All In (The Blackstone Affair, Part 2) by Raine Miller Page A

pang of worry and pretty much ignored it. I could not fail
in protecting her. I wouldn’t allow a failure.
    Muriel grinned at me when I paid for the
papers. I tried not to shudder at the sight of her teeth. “There
you go, luv,” she said, holding out a stained hand with my
change.
    I got a look at that grimy hand and decided
she needed the change more than I needed to contract a contagion.
“Keep it.” I looked into her oddly beautiful green eyes and nodded
once. “I’ll be getting all these US papers regular from now on if
you want to have them ready,” I offered.
    “Oh, you’re a darling, you are. I’ll have
‘em. G’day to ye, handsome.” She winked at me and showed a bit more
of those horrifying teeth. I tried not to look too close, but I
think Muriel could compete with me on beard stubble. Poor
thing.
    When I got into my office I started on the
intel in earnest. I listened to the message of the man who’d called
Brynne. I played it several times. American, very matter of fact,
non-confrontational, nothing revealed in his inquiry gave anything
away about what he might know. “Hi there. This is Greg Denton
from The Washington Review. I’m trying to find a Brynne Bennett who
attended Union Bay High School, San Francisco…”
    His message was short and utilitarian, and
he left his information for a call back. The history showed he’d
only rang her the one time so there was a very good chance he
didn’t know much, or if Brynne was even the right person he was
attempting to contact.
    I briefed Frances without giving away
specific details, told her to look into this Greg Denton at The
Washington Review and also to see what else she could scrub up in
the newspapers I’d bought this morning.
    I was just sitting back down, eyeballing my
desk drawer where the smokes were stashed when Neil came in.
    “You seem rather…human…this morning, mate.”
He sat in the chair and looked me over, a bit of a smirk going on
his square jaw.
    “Don’t say it,” I warned.
    “A’right.” He pulled out his mobile and
looked busy with it. “I won’t say I know who stayed over last
night. And I definitely won’t say I saw you two snogging while
waiting for the lift this morning on security cam—”
    “Piss off!”
    Neil laughed at me. “Hell, the office is
thrilled, mate. We can all breathe again without fear of
disembowelment. The boss got his girl back. Praise the gods!” He
looked upward and held his hands up. “It’s been a fucked-up couple
of weeks—”
    “I’d love to see how your miserable arse
would do if Elaina suddenly decided she couldn’t stand the sight of
you.” I cut him off, offered up a fake grin, and waited for the
change in attitude. “Which could always happen, you know, as I know
all your shameful secrets.”
    Worked like a charm. Neil lost the dickhead
posturing in about one point five seconds.
    “We’re really happy for you, E,” he said
quietly. And I know he meant it.
    “How’s the military investigation into
Lieutenant Oakley going?” I asked, giving in and opening my desk
drawer to pull out my lighter and a pack of Djarums.
    “He’s been doing very bad things to the
people of Iraq and getting away with it, but not sure for how long
that’ll stay buried. I think the senator can only be relieved his
son is off getting into trouble in Iraq as opposed to anywhere
close to his election campaign.”
    I grunted in agreement and sucked back my
first, sweet inhale. The cloves gave quite a kick, but I was used
to it. Now I just let the nicotine do its work and felt guilty for
what I was putting into my body. “So he’s career military you
think?” I exhaled away from Neil.
    Neil shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
    “Why not?”
    Neil had the keenest instincts of anyone I
knew. He wasn’t just an employee, not by a long shot. Neil was
much, much more. We’d been boys together, gone off to war, survived
that hell to return to England, managing to grow up in the