Heartbreaker (27 page)

Authors: Linda Howard

At one point he lost sight of herâÂthough he was careful not to let her know he was watchingâÂbut she reappeared in about ten minutes with freshly applied lipstick, so his best guess was a trip to the ladies' room. She could also have been meeting a lover, exchanging information, or making a private call. Without any evidence to the contrary, though, he was going with the ladies' room theory.

They were an hour and a half into the party when their circuitous routes around the room brought them together. He tilted his glass toward her in acknowledgment but didn't interrupt his current conversation with a senator's aide even though it was deadly boring and he'd have liked to cram a pair of dirty socks down the pompous jackass's throat. Let her come to him. He wasn't approaching anyone.

Finally the senator's aide paused when he stopped a passing waiter to deposit his empty glass on the man's tray. Congresswoman Kingsley smoothly slid in and said, “Hello, Karl, Axel.”

“Congresswoman,” Axel replied in acknowledgment, and watched in amusement as the senator's aide struggled with his ego and the pecking order on Capitol Hill. The congresswoman was an important personage, but Karl looked on the House as inferior to the Senate; therefore his position as chief aide to a senator
should
be superior to hers. Then his ego butted into the unfortunate fact that Congresswoman Kingsley had been electedâÂseveral times overâÂwhile he was a hired aide who hadn't been elected to anything..

“Congresswoman Kingsley,” Karl finally muttered, using her title while she'd used his first name. Oh, the slings and arrows, Axel mused.

She gave Karl one of those smiles and said, “Would you excuse us? I'd like to discuss a few details with Axel.”

There was nothing Karl could do except say, “Of course,” and take himself away.

Axel sipped his drinkâÂsparkling water on the rocks because when you were wading in a pool of sharks, you needed all your wits about youâÂand waited for her to steer the conversation in the direction she wanted, though he did paste a faintly questioning expression on his face.

“I heard something disturbing,” she said, pitching her voice low so only he could hear her.

He gave a slight lift of his eyebrows that invited her to continue.

“I heard Morgan was killed.”

“Not so,” he promptly replied.

Relief flickered in her eyes. “Thank God. ButâÂwas he hurt? My source was very specific about the victim's name.”

He'd like to know exactly who her source was, but he didn't waste time trying to dig that info out of her. She was a seasoned veteran of the dance.

“He was shotâÂand I won't lie, it was serious. But I have him in a protected location while he recovers.”

“What happened?”

“Assassination attempt. The problem is he can't tell me why.”

“He doesn't
know
?”

Axel rocked his hand back and forth. “He thinks he does. He suffered a serious concussion and he's having a few memory problems, but he says he knows what's going on if he can just remember it. There isn't any permanent brain damage, and the doc says that he'll remember when all the swelling is gone.”

“For goodness' sake! When will that be?”

“No definite date, everyone heals differently. He has pneumonia now and that's a setback, but the docs say he's already getting better. I'm thinking a few months, most likely, before he's back to normal.”

“That must be difficult, being grounded until then. I don't know him as well as you do, but I suspect he isn't a good patient.”

“Understatement,” Axel said.

“I'm so glad he'll be all right. We'd all be devastated if anything happened to him. Give him our best when you see him.”

“I will,” he replied, holding back the information that he wouldn't be seeing Morgan at all until and if his trap was sprung. He'd spread these seeds of information in several venues around town; now he had to wait and see if any of them sprouted. Morgan had been targeted for a reason; that reason
had
to be rooted in something he'd seen or done that day. Maybe the threat he was looking for was several layers deep, not Congresswoman Kingsley herself, or Brawley, or even Kodak, but someone who knew them. He wouldn't know until someone acted.

About the Author

LINDA HOWARD is the award-Âwinning author of many
New York Times
bestsellers, includingÂ
Up Close and Dangerous, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Cover of Night, Killing Time, To Die For, Kiss Me While I Sleep, Cry No More,
Â andÂ
Dying to Please
. She lives in Alabama with her husband and two golden retrievers.

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By Linda Howard

Shadow Woman

Prey

Veil of Night

Ice

Burn

Death Angel

Up Close and Dangerous

Cover of Night

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Killing Time

To Die For

Kiss Me While I Sleep

Cry No More

Dying to Please

Open Season

A Game of Chance

Mr. Perfect

All the Queen's Men

Kill and Tell

Now You See Her

Son of the Morning

Shades of Twilight

MacKenzie's Magic

MacKenzie's Pleasure

After the Night

Dream Man

Loving Evangeline

Heart of Fire

A Touch of Fire

MacKenzie's Mission

Angel Creek

The Way Home

A Lady of the West

Bluebird Winter

Midnight Rainbow

Almost Forever

Sarah's Child

Cutting Edge

Tears of the Renegade

Come Lie With Me

Against the Rules

An Independent Woman

All That Glitters

By Linda Howard and Linda Jones

Blood Born

Running Wild

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This book was originally published in 2014 by Harlequin Books S.A.

Excerpt from
Troublemaker
copyright Â© 2016 by Linda Howington.

HEARTBREAKER
. Copyright Â© 1987 by Linda Howington. All rights reserved under International and Pan-ÂAmerican Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-Âbook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-Âengineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperÂCollins e-Âbooks. For more information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.

EPub Edition FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780062422262

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