She had to think seriously about Carver and Dannon. Dannon was well under control-he'd been her security man for four years, and for all four years had hungered for her. Not just for sex. He was in...

The nun said, I can forgive the language. I'm not sure I can forgive your making an obscene gesture at your mother. Ya gotta know her, Holland said. If you knew her, you'd give her the finger, too.

Lucas's Colt .45 Gold Cup and Beretta 92F, and drove up

Focus on our ignorance. She didn't quite grasp the concept. She'd never been ignorant.

Yael chipped in: He is trying to sell this artifact he stole. The people he is trying to sell it to are extremely dangerous. People who might kill him, if they need to, to get the stone. Virgil added,...

Hey, people get killed from time to time, that's just the way of the world, let's not bust a budget about it . . .

Haven't seen so much screaming and yelling since I went to a goat-fuck out in South

Women are basically recreational areas, with several separate facilities available at any given time.

stopped by the door

California is like a Nazi state with palm trees

Cops and schoolteachers," Sloan said with satisfaction. "A cop and schoolteacher bar. The teachers drink like fish. The cops hit on the schoolteachers. One big happy family.

Clay pulled Lucas along and as they were approaching the back door, he called, Madam Secretary . . . I need you to meet this guy. She stopped and turned and looked at Lucas and then Clay, did a quick...

The Times, whose editorial portentousness approached traumatic constipation, tried to suppress its glee under the bushel basket of feigned sadness that another civil servant had been caught in a...

Mount Pleasant was an older town, where no two houses, standing side by side, seemed to come out of the same architectural style, with nineteenth-century Victorians up against pastel-colored postwar...

He was conservative, especially on the abortion issue, and he was death on taxes; on the other hand, he had a Clintonesque attitude about women, and even a sense of humor about his own peccadilloes.

Did he ever ask you . . . or suggest to you . . . that he might want to pull some kind of dirty trick on Senator Smalls? Oh, no, he would never have done that, Fey said. I mean, he might have tried to...

LEONARD WAS A THICK, dark-haired man, Lucas's height but heavier, both in the arms and the gut. He was wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and yellow work boots. The scars around his pale, suspicious eyes...

He went on like that for a while, and before he was done, Lucas had dismissed him as being ineffectually goofy, although his ideas about the killing were roughly the same as Lucas's own. Holly said he...

We need to know who it is, if he or she is there, Lucas said. That person's life could be in danger from the same people who killed Tubbs . . . unless he or she did it. Then, that'd mean you're...

You think we could get them around by the pool? Taryn asked. Well, we could, but why would we? Because it looks rich. The point is, if this hurts me, I'll be hurt with the more conservative voters out...

Schiffer recoiled: Oh, Jesus Christ, Taryn, don't give me a heart attack, she said, clutching at her chest. Remember: no sense of humor. How many times do I have to tell you that: No sense of humor....

She made a moue, then said, There's one exception. If he is, in fact, in love with Ms. Grant, he might take one for her . . . if she's involved. If he thinks Carver acted alone, he might also turn on...

Though wickedly aware of his surroundings, he didn't look around; looking around attracted the eye. People who saw him would ask themselves, "Why's that guy looking around like that?" He'd learned not...

I don't know. He was hit hard. Bleeding out his mouth, bright red blood, so he probably took a hit to his lung. He was alive when they took him into the operating room . . . Lucas gave him the details...

The aisles of the Varied Industries building had grown too coagulated, so Marlys led the girl around the building, the girl's legs churning to keep up. They came out directly behind the fire hydrant...

The gun locked open and he slammed another magazine in. As he did it, he either saw or imagined he saw a ripple moving through the cornfield and fired four more shots at it, then stopped, crouched,...

Murdered? Somebody murdered him?" Palmer was agog. A thin, soft man with a pitted nose and a bald, bumpy egg-shaped head dotted with dime-sized freckles, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said,...

A diplomatic passport for a Tal Zahavi, with a current photo of Yael-1. The same birth date as in the other passport. The interior must have had fifty entry stamps for European and South American...

Impossible to know. The thing is, you take a fork in the road, it doesn't always work out for the better . . . but sometimes it does. It must.

She shook her head. I don't know the details, exactly, but he was a lobbyist for the Minnesota Apiary Association. You mean, archery? Jeff asked. No, apiary, Daddy. You know, honey bees. There was...