Surrounded Read Online Free PDF Page B

when he was in the Tucker persona-disappeared. He felt more at ease, more relaxed than he had all day.
        However, it was not yet time to mix a drink and sit down with Elise. There were certain details… He stepped into the large living-room closet and opened the wall safe, put away the wallet that contained the Tucker papers. He removed his own wallet from the safe and slipped that into his jacket pocket, closed the round metal door, and spun the combination dial. Now it was time for a drink and for Elise.
        She was in the white-on-white kitchen, sitting at the big Lane table, sipping a Jack Rose and reading the newspaper. He put his hands on her shoulders, leaned down, and kissed the side of her slim neck, his lips lingering just long enough to feel the steady pulse of blood in her throat.
        She shook her head. Her yellow hair bounced. "Just a minute. I'm reading about myself."
        "You're in the Times?"
        "Ssshhh," she said, bending more closely over the paper.
        He took off his jacket, draped it over another chair, then went back into the main hall to the bar, where he fixed himself a vodka martini and admired two of his most expensive possessions. While his hands worked with the bottles and the ice cubes, he studied the two pieces of primitive art that so starkly decorated the cream-colored wall in front of him. There was a fragment of a fifth-century Edo shield, roughly half of a well-worked copper oval trimmed in silver and inlaid with tiny pieces of hand-carved ivory. The African artisan who had made it had lived on the east bank of the Niger River among peace-loving people who made shields and rarely went to war. From the same tribe, but crafted by a different man, was a hunting spear with an intricately carved nine-foot shaft and an ivory-graced iron head. Tucker had paid forty thousand dollars for the fragment of the shield some six months ago. In August he had disposed of a few less important items in his collection and had cleaned out a savings account to come up with the full sixty-five thousand that the spear had cost him. It was the spear that had so severely depleted his resources and had forced him to look for another job. But he did not mind. The great lance was an incredibly beautiful piece of work worth any temporary insolvency.
        Furthermore, the spear and the shield and the other bits and pieces in the apartment lent substance to his cover as a free-lance dealer in primitive art objects. And that cover was essential. It satisfied Elise, and it stalled his father's hired investigators. He did not profit much from his art dealings, certainly not enough to live in the style he preferred, but that was a fact his father's men could learn only by burglarizing the IRS files.
        "You can come in here and kiss me now," Elise called from the kitchen.
        He went back out there and kissed her, lifting her from her chair, bringing her to her feet so that they could embrace. When she finished kissing him, he said, "What's this about your being in the Times?"
        She slipped out of his arms and tapped the paper, turned it around on the table so he could read it where he stood. "I made the business pages. The article on advertising." Her smile was wide and bright.
        Bending over the newspaper, palms flat on the table, Tucker read the brief story. It concerned the careers of several of the currently most successful actors and actresses in television commercials, and it gave Elise the highest marks for beauty, charm and professional skill. "With a copy of this in your resume," Tucker said, "you ought to be able to get a lot more money the next time you push a product."
        She grinned, dimples puckering her smooth cheeks and making her look quite unlike a cool, sophisticated actress. "Your mind's in the same groove as mine-take the suckers for everything you can get out of them."
        If only you knew, Tucker thought, reminded of what he was