Free Masquerade by Gayle Lynds

her small feet arched daintily in teetering heels.
    She laughed because this was so unlike her.
    â€œChrist, Les.” His voice was husky as if they were in some trashy movie. He didn’t give a damn. He grabbed for her. She ran into the bedroom. He followed, a boy eager and in love.
    Afterward, Lucas and Leslee lay naked on the bed, the air conditioner bathing them in a cool stream. He was in awe of her body, so taut and smooth, her small breasts tight against her rib cage. She was thirty-two, he was sixty-two, covered with sags, bulges, and wrinkles, especially now that he was losing weight. But Leslee seemed to think he was beautiful.
    â€œHave I made you burn dinner?” he asked.
    â€œNope. It’s beef burgundy, slow-cooking on the stove. Too hot for this weather, but I was in the mood. Do you care?”
    He smiled. “I’m always in the mood for whatever you’re in the mood for.”
    She was a writer and editor at the
Washington Independent
, an alternative newspaper that had survived twenty-five years of shoestring budgets, conservative attacks, police inquiries, and an underpaid revolving-door staff.
    And she’d changed his life.
    â€œI wish I’d known you were this easy.” She laughed.
    She’d changed his life by changing his focus from past mistakes to future possibilities. He had made careful plans. To be with Leslee, he intended to get out from under his past.
    Yes, what he and his colleagues had done was wrong. In fact, Iran-contra and Bill Casey, head of Central Intelligence during the go-go ’80s, had been wrong. Reagan and Bush had been double wrong. It shamed Maynard that he himself had falsified records, stolen money, and aided killers.
    Tiredly he closed his eyes and saw Leslee plainly in his mind. If he listened carefully, he could hear her voice in the silence of the room, even though she was drifting off to sleep in his arms. His new understanding came from Leslee Pousho with her little, compact body and her biting intelligence. He longed to tell her everything, but not until he had a deal for immunity.
    Then he’d tell Leslee and marry her, if she’d have him.
    â€œMy God,” she murmured. “The food.”
    â€œLet me. You’re tired.” He stood, held onto the bedpost, dizzy. Damn his diabetes. Why in hell hadn’t he met her before he was old, sick, and in trouble?
    â€œAre you all right?” She sat up, her breasts so small and perfect they hardly jiggled.
    The teddy and black net hose were in a tangle with his clothes on the floor. He had no idea where her pumps were. In the hall, maybe.
    â€œI’m fine.” He put on his robe. “What do I do about dinner? Do you think it’s burning?”
    She chuckled. “No. It’s just ready. Are you hungry?”
    They ate as usual at her kitchen table on a red-checked oilcloth. Again, like Terre Haute. And she a career woman from Manhattan.
    â€œI’m working on a story about your industry,” she said between mouthfuls. “Want to comment?”
    â€œProbably not. But go ahead and try me.”
    At first they’d fought about the responsibilities of government intelligence, its place in a democracy, whether its veryexistence was antidemocratic. Then they’d fought about the excesses of the Reagan and Bush years, and finally about the Company’s role in today’s post–cold war world.
    She said, “The junior senator from Utah has submitted another bill to allow the CIA to engage officially in economic espionage.”
    â€œYou act surprised.”
    â€œThis time it may pass.”
    â€œThat’s what I hear.” He chewed and watched her heart-shaped face.
    She was getting angry, because he wasn’t responding.
    He said, “Look, I understand it. We Americans are afraid. We’re sliding down a slick hill of our own greedy shit. We’re the biggest financial power in the world, and now we want