Free Bonereapers by Jeanne Matthews

nothing ventured…
    The other guard, Lee, answered her knock. He was a couple of inches taller than Rod, but they could have been brothers. Same thin mouth, same thin nose, same thin hair.
    “I’d like to talk with Erika, please.”
    “Mrs. Sheridan doesn’t wish to be disturbed.”
    “Is she ill?”
    “She’s resting.”
    “I won’t stay long.”
    “Look, she doesn’t want to be disturbed, okay?”
    The door was closing when Erika peeped around his shoulder. “What is it, Dinah? Did you bring a message from Colt?”
    “No, Erika.” Did she expect that he would send a gofer to apologize for him? “You looked so shaken when you left the restaurant. I thought I’d come and sit with you for a while.”
    “I guess it would be all right.”
    Lee folded his arms across his chest and widened his stance. “Senator Sheridan said you should rest.”
    Erika skimmed a sideways look at his face. “Colt’s right, of course. I have to take care of myself or I’ll get a migraine.”
    Dinah didn’t believe her. “Exercise is always good for what ails you. I’m going for a walk. Come with me.”
    “In a blizzard?”
    “It’ll be invigorating. Like you said, too much warmth isn’t healthy.”
    “That’s not exactly what I…Wait!” Erika’s eyes brightened. “I want you to take my parka. You’ll freeze to death in that pea jacket you brought.” She went back inside the room.
    Lee stood in the doorway with his arms across his chest. His eyes were as hard and unreflective as slate.
    “Must be a full-time job protecting Mr. Mahler,” said Dinah.
    No comeback.
    “You must have had previous encounters with Mr. Eftevang. Valerie says he’s been a real nuisance.”
    A muscle in his jaw twitched.
    Dinah frowned. The hit man hypothesis began to seem less far-fetched.
    “Here you are.” Erika reached past him and handed her the coat. “The hood is lined with mouton and the body’s down-filled. It will keep you warm.”
    “Thanks, Erika. I’ll return it this afternoon.”
    “No hurry,” said Lee, and closed the door in her face.
    Dinah retreated to her room. Outside her window, the blizzard Ramberg had forecast was swirling in the blue lights. Her thoughts swirled as furiously as the snow. What was going on next door? Was Erika being held incommunicado by her husband or was she cutting off communication of her own volition? Dinah slumped into the chair and propped her feet on the window sill.
    Why had Eftevang’s murder rattled the Sheridans? A raft of possible explanations scudded through her head. Maybe Eftevang knew an embarrassing secret about the senator or Erika and had threatened to expose it. Or maybe he knew something damaging about Tillcorp and Sheridan’s dealings with the company and was on the verge of passing whatever it was to WikiLeaks. What had Mahler said? Clamp a lid on it. It can’t go any farther . What had he meant by that? During the press conference, he and Valerie had been seated near the back of the audience. Dinah wished she’d seen their faces when Eftevang charged the podium yelling, “They’ve brought the death gene.”
    She sat up and took another look at the outside world. The snow was coming down so fast and so thick that it covered some of the lights. The heat put out by the little blue bulbs couldn’t melt it fast enough. It was hard to think of a storm of this magnitude as an aggregation of separate, unique snowflakes, but that’s what it was. Perhaps that was the story with the human storm roiling around her. It was an aggregation of unrelated problems that just happened to converge in the same place at the same time.
    With no one to talk to and nothing to do, she was in limbo. She supposed she should call Eleanor with an update, but all she could think about was Eftevang’s murder and Erika’s predicament and she had no idea if these matters had anything whatever to do with the seed vault. She decided to wait and call Eleanor after the tour of the vault, if it