This close to D.C., private and public cops were as common as ants. Still, Cord couldn’t imagine why one would be here, in his classroom-much less why the ferret and hound would be paired together.

“All right. Let’s wrap this up,” Cord said, but he didn’t really want to wrap up the class at all. It was twenty minutes to ten. Outside, it was a bone-chilling, rainy night, but inside, Cord had been perfectly happy, his boots up on the desk, his arms cocked behind his neck, occasionally stirring himself to referee the debate…but the two strangers made it impossible to concentrate.

He couldn’t imagine what they wanted…but it couldn’t be good. Cord was fatalistic about bad luck. It never showed up when you were in the mood, because you were never in the mood.

“Okay, I know you think you escaped a bullet by getting out early, but don’t start thinking I’m going easy on you. Next Tuesday night, I just might keep you until after eleven.”

This threat was greeted with mixed laughter and groans. Students rustled into their jackets, stood up, dropped books, made all the usual noise it took to scoot them out of the place. Even on a medieval dark night like this one, they were more revved than tired, and damn it, when Cord finally got them charged up about ideas and thinking and bigger worlds, he hated to let them go.

The place had completely cleared out before the two strangers headed down the aisle. Cord had stood up by then, was pushing papers and books into his folio, reaching for his old alpaca jacket…but he watched them.

“Cord Pruitt?”

Cord nodded. Both men showed their IDs. As expected, the jowly, tired-looking guy was a detective, George Bassett. The other man-the more interesting character with the long, sharp features-was private security. Ian Ferrell had a tag from the Senate Office Building, so, pretty obviously, he was on some senator’s staff. Cord was even more mystified why they’d be paired together.

“I’m afraid we’re here about your brother, sir.” Bassett’s tone was respectful.

“Jon?” Okay, dumb question. It wasn’t as if he had any other brother. But his muscles were freezing up now, anticipating a blow.

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid we have bad news. Perhaps you might want to sit down.”

Cord pushed off his jacket, but there was no way he was sitting down. “You can skip the tact and cushioning with me. Just tell me what kind of trouble he’s in now.”

The men exchanged glances, but the detective picked up the ball. “We received a 911 call late this afternoon. When officers responded to the scene, we found a man lying at the bottom of the stairs. He was deceased. I’m sorry for your loss, sir-”

That had been tacked on as if the detective had suddenly forgotten his usual lines in a play.

Cord sagged against the desk. There was no love lost between him and Jon. Years ago he’d stopped believing his brother would find an ethic or principle in his character.

But five tons of flash-flood memories suddenly seared through his mind. Cord had been roaming the world for God knew how many years now. He’d still likely be hightailing it from Everest to the Amazon, from Delphi to Paris to Rio…if their mother hadn’t come down with cancer. By the time he’d severed his work ties and got back to Washington, it was too late. Mom was gone. Dad had crashed and had to be put in what they discreetly called a rehab center. Over the last years, Jon had turned into someone Cord couldn’t even recognize, much less reach. And Zoe had left him, because coming home to clean up family messes wasn’t exactly her specialty.

More fool Cord. He’d actually thought she was the kind of woman who’d stand by him.

His brother, on the other hand, had always been trouble. Cord could readily believe Jon had promoted himself to even bigger trouble-but still, nothing like this. Not dead. Not murdered.

Cord swiped a hand over his face, tried to surface from the weight of shock. And guilt.

“Where’s my brother now?” Cord asked hoarsely. “Who did this? What-?”

The detective quietly interrupted. “It took us a few hours to track you down. Initially, we assumed your father was the primary family connection, but then we realized…”

“That he’s in a rest home.”

“Yes. So from there, we tried to ascertain if your brother had any other direct relatives-which is how we came across your name. Obviously, you weren’t at your home address, so we tracked you down through the university, and then where you’d be lecturing at this hour-all of which is to say, this all took time. It has been a few hours since the event. Initially we weren’t certain if your brother fell down the stairs or if there could have been foul play-”

Impatiently, Cord pushed away from the desk. Bassett was talking a lot, but saying very little, arousing Cord’s worry buttons even more. Obviously, his brother hadn’t had an accidental fall. And obviously, even a murder must have had unusually complicated implications, or these two men would never have shown up together.

“What do you need from me?” he asked curtly, addressing the private cop rather than the detective. The man had been silent all this time, but Cord sensed he was the higher authority of the two.

“Mr. Pruitt…the situation is complex.”

Cord had already guessed that. Situations involving Jon were always complicated. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to fathom how his dad was going to survive this.

“Are you familiar with a young woman named Sophie Campbell?”

“No,” Cord said.

“She’s the tenant who lived next door to your brother-from the time she moved here, somewhere around nine months ago. She’s the person who found him. She apparently knew your brother quite well.”

Cord sighed. “So did a lot of women.”

Bullets kept shooting through his mind. Funeral arrangements had to be made. Someone had to deal with his brother’s business, from bills to belongings. Their father was hooked up to oxygen full-time, wouldn’t be able to handle anything-just telling him would be a crisis in itself-and thank God they’d lost their mother, because she’d have crumpled to find out what Jon had become and how he’d died.

“Who did this? Do you know?” Cord asked again.

“That’s exactly what we need your help with.”

Cord wanted to throw something. Too many people could have wanted to strangle his brother. Himself included.

He paced around the desk, stared at the black diamonds sluicing down the windows, the pitch-black night, the bleakness of it. “Look. I can’t seem to grasp any of this. You think this woman, this Campbell person, killed him? Is that why you mentioned her?”

They all pulled back for a moment. Neither man had moved from their rock-quiet position in front of him. The detective, Bassett, started to say, “At this time, this soon, there’s no possibility of our knowing anything definitively-”

But Ferrell interrupted him, looked directly into Cord’s eyes. “Your brother has been under private investigation for the last two months. I believe he’s been blackmailing two women, and possibly more. He had a pattern of targeting high-profile women, where a public scandal would have crippled their lives. My client is a senator, but believe me, she isn’t the only one who wants this matter handled as privately as possible.”

“We absolutely want to find out who murdered your brother,” Bassett clipped in.

“But we also want access to the blackmail evidence your brother had. It’s no one’s goal to impede the investigation. Everyone concerned wants the killer brought to light. But in an ideal world, the innocent victims wouldn’t be exposed to a media circus.”

“Holy hell.” Cord rubbed the back of his neck again.

“We have no absolute evidence of blackmail-” the detective interjected, but Ferrell interrupted him again, his voice quiet and sure.

“No one expected your brother’s death. No one knew for sure how far your brother’s…activities…had gone, or how many women were involved. But right now it’s a tangled mess. A lot of people could be hurt if this is handled the wrong way.”

Cord wished his thermos wasn’t empty. His throat was dryer than the Sahara. They kept heaping on more bad news. “Maybe we’d better get a few things straight before you say any more,” he told both men. “I did a stint in the Air Force, donated some years to the State Department-easy enough for you to check my background, and I’m guessing you already have. But being a patriot doesn’t mean I have any use for politics and politicians. I don’t. I don’t spy and I don’t lie. So if that’s what you’re asking me-”

“It’s not, Mr. Pruitt. But we are asking for your discretion, and your help. We absolutely want to bring whoever did this to justice. But we believe that it’s in everyone’s best interests to keep this under the media radar as much as possible-”

Bassett was long-winded and careful. Ferrell cut to the chase. “It’s too soon to draw conclusions. We all know that. But as an initial strategy, it makes good sense to publicize your brother’s death as an accidental fall. Temporarily, not forever. There’s no question, at least in my mind, that this was a murder-”

“Although we won’t know that until the results of an autopsy. We know very few specifics this soon.”

Ferrell rolled his eyes. “It was murder,” he repeated to Cord. “But the reason we want the media calling it accidental is to gain an advantage. The murderer wouldn’t be on her guard.”

“We don’t positively know that it’s a ‘her,’” the detective piped up again, but Ferrell ignored him.

“If the murderer feels safe, she could slip, make mistakes. The women involved with your brother are going to want that blackmail evidence, Mr. Pruitt. There are pictures, notes, CDs. We know that, but we don’t know where they are. We believe the murderer-as well as the other women involved in your brother’s life-will likely take some major risks to find that evidence. To destroy it.”