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Delia.
    “We being watched?” he said.
    “Not necessarily. It’s always on. They’re not always monitoring it.” Delia put a strand of blond behind her ear. “I can call them, though. That’s what the button’s for, below the light.”
    “It’s a lot of security for an animal. Grimes got a thing about the horse?”
    “He’s got a thing about protecting his investment.”
    “When you’ve got something that sweet, I guess … you don’t want to lose it.”
    “That’s right.”
    “It is sweet,” Constantine said. “Isn’t it? I’m thinking right now how sweet it must be—”
    “Don’t,” Delia said sadly. “Don’t think about it.”
    She made a move to go around him, but Constantine stepped in front of her, blocking her way. Her blue eyes bore into his with determination, but there was something else there, something like an opening; Constantine took it, holding her chin in his hand just as she tried to jerk it away. He put his mouth on hers. Her lips were warm and almost at once there was no resistance, and Constantine took his hand off her chin, feeling her mouth open as she relaxed against him. He put his hands on her shoulders and smelled the clean scent of her hair, and the smell aroused him as much as the smoothness of her tongue and the pressure and warmth of her groin against his.
    They broke apart. Delia stepped back, ran the back of her hand across her mouth, slowly looked him up and down.
    “Why did you do that?” she asked quietly.
    “You wanted me to.”
    “Yes,” she admitted. “I suppose I did.”
    “You can’t be happy.”
    She studied his face. “You’re not going to make trouble, are you?”
    “I might,” he said.
    She came forward, closing her eyes this time before they kissed. He felt her around him, felt her tongue slide over his. She took his fingers and put them to her breast, her teeth pressing into his lips as he touched her. They walked to the far corner of the stable, where they undressed.
    Delia dropped Constantine’s denim shirt into the damp dirt. He watched the muscles of her back wash over her rib cage as she carefully spread the shirt. She sat on it and reached for his hand. He came to her as barn swallows fluttered in the rafters.
    A FTERWARD , they did not speak. Constantine held her, her tears hot on his neck. The feeling of her in his arms frightened him, the same fear that had gripped him when he had held the boy in the park, in Greece. He could just move on—there would be other children to hold, and there would be other women—but he was tired.
    Delia looked up at him and smiled, wiping the tears off her face. She put her head back down and buried her face into his shoulder. After a while the fear that he was feeling went away.

Chapter

7
    A CATALOG of power fashion packed the lunch-hour sidewalk at Connecticut Avenue and K, the downtown hub of the city’s lobbyists, and blue-chip law and brokerage firms. Armani suits and Louis Vuitton handbags paraded by, sharing the concrete with the homeless and the vendors and the bums, the scent of Opium colliding with the stench of urine.
    At one particularly busy avenue storefront, Washington’s working women—secretaries, attorneys, and hookers—buzzed in and out of glass doors. Those exiting the shop carried white plastic bags emblazoned with a luxuriant blue logo depicting one delicate foot resting on a pillow. Mean Feet, D.C.’s premier shoe boutique, had begun to heat up.
    Inside, Randolph worked the floor.
    “What size, girlfriend?” Randolph said, to the woman in the red skirt. She was standing by the display rack holding a spectator, a black number with a blue vamp, in her hand.
    “That depends on what you’re doing tonight,” she said coyly.
    “Tonight?” Randolph said, buying time, looking away like he was thinking it over, really looking at the rest of the customers on the floor, making sure none of the other boys took one of his women. Antoine, that skinny boy from Georgia, was