Thomas openly smiled. "I'm quite prepared to be polite. Or, if you prefer, I might be able to dredge up some nervous sweat and a stammer or two. What do you want? Information or subservience? I'm investigating the murder of fifty-four men, women, and children, and I was asked, not ordered, to make time for this courtesy briefing."

She straightened in her seat. "Fifty-four? I understood it was fifty-three. Did you find another body?"

I should've just said "mass murder." His felt his eyes narrow. "And who, pray tell, told you that figure, and when?"

She raised her chin. "Your boss. Three days ago. And who is briefing whom?"

Thomas smiled thinly. "Ah, that's the trouble with conversation. It goes in two directions. Perhaps you should've just asked for a written report. What else did he tell you... the better to shape my briefing?"

She sat back again and smiled slightly. "Why don't you just pretend I don't know anything and go from there."

I wish. "Very well. We have suspects but no proof. The investigation is proceeding. Progress is being maintained." He stood and placed his hat beneath one arm.

"Where are you going?"

"That concludes the briefing."

She pointed back at the chair. "Sit back down, Commander. We're not finished."

He did not sit, but turned to face her instead, in parade rest. "Do you remember the San Luis incident, Congresswoman?"

The woman's eyes narrowed. "Vaguely."

The San Luis was a small cabin cruiser with fifteen refugees aboard. It was sunk with all hands by an INS patrol boat. The three-man crew claimed they'd been fired upon, but the physical evidence did not agree.

"At the attorney general's order, INSCID briefed your committee on the ongoinginvestigation, complete with a detailed summary of the evidence and suspects."

She didn't say anything.

"The details were in the Washington Post the next day. The two suspects skipped the country after killing our most important witness."

She waved her hand as if brushing at gnats. "That was the committee, seven members and their aides. They traced the leak to Senator Nole's aide."

Thomas didn't say anything.

"Commander, I've got a right to know. I have a need to know. It's my job to safeguard the people's interests, to make sure the Constitution is not subverted. You can have my assurance that it won't leave this room."

Thomas shook his head. "You voted for the Emergency Immigration Act. You approved the Displaced Americans Disenfranchisement. You voted for the impeachment of Justice Libby. I'm not so sure the Constitution is safe in your hands."

She looked aside at that. "That was very early in my career." She raised her eyes back up. "But since you're so interested in my voting record, you'll also find I've voted on every attempt to end the Emergency Immigration Act and, in fact, when this election is done, I think you'll find we actually have the votes to finally do it.

You'll see that my presence on this committee has kept the National Alliance from destroying what vestiges of immigration we still have."

Thomas paused. "I admit, madam, that I'll take you over Congressman Smithers, any day."

"Thanks, I think. Why don't we begin again?" She touched a button on the phone. "Meredith, could we get some coffee in here?" She looked back at Thomas.

"And how do you take your coffee?"

It wasn't a big step, but it was in the right direction. He turned his hand over.

"With milk," he said mildly. "If you would be so kind."

One of the aides came into the room and put a piece of paper down in front of the congresswoman while she was still talking into the intercom. She picked the paper up, then looked at Thomas. "Do you really want to find out who sunk the Open Lotus, Commander?"

"That's my intent, Congresswoman. That's my mission."

"No matter the cost?" She was oddly serious.

Thomas straightened to attention. "I won't kill or torture to find out, and I would prefer not to die. I won't subvert the Constitution. Anything else goes. My word on it."

She turned to the aide. "Have them send her up."The aide left the room.

"There's a young lady downstairs who claims to have information on the involvement of the INS in the sinking of the Open Lotus."

One of the congresswoman's aides had a jacket that wasn't quite too small for Thomas's shoulders. He put his uniform jacket and hat in the closet and sat in the congresswoman's seat behind the desk to hide his uniform pants and shoes.

If this mystery woman knew that the INS was involved in a mass murder, she might hesitate to discuss it before an INS officer.

Congresswoman Beenan stood in front of the desk and leaned on it.

The woman came in with an aide on one side and a New Galveston police officer behind. She was wearing a red dress, sexy with lots of cleavage, with shoulder-length shiny black hair, bright lipstick, and sunglasses. She was looking at the congresswoman, but when her head swiveled to take in Thomas, her mouth dropped open.

Thomas took one look at her face and froze, his hand going to his mouth.

Congresswoman Beenan pushed off the desk and offered the woman her hand.

"I'm Katherine Beenan. I understand you have something to tell us?"

"What are you doing here?" the woman hissed, stepping past the congresswoman's offered hand as if it wasn't there.

Thomas looked her up and down and whistled. How on earth? "Good madam, let me see your face."

The congresswoman, annoyed, looked from Thomas to the stranger.

The woman in the red dress said, "Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face? You are now out of your text: but we will draw the curtain and show you the picture." She took off her sunglasses. "Look you, sir, such a one I was this present: is't not well done?"

The congresswoman was twisting her head, staring at the brunette.

The voice reminds her, but she still doesn't get it. Aloud, Thomas said, "

Excellently done, if God did all."

Here Patricia sighed and departed from the play. "No, in truth, God and nature had a shitload of help." She pulled the wig off and dropped it on the desk, then turned to the congresswoman.

"Hi, Mom."

Thomas hadn't expected tears-first the mother's, shocked from her, apparently;then Patricia's, in response.

Thomas waved the aide and the cop out, then sat back and drank his coffee, carefully looking away from the two women. When they pushed apart from each other, he slid the box of tissues across the desk toward them.

"Did you get your breasts done, Pea?" the congresswoman asked a few moments later.

Pea?

Patricia blew her nose. "No. They're as false as the hair. I've had more doors held for me in the last twenty-four hours than in my entire adult life, and I don't think it's the hair."

The congresswoman looked back at Thomas, and some of her rigidity returned.

"Did you two set this up?"

Thomas shook his head. "Surprised the hell out of me. I had no idea she was going to be here."

Patricia was looking at Thomas, smiling. "I was surprised, too. Mom, can I borrow a T-shirt and some shorts? This rig," she gestured at her chest, "chafes me sorely."

The two women left the room. While they were gone, he put his uniform coat back on. In a few moments, Patricia's mother returned.

"She's scrubbing her face. You must've seen her in that disguise before," said the congresswoman.

Thomas shook his head. "No. Never."

Patricia came back in, barefoot, dressed in shorts and a cotton shirt. She was drying off her face with a hand towel.

Thomas stepped forward when she lowered the towel. "Ow, that had to hurt." He leaned forward, looking at the stitches.

She laughed. "It sure hurt when they put them in, that's for certain." She searched Thomas's face, her mouth parted. "I didn't really feel it when the bomb went off."

The congresswoman shook her head, unable to let it go. "Then how did you recognize her when I didn't?"

Thomas felt the small package in his jacket pocket. "Ah, well, I have an idea about that, but it's kind of personal."

"Personal?" Patricia's mother was clearly baffled. "What on earth does personal have to do with you recognizing her?"He looked back at Patricia. She had a question in her eyes, her head tilted.

Thomas took the plunge. "Well, you didn't recognize her because you only lived with her for the first part of her life, whereas I-" he took the box from his pocket "-intend to live with her for the rest of it."

He held his breath and offered the box on his fingertips, his palm flat, like one might offer sugar to a horse.

Patricia dropped the towel on the floor and he thought for a second that she was about to bolt, but she cautiously reached out and took the box, then opened it.

Christ, this has got to be the scariest thing I've ever done.

She looked up at him and there were more tears in her eyes. "Oh, Thomas, are you sure?"

"I am sure of everything but the timing and the audience. Give me thy hand; and let me see thee in thy woman's weeds."

Her response was physical, passionate, and deeply gratifying.

It took a moment for them to realize the congresswoman was talking to them, or at least at them.

"Either you carry an engagement ring around on the off chance you meet a likely bride, or I can assume you two have been introduced."

Thomas backed off from a heroic kiss and traced the line of Patricia's jaw. "We were to meet later this evening. I was going to ask her then." He touched Patricia's lips with his fingertip. "I didn't mean it, by the way, about thy woman's weeds. I mean, you looked great in that dress, but I like you just fine in shorts. Or jeans. Or coveralls."

"Or nothing?" she suggested, then blushed, her eyes darting sideways at her mother. "Well, I think your uniform is very nice, too."

Her mother snorted. "I think I better order up some champagne." She picked up the phone and talked briefly, then walked back to the entwined couple. "Let me see the ring."

"The ring?" said Patricia. She was still staring at Thomas, and he laughed.

"Did you even look at it?" he asked.

"Of course," she said.

"What color was the stone?"

She buried her face in his neck. "Okay, I'm a fraud. What color is the ring?"

Her mother found it the box, dropped on the floor by the towel. "Green. It's an emerald bracketed by two smaller diamonds. Looks like an antique. Very nice. Afamily piece?"

Thomas shook his head. "No. I found it in an antique shop in Houston. It dates to the eighteen eighties. I did go into one of those malls-" He shuddered. "Your hand, Patricia." He took the ring from its box. "I had to guess at the size." He slipped it on her left ring finger. It stuck slightly at the knuckle, then went over.

"Perfect," Patricia said. "I wouldn't want it to slip off. Oh. It is nice." She kissed him again.

"I think I'll go see if there are any champagne flutes," the congresswoman said.

She closed the door behind her.

Oddly, this privacy seemed to constrain Patricia more than the presence of her mother. She backed off, staring at Thomas as if he were suddenly strange.

"I didn't even consider this. I've been concentrating on getting you into my bed the first time." She looked down. "Not for all time. This is so strange. Nobody gets married without sleeping together first-not unless they're hyper-religious."

Thomas's voiced husked. "I'm more than willing to sleep with you before we get married. You know I want you-we've just been... interrupted." He smiled. "My one worry is that we'll get shot at every time we try."

She shrugged off the joke, her face still serious. "You don't have to marry me to sleep with me. I want you, too."

Thomas dropped to both knees and held his arms out. "I love you. I am overthrown. I hadn't read Twelfth Night in years, but I've read it three times in the last twenty-four hours. I've even been reading sonnets, so bad do I have this plague.

Christ, I've been giving my men orders in iambic pentameter!"

She sobbed, a short laugh, with tears.

He pushed on. "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. I'm in this for the long haul." He pointed at the scarred side of his face. "The question is, can you put up with this?"

She crouched and cupped his face with her hands. "Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house; write loyal cantons of contemned love and sing them loud even in the dead of night. Oh, Thomas, I do love you."

He stood again, taking her in his arms, but she pushed back, another look of panic on her face. "Where will we live? I don't even know where you live."