Executive Privilege by Phillip Margolin

her.
    “Shit!”
    She wiped her hand on her shirt and shook it to cool it off. She’d have a lot more to worry about than a burn if the people watching Farrington had her license number.
    Dana stood up and started to pace. Could she get Perry to intercede for her? He was connected. Hell, he was a personal friend of the Farringtons. Then it occurred to her that Perry couldn’t intercede on her behalf. If he did, he’d have to tell the president that he’d hired someone to spy on him. Perry would deny any connection to her and the surveillance and there was no way she could prove he was lying. Perry had met her where no one knew them. The waitress was the only witness, and she’d never be able to ID Dale. He’d been wearing shades and that baseball cap. And there was no paper trail. He’d paid her in cash. She was screwed.
    Another idea occurred to her as soon as she calmed down enough to think. Maybe she could work this fiasco to her advantage. If Christopher Farrington was having an affair with Charlotte Walsh the photographs she’d taken were worth a lot of money. Farrington was always spouting off about family values. Proof he was having sex with a teenager would send the media into a feeding frenzy. A tabloid like Exposed would give her a fortune for the shots. And there were the right-wing television stations. She bet they’d come across.
    Of course, the money wouldn’t do her any good if she was in prison for attacking the guard or dead. Maybe she could use the pictures as a bargaining chip to stay out of jail or to get Farrington to leave her alone. Maybe she could get some money for them from Farrington and use the pictures as an insurance policy. Dana decided that she should put a copy of the photos in a safe place, maybe give them to a lawyer or lock them up in a safety-deposit box. But did she need a bargaining chip? She would if the Secret Service knew who she was, but she still wasn’t certain that they had her license number. There was only one way to find out. She’d have to go to her apartment and see if it was under surveillance. She couldn’t drive her car because it would be recognized. Jake’s Harley was available, but she didn’t want to get him in trouble. In the end, Dana decided to take the motorcycle.
     
    Dana put a DVD with the photos and a cover letter in an envelope with Jake’s name on it and left it on his desk. Jake would know how to exploit the pictures if something happened to her. She addressed another envelope with a second copy of the DVD to a lawyer who’d given her legal advice when she was deciding whether to quit the force. She dropped the envelope for the lawyer in a mailbox on her way to her apartment, which was on the third floor of a three-story brick apartment house on Wisconsin Avenue, a short haul from the National Cathedral. The bottom floor was occupied by a Greek restaurant and the entrance was between the restaurant and a dry cleaner. Dana cruised by her building slowly, taking in both sides of the street. At this hour, there wasn’t much traffic and it should have been easy to spot a stakeout. As far as Dana could tell, the cars on both sides of her block were unoccupied and she didn’t see any suspicious-looking vans.
    Dana waited on a side street for fifteen minutes before circling the block and cruising back on the opposite side of the street. Nothing she saw raised her antennae. If someone was watching her apartment they weren’t doing it from the street, but the surveillance could be from any of the apartments across the street. She tried to spot some suspicious activity in one of them but she couldn’t see into the darkened interiors.
    After making sure that the back wasn’t being watched, Dana parked the Harley in the rear of her building and entered it through a metal door that opened into the basement. Maybe she was going to be okay. Maybe she’d been lucky and it had been too dark to make out her license plate.
    Dana took the stairs and