Everything she knew about Brognola told her he was a devoted family man, conservative, traditional, and Susan knew that she would have to be discreet in her approach. If nothing else, his tone of voice had flashed a warning signal to her, urging caution. Something had Brognola on edge, and whether it was a suspension from his job or something else entirely, Susan realized that she could not approach the subject like a scandalmonger who wrote for one of those newspapers found at supermarket checkouts. Some sophistication was required, and Susan felt that she was equal to the task.

She found Brognola's street and made a single driveby to confirm his car was parked outside before she doubled back and nosed her Honda in against the curb. She double-checked her equipment — the compact recorder in her purse, the notebook, pens — then climbed the concrete steps to Hal Brognola's porch.

She pressed the doorbell, waited, tried a second time before she heard the cautious sound of footsteps from within. The door swung open and Brognola stood before her, looking older than the woman had remembered him from Texas, a few months earlier. The wrinkles — worry lines? — were deeply etched into his face, around his mouth, his eyes. It was the eyes that struck her hardest, peering out from under bushy brows and looking cornered, trapped.

He should remember her from Texas, from the Phoenix flameout, but the lady wasn't taking any chances.

"Susan Landry, with the..."

"Yes," he interrupted her, "I know."

"I wonder if you might have time to answer several questions."

"Questions?"

Susan noted that his eyes had shifted past her, scanning along the street in both directions. Perhaps he was expecting camera crews to spring out of the shrubbery.

"If I might just step inside..."

"What kind of questions?"

Fair enough. She dropped the smile and forged ahead. "It's been reported by a confidential source that you have been suspended from your post at Justice, pending an investigation into certain charges of administrative impropriety."

Brognola's smile was crooked, bitter. "I'm on holiday," he told her. "Three-day weekend."

"Any comment on the charges? The investigation?"

She was on the edge. It would be simple for him to deny the rumor, close the door and leave her standing there. It would not put her off the track, of course, but it could slow her down, and he must know as much. Another visual sweep up and down the street, and then Brognola stepped aside to clear the doorway.

"Come with me."

He closed and double-locked the door behind her, led the way along a corridor that seemed to more or less divide the house, with bedrooms on the right, the parlor, kitchen, dining room to Susan's left. He steered her toward the breakfast nook and found a stool on one side of a counter topped in decorative tile. She sat across the counter, facing him.

"What do you want to know?"

Presented thus, devoid of shadowboxing, the inquiry took her by surprise.

"I'm interested in your side of the story," Susan told him simply, settling back to wait.

Brognola mulled it over for a moment, glancing at his watch as if the time held great importance for him, and again the lady felt that he was worried by something more than the potential ruination of a proud career in law enforcement. When he spoke, the big Fed's tone was curt, his phrases clipped and economical.

"There have been certain leaks at Justice," he informed her. "Some of them in my department, some in others. You're aware of recent cases that have made the papers."

It was not a question, but she answered anyway. "Of course."

"Investigations are continuing," he told her cautiously, "and someone thinks they've got a handle on a leak inside my office."

"Your response?"

"I haven't had a chance to see the so-called evidence."

She frowned. The man was stalling, playing games. ''Your personal response?''

His scowl was withering. "I categorically deny releasing any confidential information from my files at any time, except through channels duly authorized. If someone's holding evidence that points the other way, let's see it in a court of law."

"And have you been suspended?"

"Like I told you, I'm officially on holiday. Unless somebody serves a warrant, I'll be clocking in on Tuesday morning, as usual."

She tried a different tack. "How is your family reacting to the charges?"

She was startled by the sudden change in Hal, his stiffening, the pallor in his cheeks. His answer seemed to take more energy than he possessed.

"I have their every confidence," he said at last, his voice remote and somehow very sad.

Susan's instincts told her that she was within a hairbreadth of another story altogether, but she couldn't find the handle, and she had no way inside. Instead, she doubled back to the investigation.

"Any comment on the evidence compiled so far?"

He shook his head. "As I've already said, I haven't seen it yet. It will be subject to intensive scrutiny." Brognola checked his watch again. "Now, if you'll please excuse me..."

She was poised to ask another question, but her train of thought was interrupted by the telephone. Brognola jumped, and Susan would have been amused by his reaction under other circumstances. As it was, she noticed the anxiety that surfaced on his face, the hesitation as he reached for the wall phone close at hand, then stopped himself.

"Excuse me, I'll take this in the other room." He fairly bolted from the bar stool, disappearing along the corridor in the direction of his den. The door swung shut behind him, and the telephone's third ring was severed halfway through.

Susan felt an urge, suppressed at once, to listen in on the extension. It would be an insult to Brognola and his hospitality, of course, but she was equally convinced that he would catch her at it, recognize the sound of the receiver being lifted in the breakfast nook no matter how distracted he might be.

She checked her watch and found it was one minute past six o'clock. Brognola had been waiting for a call; she realized that much from the compulsive study of his watch, his shock-reaction when the telephone had finally rung. Her reporter's instinct told her that the call had less to do with problems at the office than with something more immediate, more intimate. More painful, if it came to that.

The man was hurting, and from what she knew of Hal Brognola, it was not his typical reaction to a challenge on the job. Brognola would be angry, even outraged, at a challenge to his personal integrity, but he would come out swinging. There had been a trace of the anticipated anger in his grim determination to confront the recent charges in a court of law, but underneath the surface there had also been a trace of... something else.

The call was more important to Brognola than his job, and that sudden certainty left Susan Landry with a narrow range of viable alternatives. What might produce the symptoms she had witnessed in a man of proved courage and determination? Office politics was out, as well as any effort to indict him for a crime that he had not committed. The reverse side of the coin — his actual involvement with a leak of confidential information — never seriously entered Susan's mind. And what was left?

A threat against his life?

She couldn't buy it. Hal had doubtless been in dangerous situations countless times before, and from the information readily available in public files, he had revealed no trace of cowardice.

A threat against his wife and family?

The silence of the house, its emptiness, struck Susan like a fist above her heart. Hal's children would be grown, of course, away at school or off with families of their own by now, but Susan suddenly realized that she had seen no sign of another woman on the premises since she had entered.