That being clearly as close as a random person was going to get to Sarlac, I gave up the hunt for now and instead enlisted Kanesha to do more research. Doesn’t use escorts. Will have to try something else.

Something that wasn’t sex? Could somebody be immune to that? The concept was somewhat alien to me, but it did seem that Charles Sarlac had never had any romantic entanglements.

He did, however, have a sister with two kids. Not in DC. The next form of leverage was to threaten family, right?

Or enlist family. Unfortunately, they were back in his home state of Oregon. The other side of the country.
That wouldn’t slow down a succubus, I thought. Or an incubus. It did, however, put a certain crimp in my ability to get there before spring break. I couldn’t take too many sick days to work on this, not after the African adventure.

Maybe I could contact her over the internet? Friend her on Facebook? That felt wrong to me.

I couldn’t assess her, work out how vulnerable she and the kids were, without a face to face meeting. Her husband was a lawyer. Veterinary malpractice, of all things. I didn’t even realize that was a specialty.

No good angle there. And maybe…no. If anyone would know Sarlac’s proclivities, or lack thereof, it would be his bodyguard.

Another angle.

Kanesha texted me back with, “Guy’s so straight arrow it’s unbelievable. Have you tried cornering his staff?”

“I talked to his bodyguard, but…no. I haven’t tried his secretary.”

“No sex, no drugs, no booze, probably no rock and roll either.”

I laughed, even though she couldn’t hear me. So, maybe the answer was to sneak around whatever senate office building he was in. “Find out which building his office is in?” I typed back, then tucked my phone back into my pocket and just stared at the ice covered reflecting pool.

Hopefully nobody would throw Loki in it today. It would be awfully cold.

Then again, he wouldn’t care about cold any more than I would. Advantages.

How could I use them? I’d probably…no, wait, I wouldn’t. The bodyguard would never be able to trace that identity. Hopefully there wasn’t some poor real woman out there who happened to look like the glamor I’d set.

That was an advantage. It was one, though, that I shared with my enemy.

Who, I reminded, was afraid of me. Maybe as a matter of principle. Maybe she knew something I didn’t.

I had to get to Oregon. Or was that too some kind of trap?