Wildcard. Rachel Lee

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      He’d held her as a baby, taught her to walk and ride a bicycle, tended skinned knees and later skinned hearts, watched her graduate from high school, then college, then law school, quietly opened doors as she’d begun her career, and all the while she had been the one pure, abiding joy of his life.

      He rubbed his nose briskly and nodded. “Yes, darling. I’m ready.”

      She saw his face, read his thoughts, and came to him with open arms. Their embrace was tight.

      “Oh, Daddy. I will always love you first.”

      “I know, precious. I know.”

      If only it were true. If only anything were true.

      “Lovely ceremony, Edward,” Harrison Rice said, extending a hand. “Your daughter is a stunning bride.”

      “Thank you, Senator. I don’t quite know how to feel about it, but…thank you.”

      Rice held on to his friend’s hand for an extra moment while flashbulbs popped in the fading evening light. Some were wedding photographers. Others were society press on hand to cover “the wedding of the season.” The rest, and that was most of them, were covering Rice’s campaign…again. Or still, depending on one’s perspective. He pressed his face close to his friend’s ear and whispered, “I know exactly what you mean there.”

      Edward Morgan met his eyes for a moment and nodded. “Yeah, I guess you would.”

      For Rice, the past forty-eight hours had been an emotional whirlwind. It had begun with the assassination in Guatemala and its aftermath, as news camera crews chased him across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas to secure him as a guest on one talk show after another. He’d had to cancel a scheduled campaign appearance, although his staff had assured him that he would get far more mileage out of the TV time.

      He supposed they were right. The speech probably wouldn’t have made enough of a difference, even if he himself would have found it more reassuring. He always preferred a live audience to the blank eye of a camera. But he’d had too high a mountain to climb yesterday. Lawrence had been a lock in his home state of Florida. Rice had known he would have to win Texas and split the other two Southern states to have a chance. He hadn’t. Grant won decisively in Texas, Louisiana and Florida, easily giving him enough delegates to lock up the nomination.

      And Rice’s campaign had been over. For about an hour.

      Unlike most Americans, Rice had not been watching as Grant Lawrence was shot. He’d been sitting with his wife, taking a few minutes of silent consolation, away from the press and the cameras and his staff and even his friends. Some moments should be private, and that had been just such a moment. Until a staffer began pounding on his door, shouting, “Someone shot Lawrence!”

      Rice had emerged in time to see the first of the now endless reruns of the attack. He’d had to turn away. While they had been rivals in this campaign, he and Grant had been Senate colleagues for years. They had been guests in each other’s homes on numerous occasions. Rice had never felt as if he was on Grant’s short list of true confidantes, but he’d liked and respected him. He’d watched Lawrence cope with the death of his wife, and, years later, the brutal murders of his lifelong nanny and a former girlfriend that culminated in the kidnapping of his children. The man had endured enough. And now this…

      Now Rice was expected to carry the Democratic banner, the Grant Lawrence banner. His campaign had gone from dead to full steam ahead in the few seconds it had taken for a would-be assassin to squeeze the trigger of a handgun. Rice couldn’t help feeling sick about it, even as the object of his lifelong ambition loomed nearer than ever.

      “You look like you need to talk,” Edward said, too quietly for anyone else to hear.

      Rice realized his thoughts must have been showing on his face, a trait he’d picked up from his mother, a former stage actress in Birmingham. Edward had, intentionally or not, reminded him that appearances are everything in the world of presidential politics.

      Rice nodded. “It’d be nice to catch up.”

      “After the reception,” Edward said. “We’ll go sit in the den, drink a couple of beers and pretend we’re back in college.”

      It was, Rice thought, the nicest invitation his old friend could possibly have made. It was certainly better than brooding about the rest of his life.

      4

      Washington, D.C.

      “Coffee?” Tom asked, holding out a foam cup.

      Miriam looked up and smiled. “You read my mind.” She took a sip and pushed a stack of papers away. “What a waste of time.”

      Tom sat and sipped his coffee. It was Bureau issue: too strong, too bitter. If he let himself think about such things, it was probably a subtle tribute to the Bureau’s founder and the man for whom this building was named. John Edgar Hoover had also been too strong, too bitter. And his ghost still walked these halls.

      “What did you expect?” Tom asked. “There was no way Kevin could put us in the middle of this. We’re damaged goods. So we get to waste time while the rest of them do the real work.” He eyed the stacks of files with distaste. “Prove there was no conspiracy to assassinate Lawrence. Helluva job, proving a negative. And we get it because I freaked in L.A.”

      “And because I know Grant personally,” Miriam reminded him. “It’s not that bad. Face it, Tom, like it or not, somebody’s got to do it or we’ll be hearing conspiracy theories for the next fifty years. It’s just…”

      “What?” Tom asked.

      He’d spent enough time with her to recognize the subtle cues that flickered through her eyes. She wasn’t thinking about the case.

      “Terry called while you were out,” she said. “Grant is out of surgery, but it’s not promising. The bullet in his chest took a lung. The other one perforated his liver and spleen. He still hasn’t regained consciousness. They don’t know if he ever will. Karen’s a wreck, and apparently there’s a big debate about whether she should even be allowed in to see him. Dammit, Tom, you’d think in the twenty-first century it would be okay for a president’s wife to have a job! You’d think it would be okay for Grant and Karen to get engaged, get married.”

      Tom nodded quietly. He didn’t bother to remind her that Karen would be seriously hampered as a detective with a couple of Secret Service agents always at her side. Besides, Miriam Anson didn’t open up often. On the few occasions when she had, he’d quickly decided the best course of action was to simply sit and listen, offering the occasional question more as a way of letting her know it was okay to continue than because he needed more information. It was a technique he’d learned while trying to help his father work through the death of Tom’s mother, and again two years later, when the last shreds of his father’s confidence had turned to dust during the trial. Now Tom often used the same technique in his work.

      “Grant’s daughters are a mess, of course,” Miriam continued. “Karen’s doing her best to comfort them. I think about what I’d be like if it were Terry. They say helplessness is the most depressing thing in the world.”

      “It is,” Tom said.

      He knew from experience. He’d never met СКАЧАТЬ