by B. J Daniels
“This big bang Green was telling us about?”
McGill looked surprised that Green had told them.
“Sounds like nothing more than prison talk to me,” Max goaded. “The two of you can’t do much locked up here.”
“You have no idea what we’re capable of.”
“The families of the innocent people you killed know, though,” Max said.
McGill shook his head. “You don’t get it. Sometimes innocent people have to die for a cause. Look how many of our soldiers the government has sent to die in godforsaken countries, and for what? Someone has to say, ‘Enough.’ That’s what the Prophecy is about. A revolution of change. A new future for mankind.”
The radical shine of hatred and fanaticism burning in the man’s eyes made Kat shudder inside. “You sound like a man who was brainwashed.”
McGill smiled at that. “I’m a man who gave his life to help this country. I will not stop until I take my last breath.”
“Shouldn’t be long, the way you’re looking,” Max said.
McGill started to reach for the button that would signal the guard to come for him.
“You know what my mother’s planning to do?” Kat asked.
The prisoner shifted his gaze to her again as he hit the button. His smile had an edge to it. “It was all set into motion long before you were born. No one believed in our cause more than your mother. She led us, kept the faith, did what needed to be done, sacrificing more than either of you could know for what she believes in. It’s up to her now.”
“Are you that sure she still believes in this cause of yours?” Max said.
The guard appeared at the door, and McGill got to his feet, but it was Kat he smiled at. “Give your mother my best.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KAT HAD TOLD herself she was braced to meet another man her mother had been involved with in the Prophecy. Yesterday, after their visit with Mason Green, the truth about her mother’s involvement had hit her hard. Today as they walked out of the prison, she was still shaken, but keeping it together.
“How do you do it?” she asked after taking several gulps of air.
Max looked over at her as they walked toward the rental car. “Do what?”
“Interview people like that.” She motioned back past the razor wire and high concrete walls of the prison, and shuddered. “They’re...crazy.”
He shrugged. “They seem like lunatics. But to them, it all makes sense. So when I do their stories, I try to see it from their side.”
Kat shook her head. “You give them a voice. If you didn’t write about them, then—”
“Readers need to know. Not telling it from their side doesn’t make any of it go away. The radicals are still out there, still making their crazy plans.” He unlocked the car. “Let’s get something to eat. I’m starved.”
“You’re always starved.” But this time, she thought he’d said it to lighten the mood. Max could act as if none of this affected him, but she could tell that Wallace McGill had gotten to him even more than Mason Green had.
“I’ll even let you pick the type of food you would like,” he said as he opened her door before walking around to the driver’s side of the car to get in.
Kat grabbed the top of the open door and hesitated to look back at the prison. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. She felt as if she needed another shower.
“When do we fly back?” she asked as she climbed into the car and buckled up.
“This afternoon. We have plenty of time. Name your poison.”
She couldn’t think about food right now. “Do you think it’s true that they have something planned and my mother is at the center of it?”
“I think they want us to believe it’s true.” He started the car and drove out of the prison lot and onto the two-lane road that would take them back to civilization. They’d traveled through miles of nothing but barren-looking ground with an occasional line of storage units or old car junkyards to get to the prison.
“But if it’s true...” Kat looked over at Max. He looked so serious. “If it is, then it will certainly make a better story for you to write.”
* * *
“I GUESS IT WILL.” Max concentrated on his driving, wondering when all of this had become so much more than another story, another job, another investigation. He’d adopted this golden rule because he knew in his profession that getting involved in the story was the worst thing he could do. It ruined his objectivity.
As a journalist, he was the fly on the wall. He was the guy who looked at all the facts and wove an unbiased story together. He prided himself on being able to see all sides. On being fair and impartial. On not getting involved and becoming part of the tale.
Somehow, that plan had gone off the rails. He wasn’t even sure exactly when it had happened. Maybe that evening just before sunset. Kat Hamilton in that electric-blue swimsuit, the smell of salty air, the feel of the silky sea, that feeling of being totally liberated.
He’d gotten to know her just enough that he wanted to know more. He wanted to see that woman he’d kissed in the Pacific again. Sometimes he glimpsed her. Kat was beginning to trust him. Maybe that was what had changed things. He didn’t take that trust lightly.
Someone had made her withdraw into herself. A man. Max couldn’t be another man who hurt her. He had to either back off completely or—
“Max?”
At the strained sound of her voice, he looked over at Kat. Her gray eyes were wide with alarm, and she was looking past him out his side window.
Turning, he saw a large car with tinted windows had pulled alongside them. He couldn’t see more than the silhouette of the passenger, but it was clear that the driver didn’t intend to pass.
For a moment, he thought the driver intended to force them off the road. He was about to either hit his brakes or gas to end this, when the passenger-side window whirred down.
Max saw the dark ski mask over the passenger’s face only an instant before he saw the gun. He hit his brakes, but not before a bullet was fired into his side of the rental car. The side windows exploded. Kat’s scream was drowned out by the sound of the windshield shattering.
“Are you all right?” Max cried as he pulled the car over to the edge of the road. Through the spiderweb of glass, he could see the car speeding away before he could get the license plate number.
“I’m okay,” Kat said, looking pale and shaken but apparently unharmed except for a few tiny cuts from when the glass around her had exploded.
* * *
“THE COPS THINK it was a drive-by shooting,” Max said when he joined Kat outside the police station. An officer had taken both of their statements, and then the rental car had been impounded. “He suggested we stay out of that neighborhood. Apparently, there’s been a lot of that sort of thing lately in that area.”
“Near the prison?” Kat shook her head. “So it had nothing to do with us visiting two members of the Prophecy in prison?”
He glanced over at her as they waited for the taxi he’d called to take them to the rental agency. There would be tons of paperwork to fill out. They had already missed their flight and wouldn’t be able to get back to Montana until late tonight—if they could make that flight.
“The police think we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.
“You don’t really expect me to believe that.”
Max raked a hand through his hair. “I’m as skeptical as you are, but think about it. Why kill us? We don’t know anything.”
“We know my mother is Red.”
“But we can’t prove it. “
“If we went to the FBI, they would see how much she resembles Red, they would—”
“Don’t you think they chased a lot of women who looked li
ke Red when they were actively hunting these guys back in the ’70s? For all we know they even questioned your mother. By then, she was probably blonde again and maybe even attending a few classes at the university.”
“I would think they would take more of an interest because she was Senator Buckmaster Hamilton’s wife,” Kat argued.
“Or maybe they wouldn’t touch this with a ten-foot pole for the very same reason. Without—”
“Proof. I know.” She sighed. “Max, those two men just as good as confirmed what we feared. They have something planned. Something big. You know it has something to do with my father and this election.”
“Like I said, the election is still a year away. I don’t believe they’ll do anything until he’s president. Killing a candidate is not a big bang.” Just then their taxi pulled to a stop at the curb. Max opened the back door and Kat slid in. He followed. “So we have time.”
“What are we going to do?” she whispered after Max gave the driver the address of their car-rental agency.
“We aren’t going to do anything. I don’t want you involved anymore.”
She turned to look at him in surprise. “So you don’t believe that was just some coincidental drive-by shooting any more than I do.”
“I’m not sure what I believe. But I’m not taking any chances with your safety.”
“And I have no say in this?”
“Kat, I don’t have to tell you that this is more dangerous than I ever imagined. At first it was just another story. A great big story, as it turned out, that I was dying to break. But now...”
* * *
BUCKMASTER STARED OUT through the dark night at the city. In between the fund-raisers, the dinners and the strategy meeting for the campaign, he hadn’t had a lot of time to think, let alone feel.
But tonight, alone in their DC apartment with Angelina gone back to Montana, he finally let himself ponder what he’d been feeling.
When he thought of Sarah marrying Russell, it threatened to double him over. He’d always been a strong-willed, determined man. But lately he felt as if he was walking a tightrope trying to keep Angelina happy and yet do what he felt was right for Sarah.
Angelina was right. If he left her for Sarah, he might as well bow out of the presidential race. The other side would crucify him in the media. Angelina would come off as the betrayed loyal wife. His political career would be tarnished, if not over.
But right now, standing here alone, staring out at the city, he didn’t give a damn about any of that. He couldn’t keep lying to himself. Nothing mattered without Sarah. Not the presidency, not any of this. The thought of giving it up and going home to the ranch to be with Sarah sounded wonderful. Was any of this really worth it, if the price was losing Sarah for good?
He had let months go by without making a decision and feared it was too late. Maybe Sarah wouldn’t take him back. He wouldn’t blame her.
As for Angelina... He had tried to placate her for months, and all it had done was make her more angry at him. She saw him as weak because he still loved Sarah, because he couldn’t turn on her the way Angelina demanded he do. He was tired of feeling guilty and making excuses for his feelings.
It was time he took a stand. This was his life. He’d let other people take it over for too long. He would leave Angelina.
Relief washed over him.
He would leave Angelina.
Taking a deep breath, he let it out. He knew why it had taken him so long to come to this decision. Sarah, for whatever reason, had left him the night she’d tried to kill herself in the Yellowstone River. He thought he could never forgive her for that. He’d been so bitter for so long... He’d filled the hole she’d left in his heart with politics, telling himself he could do good for the state and finally for the country.
But with Sarah back...he couldn’t pretend he didn’t love her anymore.
There would be fallout, plenty of it. But he had to follow his heart.
He stood for a moment, living with his decision, before he reached for his cell phone. It rang before he could get to it.
Probably Angelina. He frowned, realizing he hadn’t really gotten a straight answer from her about why she’d had to return to Montana in such a hurry. If she had ever been a mother to his girls, he might have thought it had something to do with them. More than likely it had something to do with the upcoming election or... Or Sarah.
He frowned as he pulled out the phone, remembering that Angelina had said the police might want to talk to her about the death of the private investigator she’d hired to look into Sarah’s past. He hadn’t asked where she’d found the PI or where he’d been killed.
Now checking the screen, he saw that the call was from the Silverbow Sheriff’s Department. He quickly answered, expecting it would be Angelina and that he’d been right about where and why she’d gone. Surely she wasn’t somehow involved in the man’s death.
“Senator Hamilton?” a male voice said on the other end of the line. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
* * *
“NOW WHAT?” KAT ASKED, half turning in the seat to look at Max. He’d said that all of this was no longer just a story. She desperately wanted him to say the words. This...whatever I’m feeling between us, tell me it isn’t just me feeling it. “What’s changed, Max?”
His gaze locked with hers. “Do you even have to ask?”
“I guess I do since you never break your golden rule.”
He chuckled as he shook his head and then cupped her face in his large palms. “There’s always a first time, I guess.”
The kiss between them in the Pacific was child’s play compared to this one. He pressed his lips to hers and teased them apart with his tongue. She opened to him and caught her breath as she felt him slowly, tenderly explore her mouth. He moved one hand to cup the back of her neck, while the other hand found her breast.
Her nipple hardened instantly under his touch. She closed her eyes as a groan escaped her lips. His warm fingers worked at a button on her blouse, easing it open, his lips never leaving hers. She shivered at the feel of his touch on her bare skin, then flinched as she felt him take the hard nub of her nipple between his fingers and gently pull on it.
Kat felt herself sliding down in the taxi seat, completely unaware of anything but the feel of Max’s mouth, his hands, his body. Like hers, his breathing sounded ragged.
“Max,” she whispered against his mouth as she felt another button open to his demand. His hand moved down her ribs to her stomach to the top of her pants, and she thought she might burst with her need for him if he didn’t—
The taxi came to a stop, yanking her out of the foggy, dreamlike erotic state. “We’re here,” the driver said, amusement in his voice.
Max disengaged his hand, making her want to groan with frustration even as she quickly buttoned up her shirt. As they disembarked, she didn’t look at the taxi driver. She’d never done anything like that in her life and felt torn between embarrassment and regret that they’d been interrupted.
Max cleared his throat as they stood on the curb. He seemed as uncomfortable with their sudden interruption as she felt. “Whew,” he said. “I really wish that had been a longer taxi ride.” He looked over at her, his gaze locking with hers. “Maybe we’ll have to do something about that.”
Just the promise in his stare made Kat feel weak at the knees with yearning. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Max laughed. “I thought you were going to say, ‘I don’t—’”
“No,” she quickly interrupted. Although in truth, it was true. She hadn’t made love since... She quickly pushed that thought back into the darkness where it belonged and followed Max into the rental car agency.
He was filling out forms when she got the call from her sister Ainsley.
“Kat, where are you?”
&nbs
p; “I’m...” She realized she didn’t want to get into this, even with Ainsley, in a car-rental agency. “Why, what’s wrong?”
“There’s been an accident,” her sister said. “It’s Angelina. She’s been killed. Dad is on his way home from DC.”
Kat felt a wave of shock move through her. “Wait, where was she killed?”
“She’d apparently flown back from DC to take care of some personal business up by Butte. She must have fallen asleep at the wheel. They found her car in a canyon.”
“Are you at the ranch?” Kat asked.
“No, I’m up by Glacier Park. I’ll be driving down tomorrow. Dad’s flying in later tonight, Harper and Cassidy are on their way, and Livie and Bo are both there already. With Livie pregnant... I was hoping you could go to the ranch and make sure Dad’s all right as well as Livie and the rest.”
“I’m not in town, but I’ll catch the next flight out,” she said as Max came out of the rental agency.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You’re as pale as a ghost.”
“It’s Angelina, my father’s—” Suddenly goose bumps rippled over her skin.
“Wife?” Max said when she’d stopped abruptly.
“She’s dead.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MAX WAS ABLE to get them on the late flight to Bozeman. While they were waiting to board, Kat had seen the story on national news. She and her sisters had been sheltered from the limelight by living on a ranch in Montana—until her father had announced he would run for president.
Now things would get worse. For months, the media had played up the lovers’ triangle between her father, mother and Angelina. Angelina’s death and Sarah’s engagement would start a whole new set of stories and speculation. If only her mother was already married to Russell.
She and Max didn’t talk about it on the flight. They were both smart enough to know that their conversation could be overhead, worse, recorded on a cell phone for a sound bite on the news or end up in some tabloid magazine.
