by Amy Gamet
Why would someone shun modern technology that could make life so much easier?
“You checked out the downstairs,” said Razorback. “Did you see an office of some sort?”
“A room with a desk and a bunch of boxes. That’s it.”
“What about a computer or fax machine?”
“No.”
“Printer?”
“No. Strange, now that you mention it.”
“She sent us an email. How did she do that?”
“Probably a cell phone. She could be a technophobe, you know. Or she could be hiding something she doesn’t trust to a computer system or the cloud.” Sloan opened a cigar box. “Whoa, hello there, Mr. Smith & Wesson.” The old revolver was tarnished and worn.
“What, Wesson doesn’t get his own mister?”
“I find a fucking gun and you correct my grammar?”
“Technically, it’s a personal title.”
“Suck my dick.”
Razorback lifted the weapon. “Not loaded.” He smelled it. “Hasn’t been fired recently. I wonder if Jackie would still have those bruises if it had.”
“Ah, you’re a Republican. You’re right. We shouldn’t talk politics.”
Truth be told, he was an independent—choosing to vote for whomever he felt was the best candidate for each position—but he kept his mouth shut just so Sloan would leave him be. He replaced the gun. “So, we’ve got nothing. We went through the whole upstairs and there’s nothing to give us a clue about the real reason Jackie Desjardins was attacked.”
“All we learned is she’s a gun-toting technophobe with pretty underpants.”
Razorback’s mind flashed to Jackie in the tiny thong and nothing else.
“You’re smiling,” said Sloan, pointing at him. “You like her.”
“Shut up.” He gestured to the hallway. “Did you go through that closet over there?”
“Not yet.”
Razorback opened it. It was narrow, with shelves from floor to ceiling stuffed full of random cleaning supplies. A hand vacuum cleaner. A mop bucket. A clear plastic bag full of spray sunscreen, another of tiny individually wrapped soaps. He pulled a box off a high shelf. It was addressed to Jackie, its postmark faded and illegible.
He set it on the ground and opened it, flipping through old photo albums and binders. One was full of genealogy information, photocopies of handwritten census sheets, birth certificates, and black-and-white photographs. A color wedding picture of Jackie in a strapless white gown fell from the pages, her smile radiant with the promise of good things to come.
His own marriage had been the same. Two kids barely old enough to rent an apartment, promising to love each other until the day they died.
Such bullshit.
He went back to the album. It was full of pictures of Selena, but no more from a wedding. After turning the final page, he opened a pocket built into the back cover and pulled out several more pictures. There was the groom, handsome enough, with straight dark hair and light skin, one arm around Jackie’s back. Razorback frowned, mentally comparing Jackie’s husband to the much darker Selena. Perhaps the girl was adopted, but she resembled Jackie too much for that to be very likely. Could the girl have been the product of an affair or a relationship after her marriage collapsed? Perhaps the reason it had fallen apart.
Sloan joined him in the hallway. “What’d you find?”
Razorback tucked a handful of three-by-five images back into the pocket. “Wedding pictures.”
The other man took the album from his hands and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
“What are you doing?” demanded Razorback.
“Dropping the kids at the pool. Going to see a man about a horse. Building a log cabin. Want me to go on?”
Razorback shook his head. “I don’t think you can.”
“Taking the Browns to the Super Bowl. Letting the dogs out. Releasing the Kraken. Holy shit!”
“You all right in there?”
“Do you know who this is? Did you look at these pictures?”
“I’m guessing he’s her husband.”
“Jesus Christ, you live under a rock. Did you look at the— Hang on.” The toilet flushed and a moment later, Sloan opened the door.
Razorback winced. “Wash your damn hands.”
Sloan sighed but went back to do it, then opened the album. “There. That guy. That’s Douglas McGrath, the senator.”
Razorback shrugged. He didn’t give a shit about politics or the smarmy bastards jockeying for control of the government. “Okay.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“The news is bullshit. I watch football. Man TV.”
“Which means Jackie is Jacqueline McGrath.”
Razorback raised his eyebrows. “Is that supposed to sound familiar?”
Sloan closed his eyes and shook his head. “Unbelievable. Don’t you remember the senator’s wife who drove her Mercedes off a cliff into the ocean a few years back? They never found the body? It was all over the tabloids for weeks.”
That one rang a bell, though Razorback hadn’t paid much attention to the story. He was too busy fighting insurgents and saving lives. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Jackie Desjardins is the wife of this Senator McGrath guy, and everyone thinks she’s dead.”
“Holy shit.”
Sloan nodded. “But wait, it gets better.” He held up the photo of the bride and groom, his finger covering Jackie. “Now that Waller’s had a stroke and the world knows Mason likes to wear girls’ underpants, this guy’s the prime candidate to be the Democrat nominee for the president of the United States. Down to him and one other dude. We won’t even know who they choose until the convention, because they’re both virtually unknown and so close in the polls.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me. And his wife is hanging out in Mexico, playing dead. What the fuck?”
“I don’t know, but it was her death—or her presumed death, I should say—that got McGrath reelected as governor of California in a landslide. Pity vote. The guy should’ve been out on his ass.”
He plucked the picture out of Sloan’s hand. “I never heard of him.”
“You and two hundred million other people.”
Razorback frowned. “When’s the national convention?”
Sloan counted on his fingers. “Six days.”
“She’s been MIA for how long?”
Sloan shrugged. “Gotta be six, seven years, at least.”
“And how long has Doug McGrath been a contender for the presidential nomination?”
“Like, a week.”
“And now she has a target on her back. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Maybe he tried to kill her. Dateline did a thing on the accident. There were two sets of tire tracks on the shoulder of the road. Paint transfer on her car. Dents, though the experts didn’t agree on whether they were from the impact with the water or a collision with a car.”
“No. When someone tries to kill you, you go to the police, not Mexico.” Razorback shook his head. “We’re missing too many pieces, but her attack has to be related to her husband somehow.”
“Maybe she knows something that could ruin his chances.”
“Maybe. Get Mac on the line. He needs to know about this, pronto.”
Sloan took off down the hall while Razorback stared at the picture of the newlyweds in his hand, gently touching Jackie’s cheek. “Did he hurt you?” He clenched his jaw, his biceps going rigid with the need to defend. He barely even knew this woman, but he already liked her more than he should. She was good, and he didn’t often think anyone was good.
If she’d decided to hide herself in Mexico for years on end, she must have had a damn good reason. But what could possibly be that bad? His gut said the answer had something to do with Selena. She was the missing piece, the open-ended question.
He needed to find out who had fathered the girl. Maybe it would be a dead end, or maybe it was th
e key. He only hoped he could persuade Jackie to tell him.
10
Jackie put her suitcase on the floor in front of her dresser and sat beside it. She’d always found packing to be overwhelming. Where should she begin?
When her neighbor called this morning and asked if she wanted anything from town, Jackie had jumped at the chance to come along and see for herself if the roads were passable, and they were. There was nothing keeping her here any longer. Getting away from Razorback and the way he made her feel was simply a bonus, plus Selena would enjoy the ride.
Most of the trees had been removed from the road, and with four-wheel drive, they’d been able to navigate freely. Jackie didn’t have a Jeep like her neighbor, but she did have a truck, and felt confident she’d be able to get through.
She transferred clothing from drawers into the suitcase. What about Bill’s things? Could she just leave them behind? There was a limit to what she could bring with her, but emotionally it was beyond difficult to consider walking away without his belongings.
Neither was she looking forward to telling Selena. The idea of leaving the only home the girl had ever known was daunting to say the least—especially when Jackie couldn’t share the real reason they needed to move.
She started a bag for toiletries, then pushed into the hallway, heading for the bathroom closet, and nearly plowed straight into Razorback.
His hands went to her arms. “When did you get back?” He looked beyond her through her open bedroom door. “You’re packing?”
“Shh… don’t let Selena hear you.” She stepped back, waving him into the room and closing the door behind him. “She’s playing in her room. I haven’t told her yet.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Away from here is a good enough destination at the moment.”
“Running away isn’t going to solve your problem.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t know anything about my problem—”
“I know you’re Douglas McGrath’s wife, presumed dead after a car accident eight years ago.”
Time slowed down. She’d lived in fear of discovery for so long, but she still wasn’t prepared for it. “How did you find out?”
“Photo album in the closet.”
Now she gaped. “You went through my things?”
“This morning while you were out. You weren’t being honest with us, and we needed more information to protect you.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
He took a step closer. She took a step back. “We’re on your side, Jackie.”
“Bullshit you are! You didn’t get the answers you wanted from me, so you just helped yourself to anything you could find, prying through my life without permission.”
He took another step closer. “We want to help. Why do you think Bill told you to call us? Because he knew he could trust our team. That we’d be there for you if he couldn’t be.”
She pointed at him. “Don’t you use Bill against me. Don’t you take my grief and throw it in my face to make a point.”
“And don’t you push me away because you honestly believe you have to handle everything yourself. I’m standing right here. Sloan is right downstairs. We are here for you, we can protect you, but we need to know everything.” He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “You have to let us understand why someone wants to hurt you. Why did you fake your own death?”
She opened her mouth to speak, her bottom lip trembling. “I didn’t plan it.” He was too close to her, too tall, too powerful. She scooted around him and crossed the room to get some space, reaching for a tissue and beginning to pace. She needed to get her thoughts together.
“We tried for years to get pregnant. Three rounds of in vitro before it finally worked, but at four months I lost the baby.” It was a memory she rarely allowed herself to unbox, the pain of losing a child too intense to describe. “I remember the nurse brought him to me to hold. He was so perfect, my sweet little boy, but his skin was dark. I thought there must have been some mixup at the fertility clinic like you see on TV, so I had them run my DNA and the baby’s to check. He was my son. That’s when Doug accused me of cheating on him.”
She was bawling outright now. “I’ve never told anybody this. I’m sorry.”
He crossed to her and opened his arms, and she stepped forward, resting her head on his shoulder. It felt so good to be comforted, to have caring arms wrapped around her, telling her it would be okay. Ian ran one hand down her back and her body thrilled at the touch.
It felt good. Much too good.
She stepped back.
“I didn’t cheat on my husband. I knew there must be an explanation in our family history, so I started researching our ancestry.” She laughed without humor. “I foolishly thought I could save my marriage.”
“You were doing what any loving wife would do in a difficult situation.”
“Hard to believe I loved him once, but I did.” She sighed heavily. “Hattie May Edwards, his grandmother, was black. But she died when his father was so young, and his grandfather got remarried to a white woman. That piece of the story was left out in the retelling. A second cousin on a genealogy website sent me a picture of the grandmother with her baby, Doug’s father.”
Razorback moved to the bed and sat on its edge. “I’m ashamed to say, I just assumed your husband wasn’t Selena’s father, but he is, isn’t he?”
She nodded. Damn it, she was crying again, and she grabbed a fistful of tissues this time. “He didn’t want to try again after the miscarriage. I begged. I thought the family tree stuff would convince him I could be trusted, that I hadn’t done anything wrong and I loved him. But he still didn’t want to do another round of in vitro. I got pregnant with Selena the old-fashioned way, five years after we started trying. I was thrilled.”
“But your husband wasn’t.”
“No.” She sat down several feet from him on the bed. “I thought he was scared of losing her like we’d lost our first baby. But soon I realized it wasn’t fear I was seeing, it was anger. He thought I’d tricked him. Can you believe that horse shit? Tricked him, my ass.” She shook her head.
“Things between us were worse than ever. He was running for reelection as governor of California, and he wasn’t doing well in the polls. He was stressed. We were both unhappy. That’s when he dropped the bomb. He showed me the transcript of a speech he’d given at a town meeting after a racially charged shooting made national headlines, where he talks about being a white man, but a white man can still do some good.”
Razorback’s head tilted to the side. “I’ve heard it. It’s an amazing speech about what we can all do to stem the tide of racism.”
“Right. That speech is what got him elected the first time, but it loses some of its impact if he’s actually of mixed race and lying about his ancestry.”
“He didn’t know his grandmother was black.”
“Oh, but he did.” She turned to him. “He admitted it to me that night, and brought out of a picture of his grandparents that had been on the wall at his parents’ house the whole time he was growing up.”
“Wait a second. He knew he had African American roots. He knew your child could very well be his.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And he accused you of cheating on him rather than admit that to you.”
“Yes.”
“And he lied to the American public, denying his true heritage.”
“That’s right.”
“Why did he tell you all this?”
“Because he thought by showing me how having this child would ruin his career, I would agree to an abortion.”
“That fucking coward.” He shook his head. “And you said no.”
“I said yes,” she whispered, her gaze locked on a spot in the distance. “At that moment in time, I wanted him out of my life for good. I thought if I got rid of the baby… I drove to the clinic—out of state, of course—but I couldn’t even get out of t
he car. I loved Selena, even then. What I didn’t know was that Doug’s campaign manager had followed me to make sure I did what I was supposed to do. And when I didn’t, he ran me off the road, into the Pacific Ocean.”
“That son of a bitch! How did you survive?”
She shuddered. “He had an attack of conscience and pulled me out of the water. Turns out cars take a long time to sink. We made a deal, he and I. I would walk away and start a new life out of the country. I wouldn’t tell anyone about Doug’s lies or Levi’s attempt to kill me, and he wouldn’t tell Doug I was alive. And it worked for eight years.”
“Until McGrath became next in line for the White House.”
“That’s right. Now I’m just a liability.”
11
That’s why there was a price on her head. Jackie and Selena’s very existence could wipe out any chance McGrath had at the White House.
It was Razorback’s turn to pace. “You have to stand up to him. Call him out on his bullshit. Forget about running away. How could that possibly help anything?”
Jackie shook her head. “No. Absolutely not.”
“I saw the picture of his grandparents. It’s in that box in the hall closet.” He remembered the mailing label, faded with time. “How did you get your things after the accident?” It hadn’t been an accident at all, but he wasn’t sure what else to call it.
“Bill had a key. I gave him a list that included everything I needed to prove the truth, and he mailed them to me. Doug had no idea.”
“Why not come forward now? You have nothing to lose. Once you expose him, he’ll have no reason to come after you.”
Her eyes were shining, the green of her irises contrasting with the redness from her tears, and he was momentarily transfixed by her beauty. Even in turmoil this woman could hold him suspended.
“I was a reporter, Ian. I know what would happen next. Everyone would want the story. Where have I been all this time? What have I been doing? How did I hide? They’d find Selena in a heartbeat, and in a very public way. And then what? She learns she’s the daughter of a man who is so ashamed of her skin color, he didn’t want her to exist? It’s better if she never knows who her father is than have to deal with that. Or God forbid, he could try to be part of her life, even if he didn’t want to, just to try to save his image. He’s a narcissist. He cares only for himself.”
