by Cassie Cole
There was a noise out in my hall. A police officer arguing with a woman. Moments later Megan came striding into my kitchen. “What the heck is going on outside?” she demanded. The crazed look in her eyes didn’t disappear until she saw me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Since our meeting yesterday got interrupted, I figured I would try to catch you after your morning run.” She hefted the folder she’d shown me yesterday. “Elizabeth, what happened?”
“Senator O’Hare was attacked,” the older officer said.
Megan’s eyes widened. “Elizabeth!” she came running over to where I sat at the table. I let her hug me.
“Senator,” the younger officer said. “Do you know of anyone who would want to cause you harm?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m a senator from a swing state. Half my constituents hate me. Not to mention half the people in this town.”
Megan took the question more seriously. “We get death threats every day, officer. I’ll have the most recent ones forwarded to your office.”
“That would be helpful.”
I spun my head to face Megan. “Every day? Seriously?”
Her face was grim. “Just about, yeah. Most are nutjobs who don’t pose any real threat. Assholes venting on the internet.”
“And you’re just now telling me this?”
“Every politician gets some number of death threats,” she said simply. “There’s no point in concerning you unless they pose an immediate risk. You already have too much on your mind.”
I knew she was right, but it still annoyed me to be left in the dark. Every single day?
“Are you done with her?” Megan asked. The police said they were, and Megan turned to me. “I’ll meet you for lunch on the Hill so we can talk about this.”
She led the police officers out of my apartment while telling them it was crucial to keep this attack from leaking to the press, insisting the timing was politically sensitive. I shook my head. She hadn’t asked who attacked me, or how, or even if I was alright. She went straight to thinking about how it would affect the campaign.
Granted, that’s what I paid her for.
Anthony lingered in my kitchen, his eyes focused on me. “You okay, sugar?”
“I’m still shaken up,” I admitted. I stood, and my legs felt weak. “I’ve never had a gun pointed at me before.”
Anthony came over and embraced me. This time I accepted it gratefully. I melted into his warm arms just like I’d melted into them last night, but totally different at the same time. He made me feel safe. Within seconds I wasn’t afraid anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into my hair. “I should have been outside on my bike…”
I squinted up at him. “Shut up. You’re being stupid.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Really stupid.” I bopped him on the nose. “If not for you, I’d be dead.”
“We can’t tell them anything,” he said, cupping my chin with his tattooed hand. “Last night was amazing, Elizabeth. But now, with this attack? They’ll have my head for abandoning my post.”
“It would be disastrous for both of us,” I agreed. He seemed to understand the severity of the situation. Heck, now he was in a worse position than me. A senator was attacked because he shirked his duty.
“I’m glad you left your post,” I said, putting a hand on his uniformed chest.
I could tell he wanted to stay. His grip on my body was passionate and needful, holding my hips against his. I didn’t want him to leave either.
But then he quickly looked around and pulled away as if remembering we might be seen together. “I’ve got to go.”
He turned away, but I grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Thank you, Anthony,” I said. “For saving my life.”
A small smile touched his lips. “Just doing my job, Senator O’Hare.”
And just like that, he was gone.
11
Elizabeth
It was hard to focus on the Hill. I kept re-living the end of my jog everywhere I went. In the senate chambers, in the office hallway, even in the women’s bathroom I kept imagining a hooded figure appearing ahead of me. Drawing a gun. Aiming it at my chest.
A few of the other senators on the finance committee knew something had happened. Word traveled fast in this town. I brushed it off as a potential mugging. A totally random event.
Even though I feared it was anything but.
The morning was a blur. I was in my own head throughout the morning senate session, and I might as well have been a mannequin for all the talking I did on my subcommittees.
“Senator O’Hare,” said Bob Pollock, the senator from Florida, catching up to me in the hallway after the committee.
“Senator Pollock. I’m surprised to see you on the Hill and not out on the campaign trail.” He’d announced his candidacy for president two weeks prior.
He smiled a politician’s smile at me. “Still plenty of work to do here before I start courting Iowa and New Hampshire. Can’t let a campaign get in the way of what the people of Florida elected me to do.”
“A noble viewpoint,” I said. “How can I help you?”
He stopped me there in the hall, then looked both ways to make sure nobody was within earshot. His tan face was filled with concern. “I heard about what happened this morning.”
I groaned. “You and everyone else on the Hill.”
“I’m not going to bother you about it,” he said. “I just wanted to say that I hope this doesn’t discourage you from any future political aspirations. You’re one of the most compelling young senators in our party. Our country would lose something special if you let an attack like this scare you away from public service.”
The words were as encouraging as they were unnecessary. “It was just a mugging gone wrong.”
“Sure it was,” he said.
“But I appreciate the kind words. It’s going to take more than 30 seconds of harassment to steer me away from politics.”
That politician’s smile touched his lips again. “I’m overjoyed to hear it.”
I grabbed food from the cafeteria and carried it back to my office. Megan was waiting inside. I handed her a salad and then tore open the container holding my cheeseburger. Megan raised an eyebrow at my food.
“No salad today?” she asked.
“Someone tried to kill me this morning,” I said. “One cheeseburger isn’t going to hurt.”
“Speaking of this morning,” Megan began.
I cut her off with a gesture. “Please no. The last thing I want to talk about is the mugging. Everyone, including Senator Pollock, has been whispering about it.”
Her eyebrows climbed up her forehead. “Bob Pollock talked to you? What did he say?”
“Enough, Megan. Let’s go over that folder of yours.”
Megan pulled it out of her bag and tossed it on my desk. The opposition research we’d ordered.
“Well?” I asked, afraid to touch it.
Megan took a bite of salad and grinned. “You’re clean. You passed.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and opened the folder, sifting through it while she talked.
“They found some tame stuff from high school. There’s video recording of you arguing an anti-Israel stance while on the debate team, but obviously that’s only because you drew that stance at competition and not because you legitimately hold that belief. You smoked weed in college, but thankfully nobody cares about that anymore. Honestly, the worst thing on your entire record is the plagiarism accusation in college.”
I grimaced. “I figured they’d dig that up. It was totally unintentional. A single paragraph in a 40 page essay on Hamilton’s Federalist Papers.”
“You were put on academic probation for a semester,” Megan said. “Which looks bad, but at least you weren’t expelled. That won’t play well with certain demographics but it’s not terrible in the grand scheme of things.” She pointed her salad fork at me. “
That’s more or less it. There are no serious roadblocks.”
I grinned. What she was saying was beginning to sink in.
“How about it, Elizabeth?” Megan asked. “You ready to announce your candidacy?”
I’d wanted to become President of the United States since I was a little girl, when we went on a family trip to Washington. I was only 12, but I knew it then with certainty. No other aspiration would suffice.
But a woman had to work her way up in politics. I got my degree in political science and ran for city council back home in Ohio. I ran circles around the small town politicians and quickly rose to state senate. From there it was easy to jump into the race for Ohio District Five, where I served two terms before unseating Senator Kopeck for his senate seat.
I loved civil service. It was fulfilling working on things that mattered, knowing I was helping people back home. I woke up every single day excited to go to work on the Hill and try to make our country a better place.
But throughout all those years, I kept my sights laser-focused on what I really wanted.
Now my chance was here. I was 35 and eligible to run for president. I grinned back at my campaign manager.
“Let’s run for vice president!”
I wasn’t naive. I knew my chances of winning a presidential primary were slim to none. I looked too young, I had too little experience, and I was single. That was a surprisingly strong turnoff for a lot of voters. People wanted a politician with a spouse and family. That was true for male politicians, but it was especially true for women.
That was okay. Our goal wasn’t to win the presidency just yet. Our goal was to make a splash in the primary and get picked as the VP for whichever candidate did win the primary. Because I had something incredibly valuable.
18 electoral votes.
Ohio was a swing state. And despite this morning’s attack, my approval rating among Ohioans was high. Picking me as VP would all but guarantee a candidate the state of Ohio, and likely the election overall. Hopefully that person would be Senator Bob Pollock. So far, he was the strongest candidate in the field by a wide margin. And if he carried his home state of Florida in the general election? We couldn’t lose.
If everything worked out the way I hoped, eight years as vice president would help me build experience and name recognition with the American people. By then I would be 43, the same age Kennedy won the 1960 election.
Megan and I had carefully crafted the plan for years, waiting for the right moment. Now that I’d passed a thorough background check from a skilled opposition researcher, there were no more roadblocks in our way.
“When should we announce?” I asked as I bit into my cheeseburger.
There was so much work to do. A presidential campaign required an enormous staff and boatloads of money, not to mention carving time out of my already slammed senate schedule. It would be weeks before we were ready to announce.
But Megan surprised me by saying, “This weekend.”
I almost choked on my food. “What! So soon?”
“Yes! We’re going to take advantage of this morning’s assassination attempt.”
“Please don’t use the A-word,” I said. “It was a mugging.”
She gave me a patient look. “Muggers usually, you know, mug someone. The police told me he shot first?”
“He was probably a tweaker.”
“A sitting senator getting shot at is not a coincidence, Elizabeth. You may want to avoid that fact, but as your campaign manager I can’t. I want to use it to our advantage. Gain some sympathy support. Make you look strong.”
“We’re not using this as a political crutch,” I insisted. “I’m serious, Megan.”
She chewed her bite of salad, swallowed, and looked back at me coolly. “What did I tell you when you first hired me?”
“You said you would do anything to win.”
“That’s right. Anything, no matter how much you don’t like it. You’re about to launch the biggest campaign of your career. I can’t ignore a political opportunity like this. I’m going to kick the tires with my pollsters and see how this morning’s attack will play, but I already know the answer. It’ll give you more media attention than we ever could’ve dreamed. Here’s what I’m envisioning. We find an excuse to go back to Columbus for the weekend. I can schedule an event. Then we get the Capitol Police to release information about the attack. An assassination attempt is a big deal. It’ll be on every news station. That’s when you give a public statement. We’ll have you talk about not letting fear get in the way of your dreams, or in the way of greatness. I can see the speech in my head already. You’ll crush it.”
I wanted to protest more, but Megan was like a dog chasing a tennis ball. There was no stopping her once she set her mind to something. Plus, I had to admit it was a cunning way of announcing my candidacy for president. I would have to make a statement about the attack this morning regardless, so why not combine the two?
“Alright,” I said. “There may be something to that.”
She gave a single emphatic nod. “Now that’s out of the way, I do want to bump up your security. I’ve hired a private bodyguard for you.”
I groaned.
“He starts tonight.”
“Come on, Megan…”
“Someone tried to assassinate you this morning. This is serious, Elizabeth! Why aren’t you taking it seriously?”
“I have the Capitol Police watching my house,” I said. Images of Anthony nude in my bed bombarded me. The delicious tattoos on his chest and neck and arm…
Megan rolled her eyes. “I’m not impressed with them. That bad boy with the tattoos didn’t respond very quickly. You need someone by your side.”
“I can’t have a bodyguard tailing me all around the Hill,” I said. “He’ll get in the way.”
“Senator Kirono has had a bodyguard with her for three years,” Megan pointed out.
I scoffed. “That big dude with a head like a bowling ball? He’s in the way constantly. I don’t want another one of them.”
“The bodyguard I hired comes highly recommended,” Megan replied. “You won’t get added to anyone’s presidential ticket if you’re dead.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Dead people have won elections before.”
“I’m serious, Elizabeth.”
I took another bite out of my cheeseburger. All this talk about assassination attempts and potential death was diminishing my appetite.
“This is too much right now. I’m still rattled from this morning. Can we please focus on the campaign itself?” I asked. “The part that actually matters?”
We went over campaign data for the rest of lunch. Polling on specific issues and ways to stand out as a candidate. Minutia such as the best time of day to make the announcement, and the best venue. Even data on whether to wear a pencil skirt or pantsuit for the announcement. We settled on the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, where I first ran for city council.
“So that’s it,” I said as I packed up to return to the senate chamber. “We’re really going to do this?”
“We really are.”
I couldn’t get rid of the silly smile on my face. Megan was just as giddy. We were like schoolgirls who knew the Prom King was going to ask us to dance.
“I’ll get the ball rolling on everything,” she said. “Try to go about your day as if nothing’s different.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said doubtfully. It was going to be tough listening to old senators ramble about bill riders this afternoon.
Megan’s phone rang as I was leaving. “Wait, what?” She snapped her fingers to get my attention and gestured for me to wait. “Is this a joke? Who decided that? Well, go find out! Senator O’Hare doesn’t have time for this petty nonsense.”
“What is it?” I asked.
She covered the receiver. “If you didn’t like my bodyguard idea, you’re really going to hate this.”
12
Luca
It was 12:05 on a Tuesday after
noon when I got the most ridiculous assignment of my life.
Agent Frank Blixen, my boss, tossed a folder across his desk. “There was an attack on a senator’s life this morning.” He leaned back in his chair behind his desk as if that was all that needed to be said. “That’s your new assignment.”
“A senator?” I asked.
“You heard me, Agent Santos.”
I didn’t touch the folder. That would be akin to acceptance. And I wasn’t going to accept anything about this.
“Elizabeth O’Hare, from Ohio,” Agent Blixen said, as if that helped. “Man with a gun opened fire on her during her morning jog.”
“None of that answers my question,” I growled.
“You didn’t ask a question. You’re just sitting there, sulking.”
“Why is a senator getting a Secret Service detail?” I asked. “And why in the fuck is it getting dumped on me?”
Frank got up and closed the door to his office. The blinds on the window rattled against the glass. He sat back down, crossed his arms, and said in a sympathetic voice, “I think you know the answer to the second question, Luca.”
Because I fucked up last week.
I was near the end of my shift in the West Wing when I was sent to relieve another agent near the Roosevelt room. I knocked before entering, but the senior member of the cabinet inside the room hadn’t heard me. Neither had the young intern with whom he was vigorously engaged in… activity. I’d immediately apologized and left the room, and when they both came out moments later the cabinet member only nodded politely at me. But I could tell by the look in his eyes that I’d fucked up.
And now I was being punished.
“The Secret Service doesn’t give protection to senators,” I said stubbornly. “Not unless they’re running for president and have already won their primary.”
“Protection is authorized at the sole discretion of the DHS Secretary,” Agent Blixen said. “This detail is unusual, but it is not unprecedented.”
I gave in and opened the file. A photograph was on top of the stack of information. Elizabeth O’Hare was young and very pretty, with a sharp wit shining in those almond eyes. My first reaction was vaguely sexist: why would anyone want to hurt a pretty little thing like her?
