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by Sandra Brown

  David laughed. “That language has such sinister overtones, Clete. Are you suggesting that Gray killed Spence?”

  “Do you have another explanation?”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes,” David replied testily.

  “Yancey doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “Yancey. I had reservations about appointing him. I wish now I’d heeded them.”

  Clete chuckled. “Because he’s much like Bondurant. Always in your face over something. He doesn’t kowtow like the rest of them. In any event, he talked to somebody over in the FBI criminal division, who agreed that a little chat with Mr. Bondurant is in order.”

  Clete stuck the cigar in the corner of his mouth, moved to the liquor cabinet, and poured himself a straight scotch. He held the cut crystal tumbler in front of a lamp and studied the play of light through the facets. “When they question Bondurant, I wonder how much he’ll tell them about Spence’s visit to Wyoming.”

  He turned and looked pointedly at his son-in-law. The two men exchanged a long stare. David was the first to smile, in grudging respect for his shrewd mentor. “So you know. Gray told you.”

  “That you sent Spence there to kill him? Yes, he told me. Makes one wonder what else he knows—or thinks he knows—that you’d rather keep quiet.”

  David sat down on a divan and crossed one ankle over the opposite knee. Clete wasn’t fooled by David’s seeming insouciance. He wasn’t nearly as relaxed as he wished to appear.

  “What do you want, Clete? I know you too well. You didn’t orchestrate this bullshit FBI investigation on a whim. You for damn sure didn’t do it out of concern for Spence. Then why? What is it you want?”

  “My daughter.”

  “My wife, you mean.”

  “You’re ruining Vanessa’s life. I won’t let it happen.”

  “Where Vanessa is concerned, my wishes as her husband take precedence over yours, Clete. Let me assure you that she is in excellent hands.”

  “Where? Allan’s lake house again?”

  “Her condition became much too serious to be treated there. She flipped out one morning. George had no choice. He had to remove her to a nursing facility.”

  “Which facility?”

  “Tabor House.”

  “The detox hospital?”

  “He knew her privacy would be guaranteed there.” David got up, crossed to his desk, and retrieved a slip of paper from the middle drawer. “Here’s the number. Call it if you don’t believe me.”

  Clete snatched the paper from him and asked the White House operator to place the call. While he waited, he slammed back the scotch. Finally a mellifluous voice answered. “Tabor House.”

  “This is Senator Clete Armbruster. Let me speak to whoever’s in charge.”

  “One moment, please.”

  Soft music played in his ear as he waited for the call to be directed. He wondered if this really was a telephone line to the exclusive substance-abuse hospital or if David was tricking him.

  “Clete? I’ve been expecting to hear from you. The President told me you’d be calling.”

  He recognized the voice. Dr. Dexter Leopold, former surgeon general, now administrator of Tabor House. “Hello, Dex. How’s my daughter?”

  “I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Clete. She was in bad shape when Dr. Allan brought her here. Her medication wasn’t working because she was drinking so heavily. But we’ve got it stabilized now, and she’s much improved.”

  “Give her the best treatment available, Dex.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “I want other doctors on her case, not just Allan.”

  There was a slight pause on the other end. “That would be awkward, Clete.”

  “I don’t care how awkward it is.”

  “Dr. Allan is her physician of record. Until Mrs. Merritt herself—or President Merritt if she’s incapable of making the decision—replaces him, I must recognize him as the physician in charge of her case.”

  Dex Leopold was reputed to be an honorable man, but David could have gotten to him somehow. If George Allan was slowly killing Vanessa, would Dr. Leopold look the other way? “Exactly where is Tabor House?” Clete asked. “I’d like to come see her tomorrow.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t allow that, Clete,” the doctor said gently. “You know the policy here. Absolutely no one except the patients and the staff are allowed on the premises. That’s the only way we can protect our patients’ privacy and maintain the hospital’s integrity. Seeing family can cause a setback, especially once the patient is medically healed and we’re working on the psychological phase of recovery.”

  “But surely, Dex—”

  “I’m sorry, Clete, no exceptions. Not even the President has been allowed to visit Mrs. Merritt, although he’s asked to each time he’s called. If I turn him down, I must say no to you too. It’s what’s best for Mrs. Merritt, I assure you.”

  Clete’s eyes cut to David, who was watching him, his expression unperturbed.

  “All right,” Clete conceded. “I want Vanessa to be well again. She’s had it rough ever since the baby died.”

  “So President Merritt informed me. He regrets not getting her into therapy following the baby’s death. If she’d had counseling then, this crisis might have been avoided. But don’t worry. We’ll return her to you fully restored.”

  “You will if you know what’s good for you,” Clete said just before hanging up.

  “Satisfied?” David asked.

  “Not by a long shot.” Clete strode to the door of the Oval Office. “Be very careful, David. I don’t care how many people you’ve lined up to lie for you and do your dirty work, I’ll have my daughter back, or else. A few weeks ago I reminded you that I put you here, and I can take you out.” He snapped his fingers an inch from the President’s nose. “Like that.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Well before daylight, Clete headed downstairs to pour himself a cup of coffee. Before going to bed each night, he set the timer on the coffeemaker.

  That first steaming cup always brought back cherished memories of his boyhood, before he knew how to spell politics or even what the word meant, before he learned that some men placed ambition and greed above honor, before he had become one of those men.

  His father had been a tall, strong, quiet man to whom committing one crime to cover another would have been unthinkable. He’d had only a third-grade education, but he knew all the constellations and could calculate in record time the number of dots on the dominoes just played. He was slow to anger, but quick to defend an underdog in a fight.

  He had served under General Patton in Germany. That’s where he’d been killed and buried. But before the war he’d lived and worked as a wrangler on a cattle ranch in south Texas. During spring roundups, he would sometimes let young Clete ride along with him and the other cowboys.

  The most dangerous animals on the range weren’t other men from whom you had to protect your back, but rattlers, spooked horses, and cranky longhorns. The days in the saddle were long, hard, and dusty. The nights were star-studded. At dawn every morning, before the workday began, the cowboys gathered around the campfire and drank cups of scalding, stout coffee.

  After the war, his widowed mother moved them to Mississippi to live with her family. Clete had spent the remainder of his youth far from the cattle ranch, and the majority of his adult life in Washington, but sixty years later, he could still recapture the mingled smells of frying pork, and manure, and leather, and his father’s cigarettes, hand-rolled as he hunkered down over breakfast under the sky. No coffee in the world had tasted as rotten as that camp coffee. None since had tasted as good.

  Clete had loved those mornings. He’d loved his father too. He remembered how glad he’d been to ride along beside him, and how the other men, no matter how tough, had treated his father with earned respect. How proud Clete-the-boy had been to be his father’s son.

  On this m
orning, as on all others, Clete avoided thinking about whether his father would be proud of Clete-the-man.

  He switched on the kitchen light.

  Gray Bondurant was sitting at the table. He had helped himself to a cup of coffee. “Morning, Clete.”

  His voice was level. His slouch was hardly a confrontational posture. But Clete knew that to Gray Bondurant, betrayal was the ultimate offense. And Bondurant was a dangerous man.

  Clete wondered if his reminiscences of his father and campfires and roundups had been harbingers of his imminent death at the hands of a man he had sorely wronged. He was ashamed of the fear that fissured through him.

  Of course, he let none of his apprehension show as he poured himself some coffee and joined his uninvited guest at the kitchen table. It would have been a waste of breath to ask Bondurant how he’d gotten inside the house. The sophisticated alarm system had been armed, but it wouldn’t have deterred the recon who’d penetrated the walls of a Middle Eastern prison.

  Holding Bondurant’s chilly, implacable stare, Clete took a fortifying sip of caffeine. “I guess saying I’m sorry won’t cut it.”

  “Not hardly, Clete. Call off the dogs.”

  “I can’t. It’s gone too far. It’s out of my hands.”

  “Bullshit. You started the ball rolling. You can stop it. Or are all your boasts about the power you wield just so much hot air?”

  Bondurant was a worthy adversary. He wasn’t going to be put off with verbiage. Clete decided to cut to the chase. “What do you want?”

  “I want to find Vanessa and return her to you. But I can’t have the FBI breathing down my neck while I go about it.”

  “Vanessa’s no longer in danger.”

  “You believe that?”

  “She’s at Tabor House.”

  “I know where she is.”

  Clete wondered how Bondurant had come by that information, but he knew it was pointless to ask. “Last night I talked to Dex Leopold. He’s the ramrod there now. I’ve put him on notice that she better come back to me safe and sound.”

  Bondurant snuffled with scorn, then leaned across the table. “Did you believe anything that Barrie and I told you about Vanessa’s pregnancy and the baby’s so-called SIDS?”

  Being the politician he was, Clete held his silence.

  “If you think there’s any truth to what we told you, do you believe David will let it go now? You know him better than anyone, Clete, so what do you think? If he did in fact smother Vanessa’s baby, do you think there’s a ghost of a chance that he’s going to let her live to tell about it?”

  Clete mentally debated the question, although the answer was terrifyingly simple. “What do you want?” he repeated brusquely.

  “Freedom to move around without fear of being apprehended. I don’t care how you do it, get me out of hock with the FBI.”

  “How do you propose I—”

  “Don’t pull that shit with me. You’ll think of something, and you’ll be convincing. Tell them you were grossly misunderstood, misquoted, misled. Make something up, but make it believable. Get them off my tail. In return, you’ll get Vanessa back.”

  “I’ll get her back anyway.”

  “The question is whether you’ll get her back alive.”

  “David wouldn’t dare go that far. I’ve put him on notice too.”

  “All the more reason for us to act quickly.”

  “I’ll do my own acting, thank you.”

  “Okay, have it your way. But there’s one more thing you should know. Spence hasn’t mysteriously disappeared. He’s alive and well and in Washington.”

  “The hell you say! I thought you killed him.”

  “Well, I didn’t, although I might live just long enough to regret it. He’s back. I’ve seen his handiwork. Do you think he and David will allow the FBI boys to interrogate me? Never. They’ll try and kill me first.”

  “So it’s your own skin you’re bargaining for, not Vanessa’s.”

  That shot caused a glint of anger to appear in the other man’s eyes, but he kept his cool. “Spence won’t stay invisible forever. He’ll materialize. When he does, they’ll publicize it and have a good laugh at your expense. You’ll look like a doddering old fool for raising a false alarm. Yancey and the FBI will denounce you for meddling and dragging them into a farce.

  “After that, who’s going to believe you when you blame David for whatever misfortune befalls Vanessa? No one. You’ll be written off as delusional and senile. David will have won on all accounts.”

  “You’re lying.” Bondurant didn’t honor the accusation with a denial, merely stared at Clete with those cold blue eyes. “I told David last night why I called Yancey and got the investigation going. If Spence was still alive, he would have told me.”

  “Would he? Or is he setting you up?” Bondurant leaned slightly forward again. “Cagey as you are, Clete, I’m sure you’ve cooked up a delicious plan to destroy David for killing your grandson, but your way will take time, and time is something we don’t have.”

  The man was making sense, but Clete wasn’t ready to concede. “What if I don’t do as you ask?”

  “Then good luck. You’re on your own.”

  “I’ve been doing things on my own for a damn long time. I have a pretty good track record.”

  “Then why isn’t Vanessa here with you now instead of locked away in some hospital, incommunicado, under the watch and care of David’s lap-puppy George Allan?”

  It was a good question. Clete had no answer for it. Still, it was hard for him to back down. Retraction wasn’t in his nature.

  “You’re bluffing. You want Vanessa safely back as much as I do. With or without my intervention, you would fight off the FBI and anybody else to storm the castle and rescue her.”

  “Maybe once. Not anymore.”

  “Got another girl, huh? Barrie Travis?”

  Clete didn’t expect him to rise to the bait, and he didn’t. “In many ways, Vanessa is a delightful woman. But she’s selfish.”

  “Listen here,” Clete said, shaking his index finger in Bondurant’s face. “I won’t have you or anyone criticizing my daughter.”

  Ignoring him, Bondurant continued. “She learned early on to cover her own ass, and she had a damned good teacher in you. Vanessa always gives herself top priority, and never so much as when I resigned my White House post. She let me bear the brunt of the gossip about us, never uttering a single word in my defense, never interceding with David on my behalf.”

  “So why are you offering to help her now?”

  “Patriotism.”

  Clete snorted. “Self-aggrandizement is more like it. You’re a hero. Saving the First Lady is an irresistible challenge.”

  “Nothing as romantic as that, Clete. An innocent baby is dead. Shouldn’t his killer be punished? I also want closure on my association with David’s presidency. I want it to be over with once and for all, and that’ll never happen until his administration is upended and the ugly underbelly is exposed. And while Vanessa no longer holds my affection, she certainly doesn’t deserve to die.”

  “Saint Gray,” Clete said snidely.

  Bondurant came to his feet, signaling that he’d done all the haggling he intended to do. He seemed exceptionally strong as he stood over the table. Clete suffered by comparison. The younger man’s sinewy strength made him feel old and soft and weak.

  “What’s it going to be, Clete? Do I implement a rescue?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Not good enough. Call Bill Yancey—now—or I disappear, and Vanessa’s life rests in your hands alone. You’re mean and cunning enough, you might defeat David and survive. She won’t.”

  Clete never surrendered. Never. But he knew from his football days at Ole Miss when it was prudent to fall back and punt.

  * * *

  As she was making her way from the fresh grave back to her car, two men fell into step with her, one on each side. “Miss Travis?”

  “Yes?”
<
br />   They showed her their FBI badges. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Now?” she asked incredulously. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is a funeral.”

  “We noticed,” one said. “We’re sorry about Mr. Fripp. We’ve had a problem locating you and figured you’d be here.”

  “Your insensitivity is unforgivable,” she said.

  Pathetically few people had attended the brief, secular service at Howie Fripp’s interment, which was a sad commentary on his life. Almost exclusively, those in attendance were co-workers from WVUE, most of whom had used the funeral as an excuse to take an extra hour at lunch. In chatty groups, they were hurrying back to their cars, having upheld their moral responsibility and now free to socialize on company time.

  Barrie’s tears were real. She genuinely felt sad, not only for the horrible way in which Howie had died but because there would be no atonement for the crime and because no one really cared anyway.

  One of the agents nudged her from her lament. “Even though this is an inconvenient time, Miss Travis, we’d still like to talk to you.”

  “Since you’ve got me surrounded, what choice do I have? But do you mind if we move a little farther from the grave?”

  “Not at all.”

  When they reached her car, she blotted her eyes one last time and turned to face them. “I told the police everything I know about Mr. Fripp’s murder. They took my statement at the scene.”

  “That’s not why we’re here,” one of the agents said.

  “No?” she said, pretending to be taken aback and puzzled. “Then what’s this about?”

  “Gray Bondurant.”

  “Oh, him,” she said in a drop-dead voice. Folding her arms across her chest, she assumed a bored but disgruntled pose. “What do you gentlemen wish to know about our nation’s erstwhile hero?”

  “For starters, where he is.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. He’s a creep.”

  The agents exchanged a look. One said, “It’s our understanding, Miss Travis, that the two of you have been spending a great deal of time together.”