by Laura Hayden
“But I’m not scheming.”
“I know that. You know that. Emily knows that. But maybe Daniel doesn’t know that. If this is Daniel at all. Look, have your security people contact John Ferguson at the Virginia Department of Corrections. I’ll give him everything I have on Gilroy and explain the situation to him. If Gilroy contacts me, I’ll tell the authorities everything he says.”
“Thanks, Wes.”
His voice softened. “Don’t worry, Kate. Gilroy doesn’t have a history of violence. If anyone is all bluster and no action, it’s Daniel Gilroy.”
“Are you sure?”
Wes lowered his voice. “Can I tell you a little secret? Remember at the cabin, years ago, when Emily pulled the clip from his gun?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the clip was empty. The only bullet he had was in the chamber, and that was because he was too stupid to look there. The big militia man thought the gun he was waving around was unloaded. That’s how nonthreatening he is.”
Or how inept. Of course, that was several years ago. Hopefully, he’d not gotten any training on the darker arts in prison.
After thanking Wes once more, Kate hung up and immediately called Decker Bloom, the head of the security firm that handled all campaign security issues. After her explanation, Decker assured her that his people would investigate the Gilroy connection and beef up security around her, personally.
But to be doubly sure, Kate also called Agent McNally of the Secret Service and told him everything she knew. To her surprise, he already had information about Gilroy, since the man had been on their first-look list of “people of interest” after the first note had turned up.
“According to our intel, Gilroy is currently basking in the Florida sun, living with his older sister in her Sun City retirement apartment. We’ve had him under surveillance for some time now. I don’t think he’s any threat.”
When Kate hung up, her heart rate dropped down from warp speed to merely insanely fast. With both sets of assurances, from Wes and from McNally, she realized she could afford to feel marginally better. Maybe, just maybe, she could concentrate on the dozen or so campaign reports that needed to be reviewed.
Instead of thinking about a lunatic coming to kill her.
She called room service, ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and after a second and third thought, plus a trip to the bathroom scale so thoughtfully provided by the hotel, she called back and added a chocolate sundae to her order.
Sometimes, a person just had to ignore the calories and splurge.
That night, Kate was almost asleep when Emily called with the day’s update, giving a rundown of the good and less-than-good moments. But this time, she sounded different—she sounded . . . happy.
“M, you didn’t drink a lot tonight, did you?” Kate tried to not sound suspicious.
“Not a drop, K. It’s just that we had a really great day. Good venues. Great responses. I really felt like I reached the people today. I think . . . nope—I know.” A note of awe crept into her voice. “I really believe we can pull this off.”
If Kate had entertained any notion of mentioning Gilroy and the second threatening note to Emily, she decided against it then. The last thing she wanted to do was douse Emily’s infectious enthusiasm and good mood.
Kate closed her eyes, sent up a quick, fervent prayer requesting guidance, and reached deep to tap what her mother always called the “Rosen Reservoir.” She even found a bit of good humor stashed there as well as a sufficient amount of inner strength.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” she chided. “It’s not like that wasn’t our plan from the beginning. As that great Greek philosopher Homer said, ‘D’oh!’ You know you’re going to win.”
“Theoretically, sure. But now it’s all coming together right in front of me. The people are responding. We’re getting more enthusiastic crowds and bigger crowds—a lot bigger on this leg of the campaign.”
“I’d say that’s a pretty good return for the six million we invested in advertisement.”
“Now, wait. Only half of that was Iowa. How’s our other half of the investment going? How’s New Hampshire?”
“Full of interesting people, one in particular.” She almost said “two” but decided again not to burden Emily with the suspected antics of Poison-pen Gilroy—or whoever was writing the threatening letters.
“Who?” Emily demanded.
Kate drew a deep breath. “Nick.”
There was silence on the other end.
“He asked for a meeting.”
“Over my dead body,” Emily said in an equally dead voice. “Better yet, over his dead body.”
“He didn’t want to talk to you. He wanted to meet with me.”
More chilled silence.
Kate continued. “He called to arrange a meeting with me, and I agreed.”
“Kathryn Marie Rosen,” Emily began in warning, “you know how charming and slimy he is. You can’t trust him. For heaven’s sakes, don’t meet with him.”
Kate drew in a fortifying breath. “Too late. I already did.”
Emily split the air with a single icy expletive.
“Don’t worry. We met in a public place and all I did was listen to him. And his message was simple. He said, and I quote, ‘I don’t intend to use any insider knowledge I have of Emily to disrupt your campaign or cause her any personal grief.’”
“I’d like to cause him some personal grief,” Emily grumbled. “Tell me you didn’t believe that load of bull. Please?”
For some reason, Kate decided to not enlighten Emily concerning the news of Nick’s newfound faith. It would only serve to rile her friend up even more.
“He’s changed,” Kate said. “He says he’s been to AA.”
“Considering that he was drinking his way straight to cirrhosis of the liver, good for him.” Emily’s ice-queen act began to melt under the heat of her sarcasm. “So he’s, what? somewhere in step eight? making amends to all those folks he done wrong?” She affected a Southern accent. “Why, Momma, Dah-dy, I so-o-o sorry I’m such a disappointment. Will y’all ever foh-give me?”
“Don’t be crass,” Kate scolded.
“If he’s asking for apologies, why hasn’t he called me? I figure I rank above you—probably even above Momma and Daddy—in the ‘need to forgive’ list.”
Telling Emily that Nick’s parents were both gone wouldn’t help at all now. Emily had appeared to like them, even after she’d assigned Nick to the innermost ring of Dante’s Inferno.
“Maybe he hasn’t gotten that high in the to-do list yet,” Kate said. “Or maybe he knows you’re in no mood to listen. Not that I think it would be a good idea for you to talk with him. In any case, it appears Talbot has realized you’re going to come out of Iowa as the winner and he’s trying to get us to agree to a clean, positive campaign. After the primaries are over.”
Emily chuckled. “This is really priceless. You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Yeah. That he’s already pegged you as the party’s nominee.”
“Well, there is that . . . but more importantly, he must know we found dirt on Talbot and now he’s running scared.” Emily began to speak faster as her sarcasm gave way to anger. “The only thing Talbot can think to do to stop us is to hire Nick as his not-so-secret weapon and then send him to you with his fake ‘Let’s keep it clean’ message. This is just priceless.”
Red-hot glee filled Emily’s voice. “I am so going to love blowing that sanctimonious Talbot right out of the water. And if Nick is a not-so-innocent bystander in that explosion, all the better. Collateral damage.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Talbot’s plan to use Nick to throw me off my game is going to backfire in his face. Trust me, Chuck Talbot is going to rue the day he invited that snake into his camp.” Emily released a belly laugh.
“But—,” Kate started, but Emily interrupted her efforts again.
“Hush. This is rich. We don’t even have to do a
nything, say anything, or use whatever it is that you found on him that you won’t tell me about. All we have to do is simply sit back and watch it crumble from the inside.”
“Whatever you say, M.” But Kate wasn’t sure she meant it.
KATE WISHED SHE COULD BE IN IOWA, if only to distract Emily from her fixation on her ex-husband and Charles Talbot. Emily may have needed Kate to help keep her impatience and her temper in check, but Kate needed to run New Hampshire while Emily concentrated on Iowa. It was hard to wait, even harder to stay in the Manchester headquarters on the actual day of the Iowa caucus.
Emily’s campaign had everything riding on the results, and Kate felt almost as if she was shirking her duty by not being at Emily’s side, even though she was pulling round-the-clock duty in New Hampshire.
This particular night, everyone in the New Hampshire office was staying late, wanting to be together to celebrate what they were sure was the upcoming victory in Iowa. Kate manned a direct connection via computer to the Iowa and Nevada headquarters as well as to the Virginia base camp so all four groups of the hot spots in Emily’s campaign could stay in constant contact. So far, news from Iowa had been mixed but tending in Emily’s favor.
Emily’s top opponent had been Henderson. In his absence, a retired four-star air force general named Wright was expected to be her strongest contender in the state, according to media reports. In the credit column, the general had the bearing of a male authority figure, which appealed to the older party members, both male and female, plus he had a strong oratorical voice. When he said something, his ringing baritone made him sound as if he really meant it and so should you. On the negative side of the ledger, he came across to many younger voters as an autocrat, expecting everyone to jump whenever he issued an order. That impression might just be fact. Running his campaign like an extremely strict military organization, he’d limited his ability to adjust his plans to the rapidly changing political climate of the campaign.
In particular, he hadn’t been able to turn and go after Emily full-time once Henderson had bowed out. And the lost opportunity might have done irreparable damage to his campaign efforts.
Media reports already suggested that Wright’s ramrod, standoffish demeanor had played against him on the grassroots caucus trail, even to an Iowan public predisposed to liking the military.
Like his slogan said, “Wright is might” and don’t you forget it. . . .
However, Iowa did.
The caucus entrance polls were substantiating the early media reports. The good people of Iowa had not been impressed with Wright’s paternal but strict “I know what’s best for America” pose. Emily’s “We have a plan for America” concept had fared much better.
But not enough to be securely, clearly in first place.
At least not yet.
Early returns with only about a quarter of the precincts reporting put Emily in second place, trailing slightly behind Senator Burl Bochner but well ahead of General Michael Wright. Whether Emily would hold that position through the rest of the night or not, especially as the bigger urban precinct results rolled in, remained to be seen.
Emily had all but forecast Bochner’s potential as the front-runner the day before. Bochner had been flexible and had come on fast once Henderson was out of the way. “The trouble is, he’s a man advocating virtually the same things I am,” she’d said. “He’ll appeal to the same voters I do, but he’ll score points off of their familiarity and comfort with male representation. Just like Henderson before him. I don’t like this at all.”
Kate knew her role in Emily’s world was to point out the obvious. “But he’s still a first-term senator. He has virtually no experience in Washington. You, on the other hand, know the Washington culture, the political clime, the names, the faces. You’re a known quantity within and beyond the Beltway. You’ve seen what government’s about nearly from the day you were born.”
“Trust me—the folks in Iowa don’t really care about the Beltway. To them it’s just a highway with more traffic than they’ve ever seen before.”
Ten minutes later, with 50 percent of the precincts reporting in, Emily had pulled into the lead.
An hour later, with 75 percent of the precincts’ results, Emily was ahead by a comfortable margin but not enough for her win to be considered a clear victory that would catapult her to the front-runner for the party at the convention. Theoretically it was still possible for her to fall behind, even in Iowa, but if the current trend held, she’d win.
But Emily wasn’t ready to rest on her laurels for more than a few minutes. She called Kate back immediately. “I’d hoped to get a strong enough win here to blow out the rest of the competition, but Bochner has made a solid showing. We can’t count him out or, for that matter, Wright either,” Emily cautioned. “That’s why I want you to look harder into both of—”
“Stop,” Kate commanded. “Don’t say it. This is not the time. We need to count our positives. The volunteers, not to mention the field office staff, have been working awfully hard for you. You need to let them celebrate their victory, as much as yours. And to do that, you need to celebrate with them. Janis and I had a long talk about timing. She’ll give you the cue when your win is made official and when it’s time to go into the ballroom for the hoopla. Are you comfortable with the speech?”
There was a burst of noise in the background. Kate looked at the television screen and saw that the network news had cut into regular programming. She turned up the volume slightly. “This is an NBC News special report.”
The camera cut to the national news desk in New York. “This is George Lacken reporting. With 85 percent of the precincts reporting in, it appears as if Emily Benton, the former governor of Virginia, has won her party’s Iowa caucus in what our experts are calling a guarded victory.”
“Guarded?” Emily growled in her ear.
“Iowa is a critical first step to Ms. Benton’s winning the party’s presidential nomination, and she’s expected to hold her own in Michigan, now that Senator Mark Henderson has pulled out of the race,” the newsreader intoned. “Former Governor Benton comes from a family with a long history in American politics. Her father was the late House Representative Henry Benton, perhaps best known as the man who intercepted would-be presidential assassin Edward David Sharbles and took a bullet meant for President Haynes. Her uncle is former President William R. Benton and—”
The echoing voice from Emily’s phone died down as she evidently muted the sound on the television. Kate did as well.
Emily sighed. “One of these days, they’re going to talk about me without trotting out my family’s bloody laundry. Sure, I’m proud of what the Bentons have done, but I’d rather not have Dad’s death mentioned every time somebody runs a clip of me on television.”
“I don’t blame you, but you know the media.” Kate changed the subject as quickly as she could, not wanting to feed into Emily’s foul mood. “Even though they’re supposed to be all about ‘news,’ they love to tell a story they’ve told a thousand times before. Forget them, M. Go out there and be a gracious winner for the people who supported you.”
“Yeah, yeah. For the little people. Yada yada.”
Kate ignored Emily’s complaint. “Hey, I haven’t congratulated you yet. It’s a big first step, but you did it. Congratulations.”
Emily was silent for a moment; then she spoke softly, no longer talking to her campaign manager but to her oldest and best friend. “Big Henry would be proud of me, wouldn’t he?”
Kate knew the politically correct answer. But it happened to be the truth as well. “Your dad was always proud of you, Emily, win or lose; you know that. Tonight you won. Go make nice with the cameras.”
“Thanks, K,” Emily whispered. She sniffed and then her voice grew stronger. “After today, the Benton legacy won’t be all about bloody laundry.”
“It sure won’t. Now go smile at the cameras.” Kate hung up.
Bloody laundry, indeed.
Lik
e most of America, Kate would never forget the day of Big Henry’s death. But unlike most of America, Kate was supposed to have been there, standing in the crowd next to the man, taking advantage of having a college roommate who was a member of the best known political family in the United States. It’d been Kate’s bad luck to get a stomach virus the day before. So instead of a front-row seat, hopefully witnessing history in the making, Kate had stayed home, trying to keep saltines down, and watched the event on C-SPAN.
Later that night, when Emily finally got home, she gave Kate a highly detailed, up close version of the day’s events. She seemed to have a cathartic need to purge herself of the memories. A burden shared . . .
Between Emily’s personal account and what Kate saw in live coverage and endless replays, she had a good idea of what had happened. . . .
It was April.
Emily and Kate had both been looking forward to their upcoming summer jobs on the Hill, interning as legal researchers for the Honorable Matthew R. Benton, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, aka Emily’s cousin Mattie.
However, it wasn’t their new positions that was providing them a chance to stand on the steps of the Capitol and witness what was being touted as an historical appearance by the president. It had been an invitation from Emily’s father, Big Henry, one of the most powerful lobbyists in the District. Kate was at home, kicking herself for missing the opportunity of a lifetime to be in such august company and see the president in person as he signed a major bill. Emily had promised to tell her everything.
She eventually did.
The weather had cooperated with clear skies, a strong sun, and pleasant temperatures in the low seventies. A good-size crowd of dignitaries framed the tableau, the front left open for the media and spectators, held at bay by a defensive line of Secret Service agents.
Sitting in bed, Kate watched as the camera panned across the throng. She easily spotted Big Henry. His nickname had more to do with the amount of power he wielded than his towering height, but he still stood well over six feet tall. Emily stood to his side, sedately dressed for the event in a conservative burgundy suit. She’d wanted to wear a bright red dress, but Kate had talked her out of it. Emily’s youth, her attractiveness, and her blonde hair were enough to make her stand out in that sea of older, dark-suited men. After the Great Clothing Debate, she and Emily had settled on something “Not black, not navy, not gray. . . . And absolutely no pinstripes.”
