“No, ma’am. Not at all. My job is to—”
She waved her hand and cut him off. “Your job is to protect me. I know that, Jonathan. And I know it may not seem like it, but I appreciate what you do. Are you married? Kids?”
“Yes, ma’am. Both. We have a six-month-old baby girl.”
“What’s her name?”
“Katie, ma’am,” he answered proudly.
“Katie. Cute name. Do you get to spend much time with her?”
“All day, ma’am. So my wife can catch up on sleep. Katie came out screaming and hasn’t stopped since. She’s feisty.”
“So if you’re here all night and with the baby all day, when do you get to sleep?” she asked.
“I catch catnaps here and there.”
“It’ll get better, Jonathan. All my babies were feisty too.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She secured the deadbolt, leaned back against the door, and took several deep breaths.
All my babies.
McDermott glanced at the stack of mail and briefing papers on the kitchen counter, shook her head, and spoke out loud in the empty apartment. “You can wait. Shower time.”
McDermott emerged from the bedroom twenty minutes later wearing white cargo shorts and a black t-shirt. She poured a glass of red wine and flipped through the stacks of paperwork that covered most of the kitchen counter space. Connecticut economic reports. Board of Education test results. Speaking invitations and pleas for support from various nonprofit organizations. An official-looking envelope exclaiming, “Open immediately! Lois Sumner McDermott, you don’t want to miss this opportunity!” found its way into the trash.
Nice try, guys, but I dropped the Sumner a long time ago.
She settled on the most recent statistics on gun violence and headed for her evening reading spot on the couch near the balcony. A flexible reading lamp hovered overhead like the boom microphones that seemed to follow her everywhere. The sliding glass door was open and an unseasonably cool breeze gently blew the drapes. Two pages into the report, she was startled by a voice from outside.
“Good evening, Senator.”
Surprised, she rose to her feet and dropped the papers on the coffee table.
“Jesus! You scared the heck out of me. I thought I had made myself clear to your boss, Jonathan. No security inside the apartment once I’m in for the night.”
“It’s not Jonathan, Senator,” the man answered after several seconds of heavy silence.
McDermott shielded her eyes from her bright reading lamp and focused on the silhouette in the doorway. “Well, he should have passed those instructions along to the entire security detail. So thanks for your help, but I can take it from here. Now please show yourself out. I have a lot of work to do this evening,” she said in a firm tone before taking a quick sip of wine.
“I’m not part of your detail, Senator.”
Senator McDermott froze. There was no sound other than those of her own breath and the plastic tips of the balcony curtain drawstrings gently tapping against the glass in the breeze. Her pulse quickened and she turned the lamp away from her eyes to get a better look at the stranger.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
He took several relaxed steps inside the apartment and stopped. The presence of an uninvited man in her apartment at night should have been cause for panic, but this man’s tone and physical demeanor, as he stood casually with his hands in his pockets, felt strangely disarming, eerie yet inexplicably familiar.
Why am I not screaming and running for the door?
“You know who I am,” he answered.
“I’m going to ask you one more time. Tell me who you are, right now.”
“I already told you, Senator. You already know who I am,” he said, slowly drifting to the far side of the room and flipping the overhead light switch to fully illuminate himself. “Look closely.”
The stranger took several gentle steps across the soft white carpet to the edge of the coffee table. McDermott looked deep into the man’s eyes and squinted. She curiously tilted her head to the side and focused her tunnel vision on the man’s face. Her heart raced and her arms and legs went numb, but she did not yet understand why. Then he flashed a warm, peculiar smile, and memories from the past came roaring back like a freight train.
“Oh my God … is that … it can’t be … is that really you?” she whispered.
The wine glass slipped from her grasp and she brought both hands to her mouth.
“Mark?”
Thank you for reading my book!
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Randall H. Miller
About the Author
(Photo by Michael McLain, Stockholm, Sweden)
Graduate of Norwich University, the nation's oldest private military college (B.A. in Criminal Justice; M.A. in Diplomacy with a concentration in international terrorism). U.S. Army Officer in a prior life (2nd Infantry Division, S. Korea; 82nd Airborne Division, Ft. Bragg). Stints in pharmaceuticals and high tech. Currently live in Massachusetts where I teach college, write, and worry about what the future has in store for my three-year-old son.
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Wrong Town: A Mark Landry Novel Page 36
