by J. L. Brown
His chest rose and fell as he breathed. The only movement he was capable of.
The stars burned bright against the black sky. The Little Dipper. The Big Dipper. Perseus—or was it Gemini? He had learned about constellations during a class field trip to a planetarium three years ago. Life had been great then. When he was young.
Running away had been stupid. Where could he hide? He saw these guys every day. Two of them had grabbed him before he made it off campus. Tossing him into a car like a crumpled piece of paper, they had driven to a three-sided section of the main building. Back in the day, it had served as the student smoking lounge, if you could believe that. Now, just an area the high overhead night-lights and security cameras missed.
Two other guys had joined them—one, the fighter in the knickers—and beaten the shit out of him until he passed out.
Dew began to soak through his shirt. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying here. The grass, mowed to the perfection of a baseball field, smelled as the boy imagined heaven would. His dad took enormous pride in his lawn.
He could lie here forever.
Turning his head, he spotted it in the moonlight. “I thought I’d lost you.”
He pushed himself up, picked up his cap, placed it on his head, and gingerly made his way to the front door. Pain shot through his hand as he extracted the key from his back pocket.
Inside, quietly and painfully, he climbed the stairs. The noise of a television behind his parents’ closed bedroom door masked his footsteps as he tiptoed by. Some reality show that offered a different reality than their own.
The boy entered his room at the end of the hall. Not bothering to pull off his pants or brush his teeth, he crawled into bed.
An hour later, sleep still eluded him. He reached for his nightstand and removed a bottle of pain-relief pills hidden in the drawer.
He’d taken a lot of them over the past two years.
Shaking out four pills, he swallowed them dry and lay down and waited for them to work.
As he drifted off to sleep, he remembered the name of the constellation.
Perseus. The hero.
CHAPTER TWO
Fairfax, Virginia
Why is it quiet upstairs?
Jenny Thompson’s two youngest children, seven-year-old Mia and five-year-old Matt Jr., sat at the kitchen table, slurping cereal while playing games on their electronic tablets. Learning to multitask early. She often wondered whether her kids would be able to function, if forced to focus on one thing.
“Don’t make so much noise,” she said. “It’s bad manners.”
Both cut their eyes at her, briefly, and turned back to their tablets. And their slurping.
Her husband, Matt, had left for the Mercedes dealership in Fairfax City, a short distance from their home. She’d packed his lunch, attaching a Post-it note to the plastic bag safeguarding his sandwich:
I love you! See you tonight! Love, Jenny
The i in tonight was a heart instead of a dot.
As the general sales manager, Matt needed to be in the office early, most days arriving at 6 a.m. From the beginning of their marriage, they had decided that she would be responsible for waking, feeding, and sending the kids out the door for school in the morning. Yes, she was a stay-at-home mom—and proud of it—but that didn’t mean her days weren’t stressful.
Like today.
Jenny called up to her oldest son. Again. “Tyler, come on! You’re going to be late!”
Her fourteen-year-old son used to be prompt and look forward to going to school. But when he hit his teen years, he became infected with the tardiness bug pandemic to most teenagers.
Removing the stainless-steel skillet from the stove, she scooped the scrambled eggs onto a plate next to the bacon. She placed it in front of Tyler’s seat at the table. She poured him a glass of orange juice and texted him to hurry up.
Her younger two children chewed their food, their intense gazes never leaving their screens. Despite their ignorance of her presence, a surge of love for them swept through her. They were growing up before her eyes. She could admire them all day, but she had her priorities.
“Tyler, I’m not kidding!”
After a last glance at Mia and Matt Jr. and double checking that the stove burners were off, she said, “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
Like I have to worry.
Making her way toward the front of their Colonial home, she climbed the stairs to the second floor. As she reached the top, she paused, her hand still on the wooden rail in need of refinishing. The smell of bacon permeated all the way up here.
But something was off. It was too quiet.
She shivered.
After a few moments, she realized what was wrong. She didn’t hear music. Tyler always listened to music, mostly rap. Her Caucasian offspring from the suburbs couldn’t read, watch TV, or sleep without it. His favorite t-shirt sported YOLO—You Only Live Once—in gigantic yellow letters, lyrics of a song by his favorite artist, Drake. He wore the shirt so often that it had faded from its original black to a dull gray.
Jenny shook off the bad thoughts and walked—conscious of each step—down the carpeted hallway to his bedroom, stopping at the door to listen.
Nothing.
She frowned. A gnawing started in the pit of her stomach, spreading through her body and into her fingertips. She placed her palm flat on his door, before slowly balling her hand into a fist. She knocked.
No response.
She knocked again, more insistently.
Still nothing.
“Tyler, open the door.”
Her hand drifted to the knob, encircling it. She squeezed and turned. But the door did not open.
It was locked, which wasn’t unusual.
When he was eight years old, Tyler saw the movie The Haunting in Connecticut at a sleepover with friends. Ever since, he’d been locking his door before he went to bed.
Jenny backtracked to her bedroom near the top of the stairs and through to the bathroom. She grabbed the bobby pin in a drawer of the vanity, kept easily accessible for just this purpose, and returned to Tyler’s door. She inserted the already straightened pin into the hole in the doorknob.
A click. Success.
Jenny inched the door open to ensure that she didn’t see anything she didn’t want to see. Tyler told her he had started sleeping in the nude about a year ago. When he hit puberty, he strutted around the house without a shirt, his underdeveloped chest impressive only to himself. Every real and imagined chin hair pointed out for her inspection.
Yep. He still lay in bed, shirtless, the sheet thankfully covering the lower half of his body. She pushed the door open all the way.
“Tyler, wake up, now! I mean it!”
Stomping over to the bed, she stopped short.
His face, swollen and covered with bruises, sported a black eye. The inside of his nose and the corner of his lips were crusted with blood. Her eyes scanned his torso, the bruises forming an intricate tattoo.
What the hell had happened to her son?
She grabbed his shoulder and shook him—
And pulled her hand back as if scalded. Not because he was hot. Or warm. Just the opposite. Her son was cold. His shoulder barely moved.
She cradled her son’s face in both of her hands. His eyes were closed. His face cold. An angel.
A bruised and battered angel.
Sleeping.
No. This can’t be.
“Tyler, baby, please! Wake up! Please, baby. Please.”
She bent and placed her ear to his chest and then over his mouth.
Nothing.
She initiated CPR. Never trained, she imitated what she’d seen on a hospital reality TV show. She put her hands together and, using the pads of her palm, pressed repeatedly against his heart. She tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Still nothing.
After a few minutes, she stopped. Her efforts fruitless.
Whispering in his ear over and ove
r, “Wake up, baby,” she closed her eyes, the warm tears cascading down her cheeks and onto his.
Still cheek to cheek, her eyes moved from his headboard to the lamp on his nightstand, to his cell phone streaming with texts until she spotted the medicine bottle laying on its side next to the phone. She reached for it.
Turning the bottle around, she read the label.
It belonged to her. A long-standing OxyContin prescription she used for knee pain, a constant reminder of her high school and college playing days.
The bottle was empty.
Only then did she start to scream. And couldn’t stop.
Mia and Matt Jr. burst through the open door.
“Mom! What’s wrong?”
“What’s happening?”
They stood next to the bed.
“Why are you crying?” Mia asked.
“Why are you in bed with Tyler?” Matt Jr. said. He pushed his older brother with both hands. “Wake up!” He recoiled and looked at her. “Why is he cold?”
“I’m calling Dad!” Her daughter grabbed Tyler’s cell phone off the nightstand.
Her children’s voices reached her through a thick fog. She didn’t register what they were saying.
Matt and the paramedics arrived at nearly the same time ten minutes later. Her husband must have called 911. Jenny was still crying and screaming. By that time, her two youngest children had joined her.
CHAPTER THREE
Arlington, Virginia
Jade Harrington holstered her Glock on her hip and sipped the remains of her morning coffee as she looked out at the small backyard of her townhouse. The melting snow from last week’s storm, unusual for April, exposed to the world her poor yard-work skills. Brown grass surrounded the concrete patio, the only furniture a rusted wrought-iron table and chairs. She couldn’t remember the last time she had sat out there.
She glanced down at her cocoa-colored cat, Card, who stared up at her, a face of unmasked devotion.
“What?”
The cat continued to stare, a slight twitch of his ears the only evidence that he’d heard her. Placing the cup in the sink, she swooped Card up to cradle him like a baby and deposited a kiss on his forehead.
“Love you. Gotta go.”
The smartphone in the pocket of her gray dress pants buzzed. She shifted the cat to one arm as she fished it out. Christian. She answered. “Hey, you.”
“Hey,” he said, his tone somber. Unusual for him.
While FBI agents don’t have partners, she worked with Special Agent Christian Merritt more than any other agent. She wouldn’t want it any other way.
Depositing Card on the floor, she placed her hand on her hip, ready, bracing for the bad news sure to follow.
“What?”
“My nephew . . . my wife’s sister’s son . . . he, uh, died of an apparent suicide. Last night. They . . . she found him this morning.” Silence. “Do you think—”
Jade had started for the front door while he spoke. Grabbing her suit jacket off the back of a chair, she scooped up her briefcase and keys from a table in the foyer.
“On my way. What’s the address?”
CHAPTER FOUR
The White House, Washington, DC
She looked across the desk at her Chief of Staff, Sasha Scott. “Ninety days.”
President Whitney Fairchild sat behind the Resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. President John F. Kennedy was the first to use the desk in the Oval Office, as had many presidents since.
She glanced around her office: the beige carpet with the presidential seal, the plush sofas and chairs, paintings of Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Susan B. Anthony—she could never exclude the famous suffragette.
“It hasn’t gone as I had hoped,” Whitney continued.
Sasha shifted in her chair. “You haven’t accomplished anything.”
Whitney proffered a wry smile. “Tell me how you really feel.”
With both houses of Congress controlled by the other party, resisting—she preferred “obstructing”—every issue on her legislative agenda, her first ninety days in office had not gone well. Certainly not according to plan. This Congress allowed all legislation, even measures that had been supported by Republicans in the past, to languish or die.
“Every president since FDR,” Whitney said, “has been judged on his accomplishments within his first hundred days. I only have ten left.”
“But that Congress gave FDR everything he asked for,” Sasha pointed out.
“Resulting in the highest GDP growth in history.”
“I wish time travel existed. Like in all those books you read. We could swap this Congress for that one. So, what are you going to do?”
“That is the question. Isn’t it?” Whitney held out her hand. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
Sasha handed her several briefing books. “You’re meeting with the Gang of Twenty on comprehensive immigration reform.”
“Eight. Twelve. Twenty. No matter how many members of Congress work on it, they cannot seem to come to an agreement.”
“A few freshmen congressmen requested a meeting about paving the way for another pipeline through the Midwest.”
Whitney didn’t bother to respond.
“And the president of the National Education Association wants to hear your ideas for education in the twenty-first century.”
“I’m not ready.”
Sasha nodded toward one of the books. “Just repeat what’s in there.” She settled back in the guest chair. “Did you see Maddow?”
“About Cole’s son?”
She nodded. “Should be some show today. Cole’s show, I mean.”
Cole Brennan, the top-rated conservative radio talk-show host in the country, was Whitney’s loudest and most vocal critic. His pledge during the campaign to support her had lasted exactly one day. Inauguration Day. Since then, he had criticized her every move, every decision, every outfit, every hairstyle. He even criticized her weight. His ratings had never been higher.
This morning his eighteen-year-old son announced he was gay—and worse, a liberal—on a special edition of Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC. That he would do so on the liberal news commentator’s television show must have been a staggering blow to Cole.
“Wish I had time to listen to it. Poor kid.” Whitney crossed her legs, her left index finger resting on her lips. Her thinking position.
“What’s on your mind, Madam President?”
“I’m worried. When was the last time you visited a truly diverse community? People live among other people who think like them, look like them, vote like them, and pray—or not—like them.”
Sasha remained silent. She had heard all this before.
“Dual economies,” Whitney said. “Different classes of people living side by side.”
“The difference in income between the haves and have-nots,” Sasha said, “continues to grow.”
“The wealthy continue to earn the majority of income, but middle- to lower-class wages stay the same.”
“And it’s only gotten worse since you’ve been in office.”
Whitney frowned. “Thanks.” Leaning her head back against the chair, she stared at the ceiling. “Nineteen eighty-two began the start of gated-community construction. The year of the Great Divide. Today, seventeen percent of all new homes over five hundred thousand dollars are built in gated communities.”
“It’s no coincidence that ‘segregate’ contains the word ‘gate.’”
Whitney smiled. “Ooh . . . I might need to use that.”
“The question is: are the gates to keep people out or to keep people in?”
Whitney thought about it. “Both.” She sighed and sat up. “I’m supposed to be the president who changes this. Reverses the trend.”
“It’s still early, yet,” Sasha said, her pen ready. “What do you need?”
Whitney gestured at the briefing books stacked on her desk. “These a
ren’t my legacy. Inequality is at its highest level in more than a century.” She brought her fist down, tapping the table. “Income equality is the issue I want to solve. That is my legacy. I need you to come up with a plan. A brilliant plan that will stimulate the economy, inspire the American people, and ensure that everyone shares in the benefit. Not just the one-percenters. But, most important—”
“—will get buy-in on the Hill,” Sasha finished for her.
“Work with—” She almost said “Landon.” It had taken her more time than it should to name his replacement for director of legislative affairs. “—Rick.”
“When do you need it?”
“Yesterday.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Fairfax, Virginia
Jade parallel parked her old Audi A4 behind the car in front of a traditional Colonial home. It wasn’t one of the McMansions that had sprouted like weeds in the DC metropolitan area in the 1990s and the first two decades of this century.
Christian leaned against the trunk of a Bureau car, his arms crossed over his massive chest. His cropped blond hair stood at attention. He watched her approach.
She gave him a brief hug. It was like embracing a mountain. Pulling back to look him in the eyes, she brought her hand to his cheek. After a moment, she said, “Let’s go.”
A kid’s bicycle lay across the walkway that bisected the well-maintained yard. They stepped around it.
He led her through the front door. A man the same size as Christian, but not as muscular, met them in the foyer. Christian gestured to Jade. “This is Special Agent Jade Harrington.”
“Matt Thompson,” he said, subdued, extending his hand. He showed them to the living room, one step down off the foyer to their right.
“Be right back,” Matt said, turning toward the hallway that led to the back of the house.
Jade took in the immaculate room. A massive Matisse reproduction adorned one wall over the sofa, and a hodgepodge of framed photographs rested on an end table. She picked one up of Matt with a pretty, athletic woman and three kids, all smiling, their brown hair kissed by the sun. An orange promotional lifesaver ring with Carnival Dream in black lettering hung behind them. Matt’s wife resembled her sister—Christian’s wife, Amanda—but Amanda was blonde like her husband. Jade stared at the children’s faces.