Deeply inhaling, I soak in the warmth of his flesh pressed against mine. I love this man—both of them. It’s the only reason I’m here.
I love them enough to take whatever risks I must to protect both of them.
We return to bed, where Elliot’s sound asleep. Leo pauses before he gets in bed, smiling down at him. “Dammit, he’s so cute.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“I envy you, baby boy.”
“Me? Why?”
“You get to sleep next to him every night.”
As if my heart wasn’t breaking enough already. “One day, he’ll de-ass his head, Daddy.”
Or I’ll fuck up, one of the two.
“Eight years, at the most,” he says before slipping into bed.
I climb in after him. “At the most,” I echo.
Long after both of them are sound asleep, I lie there with Leo curled around me and Elliot spooned around him from behind, and I plan.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Oh, my god. Home.” Elliot face-plants on our bed, fully dressed, and I can’t even blame him for not dropping back into our protocols once we are alone. “I missed you, bed,” he mumbles into the duvet cover, arms spread wide like he’s hugging it. “Gawd, I missed you.”
He’s fricking adorable. He really is.
I leave his large suitcase at the foot of the bed, by the bench, to take care of later. I’ve got others that have to come up from the entry, but this one has most of his clothes in it. We also have dirty clothes for the laundry, which his valet will take care of for us tomorrow.
It’s almost midnight Sunday, and we’re both fricking exhausted.
And my day’s nowhere near finished yet.
I playfully slap his ass. “Sooner you let me get you naked, sooner you can go to sleep, boy.”
He turns his head and peeks up at me with one eye. “The bed has claimed me as its own,” he mumbles. “Resistance is futile.”
I snort and catch half of his playful smile. He likes making me and Leo laugh. He’s good at it, too, when he doesn’t have to deal with the minutiae of keeping our country running.
I wish he had more time to spend on making us laugh.
He finally sits up and turns around so I can get him stripped. In my back pocket is my personal phone, and I’m expecting a text any moment from Grace. I sent her one as soon as Air Force Two was on the ground, asking if we can get together tomorrow night.
This won’t be a one-time thing. She needs to trust me a little before I can make my move. I need to feel her out and see what other info I can get from her.
Once the boy is naked and using his walker to head to the bathroom, I return downstairs to grab another load of luggage. Before I reach the bottom step, my ass buzzes.
Right on time.
I pull out my phone and, sure enough, there’s a text from her.
Tomorrow, 8?
Excellent. I reply and confirm, grimly smiling as I return my phone to my pocket to free my hands. I’d debated using a throwaway Google Voice number or something, tied to the burner, and then decided not to. She’s not stupid enough to say anything in text—I hope—that can be tied to her scheme.
There’s also the very real chance I might need to make it look like she and I are fucking.
By the time I finish moving everything, it’s after one a.m. and Elliot’s sound asleep in our bed. I stand there for a moment, staring at him.
Fricking adorable. He really is.
I strip, take care of business, and soon join him. We can sleep in a little this morning, until seven. Might not sound like that’s late, but for us, it is. We’re releasing the announcement about Casey joining the campaign later today, at a press conference at four. She’ll meet us at campaign headquarters just before then, and I’ll leave Elliot there with her while I go “handle some things.”
I get the impression, based on what Casey said to me that day in the hotel room, that she is intimately acquainted with having to go to extremes to protect someone.
It’s also something I’ll never ask her about, either, much less confide in her about Grace. Because I might trust her in some ways, but this is something else.
No one can know.
Besides, if I fuck it up, Elliot will need Casey every bit as much as he’s going to need Leo. I feel comfortable leaving Elliot’s political fortunes in Casey’s hands. She’s strong, savvy, and protective. She understands the depths of my loyalty to my boy and to my Sir.
Despite my exhaustion, I lie awake, Elliot rolling toward me and draping himself over me. I’m nearly asleep when I feel him grow restless and he softly moans.
Here we go.
This is one of the reasons I couldn’t sleep. Because I knew what was coming.
I carefully wrap my arms around him, slowly squeezing, my cheek pressed against the top of his head. “You’re safe, boy,” I softly murmur. “Wake up, Elliot. It’s just a nightmare. I’ve got you.”
By the time he startles awake, I’ve already got a tight enough grip on him that he won’t thrash around and hurt me. But he’s gasping for breath and I feel his heart hammering in his chest. As he starts crying, I ease my grip on him and start stroking his back. Hopefully, he won’t even remember this come morning.
After a few minutes, he cries himself to sleep in my arms, and I can finally let go and give in to my exhaustion. He nearly always sleeps through the rest of the night after a nightmare.
Now, so can I.
And this is just one of countless reasons why there’s no way in hell I’ll let Grace win.
* * * *
“Humor me, Grace.”
“This is a pain in the ass. Why can’t we just tell people it’s none of their business how we got together?”
I snort. “Are you new here? Have you actually met the press in this town? This is DC. That’s worked exactly zero times in the history of American politics, Grace.”
It’s the second week of September and, not counting that first day when she hit me with the bomb, this is my sixth visit to Grace Martin’s apartment. She’s currently scouring her daily appointments, personal cell phone records, and comparing them to a written printout I brought with me of Elliot’s past campaign appearances, as well as currently planned ones. This is to try to coordinate as much as possible where it looks like the two of them could have snuck time together outside the White House or Elliot’s residence. She hasn’t booked any travel yet for future events.
While she does that, I’m sitting on her couch and cruising through shows on the Netflix app on her Fire TV. She turned it on for me so I could kill some time while she worked on this, per my instructions.
What she doesn’t know is that I now have her Amazon password. It’s the same as her Netflix app, which she gave me the password for.
She left her laptop open during my second visit, while she was on the phone and stepped out of the room to talk. Grace isn’t nearly as smart as she thinks she is. Which, she believes she’s brilliant.
Because my first visit here, she showed me how she can text people by voice through Alexa on her Fire TV. She does it all the time, apparently.
Including texting me.
Gotta love technology.
Hopefully, Leo won’t be too growly with me about stopping by his apartment earlier while he wasn’t home and then leaving again almost immediately. When I told him I had errands to run this evening, I could sense him biting his tongue not to ask.
Unlike Elliot, he’s…
Well, stalky.
No, I’m not telling him where I’ve been going. Duh. Kind of the whole point of me sneaking around to handle this. He’s the body man to POTUS and knows that, sometimes, errands have to be run. It’s work, so he’s not going to interrogate me about it too much.
I mean, it is work, technically.
It’s protecting VPOTUS.
That the Venn diagram of what’s work and what’s personal about this sitch makes a perfect fricking circle is irrelevant.
“This fucking sucks,” she grouses.
I make a production of dragging myself to my feet from the couch. “You want a martini? I think you’ve earned one.” It’s not even eight o’clock yet. I still have plenty of time before I need to return to campaign headquarters.
“Yes, I want a martini. Gawd.” She rolls her eyes. “If you’re going to torture me, at least ease the pain.” She waves me toward the kitchen. “You know where everything is.”
I laugh. “Coming right up.” Yes, I know where everything is, because I’ve made her martinis several times now.
I head into the kitchen and mix them. Then, sipping mine, I carry them out to the living room and set hers in front of her on the coffee table.
She slams half of it back almost immediately and waves her other hand at her laptop. “I have to say, Jordan, as aggravated as I am at you over this, it gives me hope.”
“Why’s that?” I eye her over my martini glass as I sip.
“Because you’re doing some detailed work here. Obviously, you’re all-in. I will admit you’ve apparently thought this out even farther than I have. I’m impressed. And it bodes well for your future.”
I shrug and play with my toothpick full of olives. “Not going to fuck it up. It has to be believable. Better to have it all ironed out now, so Elliot doesn’t have any reason to stall you when you corner him, and no one in the press can catch us in a gaping lie.”
I point a finger at her. “And I want the fucking video from that first little chat of ours, Grace.”
She huffs. “I told you, I was not stupid enough to tape that. It would incriminate me, too, and I’m no idiot. Besides, it would’ve been illegal in a way even I couldn’t have skated on. Privacy laws, illegal videotaping, extortion, quid pro quo—all of that.”
She takes another swallow of her drink. “Seriously, Jordan. I might be many things, but self-incriminating isn’t one of them. The ROI isn’t worth the stress of having it out there over my head, too. When I get dirt on people, I always make sure it doesn’t implicate me.” She points from her to me and back again. “We’re partners. I told you, you help me with this, I’ll reward your loyalty. We’re going to go far together.”
Unlucky for her, I believe her.
About the lack of a video, I mean. Because she’s absolutely an idiot. Me feeling secure that there really isn’t a video means I was correct to make tonight the night I move forward with my plan.
It takes about ten minutes for the dose I spiked her martini with to start hitting her. I hear it by how she starts giggling, laughing, spacing out.
Playing along, I follow her conversational squirrels and keep her talking, encouraging her to finish her first martini. By the time she does, I’ve already finished my “martini”—which was just water and olive juice and olives—and I mix us refills.
Her habit is to drink three of them, at least.
“Here.” I’m smiling as I hand over her second martini. “This’ll help you focus.”
She giggles. “Yeah, it will. You know me so well. This is another reason I really like you.”
“Bottoms up.” We clink glasses and I throw mine back.
Never one to back down from a challenge, she guzzles hers, too, and laughs as she holds the empty glass out to me, shaking it back and forth. “Hit me again, barkeep!”
I smile and take it from her. “You’re not driving anywhere tonight, are you, lady?”
“No, Occifer. I promise I’m not driving anywhere.”
“Hmm. Maybe I should make you convince me to mix you another drink.”
She sort of waggles a finger at me. “You’re awfully bossy, mister. Maybe I like that.”
“Good. I’m used to being bossy.”
“Boss me into drinking one more, please?”
This is Grace with no filters, except she doesn’t even realize it. I started conservatively, because I wanted to make sure I had her good and docile and didn’t knock her out before I delivered the final dose. That would have complicated things. I’ve lightly dosed her a couple of times during past visits, to gauge her tolerance.
“If I make you one more, you have to promise to drink it. It’s a crime to let good alcohol go to waste, you know.”
With her fingers, she draws a lopsided X over her abdomen. “I swear! If you’ll drink one more with me?”
“All right. One more. Then the bartender’s cutting you off, lady, because I’ll need to get going before I’m missed.”
She grins and makes kissy fish lips at me. “Thank you!” Somehow, I manage to suppress my revulsion as I return to the kitchen.
Not that she’d probably notice if I didn’t. She’s fairly wasted now.
Working quickly, I pull a zip-top baggie from my pocket. It holds another baggie full of powdered Fentanyl I purchased from one of the dealers at a club a couple of weeks ago, the same night Grace dropped the bomb on me. This shit’s dangerous, and I’m careful not to touch it with my bare fingers. I kept my stash hid in several coffee pods tucked inside a box of them that I stored in a suitcase under the bed in my room, where I keep a few other miscellaneous personal items stored, like some of my books, sex toys, and other items. A little risky, sure, but I didn’t want someone accidentally making themselves coffee and drinking it and…you know, dying.
I mix her a third martini, add the Fentanyl, and dump in a couple of spoonfuls of simple syrup for good measure. It won’t completely mask the taste, but the drugs I spiked her first two drinks with are already hitting her hard, in addition to the alcohol. She’s been drinking soda, too, so the extra sugar in her system won’t be noticed, I’m sure.
Mine is, once again, water, olive juice, and olives.
I carry our drinks to the living room and hand hers to her, gently clinking with her, because she’s really wasted.
“Down the hatch, lady. A deal’s a deal.” I chug mine.
Grace barks a laugh and chugs hers, too. I catch her hand and take the glass from her and safely set it on the table, because she nearly slams it into the table. I can’t have her doing something like that, breaking a glass and cutting herself.
Her eyes already look glassy, the pupils constricted as she stares at her hand, where I took the glass from her. She’s still holding it in the air and slowly wiggling her fingers, turning her hand back and forth, like she lost the glass and can’t figure out where it went.
I snap my fingers in front of her face. “Grace?”
She blinks, frowning for a second before she tries to focus on me. “What’s wrong with me? I feel…weird.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you, honey. I think you drank a little too much too fast. Three martinis on an empty stomach. Told you earlier you should have let me call in a pizza. You look sleepy. Why don’t you lie down?”
For a moment, she doesn’t react. Then she sort of flops over with a heavy sigh, blinking a few times before her eyes flutter closed.
I tap her personal laptop’s trackpad with my knuckle to keep the computer from going to sleep. Although I have her password for that, too, because she’s an idiot.
Same password she uses for Netflix and Amazon.
Oh, and it’s the same password for her Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, and a few other personal accounts.
She also doesn’t know I changed her privacy settings a couple of weeks ago in her Amazon account, so that Alexa doesn’t store her voice texts or commands.
Yes, I am my Daddy’s boy, and learned my lessons about privacy protection well. Alexa, Siri, and whatever Google’s flavor is called aren’t allowed in Leo’s apartment, much less in the White House or Elliot’s residence.
I pull on my blazer. I don’t want to accidentally forget it here. The paper listing the dates and cities of Elliot’s campaign stops flutters from her lap to the floor, and I grab it, folding it several times and tucking it into my blazer pocket. I’ll run it through the shredder when I return to campaign headquarters. There’s nothing suspicious on it, anyway.
Then I don
a pair of black nitrile gloves I brought with me. I arrange Grace on the couch like she’s watching TV, and sort of point her face-down toward the cushions. Her breathing’s already shallow, her pulse weak.
As I have on nearly every visit I’ve been here, I type a couple of searches into her browser.
For local drug rehab facilities. Because I quickly sussed out she never clears her browser history or her cache.
I might have also browsed books on addiction and recovery while logged into her Amazon account over the past several weeks.
I click on one of the links in the search results. This facility is a well-known, exclusive local program that frequently works with members of Congress and their families.
They also have a 24/7 emergency intake number.
Leaving the info on the screen, I grab her iPhone—her personal phone—hold it in front of her face to unlock it with Face ID, and check her texts.
Past voice texts she’s sent to me by the Alexa app are mirrored there, with nothing to show at first blush that they weren’t sent from her phone.
Perfect.
Next, I enter the facility’s emergency number into her keypad, like she was going to call it. Then I wrap her fingers around the phone and place it on the couch.
She’s still breathing—barely. It won’t be long.
Working fast, I wipe down the outsides of the baggies of the drugs I brought, including the empty packages for the drugs I’ve already dumped into her drinks. Then, I press her fingers all over them, dip two of her fingers from her left hand into the Fentanyl residue, so it appears there, and leave the empty Fentanyl baggie and one of the unused packages of E on the coffee table within her reach.
I take the other baggies, including the empties, and another baggie of Fentanyl, to her bedroom and tuck them into her top dresser drawer, where I’m pleasantly surprised find she also has a bag of pot, rolling papers, and a lighter.
Now that is a happy coincidence.
I leave the drawer ajar enough that anyone looking inside it can see the pot and bags of drugs.
The zip-top baggie I carried everything in, I wipe it down and carefully roll it up and put it in my pocket. I’ll toss it somewhere else.
Innocent (Inequitable Trilogy Book 2) Page 57