by Gayle Wilson
He was vaguely aware of the tug of the needle rejoining the edges of the cut. A piece of metal, blown from the limousine by the force of the bomb, had gouged a hole in his shoulder. Jared hadn’t even felt it. He hadn’t been aware that he was bleeding until one of the uniforms mentioned it.
He had been too concerned about Robin to worry about his injuries. Then, when she’d assured him she was all right, and his eyes couldn’t find any reason not to believe her, he had run back toward the burning car to try to get the driver out.
During those few seconds Jared had lain protectively over Robin, Gus had somehow managed to open the door. From the moment Jared had seen the driver’s weaving, stumbling figure, fire streaming from his back, he had begun taking his jacket off.
When he’d reached Gus, after what seemed like an eternity, he had thrown his coat over the driver and pushed him to the ground, rolling him over in an effort to put out the flames. Jared had ended up beating out the last of them with his bare hands.
The first of the screaming sirens had sounded about then, discordantly cutting through the cold air. And then everything seemed to happen at once. Suddenly they were surrounded by fire trucks and paramedics and cops. Jared didn’t find out until later that Robin had called for help on her cell phone. “Ain’t technology grand?” McCord had said only a few minutes before. Sometimes, Jared thought, it really was.
“I think that’ll do it,” the doctor said, as he taped the square of gauze his assistant handed him over the cut. “The nurse will tell you what to do to take care of this and the burns, but other than some minor discomfort—”
“What about the woman who came in with me?” Jared asked.
The doctor glanced at the nurse, who shrugged her shoulders.
“Tall, reddish-blond hair,” Jared said. “Beautiful. She was wearing a navy coat.”
The doctor’s lips quirked, almost breaking into a fullfledged grin. “I recognize the description,” he said. “She’s waiting outside. Or she was a few minutes ago.”
“Did somebody check her out?” Jared asked.
“Were we supposed to? She didn’t say anything about being hurt. She looked a little white-lipped, but—”
“She’s pregnant.”
The doctor’s eyes lost their amusement, but they still didn’t seem to share the anxiety Jared was feeling. “How far along?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“Almost four months.”
The mobile lips pursed this time. The doctor was obviously thinking about the ramifications of that. “Then I’m betting everything’s fine,” he said. “We might keep her for observation overnight, but chances are we won’t even need to do that. She get hit by any of the stuff that was flying around?”
“She got hit by me,” Jared said. “I knocked her down when the bomb went off. Maybe that could have...” He hesitated, having no idea how to express what he was afraid of. “Hell, I don’t know what it could have done,” he said. “Jarred the baby or something. I just think somebody ought to check her out.”
“I’ll check on her,” the doctor said reassuringly. Jared was almost relieved by the casualness of the promise. “You can go ahead and put your shirt back on. You have a coat?”
“I did at one time,” Jared said. Again the smell of burning flesh was in his nostrils, only memory now. “It got...damaged. I don’t think they bothered to bring it in.”
“There’s probably something in the lost and found. Something that will give you some protection against this cold, at least, although I can’t vouch for the style.”
“I’ll be okay. You said you’d check on Robin.”
“Your baby?” the doctor asked.
“Yeah,” Jared acknowledged. This was the first person he’d told.
“Then I guess you have a right to be concerned,” the doctor said, touching his shoulder reassuringly. “I’ll be back. And don’t worry. There’s not much of anything external that can cause a problem at this stage. I don’t think anything you’ve told me about is cause for much concern.”
Easy for you to say, Jared thought, remembering the fire, soaring against the night sky. Too damn easy to say.
THEY HAD GIVEN HIM some pain pills, a packet of sterile dressings and a tube of salve for the burn on his hand. Which hurt like hell, he acknowledged. And whatever they had used to deaden his shoulder was beginning to wear off. He was sitting in the back seat of a cab, his upper body hunched forward so his shoulder wouldn’t rub against the seat.
When he realized what he was doing, he eased back gradually, deciding the pain was bearable. He glanced at Robin and found she was watching him, her eyes wide and dark in a face that was still about three shades too pale.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
She looked shell-shocked. A little like a rookie who had just witnessed his first post-blast scene complete with body parts. And Jared supposed that analogy was a little too apt.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“You call your uncle?”
She nodded.
“How about whoever you were supposed to be meeting?”
She looked bewildered. “Meeting?”
“You got into the limo tonight to go somewhere.”
“Whitt said Uncle Jim had an errand he wanted me to run and that he’d tell me when I got to the car. Obviously, just part of his ploy to get us together.” Her eyes moved briefly to the back of the cabbie’s head before coming back to Jared. “You think that bomb was meant for Uncle Jim?”
It would be hard to think anything else, Jared decided. That was, after all, the senator’s limousine scattered over a couple of New York City blocks. According to McCord himself, he should have still been in it. “It’ll shock the staff that I’m gonna be early,” McCord had said. But he had been. Almost ten minutes early. And for a man who had confessed he was habitually late...
“It looks that way,” Jared said noncommittally.
Robin said nothing for a moment, and he could see the depth of the breath she took before she spoke again. “I thought that this was all over,” she said softly.
“The senator’s had some other...problems like this?” Jared asked cautiously.
“Someone trying to convince him not to run. At least...” She hesitated, a small crease appearing between her eyebrows.
“I’d say they found themselves a hell of an effective argument tonight,” Jared said bitterly.
“The man who was doing that—back in Texas—is dead,” Robin clarified. “So...I don’t know who this could be.”
Jared had a pretty good idea, remembering the message McCord had shown him. “Maybe somebody else doesn’t want him to run.”
He had promised McCord he wouldn’t tell Robin about the latest threat. Maybe, after what had happened tonight, he wasn’t bound by that promise, but judging from her face, she didn’t need any more upsetting news right now.
“What they don’t understand is that threats and intimidation just make him more determined,” Robin said. “More resolved not to let them run him off. He believes there are things he can do that no one else can. I know that sounds...egotistical, I guess. Except I believe it, too. He’s a good man. A really good man. And then for something like this...”
“Tell me about what happened before,” Jared said.
“Someone attacked him.” The words stopped again, and Robin took another breath before she went on. “It was the brother of the man Uncle Jim had to shoot in Vietnam. He couldn’t stand the thought that the person who had killed his brother might really end up being president. At first, I think he just threatened to tell the whole story if Uncle Jim didn’t drop out. He thought the highly respected Senator McCord would do anything to prevent that from happening, but I think Uncle Jim knew all along he would have to tell the truth about Vietnam. There’s nothing in a candidate’s past that won’t eventually come to light now.”
“So your uncle refused to quit.”
“And when that didn’t work, Edwards tried to make sure he co
uldn’t run.”
“He tried to kill him?” Jared asked.
Robin nodded. “But Jake Edwards is dead,” she said, her eyes on Jared’s, wanting that to make a difference. “And Uncle Jim told the truth about shooting Edwards’ brother, so he thought that was all over. We thought it was all behind us.”
“Maybe this is somebody else. Maybe it’s about something not related to what happened in Vietnam.”
Robin nodded. “You saw them that morning. And tonight. I think some of them would be capable of anything. Even this.”
“The millennium crowd?” Jared clarified, having finally figured out what she was talking about. In his opinion that was a real stretch—getting those people from protest to attempted murder. Maybe it was easier for Robin to make that transition, considering what had happened in front of the hotel that morning.
“I think some of them truly are crazy,” Robin said softly. “Absolutely gone off the deep end. That morning of the riot, one of them wouldn’t let me get out of the crowd. I was heading back to lobby doors when he grabbed my arm and tried to pull me back into the middle of everything that was going on.”
“You never told me that.”
“I’d almost forgotten it. He kept screaming something about Uncle Jim wanting to get us involved in another war. About him trying to bring on Armageddon. It was... insane.”
“There are a lot of crazy people out there,” Jared agreed. “And one of them put a bomb in your uncle’s car tonight.”
“What they don’t realize is that things like this won’t work. He’ll take what precautions he can, because he isn’t stupid. But he won’t quit,” she said with conviction. “He won’t back down from a fight. He never has. He doesn’t know how.”
McCord had asked Jared if he had a death wish, and he had denied it. Maybe the senator needed to think about that question himself. Had his desire to be president become an obsession, so much of one that nothing anyone could say or do would stop him?
“But I don’t think they’ll ever give up, either,” Robin said.
They. The protesters, who had crowded around the car tonight while it was stopped at the curb in front of the hotel. Was it possible, Jared wondered, that someone in that mob had reached under the car and, using a magnet, attached that bomb?
Entirely possible, he decided, replaying the scene in his head. His attention had been on Robin. On McCord. Of course, everybody’s attention would have been on the senator. On his arrival. On whatever he might say for public consumption.
There would have been plenty of opportunity for someone to plant that bomb. Plenty of distractions. One of the protesters could have been crowding up next to the limo for that very purpose. Not to protest, but to destroy.
“Then...McCord couldn’t have been the target,” Jared said, the realization sudden. “Not if one of the protesters planted the bomb. They had just seen him climb out of the car. So why would they plant a bomb designed to go off ten minutes later?”
“Maybe they thought he was going to get back in again. Maybe...” She hesitated, trying to think. “I was standing just inside the hotel doors. Visible from the street. Maybe they thought he was just going to pick me up.”
She waited for Jared to comment on the scenario she’d outlined. It was possible. The protesters wouldn’t have access to the senator’s schedule, but they seemed to know Robin was his niece. Or at least they knew she was his aide. With her standing out in front of the hotel, he supposed they might think she was waiting to be picked up and taken somewhere.
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” she prodded when he remained silent.
He could hear the anxiety in her voice. And he hated it. Hated what this was doing to her.
“It’s possible,” he admitted reluctantly. “At this point, I guess anything’s possible. We’ll have to wait for the lab to tell us what they find.”
“What they find? In the wreckage?”
“They’ll examine every piece of it,” Jared promised. “Especially the fragments of the bomb. In a few days we’ll know everything there is to know about that bomb.” This was one place he could pull some strings.
“Enough to know who made it?”
She sounded skeptical. And maybe the lab results wouldn’t be that conclusive, but they would tell them a lot. At least they would answer some of the questions he had raised tonight.
“We’ll know that eventually,” he assured her.
He had seen labs work miracles before, providing information that allowed the police or the FBI to make a quick arrest. However, even if he were right about the possibility of the bomb having been stuck to the underside of the limo’s frame during the time they were parked in front of the hotel, that would narrow the suspects to a couple of hundred protesters.
He remembered telling Robin to let him know when her nutcases began blowing people up. At the time, it had been sarcasm. Now it seemed a distinct possibility.
And they were headed right back into the middle of that circus, he realized. Right back to the hotel where the demonstrators had set up camp. Back to where the reporters would be waiting with a thousand questions for which they’d expect Robin, as McCord’s spokesperson, to provide answers.
Suddenly Jared leaned forward and spoke to the cabbie. “I think we’ve just had a change in plans.”
Chapter Nine
“I know you don’t want to be here, but...I couldn’t think of anywhere else,” Jared continued when she didn’t bother to deny his first contention. “None of those people know me. Or where I live. You can stay in touch with your uncle by phone without having to run that gauntlet in front of the hotel.”
Robin nodded, her eyes circling the living room of his apartment, savoring its familiarity. “Actually,” she said, as she put her purse down on the table by the couch, “I think this is exactly where I want to be right now.”
She was remembering the last time. Remembering it almost against her will. Even so, what she had told Jared was the truth. She did want to be here. She wanted to be with him. He made her feel safe, removed, at least temporarily, from the madness that had dogged the campaign the last few weeks.
“I’d better call him,” she said. “I told him we were heading back to the hotel. He’ll worry if we don’t show up.”
“The phone’s on the table,” Jared said. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Try the hospital while you’re at it. See if there’s any word about the driver.”
Robin nodded, but after Jared left the room, she didn’t pick up the phone. She dreaded having to talk to her uncle. Dreaded having to deal with his concern. And his guilt.
She thought about phoning the hospital first, but it would be better for him to make that call. James Marshall McCord would be given more information than they would give her. He might already have received an update on Gus. Or have gotten some preliminary information from the police about the bomb. In any event, this was a call she had to make, and the sooner she got it over with, the better.
As she punched in the number of her uncle’s hotel room, she acknowledged that she had been thinking that a lot lately. Get it over with. That was exactly the way she had felt when she’d stormed out of the limo tonight. Frustrated that Jared wouldn’t commit to some option that would allow them to be together. Tired of being told she was the one who was childish and selfish because she couldn’t stand to be with him when—if, she amended, trying to be fair—something happened to him.
She listened to the phone in her uncle’s hotel suite ring for the fourth or fifth time. She had already taken the receiver away from her ear, preparing to hang up and try again later, when someone finally picked up. The “hello” was distant enough that she couldn’t identify the speaker, but she knew it wasn’t Uncle Jim. There was no accent. At least not his.
“Whitt?” she asked, trying to think who else might be answering her uncle’s phone this late at night.
“Paul Farley,” the voice on the other end said.
“It’s Robin. Is Uncle Jim
there?”
“He and Whitt are working on a press release. We decided we needed to get something in the morning editions.”
Robin was surprised the senator’s PR machine would be functioning so efficiently in the middle of tonight’s tragedy. It seemed to her this was not the time to be worrying about the wording of press releases. Not for a few more hours at least.
She and Jared had almost been killed, and when they’d left the hospital, Gus’s life had been hanging by a thread. Robin knew how much her uncle liked Gus. McCord had always requested that Gus be his driver whenever he was in New York. Yet the McCord camp seemed to be more concerned with keeping the press informed than in dealing with those two near tragedies.
“A release saying what?” Robin asked, trying to control the probably unreasonable spark of anger Paul’s words had created.
“Just the facts as we have them now,” he said.
“Exactly what are those facts? I’d really like to know. Especially since I was involved.”
There was a long silence. When Paul broke it, his tone was no longer quite so detached. “Are you all right?”
“Other than almost getting blown to kingdom come, you mean?”
“You sound...stressed.”
“I think you could safely say that.”
“Let me get your uncle for you.”
“Never mind,” she said abruptly. “I’d hate to interrupt such important stuff. Just tell him...” She hesitated, trying to think what her uncle needed to know. “Tell him I’m safe. I’m spending the night with a friend. Tell him...” She paused again. “Tell him I’ll call him in the morning.”
The part about spending the night with a friend had probably sounded cryptic, but it wasn’t any of Paul’s or Whitt’s or Katie’s business where she spent the night. She had no desire to spell out for any of them that she was with Jared, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on why she felt so strongly about that.