Red, White, and Blue

by Laura Hayden

  He looked up, fire in his eyes. “No, that’s what I was supposed to think. But when I woke up, I found this on the ground.” He reached into the pocket of his leather coat and pulled out a padlock.

  Its hasp had been neatly sawed in two.

  “IT HAD TO BE SOMEONE WORKING for Emily. She must know everything,” Nick said in a leaden voice. “Everything we’ve been doing to uncover the truth.”

  “How could she?” Kate whispered.

  “How else? She’s the president. She’s got resources at her command that no one else in the world has.”

  “But I’m her chief of staff. Any of her actions go through me first.”

  “That’s what she’s always wanted you to think. But we know it’s not true. You knew nothing about her toll road debacle. Or when she sicced Maia on you to steal the info you had on Talbot.”

  Or how she used my investigators to find Maia’s cell phone.

  A look of bitterness crept across his face. “I bet you didn’t even know much about her relationship with Jack Marsh.”

  Kate had already made herself search back through the many years of conversations she’d held with Emily—all the silly stories, gripe sessions, deep secrets, and such. But her friend had barely ever mentioned Jack. “She never told me much about him, so I thought they might have gotten together as kids and then something split them up.”

  “Not only as kids. But as adults—” his face darkened perceptibly—“while she and I were married. We’d had one of our worst fights, and that’s when she told me exactly why she’d married me—strictly to get back at Jack Marsh.”

  Kate gaped at him, unable to say anything.

  Nick spat out the words with an air of pent-up frustration that had evidently been building for years.

  “Jack was the man she really wanted, but he refused to move back to the U.S. for her. But you know Emily—never let love get in the way of ambition. After all, she’d have no hope of becoming president if her prospective husband refused to live in the good ol’ US of A. It’s simply not patriotic. Evidently I was the runner-up and won her hand by default.”

  Kate began to see the bigger picture that she’d tried hard to ignore for the past three months. “And then you ran away.”

  He nodded. “I certainly did. I was trying to save my own life. I know Emily didn’t pour the booze down my throat. I take responsibility for that. But she didn’t like that I left her. I was just supposed to shut up and take whatever she dished out.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out some soggy sheets of paper. “This is what Donnie sent me that I was printing out last night. It’s further proof that she holds a grudge longer than anyone in the world.” He straightened the first sheet against his knee and then placed it on the coffee table.

  It was the application for one of the three bogus foundations, now listing Nicholas Beaudry as the investment manager.

  “She’s going for the jugular. But I’m not surprised. I’ve always been her favorite whipping boy. But this one . . .” His voice ground to a halt and he had to cough to speak again. “I’m sorry, Kate. I never saw this one coming.” He handed her a second sheet.

  She examined the sheet, trying to make out the faded print. It was a copy of the application for the D-JED foundation, but now, instead of Dozier’s name and address, someone had typed in her father’s name and address.

  Shock robbed her of breath. Finally she stuttered, “Why D-Dad?”

  “I guess because Emily believes the best defense is a good offense. If you try to blow the whistle on her now, she’ll pull this out of her sleeve and—”

  The blood rushing in her ears blotted out everything else Nick said. How could Emily do something like this . . . to Kate’s own father? Even Emily had called him one of the finest men she’d ever known. Kate had always marveled over the consideration, respect, and—dare she say it—love that Emily had always showed for the Rosen family.

  Had it all been a lie?

  Nick reached over and touched Kate’s hand, evidently reading her turmoil easily. “Emily loves when it’s convenient to love. The trouble is you’ve never fully stood in her way before. But if you don’t step aside on your own volition, she’s ready with the type of ammunition that will either move you or remove you.”

  There was nothing Kate could say that wouldn’t make her seem naive or foolish.

  Nick continued, trying to smile but failing. “If it’s any consolation, I doubt she expects to ever make this application public. It’s there for one reason and one reason only—to stop us from exposing her. When push comes to shove, she’s apt to use a shovel on me, but maybe she’d rather nudge you out of the way instead.”

  Kate stabbed at the paper with her finger, tearing it slightly. “No one in their right mind would believe my father is the sort of man who needs to hide assets in an offshore account.” She stuttered to a halt. “I don’t mean to imply that they would believe you’d do something like this.”

  “No offense taken. I’m more concerned about your father than myself. I’ve got experience surviving Emily’s attacks.” He touched his bandage. “Recently, even.”

  “But why Dad? He’s not some high muckety-muck in the government who can peddle influence. He worked his entire life in a fiberglass plant, and it took almost thirty years for him to rise to plant manager. It’s ludicrous to think he might have this sort of money he needed to squirrel away. That fact alone should make it plain to anyone with half a brain that this piece of so-called evidence is obviously faked.”

  “True again, but it doesn’t really matter in the long run. If you try to take Emily down . . .”

  Kate supplied the unfathomable, unthinkable answer. “She’ll take my father down with her.”

  Nick nodded. “She’s counting on that being her ace in the hole. That had to be the reason she didn’t have Jack change the foundation into your name. You might have been willing to sacrifice yourself to support your principles. But she’s sure you won’t knowingly destroy your own father.”

  Kate stared blankly at the paper; then her thoughts centered on her parents. They’d lived a moderate lifestyle based on hard work, clean living, and a strong relationship with God. They’d brought up both Kate and her brother with the same ideals. They’d never really suffered for the lack of money, living comfortably within their means. Her father didn’t deserve to have his good name and hard-earned reputation smeared falsely just to protect someone else’s greed.

  Kate wrapped her arms around herself to combat the sudden chill, as if something had encased her heart in ice. How many years had she devoted to Emily’s political ambitions and advancement? How many times had they sat back and made grand plans to make the world better, stronger, cleaner, greater? How many joys and triumphs had they shared? How many moments of anguish and disappointment?

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Emily was supposed to do great things as president. Bring honor and glory, peace and prosperity.

  They were going to do great things. Together.

  When did you change, Emily? And how did I fail to see it?

  Kate stood, unable to sit still any longer. She paced around the living room, a hundred thoughts swirling through her mind at one time. However, one thought kept surfacing to the top.

  “I need to call Wes Kingsbury.”

  Nick, who had been holding his head, looked up. “Why him?”

  “I . . . I’ve used him as my sounding board for a long time. I trust his instincts. Even better, he’s a man of real faith. He knows Emily better than anybody else I know, and because of that, I’ve told him a lot about the problems we had with the campaign.”

  “He knows about Talbot?”

  “Yes, and about Emily and the toll road too.”

  “And you’re going to tell him about all this?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  Nick stroked his chin in contemplation, his brow furrowed. “It’s not a matter of not trusting him. But if you tell him everything, you might be putt
ing him in a compromising position.”

  “He’s the last person in the world that Emily would deliberately . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say hurt, but her mind whispered that it was a possibility, however remote.

  Nick reached over and touched her hand. “Couldn’t we say that about you? Aren’t you the last person in the world we thought Emily might try to hurt?”

  He picked up the lock he’d placed on the coffee table and ran his finger over the jagged edges of metal. “You realize I wasn’t conveniently slammed in the head by debris from the wind, don’t you? I’m pretty sure a person was on the other end of the two-by-four that hit me. A person following Emily’s instructions.”

  Kate squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remove the image that his description had placed in her head. As much as she would like Wes’s counsel on this, the last thing she wanted to do was bring him onto Emily’s active radar screen.

  “Okay, you’re right. I can’t bring Wes into this. But I can’t just sit here and pretend that nothing has happened.”

  “You could,” he said softly.

  “No. No, I can’t. It wouldn’t be—”

  Her cell phone rang, slicing the conversation as effectively as a knife. She picked it up and looked at the caller ID.

  “Who is it?”

  She stared blankly at the readout, wondering if this was nothing less than the hand of God reaching out and lighting the bush afire in front of her very eyes.

  “It’s Wes.”

  AFTER SHOOTING Nick an apologetic smile, Kate answered the phone, wishing her hands weren’t shaking quite so much.

  “Kate, are you okay?”

  “Yes, no damage here. What about you and your family?”

  Wes released a heavy breath. “We made it through fairly unscathed, but we’re one of the few lucky ones. Our area got hit. Bad.” Tension filled his voice. “Not just our area but lots of neighborhoods, towns. From the reports I’ve received, the tornadoes ran right up between the Parkway and I-85. There’s massive destruction from the Beltway to Baltimore.” He paused. “Kate . . . we need your help.”

  “Anything, you know that. Just tell me what I can do to help you.”

  “It’s not just for us, but for everyone else who has been affected. We’ve already set up several churches as shelters, but we’re going to need a lot more in the way of disaster relief because there are so many different communities that have been hit. Two of the major area hospitals have taken heavy damage, so they can take only the most critically injured patients.” He lowered his voice. “I know I’m circumventing a system that will eventually start to function, but we need help now, Kate. And if I have a direct pipeline into the White House . . .”

  “You need to use it,” she said, finishing his statement. “I understand completely. I’ll do everything I can, and I’ll start right now by calling Emily. And then I’ll head your direction immediately. If I’m on-site, I can relay enough information to persuade her to declare it a disaster area and cut out any bureaucratic delays.”

  “We’re working out of the church on Grant Avenue. We went there once together, remember? To talk to the minister about the restaurant donation program? It’ll be easy to find. It was spared when everything around it was literally flattened.”

  She listened intently as he gave her directions. “I’ll get there as soon as possible, Wes. And I’ll get the cavalry there, one way or the other.”

  As soon as she hung up, Kate turned to answer the questions she knew Nick must have but, instead, saw him pick up his coat.

  He struggled to push his arm through the sleeve. “Where are we headed to?”

  She motioned for him to sit down. “You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”

  He wore a look of strained but unwavering determination. “I repeat. Where are we headed to?”

  Somehow she knew he wouldn’t back down, and she secretly appreciated his sense of resolve. “Wes says that the tornadoes did massive damage up in his area.” A sudden flash of revelation made her wrap her arms around herself. It so easily could have been here. . . .

  She pushed past the overwhelming thought and continued. “There’s nothing much we can do about our own problems right now. So maybe changing gears and thinking about someone else is the better thing to do.”

  He nodded. “I’m game. I’d like to forget . . . a lot of things—if only for a little while.”

  She motioned for Nick to follow her into the kitchen, where she dug out more emergency supplies—a couple of flashlights, extra batteries, and the box of the latex gloves she’d gotten for her last painting project. “If I can get Emily to declare it a disaster area, we can probably get federal aid into the area faster than the individual communities can.”

  He took the bag of supplies from her. “Nice to know we learned something from Katrina. I’d never seen a bigger boondoggle down there. It was . . . unbelievable.”

  She reached into the hall closet and pulled out a hooded jacket, and he helped her put it on. “You were in Katrina?”

  “I didn’t ride it out there but returned just as soon as I could afterward to help the family.” His face darkened. “I hope to never see anything like that again.”

  “This may be bad too.”

  “Couldn’t be any worse.” He shuddered as if the memory was too much to handle. “Nothing could have been worse than what I saw down in N’Orleans.”

  “Maybe we’ll have a chance to do better this time,” she said, fishing her keys from her purse.

  “Maybe . . .”

  They ended up taking Nick’s truck rather than Kate’s car. Because the truck rode higher than a sedan, they could negotiate flooded streets without stalling and pick their way along debris-strewn roads with more clearance.

  Once they reached the relative safety of the interstate, Kate called the president’s private line.

  Emily answered the phone herself. “Kate, thank God! I’ve been trying to get you. Are you okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Your mom and dad?”

  “They’re fine too. But I talked to Wes and he says his area is a complete disaster.”

  “We have reports coming in. Looks like from here to Baltimore caught the worst of it. Virginia dodged most of the bullets, but Maryland didn’t.”

  “That’s what Wes said. I don’t have to see the area to realize we need to declare the area a disaster and get federal help in here as soon as possible.”

  “I’ve already spoken to FEMA and Homeland. They have teams headed that way. Once I get their reports—”

  “You know bureaucratic red tape. I’m headed there myself. Let me take a look and call you back with the recommendation. We can get a jump on things—get help to them faster. You trust my assessment, don’t you?”

  To Emily’s credit, she didn’t hesitate at all. “Do you even have to ask? Of course. You give the word and I’ll move every bit of aid we have into the area. What’s the good of being president if you can’t jump a turnstile or two in order to help folks?”

  It was the sort of sentiment she’d expect to hear from the old Emily and hadn’t heard much from the new one. It renewed her faith that there might still be a shred of her old friend buried within and all Kate had to do was fan that flicker back into a flame to heat up a colder heart.

  “Thanks, M.” Kate closed her phone. “She’ll make the recommendation on my report.”

  Nick’s expression didn’t change as he steered around a large tree branch that blocked the right lane. “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “What? Being persuasive?”

  “No. That’s the easy part. I’m talking about it not being easy to give up the right-hand seat—sitting next to Emily as she steers America.” His face softened. “I realize the power has to be . . . intoxicating sometimes.”

  She thought about Emily’s quick and seemingly heartfelt promise to act on the strength of Kate’s assessment. “Who says I’m giving it up?”

  “I just thought . . .�
� He clamped his mouth shut.

  “I know.” She sighed. “After everything she’s done. But that call I just made? That’s an example of what can be done for all the right reasons. If I stay, I’ll still be in a position to influence her into doing the right things.”

  “Operative word: if. But think about it. Can you watch her all the time? make sure she’s always doing the right thing? stop her when she’s veering from the path?”

  They were questions she had asked and would continue to ask herself. “That’s the hard part,” Kate admitted. “And I don’t know those answers.” She paused, mulling over his original question. “Not yet, at least. But as to the power being intoxicating? It can be sometimes.”

  “The trouble with intoxicating is that it can so easily turn to addiction. I know that all too well.” After a moment, he added, “I’ve always admired you for your ability to resist the allure of power. Hang on,” he said without pause.

  She braced herself as he pulled onto the shoulder of the interstate to avoid a twisted piece of sheet metal stretching across all lanes. “Did I? Resist, that is?”

  “As far as I know.” He quirked a small smile, not turning his gaze from the challenges of driving.

  “From my experience, I’ve seen how power can blind you into presuming you know best. So what about this situation? Aren’t I doing the same by attempting to go over the heads of several highly trained teams of government investigators who do disaster assessment for a living? That I think I’m just as capable—no, more capable—than they are to make the call? That’s pretty presumptuous and power mad of me, don’t you think?”

  He tilted his head as if conceding there was a sense of accuracy in her assessment. “True.”

  She waited for him to explain why her planned actions were actually warranted. He said nothing.