by Meli Raine
“That is enough!” Harry’s vehemence isn’t a defense of Jane. No one in the room is stupid enough to think so. It’s exactly what he says.
He’s done being insulted.
Boiling points are dangerous.
Two pots overflowing at the same time means everyone gets burned.
The comment about Jane has me on my feet, slow and steady, hand in my pocket. I find the trigger of the gun and look to Drew and Mark, trying to read the room. Neither of them is going for their weapon. If anything, they’re relaxed. Watchful. Letting Monica play this all out.
I relent. I turn and walk to the back of the room as Lindsay leaps to her feet and screams:
“YOU ORDERED THE ATTACK!!” She looks at Monica as she does it.
And then she charges.
The slap against Monica’s face is a whip crack. The second it happens, I know I’m supposed to rush in and protect the presidential candidate’s wife.
So is Drew.
So is Mark.
We all remain in place.
This is Lindsay’s show now.
We’re nothing but meat.
Harry stops pacing and stands up against the table, off to the edge. Lindsay’s back is to him as she confronts Monica.
Unaccustomed to being struck, Monica takes the blow full on.
I expect her to hit back.
She doesn’t.
“Paul Ellison?” Lindsay wails with a gut-busting groan, a wounded animal in pain. “Some guy named Paul Ellison? And I have two half-brothers? One I’ve known all along?” Lindsay begins to weep, her breath coming in sucking hitches that make it hard for everyone else to breathe. She looks at Harry.
“My God, Daddy, is that why you kept me on the Island all those years? Because you knew she ordered the attack? Because you needed to protect me from her?” She points at Monica with an arm so shaky it looks like she’s being electrocuted.
Harry sputters, protests forming in the sounds before the words come out.
Monica steps back, her face slack, eyes calculating. Lindsay’s words clearly hurt her, the slapped-cheek mark standing out, but she doesn’t speak. Just breathes. I’m watching Jane, but then –
“Gentian!” Drew hisses. I turn, distracted just long enough.
A split second can be a lifetime.
Because the look on Drew’s face changes to pure horror as, in my peripheral vision, I see Monica pull out a pistol from her pocket.
And point it straight at Harry’s chest.
Jane
I know this is real.
It is.
But it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.
My stepmother has a gun pointed at my father’s chest.
Her hand shakes. Her aim is direct.
Marshall eases himself back, eyes wide, hands up. She ignores him.
“Monica,” Harry rasps. “You can’t.”
“I can. I will. Once it all comes out, I’m ruined. You’re ruined, but I’m destroyed. I refuse to go to jail for you, Harry, you fucker.”
“Monica!” he gasps.
“I know how it all works. You have those reports from Alice’s private investigator. Yes, I know all about it. And I know my own daughter betrayed me by uploading those photos of the reports. I had no idea that slimy little artistic weasel had me followed. The great Alice Mogrett was a sick little spoiled rich girl. Nothing more. She accused me of embezzling funds from my own parents’ art gallery, and now I know how far she really went. Having me followed! But it means you have proof I met with Corning and Landau.”
“You forgot Ellison,” Lindsay says. “And what about Tara? Mandy? Jenna?” Lindsay demands of her.
“My mother?” I gasp.
“And mine!” Drew growls, Mark Paulson staring with his jaw open, clearly thinking the same.
“Those three little twit friends of yours couldn’t chew gum and take a selfie at the same time without fucking it up,” Monica says, expressionless. “And talk to Harry about Jim and Donna, Drew. That one was all his fault.”
“What about my parents?” Mark yells, emotion overriding survival.
“Harry? You want to explain?” she says, one corner of her mouth curling up in a smile that makes me turn to liquid.
“I — what? I had nothing to do with Jim and Donna and — what the hell are you implying, Monica?” Harry whispers, his face ashen grey.
“You had to tell them, didn’t you? About Nolan approaching you to help Ig with some simple border issues.” Disappointment fills her voice. “All you had to do was use your influence as chair of Foreign Relations to give Ig what he needed. But you didn’t. Instead, you opened your big mouth. Nolan had no choice.”
“NO CHOICE?” Drew shouts, moving toward Monica, who doesn’t turn. Her finger, though, presses down on the trigger, so close, so close.
Drew halts.
“Monica,” Harry says in a grating voice, “how far does this go? How many deaths have you been responsible for? My God.”
“Not enough, Harry,” she replies. “Not enough.”
Silas, Mark, and Drew are all trying to figure out how to salvage this. She gets one shot, by my guess. One. The guys can get their guns out once that first shot is discharged.
That means someone’s taking a bullet.
Who?
I don’t have to wonder long, because in the next second, Monica pulls her finger back, tightening the trigger, moving in slow motion as Lindsay screams, “Noooooooooooo!”
I’ve gone over the moment in my mind a million times and I still don’t know how it all adds up, but the next thing I feel is Drew moving past me. Then a flash of light on dark metal.
“Daddy, no!”
Lindsay lunges into the space between Monica and Harry.
Monica’s gun discharges, Lindsay in midair as Harry drops to the ground, her body blocking him, instinct pushing her to protect him for whatever reason some section of her brain has conjured as death looms. It’s all a blur, an impressionist painting gone evil. A tiny, dark hole tears Lindsay’s dress at her ribcage, above her breast, closer to her shoulder, the red spreading across the yellow fabric.
And then Silas shoots Monica point blank, right through the space in her chest where her heart should be.
If she had one.
A second bullet takes out one of her eyes, Mark’s reaction fast and clean. Her eye is there, and then it’s gone, shattered, my own view of it turning to a grey cloud, a plume, a mushroom, as my mind can’t process what I see without turning it into visual chaos.
Screaming, all of it in hoarse male voices, makes the room spin, like we’re in a centrifuge and no one can cut the power. I am spiraling faster and faster, sound a whirling blur that becomes churned butter in the sky, everything unctuous and weightless.
I’m smothered. Can’t breathe. Flat on the ground, the scent of Silas filling my nose, my lips tasting like carpet and gunpowder.
When I finally find my sight, the room slowing down, I see her.
Monica.
Glassy eye, slack lips, smeared make-up, a red line running underneath her lapel, the blood pooling.
“LINDSAY! MEDIC!” Drew bellows as I hear Silas above me, speaking into a phone, the heat and weight of him moving off me so fast, it almost feels like I’m crushed by his absence.
I can’t breathe, even when he’s not covering me.
He’s holding the back of his head, blood pooling between his fingers, the wound reopened in the chaos.
Blood is everywhere. Lindsay. Monica. Silas.
Only Monica is dead. Dead at my feet, her blood staining my shoe. She looks old and saggy, her makeup worn off, her neck lined with loose skin, no lipstick left on those cold lips. For a woman who was always perfectly coiffed at all times, dying like this is the ultimate insult.
A crew of people rush into the room, one carrying a medical bag.
And the room goes white as I pass out into Silas’s bloody hands.
Monica lost her shameless little bet.
Chapter 23
Jane
The last meeting I attended didn’t exactly end well.
But I’m giving this one the benefit of the doubt.
It’s been two months since the mess in D.C. The committees are still investigating. Special prosecutors have been engaged. My inheritance from Alice let some money loose.
And Harry is coming out smelling like a rose.
We’re assembled around a fire pit in Mark Paulson’s backyard, all of us in a circle around glowing embers. Silas, Drew, Lindsay, Mark, Carrie, and me. Chase and Allie decided to leave for the weekend, but not until Chase and Lindsay had a chance to meet in person.
By all accounts, it was a pleasant visit.
We’re here to process what happened back in D.C., in Harry’s townhouse.
Harry and Monica’s townhouse, that is.
Over and over, Harry has tried to get us to come to him. To hold court over a debriefing designed with the singular goal of damage control.
Not a single one of us has complied.
And we intend to keep it that way.
We’re not alone back here, though it’s easy to imagine we are. Four security guys hide on the perimeter, watching.
Waiting.
Waiting, I hope, for nothing.
The great unraveling that took place after Monica tried to kill Harry and Silas shot her dead has been like watching one thin strand of yarn in a sweater get caught on a passing train. The speed, the finality, the uncontrollable and inevitable destruction have been swift.
Change never felt so cleansing.
All of the attempts on my life stopped as soon as Monica’s life ended. Mystery solved. What Silas and Drew thought was a complex network of competing actors all trying to get me for different reasons turns out to have been deceptively, depressingly simple:
It was Monica, stupid.
“Monica was introduced to Ignatio Landau by Alice Mogrett, of all people,” Mark marvels as he pokes the fire.
“No,” I remind him. “Introduced at one of Alice’s showings. The PI reports make it look like she met Corning at an event, and then he introduced her to Landau.” I don’t like the idea that Alice was a dupe. A shrewd judge of character, she never liked Monica. Not if her notes were any indication.
And they were.
Being duped hurts. It’s happened to every single person sitting here around this fire.
At least we’re all in good company.
“Monica worked with Corning to get Harry’s political career off the ground. And then Harry took off, leaving Corning in the dust – with a lot of unredeemed favors left worthless. Monica had put Harry into political debt without Harry realizing it,” Drew says.
“You really think he didn’t know?” Lindsay asks in a quiet voice.
No one says the obvious.
“The press is all over every detail. They’ve bought Marshall’s PR spin. That Monica was being used by Corning. Lured into working with him and then exploited. The whole ‘poor woman was manipulated’ angle.” Drew just shakes his head in disgust.
“Monica was anything but a weak woman who could be used by someone else,” I point out.
“Marshall is using it to Harry’s advantage. Polls show sympathy is swinging his way,” Mark says.
“There is no way they can get away with this,” Drew says, but even his tone says he’s wrong.
“You think he still has a chance of winning the presidency?” I ask.
“Weirder things have happened when it comes to elections,” Silas says.
The guys all shrug.
“I still don’t understand Paul Ellison,” Lindsay muses.
“Join the club,” Mark replies with a wry grin. “He’s definitely a chimera. A chameleon. Our biological father is the sketchiest person in this whole mess. Why Monica chose him will remain a mystery, I guess. She’s the only one who knows.”
A rustling in a bush behind us gets louder. One of the guards walks out of the shadows and into the fire’s glow. He’s bald, with wire-rimmed glasses and an earpiece, wearing a dark suit that’s a size too small.
“I’m sure she boned him because he was hot as hell and she couldn’t keep her hands off him,” the guard says.
Mark squints, then groans.
“Galt? What the hell are you doing here?”
Silas
Lindsay jumps to her feet, Drew beating her by a microsecond, inserting himself as a shield between her and the beefy guard.
Who isn’t a guard.
He’s her dad.
“Uhhhhh,” she says.
Jane whispers, “I know exactly how she feels. Nothing like meeting your biological dad for the first time. The one you didn’t know was your dad.”
I tighten my hold on her.
“I can’t stay long. Just popping in for an awkward family moment,” Galt says.
“I can feel the love,” Mark cracks, not smiling.
“I’m, uh...” Lindsay’s words choke off. Drew tenses. I know he’s feeling pain on her behalf. This is the kind we can’t take on for our women.
And it sucks.
“I’m sorry about your mother dying,” Galt says as he moves closer to Lindsay. She studies his face like she’s cramming for the exam of her life. “She was a – well, she was Monica.”
That is probably the nicest statement anyone can make about her.
“Thank you,” Lindsay says. “I’m Lindsay.”
“I know.”
“Of course you do. Did you know about me before? Before all this?”
“No.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He shoots Mark a dark look. “So don’t give me shit about her. I didn’t know. I would have told you and Chase a long time ago if I’d known, okay?”
Mark’s tongue rolls in his cheek. He says nothing.
“I don’t want to put you in more danger. If I’d known, I’d have kept an eye on you,” Galt says to his daughter.
Mark snorts.
“But I think you’re in good hands.” Galt nods at Drew.
Who nods back exactly once.
“Are you – can I see you again? Maybe we could do coffee? Have a drink?” Lindsay’s pleading makes Galt soften.
“Sure, kid. Sure. Let the dust settle on your mom, the election, all this shit, and we’ll get together.”
“You better mean that,” Mark warns him. “Don’t shine her on.”
“I’m not.”
“Can you answer some questions?” Carrie asks him, her face tipped up, the fire catching her just right. She looks like a wise witch as the moon peeks out from behind cloud cover, her hair spilling over her shoulders like a huntress.
“I can try. You ask, and if I can answer, I will.”
“Why did my mom sleep with you?” Lindsay blurts out before Carrie can take a breath.
“Because she wanted a good lay.”
“GALT!” Mark shouts.
“Okay. Fine. Truth is, I don’t know. She was my boss’s wife. One night, she showed up at the office, shitfaced. I offered to drive her home and got my hands on her keys. She said she wasn’t going home. Said Harry was leaving her for another woman. I took her to some hotel room she rented. And things went from there.”
“So it wasn’t an affair?”
“No. Once.”
“Lucky shot,” Mark snaps.
“That seems so... simple,” Lindsay says. “Too simple.”
Galt gestures to her. “Not so simple, kid. Now there’s you.”
“I’ve been here all along.”
“See? Not so simple.”
“Did you know Monica was working with Corning and El Brujo?”
“No one knew Ignatio Landau was El Brujo back then. Hell, I don’t think he was. That power consolidation came later.”
“Was it because of Corning? Corning made it easier for him to bring drugs and sex slaves into the country?” I ask.
“Yes.”
&nb
sp; I’m struck by the fact that Galt would tell the truth. Reveal so much.
Then again, everyone who can contradict him is dead.
Except for Harry.
“Gotta split,” Galt says. And he does. Boom. No niceties, no hug for Lindsay, nothing.
But that’s Galt.
Drew pulls Lindsay into his arms. I sure do like having Jane in mine.
“Sorry about our, uh, father,” Mark says to her, frowning in the direction where Galt departed.
“Would everyone stop apologizing to me for other people? I’m fine. Everything is fine!” Lindsay grouses. “Other than, you know, being shot.” Working around her injured arm, Drew keeps her close.
“Your quick shot saved someone in that room. Monica got Lindsay and was ready to go for someone else next,” Drew says to me in a voice I know well. None of us like to think we can be tricked or fooled. None of us like to think we’re invincible.
And yet experience is a brutal teacher. We’ve all been taught by her.
And she’s a hell of a hard grader.
“I got lucky. I damn near used it on Czaky earlier, back at the Margin of Error.”
“What?” Lindsay makes a face. “Romeo? He’s super nice! Is he a spy? Like Galt?”
“No,” Drew assures her. “Just hard to read.”
“Like Galt,” Mark mutters.
“It’s complicated,” I explain, as if this crowd will accept that for an answer.
“You think you’re complicated?” Lindsay points to herself. “Queen of Complicated here. Right here.”
“If I’d shot Romeo, I wouldn’t have had a round for Monica.” I turn to Lindsay. “I’m sorry I killed your mother.” This is probably the twentieth time I’ve said that.
And I’ve meant it more with every breath.
“Don’t be. She was – well, you did the right thing.” Lindsay’s already had one operation on her shoulder. She has a long road ahead of her.
Carrie leans forward in sympathy and touches Lindsay’s hand. “Arm casts and slings are the worst.”
Lindsay’s brow tightens in a puzzled look. “You’ve been shot in the arm?”
“We’ll talk later.” Carrie’s eyes meet Mark’s. I get the sense there are a lot of stories there.