The tune-challenged choir wrapped up their song and demanded, “Make a wish!”
A wish? Abrianna’s mind went blank. Not because she didn’t need anything. She did. She needed everything. But she wasn’t on speaking terms with everyone’s favorite make-believe friend in the sky. At the moment, they had the perfect understanding that he didn’t like her and she certainly wasn’t too thrilled with him.
“C’mon, girl. We ain’t got all night,” shouted Tivonte, still in full Beyoncé drag—all three hundred and fifty pounds of him. “We came to party and bullshit, bullshit and party!”
The crowd co-signed with a cheer. Abrianna caught Shawn staring. Crease lines were stacked on his forehead.
Fuck it. Smiling, she took a deep breath and blew out the candles.
“YEA!”
An obscene amount of confetti was tossed, party horns were blown, and someone cranked up the music.
Abrianna knew that her cranky-ass landlord, Mr. Gordon, was probably already on the phone with the cops. But after another line of coke hit her system and silenced the buzzing, she really didn’t give a fuck.
Moses and Abrianna had only been living up in that piece for four months, and were already on a first-name basis with the beat cops. They were usually up in there three times a week. The first time, their asses kicked the door open and broke it off the hinges. Of course, by that time, Moses and Abrianna had finished whatever the fuck it was they had been arguing about and had been in the middle of fucking each other’s brains out.
Those days were over. She and Moses had broken up two weeks ago, but he was taking his sweet time getting all his shit out of the apartment.
Officers James Miller and Bubba (yes, that’s the asshole’s real name) Bolton had harassed the shit out of them and refused to let her put any damn clothes on while they interrogated them. But most cops were usually dicks and you just learned to deal.
Abrianna didn’t remember how long the party went on for or when the last muthafuckas took their asses home. But she believed Officers Miller and Bolton had paid at least three visits during the night. The last time, a couple of her dick-starved girlfriends had hooked the cops up in the stairwell in order to persuade them to take back their threats of arresting everyone.
There were remnants of a memory of Shawn and Tivonte putting her to bed, but she couldn’t swear by it. It might have been shortly after they’d held her hair back while she’d thrown up in the bathroom—or was that a memory from another party? It was hard being unable to trust one’s memory sometimes. The things Abrianna wanted to forget took root and the things she needed to remember, she forgot.
But she did recall Shawn stroking her hair and whispering something about her seeking help again. Something told her that an intervention was likely in her future.
“You’re my best friend, and I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you,” Abrianna vaguely recalled Shawn saying.
“I’ll get help,” she said.
“You promise?”
“Promise.” She really did hate lying to him, but what was wrong with her likely had no cure.
7
Just do it. Jump.
Shalisa Young stood on top of the St. Elizabeths Hospital building, in the dead of night, while the rain plastered her thin gown to her body. Numb, she felt neither the rain’s growing velocity nor the icy wind. All she cared about was ending it.
The needles.
The buzzing voices.
The pain.
Life.
The moon glimmered off the Potomac, transforming it into black glass. It was beautiful. The view of the city was also beautiful. Maybe she’d miss it.
“Ms. Young,” a nurse screamed from behind her. “You don’t want to do this!”
Shalisa let the words wash over her. The woman didn’t know what the hell Shalisa wanted. They just wanted to keep pumping her with drugs. Drugs that made it difficult for her to think.
“Shalisa, sweetheart. Talk to me. You don’t want to do this. Please.” The nurse crept forward. She wasn’t alone. Shalisa heard the soft shoes of the orderlies steadily approaching. No doubt they thought that they could snatch her back from the edge before she leapt.
Like the last time.
But last time she’d been weak. A small part of her had still believed that there had been a mistake, believed that she hadn’t done what everyone said she had. She hoped—prayed—for the day when her mother would walk into her bedroom and say that it had been a horrible nightmare.
Shalisa now understood that day was never going to come. She’d killed her mother.
Tears splashed her face and mingled with the rain. She hadn’t meant to do it. She had been angry with people constantly hounding her about when she was going to get better. The doctors. The pills. The disappointment.
No one understood why she couldn’t get better like Tomi Lehane. She’d breezed through college and now worked at the Washington Post. How come she was able to put everything behind her? How was it that she was happy and successful?
“Shalisa, please,” the nurse pleaded. “Back away, and let’s go inside!”
My mother. My sweet mother. The one who’d turned the city upside down looking for her when Craig Avery kidnapped her. The one who’d held prayer vigils and tacked posters in every neighborhood. Shalisa couldn’t understand how she could’ve done such a thing. She’d just wanted her mother to leave her alone for a little while.
She hadn’t wanted to hurt her.
She hadn’t wanted to kill her.
But somehow she had—just by thinking about it one night.
The orderlies closed in.
Shalisa tugged in a deep breath and stepped off the ledge.
8
Capitol Hill
“We’re going to be late, Jayson,” Tomi Lehane complained to her photographer, as they charged up the stone steps leading into the Longworth House Office Building, south of the Capitol. The word she’d left out was again. At this point in her life, she’d conceded her mother’s assessment that running late was programmed in her DNA—on her father’s side of the family, of course. Over the granite base, past the ionic columns, the reporter and cameraman entered through the first portico and rushed to security check. Once there, the guards moved like molasses and were indifferent to all the obvious signs of her and Jayson’s impatience.
When it was Tomi’s turn to step up, she flashed Roosevelt her brightest smile and fumbled around for her press badge. “Shit. I know I have it. Just a sec.” Trembling, she checked her jacket pockets a second and then a third time. “I know I grabbed it this morning,” she lied. The truth was that she didn’t remember a damn thing after realizing her alarm clock hadn’t gone off that morning—other than tripping over Rocky again since he liked to park his large Doberman butt where she rounded the corner of her bed. After so many years, one would think that she’d remember that he slept right there. But . . . noooo. In the mornings, her brain struggled through a fog so thick, it was a wonder she could get out of bed at all.
“Where the hell is it?” Her panic crept up when Roosevelt reached out and lifted the press badge draped around her neck.
“Looking for this?”
Tomi imploded with relief, but embarrassment colored her face. “If my head wasn’t attached . . .”
Roosevelt, or Rosie, as he was affectionately called, smiled and shook his head before waving a metal wand around her.
Jayson breezed through the checkpoint with his camera in tow, because he always had his shit together. They took off to find the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Today, Secret Service Director Donald Davidson was in the congressional hot seat for the latest scandal involving his agents during a presidential trip to Brazil. It wasn’t the first time that the agency had been embroiled in a scandal, but it had been thought that the agency had long since cleaned up its act. Instead, it appeared that they’d simply got better at hiding their shenanigans—sort of. And if that wasn’t enou
gh, the intermittent security breaches at the White House and reports of drunken off-duty agents had many in the country wondering what the hell was going on with the agency.
The scandals were bad enough on their own, but the extra spice in today’s hearing centered on the committee chairman, and the now likely speaker-in-waiting Kenneth Reynolds. Likely, because the House still had to hold a vote, but the buzz on the Hill was that Reynolds was the only one who could get the 218 votes needed for the leadership role. Everyone in the conservative wing of his party liked and trusted Reynolds—that, and no one else really wanted the job. The party was completely comfortable being the loyal opposition party to Democratic President Daniel Walker, but no one was actually interested in governing or being held accountable for anything.
While conservatives lavished their praises on Reynolds, they paid little attention to the fact that the man actually had very few accomplishments. And “very few” meant literally three. Three post offices renamed in his district, to be exact. Then again, maybe they did pay attention, but figured that it was par for the course for a party that no longer believed in small government, but in no government at all.
“Here we go,” Jayson said, pushing open the door to room 1100. The place was jam-packed with reporters, bloggers, and baby-faced interns.
Tomi wasn’t at all surprised to find that it was a packed house, but she was disappointed that the opening statements had already started. Her watch read 9:35 AM. A hearing that started on time was as rare as a real federal budget balancing.
Jayson crept to the front of the room and crawled around on the floor with the other photographers, elbowing to get tight shots of the Secret Service director and Chairman Reynolds.
Miracle of all miracles, Tomi found a seat, three rows behind the director.
One look at Reynolds’s stern, almost marble-like face and it was clear that he knew that he was the big draw and was ready to become second in the line of presidential succession—not bad for a man of forty-two.
“Lucky bastard.” There was no other way to explain it. As the Republican Party ate its own, the old guard of establishment politicians had disappeared and a new crop of uncompromising SOBs had emerged. Their leader was days away from becoming the third most powerful man in the country. Tomi wanted to know how a man that close to so much power had managed to survive in this town for nearly fifteen years and no one had any dirt on him. Nada. Zero. Zilch. In the land of the corrupt and crooked, that shit was unheard of. Everyone had a secret in D.C. Right now, Tomi would give anything to know Reynolds’s.
Chairman Reynolds’s ebony gaze lasered in on the Secret Service director as he accused the agency of having a “culture of incompetency” and “demoralizing decay.” Reynolds’s harsh words landed on his target, and from Tomi’s seat three rows back, she watched as the back of the man’s head and ears turned bright pink. Of course the director remained stoic as the chairman proceeded to go into detail about the scandalous behavior of the agents in Brazil.
Reynolds raised his voice for effect. “Despite your previous testimony before this committee that your agents never left sensitive government documents unprotected in their hotel rooms, we now know this to be false, and we have to start questioning your leadership abilities. Don’t you agree, Mr. Davidson?”
The director lifted his chin a few inches in subtle defiance, but he kept his cool.
Reynolds remained on a roll. He brought up other deficiencies in the agency. The more he talked with righteous indignation, the more Tomi was convinced that the man was full of shit. For her, the real story wasn’t that Reynolds was on the verge of making history as the first African American speaker of the House, but whatever damn secrets the man had nailed up in his closet.
The hearing broke for lunch at exactly 11:45, and everyone sprang out of their seats like toasted Pop-Tarts and filed out of the sweltering room. Tomi too, because she wanted to be in a good position to lob questions at the speaker-in-waiting when he exited from the congressional side doors. But her bad luck continued as a throng of reporters prevented her from getting anything other than a bird’s-eye view when Reynolds finally emerged. None of the questions shouted at the congressman had anything to do with today’s hearing. They only wanted to know whether he’d secured enough votes for the speakership.
Reynolds flashed a smile that belonged in Hollywood and proceeded to charm the pants off the mainstream media with his well-rehearsed modesty.
“Well, you guys know that this was not a job that I ever sought. I never wanted or aimed to be speaker.”
“Does that mean that you really are thinking about not running for the speakership?” an alarmed female reporter asked while nearly tripping out of her pumps.
“Well,” Reynolds hedged, his smile widening. “There would definitely need to be some changes to the House rules in order for me to be a more effective leader.”
“But the current speaker, Hartman, is going to be stepping down soon. When will you make your decision?”
“Look. I’m considering this with a great deal of reluctance, and I mean that in terms of sacrifices. My wife, Valerie, and I have been discussing this the last few days. I’m not willing to give up our family time. And I promise that you guys will be the first—no, make that the third—to know our decision when we make it.”
Give me a fuckin’ break. How she managed to stop her eyes from rolling to the back of her head was beyond her.
“What about your threats to impeach the president?” another reporter asked, catching Tomi’s attention.
Reynolds stopped, turned off his charm for his prosecutorial voice. “I, of course, take the proposition of impeachment very seriously. The president’s rumored . . . behavior along with his Secret Service team deserves to be looked at very seriously.”
“Are charges of impeachment off of the table?” Tomi shouted over everyone’s heads.
Reynolds looked up and met Tomi’s steady gaze. “Oh no, ma’am. Impeachment is definitely not off the table.”
“So what do you think?” Jayson said, coming up from behind.
“I think he’s full of shit,” Tomi admitted.
“Well. At least that explains the smell,” Jayson joked.
They stopped and watched as the congressman and the reporters flanking his sides inched their way down the hall.
“No. I mean it.” Tomi turned toward Jayson. “Most politicians are full of it. But this guy is particularly odious. Nobody is as clean as he’s pretending to be.”
“Uh-oh. I know that look.” Jayson groaned. “You’re going to go digging in his closet, aren’t you?”
“With a jackhammer and a crowbar. And I know just the private dick that could help me out too.”
9
The White House
President Daniel Walker paced as the potential new speaker of the House dropped the bomb of a possible impeachment hearing live on cable news.
“Calm down, Mr. President,” Sean Haverty, the president’s chief of staff, urged.
“Listen to that ignorant asshole! Do you hear him?” Daniel raked his hands through his thick silver hair while his dark green eyes lit with outrage.
“Fuck staying calm! Impeachment? Me?”
Vice President Kate Washington took a stab at lowering the temperature. “They wouldn’t be the Republican Party if they weren’t threatening to impeach a Democratic president.”
The president railed, “We can’t hire enough staff to keep up with the utter nonsense that floats out of the Conservative Industrial Complex. Their twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week propaganda machine never quits or breaks down!”
“Then we’re just going to have to ride the tide like everything else,” Kate said with what she hoped was a bright smile. “It’s not like they have anything to tie you to all that foolishness that went down in Rio.”
The president cut a quick glance at his chief of staff.
An alarm went off at the back of Kate’s head. “What?”
&nb
sp; The men shared another look before the president shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing.”
But the one-word answer fell like a lead balloon.
Kate groaned and took a seat across from Haverty’s desk. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No. Nothing happened,” President Walker insisted.
“Nothing happened, or you don’t think that they can prove anything happened?” she challenged.
The men shared another look, and Kate’s head threatened to explode. “Enough with the damn silent eyeball conversation and just spit it out. Were you or were you not involved in the cover up down in Brazil?”
The president’s hesitation was all she needed to lose it. “Damnit!”
Haverty raced and made sure that his office’s door was indeed locked. It was. But to add more security, he closed the shades on the two glass panels that framed the door.
“Katie, calm down,” the president said, lifting both hands as if that shit really called a time-out.
“Don’t you fucking Katie me—or tell me to calm down! Ever! What were you thinking? Really? How in the hell did you think that you could get away with this?”
“I . . . I . . . wasn’t really thinking,” President Walker admitted.
“No shit, Sherlock.” She dropped her head into her hands, but then fought the urge to pull her fucking hair out. “It’s over. It’s over. My career is over.”
“Katie—”
“Don’t,” she warned, squeezing her eyes shut, to block his presence out of her mind. She wanted to block out everything she’d just heard.
“How about I give you two a couple of minutes alone so you can talk?” Haverty suggested. He went back to the door. Neither the president nor the vice president stopped him.
Alone, Daniel leaned against a corner of Haverty’s desk. “Say something.”
“What would you like me to say?” Kate asked, bolting back out of her seat. “Way to go? How about ‘Good job?’ You not only screwed up your legacy, but you’re taking me down with you.”
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