by Faye, Amy
Adam stands behind the sofa, rather than sitting. Tom watches him only for a moment before turning to regard the television.
"Ready?"
"Sure."
The frozen image starts moving, leaving a little progress bar at the bottom. The camera cuts over to the host of the show. He's surrounded by ominous red lights—typical of Fox News, Adam is starting to realize. He leans heavily on one arm.
"You were Adam's room-mate in college, is that right?"
The question, followed up with the voice that answers, brings the face back into his memory. Terry Johnson hasn't aged particularly well. He looks like he's had a hard life since college. Then again, he had a hard time at college, too. Anyone who didn't go to class would.
"Yes, Ray."
The host leans back. "So tell me about this accusation."
"Well, I was working on my Masters thesis when Adam was working on his Masters, as well."
"So you were rivals, then?"
"I guess you could say that," Terry answers. It was a lie, of course. They were the same age, sure. And they were working in the same field. That might have made some people rivals. A little friendly competition could make the work easier, make the hours go by faster.
That would have required, of course, that Terry was any sort of competition.
"So then what?"
"Well, I was working on a project that would revolutionize computers. You might remember, Ray—back in that day, you had computers that were taking up the better part of a room, yeah?"
"It seems made up," the host responds, laughing. "But I guess that's true."
"So I had an idea to shrink them way down. Small enough to sit right on your desk."
"Oh?"
"Well, wouldn't you know, two years later, what should I hear, but Adam Quinn's done exactly that. I don't know about you, Ray, but that sounded awful suspicious to me, back in 82."
"I imagine it would. Why haven't you come forward before this?"
Adam takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. The reason was that it wasn't convenient for him. The case wouldn't get past the preliminary stages, and everyone knew it.
Adam remembered Terry's project. He had been working on a system of rotating discs. Like a vinyl record. Those discs would be stacked, one on top of the other, and that would be used to run data. It would have been, in the end, regarded as the precursor to running software off compact discs, but it wasn't going to do anything like he wanted it to, and vinyl was too big.
The digital solution that Adam had worked on was nothing like it, and anyone looking at them together would see the differences immediately. But almost forty years later, when it was his word against Terry's…
He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. On the screen, his old roommate and some ass-hole in a crimson-red tie yammered on, endlessly. There would be time to respond to this. Eventually it would all blow over.
The problem was that he had to keep his momentum while he did it.
He needed someone who knew how to deal with this stuff, and there was only one person he knew of who was well-suited. Too bad she hadn't been taking his calls.
Chapter Forty-Five
Linda had plenty of time to make the decision. After all, there were still months to go until the election season really began. If she took two or three days to really consider everything, then no doubt she'd come to the right conclusions all on her own. It wouldn't be any problem for anyone. No reason to cause any trouble, and nobody could complain.
Least of all, Linda thought, herself. She knew what she wanted, and she knew what she needed, and she knew what the options were. None of them were perfect. Costs and benefits.
The thing that vexed her more than anything, though, was Adam's role in it. Specifically, the fact that his fingerprints were all over the entire situation.
She had left his campaign, and she'd gotten away from him. Why, then, should he be the deciding factor? Why should he be very nearly the only thing she's thinking about?
The money is good, no matter where she goes. It's better with Adam, but without a way to spend it in either case, it's little more than score-points on a board, and there's no 'game' to 'win' at the end when the money is all tallied up.
She's not going to be a billionaire, or even a millionaire, not unless something very drastic changes. The difference isn't enough to make the choice for her, so she ought to disregard it. Or at least, it's a bonus rather than a deciding factor.
It's very difficult to make decisions about something like this based purely on rationality. It's about so much more than that. And yet, so much less, as well.
It's about feelings, more than anything else. About what she wants and how bad she wants it, about where she's willing to compromise and where she isn't.
On one hand, the pressure of being surrounded by a tornado like Adam Quinn was… well, it was the reason she left, after all. On the other hand, that same tornado lifted her up, wrapped all around her, made her feel… so much more.
The choice, she was starting to realize, wasn't so much whether or not she liked Jen Greene—she did—but whether or not she was prepared to weather the storm that Adam Quinn brought with him everywhere he went.
That was totally unfair. Unfair to her, unfair to Jen, even unfair to Adam.
She ought to have been able to rationally sit down and hash everything out. But every time that she sat down, her pad balanced out on one thigh, it came down to the same question. How did she feel, and what was she willing to do?
She knew how she felt. That wasn't the hard part. The hard part was how she was going to allow herself to feel. How hurt was she going to let herself get before she pulled herself out?
The TV yammered in the background. She looked up for a moment, and for an instant, her heart stopped in her chest. She read the headline across the bottom twice over, unsure of her own ability to read it.
A moment later, she lets out a breath she hadn't really known that she'd been holding. She reaches into her breast pocket and pulls a phone free. It almost dials itself.
The phone connects, but there's a moment before she gets a response on the other side. She doesn't wait.
"Is it true?"
Chapter Forty-Six
There was a big part of Linda that wanted to turn around and leave the moment she got off the plane. It was the same part that had walked out the first time, the part that worried. The part that wanted to avoid taking any risks.
There was certainly a place for risk avoidance. More than that, there was a real logic in it. It certainly didn't make any more sense to go looking for risks to take.
She ignored that part of her, no matter how much her stomach churned. She couldn't change her mind now, no matter how much she wanted to. If the decision was already made, then it was just better to make the best of it, and not think too hard about the alternatives. If only she could feel that way about everything else, maybe it would all feel a whole heck of a lot better.
But her heart threatened to leap out of her chest at the first opportunity, regardless. She grabbed her baggage off the turnstile and hefted it onto one shoulder—she'd packed for three days, and the bag hung a little limply on its strap—and immediately turned to find a man in a dark suit holding a sign with her name on it.
She halfway expected him to recognize her right away. When he didn't, Linda had to check her expectations for a moment. Why would he recognize her?
There was absolutely no reason he would. She was being downright silly to think that there was any chance, she chastised herself. Then she introduced herself, and was immediately whisked away to a car that could have cost a million dollars.
Linda had seen a thousand stretch limos, cars that were so ostentatious that you couldn't miss them if you were blind. This wasn't anything like that. From the outside, it could have been any luxury car—Linda had to admit to herself that she didn't know all that much about cars—but as soon as she got inside, it differentiated itself from any Buick or Jag
uar she'd ever sat in.
The only clue that showed that the engine kicked to life was that the car started, ever so gently, to roll forward, and then picked up speed without a sound.
The feeling, as well, as like being whisked on a flying carpet. The road was hardly perfect in any part of DC., and yet for the first time in her life, she couldn't feel one of them. In any other circumstance, it would have been a fairy tale experience from start to finish.
But this wasn't any other circumstance, and all she wanted now was to get to Adam and get to work.
From the beginning, Adam Quinn was impervious to any real attack. The traditional mudslinging just wouldn't work on him. He was a known womanizer, a man who was as amorous as Pan and just as fickle. He was a famed eccentric. He spoke too brusquely and too directly to be branded a liar.
But if there was one thing that he was, the lynchpin that held his entire reputation together, it was his history as a technology innovator.
If you could topple that reputation, or even cast some doubt on it, even for a moment…
She took a deep breath.
Just get to work, and stop worrying about how bad it could go. That was the rule in all of politics. Working for Adam Quinn, where the heights got so much more dizzying, 'don't look down' went without saying.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Linda's expression tells the whole story. Adam allows himself a momentary distraction, watching her. He can't help the soft shadow of a smile that pulls itself across his face, watching the way that she's jerking between panic and confidence, like someone who's stuck in gear.
"What are we going to do to get around this," she repeats.
"We're still trying to make a hard decision," Adam responds. "Somewhere between 'shut it down,' and 'do nothing,' I think. We've taken 'retire from public life' and 'die of humiliation' off the table."
She purses her lips together, and Adam feels a grin spread across his face even wider. "Really? Sarcasm, now?"
"Oh, I wasn't being sarcastic," Adam responds. "I'm pretty sure that my career is safe from Terry Johnson's vicious onslaught."
"I'm glad you're so confident. Now, what are we actually going to do about this? And don't say 'do nothing.'"
Tom pipes up, then. "We've got an invitation to sit down with him on television."
"I don't know if that will work out?"
"Why the hell not?" Linda's face is twisted up in frustrated exasperation.
"Because he wouldn't show up."
"What makes you so sure?"
"He knows me, knows I'll school him, and doesn't want to do anything that would embarrass himself."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. But if you want me to go on the show, we can just give him the chance to not show up of his own accord, rather than just taking my word for it."
"I'm sure you know exactly what you're talking about, Adam, but I think I'd like that."
"May as well," Tom pipes in. He's out of his element with this.
Tom Delaney's good for stirring the pot, but when it's time to respond, he's more than happy to step aside and let someone else get it settled so that he can throw his own, personal monkey wrench into the gears.
"Well, let me get on the phone. Should I go for their offer, or make some public counter on a more favorable program?"
Linda looks at him hard. He tries not to look too happy that all of this is happening. There's got to be at least part of her that dislikes the chaos. Adam doesn't. It makes his teeth feel sharp. It fits with everything he does, everything he's been doing for decades.
"How do you feel about it?"
Adam shrugs. "It makes no difference to me."
"Then why not go with something more favorable?"
"The way I see it, right now if he doesn't show up on the show he picked for himself, Terry looks like a real moron. If I change the terms, he gets an out. Says, I changed it because I wanted someone biased in my favor."
"Okay."
"If I stick with his show, and he doesn't show up, he looks like a coward or an idiot. Shows right off the bat that he wasn't a serious detractor. If he does show up—"
"I got it, I said."
"I know you got it." Adam's voice is low and soft. "But that doesn't change anything. What do you think I should do?"
"I think you should… how confident are you? This guy doesn't have some ace in the hole that makes you look like an idiot?"
He leans back in his chair and lets out a long breath. "No chance. There's nothing to have."
"Okay, then. Do Ray's show. Just be prepared for something."
Adam grins. "I'm always prepared for something."
Chapter Forty-Eight
The lights were hot. There had been a time, once, when Adam Quinn had wanted to be on television. When he was young. The first time under the lights, so bright that no matter where you look you feel a little blinded, he'd learned his lesson. By then, though, everything else had dug in until there wasn't much choice about whether or not he'd go back under them.
Almost forty years later, they're still too bright. It's still miserable. But so are a great many things—and like most of them, he's gotten used to it.
Linda's sitting off to the side, of course. She wasn't happy about the last time Adam went off on an interviewing adventure, and it's not likely to happen again, not alone.
She stands up when she sees him looking and walks over. "You feeling alright?"
"Feeling fine, sure."
"Do you know the plan?"
"No plan," Adam answers. He shrugs. "Why?"
She looks at him flatly. Words aren't absolutely necessary.
"I have a rough idea."
"I'm not going to like it, am I?"
"You'll love it, if you give it a chance."
She takes a breath. Adam can see by the look on her face that she's not comfortable with it. Maybe she's right not to be. But that doesn't mean that he's going to change anything.
There's a very simple plan, and no—she isn't going to like it.
The plan is, at the end of a ten minute interview, to make Terry Johnson wish that he'd never been born. Adam prided himself, he had to admit, on his self-control. On his ability to keep himself calm, to keep himself from flying off the handle with people.
Even people who might have deserved it, like Terry Johnson certainly did. Adam Quinn had been born a great many things. Talent wasn't something he was proud of. He hadn't earned it. But that control, that was something that he'd worked on for some time.
And now he was going to use that skill, that he'd had to train so much. And it would work. He'd be able to do it, without too much trouble, as long as he kept himself separate from the situation.
If he didn't, then things could go badly. So he had to make sure that they wouldn't go badly. Simple as that.
He took a breath as the producers and makeup people started to separate, and a young woman with a panicked look in her eyes—typical of television people, Adam had discovered over the years—came to wave him to follow. They sat him down on a couch. It was moderately comfortable, he had to admit. And then, a moment later, the hot lights kicked on and he buckled in.
This was going to be interesting. Linda wasn't going to like it, but when it was done…
He smiled. She could have stopped him, he knew. But she hadn't.
Epilogue
Linda sits back in her chair. The sun's beating down, too hot for January. It should be cold. A week ago, it had been, but the weather's always been fickle, and of course, for Adam, it always seems to do what he wants. If it's hot, then he must have wanted it that way. It seems like superstition, but Linda's learned enough not to question it.
She shields her eyes against the sun and leans back, her coat pulled tight around her shoulders. They've gone over his inaugural address every day for the past month, and if she's lucky, that's the speech that he's going to give.
If she's not lucky, then… well, the entire campaign's been full of surprises
from the beginning. What's one more?
The ceremony finally gets started with the swearing-in. Some part of her jumps into Linda's throat as his hand falls on the bible. A fear that shoots through her, asking what would happen if he did something unexpected. What are the odds he would decide to surprise her? She doesn't want to think about it.
Her body starts to recover, just for a moment, as he repeats faithfully. A little voice inside reminds her that for surprise, he's shown that he can keep himself under control when it counts, and it certainly counts now.
The speech begins as-expected, too. She allows herself a little swelling in her chest, the pride of a job well-done. It all sounds crazy, but somehow… well, they made it this far, she supposes.
And then everything falls apart when he turns away from the podium and points back. Her mind plays back the past sentence, trying to figure out what she had missed. She can hear it, once she thinks about it.
"I'd like Miss Owens to join me at the podium," he said. That wasn't part of the speech they'd discussed.
Her face goes red immediately. He knew better than this. The cameras, the glitz, none of that was something she wanted. It was part of his life, but it wasn't part of hers. He knew that. He'd promised—
She stood up and waved, stepped down to him.
He dropped to one knee in a practiced, easy motion, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a little black box, and Linda's vision went white for an instant as the crowd started to roar in the distance.
He'd always had a flare for the dramatic. Now if only she could get away from it.
"Will you marry me, Linda?"
She can hear his voice going out across the speakers, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts.
She takes in the deepest breath she can, one that almost manages to fill her lungs, and steadies herself long enough to get one sentence out as a hot tear streaks down her cheek.