Category 7

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  Elle stepped out of the car on the 4–5–6 line and let out a breath that registered somewhere between exasperation and relief. The trip uptown was always aggravating and even the prospect of a relaxing night out couldn’t change that. The Lexington Avenue line was the city’s most heavily traveled route and had the worst performance, something the hundreds of people packed into the cars during rush hour were well aware of. By waiting until six thirty she was usually able to avoid the worst of it. If she left the office at five, she’d have to deal with the crush of Wall Street administrative staffers heading home, and if she left at six, it would be the mid-level managers who had to make it back to Connecticut and New Jersey in time to kiss their kids good night. So she left at six thirty, after most of the Financial District had cleared out and she only faced a crush of bodies for a short time as she moved through Midtown.

  She stepped out of the subway car at 68th and Lexington. After she climbed thirty-three grimy stairs, the steamy, smelly, subtropical microclimate of the subway tunnels gave way to the blast furnace of the streets and she began counting her steps until she could turn onto Park. From that point it was only three and a half blocks—about 425 steps on average—to her building, nestled on East 73rd between Park and Lex, where she could finally escape the noise and the odors of the street. Initially a game to keep her mind off what she had agreed to by coming up here, counting her footsteps had become a neurotic ritual. It kept her moving toward her favorite moment, when she closed her apartment door behind her and the public portion of her working day was finally over.

  If she’d had to live in any other part of the city, she’d never have taken the job. Not that she’d wanted to take it at all, but this job truly had been the proverbial offer she couldn’t refuse. For one thing, she’d been told she couldn’t refuse it and hadn’t been able to come up with any credible counterargument. And rather than walk away from the future she was carving for herself as a political strategist, she’d agreed to get her hands dirty. So here she was, working for a hick, dressing like a troll, and gaining so-called valuable experience that could backfire at any moment.

  Just looking at the carved, graying limestone façade of her building helped some of the day’s irritation fade, and, as always, she glanced up to the roof of the building where evidence of the penthouse tenant’s terrace garden teased her imagination. She’d heard that the garden was pretty amazing. It wrapped all the way around the building, so that the apartment appeared to be set in the middle of a yard. She knew there was no way she’d ever get to see it, so she made do with her daily ogle. The only indications visible from the street were full-sized trees rising from enormous terra-cotta tubs and flowering greenery that trailed over the parapet and swayed in the fifteenth-story breezes. It was as close to nature as she got most weekdays.

  “Good evening, Ms. Baker.” The doorman was never curious, never chatty, just pleasant. “Going to be a gorgeous night.”

  “Hello, Shel. I think you’re right,” she replied with a tired smile. His timing was so impeccable she didn’t even have to slow down, she just sailed through the open door into the cool, soothing haven of the Corinthian pillars and crown molding of pre-war New York. Her thin-soled loafers slapped softly across the bronze-colored marble as she headed for the elevator.

  “Good evening, Ms. Baker.”

  “Good evening, John,” she replied absently, not bothering to make eye contact. The concierge had eyes like a snake, or maybe a pornographer. She was convinced his second job was pimping.

  She rode the elevator to the eighth floor in peace but didn’t fully shake off the day until the apartment door clicked shut behind her and she dropped her canvas book bag on the floor, where it would remain, an untouched blight in the pristine, aged elegance of the richly furnished apartment, until seven thirty Monday morning.

  It was the end of another hellish week. They all were hellish, whether Davis Lee was in the office or not. Putting up with his brand of pseudo-polite condescension took a lot out of a girl. At least she was paid enough to make her smiles and simpering worthwhile. God willing, she’d be able to execute her exit strategy soon.

  She crossed the foyer and living room heading for her bedroom and a cool shower, to be followed by a cold martini and some culture. As she walked, she began peeling off her nondescript and therefore despised “uniform”—Gap linen pants and a plain blouse—with as little care as the garments required.

  Crossing the threshold to her bedroom, she stopped short in the doorway, her heart bursting into a panicky sprint as she saw a figure rise from the wing chair in the corner. Recognizing his face didn’t do much to slow her pulse.

  He wants me back.

  It was a ridiculous thought and the rational part of her brain knew it. So did her heart. She swallowed hard and took a shaky breath.

  “Win. I … I didn’t know you were— Did we have a meeting scheduled? Nobody …,” she stammered, then stopped. He wasn’t a man to whom you ever showed weakness unless you wanted it used against you. She’d learned that the hard way, recently enough that the memory still stung.

  “Hello, Elle. No, no appointment. This was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Seeing you in Iowa last week made me realize that I haven’t come up to see how you’re doing since you moved up here.” He smiled.

  It was a beautiful smile, a practiced, lazy smile that belonged at the beach or, appropriately, in the bedroom. But she didn’t want it in hers. Not right now. Maybe not ever again. Maybe. But what she wanted had never really mattered to him.

  He’d always intimidated her, from the time she’d met him at her parents’ home during his father’s first presidential campaign. Home for a visit between semesters, Elle had been underwhelmed by Win’s arrogance and hadn’t been discreet about it. Rather than putting him off, her attitude had intrigued him. He’d turned on the charm, keeping in touch with her and arranging for her to get the internship she wanted. A year after that he’d gotten her a better one, and by then her defenses were gone. She was local, loyal, and too much in love to complain about anything.

  As the president’s son, Win had a high public profile and was on the A-list of every socialite and celebrity. When he could, he told her, he spent every available minute with her, but always out of sight of the press and any other interested parties. Their relationship had been quiet and private and, she realized later, completely one-sided. She’d lived for him, deliberately staying as far from the spotlight as a person could; in return, he’d slept with her whenever it was convenient or there was no one more exciting available. It still surprised her that it had taken so long for her to realize that he was such an ass and that she—the smart, sensible, levelheaded girl—had been such a fool. That her stupid declarations of love had made it easier, not harder, for him to use her.

  And despite the lesson, here she was, still being used, still not sure how to stop it.

  Feeling a tense muscle flex in her cheek, she stared at his beautiful, tanned face and reminded herself that the truth about Win was that he cared only for himself and his political future. Even his father came second to that.

  He pushed his hands into his trouser pockets casually, his eyes never leaving hers. “No one knows I’m here. Officially, I’m still in Washington. I just thought I should check on you, see how you’re doing.” The caring note was false and the familiarity in his voice didn’t soothe her. It wasn’t meant to. “Is the apartment okay?”

  She nodded, still too unsettled to trust herself to speak.

  “Glad to hear it. I guess I’ll let you get dressed and then we’ll talk.”

  His eyes drifted over her and, belatedly, she remembered that she was holding her pink blouse and the belt to her slacks in her hands. She felt heat rise to her face. “Of course. I’ll be right out.”

  “Take your time, Elle. I’m delighted to see you again.”

  She stepped aside as he moved past her, and she knew the brush of his knuckles against her linen-clad thigh had very little to do with
the narrowness of the doorway.

  “Thank you, Win. It’s lovely to see you, too,” she murmured with automatic politeness as the door shut gently behind him.

  Gritting her teeth at the intrusion or the intruder or maybe both, she stepped out of the rest of her clothes and made a beeline for the shower. Five minutes later, freshened up, fully clothed in a sleek, polished-cotton Ann Taylor sheath and slim-heeled Prada sandals, wearing her own identity instead of that of the office drone she played for fifty-something hours a week, Elle entered the living room with her back straight and her chin up. She nodded a cool, blasé greeting at the pair of Secret Service agents on the far side of the room. Where they’d been when she’d been doing her inadvertent striptease was something she preferred not to consider.

  Coming to a stop a few feet away from Win, she cleared her throat, causing the president’s son to turn from the window and smile at her again. The agents disappeared from view.

  As she lifted a cigarette from the highly polished sterling silver box on the coffee table, the diamond tennis bracelet she’d bought for herself after he dumped her slid along her forearm to rest loosely around her wrist. It wasn’t Tiffany, but it was real, and the setting sun flashed off the stones like the lightning from an Independence Day sparkler. She knew he’d see it and wonder where she got it. Pathetic, she knew, but that was the reason she’d nearly emptied her checking account to buy it and that was the reason she had just put it on.

  Lighting the cigarette from the matching lighter, she inhaled deeply, then aimed the thin stream of smoke at the ceiling as she decided what, if anything, she was going to tell him.

  “I thought you gave that up.”

  “I did,” she replied coolly, then sat down on one of the silk-covered settees. She noticed him noticing her legs, long and bare and evenly tanned, so she crossed them, sending the abbreviated hem of her dress higher on her thigh. She let the sexy sandal dangle from the joints of her red-tipped toes.

  As she watched him drag his eyes away from her feet, she let the hint of a smile appear on her lips.

  “What do you have for me?”

  A silver stake to drive through the space where your heart should be. She took another slow drag, then leaned forward to tap the ash into a heavy crystal ashtray that bore some sort of crest. “I’m still gathering information. I’ve sent a report—”

  He pulled one hand from the trouser pocket of his suit and dismissed her words with a brusque wave. “Old news. I want your impressions, Elle. That’s why you’re there. I want to know their vulnerabilities. Where they are, what they are, who they are.” He announced his displeasure with a refined, unamused snort. “I didn’t expect to have to go over this with you again.”

  His words, the tone behind them, sliced into her and she kept her eyes fixed on his. Pale blue and cold, they were as forbidding as a glacier.

  If only he knew how much a little civility would gain him.

  As it was, the look in his eyes made her decide against imparting the possibly interesting information she’d learned about Carter Thompson this week.

  She inhaled again, slowly, elegantly, and breathed out. “I know what you want, Win, and you know that I’ll find it. But I haven’t found anything significant yet.” She lifted one shoulder and let it drop, unconcerned.

  “Significant?” he repeated slowly. “Would we define that word the same way?”

  She counted one heartbeat. “I mean I haven’t found anything exploitable.”

  He looked down, biting the inside of his lip as if he might be stifling a smile. Knowing him, though, he probably just liked pain. “You’ve been inside for how long, Elle?”

  “Four weeks.”

  “If, in that time, you haven’t found anything of political significance, that means either Carter runs a clean operation or you aren’t working hard enough. Knowing what I already know of Carter, I think it’s the latter.” He paused, and when he continued, his voice had dropped to a near whisper that made chills run up her back. “We don’t have time to put someone else in place, Elle. Davis Lee likes you. Apparently he trusts you. That means you’ve effected change. You’ve transformed him from a fortification into a liability. He’s the vulnerability you’re looking for, Elle. You need to exploit that to the very best of your ability.”

  He paused again, longer this time, and Elle didn’t say a word, didn’t take her eyes off him. She knew he wasn’t done speaking, and she wasn’t interested in offering him any unsolicited insight. Leaning forward slightly, she tapped another length of ash from her cigarette.

  “I asked you to do this because you have the skills necessary for this sort of operation. I believe in you, Elle. Don’t make me start doubting you,” he said slowly, then lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “That would mean I must doubt myself. It’s something I’ve never liked doing.”

  Pushing aside all the comments she could make in response to that admission, she stubbed out her cigarette and stood up in one movement, her anger lending grace to the gesture. “At your insistence, I maneuvered my way into this organization, Win. I played the role of the drab little mouse; I caught Davis Lee’s attention and won his confidence, as you say. I’m doing the job you asked me to do, which is pretty miserable and, frankly, far beneath my abilities. But here I am, searching for dirt on an honorable man so that you and your father can keep him off the ballot next year. For the record, I find it offensive, Win. I find everything about this job offensive, but I’m doing it anyway, to help your father and to move forward in my career. To prove my commitment to the cause. And, by my accounting anyway, I’ve been successful so far. I’m finding things. I just haven’t found enough to create any meaningful ‘big picture.’ But I will. And I’ll do it my way.” She took a step closer to him, not letting her eye contact waver. “I was your girlfriend, Win. That doesn’t make me your whore.”

  His laugh was for real this time, and the broad mockery in it ripped open the wound that hadn’t healed despite six months without him. She was sick of his hold on her.

  “Brilliant speech, Elle. And delivered with all the profundity a twentysomething can summon. But you’re wrong. We’re all whores. It’s just a matter of what we’re selling, to whom, and for how much. You want to be a strategist, right? Well, you can’t do that without getting those lily-white—and, if I remember correctly, quite talented—hands of yours a little grubby.”

  They both knew the Secret Service agents were within earshot and that the unsubtle reference to their relationship was meant to humiliate her, but she refused to let it show. “You’re asking me to sleep with him.”

  His eyes held genuine amusement as he gave her another easy shrug. “I’m not asking you to do a thing. I’m telling you to do what I’m paying you to do, which is gather information. I don’t really want to know about your methods, whether they involve hacking his networks, pilfering his trash, or banging him on the floor of the Stock Exchange at the closing bell.” He paused. “I’m just awaiting results, Elle. I expect a reasonable return on my not inconsiderable investment.” He glanced around the spacious room pointedly. “This place isn’t exactly low-rent.”

  Elle said nothing and he smiled.

  “Replacing you would cause a setback for us, certainly, but it wouldn’t be irrecoverable. The experience you’ve gained, however, would be lost, wouldn’t it? To you, I mean. Granted, it might help when you go home and try to get your neighbor elected to the local school board, but as far as working in Washington any time soon—well, Washington is a small world with a very long reach. Word travels, unfortunately.” His voice had gone soft again, the gentle syllables at odds with his intent.

  And there it was in all its startling simplicity. This was a one-way project with no margin for error. If she didn’t perform to Win’s satisfaction, she’d be outed. She’d be another expendable Washington female exposed for blindly following orders and therefore subject to ridicule and slaughter in the public arena, following in the tarnished footsteps of Fawn Hall and
Linda Tripp.

  Except that Elle knew what she was doing was completely unethical in the first place. He’d left her without any moral high ground on which to anchor a potential defense.

  What a fool I am.

  She forced herself to nod once in response to his words and resisted the temptation to argue or defend herself. Both would be pointless. Because it came from Win, she had no illusions that the threat was idle.

  He nodded back, his smile satisfied. “I’m glad we understand each other. You know who to call if you need anything.”

  “Yes, I do. Thank you,” she replied tightly. Maureen Dowd, your father’s biggest fan.

  His smile widened then and she felt a familiar and futile downward shift in her mood as he seemed to shrug off the conversation. It only took a few steps for him to close the gap between them. She fought off a shudder and took a step back.

  “Now that we’ve dispensed with business, it really is good to see you again, Ellie May,” he said, using the pet name he’d given her while they were dating. She despised it.

  He pulled her close, ignoring her stiff resistance.

  “Win, don’t.”

  “Oh, come on, Elle. Grow up. Business is business, but this—” He tilted her face to his with a cool finger crooked under her chin, then eased his knuckle along her jawbone. “This isn’t business, is it?”

  His other hand slid into her hair and shook free the clip holding it in a conservative coil. His eyes had taken on a familiar warmth that was impossible to misunderstand.

  Old desire and more recent loathing warred within her, but she knew neither would have any role in the outcome. The man with his hands on her had a saying he was fond of, and that was “Win wins.” Elle knew from experience that the statement was more than just a play on words. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Win rarely lost, and then it was usually temporary.

  “I have about an hour to kill before I have to leave,” he murmured, his mouth brushing her ear as a hand slid down the front of her and snaked around her waist. “Just long enough for a drink. Or something.”