Wrongfully Accused

by Ana Barrons

  On the other side of the door, Kate was met by three men in black suits carrying walkie-talkies and a soldier carrying a large automatic weapon.

  “Mrs. Franklin?” the largest suit said. He pulled out his credentials. FBI. “Agent Richard Miller. Please come with us.” The other agents were busy scanning the Jetway as though there were some hidden menace right there in the tube.

  “Has there been a bomb scare or something?” Kate asked.

  “Come with us, please,” Agent Miller repeated.

  The three agents surrounded her and ushered her up the Jetway, through the gate at Dulles International Airport and into a small office with a metal desk and four padded chairs. The soldier stopped outside in the hall. As soon as the door closed behind her, Kate said, “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”

  Agent Miller cleared his throat and offered her a chair. “Please sit down, Mrs. Franklin,” he said. “Would you like some coffee or water or—”

  “Just tell me what the in the world is going on!” A sudden thought struck her. “Is this about Drew?”

  The other two agents shared a glance and the knot in her gut twisted. “Oh, God,” she said, her voice shaky. “Is he okay? Is he hurt?”

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.” Agent Miller took a deep breath and let it out. “The Learjet carrying your husband and several other congressmen to Washington exploded over Long Island Sound twenty-five minutes ago.”

  Her heart began pounding in her ears, blocking out sound. Surely she’d heard him wrong. This wasn’t possible. “What?” she asked over the deafening whoomp, whoomp, whoomp.

  “Congressman Franklin and several others...” The man swallowed. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Franklin. The Coast Guard is searching for survivors, of course, but—”

  Panic seized her then. Survivors. Coast Guard. Water. She closed her eyes and the room spun. “Oh, God,” she murmured. Someone helped her into a chair. Nausea threatened and she bent forward, dropping her head into her hands. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God... Drew. Oh God.” How could this be happening?

  “I’m so sorry.”

  It was several minutes before the dizziness and nausea passed. Her insides were cold and tight, so tight. Someone handed her a cup of water, and she managed a small sip. In a dim part of her mind she thought of the people she needed to call. Drew’s parents. Her family. Their friends.

  Drew was dead. Just like that. Gone forever.

  Like Steve.

  Oh, God, how could she bear all that emptiness again?

  “How?” she whispered.

  Agent Miller’s gaze slid toward one of the other agents but he didn’t turn his head. “We won’t know for sure for some time,” he said. “But the investigation will be extremely thorough, I can promise you that.”

  She stared at him. “What aren’t you telling me? What is it?” She searched the faces of the other agents, whose eyes would not meet hers.

  Agent Miller cleared his throat again, then spoke in a low voice. “We have reason to believe...” He trailed off, one hand at his tie.

  Kate struggled to swallow. “What? You believe what?”

  He pulled his hand away from his tie and leaned back against the desk. His mouth was set in a grim line. “Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility,” he said quietly.

  Chapter Two

  A week later

  Kate ducked into Drew’s study and closed the door quietly, then leaned her forehead against the cold wood. She didn’t bother to turn on the light. If she didn’t get some time alone she was going to flip out. It was all too much. People in the house constantly, especially today, after the memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral. The phone calls and sympathy cards. The politics. The phoniness. The press.

  Her husband was dead, and the politicians were turning his death into a media circus. Some of these people had loved Drew, yes. His parents, who were heartbroken. His administrative assistant, Michael Clark, who’d been with Drew since he worked in the Connecticut legislature more than fifteen years ago.

  She crossed the room to the built-in shelves behind Drew’s desk. He kept a bottle of very good cognac there, as she’d discovered during one of the many nights he simply hadn’t come home. Now she poured a generous snifter and brought it to her lips. How was she going to get through this? Granted, their marriage had been far from perfect, but they’d been trying to work it out. Maybe this time things would have changed.

  “Goddamn it, Drew, why did you have to die?” she murmured.

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

  Kate jumped and spun around. Joy Stuart, representative from Connecticut’s third district, sat in a tall wing chair facing Drew’s massive oak desk. Kate couldn’t see her well in the dim light, but it sounded like she’d been crying.

  “What are you doing in here?” Kate asked. Her hands were shaking. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  Joy raised a glass. “Great minds think alike,” she said. “I knew Drew kept this bottle in here, and I was sick to death of all those people.” She swirled the cognac in her snifter, then took a long swallow.

  Kate wasn’t sure how she felt about Joy making herself at home in Drew’s study, helping herself to his booze.

  Joy’s husband, Ben, had been best friends with Steven, despite the ten-year difference in their ages. Ben was a cardiology fellow at Georgetown Hospital when he’d hired the eighteen-year-old Georgetown senior to help him solve some biomechanical problems. The two hit it off immediately and developed a deep respect for one another. Kate was a freshman that year—her first time away from home—and when she started seeing Steven, Joy took her under her wing.

  Steven’s mother loved to cook and invited Kate and the Stuarts to numerous dinners, bringing them into contact with Gabe and his new wife Lindsay. The three couples grew close. After Steve died and Gabe had turned his back on her, it was Joy who introduced Kate to Drew.

  She and the Stuarts remained close until politics drove a wedge in her friendship with Joy, who had become openly disdainful of Kate’s liberal views—and her habit of expressing them in mixed company.

  But maybe there was more to it than politics.

  Kate stood there feeling awkward for a moment, and then decided to clear the air with the woman who had once been her closest friend. “You saw more of Drew than I did over the past couple of years,” she said. “Nights he didn’t come in until after midnight, weekends I barely saw him, he was with you.”

  Joy sighed. “Ben said the same thing to me recently, almost verbatim.” She ran her fingers through short, highlighted blond hair. “What can I say, Kate? We worked together. Fought battles, side by side, every single day. Shared the same values. We enjoyed spending time together.”

  Kate winced. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  Joy took a long sip of cognac and struggled to swallow it. Tears glistened on her cheeks. Finally she said, “Drew meant a lot to me. We were...close.” She closed her eyes and took a deep, halting breath, obviously holding back a sob.

  “I resent your closeness,” Kate said, surprising herself with that bald admission. Well, if she didn’t get this off her chest now she never would. “I resent that he cared about you. I resent all the time he spent with you instead of me.”

  Joy got up, came behind the desk and reached for the bottle, then poured herself another generous snifter. Her face looked haggard, like someone deeply grieving. Good Lord, Kate thought. I even resent her grief. She leaned against the desk, watching Joy pace around the office, running her hands over photos of Drew with various politicians and world leaders. Joy laid a hand on a photo of herself and Drew, as though she were feeling its beating heart.

  “You loved him,” Kate said. It wasn’t a question. “You were in love with my husband.”

  “The whole world was in love with Drew,” Joy threw back.

  “The whole world of his party, maybe. But that’s not what I’m talking about and you
know it.”

  Joy turned to her, eyes narrowed, hand on hip. “Tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.”

  Anger bubbled up inside Kate’s chest, but she bit her tongue. She’d never imagined herself in the position of spurned wife confronting her husband’s mistress. Humiliation burned her cheeks.

  “Are you insinuating that Drew and I were lovers?” Joy pressed.

  Yes, she wanted to scream. It would explain so many things. Like why Drew never wanted sex anymore. Why his rare professions of love, typically made when she suggested a trial separation, sounded insincere. She swallowed hard. “Were you?”

  “I won’t dignify that with an answer,” Joy said. “If you really think your husband was having an affair maybe you should look in the mirror and ask yourself why, rather than accusing his female colleagues of sleeping with him.”

  The barb stung, causing Kate to gasp. “That was a low blow, even for you.”

  Joy splayed her hand over her chest. “Oh, well, excuse me for being indelicate, Kate. Was that blow lower than you rolling your eyes for the TV cameras during one of the most important speeches of Drew’s life?” Her voice rose as she spoke. “Lower than undermining Drew’s stand on prisoner’s rights on his own front lawn? Lower than arguing the other side of every goddamn issue at every goddamn dinner party?”

  Joy’s words rang in the silence that followed. All Kate could hear was the pounding of her own heart. “You heartless bitch,” she whispered. “I just lost my husband.”

  Joy took another long swallow of cognac, swaying a bit as she did. “You didn’t deserve him.”

  The door to the study opened and Ben Stuart stuck his head inside. “There you are,” he said to his wife. “What are you doing in here all alone?”

  “She’s not alone,” Kate rasped around vocal cords that felt frozen. Joy couldn’t have hurt her more if she’d taken a stick and beaten her with it.

  He stepped further into the room. “Oh. Sorry, Kate. I didn’t see you. I’ll, uh, leave you two to talk.”

  “Oh, believe me, we’re done,” Joy said. She brushed by her husband on her way out.

  Ben seemed momentarily startled, then moved toward Kate. She was struck, as always, by the calm he carried with him. Ben was a handsome, athletic man who seemed oblivious to his looks and appeal. His green eyes studied her from behind tortoiseshell glasses as though she were one of his heart patients.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, squeezing her hand.

  “I will be,” she managed. Once she recovered from Joy’s pummeling.

  “What a terrible day this must be for you.”

  Terrible didn’t begin to cover it. “It’s hard,” she said.

  “So much harder when someone is torn away from you suddenly, the way Drew was.” He shook his head in that concerned way of his that she found so endearing. “And dealing with all these people. My God, Kate. There must be a hundred guests here.”

  “It’s important to bring everyone together.” She gazed down at her black high heels, unsure what to say next. “I think you should take Joy home. She’s had too much to drink and...she’s grieving. She needs you now.”

  He was silent for a moment, and Kate mentally kicked herself for saying too much. Even if Joy and Drew had been sleeping together, she wouldn’t want that knowledge to hurt Ben.

  “What about you?” Ben asked. “Who’s going to take care of you?”

  She hugged herself. “My family is here. Friends from my charities.” And then, more to herself than to Ben, “Being Mrs. Drew Franklin wasn’t my whole life.”

  “Sorry to interrupt this little reunion.”

  Gabe? She had spotted him in the crowd after the memorial service, but there had been a large police presence at the cathedral so she’d assumed he was on the job. Never in a million years would she have expected him to show up at her house. Now he was standing in the doorway to Drew’s den, his large frame blocking the light from the hall.

  Eight years after Steve’s death he still held her responsible. She knew that down to her bones, even though he’d never come out and said it.

  “What do you want?” Ben asked Gabe, frowning.

  “Joy doesn’t look too good. You might want to take her home.”

  “Right. Thanks.” Ben turned back to Kate and spoke quietly. “I’ll come by tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”

  “That’s really sweet of you,” she said. “But I’ll be fine. Really.”

  Gabe closed the door behind Ben and leaned against it, arms folded over his powerful chest. The room felt smaller now that it was only the two of them. He had always had that effect on her. And as always when she was around him, her heart pounded and she had trouble pulling air into her lungs.

  “So,” he said, that deep voice steady and casual. “Already working on number three? You never were one to waste a lot of time mourning.”

  The shock of his words jerked her head back. Had he really said—? Pain sliced through her heart, but hot anger cauterized the wound. She gripped the edge of the desk. “How dare you mock my grief, you son of a bitch.”

  “Joy would take him to the cleaners if he divorced her,” he went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “But then, you’re not exactly hurting for money, are you? Steve took care of that for you.”

  She propelled herself away from the desk, stalked across the Persian carpet and reared her arm back to slap him. Gabe grabbed it just before her hand connected with his face.

  “A little too close to the truth?” he asked, lowering his voice.

  She raised her other arm and he grabbed that one as well, but she was fired up and shoved against him. “You bastard.” A hard kick to his shin got her pushed against the study wall, arms over her head, his body pressed hard into hers.

  “Careful, there, sister,” he ground out.

  She was breathing heavily, her breasts heaving against the solid wall of his chest. Beneath her anger she was aware of his heat, the way his thighs felt against hers, the closeness of his mouth. God, she was pathetic. His breath even smelled the same, like the butterscotch candies he’d been addicted to since he gave up smoking.

  “Jesus,” he said, dropping her wrists and backing away as though she’d singed him.

  She was disgusted to feel tears welling. Why did she still let him get to her? First Joy, now him. Go ahead and kick me while I’m down, guys. That thought stiffened her spine. Okay, this really was the day to get things off her chest. And God knew, this encounter had been a very long time coming.

  “For years it tore me apart,” she said, hoping he hadn’t heard the slight crack in her voice. “Knowing you could even consider the possibility that I drove Steve to his death.”

  “I never accused you of anything,” he said.

  “I wish you would,” she shot back. “You’ve never told me what you think I did to make him miserable enough to—” She took a deep breath to try and regain her equilibrium. None of them had ever said the “S” word out loud, but Gabe’s expressions and body language at Steve’s funeral, and his active hostility ever since, told her loud and clear that as far as he was concerned it was her fault his brother was dead.

  “At first I told myself you were grieving,” she went on, absently rubbing her sore wrists. “And that you’d get over it in time. At least for Jeremy’s sake.”

  She saw him wince at the mention of his almost ten-year-old son. Her godson. She knew it galled him that she and Jeremy were so close.

  “Get over my brother’s death, huh? Like you did?”

  She held his angry gaze. His face was as handsome as ever, but harder. There were new lines framing his sensual mouth. The five o’clock shadow that accentuated his dark coloring made him look more dangerous than even she knew him to be.

  “I meant I hoped you’d get over blaming me for it,” she said. “You’re wrong if you think I was over Steve when Drew showed up. I mourned him for a long time. But I had to move on.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I
noticed.”

  She rubbed her arms, cold despite the cognac, and gazed at a spot over his shoulder. “Think what you want, Gabe, you always have. The truth is I just wanted to be loved, and I was young enough to believe...” Why was she bothering? What she said wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to him. She’d allowed herself to believe that Drew would give her what she’d longed for her whole life. What a fool she’d been.

  “You were everything to Steve,” Gabe said. “He worshipped the ground you walked on.”

  She made a derisive snort. “He needed me,” she said. “That’s not the same thing as worshipping me and you damn well know it. I was the one who took care of him, and let the rest of you off the hook.”

  Gabe’s thick brows drew together, and his mouth formed a tight line. His anger didn’t surprise her. When a loved one dies, their foibles and imperfections are quickly forgotten. Gabe would never admit his perfect little brother had been as self-centered and emotionally labile as he was brilliant and charming.

  But he did know, once.

  “Spare me the bullshit,” he said gruffly and opened the door to leave.

  “If I didn’t love Jeremy so much,” she said before he could escape, “I would tell you to stay the hell out of my life, you self-righteous prick.”

  * * *

  “What did you say to her?” Ben demanded when Gabe shut the door behind him.

  “Leave it alone,” he said. Damn it, he’d lost control in there. Like he tended to do any time he was in the same room with her for more than two seconds.

  “Why did you come here? There’s not even enough left of her husband to bury and you have to show up and hassle her?”

  “I don’t know why you’re defending her,” Joy said to Ben slowly, in the manner of a drunk trying to sound normal. “She actually had the nerve to ask me if I was having an affair with Drew.”

  Gabe watched Ben school his features, but he couldn’t miss the flash of fury. Interesting.

  “If you have any decency left, get out of her house and leave her alone,” Ben said to Gabe. He took Joy’s arm and tried to nudge her forward. “Let’s go.”