by Erica Orloff
“Madison? Just wondering…any sign that the Duke may be involved in your case?”
Madison shook her head. “I don’t think so. This seems personal in some way.”
“Trust me, though, it wouldn’t be unlike him to make things personal if he thinks you’re close to Renee. Promise you’ll be careful.”
Madison nodded and the two of them went to powder their noses, appearing to all others like two former debs all grown up. They made their way back to the table, Madison still marveling at how seamlessly agents pretended as if they were nothing more than heiresses.
After dinner, Senator Richardson gave a speech outlining her plans for social security legislation, the environment, and highway initiatives, as well as a sweeping pronouncement about free speech and patriotism that sounded remarkably like a presidential stump speech. Ashley noted that the senator’s voice was firm and passionate, and she was wearing a black vintage Valentino gown as fashionable as anything on any of the twenty-somethings. She was completely telegenic. Desserta beautiful white cake with an apricot and custard filling and edible flowers on the topwas served, and dancing began.
John asked Madison to dance to a slow song. On the dance floor, he whispered in her ear, “I’ve been a very good boy, but I really want to tear that dress off you. Can we go soon?”
“Mmm,” Madison murmured. “You have been a good boy. I can’t believe I was worried about how you would deal with all this nonsense. You’re an old pro. You sure you’re not one of the Palm Beach Hernandezes?”
He laughed out loud and twirled her around.
“I’m the envy of every guy here.”
“No…I think the ladies at our table are quite taken with you. They’ll be asking you to fix them up with your friends if you don’t watch it.”
“Sure…and you know, I could just see Fluffy Peters on the back of a Harley.”
At that thought, Madison laughed. Then Ryan Greene came up to the two of them as the song ended.
“Hi, Madison…you going to introduce me to your mystery date?”
“Ryan, this is John Hernandez. Not of the Palm Beach Hernandezes.”
John laughed at their inside joke, and he shook hands with Ryan. Madison asked, “Where’s your date?”
“Knowing Charlotte West, I’d guess she’s in the bathroom checking her lipstick for the five-hundredth time this evening.”
“Sounds like Charlotte.”
The band started playing a song by Anita Baker, and a woman whose voice uncannily resembled Baker’s was singing.
“Mind if I dance with your date?” Ryan asked John.
“It’s up to her,” John teased.
Madison nodded and kissed John on the cheek as Ryan took her hand and led her into the middle of the dance floor.
“Seems like a nice guy.”
“He is.”
“Doesn’t look like one of us.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The small diamond stud in his left ear. Hair a little too long. Cut of the tuxedo…too buff for Wall Street.”
“God, you’re observant.”
“Just where you’re concerned.”
“Why?”
“Come on…you can have your fling with stud boy over there, but after a while, what are you going to talk about? With me, God, we can talk deals and mergers and acquisitions and all the things that make the hearts of people like us really race.”
He dipped her ever so slightly and looked her in the eye. Then they resumed their dance.
Madison smiled ruefully. “You know, Ryan, there was a time I would have thought you were right. And I don’t think I’ll ever lose my killer instinct in the boardroom. But I realize there’s more to me than mergers and acquisitions and land deals. And for some reason, he’s the guy who makes my heart race.”
“You and I, we’re destiny, Maddie. Trust me.” He winked at her. They continued dancing. Madison knew he saw her as an acquisition and merger he couldn’t have. But that was better than really hurting him. He was a friend.
When their song ended, she went and sought out John, who was being “chatted up” by CeCe. He was tight-lipped and looked relieved when Maddie came to get him.
“Come on, John, let’s call it a night. Excuse us, CeCe.”
The two of them left the ballroom, and he said, “Man…she was determined to make me crack.”
“Good thing you’re such a tough guy.”
“I don’t know. I felt like I was being grilled by a police interrogator.”
They emerged from the Waldorf, and Madison shivered slightly. She had on a light silk wrap, but the temperature had dipped to nearly freezing. John instantly took off his tuxedo jacket and wrapped it around her. Then they saw Charlie up the street and waved. He was leaning against the car reading the paper. He nodded at them, climbed back in and drove to the curb right in front of them. He hopped out to get the door for Madison as John reached for the handle at the same time.
“Sorry,” John said. “Still not used to that.”
“No problem,” Charlie said, and gave him a clap on the back.
Madison was relieved when the heat came on in the limo right away. She shivered and shook off the cold.
“How was your night?” Charlie asked.
“Wonderful.” Madison beamed. She snuggled up against John and they drove toward Central Park. “Of course, the usual social nonsense. CeCe Goldberg was after scoop, and Ryan Greene was determined yet again to create the ultimate real-estate merger, but all in all, I had a wonderful time.”
“What’d you think, John?”
“I got to dance with my angel, here, so it was all good.”
Madison laid her head against his arm.
“Oh, damn,” she said suddenly.
“What?” John asked.
“Nothing…Charlie?”
“Hmm?” He looked back in the rearview mirror.
“Can you stop at the grocery store over on Eightieth? I just realized I forgot to ask Estelle to pick some coffee up when she came to clean today. And I cannot start my day without it.”
“No problem.”
A few lights later, Charlie make a left and drove to the grocery store, parking the limo across the street from it to avoid a no-loading zone.
“Why don’t you let me run in?” he asked. “Coffee…need anything else?”
“No, Charlie, it’s okay…John and I will go. Maybe we’ll get some fruit for the morning, too.”
John opened the door for her and she slid out, still wearing his tuxedo jacket. The two of them held hands as they crossed the street and entered the supermarket.
“I took tomorrow off,” John said. “I have some papers to grade, but other than that, I’m all yours.”
“Great.” She smiled. They took a little red plastic basket and wandered the brightly lit aisles of the gourmet grocer, filling the basket with French-roast coffee, some pastries, oranges, grapes, and some cheese and crackers.
At the register, John took out two twenties and paid for their purchases, then the two of them left the supermarket.
Suddenly, a huge explosion rocked the entire block. Madison fell backward into a pile of newspapers delivered for the morning, and John hit the sidewalk, smashing his elbow.
Debris rained down, ash and dust, and an acrid smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
With tears in her eyes, Madison looked across the street. Where her beloved limo driver had been parked with her limousine now stood the flaming wreckage of a car.
Chapter 19
Thinking fast, Madison grabbed John’s hand. “Let’s go!”
“What? We’ve got to wait for the police,” he said, his voice raspy with the smoke around them.
“Trust me,” she begged and pulled him around the block and then down the street to a subway station. In the distance, they heard sirens.
“Are you crazy, Madison? Someone wanted you dead. We’ve got to talk to the police.”
Teeth chattering from shock, Ma
dison knew she had to think clearly. She shook her head from side to side, fighting tears, trying to breathe deeply and collect herself, squeezing her eyes shut to try to stave off the vision of the burning car that she was certain was now forever etched in her mind.
“John…we’ve got to get to your place. Fast.” She pulled him down the steep staircase into the suffocating air of the subway station. The smell of urine and stale, unmoving grimy air assaulted their nostrils.
“Give me a few dollars,” she urged him. Taking the bills he handed her, she bought a Metrocard and led him through the turnstiles.
Maddie kept looking over her shoulder, moving farther down the platform. A few minutes later, she could hear a subway car in the distance, its lights a glow down the tunnel. Finally, a subway car rattled to a stop, and its doors opened with a swooshing sound.
“Come on,” she urged.
Shaking his head, he nonetheless followed her. “You’re in shock, Maddie. We need to go back. We’re witnesses.”
They hopped on the subway car. Its doors whooshed shut, and it pulled out of the station and into the dark of the tunnels.
“Where is this car headed?” she whispered.
“Not sure.”
“Let’s ride it for a couple of stops, get off and hail a cab to your place.”
“Madison…”
“Shh…” She squeezed his hand, teeth still chattering.
Three stops later, they found themselves within thirty blocks of John’s town house. They hailed a cab and were dropped off. Madison looked at her watch. It was just before midnight.
They let themselves into John’s apartment, but she stopped him before he turned on the lights.
“Wait! They could be watching us.”
“Who’s they? Madison…what is going on?”
“You have to trust me. I need to call the FBI. Remember that man I was seen with in the Rubi Cho column?”
He nodded. “How could I not remember? I was so jealous.”
“He’s an FBI agent.”
She conveniently left out that she was undercover, too.
Using her cell phone, she dialed Troy, gave him her location and told him she was safe.
“Whoever did this thinks I’m dead, Troy, and that’s a good thing. I need you to do one more thing before you come here.”
“What?”
“I need you to use your FBI credentials to get into my office. In the upper-left drawer of the credenza against the far windows is a locked briefcase. I need you to bring it.”
“Okay. Hang in there.”
“Trying to.”
“I won’t be able to get there for a little while. I’ll need to gather together a team. Give me a couple hours.”
“Won’t matter. Not like I’m going to get any sleep anyway.”
She hung up and then John came behind her in the dark.
“Let’s get out of these clothes and take a hot shower. I want to get the smell of smoke and street off of me.”
She nodded and allowed him to lead her into the bathroom. They took off their evening clothes. Compared to her apartment, John’s little bathroom was cramped, and the two of them barely fit in the shower stall, wedged together, their bodies close.
He turned on the hot water, still without the lights on, and pulled her to his chest. As the water enveloped them, followed by the steam, Maddie finally allowed herself to absorbeven partiallywhat had just happened. Great wracking sobs escaped from her mouth and she put both of her arms around John’s neck, clinging to him the way a drowning person clings to a life preserver. What if he had been killed? At the thought of the explosion, she felt a pain in her heart.
Charlie was like family to her. He had guarded her with his life…had paid the ultimate price for being part of her world. Guilt consumed her, and she laid her head against John’s chest and allowed the water to cascade over her, washing away some of the pain as he just held her.
After the hot water began to run lukewarm, John turned off the shower and helped her from the stall, wrapping her in a big well-worn towel. He led her into the bedroom and dug through his drawersstill in the dark, his room only illuminated by a single night-lightuntil he found a pair of sweatpants for her and a big sweatshirt. He donned the samesweats and a T-shirt, then a zippered sweatshirt he sometimes wore for his morning run.
“Want a cup of tea, angel?”
Madison still had the sniffles from her crying jag. “Kind of, yeah.”
She followed him into the kitchen as he readied a kettle of boiling water, his profile illuminated in the moonlight coming in through the kitchen window. Then he poured her a cup of peppermint tea and made himself one.
“I keep this tea for when I have a cold. Drink it down…. Come on, let’s go to the couch.”
Madison sat down. He went to get the comforter from his bed and wrapped it around her, then sat down next to her. For a long while, he didn’t say anything, just pulled her against him and stroked her damp hair. Finally, he cleared his throat.
“I need to ask…Why are you involved with the FBI, Madison?”
She knew Troy would never reveal her status as an undercover operative. So she told John pretty much the rest of the story, leaving out her own involvementClaire’s death, her father, rumors of offshore accounts and the mob.
“Basically, Claire was onto something. I really can’t be one hundred percent sure of what, but I have a really good theory I’ve been developing all week.”
“So you think whoever’s behind this was who ran us off the roador tried toat West Point.”
Madison nodded, feeling almost robotic, numb.
“Can’t the FBI and police protect you?”
“Yes, but until all the pieces to this puzzle are solved and the people responsible are arrested, I can only be but so safe.”
John rubbed his eyes with weariness, worry. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Neither do I…and every time I think about Charlie, I want to just curl into a fetal position and cry. But I’d rather get mad. I’d rather get these bastards once and for all.”
In the dark, she couldn’t see John’s face. She curled against him and he stroked her face.
“I love you, Madison,” he whispered almost inaudibly.
Madison had never really said the words to a lover. She had never even thought them about anyone else. She was too busy. Her BlackBerry was jammed full, her voice mail always overloaded, her e-mail overflowing. Love would have just been another inconvenience to fit into her scheduleright there wedged between a meeting with the board of directors and dinner with the head of the zoning commission. But this felt right.
“I love you, too.”
Around three in the morning, she and John were dozing, when there was a knock on the door. John startled awake, stood and went to his peephole.
“It’s that guy…from the FBI,” he whispered.
Madison rubbed her eyes. “Let him in.” Her body ached, and she felt as if she’d been sucker punched in the gut.
Troy nodded at John, shook his hand and identified himself, and entered with another agent he introduced as Mark Layton.
“I brought the briefcase, Madison, but before we go over all that, we want to get you to a safe house. Right now, we were able to talk to the M.E. He’s saying two people were blown up in the limoyou and Charlie. That way we can keep you safeno one’s looking for youuntil this is all straightened out.”
“How long will that be?”
“I hope not long at all. But I can’t make you any promises. All I do know is at this point, someone is very, very determined to see you very, very dead.”
“What about John?”
“He’s a material witness. We can hide him, too, but I think sticking a detail on him for a few days will be enough. We’ll say he saw nothing. Honestly, with you dead, they probably think they’re home free.”
“Can you catch whoever did this? Charlie was…he was a really good man.”
“
We’re working on it, Madison. We’ll get them. How quickly depends on what’s in this briefcase you had me bring.”
“Okay. So when would I go to this safe house?”
“Now, Madison. There isn’t a lot of time to second-guess this whole thing.”
Madison’s gut twisted some more. She had gone from the height of being in love, dancing at the Waldorf, to death, grief, and now life on the run, all in the space of one night.
She turned to face John. “I have to go with them. I can’t let anyone else die because of me. They’ll watch you for a few days. But promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Forget about me, Madison. You’re the one who’s in danger. How can I get in touch with you?”
Madison looked at Troy.
“You can’t. Not directly.” He took out his wallet and handed John a card. “You can call my cell and relay messages. And I can relay them to you. But until this blows over, your best bet is just to act the role of the grieving boyfriend.”
Madison rushed over to John and kissed him on the lips. “I’m going to get these guys. I’ll see you soon.”
Looking every bit the part of the grieving boyfriend, John nodded. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Then, with an equally grieving heart, Madison nodded at Troy and left John’s apartment, not quite sure of whenor ifshe would see him again.
Chapter 20
The safe house turned out to be a nondescript motel in southern New Jersey. When they arrived at the room, Madison crashed for an hour or two on the very lumpy mattress, exhaustion overtaking her. When she awoke, Troy and two other agentsLayton and an agent named Lawsonwere there, eating from a platter of cold cuts and catching some of the news coverage of her “death” on CNN.
Stock in Pruitt & Pruitt plummeted with this latest twist, but the board quickly announced the succession of Madison’s uncle Bing, and Wall Street analysts thought there was the possibility of a rebound based on rumors of an acquisition of a cereal and sports-drink company.
“Frankly, Jim,” one analyst said, staring at the camera, “Pruitt & Pruitt has a long history stemming from early in the last century. They invest wisely, diversify intelligently, and have had good leadership. I think they can rebound from this.”