Vote Then Read: Volume II

by Lauren Blakely

  In spite of the tension between them, Isabel smiled. Years from now, when she was feeling isolated and alone and this fling was but a distant memory, she would have the moment Alec had shot out the cameras just so he could be with her to replay in her mind. She would revel in the heat and exhilaration that infused the memory.

  Alec slid back the dead bolt and opened the door.

  Nicole snarled and thrust her iPad into his hands. “Explain this, you bastard.”

  Isabel read the headline on the screen over Alec’s shoulder. Dead Soldier’s Sister is Suspect in Senate Candidate’s Alleged Abduction.

  24

  Bile rose in Alec’s throat as he read the Baltimore Sun article—which quoted Nicole directly as having stated Isabel was suspect, in words eerily similar to those she’d said in his office yesterday. Isabel’s arrest on the restraining order violation was mentioned, and the FBI was quoted as offering no comment on the ongoing investigation. But it only got worse from there. The article proceeded to neatly lay out the case against Isabel, attributing the speculation to “confidential sources within the Ravissant campaign.” She was painted as imbalanced, possibly dangerously so, with a strong vendetta against Alec in particular.

  The stricken look on Isabel’s face triggered a fresh wave of horror. “I had nothing to do with this, Isabel.”

  She turned to Nicole. “Did you say what the article quotes you as saying?”

  Nicole grimaced even as she nodded. Alec had to give her credit for being honest.

  Isabel took a step back. “I thought we were friends.”

  “We are, Isabel. But that doesn’t mean I won’t consider all possibilities. Tell me you don’t suspect me. I dare you.”

  Isabel glared at Nicole but said nothing. She turned to Alec. “And you. You’ve been seducing me even as you’ve been looking for ways to use me to get your campaign back on track?” She jabbed a finger at the offending iPad. “Don’t think I don’t see this for what it really is. I’m the perfect goddamned suspect, because if I take the fall, your campaign won’t have to face questions of whether you have dirty operatives on the payroll. You won’t be tainted by scandal.”

  “Isabel, I told my campaign manager in no uncertain terms you’re off-limits. When I find out who did this, their ass is fired.”

  “Right. When they single-handedly saved your campaign with this smear piece?”

  “Watch me.”

  “We’ve got other problems to deal with first, Rav,” Nicole said, her voice stiff with anger. “Someone quoted what I said in a private meeting in your office. If it wasn’t you, then who was it?”

  Alec was damn tempted to point a finger right back at Nicole, but exchanging suspicions would get them nowhere fast.

  “Who was present when you said it?” Isabel asked.

  “Hatcher, Rav, and me.”

  “And Hans,” Alec added. “He can hear everything said in both our offices.”

  “Hatcher could have done it to save your campaign,” Nicole said. “He needs you to win to secure the CEO position.”

  That balloon would never float. Alec knew Keith was adamantly opposed to using Isabel that way. He’d been outraged by Carey’s suggestion. Nicole’s casting suspicion on Keith hinted at her own desperation.

  “I think we need to sweep my office for bugs again.”

  Isabel felt as if she’d been hit with infrasound. Her pathetic life had been laid bare in the papers in an appalling exposé. She’d been labeled antisocial. A loner. Out for revenge. Jesus, put up a sketch of the Unabomber next to the piece, and no one would bat an eye. She’d been tried and convicted by the Baltimore Sun. Not too surprisingly, the paper had endorsed Alec weeks ago.

  A search for bugs in Alec’s office turned up a listening device. Meaning once again, everyone was a suspect, and yet as much as it hurt to consider it, Isabel couldn’t help but wonder if Alec was behind it. He had the most to gain. She only had to remain the prime suspect until after Election Day. After that, she could be neatly cleared and he could claim no harm, no foul.

  Except she’d been made to look like a bitter, grieving, vindictive sociopath in an article that was certain to go viral. All harm, all foul. Whether she was guilty or innocent didn’t matter. What mattered was Alec couldn’t lose with her taking the spotlight.

  He was down in the polls, and he’d told her himself losing was not an option. He could have done this.

  She closed her eyes and remembered last night, when she’d finally released her guilt over wanting him and enjoyed every minute of being in his arms and taking him into her body. There’d been a connection that was more that sex. More than fulfilling the need for orgasm. But what if, for him, it had just been a means to an end?

  The suspicion settled in and made a home with her deepest insecurities. Seducing her could be a way to control her. To convince her to play the game, take the heat until the election.

  She’d returned to his suite alone while he called his campaign manager, supposedly to demand answers. He didn’t want her in the room while he made the calls. She dropped onto the couch and picked up Gandalf, who seemed annoyed to be woken, but he settled onto her lap anyway.

  They hadn’t had a chance to finish discussing his dream, which they both knew was memory. He’d heard her singing the title song from The Sound of Music in the dream. What she hadn’t told him yet was she had sung that song on Thursday, but it hadn’t been while she was working for the DNR.

  She’d sung it during her lunchtime foray onto Raptor land to look for the cave.

  Apparently, she’d gotten close.

  Alec hung up the phone, having just granted an impromptu, angry interview to the reporter who’d skewered Isabel. He had no clue how the reporter would slant the piece. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for politics, but how could he sit back and watch the press go after Isabel, all because of him?

  She’d saved his life, and they’d flayed her.

  It would only get worse if she were his girlfriend or wife—she would be an open target as the candidate’s—or senator’s—wife. As far as he could tell, only the youngest children of politicians got a free pass. And sometimes not even them.

  He ground his palms into his eyes. Nearly six a.m. and it had already been a helluva day.

  He’d assaulted Isabel in his sleep, and he’d yet to tell her he’d seen the lynx petroglyph in his dream. A dream that wasn’t a dream at all.

  He’d heard her singing, which meant she’d been near the cave as he was being tortured. If she could narrow down where she’d been when she sang that song, they’d have a starting point for the search. But the article had undermined every ounce of trust Alec had managed to build with her.

  He was falling in love with her, but from the look in her eyes, she not only didn’t trust him, she was back to dislike. Possibly even hate.

  And he couldn’t exactly blame her.

  Did she once again think he might have had a hand in covering up Vin’s murder? Had they gone all the way back to the start with the awful article?

  He tilted back in his chair and stared, unseeing, at the ceiling. He’d had about four hours sleep, and much as he wanted to crawl back into bed with Isabel, he had a feeling she wouldn’t welcome him.

  I attacked her.

  He feared what he could have done if she hadn’t woken him with the blow to his temple.

  In the cave, muscle memory had taken over, and he’d defended himself with the ferocity in which he’d been trained. The same ferocity he hoped soldiers learned here, because in the heat of battle, sometimes only muscle memory, thanks to intensive training, could see a soldier through.

  The Army had taught him how to kill, and he was good at it. Very, very good.

  He stiffened. A memory hovered, just out of reach.

  The memory dissolved before it could solidify. He shook it off. Probably it was an op in Afghanistan. Or Pakistan.

  He picked up his phone and dialed. It was time to fire his campaign manager.

&n
bsp; Isabel pulled on her hiking clothes and stuffed her pack with all the items that had been removed to dry when they returned from their swim down the river. The trail mix, jerky, and energy bars were all sealed in their packages, nice and dry, a ready breakfast on the fly.

  From her rarely used purse she grabbed the phone and keys for the car Alec’s employees had delivered to her on Friday night. The screen of the phone was cracked. She unlocked it to make sure it still worked and saw she’d missed some calls. Odd, since no one but Alec had this number. There was a text as well. A quick check showed the text and the missed calls were from the Fairbanks lawyer Alec had hired for her. She’d forgotten about the legal issues with everything else that had happened.

  But she didn’t have time or the emotional energy to face that now and tucked the phone into her backpack. She’d deal with the lawyer later. She had more important items on today’s agenda.

  She faltered as she made her way through the labyrinth to the front door. Should she stop and talk to Alec? Give him the chance to deny again that he was behind the article that had presented a caricature of her to the world and called it a photograph?

  Could she look into his eyes and ask him point-blank what he would do if she found the cave? Given the slant of the article, at this point, finding the cave would only hurt his campaign. If she were proven right, she’d no longer be the perfect scapegoat. Even worse, he’d have to face difficult questions about his abduction. If voters believed he’d been abducted by pretty much anyone but her, they might have serious questions about his mental fitness for such a high-stress office.

  He’d been tortured, like Vin. He’d said as much when describing the dream. This wasn’t John McCain running for office years after being tortured in Vietnam. Alec had suffered through a life-altering event less than sixty days before the election.

  If he wanted to win, the cave could never be revealed.

  But still, she couldn’t just walk out. She didn’t want to believe he was the kind of man who would put his election above the truth. Above justice for Vin.

  She turned down the short corridor that led to his office, thankful that this early in the morning, Hans wasn’t at his desk.

  She could hear Alec’s voice through the door, confirming that Hans could indeed hear every word spoken in the office. She couldn’t help but wonder if Robert Beck had planned that as well, and why.

  “What are the polling numbers in the Piedmont region?” Alec asked. After a short pause, he cursed. “We’re going to need another poll after the new ad rolls out with quotes from the Sun, if there’s anything we can use.”

  She didn’t know which was more appalling, that it was business as usual for him with the campaign, or that he planned to use quotes from the article in his TV ads.

  Who was this man? In the last five days, she’d thought she’d gotten to know the soldier and the boss, but now she realized she didn’t know the candidate at all.

  She headed for the front entrance. In moments, she was behind the wheel and driving through the main gate. The security guard merely nodded as she passed. He was there to keep people out, not to trap her inside.

  25

  “She left. And you just let her go.” Alec stared down the security guard who’d let Isabel pass through the gate without so much as a phone call to Alec to inform him. She had at least a twenty-minute head start.

  “Yes, sir. She was driving the vehicle you signed out to her on Friday night. I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware she was a prisoner here. Sir.” The guard said the last bit with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

  Alec was not amused.

  He’d forgotten he’d given her the keys after they arrived on the compound. At the time, it had been a gesture of trust. It wasn’t like she’d needed them. Or even wanted them, considering how badly she’d wanted inside the compound in the first place.

  She must have gone to the forest. To find the cave. His best guess was she knew where she’d been in the forest at the time she sang the song from The Sound of Music. Which meant she’d been on Raptor land Thursday afternoon, searching for the cave. That she’d withheld that information from him was yet another bitter pill to swallow.

  Now, like a fool, she’d gone off to find the cave by herself.

  Why?

  Because she feared him? Or because she didn’t trust him?

  There was a huge difference. The fear he could understand. He’d hurt her. Twice. And he’d feel sick about that to his dying day.

  But the trust thing, this late in the game, he had a problem with that.

  The idea that she believed he was behind the article made his guts clench. He’d fired Carey without hesitation and replaced her with a far less experienced aide who would spend the next week scrambling to figure out the job during the most critical juncture of the campaign.

  Unless Stimson said something profoundly stupid or was caught in a sex scandal, Alec would have a hell of a time recouping his lead after this fiasco.

  But while he’d been throwing away his campaign, she’d taken off to find the cave—the one he’d been tortured in—without him.

  He’d been inside her body and had made her come as he tangled his fingers in her sexy curls. She’d tipped her head back and the sound of her orgasm echoed from the firing lanes. He’d taken and given, and he wanted to give and take more. He wanted all of her. Not just her body.

  And she still didn’t trust him.

  He turned on his heel and marched to his quarters. He’d grab his pack and set out to find her. To hell with the compound closure and mass eviction of the staff. Keith would handle it. That was why Alec was paying him the big bucks.

  His company was falling apart. His campaign was all but over. But the only thing that mattered was finding Isabel.

  Actually, he had to admit this was a damn good time to search for the cave. Everyone they were suspicious of had a job to do inside the compound to manage the closure, meaning they couldn’t be in the forest, hunting Isabel with infrasound.

  The thought of her alone in the woods, being chased down by men with infrasound—just as Vin had been—made him sick with fear, which almost eclipsed his anger.

  Almost.

  In his quarters, he grabbed his cell and dialed Lee, who should be landing in Fairbanks soon. He hoped to hell Isabel had taken the phone he’d given her and Lee could activate the GPS and locate her. She was probably still in cell range, but in another twenty or thirty minutes, he’d never find her.

  As he spoke with Lee, he loaded his pack with supplies. Starting with his gun and several magazines. More memories of what had happened to him in the cave returned while Alec had been on the phone with his new campaign manager. He hadn’t just been tortured; he’d been interrogated. He didn’t remember what he’d been asked, just that there’d been many questions, and he’d come close to breaking.

  If infrasound could be used to torture and interrogate without leaving a mark, without the victim even remembering what had happened to them, then how could the Geneva Convention protect against it? It could take days, weeks, even months of torture to break a soldier, but Alec had reached that point in mere hours. He might’ve broken, if Isabel’s singing hadn’t woken him from some sort of trancelike state.

  He might find himself facing a cover-up after all, but not of Vin’s murder; the cover-up would be to prevent other countries from adding infrasound to their arsenal.

  Today there would be no singing. She’d give no warning she was coming. The bears would just have to deal. She had a bigger, scarier predator to deal with. She would find that damn cave and prove once and for all her brother had been murdered. No one would be able to cover it up. And no one could claim she was crazy or vindictive.

  There would be justice for Vin at last, and she could get the hell out of Alaska and away from Alec Ravissant and his seductive lies.

  She usually hated ATVs, but today she’d give anything for access to one. It would make getting to the part of the compound where the cave h
ad to be so much faster. After all, she’d seen tracks on Thursday. It was one of the reasons her excursion lasted longer than the usual hour. She’d followed the tracks until they disappeared at the edge of the stream. She hadn’t spotted similar tracks on the opposite bank, but it also hadn’t been a good idea to cross. It was a small stream. Ankle to midcalf deep. But still, crossing glacial runoff in Alaska always held risk. No point in doing it without cause, and on Thursday she’d needed to finish her survey.

  But today was different. Odds were, after today, she wouldn’t have a job at the DNR anymore, but it didn’t matter. She was done with Alaska.

  She had no clue where she’d go next. She hadn’t completely burned her bridge with the PhD program in Oregon, but at the same time, she’d lived in Portland longer than she’d been anywhere since she was fourteen.

  She’d always wanted to try Montana.

  But before she could head to big sky country, she needed to find the damn cave. She reached a fork in the logging road and stopped the car to study her quad map. The map was old. The logging road had been added five years ago, and it had been months since she’d driven down this road. After a while, all forest roads blurred together in her mind. If she remembered correctly, this was the closest route to that edge of the compound, but she couldn’t be certain. Detailed maps drawn by the logging company were in her cabin. She’d considered going home to get them, but she’d wanted as much of a head start as she could get.

  Sure as hell Alec would come after her once he guessed where she’d gone.

  She pulled out the cell phone and turned it on. There was a faint signal. She’d probably lose coverage in the next half mile. She’d find the cave, get the coordinates, take pictures of whatever she found, and head back here as fast as possible. She’d send the photos to Alec’s political opponent, Officer Westover, the FBI, TMZ, and whoever else she could think of. She had no intention of giving the Baltimore Sun the story. They could go to hell as far as she was concerned.