28

Lyn Carson stood at the bedroom window of the suite high up in the Omni Shoreham Hotel. Dusk was extinguishing the daylight, like a mother snuffing out candles one by one. Ribbons of lights moved along Massachusetts Avenue, and the skeletal structure of the Connecticut Avenue Bridge was lit by floodlights. She and her husband were here for a few days to escape the depressing reality that each hour of each day pressed more heavily in on them.

Alli was somewhere out there. Lyn tried willing her into being, to stand here, safe beside her.

Hearing Edward moving about in the sitting room, she turned. She knew why he liked this storied hotel above all others in the District. Though its architecture was blunt to the point of being downright ugly, it was downstairs in room 406D that Harry Truman, whom Edward so admired, had often come to play poker with his friends Senator Stewart Symington, Speaker of the House John McCormack, and Doorkeeper of the House Fishbait Miller.

Just then, her husband’s cell phone rang and her heart leapt into her throat. My Alli, my darling, she thought, running through the open doorway. Her thoughts swung wildly: They’ve found her, she’s dead, oh my God in Heaven, let it be good news!

But she stopped short when Edward, seeing the look on her face, gave her a quick shake of his head. No, it wasn’t news of Alli, after all. Churning with disappointment and relief, Lyn turned away, stumbled back to the sitting room, half-blinded by tears. Where are you, darling? What have they done to you?

She stood by the window, watching with a kind of irrational fury the indifferent world. How could people laugh, how could they be driving to dinner, having parties, making love, how could they be out jogging, or meeting under a lamppost. How could they be carefree when the world was so filled with dread? What was wrong with them?

She clasped her palms together in front of her breast. Dear God, she prayed for the ten-thousandth time, please give Alli the strength to survive. Please give Jack McClure the energy and wisdom to find her. God, give my precious daughter back to me, and I’ll sacrifice anything. Whatever you want from me I’ll gladly give, and more. You are the Power and the Glory forever and ever. Amen.

Just then she felt Edward’s strong arms around her, and her shell of toughness—hard but brittle—shattered to pieces. Tears welled out of her eyes and a sob was drawn up from the depths of her. She turned into his chest, weeping uncontrollably as black thoughts rolled through her mind like thunderheads.

Edward Carson held her tight, kissed the top of her head. His own eyes welled with tears of despair and frustration. “That was Jack. No news yet, but he’s making progress.”

Lyn made a little sound—half gasp, half moan—at the back of her throat.

“Alli’s a strong girl, she’ll be all right.” He stroked her back, soothing them both. “Jack will find her.”

“I know he will.”

They stood like that for a long time, above their own Washington, the world at their feet, the taste of ashes in their mouths. And yet their hearts beat strongly together, and where hearts were strong, they knew, there was fight yet left. There was hope. Hope and faith.

A sharp rap on the door to the sitting room caused them both to start.

“It’s okay.” Edward Carson kissed her lightly on the lips. “Rest a little now before dinner.”

She nodded, watched him cross the bedroom, close the connecting door behind him. Rest, she thought. How does one rest with a heart full of dread?

The president-elect pulled the door open, stood aside so Dennis Paull could enter, then shut and locked it behind him.

“Nina delivered your message,” Carson said.

“The Secret Service agents outside?”

“Absolutely secure. You can take that to the bank.” He walked over to a sideboard. “Drink?”

“Nothing better.” Paull sat on a sofa that faced the astonishing view. “What I like most about flying is that you’re so high up, there’s nothing but sky. No woes, no uncertainty, no fears.”

He accepted the single-malt with a nod of thanks. Carson had no need of asking what Paull drank. The two men had known each other for many years, long before the current president had been elected to his first term. Two years into that first term, when Paull had been faced with carrying out yet another semi-legal directive he found personally abhorrent, he was faced with a professional dilemma. He might have tendered his resignation, but instead he’d gone to see Edward Carson. In hindsight, of course, Paull understood that he’d already made his choice, which was far more difficult and dangerous than simply throwing in the towel. He’d decided to stay on, to fight for the America he believed in in every way he could. His plan began with the alliance he and Edward Carson formed.

This was surprisingly easy. The two men held the same vision for America, which included returning the country to a healthy separation of church and state. Though fiscal conservatives, they were moderates in virtually every other area. They both disliked partisan politics and despised political hacks. They wanted to get on with things without being encumbered with pork barrel politics. They wanted to mend fences overseas, to try to undo the image of America as bully and warmonger. They wanted their country to be part of the world, separated from it only by oceans. At heart, each in his own way, had come to the same inescapable conclusion: America was at a critical crossroads. The country had to be healed. To do that, it had to be resurrected from the little death of the current administration’s policies. Otherwise, intimidation, divisiveness, and fear would be the legacy of the last eight years.

Neither of them was a starry-eyed idealist; in fact, over the years, they’d each brokered difficult deals, made compromises, some of them painful, in order to achieve their goals. But both did believe that the country was on the wrong path and needed to be set right. So they had agreed. Whenever he could, Paull would secretly work against the Administration’s weakening of democratic freedoms, and in return, Edward Carson would name him Secretary of Defense.

The two men sat in what under other circumstances would have been a comfortable silence. But between them now was the specter of Alli’s abduction and possible death.

“How are you two holding up?” Paull had noticed the president-elect’s reddened eyes the moment he walked through the door.

“As well as can be expected. Any news from Jack?”

“Jack is doing everything he can, I’ve made certain of that,” Paull said. “And he’s protected.”

“Protected.” Carson’s head swung around. “From who?”

Paull stared down into the amber drink, watching the light play off the surface. Only amateurs drank single-malt with ice. “I’d like to say I knew for certain, but I don’t.”

“Give me the next best thing, then.”

Paull had been told that no bodies had been found in the wreck, which meant that Jack had somehow survived the attack. He thought for a moment. “The knives are out. All signs point to the National Security Advisor.” He lifted his eyes. “Trouble is, I suspect he’s not in it alone.”

Paull, staring into the president-elect’s eyes, knew Carson understood he’d meant the president.

After a moment, Carson said very deliberately, “Can you get proof?”

Paull shook his head. “Not before January twentieth. Given time, I think I’ll be able to find a chink in the National Security Advisor’s armor, but I very much doubt I’ll get further.”

Maintaining plausible deniability was any president’s first priority, his most potent line of defense. Carson nodded, sipped his drink. “Getting one will have to suffice, then. It’ll be your first order of business come January twenty-first.”

“Believe me, it’ll be a pleasure.”

The ship’s clock on the mantel chimed in the new hour. Time lay heavy on Edward Carson’s shoulders.

“Look at them down there, Dennis. It’s that hour when the workday is over, when everyone lets out a sigh of relief on their way home. But for me, does evening bring darkness, or the end of my daughter’s life?”

“Do you believe in God, sir?”

The president-elect nodded. “I do.”

“Then for you everything will be all right, won’t it?”

It was late when Nina dropped Jack off. His car, windshield replaced, was waiting for him at the lot of the repair shop. Jack climbed into it warily as well as wearily. He felt as if he’d been beaten with a nightstick for the past few days. Had he slept in all that time? He couldn’t remember. He opened a bottle of water, drank it all down in one long swallow. Speaking of essential functions, apart from the crumb bun he’d wolfed down, when had he last eaten? He vaguely recalled scarfing down an Egg McMuffin, but whether that was this morning or yesterday, he couldn’t say.

It occurred to him that he was hungry. He held the sugar cookies from the All Around Town bakery in his hand, but he didn’t eat them.

Instead, he methodically checked out the environment. He was looking for another Dark Car. No word yet from Bennett on who had sent out the first one. He didn’t know whether that was good news or bad news. He was almost too tired to care.

Finally, he admitted to himself that what he really wanted to do was look in the backseat to see if Emma had magically appeared once more. A flicker of his eyes told him that he was alone in the car. He set the sugar cookies on the seat beside him. An offering or an enticement?

“Emma,” he heard himself say, “are you ever coming back?”

He was appalled at the sound of his own voice. Frightened, too. What was happening to him? Was he cracking up? Surely he hadn’t seen Emma, surely he hadn’t heard her voice. Then what had he seen, what had he heard? Was it all in his head?

All of a sudden, these questions were too big for him. He felt that if he sat with them any longer, his head would explode. He started the car, headed for Sharon’s. She lived in a modest house, one of many identical in shape and size, in Arlington Heights. It took him thirty-five minutes to get there. During that time, he had ample opportunity to make sure an Audi or a Mercedes hadn’t taken the place of the gray BMW.

The lights were on when he pulled into the driveway, and now that he thought about it, he didn’t know whether that was a good or a bad thing. Before he left the car, he checked to see if the cookies had been eaten. They lay against the crease where the seat met the back. They looked sad, forlorn, as if they knew no one would enjoy them. Jack, halfway out of the car, licked his forefinger, picked up a small constellation of crumbs that had formed around the cookies, let them melt on his tongue. He could feel the tears well hotly, so close did he feel to Emma.

He rang the bell, his heart hammering in his chest. Sharon pulled the door open. The scent of chicken and rice wafted out with her, making his mouth water. She regarded him with an unreadable expression. She wore a skirt that clung to her thighs, a sleeveless blouse that showed off her beautiful golden shoulders. Nina would have appeared pale and wan beside her, anorectic instead of willowy. She said nothing for a moment.

“Jack, are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure, it’s just that I can’t remember the last time I had a decent meal.”

“You were on your own so long, I often wondered why you never learned to cook for yourself.”

“The tyranny of shopping makes me anxious.”

She gave him a tentative smile as she moved aside so he could enter.

Jack closed the door behind him. He took off his overcoat, slung it over the back of the living room sofa. Unlike the old house with its familiar creaking he’d moved into when they split, Sharon preferred a modern place. She had busied herself repainting walls in colors she chose, picking out warm carpets, filling each room not only with furniture but accessories as well—scented candles, a log cabin quilt hanging on the wall, small dishes filled with lacquered shells and gaily striped marbles. No unicorns, thankfully, but a variety of other knickknacks and souvenirs, along with keepsakes and photos of Emma and Sharon as a child in handmade frames. None of this, however, made up for the house’s complete lack of character. Unlike his house, it was a two-story box to live in, nothing more. He found being here disorienting and overwhelming. He’d never get used to Sharon living here, living without him.

What did he have of Emma’s? He thought of her iPod, pushed to the back of his ATF locker. One night he took it home and couldn’t sleep. Then again, he must have because at one point he started up from a horrific dream of standing paralyzed and mute as Emma’s car hurtled into the tree. He could hear the crack of the wood, the explosion of glass, see the twists of metal spiraling inward. The car door snapped open, and a shape already curled in death shot out, struck him full in the chest. Then he was sitting up in bed, screaming and shivering, sweat pouring off him like rain. He spent what was left of the night commiserating with Nick Carraway in the pages of his beloved, tattered copy of The Great Gatsby, and was never so glad to see the first blush of dawn turn the darkness gold.

In Sharon’s new digs, he picked up one of the photos of Emma, but the image seemed flat and empty, a shell of what once had been a vibrant and mysterious girl. As for photos of other people in Sharon’s life, he knew there would be none.

Sharon had no past, and so couldn’t understand what appeal it could possibly hold for Jack. She had parents, but she never saw or spoke to them. A brother, as well, in Rotterdam, where he was an international lawyer. For reasons he’d never been able to fathom, Sharon had cut herself off from her family, her past. When they were dating, she told him that she had no family, but after they were married, he found photos in the trash, spilled out of an old cigar box. Her mother, father, and brother.

“They’re dead to me,” she’d said when he’d confronted her. She’d never allowed the subject to come up again.

Did that mean, he often wondered, that Sharon didn’t dream? Because he dreamed only of his past, iterations of it with intended outcomes, or not, bizarre twists and turns that he often remembered after he awoke, and laughed at or puzzled over. It seemed to him that there was a richness in life that came with the years, that only your past could provide. It was unbearable to him to think, as Schopenhauer had written, that no honest man comes to the end of his life wanting to relive it. But it seemed possible to him that Sharon believed just that, that her erasing of her past was an attempt to relive her life.

He put the photo back, turned away, but his mood didn’t improve. The house’s aggressive homeyness produced a hollowness in the pit of his stomach. As for his heart, it had gone numb the moment she appeared at the door.

Below her short skirt, Sharon wore little pink ballet slippers with teeny bows and paper-thin soles. They made her movements around the house elegant and silent, even on the hard tile of the kitchen floor. No matter which way you looked at them, her legs were magnificent. Jack tried not to stare, but it was like asking a moth to ignore a flame.

Sharon opened a glass-fronted cabinet over the sink, stretched up to reach a pair of stemmed glasses. Her figure was highlighted in such a way that Jack felt the need to sit down.

She uncorked a bottle of red wine, poured. “Fortunately, I made enough food for two.”

“Uh-huh,” was all he could muster because he’d bitten back one of his acerbic replies.

She brought the glasses over, handed him one. “What?”

“What what?”

She pulled a chair out, sat down at a right angle to him. “I know that look.”

“What look?” Why all of a sudden did he feel like a felon?

“The ‘Baby, let’s get it on’ look.”

“I was just admiring your legs.”

She got up, took her wineglass to the stove. She stirred a pot, checked the chicken in the oven. “Why didn’t you say that when we were married?” Her voice was more rueful than angry.

Jack waited until she paused to take a sip of wine before he said, “When we were married, I was embarrassed by how beautiful you are.”

She spun around. “Come again?”

“You know how you see a hot movie star—”

Her face grew dark. “Where do you live, Beverly Hills?”

“I’m talking about a fantasy figure, Shar. Don’t tell me you don’t have fantasies about—”

“Clive Owen, if you must know.” She took the bird out, set it aside to allow the juices to settle. “Go on.”

“Okay, so I’m alone with … Scarlett Johansson.”

Sharon rolled her eyes. “Dream on, buddy.”

“I’m alone with her in my mind,” Jack persevered, “but when I try to—you know—nothing happens.”

She dumped the rice into a serving bowl. “Now that’s just not you.”

“Right, not when I’m with you. But Scarlett, when I think about her—really think about her—well, it’s too much. I’m wondering why the hell a goddess like that would be with me. Then the fantasy goes up in smoke.”

She stared intently at the steaming rice. Her cheeks were flushed. After a time, she seemed to find her voice. “You think I’m as beautiful as Scarlett Johansson?”

If he said yes, what would she do? He didn’t know, so he said nothing, even when she turned her head to look at him. Instead, he got up, rather clumsily, and helped her serve the food.

They sank back down into their respective chairs. Wordlessly, she handed him the carving utensils and wordlessly he took them, parting the breast from the bony carcass, as he always did. Sharon served them both, first slices of the chicken, then heaping spoonfuls of rice, and broccoli with oil and garlic. They ate in a fog of self-conscious silence, sinking deeper and deeper into their own thoughts.

Finally, Sharon said, “You’re feeling okay now?”

Jack nodded. “Fine.”

“I thought …” She put her fork down. She’d hardly eaten anything. “I thought maybe after the hospital you might call.”

“I wanted to,” Jack said, not sure that was the truth. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

Sharon settled in her chair. “All right.”

“It’s about Emma.”

She reacted as if he’d shot her. “I don’t—!”

“Just let me—” He held up his hands. “Please, Shar, just let me say what I have to say.”

“I’ve heard everything you need to say about Emma.”

“Not this you haven’t.” He took a deep breath, let it out. He wanted to tell her, and he didn’t. But this time seemed as good as any—better, in fact, than any of their recent meetings. “The fact is—” He seemed to have lost his voice. He cleared his throat. “—I’ve seen Emma.”

“What!”

“I’ve seen her a number of times in the past week.” Jack rushed on at breakneck speed, lest he lose his nerve. “The last time she was sitting in the backseat of my car. She said, ‘Dad.’”

Sharon’s expression told him that he’d made a terrible mistake.

“Are you insane?” she shouted.

“I tell you I saw her. I heard her—”

She jumped up. “Our daughter’s dead, Jack! She’s dead!”

“I’m not saying—”

“Oh, you’re despicable!” Her brows knit together ominously. “This is your way of trying to weasel out of your responsibility for Emma’s death.”

“This isn’t about responsibility, Shar. It’s about trying to understand—”

“I knew you were desperate to crawl out from under your guilt.”

Her wildly gesticulating hands knocked over her wineglass. Then she deliberately knocked over his. “I just didn’t know how desperate.”

Jack was on his feet. “Shar, would you calm down a minute? You’re not listening to me.”

“Get out of here, Jack!”

“C’mon, don’t do that.”

“I said get out!”

She advanced and he retreated, past the seashells and the colored glass, the postcards Emma had sent to them from school, the photos of her as a child. He scooped up his coat.

“Sharon, you’ve misunderstood everything.”

This, of course, was the worst thing he could have said. She flew at him with raised fists, and he backed out the front door so quickly that he stumbled over the top step. She got to slam the door on him once again. Then all the downstairs lights were extinguished and he knew she was sitting, curled up, fists on thighs, sobbing uncontrollably.

He took a convulsive step up, raised his fist to hammer on the door, but his hand flattened out, palm resting on the door as if by that gesture he could feel her presence. Then he turned, went heavily down the steps, returned to his car.