DOZIER’S GRASP TIGHTENED ON HER FINGERS, growing almost painful. “I can trust you, Kate. I know you want the best for her. And you . . . you . . .” He coughed again, his whole body shaking with the effort as he tried to sit up.
“Calm down, Dozier. Everything’s all right.” Kate could do little else but extricate her hand and help brace him so he could cough more easily. He was far too fragile to slap on the back to help with the coughing. After the painful barrage of explosive coughs, he slumped onto the bed again. She helped reposition his oxygen tube and other monitoring wires and leads, muttering words of assurance.
His eyes remained half-closed, as if the energy to open them was beyond him for the moment. “She’s never going to forgive me. I’ll have given her reason to hate me, just like I gave Jack.”
“Shh . . . Emily loves you unconditionally. If you’ve done something, just tell her and she’ll forgive you.”
“No, she won’t.” He squeezed his eyes shut and tears spilled down either temple. “I’m going to die . . . without a single member of my family at my side. I’ve either outlived them or run them off. All I’ll have is a couple of business acquaintances who have taken pity on an old man. I’ll die and then they’ll forget all about me.”
Before Kate could argue otherwise, he pushed on. “And what happens after that? I have no heavenly award waiting for me. Not an evil ol’ rascal like me. I’ve done too many bad things, hurt too many people.” He turned his tear-streaked face to Kate. “I don’t want to hurt Emily. Or disappoint her. But I never thought what I did would come out or matter in the long run. I guess I never expected my run to last this long. Getting old just means you’ve had more time to do stupid things to hurt people.”
As much as Kate didn’t want to learn what new scandal waited in the wings, she realized she needed to know —if not for Emily’s sake, then for Dozier’s pacification. She prayed that she could come up with a response that would ease his concern and help him stop suffering so much. That sort of mental turmoil couldn’t be good for the upcoming operation and the recovery afterward.
Later she’d worry about how it impacted Emily.
“What can I do to help, Dozier? If I can do anything to help, to fix things, I’ll certainly try.”
He released a ragged sigh. “Tell Emily I’m sorry. I should have said something when she brought that girl into the campaign.”
By that girl Kate somehow knew exactly whom he was talking about. Her pulse quickened and her breath caught in her throat. “You mean Maia?”
He nodded. “Like the apple that Eve used to tempt Adam. All shiny and pretty on the outside, but full of evil and temptation on the inside.”
His analogy was a bit strained, but Kate didn’t want to correct him. What she wanted to know was more about an apple called Maia. “What do you mean? What did Maia do?”
“Temptation,” he said between gritted teeth. “It’s been my downfall all my life, you know. My Miriam said as much on her deathbed. She said, ‘Dozier, you gotta resist the temptations of the office. If you don’t, your greed will bring you down someday.’” He sniffed. “I don’t want my greed to bring down our Emily. I don’t want to let her down like I let Jack down. I never meant to involve her.”
Despite being lost at what he was talking about, Kate did her best to calm him with generic assurances. But behind the platitudes, she couldn’t help but be worried. Dozier was talking life-and-death matters. Maia was already dead. What was lurking under the surface here? How could she learn more without getting him even more upset? But that wasn’t a problem, she realized. The man was determined to tell her no matter what the cost.
“She was such a pretty young thing, that Maia girl. Despite what she was doing, I never wanted her dead.”
A shiver went up Kate’s spine.
He drew a deep breath that seemed to help him regain some control. “I want you to promise that you’ll forgive me —forgive an old, selfish man who couldn’t control his greed and his lust.” He reached up and touched Kate’s face. “I know you work hard to keep a direct pipeline to God. I’ve seen it in your eyes, in what you do and say every day.”
His next statement caught Kate completely by surprise.
“And I’ve resented that fact ever since we met.”
At her puzzled expression, he added, “Not resented you but resented that you could work in this business and not get caught up in its seamier side. We both know that politics can be a dirty, filthy business. But you seem to rise above it. They call you Spotless Kate behind your back, you know. Nothing bad seems to stick to you —no stains, no grime.”
She tried to laugh. “Spotless? Hardly. I’m tempted by the same things that have tempted everybody else —money, power, position. Maybe the only difference is that I keep asking for help in order to resist those things I ought to resist. And when I’ve failed —and trust me, I fail to resist many things —I’ve asked for forgiveness from God.”
“From God?” He almost spat the words out. “It’s too late for God to forgive me.”
Kate gripped his hand. “It’s never too late. God’s capacity to forgive is infinite.”
Dozier coughed out a laugh. “He and I haven’t been on speaking terms in years . . . a lot like me and Jack. I’ve already fallen a long way down. Too far to be forgiven.” His focus wavered. “I could tell you stories . . .”
She waited, not wanting to prompt him for details but hoping he would offer them on his own. Somehow she knew it wouldn’t take much to open the floodgates.
She was right.
Dozier pressed the heel of his hand to his closed eyes, scrubbing away his tears. “I never meant to hurt Jack, but I did. And I definitely don’t want to hurt Emily, but I’ve made a big mess of things.”
His breath caught in this throat. “I thought I’d been careful,” he said in a low voice. “Nothing was in my name, not outright. But somehow that little vixen Maia found out.”
Watching Dozier confess was like watching a train as it hurtled over a trestle that ended halfway over the river gulch. “Found out what?” she prompted.
“I couldn’t help it,” he said like a plaintive child. “I couldn’t turn it down, not that kind of money. I’ve worked hard all my life and I ought to be able to profit from that hard work.”
“Dozier . . .”
“It’s Pembrooke.”
“What about it?”
“I’ve accepted some . . . payments for helping put them in the right place to get some key government contracts.”
“How much?”
“No cash, mind you. Just a little bit of stock and more in stock options.”
The admission caught Kate short. She had expected worse —a tale like Charles Talbot’s, of personal debauchery or some capital crime gone unpunished. But this was still enough to rattle her.
How had she missed it? She’d done a deep background check on Dozier when it became evident that he was going to be part of Emily’s inner circle during the campaign. She performed a similar check on every person who became part of Emily’s “Kitchen Cabinet.” At no point had she, or later the FBI investigators, uncovered anything that even suggested he held any stock in the Pembrooke Group, one of the world’s largest petroleum technology industries. Such possession would have immediately been a red flag, screaming, “Conflict of interest!”
Not only did Pembrooke have deep infiltration into almost every aspect of oil production around the world, but they also had hundreds of government contracts, many of them large military ones. Dozier must have sat on over a dozen committees that were instrumental in awarding contracts to Pembrooke.
Kate found herself lowering her voice in deference to the sensitivity of the news. “How much stock?” Her mind raced ahead. If it was a few paltry shares, then perhaps he’d simply overlooked his ownership, having lost the particulars in a sea of similar stock holdings.
“Right now, I own only a couple of shares —not that much really. But the big problem is that I have a long call stock option I was going to exercise as soon as we got her energy program off the ground. We both know Pembrooke is positioned to make a killing on the program, and because of that I stand to make a lot of profit.”
“How much?” she repeated.
“Fifteen the first year.”
Her heart sank. “Thousand?”
“Million.”
She fought to catch her own breath. “D-does Emily know?”
“I never told her.”
Even though Dozier was deathly ill, the old man still clung to his cagey ways. They both knew that not telling Emily and her not knowing were two totally different things.
Despite a part of her that whispered she should back off, considering his condition, Kate knew this might be her last chance to get any details. “So Maia found out about this?”
His face grew paler than before.
“Not quite. She found out that I got involved with Pembrooke while I chaired the House Armed Services Committee. She’d been blackmailing me for the last two months, ever since she figured out how they’ve been paying me for my cooperation and influence. You can’t imagine the amount of money she extorted from me. And I think she had dirt on everybody. I don’t know where she got it, but I know she was trouble. She hinted she could bring down Emily —the whole government —any time she wanted to. I couldn’t have that. I was so relieved when she died.”
Kate couldn’t help herself. “Dozier!”
He nodded. “I know. You have no idea how sorry I am that this happened. It was wrong. Unconscionably wrong. I wanted to tell you, but the scandal went a lot deeper than just a conflict of interest with an adviser. I didn’t want to admit it before, but I have to now.” He reached out blindly for her hand. “Kate, I’m dying. I know it. You know it. I can’t go to my grave with something like this on my conscience.” His lip quivered with emotion he barely kept in check. “But I don’t think God will forgive me for being a greedy old so-and-so. He’s going to let me burn in hell, isn’t he? For all the evil things I’ve done?”
Kate realized she needed to push aside her worries about Emily’s political liabilities and deal with the more pressing issue of Dozier’s concerns about his eminent disposition. She closed her eyes and prayed for help, for guidance, for the right words.
He touched her hand. “Can you forgive me, Kate?”
She opened her eyes and found a smile. “Of course I can, Dozier. And I do. But my forgiveness isn’t as important. Ask for God’s forgiveness. Explain to him what you realize now. Tell him what mistakes you’ve made and ask him for forgiveness.”
Dozier turned his head away. “It can’t be that easy.”
“Of course it can be. If you mean what you say and say what you mean. If you’re being honest with yourself and with God. His grace is large enough for the most undeserving to come to him. All we have to do is ask him into our hearts, ask him for forgiveness, repent, and follow him.”
He turned back to face her. “He’ll wipe the slate clean?” His momentary look of hope faded fast. “But knowing me, if I survive this, I’ll just dirty it up again.”
“That’s why you pray for guidance and forgiveness every day. We’re all imperfect. We all fall from the path, sometimes by inches, sometimes by miles. But the difference is we can be forgiven if we truly believe in God.”
“Forgiven for a lifetime of sin?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “All you have to do is believe with your heart.”
“My heart . . .” His laugh turned into a grunt. “It’s as broken as my soul. God may be willing to fix one with forgiveness, but I seriously doubt he can fix the other. I don’t know if he should even try. Seems to me it’d be better if I left this world in a hurry, before I can do anyone else any harm.” His eyes clouded.
“I’ve done terrible things, Kate. Not just in the past but recently. I’m truly sorry about them. I just hope it doesn’t come back to hurt Emily. She’s the one person I’ve always tried to help, never wanted to hurt.”
“I know, Dozier.” She took his hand. “And she knows that too.”
“Will you tell her I’m sorry?”
“Emily will be here to visit you in just a couple of hours. Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“I have a feeling I’m not going to be here in a couple of hours.” Panic began to fill his eyes. “I’m so sorry about what I did to Maia. I never wanted the girl to die, even if it was the perfect solution to my problems. I just wanted her to stop.” He tried to cough but obviously had no energy left. “And Jack. Tell Jack I forgive him and I hope he’ll forgive me.”
“Of course,” she said, even as she wondered, What did you do to Maia? What kind of perfect solution? But instead of voicing the thoughts screaming in her head, she maintained her reassuring smile as best she could and kept her voice even. “Tell me about Maia, Dozier.”
His eyes drifted closed. “It was too easy. . . .”
“Dozier?” Don’t go to sleep now. I need to know.
He didn’t respond. Suddenly the machinery monitoring his vitals released a loud alarm. She stared at the jagged lines on the screens, not quite sure what she was looking at.
Two nurses burst into the room. “Code blue. Get the crash cart.”
Kate retreated to the far corner of the room, rocked by both the medical emergency and what appeared to be Dozier’s deathbed confessions. The only thing she could do to help was pray —for Dozier’s soul and, as an afterthought, for increased clarity concerning his confusing statements. And as always, she prayed for Emily’s sake and safety.
After twenty minutes of valiant efforts, the medical team called the death of Dozier Marsh at 4:01 p.m.