Molly flew in from Cheyenne that night, at Bill Ford’s request. He put her up at the Plaza, the floor below him, a suite not nearly as lavish as his but still much nicer than she would have booked on her own dime. The two of them met there with Sam Jackson at ten o’clock. Molly wasn’t particularly happy, having been summoned cross-country on short notice to help out a man she didn’t have much regard for. But it was part of the job. She’d been hoping to talk to Bill Ford privately before the three of them met but she hadn’t been able to reach him on the phone since she landed at LaGuardia. And when he showed up at her door in the hotel, he had Sam Jackson in tow.
Sam moved to the bar and poured himself a drink. When he offered the bottle toward Molly, she hesitated and then asked for bourbon. To hell with Bill Ford and his prohibition pose, dragging her out of Wyoming at his whim.
Sam sprawled into a chair with his scotch and produced a slip of paper from his pocket, which he handed to Molly. “Use this phone number from now on. The FBI is monitoring the calls on the other one. They don’t need to be privy to the campaign stuff. Last time I looked, this is still America.”
“It’s still America,” Molly said. “But is there still a campaign?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Jesus, man,” Molly said. “How can you even think about anything other than your daughter?”
“Oh, they’ll find her,” Sam said. “These people are idiots but they’re not dangerous. Try to imagine a bunch of tree-huggers kidnapping your kid. Well, that’s exactly what happened here. A bunch of tree-huggers kidnapped my daughter.”
“How do you know that?” Molly asked. “How do you know it’s not a sexual predator?”
“If it is, she’s already dead.” Sam took a drink.
Molly stared at him a moment before glancing over at Bill, who was standing by the large windows, looking at the park. Feeling her eyes on him, he turned.
“The kidnappers have been in touch,” he said. “The media doesn’t know it. But it seems that Sam’s right. They want an apology for some of the things he’s said. It’s a political act, not a criminal act. Well, it’s both actually, but it’s politically driven.”
“What kind of apology?” Molly asked.
Bill looked at Sam. He could answer this one himself.
“For my comments on the Laureltown shooting,” Sam said after a moment. “Which suggests that it’s the anti-gun lobby. Somebody smoking too much pot and watching too much MSNBC.”
“Or somebody from Laureltown?” Molly said.
Sam shook his head. “No. You think a bunch of parents got together to kidnap a child because of a few comments made on a TV show? This is bigger than that and, given the timing, probably designed to drive me out of the race. Well, that’s going to backfire on them.”
“You’re going to continue to campaign?” Molly asked. “For fuck sakes, they have your daughter.”
“Yeah, and they’re going to pay for that. But first of all, let’s use this to our advantage.”
Molly drank some bourbon and ran her fingers across her forehead as she tried to think of what to say to him. “Here’s the thing—you can’t run for a congressional seat in Wyoming without actually being in Wyoming. And you can’t leave New York with your daughter still missing and possibly—I’m sorry—possibly dead. You cannot do either of those things. You cannot ignore the fact that your daughter has been abducted.”
“I have no intention of ignoring it,” Sam said. “I’m going to use it.”
“You’re going to use it.” Molly looked toward Bill for help but he was looking out over the city again. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he wasn’t paying attention. She knew better.
“No surrender,” Sam said then. “That’s my new campaign slogan. No Surrender. It’s a natural progression from all bets are off. These people think they’re going to bring me to heel? They’d better think again. And the voters are going to sympathize with me. The reason I’m not in Wyoming is that I’m here in New York, standing my ground against some anonymous, cowardly urban terrorists. Are you going to tell me that’s not a compelling story line?”
“People are going to want to know why you’re out on the campaign trail at a time like this,” Molly said. “They’re going to ask what you’re doing to get your daughter back.”
“And we’re going to tell them I’m doing everything in my power.”
“Are you?” Molly asked.
“Of course I am. As of tomorrow morning, my house becomes campaign headquarters. I have both the FBI and NYPD following me around anyway, so I might as well move them into the house and tell them to go sit in the corner while they wait for another call to come in. We can do everything from there—whatever radio stuff you can generate from Wyoming, TV hook-ups, print media, whatever. And I can arrange for network time at least a couple of nights a week, under the guise of updating the investigation. This is a godsend. Keep in mind, that the people responsible are quite eager to maintain contact. Which is a positive thing in terms of exposure.”
“But are you doing everything you can?” Molly persisted. “Because I have the sense that you’d be happy if your little girl remained missing until, say—election day? Would that work for you, Sam?”
She saw his eyes go flat and she felt Bill approaching rather quickly. “I don’t think that’s a fair assessment, Molly. We have to play the cards we’ve been dealt here. Sam Jackson is not going to run from a fight.”
“No Surrender,” Sam said again, still glaring at Molly, challenging her.
“Yeah, I got that,” Molly told him. “I just don’t know how this plays back home. It may be a compelling story but is it a Wyoming story? Barton’s people are already referring to Sam as that carpetbagger from New York. Well, this keeps him in New York.”
“It also keeps him on the news all over the country,” Bill reminded her. “Frank Barton would kill for exposure like this.”
Molly pulled back then. She had more to say but she would say it to Bill alone. She’d wait until Sam left the suite, which he did after finishing his drink. He was meeting with someone from the network, he said. Molly might have wondered why he wouldn’t go home to his wife, the mother of their missing ten-year-old daughter, but she was already past wondering things like that about the man.
When he was gone she looked at Bill, who was now sitting on the couch, legs crossed. He’d taken a bottle of juice from the bar and was sipping it.
“What have you gotten me into?” she asked. “The guy just referred to the abduction of his daughter as a godsend.”
Bill shook his head. “He didn’t mean that.”
“He fucking well said it. Please tell me he didn’t take the girl himself. Because that’s all I kept thinking about when he was sitting in that chair, swilling scotch and talking about losing his daughter like he lost his car keys and how he plans to use it to get himself elected. Tell me that he didn’t take her.”
“Hell, he thought maybe we did it.” Bill drank more juice. “No, somebody has her. Somebody with a left-wing agenda. Which is why he’s doing the right thing here and why we have to stick with him. You said it yourself, Molly—he doesn’t have a platform. All he has is an image. But that’s how people get elected nowadays. Sam Jackson is the No Surrender man. If he knuckles under to these—what did he call them—urban terrorists, then he’s finished.”
“Who do you think took her?” Molly asked. “That poor kid.”
“They want an apology for the Laureltown rant,” Bill said. “So I’m guessing it’s some anti-gun group that’s gone rogue. But the type of person who would abduct a child to protest some crass remarks about dead children in a schoolyard is not the type of person who’s going to harm that child.”
“I suppose not,” Molly admitted. “I hope not. But I wouldn’t want my kid’s life hanging on that supposition, would you? Do you think that Sam has come to that conclusion? That’s why he’s acting like—” she hesitated, putting her hands in the air.
“Like what?”
“Like he lost his car keys.”
“I have no idea what goes through the man’s mind,” Bill said. “And I don’t care. Like I said, there’s nothing to him other than an image built on sound bites and rants. But he can get elected because of that, not in spite of it. Besides, we pull him now and we’d be handing the seat to Barton. Four weeks to the election, Molly.”
She took a drink. She knew it was true.
“We play the cards we’re dealt,” Bill reminded her.
“Whether we like them or not,” she said.
Bill shrugged. “Whether we like them or not.”
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Renata asked as she handed him the drink.
They were sitting in the living room of her condo. He had called from the car, while idling outside, saying he’d just left Bill Ford at the Plaza and needed to talk. She’d considered telling him to go home and talk to his wife but had relented and buzzed him up. She poured a scotch for him out of habit and now he was sitting spread-legged on the couch, drinking it. She remained on her feet. She was wearing track pants and a hoodie; she was about to go for a run when he called. Another two minutes and she would have missed him. That would have been fine by her.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what in the fuck are you doing?” she demanded. “Vanessa has been kidnapped and you’re on TV talking shit? Am I missing something here? Did you invent a story about a kidnapping, Sam?”
“Of course not. Good Christ.”
She came reluctantly over to sit down on the couch, away from him though. “So what’s going on?”
He took a drink. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
“You showed up here,” she reminded him.
He shook his head. “All right, you’ve always known what was best for me. I feel as if I’ve lost control of this. Tell me what you would have suggested.”
“Don’t you have new people advising you now?”
“How long do you intend to stick with that attitude?”
“You’re the one who shunted me to the sidelines, Sam. Your memory going too, along with your judgment?”
He finished the scotch in one gulp and got to his feet. She thought he was leaving and she was going to let him. Instead, he walked to the sideboard and poured more liquor.
“You won’t answer because you don’t have an answer.”
He hesitated, watching her. “Okay, here’s the problem. I’m running for a seat in Congress as a man who doesn’t give in and doesn’t give up. How do I justify all of a sudden acquiescing to these people? You tell me how to do that.”
She sat quietly, watching him. It was rare that he ever let down his guard. She had been regretting buzzing him up but now she softened, if just a little. “First of all, who are these people?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. The people who took her.”
“Don’t fucking do that,” she snapped. “Don’t come here looking for my advice and then hold out on what you know.”
He walked over and sat down in a wingback chair across from her. “It’s connected to Laureltown. They want an apology. They want money too, but I have a feeling that the apology is the deal breaker. You cannot repeat what I just told you.”
“Jesus,” Renata said.
“Yeah.”
“Then apologize,” she said.
“What?”
“Apologize,” she repeated. “Give them what they want. She’s your daughter, for Chrissakes.” She watched him a moment, saw the defiant look cross his face. “Apologize because she’s your daughter, and for that matter, because you were wrong in the first place. You know damn well you were. It was nothing more than theater and you’re not going to let a piece of theater get in the way of Vanessa’s safety.”
He put the glass on the end table beside him and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. “I don’t know how I can do that. This fucking campaign has a life of its own. I don’t know how I can do an aboutface and maintain any momentum.”
“All of a sudden, you sound like a man who really wants to go to Congress,” Renata said. “I thought this was just a lark.”
He looked at her darkly. “There are worse ambitions.”
“I suppose,” she said. “But to the matter at hand. You need to apologize. For once in your life.”
He reached for the glass. “I can’t.”
That was his answer. He’d arrived there seeking her counsel but he’d already gotten himself to a place where he was only going to listen to her if she told him what he wanted to hear. He’d tried and failed. They both had, she realized.
“I’m tired,” he said then. His eyes went to the hallway. The bedroom. “Why don’t we go and lay down?”
“Go ahead,” she told him. “I’m going for a run.”