When Molly arrived at Sam Jackson’s house by the park at ten the next morning, the place had already been transformed. The FBI was set up in a front room, with an intense and abrupt agent named Dugan running the show. There were computers and phones and various other electronic devices Molly couldn’t identify. When she introduced herself to Dugan he merely nodded and kept talking to one of the other agents, a pudgy guy in his shirtsleeves, sitting at a laptop.
Sam Jackson was in a room that appeared to be an oversized den, giving orders to a young guy with fuzzy blond hair, apparently some sort of video technician. There were two digital cameras mounted on tripods, trained on Sam’s desk from different angles and some lighting bounces on the wall behind them. The blond-haired man was doing something with microphones when Molly entered. Sam was behind the desk, stapling a banner to the bookshelves there. The banner read NO SURRENDER. No one bothered to introduce Molly to the guy fumbling with the mikes so she did it herself.
“Greg Chalmers,” he responded, shaking her hand quickly before going back to his work. His palm was sweaty.
“All right,” Sam said, stepping back to look at the banner. “We’re going to be ready to roll here shortly. We’ll use the land line for radio and press interviews. This video hook-up goes to the network feed so we can go live anywhere, anytime.”
Molly glanced about the room, the room in New York City from where Sam Jackson intended to run for Congress for the state of Wyoming. She wanted nothing to do with this. Fucking Bill Ford and his deep pockets, luring her in. She could have said no though, and knowing that made her weary to the bone.
“What have we got lined up?” Sam asked.
“What do we have lined up,” Molly said slowly, shaking herself from her malaise. “Well, everybody wants to talk to you. No surprise, you’re a public figure whose daughter has been kidnapped. Do they want to talk to you about your campaign? That’s another question.”
“We’ll talk about both,” Sam said. “That’s how it works. That’s the beauty of it.”
The beauty of it, Molly thought. The beauty of having your daughter abducted.
“What about The Press Box?” Sam asked.
“They turned us down. You know that.”
“That was before. This is human interest now. Does that prick Rutherford have any kids?”
“It’s a political show, Sam,” Molly reminded him.
“Try him again.”
“Okay.” Molly pointed her chin toward the FBI presence in the other room. “And all that?”
“They need to be close, so they say,” Sam said. “I’m sure as hell not going to spend my day at FBI headquarters so I told them to set up here. Let’s get started. Just so you know—I’m doing my old show again tonight.”
“You are?”
“I called there and offered an update on the kidnapping,” Sam said. “I need to get No Surrender out there.”
“They’re okay with that? It smacks of political bias.”
“Not when a man has lost his daughter to terrorists,” Sam told her.
“You like that word.”
“When the shoe fits,” Sam said. “Now what do we have first?”
Molly took her phone from her pocket and scrolled through the itinerary. “Talk radio from Casper. I have to send them your land line.”
“Let’s do it.”
Once the connection was made and Sam was talking to the radio host in Wyoming, Molly wandered back into the main room where she sat on the arm of a sofa and emailed a producer she knew from The Press Box. The reply came back in less than a minute. Tim Rutherford wasn’t interested in sitting down with Sam Jackson. Everybody knew that by now. Everybody but Sam Jackson.
Molly put her phone away and looked up to see a woman, standing just inside the open kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand, dressed in jeans and a faded blue T-shirt. She was around Molly’s age, tall and blonde, and she looked like shit standing there, glancing back and forth to all of the activity around her. Her hair was lank and her face puffy. Molly knew at once who she was. She walked over and introduced herself.
“Hi,” Rachel said. Nothing more. She was watching the FBI guys, huddled over their equipment.
“Quite a production here,” Molly said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry about your daughter. I hope they find her soon.”
Rachel looked at her. Pale blue eyes rimmed with red. Something defiant behind the sadness. Molly waited for her to say something but she wouldn’t.
“We’ll try to stay out of your way,” Molly said. “I know this isn’t ideal, running the campaign from here. Apparently there was no other way.”
“There was one other way,” Rachel said.
Molly took a moment. “You mean he could have dropped out.”
“Yeah.”
“I suggested that.”
“My husband doesn’t take suggestions well. Why would he— when he’s always right?”
Molly wasn’t sure what to think of the woman. Given Sam Jackson’s pomposity, she’d been expecting somebody subservient or detached, maybe even dimwitted. This woman seemed angry and tired and hurting. But of course she was hurting.
“What do you think of No Surrender?” Molly asked.
Rachel exhaled, like a swimmer surfacing. “Do you have kids?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of it?”
“I think,” Molly said slowly, “that I would try to find another way to address the situation. A more conciliatory tone, to begin with.”
Rachel turned to her. Until now, she’d been standing stiffly to the side, her body language armored against Molly. Against anybody. “Why are you working for him?”
“For money,” Molly said. “Bill Ford’s paying me to try to get him elected.”
“Whether you approve of his methods or not?”
“Nobody likes their job all the time,” Molly said. “That’s the nature of work. Politics is all about compromise. Nothing would ever get done otherwise.”
“So you’re a person who has learned to look the other way,” Rachel said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“I suppose.”
“And you’re good at it?”
“We both are, I’m guessing.”