TAMMY DOYLE DROPS her purse on the near couch. “You’re smoking.”
“Very observant,” her boss says, gently tapping another length of ash into her aunt’s priceless teacup.
“You shouldn’t be smoking in here, Amanda.”
Amanda Price shrugs. “I didn’t see a sign. I needed a smoke. There you go.” She leans forward and says, “You’ve got a hell of a bruise on your cheek. What happened?”
A wave of exhaustion and the need to bawl comes over her, and Tammy struggles to push it back. Besides still being freaked out over what just happened, she’s sweaty, her clothes are a mess, and she just wants to be left alone.
“Car accident,” she says. “My taxi…a pickup truck hit the trunk…could have killed us if it was just a few feet in the other direction.”
Amanda shakes her head. “Interstate Sixty-six…what a horror show that can be. Are you okay?”
“Just…shook up.” She touches the tender side of her face. “Why are you here, Amanda?”
Amanda takes a deep drag from her cigarette. “How long has it been going on?”
“Put the cigarette out.”
“Tammy, you—”
“The cigarette goes out or I keep my mouth shut.” The side of her face is really throbbing and she wants to take a couple of painkillers now, but Tammy’s not in the mood for showing any weakness in front of Amanda.
A few seconds pass as her tougher-than-titanium boss locks eyes with her, and Tammy stares right back. Then Amanda widens her sharp smile, stubs out the cigarette in the teacup, and puts the cup down on a coffee table. “Sharp lady,” she says. “I’ve always liked your style.”
“You want to talk style, or you want to tell me why you’re here?”
Amanda says, “You and the President. Tell me what’s going on.”
“None of your business,” Tammy says.
“None of my business? Ha.” Amanda crosses and recrosses her long legs. “Tammy, m’dear, anything and everything you do, on the clock and off the clock, reflects on Pearson, Pearson, and Price. Clear? If you were pulled over for drunk driving, well, that’s a manageable problem. But you’ve been caught banging the leader of the free world. We need to talk, or you’re going to be unemployed and no lobbying firm in the Western world will hire you. Unless we have…a satisfactory conversation.”
Tammy waits and the hard look from her boss returns, and Tammy knows she won’t win this staring contest.
“We’ve been together about eight months, since a fund-raiser in Denver,” she says, feeling like she’s surrendering to the older woman. Her boss nods in satisfaction, knowing she’s won this one.
“You in love with him?”
Something thuds in her chest. “God, yes.”
“Is he in love with you?”
“Yes.”
“He make promises?”
“I—”
“Tammy, what the hell did the President say to you?”
“He…” Damn it, tears are starting to pool in her tired eyes. “Yes, he promised me that after the election, after the inauguration, he would separate from his wife, and that…eventually…he’d introduce me to the American people…and bring me publicly into his life. That we would get married during his second term.”
Amanda chuckles, a dry, scary sound. “Leaving the First Lady and marrying you later? That damn ship has sailed and is now circling the Cape of Good Hope, on its way to the Pacific. Nope, those plans have been blown out of the water.”
More silence, except Tammy can now make out the low buzz of the news media talking among themselves, out on the street. Amanda says, “Expect rough times ahead. He’ll probably dump you publicly, to save his bacon.”
She says the words without thinking. “No, he won’t.”
Amanda looks like she is going to laugh again, but doesn’t. “Perhaps…I could be wrong. It’s been known to happen.”
Tammy says, “I’ve answered your questions. Now it’s my turn. Do I still have a job?”
Amanda’s inked-in eyebrows rise. “Of course. You’re one of our best, Tammy, and your notoriety is going to get our phones ringing with new business. But please don’t do anything more to embarrass the firm. Got that? The work you’ve done with Gideon Aerospace and Romulus Oil has fast-tracked you to a partnership. Even if you’re a Harvard girl and a Red Sox fan, which I’ve never held against you.”
Tammy manages a smile. “There are three pastimes in Boston: sports, politics, and revenge.”
Amanda gets up. “A good trio to learn. All right. Be at the firm at your usual hour tomorrow. Stroll in like you don’t have a care in the world. And for God’s sake, don’t even think of talking to the press. Or your neighbors. Or anyone else, for that matter. You could talk to your best friend tonight, under a cloak of secrecy and Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream…and she’ll turn around and sell your story to the National Enquirer in a heartbeat. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do,” she says, glad to think that her boss is leaving her home.
“Good,” Amanda says, walking to the door. “Now I need to start working our potential client list, including that rube from Oklahoma, Lucian Crockett.”
Tammy waits a second and calls out to her, “Just so you know, I’m getting a cleaning company in here as soon as I can, and I’m going to bill it to the firm.”
That brings an amused nod of the head from Amanda. “You do that. And just so you know…and this isn’t for distribution either—the First Lady appears to be missing. At least that’s the rumor I’ve heard.”
Tammy can’t smell the old tobacco smoke anymore. “Missing?”
“Yes, as in she’s disappeared. Not for public information, but I hear that she was so pissed at the President that she ducked out from her Secret Service detail and is on the lam.” Another dry chuckle from her boss. “If I was her, I’d be on a one-way trip to Reno, to get divorced and laid by some twenty-year-old stud, just…because.”
She leaves and the door shuts behind her, and Tammy rubs her tired face.
Holy God.
What now?
Tammy lowers her hands, picks up her purse, takes out her iPhone.
Usually it’s her favorite object, enabling her to communicate with anyone on the planet, but now…it looks and feels like an unexploded hand grenade.
She almost puts it back in her purse…but she has to know something.
Tammy turns on her phone, slides through a couple of screens, and—
Holy shit.
One hundred and twelve missed calls.
A hundred and twelve!
She skims through them, seeing familiar networks and the names of familiar reporters, skim skim skim, and no, there’s no familiar number, not the one she’s looking for.
Tammy jumps when her phone starts ringing.
The caller ID function on her phone says 202-456-1414.
The White House main switchboard.
She gingerly answers it. “Hello?”
“Miss Doyle? This is the White House. Please hold for the President.”