“Actually, I was hoping to have a word with you,” I say, pretending to be chummy, working my throat like it doesn’t have an elephant in it.
The fear in his eyes disappears as if someone has programmed him, and his circuits have been rewired. His eyes light up as if he’s excited. Stoked.
Eager.
“Really? For old times’ sake?”
“Maisri has the backing of Nolan Corning,” Harry explains, as if I don’t know, his eyebrows going up with fake admiration. Those eyes are calculating, just like Lindsay’s. “On the fast track. Twenty or thirty years from now, you could be in the White House,” he says to Blaine, who doesn’t even bother with false modesty.
“From your mouth to the voters’ ears,” Blaine answers with a grin.
A photographer snaps pictures. Harry grabs Blaine’s hand and turns at an artful angle, controlling the picture. Image shaping is everything.
“You high school buddies go at it. I have more flesh to press,” the senator says, clapping Blaine on the shoulder in that collegial way men in power have.
So do I.
With my knuckles.
“Tell Corning I said hi,” Harry calls over his shoulder to Blaine.
A white rage I haven’t felt since combat back in Afghanistan fills me. It’s a hyper-energy, so strong I can barely control it, so addictive I want to feel it forever. Unnerving and maddening, it has a will of its own, taking over, hijacking me.
In combat, it’s my greatest asset other than my weapon.
As a security specialist, it’s like a nuclear bomb. A great deterrent if you don’t actually unleash it into the world.
“What the hell do you have to say to me?” Blaine hisses. “We have nothing to talk about. Ever.”
I nod toward the dead zone Gentian identified.
“Over here. Away from prying ears. Some things are better kept private, right?”
He makes a sour face. “I don’t have time for this shit.”
“You keep threatening Lindsay and you’re a dead man,” I say quietly, with a smile, as I reach for his shoulder and clap him on the back.
He looks like he’s choking on a snake.
I know how this works. The video cameras don’t have sound. If I’m careful, I can make it look like this is just a conversation between two old buddies, meeting by coincidence. The rising political star running into the owner of a private security company. The California state representative having a chat with the Purple Heart recipient.
The presidential candidate’s decorated war hero security detail shooting the shit with his old friend.
At least, I have to make it look like that until I can get him out of camera range.
“You’re threatening me?” He moves his shoulder away, then looks up, searching for a camera.
I grin. We’re a handful of steps away from the labor law sign.
“I’m warning you.” He hasn’t denied the threat to Lindsay. My white rage turns red. Sonofabitch.
“It goes both ways.”
“You can’t prove a fucking thing.”
A gong goes off in my head, like someone took the biggest felt-covered mallet in the world and rang the sun.
“You sick motherfucker,” I growl. “You don’t even deny it.”
His turn to give me a distorted grin. “Why would I deny anything to you, Drew? You’re next.”
Three feet. We’re three fucking feet from the dead zone when I hear --
“Drew? You can’t just leave me in a hot car to bake and – ” Her voice cracks, going subsonic. “Oh my God. Oh my God, no. You weren’t kidding. No, no...”
We both turn, Blaine moving in slo-mo, my red rage making every part of the hallway look like I’m on a fast train through a city of lights, all the white flying past me in pinpricks turned to lines.
One step.
Two steps.
I pivot, inserting myself between Blaine and Lindsay, acting as the shield I could never be on that night four years ago.
I act.
I do.
I am.
I will.
“Lindsay,” Blaine says, his voice low with pleasure, moving toward her.
The sound of her name coming out of his mouth breaks me.
My fist hits his face with a satisfying crunch as the fury drives me forward, like a spirit that inhabits my body and takes over. It feels good. Right. Powerful, my body going into overdrive as I do exactly what I need to do in this monumental moment. Four years.
Four years.
He moves back, his nose bloodied, eyes wild with some mix of confusion and outrage, his mouth opening to say something, but I fill those lips with my fist, turning this punch into my final blow, the one that has to be enough for four years ago.
And yet I have no logic, no rationality, no strategic purpose as my rat brain kicks in and does the job. The second punch makes my thumb joint slip between his teeth, saliva on my hand, the feel of the corner of his mouth tearing a brutal victory.
Lindsay’s breath on my ear, her small hands pulling on my shoulders, snap me out of it.
“Drew! You’re on camera!”