“I have time for one more.”
“One more what?” she asks, batting her eyelashes with mock innocence.
“Oh, you need instructions? Let me show you,” I murmur as I split her legs open with my hands, burying myself in a place where the past doesn’t exist.
And where her pleasure is my present.
Chapter 11
“Don’t try to bullshit me, Drew. I know exactly what you were doing yesterday when you cornered Blaine Maisri and punched him. Convenient there’s no video.” Harry’s voice drops to a deadly whisper. We’re in his home office, Anya quietly leaving us alone with a reminder that Harry has a call with the party chairman in ten minutes.
It’s 7:02 a.m.
“If that’s all you’d done, we wouldn’t be in this meeting. But you dragged my innocent daughter into it, damn it. Made her faint from the stress. Just when we had our first success with reputation rehabilitation.”
I can taste his innocent daughter on my tonsils.
“Now there’s a video clip of her pointing through an open Exit door, eyes wide and fearful like Bambi after his mother was shot, complete with a fainting spell. If we don’t spin this carefully, the media’s going to resurrect her scandal.”
I bite my tongue. And inner lip. And curl my fingers into fists.
“We’re covered,” I assure him.
“I didn’t ask whether we were covered.” His look is designed to make me cower. It fails. “I am telling you that you fucked up.”
I just look at him.
“I know why you punched him, Drew.”
Wasn’t expecting that.
“You acknowledge what he’s done? You know he’s one of Lindsay’s rapists?” I can’t keep the shock out of my response.
Harry ages ten years in two seconds.
“Jesus, Drew. You’re sure?” He looks away. His shoulders sag.
This isn’t the first time he’s been told this bit of information. I can tell.
“Absolutely sure. I was there,” I say through gritted teeth.
“They told me...” He weakens, grabbing the edge of his desk for support. “They said it was possible. Not a certainty.”
“‘They’ who?”
“The video analysts. Other advisors.” Like who, I wonder. Marshall? Victoria? Those “LB Incident” people from the meeting with Lindsay?
He gives me a bleak-eyed look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“Ask you?”
“Ask Lindsay, for starters. And yes, me. We’re the victims.” I hate that word. A flash of the psychologist who helped me after the attacks hits my brain like a missile strike. I shove the image away.
Victims.
“We got reports from her doctors on the Island, but they said her information wasn’t reliable. It came through a drug fog.”
“Then let me make the truth abundantly clear to you, sir. Blaine Maisri was, without doubt, one of the people who raped and tortured your daughter.”
He bares his teeth at me, like an angry stray dog.
“I’m supporting his bid for my old House seat. I’ve endorsed his campaign. You tell me this now?”
“Don’t play dumb, Harry. It doesn’t suit you.”
He’s pale, his shoulders rising with each breath, chest moving fast. “Fuck you.”
My eyes narrow instinctively, examining him. He’s not lying.
But he’s not telling the truth, either.
“Do you,” he says tightly, “have any idea how thin the ice you’re skating on really is, Drew? Blaine Maisri has connections you cannot fathom.” His eyes bore into me. I don’t flinch. I don’t move.
I stare back. “Like Nolan Corning?”
No reaction.
“And those connections are more important than your daughter,” I challenge.
It’s not a question.
“No.” I expect more anger in his answer. “But pissing off Blaine and the people behind him does nothing but put Lindsay in more danger.”
More danger.
“He’s been texting her.”
Harry blinks in surprise. “More texts?”
“Yes. Threats. Pictures.”
“You traced them directly to him?”
“No.”
“Then you’ve proven nothing, which means we can do nothing.”
“Not true.”
“You have to act within the law, Drew. This is my presidency at stake. The election year is a weird one. Once I’m nominated as the party’s candidate in the general election, it’s smooth sailing.”
“How do you know?”
He shoots me a dry look.
“I know.”
“But that assurance isn’t there through these early stages?”
“No.”
“Then this may very well involve Nolan Corning. He has a reputation for being cut-throat, Harry.”
“So do I, Drew.”
“What if he’s behind what happened to Lindsay?”
“You think Nolan Corning convinced three college frat boys in your circle to do what they did to Lindsay out of a sense of...competition? Are you insane, Drew?”
“I am considering all possibilities.”
“You sound like one of those ‘9/11 was an inside job’ nutters.”
“Why won’t you even consider the idea?”
Silence.