Emery walked down the hall of the Russell Senate Office Building. Her heels clicked against the marble as she dodged Hill staffers rushing by and tourists huddled around maps. When she finally reached the elevator two men hovered behind her talking about what it would take to get a certain senator to sign on as a cosponsor to a bill.
On any other day she’d find the talk interesting. Today she needed to concentrate. She’d prepared her arguments and had some documents with her. If the senator needed to be convinced to help then Emery would launch into speech. She would have done all of that over the phone, but it was harder to ignore someone in person, or at least she hoped that was true.
The elevator bell chimed and the doors opened. Excitement built inside her. She was ready to negotiate and convince. But the churning in her stomach suggested something bigger was happening. She just wished she knew what it was.
Wren congratulated himself for not getting coffee the next morning. True, he debated “just stopping in” and abandoned the idea. The refusal to give Garrett the satisfaction was enough to kill the idea.
Not that he’d moved on from the Emery Finn problem. Just the opposite. Even now he stood in the middle of Senator Sheila Dayton’s plush blue office, waiting for her to return from a committee meeting so they could discuss Emery. Most senate office visitors had to wait in the welcome area outside her door. Not him. Not ever.
Being alone in the room allowed him to wander. He glanced at the diplomas from Princeton and Howard. The family photographs that showed off two smiling boys who towered above her even in their early teens. Not an easy feat since Wren was six feet two and the senator was only a few inches shorter than he was.
He dragged a finger along the spines of the books lined up on the bookcase. As he reached the end of the wall unit he looked at the window behind the senator’s desk and the flags standing on each side, one for the US and the other for Maryland, the state she’d represented for almost three years.
He wasn’t much of a pomp and circumstance kind of guy. Some people hid behind big concepts like patriotism but didn’t actually do anything. That’s one of the reasons he’d supported Senator Dayton from the beginning. She didn’t just deliver lip service. She was strong, smart and practical, a winning combination in his mind.
When a nasty faction tried to derail her career because she had the nerve to be female and black and seek power, he’d stepped in. She’d rewarded him both with a sizable check in payment for his services and by being the leader she’d promised the voters she would be. Now, for some reason, she’d been dragged into the middle of the Emery Finn controversy, and he needed to know why.
Just as he rounded the front of her desk and picked up her nameplate, the door opened. The senator stood there with stacks of folders in her arms and a flurry of activity behind her as staffers tried to get her attention. She traded the paperwork for two coffee mugs then closed the door behind her, leaving the chaos outside.
“Stop fondling my office supplies.” Amusement played in her voice as she walked through her office never breaking stride.
He set the nameplate down. “Yes, ma’am.”
She dropped one of the mugs on the desk in front of him and carried the other with her as she walked around to slide into her oversized chair. “This is always the point in the greeting when I try to figure out what name I’m supposed to use. Brian, Wren . . . or did you come up with a new one this week? I always saw you as a Matthew.”
The senator knew his identity. His history . . . or the pieces he reluctantly shared. She was one of the few people who made it into his inner circle. Their relationship started out as business, but it turned into a tenuous friendship. She helped to open doors for him by recommending his company when powerful people needed discreet assistance.
She also played another role in his life. He stumbled with human interaction. She and Garrett were the people he asked when he had to litmus test a problem. He was able to be more informal with them. Admittedly, his informal equaled most people’s starchy, but he was different with the two of them.
As his business exploded over the last few years, she was the one who suggested the conceit about him pretending to be Wren’s right-hand man rather than Wren. The ruse allowed him some space to maneuver when he did need to meet directly with clients. It also afforded him the privacy he craved, all while preserving the idea of the mysterious Mr. Wren.
She understood him. She talked tough and didn’t think twice about trying to push him around if she wanted him to do something. He admired that about her. The only thing he didn’t like was her unknown link to the Emery situation.
“It’s probably safest to go with Brian,” he said.
Her lip twitched. “Do you think the office is bugged?”
“Do you honestly think it isn’t?” That amounted to a lost opportunity, as far as he was concerned.
“Never change.” She settled back in her chair. “So, I hear you’ve been busy.”