Only those closest to them got to see behind the facade. Right about now, Mark found himself wishing he hadn’t ever gotten that close.
“. . . at Bethesda?” It was the tail end of a question, uttered in a voice that was unmistakably that of the President of the United States.
“That’s right.”
The reply, Mark saw as he continued on into the room, came from the First Father, Wayne Cooper. The octogenarian Texas oilman stood near the fireplace with another man Mark didn’t recognize. Built like the President except for a slight paunch, his hair gone now except for a feathery white fringe, Wayne was a widower who adored his only son. He was also a billionaire, which, to Mark’s mind, explained a lot about how that son had made it to the White House. His other child was a thrice-married daughter, Elizabeth, who was pampered and protected but otherwise ignored. All Wayne’s hopes and dreams were bound up in his son.
“I told you, I’m not taking any damned pill,” the President snapped.
“But sir . . .”
Except for his dinner jacket, David Cooper was still dressed up in the tux he’d worn to wine and dine the president of Chile. His shoes rested on the tufted gold bedspread of a bed that had not yet been turned down. John Downes, the President’s personal physician, leaned over him, his back to Mark. Leonard Cowan, his valet, hovered on the far side of the bed, a tray holding what appeared to be the President’s favored scotch and soda in his hands.
“Here’s Ryan,” Lowell announced.
The President sat up. All eyes focused on Mark. All conversation suspended. Taking a deep breath, he felt his jaw tighten and hoped to hell it was the only outward sign of tension they could see.
“God in heaven, you want to tell us how this terrible thing happened?” Wayne Cooper’s booming voice was punctuated by an audible clink as he put his glass down on the marble mantel.
“I can’t answer that yet, sir.”
“Well, by damn . . .”
“Dad, everyone, could you excuse us a minute, please?” His customary courtesy back in place despite the slight wobble that was barely detectable in his voice, David Cooper swung his legs over the side of the bed. His face was haggard, his skin pale, his eyes red. Meeting his gaze, Mark felt the knot in his gut twist tighter.
The zinger was, David Cooper had loved his wife.
My watch.
“Davey . . .” Wayne protested. Anguish over his son’s obvious pain quivered in his voice.
“Please,” the President said again. Wayne Cooper frowned, but he, like everyone else, slowly filed out. The click of the door closing behind them was loud as a gunshot to Mark’s ears.
The President came to his feet. Their eyes met. It was all Mark could do not to flinch at the accusation he saw in the other man’s face.
“I trusted you, Mark. You knew what was going on with her. You were supposed to watch her. You were supposed to keep her safe.”
Making excuses wasn’t his style, so Mark didn’t. “I’m sorry, Mr. President.”
Cooper took a hasty turn about the room. Watching him, Mark felt a burning inside his chest. He knew what it was like to love a woman who didn’t give a shit about you. It hurt like hell. Right at that moment, his sympathies were with David Cooper.
The President stopped in front of him, ran his hands through his hair. “Just tell me this: Was she out there trying to score drugs?”
The million-dollar question.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Mark withdrew the artificial sweetener bottle from his pocket and held it out. “I went to the crash site. This was in her purse. Along with a roll of cash and some credit cards.”
Since the First Lady almost never carried cash, the implication was plain: A drug rendezvous was a definite possibility. The credit cards—who the hell knew what was up with the credit cards? He hadn’t had time yet to even begin to think that through. Although as far as he knew, drug dealers still didn’t accept them.
Sucking in his breath, the President took the bottle and stared down at it. “Damned pills.” Then he looked up at Mark. His eyes were dark with pain. “This can never get out. Her reputation . . .” His mouth shook, and then his face crumpled like a collapsing building. “Oh my God, my God, I can’t believe this has happened. I can’t believe she’s dead.
Annette . . .”
His voice spiraled into a ragged wail. Even as the door burst open and the room filled with people and he was nearly shoved back out into the hall, Mark could not escape the terrible sounds of the President’s keening. Again, he felt a stab of guilt.
My watch.
Lowell caught up to him as he headed for the elevator.
“That woman.” Falling in beside him, Lowell glanced all around as if to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. “The woman who was in the car. The one who survived.”
They were in the foyer now, walking fast past a group of new arrivals being shepherded into the Yellow Oval Room. Mark recognized a famous singer along with some friends of the First Family. Throat tightening, he wondered when the Coopers’ two adult children, Laurie Donaldson and Brad Cooper, would arrive.
He really didn’t want to be here for that one.
“What about her?” he asked.
“What do you know about her?”
“Nothing except her name. Yet.” The implication that he soon would know everything there was to know about Jessica Ford was understood by Lowell, who nodded.
“Yeah, well, we hear that she’s a lawyer who works for John Davenport. We’re trying to get hold of him now, but he’s not at home and he isn’t answering his cell phone. The information we have—and it’s preliminary, but we think it’s good—is that the First Lady called Davenport, and he sent the car.”
“Why?” But at least that probably meant Annette Cooper wasn’t out there chasing the drugs she was being slowly, forcibly weaned off of after all. Or maybe she was, and Davenport had found out and sent a car and a subordinate to get her off the streets.
“Who the hell knows?” Lowell looked grim. “Look, you go to this Ford woman, and you keep her the hell away from the press. Stay with her until you find out what she knows. And if she knows anything, anything at all, that could in any way be harmful to the First Lady or the President, you get her to keep her damned mouth shut.” The glint in Lowell’s eyes reminded Mark just how ruthless the Chief of Staff could be. “You fucked up, now you clean up the mess.”
Mark’s mouth compressed. Then he nodded and stepped into the elevator.
5
S
omething woke her.
What?
Jess didn’t know. All she knew was that she was breathing hard. Feeling weird. And instantly uneasy. Even as her mind came to full awareness her senses were alert, spurred by a kind of edgy sixth sense that told her something was wrong.
Where am I?
Her eyes blinked opened on—nothing. A blur of darkness. The feeling of being inside, with four walls around her and a ceiling she could not see not too far above her head.
Cold, so cold.
Biting down on her lower lip, she tried to control the violent shivers that claimed her. She felt groggy, disoriented. As if she were floating, almost. Her head throbbed. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. Her body was one big dull ache that, paradoxically, did not hurt as much as she knew it should have. She had the feeling that she was alone, although earlier, she was almost certain she had heard her mother’s voice. Others she knew, too. Her sister Sarah’s, maybe.
There were no voices now. No sounds, except a steady mechanical beeping and a dull hum and the slightest of drawn-out creaks. She didn’t know how it was possible that she could be so cold; she seemed to be swaddled to the armpits in layers of cloth. Against her body, the texture of the cloth was tightly woven and smooth, while the cloth her hands, which were on top of the pile, rested on was coarser and fuzzy. That, plus the firm resilience of the surface upon which she lay and the mounded softness beneath her head, led her to conclude that she was in a bed. A sharp, distinctive smell—antiseptic?—defined it further: She was in a bed.
In a hospital.
Annette Cooper. The wreck.
Horror washed over her in an icy wave. Her stomach turned inside out. She felt a surge of dizziness so strong she almost sank back into the blackness again.
Something’s wrong.
That was the thought that kept her present. It was strong enough to beat back the wooziness that threatened to carry her away again.
What?
The darkness was not absolute, she discovered, as her eyes adjusted: There was the faintest of bluish glows to her right. Slowly she turned her head—moving required so much effort—to find that the bluish glow emanated from a cluster of free-standing machines near the bed. One showed what appeared to be a zigzagging line; it was the one producing the steady beep, and she thought it might be a heart monitor. If so, hers seemed to be beating right on track, with a good, steady rhythm. The deep hum seemed to come from somewhere overhead, possibly from the ventilation or heating system. The narrowing crack of light outlining the door beyond the machines pinpointed the source of a creaking sound: Someone was slowly, carefully closing the door to the room where she lay.
Even as she discovered it, the sliver of light disappeared. The faintest of clicks announced that the door was now securely shut. The area behind the instruments had gone completely dark. But a blur of movement in the shadows where the sliver of light had been told her that she was not alone. A cold frizzle of wariness tingled along her spine.
Who?
Her heartbeat quickened as she heard light, quick footsteps. Her eyes widened as someone stepped around the machines. Then she got a blurred look at a tall form in blue scrubs.
A doctor, then. Or a nurse. Someone medical, anyway.
Her breath released in a near-silent whoosh. It was only then that she realized she had been holding it.
Who were you expecting?
“Are you awake?”
The question was soft, so as not to disturb her if the answer was no. Although the darkness coupled with her bad eyesight kept her from getting a good look at him, it was obvious that the speaker was a man. A stranger. Could he see her eyes glinting at him through the darkness? She didn’t know. She knew only that the soporific tone of his voice contrasted oddly with his movements, which were swift and sure as he strode toward the head of her bed.
“Yes.”
Her voice was a mere thread of sound, creaky and tired. Her mouth was so dry that it was hard to form even that one short word.
Swallowing to moisten her throat, she followed him with her eyes. She wanted to ask for information, for the conditions of the others in the car, but she didn’t have the strength. Her tongue felt thick and heavy, and pushing words out past it required more effort than she could summon at the moment.
“Do you remember what happened?”
He took hold of the tall metal pole standing at the head of her bed. When she saw the plastic bag swinging from it, saw the tubing, she realized that it was an IV pole. And she was attached to it, by a long, clear tube that ran down into the back of her hand.
The liquid in the bag was emptying into her vein. Tape on her hand secured the needle in place.
“Wreck,” she managed.
“That’s right.”
He was holding a syringe, she saw, and fiddling with her tubing, right there where it joined the bag.
“What are you doing?”
The vague sense of unease she had felt since opening her eyes intensified. He was lifting the syringe toward the tubing—which, since he was a doctor, shouldn’t have alarmed her at all.
But it did.
Why?
“This will help you go back to sleep, sugar. Just close your eyes.”
Again with the soft, soothing voice. Her lids drooped as his suggestion tempted her. To just close her eyes and drift into unconsciousness . . . How good would that feel? And how easy would it be to do?
All of a sudden she remembered the nightmare shapes. But they belonged to the wreck. Not the hospital. She’d been found, rescued, and now she was safe. She could sleep if she wanted to.
So tired . . .
The light from the machines cast a blue glow over the floor. Jess found herself noticing it as her eyes drifted downward and he moved again, his feet shuffling in and out of the light. She forced her lids wide open and her gaze up and watched as he tugged impatiently on the tubing.
Despite her best efforts, her lids felt as heavy, as if her lashes were made of concrete. She wanted to close her eyes in the worst way. But still that prickly sense that something was wrong would not leave her.
“Are you . . . a doctor?”
“Mm-hmm.”
The tone of the murmur was comforting. The tubing was cooperating now, and he was, she saw, holding a port and positioning the syringe so that he could send its contents down the tubing into her body with a single quick depression of the plunger.
Not good.
The disturbing thought made her frown even as her eyes slid down his body toward the floor again. Where he was standing now, the blue glow spilled over his legs, illuminating them to the knees. The scrubs were too short for him, their legs ending some three inches above the hem of his black pants, black suit pants. Worn over shiny black wing-tip shoes marred by just a few stray bits of . . . what? Her vision was too fuzzy to be certain, but it could have been dead grass.
Prickly grass cushioning her cheek . . .
Jess’s heart gave a great leap and her eyes shot wide open. She sucked in air.
“No! No, stop! Wait!”
But he didn’t stop. He didn’t even glance her way. Instead, his thumb clamped down on the plunger. Jess couldn’t see clearly enough to watch it happen, but she imagined liquid shooting out of the needle into the tube that emptied into her vein.