Mississippi in July was, arguably, the worst.
“Miz Honneker?” The voice was male, deep, and thick as honey with a down-home southern drawl. Though Ronnie still could not see clearly, she suspected a reporter, simply because they always came after her when she least felt like dealing with them. She stretched her mouth into one more smile.
“Yes?” she said into the glare.
“I’m Tom Quinlan. This is Kenny Goodman. Quinlan, Goodman, Associates.”
“Oh, yes?” Vision slowly adjusting, Ronnie saw two men dressed in white shirts and lightweight summer suits standing in front of her. One was plump and sweating, light blue coat open and yellow tie askew, with pale skin and a thick crop of curling black hair. The other, the man who had spoken, was taller, leaner, with blond hair that was just beginning to recede around the temples and the tan complexion of someone who spent a great deal of time outdoors. His gray suit coat was buttoned over a broad-shouldered, athletic-looking frame, his navy tie was in place, and he looked altogether cooler and more collected than his companion.
“How nice to meet you,” she said, offering first the blond man and then his companion her hand while Thea and the state troopers looked on with varying degrees of caution. It was necessary for the Senator’s wife to be accessible to attract votes, of course, but there was also a slight degree of risk anytime a stranger approached her. Nuts were everywhere these days—and she was a favorite target.
However, these men seemed harmless enough, even if they did appear to expect her to know their names. Were they perhaps contributors? Big contributors?
Should
she know their names? Lewis’s office sent a list, periodically updated, of people for her to memorize.
She was almost sure that the names she had just heard were not on it.
Her smile widened, just in case. Money was the life-blood of politics, as Lewis had drummed into her head from the time of their marriage. For Lewis, as well as all the other politicians she knew,
show me the money
was not just a popular catchphrase. It was a way of life. A way of staying alive. For she was convinced that politicians only lived while they held office. Lewis’s senate seat and all that went with it were as necessary to him as the air he breathed, Ronnie thought. He needed the attention, the limelight, the power, the way other men needed food and drink.
If only she had understood that before she married him.
“We’re political strategists, Miz Honneker. We’re working for you now,” the blond man said dryly as she shook the other man’s hand. His tone made it clear that she had been unsuccessful at concealing her ignorance of their identities. Not that it mattered. Consultants’ opinions were more important than their votes. And since their marriage, Lewis had inflicted so many of them on her that by now they were about as welcome as a pair of buzzing flies.
“Oh.” Ronnie’s hand dropped to her side, and she stopped smiling. Her cheeks ached so from her marathon effort in the tent that it was a relief to let them relax, if only for a few minutes. Her headache, forgotten
for a moment, returned in full force. Flexing her sore fingers, she glanced at Thea.
“We got a fax from the Washington office this morning,” Thea said apologetically in response to that glance. “I was going to show it to you later today. I—didn’t realize that they would be joining us this soon.”
Thea knew how Ronnie felt about consultants. After the last one advised her to gain twenty pounds—“Look how much more popular Oprah was when she was heavy!” he had said—she had vowed not to listen to any more.
“Mrs. Honneker, you’re supposed to judge the Little Miss Neshoba County Pageant in five minutes,” a plump woman in a gaudy floral dress called as she hurried up to them. The dress struck a chord in Ronnie’s memory: Rose. The woman’s name was Rose, and her dress was bedecked with enormous cabbage roses.
It was the kind of memory exercise that she usually did rather well. One of her few assets as a political wife was her ability to remember names, she thought.
“Thank you, Rose,” Ronnie said with a smile. Rose beamed. It was clear that she was flattered to have the Senator’s wife remember her when they had only met for a moment several hours earlier. Things like that, Ronnie had learned, made people feel important. And making people feel important was a way to win votes. And winning votes was the name of the game.
“Mind if we tag along?” the blond man asked. Quinlan—that was his name, she would remember it by associating the name with a quiver full of arrows, and he seemed to be tightly strung, like a bow.
Ronnie shrugged her assent. Nodding politely as
Rose chattered away, she was escorted toward the tent where the pageant would be held. Thea, a fair official, a state trooper, and the two newcomers to her retinue followed close behind as they navigated through the eddy and swirl of activity that made up the fair. Young couples walking hand in hand, women in casual clothes pushing babies in strollers, teenagers in baggy shorts calling to each other, groups of older women in floral dresses: Ronnie smiled at all impartially as they wove through the crowd. A few smiled back.
A very few.
Sometimes she felt like the most hated woman in Mississippi.
They were almost at their destination when it happened. Ronnie had just spotted the white canvas peaks of the large tent on the other side of the busy cotton-candy machine. A steady stream of people were filing in through the front of the tent, past a large, balloon-bedecked placard that said
Little Miss Neshoba County Pageant
,
2
P.M
.
As usual, Ronnie was being led toward the back. A trio of officials already awaited her at the tent flap, which was being held open. They were looking her way, their expressions expectant.
The woman exploded out of nowhere. She came running in from the left, from somewhere beyond the cotton-candy machine, screaming words that seemed to make no sense. She was a big woman, tall and heavy, dressed in too-tight green shorts and a striped blouse, her hair dyed blond and her face florid and sweaty from the heat.
“Whore!” she screamed, darting toward Ronnie.
Ronnie stepped back, alarmed, and instinctively threw up her hand as something that glinted silver in
the sunlight came hurtling through the air at her. A smell, sharp and distinctive. A blow, as something hard struck her upraised arm and bounced off. The sensation of liquid splashing everywhere, pouring over her, thick and heavy and cool.
Ohmigod
, she thought.
Chapter
4
T
HE LIQUID SPLASHED
onto Ronnie’s head, covered her face, rained down the front of her dress. She heard screams, felt people rushing past, sensed a struggle. Eyes closed, gasping, dashing the substance from her face with frantic hands, she staggered backward, stumbled, lost her balance.
Her worst nightmare was coming true
.
She was caught from behind before she could hit the ground and steadied against a man’s hard body. Seconds later an arm went around her shoulders, another slid beneath her knees, and she was lifted clean off her feet. Blinded, dazed, she felt as incapable as an infant of doing anything to save herself. If she was being abducted, she was helpless to ward it off.
Still, she tried, fighting frantically to be free.
“It’s all right, I’ve got you safe,” a man said into her ear. Reassured by something in his voice, she quit struggling. Then, much louder, he barked, “Where’s a rest room?”
There must have been a reply, because as she clawed, terror-stricken, at the ooze coating her eyes
she felt herself being borne away in strong arms through the heat that meant sunlight. Moments later he turned sideways, shouldering them both through a door into a darker, cooler environment.
“Can you stand up?” Even as the question was asked Ronnie found herself on her feet. Afraid to open her eyes lest more of the liquid should get into them, she stood swaying unsteadily in her self-imposed darkness, unsure of anything, even the identity of her rescuer. She felt dizzy, sick, terrified. Something hard pressed into her stomach, and she grasped it instinctively. It was cold and slick and rounded, and the accompanying sound of running water helped to identify it: a sink. Her rescuer’s arm was around her waist. She let it support her, leaning back gratefully against the warm, solid strength of the man behind her. If he had not been there, she would have collapsed.
“I’m going to put your head under the faucet. Rinse out your eyes.”
Ronnie felt a hand on her head gently pushing it down, and she obediently bent, leaning forward under his direction, supporting herself with her arms on either side of the sink. Her hair was pulled back and held from her face by one of his hands. Tepid water rushed over her forehead, over her eyes, over her cheeks and nose. It felt good against her eyelids, good against her skin.
Oh, God, was the liquid acid? Would she be blinded, or scarred for life?
Fresh terror curled in the pit of her stomach at the thought.
“Open your eyes. You want to let the water run into them.”
Ronnie opened her eyes, cringing at first, but the water felt good in them, too, and after a moment she could actually see, a blur of shapes and light. Good. She was not blind.
“Here.” The roughness of a wet paper towel moved dawn her face from forehead to chin. He wiped her face twice, three times. “Okay, stand up. Let’s check the damage.”
Ronnie straightened. Her knees felt weak, and she was glad of the sink’s support behind her as she half sat on it, clutching it with both hands for balance. She blinked furiously; her vision was still blurry. Her chin was lifted by fingers beneath it, and another paper towel passed over her streaming eyes and across her cheeks and chin. He pushed her hair back behind her ears, and tilted her face first one way, then another, wiping judiciously. Throwing one paper towel away, he wet another, and ran it down her right arm.
“Oh, God, was it acid?” Ronnie asked in a croaky voice even as her vision cleared. Her rescuer, she saw now, was the blond man she had just met, the political consultant, Quinlan. He stood in front of her, frowning as he scrubbed at her arms.
“No, not acid. Paint. How do your eyes feel?”
Red
paint. Ronnie saw it on his suit, smeared all down the arms and front of his jacket. His clothes had been ruined, too, as he’d carried her into the rest room.
For she was in a rest room—a gray-tiled one with three stalls and a urinal, a pair of dingy white sinks, one of which she was partly sitting on, and a large chipped mirror affixed to the wall. A men’s room. With an overflowing waste can near the door and a faint unpleasant smell.
When she didn’t answer right away, he repeated the question patiently.
Ronnie blinked once, twice, as his words penetrated. “They burn a little, but I can see. I think they’re all right.” At the thought of how easily she could have been blinded, a wave of nausea hit her. “Oh, God, I’m going to be sick.”
She stumbled into the nearest stall, dropped to her knees, and emptied her stomach into the bowl. When she was done, she managed to get shakily to her feet and turned to find Quinlan watching her from the stall’s doorway.
“Sit,” he directed when she swayed. Ronnie sank down on the open seat, leaning forward, crossing her arms on her knees and cradling her head there.
“Stay put.” He left her for a moment, then returned, hunkering down in front of her.
“Here.”
The paper towel he handed her was wet and cold. Ronnie wiped her face. The nausea receded, leaving her with a hideous taste in her mouth. She needed a drink of water badly.
“Better?” Quinlan asked when she lifted her head. With him crouching on the floor in front of her, their eyes were on a level. His were blue, she saw as their gazes met, a deep grayed blue with a darker ring around the iris and the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners. His brows and lashes were thick, dark brown tipped with gold. His nose was straight, his lips a little thin but well cut and firm. The lean angularity of his face gave him an austere look. No sins of the flesh for him, she thought. He looked like the type who ate,
drank, and did everything else in moderation, and scorned those who were less disciplined.
“I’m okay,” she said, not quite certain it was the truth, and stood up, one hand on the wall of the stall for support. He stood, too, directly in front of her, frowning when she seemed less than steady on her feet.
“If I were you, I’d give it a minute.”
“I need a drink of water.”
He moved back out of her way to allow her to exit the stall. As long as she had the wall for support, she managed, but when she let go to traverse the few steps to the sink, she tottered sideways. She couldn’t believe she was so unsteady on her feet. That, the nausea, and the icy cold feeling that was snaking along her limbs, combined to put her in a state that, despite her brave words, was still very far from being “okay.”
He caught her elbow before she completely lost her balance, then wrapped his arm around her waist. Supporting her over to the sink, he turned on the cold tap. She bent to cup her hand under the flow and rinse out her mouth, then take a drink. After a moment she felt strong enough to sluice her face with both hands.
“I’m sorry,” she managed as he passed her a dry paper towel. Straightening, she met his gaze in the mirror. He stood behind her, one arm around her waist, obviously on guard in case she should start to lose her balance again. As she dried her face, he watched with a frown. Seen as a backdrop for her own slenderness, he looked unexpectedly big and broad-shouldered. Though she was wearing three-inch heels, he still topped her by several inches. His arm encircled her waist from behind. His hand looked large and brown
and masculine as it lay flat against the purple linen covering her stomach.
With a brief flicker of feminine awareness, she registered that he was a very attractive man.
“For what? Getting paint thrown on you? It sure as fire wasn’t your fault.” Through the mirror, his gaze ran over her. His voice dripped of the South like a hot biscuit overloaded with honey.