“How am I supposed to know how to act if I don’t know the facts?”
“You know everything you need to know—the president is dead. You need to take the oath of office and make a speech to the nation letting them know that you intend to carry on the president’s agenda.”
“I thought he wasn’t headed where we wanted the country to go.”
Hawthorne regretted, not for the first time, having picked someone with the IQ of a dead turtle to be his puppet. Then again, he knew anyone smarter wouldn’t be so easy to control. He sighed. “He wasn’t, but the people don’t need to know that. Right now they’re reeling, and they want stability. They want to think you’re going to give them that.”
“Oh.”
“You’re also going to announce that you’re nominating me to be vice president.”
“Wait just a cotton picking minute.” Wheeler didn’t like being told what to do. “I haven’t had any time to consider. I want to do what’s right for the country.”
Hawthorne had run out of patience. “You’ll do what I tell you to do or your ugly little secret will become a very public nightmare for you.”
“What in the devil are you talking about? You don’t have anything on me.” As he became increasingly agitated, Wheeler’s Southern accent became more pronounced.
Lynn Ames
“I know all about your little sister and how your father bought off the cops.”
“W-what?” Wheeler’s ears burned and his vision began to tunnel.
Hawthorne hadn’t meant to use his ace, but now that he had, he would finish the job. “That’s right. I know all about how you strangled little Bobbi Christina with your sock and threw her body in the pond.”
Wheeler sat heavily in his chair, covering his eyes as he wept uncontrollably, the memories of that day flooding back to him as they had so often in his dreams. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he repeated over and over, his words a broken whisper.
Hawthorne didn’t know what he had expected Wheeler’s reaction to be, but it wasn’t that. “Pull yourself together, man. We’ve got a country to run.”
After long moments, Wheeler said, “What do you need me to do?”
The vice president’s voice and posture were those of a man defeated.
“I need you to do exactly as I say.” Hawthorne shoved a speech into Wheeler’s limp hands.
“What’s this?”
“You’re going to call in the congressional leaders and the members of the president’s Cabinet. You’re going to give them copies of this speech, making it clear that there is no room for negotiation—you’re merely sharing it with them as a courtesy.”
“What if they question me?”
“Don’t leave room for questions—the American people are waiting—
they need to see a unified front.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to deliver this speech from the Oval Office, and you’re going to make it convincing. You’re going to look like a man in mourning but resolved to carry on the people’s business. Then you’re going to go to the Senate and push my nomination through so that I’m confirmed as vice president.”
“What if they won’t approve you?”
“They’ll have to—national security and continuity are at stake. You’ll just have to sell it to them.”
Wheeler nodded dumbly, wondering how in the world he would pull this off.
Wayne Grayson was not happy. “What do you mean ‘we lost her?’”
He listened for a moment before thundering into the phone, “Find her!
And when you do, kill her. Make it look like a suicide.” His mind was whirling. He hadn’t initially anticipated having to take out the president’s press secretary. He hadn’t thought Hyland’s man would be alive long enough to make contact with her. But the idiot had, and the fallout would
The Value of Valor
have to be dealt with. Kyle was a dead woman; Grayson knew that as surely as he knew the country was the Commission’s to control. He couldn’t be certain what she’d been told or even what her contact had known before they’d captured him. They hadn’t had time to question him before he managed to ingest the cyanide capsule.
Grayson picked up the phone. He simply couldn’t take chances.
“Yes?”
“We need everyone you can spare. The Kyle woman has managed to elude our beta team. She must be eliminated, top priority.”
“It will be done.”
“Whatever happens, she must not resurface or be allowed to make contact with anyone. Do you hear?”
“As I said, it will be done.”
The phone line went dead.
Grayson sat pounding the receiver into his open palm. He detested loose ends. He hadn’t thought about the fact that if Kyle didn’t show up to brief the press soon, questions would be asked about where she was and what had happened to her. The media’s curiosity would be aroused, and that was never a good thing. No, they needed to be proactive.
He pressed the intercom button. “Get me Hawthorne.”
“Yes, sir.”
Several seconds later, Grayson’s inside line rang. “Robert, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Is our boy ready to get to work?”
“He’s briefing the leaders and the Cabinet even as we speak.”
“Good. I need you to have him do one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Have him make a statement that Katherine Kyle killed herself shortly after she learned about the president’s fate.”
“What?”
Grayson thought quickly. “Distraught over the recent loss of her lover and the sudden death of the president, Ms. Kyle was overwhelmed. She left a note indicating that everything she cared about had been lost and she had nothing to live for anymore.”
“Are you serious?”
“Completely,” Grayson answered in an ominous voice.
“Is she really dead?”
“It’s not your concern.”
“I need to know how to play it.”
“Just the way I’m telling you to.” Grayson could hear the edge of panic in Hawthorne’s voice. He supposed so many dead bodies turning up in proximity to one another might make a man like Hawthorne
Lynn Ames
nervous. He consciously changed his tone to be more soothing.
“Everything is under control, Robert. If you follow the plan, you’ll have more power than you know what to do with.”
“You want me to have Wheeler do the Kyle thing as part of his speech?”
Grayson thought for a minute. “No, that gives it too much prominence. Have him put out a statement announcing her death, adding that he is deeply and profoundly sorry and that her suicide is a real loss to him personally and to the country as a whole.”
“Do you want the statement to go out tonight?”
“Yes.” Grayson pursed his lips. “Let’s give her a state funeral, respecting her wishes to be cremated. We want this to be very public.”
“What about her friends and family?”
“She has no family, remember? As for her friends, we’ll tell them when she didn’t show up at the National Press Club, we sent someone out to find her. She was discovered in her car with an empty bottle of sleeping pills she kept stashed in her purse. Apparently, she overdosed after getting the news about the president. She’d just gotten in her car after attending a diplomatic reception at the Russian Embassy.” Grayson figured he’d better cover his bases, not knowing who’d seen Kyle at the event.
“Okay.” Hawthorne drew out the word.
Grayson heard the implied disbelief and secretly agreed that it would be a stretch to convince the media and Kyle’s friends that the woman just happened to have a bottle of sleeping pills handy and that she’d conveniently left a note
and
wanted to be cremated. He also knew that his options were limited. He didn’t have the time or the manpower to stage anything elaborate. He just hoped that the explanation would seem plausible enough and that everyone would be too wrapped up in the president’s death and its aftermath to pay close attention to the suicide of a relatively minor member of the president’s circle.
Mimi Hyland sat ramrod straight in a seat in the front row. Voices flowed over and around her, but she paid them no heed. People walked by, touched her hand or her shoulder, but she didn’t register their faces.
Her Charlie was gone, and that was all she could think about.
“Charles Hyland stood for all that is great and right about this country. We will not let his legacy die. As your president, I will carry on in the same tradition of strength, honesty, and integrity that President Hyland exemplified so well. Even though he may be gone, his passion, his vision, and his leadership will live on.”
Alton Wheeler left the podium, walked down the steps, and stopped in front of the president’s widow. “I’m so very sorry, Mrs. Hyland.
The Value of Valor
Charlie was a great man. If there’s anything I can do for you in your time of grief, you let me know.”
“I appreciate that, Alton.” She could not call him ‘Mr. President.’ Her husband had held nothing but disdain for this man, and she knew the feeling had been mutual.
“I understand that your husband wanted to be cremated and that he wanted no viewing.”
“Yes, Charlie never was one to stand on ceremony.” She thought about their conversations on the subject, in which he’d always said the same thing.
“Sweetheart, I don’t want some long, protracted period of mourning.
Cremate me, have a quick funeral, and remember to live for the both of
us. It isn’t about my death, it’s about our lives.”
Mimi wiped away a tear. When he’d won the election, they’d revisited the topic, knowing that assassination was always a possibility.
He’d insisted that it would be critical for the country to get back to business and for the new president to move ahead with all due speed.
She would honor his wishes, no matter how painful. It didn’t matter whether the funeral was the next day or the next year. She would never stop mourning him.
She realized Alton Wheeler was still standing in front of her, waiting for her to say something. She looked up at him. “The nation needs your leadership. My husband wouldn’t want there to be a lengthy period of uncertainty. The funeral should take place as soon as possible.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Vendetti.” He was so tired of answering the telephone. It had been an endless night of questions, speculation, and more questions. He never thought he’d feel this way, but he wished that Kate would finally show up. He couldn’t imagine where in the world she was. He’d tried her home number several times, and he had someone posted outside her office door to alert him the second she arrived.
“Mr. Vendetti, this is your new boss.”
Vendetti straightened up immediately, recognizing the Southern drawl on the other end of the line as belonging to the newly sworn-in president. “Yes, sir.”
“I’d like to see you in my office. Now.”
“I’ll be right there, sir.” He jumped out of his chair and hustled down the hall.
“I need you to put out this statement.” Wheeler slid a piece of paper across the desk.
Vendetti read it, his eyes going big and round. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.
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“You’re my new press secretary now. Think you can handle it?”
“Y-yes, sir. I can’t…I can’t believe she killed herself.”
“Women are always so emotional, Mike. You know how it is.”
Vendetti hated having his name shortened, but he wasn’t about to mention it. Katherine Kyle had committed suicide, and he was the new press secretary to the president. “When would you like this released?”
“Right now, of course.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it right away.”
Terri removed a casserole from the oven.
“Mmm, that smells great,” Alexa said, sniffing the air appreciatively on her way through the kitchen doorway from outside.
“Ah, you’re right on time. Supper’s almost ready. If you don’t mind, I thought we’d eat in the living room. I’ve been glued to the television since I heard the president died.”
“The president died today?”
“Hmm? Yes, tragic, really. He collapsed while giving a speech and died at the hospital.”
“That’s awful.”
Terri continued moving about the kitchen, taking plates from the cupboard and drinks from the refrigerator. “Help yourself, Alexa.”
“You did all the work, you should be served first.” Alexa stepped aside and waited for Terri to finish what she was doing.
“Very well, if you insist. I’m starving,” Terri confided. She spooned out some casserole and a portion of salad onto her plate, grabbed a glass of iced tea, and headed into the living room, where she settled down in one of the two recliners.
The solemn-faced CNN anchorman was saying, “An additional, sad footnote to this developing story out of Washington, D.C. Katherine Kyle, press secretary to the president and his former campaign spokesperson, has died, the apparent victim of a suicide. According to a statement from newly sworn-in President Alton Wheeler, Kyle was found in her car in an underground parking garage near a reception she had been attending at the Russian Embassy on behalf of President Hyland.
Informed sources indicate that Ms. Kyle was told of the president’s death before she left the embassy and that she ran out shortly thereafter.” A picture of Kate filled the screen with the years of her birth and death.
Alexa finished putting her plate of food together and walked the short distance to the living room. She was mid-stride as the picture of Kate appeared. The plate she’d been carrying slipped through her suddenly boneless fingers and fell to the carpeted floor with a thud. It was exactly as it had been in a hotel room in Albany, New York, nearly two years earlier—that face, the one she’d seen in her dreams every night since
The Value of Valor
she’d been a sophomore in college, staring back at her, larger than life, from a television screen.
A cry of horror slipped from her throat as she heard the words,
“Katherine Kyle, press secretary to President Hyland, dead of an apparent suicide on this already tragic evening.” She slumped to the ground, landing hard on her knees, her face buried in her hands.
Terri heard the crash from behind and sprang up to see what had happened. “Alexa! Alexa, honey. What is it? Are you all right?”
“I know,” she whispered. “I know, and it’s too late.” Her body shook with sobs, keening wails bursting forth from her as she felt her heart shatter in a million pieces.