James Grippando - The Abduction

Her eyes brightened as she came to him, hugged him with relief, and said softly, “Thank you. Thank God. You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were leaving me.”

He stepped back, looking her in the eye. “Were you scared I was leaving, Allison? Or scared I was leaving before the election?”

His words hit like ice water. Deep down, she knew it was both. But that didn’t mean she loved him any less. “My feelings for you have nothing to do with politics.”

He smiled, then led her to the bed and sat her down beside him, squeezing her hand as he spoke. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the last twenty-four hours. I feel like this adultery scandal is at least partly my fault.”

“Your fault?”

“Yeah. The fact is, people are bound to have questions about our marriage if they don’t see me with you. Look at the way Lincoln Howe’s wife has been on the road campaigning for him. Just because I’m not the typical First Lady doesn’t mean I should make myself invisible.”

“You haven’t made yourself invisible. I just haven’t done enough to include you.”

“You do want me involved, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. But I’ve made it so complicated, at least in my own mind. You know what a total wreck I was after Emily disappeared. In one night I went from a career woman who thought she could raise a child on her own to-well, I don’t even want to think about it. You’re the one who helped me want to go on living. You made me get out of bed every morning, get on my feet, get a life. I needed you like I’ve never needed anyone. But no one can go on needing someone like that forever. At least not if you want some self-respect.”

“Sounds like you almost resent me.”

“Not at all, darling. I still need you, but in different ways. I think part of me just wanted to say, Hey, I’m back. I can do this. I can do it on my own. ”

“Come on, Allison. You’re running for president of the United States, not president of the Elvis Forever Fan Club. No one will fault you for enlisting a little help from your husband.”

She smiled thinly, then turned serious. “Once you jump in, you’ll be fair game.”

“Like I’m not already? Hell, half the world thinks I have to stand in line to have sex with my wife.”

Allison lowered her eyes.

He brushed her cheek. “Hey, I’m sorry. I only said that to show how ridiculous these rumors are, not to hurt your feelings. I know the reason you dodged that question last night was to protect our privacy. That took courage. It means a lot to me that you’re willing to take the political knocks to protect what’s important to us. I have never doubted you, and this media circus isn’t about to make me start.”

Allison leaned closer and gave him a hug. He was right. She was trying to protect their privacy. But that didn’t completely ease her conscience. The fact was, there were things the public didn’t need to know. Strange things the media might misconstrue. Not things she had done, but things that had happened to her. Secrets she hadn’t told anyone-including Peter.

“Peter, I-” She paused, struggling with what she was about to tell him.

“What?”

She put her arms around him, resting her chin on his shoulder. It was a tactical move, a way of embracing him without looking him in the eye. “I love you,” she said with her eyes wide open.

She stared over his shoulder and kissed the back of his neck, leaving it at that-for now.

At midnight Lincoln Howe was in his pajamas, staring out the window from the twentieth floor of the Houston Hyatt. Two days ago Texas was Leahy territory. Not anymore.

He pulled back the swag drapes for a panoramic view. A half moon hung low in the night sky. A sea of lights from a deserted downtown and sprawling suburbia blanketed the landscape. He took a deep breath, as if he had the power to draw fresh air from some faraway Texas plain.

“Lincoln, come to bed,” his sleepy wife grumbled.

Natalie Howe was the general’s wife of forty-one years, the youngest and prettiest daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher. As a homemaker she’d virtually raised their three children alone while their father served his country in Korea and Vietnam. At sixty-three, she retained much of the beauty that had attracted the young enlisted man she’d married in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Dark, almond eyes and smooth, healthy skin were the trademarks of her Ethiopian ancestry. Her shiny black hair was usually worn up or straight back to frame the beauty of her face. She never left the house without her makeup, and she weighed only five pounds more than on the day they were married.

Lincoln rubbed his hands together. “I’m too excited to sleep.” He glanced over his shoulder at his wife. She was lying on her back beneath the covers in the twin bed farthest from him. He stepped from the window and sat at the edge of her bed.

“This is the turning point, Natalie. Leahy has finally made the fatal blunder. It’s like we’ve retaken Paris. Now it’s on to Berlin.”

“A lot can happen in eleven days.”

“True,” he said confidently. “But something tells me it will only get better.”

Natalie propped herself up on an elbow. Her eyes narrowed with disapproval. “Must you gloat so much?”

“I have every right to gloat.”

“It bothers me the way you’re acting. It’s as if you’re more excited about her losing than your winning.”

“You can’t feel sorry for the enemy, Natalie. The minute you do, they’ll stick a bayonet in your belly.”

“Maybe. But I honestly don’t think what she did is all that horrible.”

He winced with disbelief. “What she did was downright cowardly. There is nothing the American people hate more than a politician who won’t answer a question.”

Her eyes became lasers. She had yet to say anything about the debate, but his bravado and self-righteousness were suddenly more than she could stand. “I can certainly think of one thing worse than a woman who won’t answer any questions about marital fidelity.”

“What’s that, honey?”

She rolled away, speaking into the pillow. “A man who lies about it.”

He froze, not sure what to say. It wasn’t like the debate, where he could simply look into the camera and deny it. They’d passed that point long ago, before the apologies.

He laid a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t respond. He rose from her bed and switched off the lamp, saying nothing.

Allison managed a couple of hours sleep after making love to Peter, but at 3:00 A.M. she was wide awake. By six o’clock, the first glow of morning light was seeping in around the edge of the balloon draperies, casting a yellow-white frame around the dark bedroom windows. Allison was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling as Peter lay sleeping at her side.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll actually had her trailing Lincoln Howe, but that was only in the back of her mind. She was still struggling over her conversation with Peter. She was happy about the way he’d come through for her, agreeing to campaign at her side. Her joy, however, was overshadowed by a nagging concern over her inability to tell him the whole story behind her decision not to answer the adultery question. Maybe what made it so difficult to talk about it now was that the whole thing had started so long ago, and she couldn’t explain why she hadn’t told him everything from the beginning. For the tenth time tonight, her mind took her back to that evening in August, almost two months ago-analyzing it, dissecting it, and wondering what made it so difficult to tell her husband about a chance reunion with Mitch O’Brien in Miami Beach…