Page 37 of Midnight Secrets

John London was a joke! Those handsome looks hid a mediocre mind and dubious morals. Dad had hated him.

Joe put an arm around her. “I’m sorry, honey. That should have been your father.”

“Yes, it should have been. Uncle Hector was a miserable replacement. But John London? He’s not worthy in any way of this. He’s a moron and a lech. I’m ashamed to have him mentioned in the same breath as Dad.”

Joe looked at her curiously. “Yeah. I wasn’t able to follow US politics too closely in the field, but London’s been around a long time. No one has ever praised him for his smarts. But a lech?”

“Pinched me once so hard I was sore for days,” Isabel said. “Tried to fondle my breasts when I was sixteen. He’s a total creep. And he doesn’t give a shit about the environment. How dare Uncle Hector choose him as if he were a natural successor to Dad!” She frowned up at him. “What?”

He’d gone all stiff, his hand biting into her shoulder.

“He pinched you? Fondled you?” Joe’s voice sounded choked.

“Yes. He’s a creep. What was Uncle Hector thinking?”

“I want to tear his throat out,” Joe said.

So did she.

“I like your thinking, Joe.” She sighed. “But it’s not possible. He’s going to be surrounded by Secret Service agents from now on. And I don’t think pinching and fondling, however awful, are crimes that warrant having your throat torn out.”

Though the ideawasappealing.

John London as president of the United States was so wrong on so many different levels she felt sick. But he’d make it probably, if he could keep it in his pants and if they didn’t let him talk too much. Other morons had made it. And there could never be a candidate like her dad. Certainly not Hector andcertainlynot London.

Her father had been smart and good and capable of fighting for what he believed in. He’d had solid old-fashioned values while being open and tolerant. And he truly believed in protecting the environment and would have fought—and fought hard—special interests. There was no one else like him on the political horizon.

And her mother’s nightmare, the reason they’d fought so bitterly over his candidacy, had actually come true. He’d been assassinated.

And so had she.

“This must be disturbing for you.” Joe kissed the top of her head. “Knowing your father and knowing him.”

She looked up at him and for the first time saw something she should have seen before. He shared characteristics with her father, which hadn’t occurred to her before. She’d thought they were polar opposites.

Her father had loved living large. He always dressed in expensive clothes, wore expensive shoes and had expensive tastes. She rarely saw Joe in anything but jeans and T-shirts. A jacket when he was really dressing up. Track shoes and boots. He didn’t have three-hundred-dollar haircuts and manicured nails.

But he said what he meant and he meant what he said and there didn’t seem to be any bullshit in him at all, exactly like her father.

“It is. I hate the thought of a man like that representing my father in any way.” She snaked her arm around Joe’s lean waist and rested her head against his shoulder. “Nothing I can do about it, though.”

Joe kissed her head again. “Nope. Maybe he’ll lose.ThenI rip his throat out when there aren’t Secret Service agents around. How’s that sound?”

Isabel smiled. “Perfect. So, who’s coming today to turn my house into a fortress?”

“Jacko and Metal and maybe the Senior. One of my bosses. He didn’t know if he could make it, but he’ll try.”

“The Senior? Is that his name?”

“No. His ranking. Former ranking, but we all just call him the Senior. He was a Senior Chief.”

“Sounds serious.”

“Man, that guy defines serious. You did not want to get on the wrong side of the Senior. Talk about ripping your throat out. He’d do worse when we were in the military, like ordering us to drop onto the grinder and pump out an extra hundred and fifty.” Joe shook his head, smiling faintly though Isabel didn’t see how pumping out a hundred and fifty push-ups could be a fond memory. “Then go for a ten-mile run in the freezing surf. That’s if he found a wrinkle in your bed. If you missed a target on the range, then he’d get creative.”

Isabel blinked. “He sounds—he sounds cruel.” Did she want someone like that in her home?

“No, not cruel.” Joe took her hands in his. His face had turned sober. “Not cruel at all. The Senior’s job was to train us to complete the mission while staying alive. He was our worst nightmare, until we actually went into battle. Being kind and soft to us in training was the very best way to get us killed in the field. If you sweat in training you don’t bleed in the field. That’s what we lived by. Man, we sweated a lot.”

---