Page 30 of Lessons in Power
“I told you Emilia was just my opening salvo,” John Thomas called. “Wait until you see what I have planned for your little boyfriend.”
It took me a second to catch the reference.Henry.Henry Marquette was not my boyfriend. But the threat was enough to keep me frozen in place.
“Marquette’s had you on your back since you got here,” John Thomas sneered. “I wonder if his pillow talk ever included anything about his father.”
Those words knocked the breath from my body.
“The congressman is very good at paying attention,” John Thomas said. “In that respect,” he slurred, dragging the cuff of his sleeve across his nose, bloodying it, “I’m my father’s son.”
Unwilling to let him see that his words had hit their target, I opened the door, stepped into the bathroom, and locked it behind me, my mind reeling.John Thomas knows something about Henry’sfather.Something that he thought could hurt Henry’s campaign.Something he thinks could hurt Henry.
I stayed in the bathroom for a full five minutes before I unlocked the door and eased it back open. John Thomas was nowhere to be seen, but the hallway was occupied.A couple.The woman had red hair, a blue dress. She was wearing matching heels. The man was her same height, seemingly twice as wide. He pulled the woman tight to his body, his hands roaming over her curves. I couldn’t make out either of their faces, but I could see a thick silver ring on the man’s right hand as he shuddered and his fingers entangled themselves in her hair.
The sound of incoming footsteps pried the two apart. I stepped back from the door, letting it close and hoping they wouldn’t take note of it—or me.
A few seconds later, I heard Adam calling my name. When I opened the door back into the hallway, the couple was gone.
“Are you okay?” Adam asked me.
I stepped toward him. “Are you?”
It wasn’t until half an hour later, when we made it to the valet stand, and I saw the thick silver ring on the hand of the man in front of us in line that I realized who he was.
Congressman Wilcox.
And the woman standing between him and John Thomas—the woman whodidn’thave red hair andwasn’twearing a blue dress—was the congressman’s wife.
CHAPTER 22
Walker Nolan showed up on our doorstep Saturday morning, looking hungover and on the verge of collapse.
Ivy rounded on me. “Upstairs,” she ordered. “Now.”
“It’s okay.” Walker’s voice was hoarse. “She’s going to see it anyway. Everyone is.”
There was a beat of silence.
“See what?” Ivy asked.
Walker stared at her for several seconds, nonresponsive.
“Walker,” Ivy said sharply.
He swallowed, his eyes regaining some of their focus. “Can I come in?”
“My name is Daniela Nicolae.”
Walker’sitwas a video—one that had arrived in his inbox that morning.
“I live next door. You pass me in the coffee shop. I’m a nice girl, the kind you smile at when you walk by.” The terrorist’s eyes were dark, a stark contrast to her fair skin. “I am a doctor. I am your neighbor. I am your friend. And everything you know about me is a lie.”
Daniela spoke with a faint accent, one I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“I have been raised for one purpose and one purpose alone. Mine is a glorious calling. And by the time you know me for who and what I am, it will be too late.”
She taped this before the bombing, I realized.Before she knew it would fail.
“I am one of many. You work with us, side by side. You lift a hand to wave as we are out watering our lawns. We are everywhere. We are in your government, your law enforcement, your military. We see everything. We know all of your secrets.” Even with a screen between us, her gaze was eerie in its intensity. “And we wait.”
