Page 79 of Swerve
I think about it for a moment, and then, “Yeah, I think I am.”
“What did Pounce think of them?”
“I decided to wait on that introduction.”
He smiles, one wrist draped over the steering wheel. “I’m guessing that was a good idea.”
”I think he’ll come around.”
“I’d bet against it.” He looks at her then, a second too long, and the Jeep swerves a little. “Sorry.”
She glances down at her hands, and he can feel her awareness of the fact that he was looking at her.
“You look nice,” he says.
“Thank you. So do you.”
They drive in silence for a mile or two while he searches for appropriate footing, a place to steer the conversation that is in line with the actual reason they are dressed up and headed back to Hotel California.
“What happens if we see him?” Emory asks, looking at the darkness speeding by outside her window.
“I’ll call for backup. We already know he’s willing to kill to keep his tracks covered.”
“What if he’s already killed her?”
“You can’t think like that.”
“I don’t want to. I just can’t bring myself to think about how she is, if she’s hurt or hungry or—”
“Emory. Don’t, okay? It won’t help anything. And she needs you to keep pulling for her.”
She looks at him then, and he lets himself glance at her face. The pain has unraveled, her eyes damp with tears. He’s realized that most of the time she keeps it tightly wrapped, the edges pressed together one over the other, so that anyone who didn’t know what was going on in her life would have been hard pressed to notice anything was wrong. Maybe it was the professional persona she’d had to develop with an impending career in psychiatry.
“How long do families wait?” she asks quietly. “Before they give up.”
“Some never do. Others need to at some point. Have to have the closure to go on. We’re not there yet, Emory. I’m not giving up.”
She reaches across, covers his hand with hers. He can feel her gratitude in the pulse throbbing in her palm. And something else he’s reluctant to name. It’s nice though. He doesn’t pull his hand away and feels a bit of a loss when she finally pulls her own back to her lap, and her view to the darkness out her window.
The Senator
“Knowing where the trap is—that’s the first step in evading it.”
?Frank Herbert
HE GIVES HIS driver Arrington’s Georgetown address. When they pull up in front of the Beaux Arts townhouse on Massachusetts Avenue, he realizes the young senator is even more well-funded than his own research had indicated. The Embassy Row properties were hard to come by and would be valued at upward of seven million.
Nice to know though that he had chosen the appropriate form of persuasion with Arrington. Money wasn’t likely to have much pull, when it was already in such apparent abundance.
He sends a text to let Arrington know they’re out front. The driver leaves the engine running, and in less than a minute, the young senator appears at the door, turns to tap a code into the lock, and then strides down the stone walkway, his very posture indicative of his position in life, his confidence that he has it all nailed down and perfectly within his control.
The driver gets out to walk around to the back of the car, opening the door as the senator approaches. Hagan turns his head to the window, allows himself a smile of satisfaction. But when Arrington slides into the back seat, Hagan’s greeting is just plain old South Carolina glad-you-could-come.
Mia
“Man is the cruelest animal.”
?Friedrich Nietzsche
