A Harmless Little Plan (Harmless #3)(29)

“You did fine.”

“A few more seconds and we might have saved Lindsay from being shot.”

“No. A few more seconds and John might have grabbed her and played hostage with her. Those seconds before you crashed the place were unpredictable.”

“I saw the footage.”

“Who in the world hasn’t seen the footage?”

He shrugs. The entire nightmare has been played on international television for the past day. Post-mortem analysis follows the same basic news cycle script. It all becomes pretty simple once you know who was trying to destroy whom.

Nolan Corning decided four years ago, when Harry was making his bid for a second Senate term and also clearly shoring up a path toward the White House, that this would not do. For all of his political career, Harry had been a Teflon man, impervious to scandal.

Corning needed a news story so big it would bury Harry forever.

How he reached out and found Blaine Maisri is anyone’s guess, and I know we’ll find out in the coming days and weeks. Killing all three attackers was, in retrospect, terrible for investigating what happened, but in the life-or-death heat of the moment, you don’t pause to consider the future.

And Lindsay’s moves against Stellan were self-defense. The video makes that clear.

Even if the knife plunge made every man who’s watched it sit with his legs crossed.

Silas snaps his fingers in front of my face. “You there?”

I ignore him and drink half my coffee, staying quiet.

“That video Jane released to the media, the one with Blaine, John and Stellan not wearing masks? It’s been proven to be legit. She hacked into John’s hard drive and got it somehow, along with some coded notes between Blaine and an aide in Corning’s camp. The rest will fall in place as the search of all their electronic records unfolds.”

He’s trying to reassure me.

I can’t stop staring at Lindsay’s door.

“Drew?”

“Heard you. Good. I want the least bureaucratic mess for Lindsay. Her recovery is more important than media time or interrogations.”

“Investigators have to interview her eventually.”

“Not without me present.”

“You’re still not cleared yet,” says a deep voice from behind me. Paulson appears, wearing a crisp suit, a well-ironed shirt, a dark purple tie with gray accents, and a look that says he wants to kill me or give me a medal.

Could go either way.

“I don’t give a shit about being cleared. I’m staying here until she talks to me. If that were your woman in there, you’d do the same.”

He nods. “I would.”

“Any news?” Silas asks Mark, finishing his coffee and tossing it in the trash bin like a three-pointer. He misses, makes a face, and bends down to throw it away properly.

“Yeah,” Mark says, anger evident in the way his nostrils flare, the posture he assumes. “This thing goes all the way to the top, and has tentacles everywhere. When Galt and I tried to get you released, Drew, turns out NSA, CIA and FBI operatives were all part of the effort to help set you up.”

“I got the full alphabet thrown at me,” I say, impressed.

“Galt figures someone finds you to be very, very dangerous,” he adds, eyebrows up. “That’s high praise from him.”

“And you outsmarted them all,” Silas intones, voice low.

“We still don’t understand how the hell Corning has that kind of reach, and -- ”

Just then, Monica and Harry emerge from the room, eyes hollow.

Oh, no.

Mark stops talking and gives Harry a worried look.

Monica grabs my hand, and says softly, “You can go in now. Maybe you’ll have better luck than we did.”

What the hell does that mean?





Lindsay


I am turned slightly away from the door. I smell Drew’s aftershave before he even sets one foot inside the room. My stomach flip-flops.

Not yet.

Not now.

I’m not really here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want him to see me like this.

I don’t want anyone to see me like this.

No. Scratch that.

I don’t want anyone to see me ever.

Too much of me has been seen. Too much of me has been stripped naked before the world, bloodied and bruised, my fury worn as my only weapon and exposed for consideration and judgment. John didn’t just kidnap me. He stole me. He stole me and delivered me to Stellan and Blaine and they took my humanity – again – and turned me into an animal.

Only this time, I was awake for all of it. Aware. Sentient and breathing and afraid and terrified to the point where I just can’t be who I was before.

He stole who I am and scraped it clean off me, like a car stripped of all its value, the important parts gleaned, the rest an empty shell no one wants.

A nuisance.

A pile of non-functioning junk.

The sound of Drew’s even breath makes me close my eyes and slow my own respiration. If I pretend to be asleep, maybe he’ll go away.

His scent gets stronger. I feel heat to my right, like he’s radiating it outward.

Even though my eyes are closed, I can tell when he’s next to me. He doesn’t touch the bed. A shadow changes the light behind my eyelids, and his heat intensifies. There’s more than simple warmth there. It’s a kind of compassion that takes on temperature, as if goodness can be calibrated to produce light.