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"Recruited?" she repeated thinly. "By whom, Jack? Whose idea was it? Who hired Eddy Paschal?"

Jack gave her a blank stare, then a quick shrug. "Dad."

FORTY-NINE

The Corte Real was a lovely facility but a poor selection to host Tate Rutledge's victory celebration because it had only one entrance. Between a pair of massive Spanish doors and the ballroom itself was a short, narrow passageway. It formed an inevitable bottleneck.

The newly elected senator was propelled through that channel by a surge of family, friends, and supporters, all raucous, all jubilant over his win. Television lights created an aura around his head that shone like a celestial crown. His smile blended confidence with humility, that mix that elevated good men to greatness.

Tate's tall, gray-haired observer weaved his way toward the decorated platform at the opposite end of the room from the entrance. He elbowed aside media and Rutledge enthusiasts, somehow managing to do so without drawing attention to himself. Over the years, he'd mastered that kind of maneuver.

Recently, he had wondered if his skills weren't getting rusty. He was almost certain Mrs. Rutledge had picked him out of the crowd on more than one occasion.

Having thought of her, he suddenly realized that she wasn't among the group following Tate toward the dais. Incisive eyes swung toward the entrance. Ah, there she was, bringing up the rear, looking distraught, obviously because she'd become separated from the rest of the family.

He turned his attention back to the charismatic young man, whose appearance in the ballroom had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. As he climbed the steps of the dais, balloons were released from a net overhead. They contributed to the confusion and poor visibility.

On the stage, Rutledge paused to shake hands with some of his most influential supporters—among them, several sports heroes and a Texas-bred movie actress. He waved to his disciples and they cheered him.

Gray Hair dodged the corner of a bouncing placard that nearly caught him on the forehead and kept his eyes trained on the hero of the hour. In the midst of this orgy of celebration, his face alone was grave with resolution.

Purposefully, he continued to move steadily forward, toward the platform. The pandemonium would have intimidated most, but it didn't faze him. He considered it a nuisance, nothing more. His progress was undeterred. Nothing could stop him from reaching Tate Rutledge.

* * *

Avery arrived breathless at the door of the ballroom. The walls of her heart felt as thin as a balloon about to burst. The muscles of her legs were burning. She'd run down twenty flights of stairs.

She hadn't even attempted to take an elevator to the hotel's mezzanine level but, together with Jack, who'd only been told that his brother's life was in imminent danger, had dashed for the stairs. Somewhere in the stairwell, Jack was still trying to catch up with her.

Pausing only a fraction of a moment to draw breath and get her bearings, she madly plunged through the crowd toward the dais. Wall-to-wall bodies formed a barricade, but Avery managed to plow through it.

She saw his head rise above the throng as he took the steps leading to the platform. "Tate!"

He heard her shout and swiveled his head around, but he missed seeing her when someone on the temporary stage grabbed his arm and began pumping his hand enthusiastically.

Avery frantically sought Eddy and found him positioning Nelson, Zee, Dorothy Rae, and Fancy in a semicircle behind the podium. He then motioned Tate toward the speaker's stand, where a dozen microphones were mounted and ready to amplify his first words as a newly elected senator.

Tate moved toward the podium.

"Tate!" It was impossible for her to be heard over the blaring band. At the sight of their hero, the crowd had gone mad. "Oh, God, no. Let me through. Let me through."

A blast of adrenalin strengthened Avery's flagging energy and rubbery legs. With no regard to courtesy, she kicked and clawed her way forward, batting aside drifting balloons.

Jack finally caught up with her. "Carole," he panted, "what do you mean Tate's life is in danger?"

"Help me get to him. Jack, For God's sake, help me." He did what he could to create a furrow through the crowd. When she saw a space opening up in front of her, she jumped into the air and frantically waved her arms. "Tate! Tate!"

Gray Hair!

He was standing near the edge of the dais, partially hidden behind a Texas state flag. "No!" she screamed. "Tate!"

Jack gave her a boost from behind. She stumbled up the steps, almost fell, caught herself. "Tate!"

Hearing her cry, he turned, wearing his glorious smile, and extended his hand. She rushed across the platform, but not toward Tate.

Her eyes were fixed on his enemy. And his were on her. And the sudden realization that she knew about him caused his eyes to crystallize.

As though in slow motion, Avery saw Eddy reach into his jacket. Her lips formed the word, but she didn't know that she actually screamed "No!" as he withdrew the pistol and took aim at the back of Tate's head.

Avery lunged for Tate and knocked him aside. A millisecond later, Eddy's bullet slammed into her, throwing her into Tate's unsuspecting arms.

She heard the screams, heard Tate's bellowing denial that this was happening, saw Jack's and Dorothy Rae's and Fancy's blank expressions of horror and incredulity.

Her eyes connected with Nelson Rutledge's the same instant Eddy's second bullet struck him in the forehead. It made a neat hole, but its rear exit was messy. Zee was showered with blood. She screamed.

Nelson's face registered surprise, then anger, then outrage. That was his death mask. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Eddy leaped from the dais into the crowd of hysterical spectators. The Lone Star flag fluttered. A man stepped from behind it and fired his previously concealed weapon. Eddy Paschal's head exploded upon impact.

It was Zee's voice that Avery heard from afar.

"Bryan! My God.Bryan!"

FIFTY

"I thought it would be best if we all met together like this, so I could clarify everything to everyone at once."

FBI Special Agent Bryan Tate addressed the somber group assembled in Avery Daniels's hospital room. Her bed had been elevated so that she was partially sitting up. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. A bandage covered her left shoulder; her arm was in a sling.

The others—Jack and his family, Zee and Tate—were sitting in the available chairs or leaning against the walls and windowsills. All kept a wary distance from Avery's bed. Since Tate had disclosed her true identity to them, she had become an object of curiosity. After the tragic events of the night before, Mandy had been taken to the ranch and left in Mona'scare.

"All of you experienced what happened," Bryan Tate said, "but you don't know the reasons for it. They're not easy to talk about."

"Tell them everything, Bryan," Zee said softly. "Don't leave out anything on my account. I want them,needthem, to understand."

Tall and distinguished, he was standing beside her chair, a hand on her shoulder. "Zee and I fell in love years ago," he stated bluntly. "It was something neither of us predicted or wanted, particularly. We didn't set out to make it happen. It was wrong, but it was powerful. We eventually surrendered to it." His fingers flexed on her shoulder. "The consequences were far-reaching. They culminated in tragedy last night."

He told them how he had returned home from Korea a few months ahead of his buddy Nelson. "At his request, I checked on Zee periodically," he said. "By the time Nelson got home, the relationship between Zee and me had grown way beyond friendship or simple mutual attraction. We knew we loved each other and would have to hurt Nelson."

"Ialso knew I was pregnant," Zee said, reaching up to cover Bryan's hand with her own. "Pregnant with you, Tate.Itold Nelson the unvarnished truth. He remained calm, but laid down an ultimatum. If I went with my lover and his bastard child, I would never see Jack again."

Tears welled in her eyes as she smiled at her older son. "Jack, you were still a toddler. I loved you, something Nelson knew very well and used to his advantage. When I vowed never to see Bryan again, he said he forgave me and promised to rear Tate as his son."

"Which he did," Tate said.

His eyes locked with Bryan's. The man was his father, though he'd never met him before last night. And the man he had known and loved as his father had been gunned down right before his eyes.

"I didn't know about Nelson's ultimatum," Bryan said, continuing the story. "I just got a note from Zee saying that our affair—and I couldn't believe she'd given it such a shoddy name—was over and that she wished it had never happened."

Despair had prompted him to volunteer for a dangerous overseas mission. When his plane mal-functioned and began spiraling down toward the ocean, he actually welcomed death, since he'd just as soon die as have to live without Zee. Fate intervened, however, and he was rescued.

While recovering from the injuries he had sustained, the FBI approached him. He had already been trained in intelligence work. They proposed that Bryan Tate remain "dead" and start working for them undercover. That's what he'd been doing for the last thirty years.

"When I could, I came to see you, Tate," he said to his son. "From a careful distance, never getting close enough to risk running into Nelson or Zee,Iwatched you play football a few times. I even tracked you around the base in Nam for a week.Iwas at your graduation from UT and law school. I never stopped loving you or your mother."

"And Nelson never forgot or forgave me," Zee said, bowing her head and sniffing into a Kleenex.

Bryan touched her hair consolingly, then picked up the story again. His latest assignment had been to infiltrate a white supremacist group operating out of the northwestern states. At the outset, he had come across an extremely bitter Vietnam vet whom he recognized as Eddy Paschal, Tate's former college roommate.

"We already had a thick dossier on him because he had been implicated in several subversive and neo-Nazi activities, including a few ritualistic executions, although we never had enough evidence to indict him."

"Jeez, and to thinkIslept with him," Fancy said with a shudder.

"You couldn't have known," Dorothy Rae said kindly. "He had us all fooled."

"I would rather have kept him alive," Bryan said. "He was ruthless, but extremely intelligent. He could have been very useful to the Bureau."

Bryan looked toward Tate. "You can imagine how astonished I was when Nelson contacted him, especially since Paschal's philosophies were antithetical to yours. Nelson cleaned him up, gave him that spick-and-span image, paid for a crash course in public relations and communications, and brought him to Texas to be your campaign manager. That's when I realized that Nelson's intentions weren't what they seemed."

Tate backed into the wall and leaned his head against the pastel plaster. "So he planned to have me killed all along. It was one big setup. He groomed me for public office, instilled in me an ambition for it, hired Eddy, everything."

"I'm afraid so," Bryan said grimly.

Zee left her chair and went to Tate. "Darling, forgive me."

"Forgive you?"

"It was my sin he was punishing, not yours," she explained. "You were merely the sacrificial lamb. He wanted me to suffer and knew that the worst punishment possible for a mother would be to see her child die, especially during a moment of personal triumph."

"I can't believe it," Jack said, also coming to his feet.

"I can," Tate admitted quietly. "Now that I think back on everything, I can believe it. You know how he preached about justice, fairness, paying for one's mistakes, retribution for transgressions? He believed you had made atonement with your life," he said, nodding toward Bryan, "but mother hadn't yet paid for betraying him."

"Nelson was very subtle, very clever," Zee said. "Until last night I didn't realize just how clever or how vindictive. Tate, he manipulated you into marrying Carole, a woman he was sure would remind me of my own unfaithfulness. I had to close my eyes to her flagrant infidelity. I couldn't very well criticize her for committing the same sin I had."

"It wasn't the same, Zee."

"I know that, Bryan," she stressed, "but Nelson didn't. Adultery was adultery in his estimation, and punishable by death."

Jack was upset. His face was pale, ravaged from a night of mourning. "It still doesn't make sense to me. Why, if he hated Bryan so much, did he name the baby Tate?"

"Another cruel joke on me," Zee said. "It would be another constant reminder of my sin."

Jack pondered that for a moment. "Why did he favor Tate over me? I was his real son, but he always made me feel inferior to my younger brother."

"He counted on human nature taking its course," Zee explained. "He made it obvious that he favored Tate so that you would resent him. The friction between you would be another burden for me to bear."

Jack stubbornly shook his head. "I still can't believe he was so conniving. Not Dad." Dorothy Rae reached for his hand and pressed it between hers.

Zee turned toward Avery, who had remained silent throughout. "He was dedicated to getting vengeance on me. He arranged for Tate to marry Carole Navarro. Even after I learned of her shady past, it never occurred to me that Nelson was responsible for her conversion from topless dancer to wife. Now I believe that he engineered that, just as he recruited Eddy. In any case, they formed an alliance at some point.

"Carole was instructed to eat away at Tate's emotions. Nelson knew that the unhappier Tate was, the unhappier Iwould be. She did everything she was told to do and then some. The only decision she made independently was to have an abortion. I don't think Nelson knew about that. It made him furious, but only because he was afraid it would cost Tate the election."

Zee moved toward the bed and took Avery's hand. "Can you forgive me for the cruel accusations I made against you?"

"You didn't know," she said gruffly. "And Carole deserved your antipathy."