No Safe Place (61 page)

“You listen to
me
.” She turned on him, caught between anger and despair. “We can’t sneak around anymore. And once we’re out of the closet, the vultures will pick our bones. When did our affair start—tonight?” Slowing, her voice became a prayer for reason. “It would be all Nate Cutler needs, Kerry. You might as well admit the truth—”

“And if I did?”

“Then whenever you looked at me you’d see a lost baby and a lost chance. How many months would we last?”

Kerry thrust his hands in his pockets. His tone, though quiet, was etched with frustration. “That’s what you said two years ago. Look how well it’s worked.”

She gazed at him steadily. “Then let’s have the rest of the conversation, Kerry. Two years ago, I said you wanted to be President. I was right, wasn’t I?”

He looked down, then met her eyes again. “I suppose you were.”

“Well, there’s no supposing now.” Her voice softened. “You
do
love two things, Kerry. I watched your face tonight: even after what Mason did, you haven’t given up, have you? You’re still wondering how to bury this.”

He shrugged, silent. At length, he said, “It’s hopeless.”

“If we go public, it will be. For good.” To ease the hurt, she went to him, clasping his arms. “We’d be on the cover of every magazine in America, and you’d be the punch line on Let-terman and Leno I said you’d be two years ago. Because I made a decision for both of us, then told a stranger instead of you.”

He shook his head. “I’d rather risk it than be with anyone else. Whenever I looked at her, I’d wish she were you.”

Briefly, Lara tried smiling. “You really
are
a romantic, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said flatly. “Just too practical to live the way I have.” He cocked his head. “Are you being practical, Lara? Where does
your
career figure into this?”

She had felt so bleak, so compromised that—tonight—she had given it no thought. Moving away from him, she sat on the couch, alone. “I’d give a lot,” she said, “not to feel like such
a whore. That’s part of what going overseas was about—penance. But, after tonight, I don’t know what it would take to feel like myself again.”

He fell quiet. She watched him, standing in the middle of a strange room, so much the captive of his own thoughts and feelings that minutes seemed to pass. “Maybe,” he said finally, “we could wait. You could go back to your job, get a grip. I deal with what I have to deal with. Then, after some time has passed …”

“We begin dating?”

“Something like that. No one needs to know that I’ve called you every night.” His voice grew soft again. “I’ve missed that too.”

“So have I, Kerry.” Lara struggled to find the truth. “But no matter how long we waited, Nate would wait us out—Nate, or your potential enemies. And imagine how ripe our story would be if you somehow managed to become President.”

“I suppose I’d have to marry you,” he answered. “Then the whole damned country would be stuck.”

Suddenly his unwillingness to
see
made Lara angry at him. “And what a gift I’d be to fanatic right-to-lifers: the First Lady of the United States, symbol of heartless abortion. I wouldn’t do that to you, me,
or
other women—never mind that, for myself, I’ve come to hate what I did.” She stood again. “These people play for
keeps
, Kerry—on both sides. They’d use me to destroy you.”

“Lara …”

“Of course,” she said relentlessly, “there’s all the joy we’d have in the meantime, waiting for them to do it. While your anxious handlers tried to make me into a Barbie doll …”

“How can you imagine,” Kerry snapped, “that I’d ever let them do that? Or that
you
would?” He crossed the room, kneeling by the couch. “You could be the best thing for this country, and for all the things you care about—like starving children. You could make such a difference—”

“That’s what you say to
yourself
,” she interrupted, “isn’t it?” She saw the hurt on his face and made her tone more gentle. “Listen to yourself, Kerry—suddenly we’re in the White House. You haven’t let it go yet. Maybe you can’t.”

This left Kerry silent. “You know I’m right,” she told him. “There’d be no safe place for us, ever.”

“So I’ll withdraw,” he answered. “How many times do I have to ask? Please, give us a chance.”

Heartsick, Lara slowly shook her head. “It’s not up to me anymore, Kerry. And they
won’t
give us a chance. No matter what we do.” She touched his face. “Why do you always make
me
see the truth? Why can’t
you
, for once … ?”

The quiet words seemed to pierce him. “I did see the truth,” he answered. “Two years ago. But you weren’t ready to listen.”

She looked away. “Sometimes I wish I had,” she said at last. “Sometimes I wish I’d believed you were content to stay a senator. Maybe then you’d never have learned what really
is
true.” She caught herself, voice pleading again. “Please, let’s stop this. Before we do more damage.”

Kerry touched her face. “Tell me one thing, then.”

“What is it?”

He looked into her eyes. “Do you still love me?” he asked.

Despite herself, Lara felt the tears well again. “Oh, Kerry,” she murmured, “that’s such a sad question.”

He took her hands again. “Why?”

For a moment, she considered telling the truth. And then she found a second, easier truth. Softly, she said, “Because the answer doesn’t matter.”

For a last painful moment, she let her hands rest in his. Then she gently disengaged and, rising, stood by the door again.

“It’s time to call Peter,” she said simply.

Nate sat in the alcove of the sixth floor, reading a
New Yorker
. It was more comfortable than sitting in her doorway and, at one in the morning, less odd and less revealing. Besides, he could see Lara’s door from here.

He had been waiting for forty minutes. It was a good thing their colleagues were so tired, he reflected; no one had seen him.

Restless, he reread a particularly scathing film review. “Ms. Draybeck,” the reviewer said of a supposedly hot actress, “uses both of her expressions frequently.” It almost made him smile.

What was Lara doing? Nate wondered. He tried to imagine the psychic devastation Dick Mason must have wrought and
then, for his own sake, tried not to. He gave up; in the next pitiless moments, Nate also saw himself, stalking a woman who once had been his friend.

Suddenly there was a soft metallic sound—heavier, somehow, than the opening of the door to a hotel room. Putting down the magazine, Nate rose and quickly turned the corner marked “Exit.”

Ten feet away, Lara Costello slipped through the heavy metal door from the stairwell.

Turning, she saw him.

His nerve ends jangled. “Hello, Lara.”

Though she was still, her expression was strangely emotionless, unsurprised. She seemed to nod, as though confirming something to herself.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“Running up and down the fire escape,” she answered coolly. “Twenty times, and I’m not even sweating. You should try exercise instead of skulking in hallways.”

“Kilcannon,” he ventured, and then Lara began walking toward him. She stopped, two feet away.

“You saw him,” Nate said.

With steely deliberation, Lara drew one hand back and slapped him hard across the face.

Startled, Nate heard his teeth click, felt pain run through his jaw. He managed to keep looking at her.

She was breathing hard now—a sudden release of tension—and her eyes were molten.

“Don’t say his name to me,” she told him. “Not you.”

He did not answer. She stared at him, her hatred plain. Then she walked past him, to her room.

Silent, Kate Feeney drove Sean to his motel.

He, too, was quiet. Surreptitiously, he watched her as they turned from Broadway onto Van Ness, her face lit by the few cars that—even at this late hour—sped down the other side of the six-lane avenue. A few more hours, and it would be dawn.

Just before leaving, Rick Ginsberg had asked for their Social Security numbers.

They had been alone in the plaza, the last three to leave. Promptly, Kate had given hers; squinting in the darkness, Rick scribbled the numbers on the back of a business card.

“John?” Ginsberg asked.

Tense, Sean hesitated; the number would expose him as Sean Burke. “I can’t remember,” he finally mumbled. “My card’s at home—New York.”

Rick frowned. “Can you get it from someone? I’ll need it first thing tomorrow, or the Service won’t let you do this.”

Sean nodded. He had felt chastised, suspect; perhaps he only imagined Kate studying his face.

“Can you find your number?” she asked now.

Remembering the artist’s sketch, Sean folded his arms, afraid to look at her. “My mother knows,” he lied.

Bending forward, he hugged his own chest. The bloody acid sourness snaked from his stomach to his throat. “My mother knows,” he repeated. “She knows everything …”

“John?”

Kate’s voice had filled with concern. Did she care for him, Sean wondered, or fear him? He stared at the floor, tears misting his eyes. “I feel sick,” he murmured.

Turning onto Lombard Street, Kate gave him another quick
glance. “We’ll be fine tomorrow,” she said in a soothing tone. “Everything will go fine.”

Was she
with
him? he thought with fearful wonder. In his riptide of panic and hope, the street looked surreal, its glowing electric signs—a gas station, a bar, a hotel—the guideposts to a seedy world filled with enemies and strangers. He did not know whether to hide from Kate or to beg her to come to his motel, to await the morning with her arms around him. As his mother had done after she stopped drinking …

Sean coughed spittle into his hands.

“Are you all
right
?” Kate asked now. “Should we stop?”

Hands covering his face, Sean shook his head. Kate continued down Lombard faster, headed for Sean’s motel. He had pills there, Sean thought desperately. All he needed was to get to them.

Helpless, he felt the sickness rise within him. He sensed, but could not see, Kate turning into the motel parking lot.

As the car came to a stop, fear and nausea overcame him. Shuddering with shame, Sean retched miserably into his hands.

He felt Kate reach for him.

Gently, she dabbed at his face with a tissue, then tugged at his jacket. “You need to get this off,” she told him.

Docile, Sean let her ease one arm from its sleeve, the left side of his jacket falling free.

The sudden silence in the car felt like a cry suppressed. He could feel her stillness.

Turning, Sean stared at her.

Her lips were parted, and she gazed down at the seat, stunned. His eyes followed hers.

His gun lay between them, a dull metallic shape.

Kate’s eyes moved from the gun to his face, appalled. “What is that?” she managed.

Swallowing flecks of vomit, he reached for the gun.

I had to stop him,
he had said to the red-haired woman.
Your sympathy should be with your baby, the life I came to save …

“John …”
Kate’s voice was hoarse now. “What are you
doing
?”

Hand trembling, Sean raised the gun. For a split-second, he saw the street punk, the last threat he had faced.

Gingerly, he placed the gun to Kate’s throat.

There was no one but them—the parking lot was dark, the motel a dim shadow with a flickering, fluorescent sign. In the cocoon of Kate’s car, her shocked eyes shone with tears; her throat twitched where the metal touched it.

She said his name again.

Do you love me?
he wanted to ask.

“Please,” Kate whispered. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Please, I only came here for an IUD.

The woman had given the police his portrait. If Kate turned on him, they would find him quickly, and then what meaning would his mission have? Sean’s hand shook more violently; he could feel her breath on his face.

“Please …”

Her eyes were beautiful, blue. He could no longer look at them.

“Please …” To Sean, it sounded like a prayer.

Closing his eyes, he pulled the trigger.

There was a popping sound, swallowed by the darkness, by whatever the bullet had struck.

Shaking, Sean looked into her eyes again.

They were shocked, stricken. The smallest sound came from her blood-flecked lips. Above her on the ceiling was a glutinous sheen.

Sean turned away, sickened.

He heard Kate slump against the seat; there was a last pitiful sound, then nothing. The car smelled of more than vomit.

Across the parking lot, a car cruised down Lombard.

Eyes half shut, Sean touched the nape of Kate’s neck, pushing her head below the dashboard. Her skin was moist, warm.

Quickly, he withdrew his fingers.

You had no choice, you had no choice.
The repeated words swirled in his brain—a mantra, a plea for absolution. The hum of traffic came to him as if from a great distance.

Her keys were in the ignition.

Opening the door, he slid out the passenger side. He stood, frozen by car lights, and then circled the car with jerky steps and flung open the door against which Kate rested.

Her head fell toward him, faceup, staring at him. Her neck hung over the seat, hair spilling from the car.

Sean swallowed. Kneeling, he shoved her by the shoulders,
pushing her into a half-sitting position and then into a fetal ball, curled where Sean had sat.

Sean slid behind the wheel, slamming shut the door, and switched on the ignition.

Blindly, he turned onto Lombard, Kate lying beside him.

He did not know where he was heading. Blocks passed, intervals of dissociation. And then he saw a looming swath of darkness.

A grove of trees, Sean realized, was blocking the moon and stars.

By instinct, he drove toward it. Then he saw the markers directing where he should exit: “Presidio National Park.”

Slowly, he entered the park.

It was an abandoned military base, he saw—neat signs pointed out a former hospital, an officers club, a base headquarters, a cemetery, all now shadows. To his right was the inky blackness of San Francisco Bay, distant lights flickering beyond; through the towering eucalyptus trees he saw a sliver of a distant glowing span—the Golden Gate Bridge.