The Candidate (Romantic Suspense) (The Candidate Series) (17 page)

 “Your television, Ben. Can you hear me? Turn it on. And hurry, damn it!” It wasn’t Andy’s voice on the other end of the line, but Fred’s.

Ben rummaged around for the remote, but he refused to turn on the light in order to find it because that would have meant going blind, if the scotch hadn’t already accomplished that goal. 

What came on was a newscast. The on-the-scene reporter was standing next to a field, flooded with lights from a fleet of emergency vehicles. “—crashed at about midnight in this deserted meadow, outside of Providence Ridge, Virginia. The presidential hopeful, a former Marine pilot, was flying his own plane, a Cessna. Though there is no official word yet, witnesses say that both Senator Mansfield and his wife were seen boarding the plane around midnight. Sadly, there is no word of survivors—” 

What he was seeing on the screen, coupled with the sudden pounding in Ben’s head, forced what was left of the scotch back up his throat. He knew he’d never make it to the toilet. Instead he puked in the wastebasket beside his bed.

“Did you give him the envelope?” 

Fred’s voice sounded far away. 

Ben lunged for the phone. “Yes, just like you told me! Right...right before the plane took off—”

“Aw,
shit
! Fuck it...Okay, okay, listen up. Andy’s plane was sabotaged! I got that from my inside source. That’s not good for either of us, dude. And for some reason there’s a witch-hunt going on over here at Langley, so I may have to lay low for a while. I’ll be back in touch when things calm down. If you get a knock on the door, you know nothing. Do you hear me? Not a thing.
I never gave you that envelope
.”

“Okay, Okay! I get it. But—but what if I need to get in touch with you?”

“Have someone you trust make the call to me at Langley.
But not you.
From a pay phone. Whoever it is should say that my nephew Teddy’s soccer game on Saturday has been postponed so no need to pick him up at the field.”

“Your nephew...a soccer game...got it. Do you really have a nephew?”

“Yeah. But he doesn’t play soccer. Basketball’s his thing.” 

Fred’s voice was replaced by a dial tone.

Ben had just zipped up his jeans when the phone rang again. He was glad Fred had rung back because he was panicking, and still had a lot of questions. “Yeah, okay I get it—”

“Ben, Andy said I should call you if—”

Maddy
. Her wracked sobs broke his heart. “Oh my god! Maddy! I’m so sorry, baby. About Abby. I’ll be right there—”

“No–
NO!
” What, she still didn’t want to see him? Then why was she calling? Why did she feel the need to hurt him all over again—

“Damn it Ben,
listen!
I—I’m not Maddy!...
I’m Abby!
”

Abigail? 

“But ...Abby was on the plane! Abby is dead!”

“
What?...NO!
I wasn’t on that plane with him!”

Ben shook his head. “I saw her on the plane myself, right before takeoff! In the cockpit with Andy—”

“
Ben, listen to me!
THAT WAS NOT
ME
.”

“Then who…” 

Maddy.

Maddy was …with Andy?
But why…

Because Andy was the Invisible Man.

Andy–the Boy Scout, the loving husband. So Mr. True Blue was just as big a player, just as big a liar, as any other candidate—

And Maddy was his pliant willing whore, waiting at his beck and call. 

And I was her whore.

It was a long time before he realized the howl piercing his heart was his own. 

It all came back to him: How, on that very first night they met, at the bar outside the ballroom for Andy’s New Year’s Eve fundraiser, she tried to hide her bitterness with coy flirtation. Then, when their one-night stand became an obsession for them both, she insisted they tell no one about it, no matter how sincere he was about his love for her.

She didn’t love me. She used me. To make him jealous. 

In that regard, Andy had been telling the truth the night he tried to warn Ben about her.

Well, he was right.

He remembered the smirk Maddy gave him when he suggested that she go on the road with him. He had no doubt she mentioned that to Andy. 

I’ll just bet the two of them laughed their heads off. How they were pulling the wool over my eyes. Mine, and Abby’s—

Abby’s own heartbroken moan brought him out of his pain. 

She’s put two and two together, he thought. She knows it was Maddy. With her Andy.

That cocksucker. That fool. How could he have done that to her—with her own twin sister, no less?

Because he couldn’t choose between them: Abby was the tonic: sweet, sincere, and loving; whereas Maddy was the addictive drug, the naughty obsession, the vulnerable child.

He had loved them both. 

I can see why. 

Ben remembered his own attraction to Abby. The guilt of his betrayal to her—they had
all
betrayed her—roused him out of his pain.

Well, she needs me now, more than ever.

“I’ll come right over,” he murmured into the phone.

“No. The press is all over here! I can sneak out the back. Trust me, I’ve done it before. I’d prefer to meet you...where? Maybe Maddy’s?”  

He croaked in agreement. Then he hung up. Yeah, it was good he was getting out of there. He couldn’t stay in the room any longer. It reminded him too much of the last time he made love to Maddy.

Then it dawned up him where he was headed next. 

He threw up again. 

Chapter 42

Captured in the moonlight pouring into Maddy’s studio, it was easy for Ben to mistake Abigail Vandergalen Mansfield for the love of his life.

It seemed like an eternity before she lifted her bowed head. He noticed she wasn’t wearing her glasses. He imagined that the tears, streaming down her cheeks, had made that impossible. The scarf on her head covered her hair completely. While it gave her the anonymity she sought during this crisis, it so clearly exposed the facial features she shared with her sister—the high cheekbones, upturned nose, and those beautifully arched brows above her wide eyes. 

He tried to stifle his heartbroken groan but he couldn’t. 

It roused her from her trance. Seeing this, he forced himself to say, “I’m…sorry.”

“Why? Because she was on the plane with him, as opposed to me?”

He winced, not because of the sharpness of her tone or the piercing scrutiny of her question, but from the precision in which she exposed the truth.

Yes, he wished Maddy were here with him, now.

His reaction brought a tremble to her lips. It startled him to think she was actually hurt by this truth. Of course she is hurt, he reasoned. She just found out her husband betrayed her, with her own sister.

That Maddy had been loved by two men. 

The same two men who had betrayed Abby.

Despite the pain it might bring her, he had to ask, “Why weren’t you there, with him?”

The tears were falling again. She wiped them away with shaking palms. “It wasn’t supposed to be more than a quick trip home, just overnight. He claimed he had an opportunity to meet with some key donors. We’ve both been on the road so much this past year. He was worried about my…my stamina. It was his suggestion that I stay home. I guess we now both know the real reason why.”

“So you never had any suspicions about them?”

She raised her head in order to look him straight in the eye. “None. Never. I presume you hadn’t either.”

His cheerless laugh bounced off the high bare walls. “Trust me, had I known, I wouldn’t have been running your husband’s campaign.” He was almost tempted to add,
And when Andy found out about it, he threatened to fire me if I mentioned it to you
, but thought better of it. She was devastated enough already.

It hurt him to see her crying like that. And yet, he had so many questions for her. “I just don’t get it. She mentioned her ‘Invisible Man’ to me the first night you and I met, when Andrew hired me to run his campaign. So it had to be going on for some time. Surely you must have had some inkling about it. Women’s intuition? Something?
Anything?
”

 “I had trust. Fifteen years of it. I thought that counted for something.” The iciness in her blue eyes sliced right through him. “Then again, I’m not as cynical as you. Which begs the question: considering the twelve months you’ve been at their beck and call, I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on it, either—”

Her angry rant was interrupted by the buzzing of a cell phone. 

It was sitting on Maddy’s coffee table.

Ben and Abby stared at each other.

“Is that yours?” they said in unison then they answered each other by shaking their heads.

 “Answer it,” Ben said. “But…do it as if you’re Maddy.”

Abby blanched but nodded. She cleared her throat before hitting the speaker button, and answering bolding, “Yeah, who is it?”

My God, if I didn’t know better I’d think she was Maddy, he thought.

“Yes, this is—Maddy Vandergalen…Sorry I’ve missed your calls. I’ve just come in from—from out of town. Yes, I—I’ve just learned about the crash….Richmond Morgue? Of course, I’ll be there. Let me write down that location.” 

While Abby grappled frantically through the clutter that filled the top of Maddy’s desk, Ben plucked a pen and a notepad from the drawer and handed it to her.

“Alright, got it…Yes, thank you.” Abby clicked off the phone, then turned to Ben. “That was the NTSB. Because of the fire, there’s not much left of the…their remains. They’ve been moved from the crash site in Providence Forge, to the Richmond coroner’s office.” She melted into a chair. “I don’t know if I can keep this up.”

Ben knelt down in front of her. “If Fred is right and the plane was sabotaged, we don’t want Andy and Maddy’s…their relationship…to overshadow the investigation of the plane crash. As the next of kin, they’d give Maddy his belongings. Fred needs us to retrieve the envelope I gave Andy, right before takeoff.”

“Fred is never wrong. If only—if only he’d gotten to Andy before…they were murdered.” She buried her head in her hands and sobbed. 

Ben wished he could do something for her, other than just stand there, watching helplessly.

Finally she lifted her face, her eyes were glassy, her smile thin and brittle. “My hair. Before we leave, I’ll have to dye it and cut it.”

“The convenience store around the corner is open twenty-four seven. I’ll see if they have any hair color. I can guess the shade.” That sounded stupid, but he’d heard you had to keep talking to people who were in shock, and it was all he could think of to say. He wished she’d stop shaking.

He wished he could hold her until she did.

But even if she appreciated it at first, she’d soon presume he was pretending she was Maddy. 

She’d be right. 

I’m a sick fuck, he thought.

As if reading his mind, she stood up. “You knew her so well, I’m sure you’ll have no problem picking out her exact shade.” Crossing her arms over her chest, she added, “Lock up after yourself. When you get back, leave it outside the bathroom. I’ll come down when I’m ready to leave.”

She didn’t wait for his reply. Instead, she grabbed the scissors off the desk and without giving him a second glance, she started up the circular staircase.

Chapter 43

The hair color Ben brought back with him was a brown that was almost black, except for the auburn highlights that gave Abby’s now razor straight hair a glossy sheen. She’d managed to cut and shape it into Maddy’s signature cut—long bangs, with the rest of her hair angled sharply from her chin line to the nape of her neck. 

When Abby walked out of the bedroom, she was wearing a pair of Maddy’s tight black leather jeans. She had paired them with a lacy black tank top, worn under a black leather jacket. She sat down at the desk, where she applied a darker eye liner and a smokier eye shadow. Then with shaking hands, she put on Maddy’s colored contact lenses so that they were no longer sky blue, but green like wet moss.

They were Maddy’s eyes.

The final touch was the dark dot she placed to the right side of her mouth, to simulate Maddy’s mole. 

When she turned to face Ben, he could have sworn she was his Maddy.

Neither of them said a word during the first hour of the ride south to Richmond, Ben attributed Abby’s silence to the fact that, like him, she’d had too little sleep. 

That, and she was steeling herself for the performance of a lifetime.

Or maybe she found him too reprehensible to talk to.

This was fine by him. He was glad to keep his mind on driving and his eyes on the road, now that she had so completely transformed herself into the woman he had loved and lost. 

By the time they approached the Richmond city limits, morning traffic had slowed to a crawl, but their pace was smooth enough that she lowered the passenger seat visor in order to use the mirror to apply lipstick. 

He hadn’t meant to, but he couldn’t help but glance over at her. “That doesn’t work,” he muttered.

She glared over at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“The shade you’re using. It’s all wrong. Maddy would never wear something so…
pink
.”

“Oh? Forgive me! Perhaps I should have let you pick out my make-up, too.” She tossed the lipstick back into her purse. “I take back the offer. You’d enjoy it too much.”

He braked the car so quickly that she grabbed the dashboard in order to right herself. 

“Obviously my feelings for your sister disgust you. Maybe it would be better if I pulled over and let you out,” Ben muttered.

Abby opened her mouth to say something, but then shut it. When finally she found her voice, it came out as a meek whisper. “I’m sorry, Ben. I know you’re angry. Well, I am, too, Ben. I’m angry that I’ve lost my husband. I’m upset I’ve lost my sister. And yes, I’ve been blaming you when in truth I’m mad at Andy.” She slipped down in her seat, deflated. “No, if I’m to be honest, I’m angry at Maddy. She was spellbinding. Or at least, men thought so. You may have been the last, but you certainly weren’t the first.”