The Candidate (Romantic Suspense) (The Candidate Series) (23 page)

He tossed Ben two sets of chopsticks. “Dig in while I break this puppy.”

It had taken him about fifteen minutes to crack the password, but half an hour to break the encryption.

Abby was reading over his shoulder. “My God! Talbot will be faking a terrorist plot—on
New Year’s Eve
?” She shook her head. “That’s only seventy-two hours from now!”

“This gives us everything we need to take them down: schematics, even photos of the Venezuelan hostages who will be used as the human time bombs—”

“Aw, hell! The file contained a worm.” Digits grabbed another memory stick and slid it into his computer. It was attached to a keychain fob with a Lara Croft image on it. 

“A what?” Abby asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’ll have to eat and run. Unfortunately the thumb drive contains some sort of tracker.” He waited a moment, until the light on Lara Croft memory stick blinked green. He pulled it out and handed it to Ben. “I’ve scrubbed the intel and put it on this drive. Take it, along with the deciphered files, which are printing now.”

As Abby reached over and pulled out the pages in the laser printer, Digits glanced out the window. “Aw, hell! Three cars just pulled up outside. Guess who’s coming to dinner?” 

With lightning speed, he ran to the refrigerator. Inside were a couple of cell phones and tall stacks of twenty-dollar bills, wrapped in cellophane. 

He tossed Abby the cell phones and eight stacks of the cash, then grabbed a backpack and stuffed his computer into it before turning out the light. "This should be enough to get you out of DC. There’s the fire escape on the back window. From there, you can jump onto the roof of the store next door. I’ll be right behind you."  

She was still cramming the stash into her purse as Ben pulled her out the window with him. 

The ledge of the neighboring roof gave them a bird’s eye view of six men in black, slipping silently up the staircase. The men had the door lock picked in no time. Apparently the lock to Digits’s front door was also a breeze to jimmy because they yanked him back out, just as he was climbing onto the fire escape.

The men then walked out with Digits tossed over the shoulders of the largest of them.

“Oh my God!” Abby whispered. “Shouldn’t we go back and help him?” 

 “If we do, they’ll kill us, too.” Ben slammed his fist against the wall. “Digits devoted his life to taking down the Ghost Squad. And Fred gave his life to see them brought to justice. We’ve got to get this intel to the right people.”

“And who is that?”

“Hell if I know.” Wearily, Ben slumped against the wall. “We’ve got to get out of here. Find a place to rest, if only for a few hours.”

They waited until all three cars drove off before climbing down off the roof.

It was Abby’s idea that they walk a few blocks to the National Theatre, where a show was letting out. “The crowd should be pretty thick. We can pick up a cab there, and take it to a hotel. We can sleep in short shifts. Maybe we’ll dream our way out of this.”

Ben nodded and stood up. With Fred gone and Digits in peril, he didn’t have the heart to tell Abby that their chances of survival were now slim and none.

Smith would not have remembered Digits if, through the fog of pain that comes with all four molars being extracted without an anesthetic, the kid hadn’t mentioned his father’s little vacation in Hotel Transylvania. 

He had to give Digits credit. It had taken one of Smith’s spooks a full hour to knock his computer’s security code out of him. 

Finally the operative working Digits over asked, “I think we’ve gotten everything we can out of him. Should I put him out of his misery?”

Smith thought for a moment, but then an idea that came to him. “Nah. We’re taking him with us to Vegas. That way, he’ll be front and center for the Big Bang. This kid has been stateside all these years, so why not make it look as if he was the mastermind of Operation Flamingo? You know, like father, like son.”

The operative shrugged.

Fucking numbnuts, thought Smith. He doesn’t get it. Our job is theater. The huddled masses will eat it up. They love a good backstory.

His only disappointment was that they had once again let Ben Brinker and the bimbo slip through their fingers. But considering the pain therapy being administered, Smith had to believe Digits when he claimed he had no idea where they’d gone after they left him.

That was fine—for now. If they were running scared, it meant only one thing: 

Any moment now, they’d reach out and trust someone they felt was safe.

The fools, he marveled. That’s the point. You can’t trust anyone. 

They’ll find that out soon enough.

Chapter 49

Ben would have preferred to take Abby to one of the nicer downtown hotels, but they couldn’t take the chance of running into someone they knew, or that the hotels were being watched by Talbot’s spies.

He opted instead for a shabby residential hotel just around the corner from the Greyhound bus depot on L and First, and paid for a full week in advance, cash. She waited outside while he paid cash for a room on the second floor and far in the back of the two-story cinderblock building.  

The room was small. The furniture, made from a scarred wood-simulated melamine, was at least twenty years old. A thin blanket covered the lumpy double bed. An old television was bolted to a shelf high above the dresser.

“Home sweet home,” Ben muttered.

“Tell you what, you take the first sleep shift,” she insisted. “I’m too wound up to go to bed.” 

He was too, but he appreciated her offer. “I’m going to jump in the shower. Keep the door bolted and the chain on. And keep the curtains drawn, too. I’ll make it quick.”

Her nod was weak. She was obviously more tired than she cared to admit.

As he suspected, the water coming out of the corroded showerhead was tepid at best. Still, it felt great running down his back. He lathered up the best he could with the thin sliver of soap. There was no toothbrush. He wondered how bad his breath smelled.

Not that they’d had an opportunity to get up close and personal. They were both in mourning—of the lives they never really had.

When he came out of the bathroom, he found Abby curled up on the bed.

She’d been reading Maddy’s diary, and she’d been crying.

He sat down beside her. “What’s wrong?”

“All these years, Maddy had been suffering from such heartache, and I never suspected it.” Abby tried to staunch her tears with the back of her hand. “That summer in New York, the man she was in love with—in the diary, she calls him ‘Mr. X’—he took her virginity.” She pointed to a passage, then flipped the page to another, and another, and another. “But Mr. X wasn’t the only one. She had many lovers. They were all much older, and most were married. It was almost as if she was playing a game to see if she could somehow
make
them love her! She wrote that she knows nothing will come of it, as if she knew she was being used. After a while, she writes as if she’s treating it like a blood sport.”

Yes, that was the Maddy he knew.

”Here, hand me that.” He motioned to the book.

Reluctantly she handed it over, as if she were afraid it might shatter his illusions of Maddy, too. 

What she didn’t know was that he no longer had any illusions about the one he once loved.

As he flipped through it, he came across a reference to a picnic. It stopped him cold. 

“What’s wrong?’ Abby asked.

He shrugged. “I think you were wrong about how and when Maddy and Andy met. Listen to this. ‘Firm picnic. Met THE ONE. Tall, dark, handsome. Clerks for Atherton. What is it with Southern men? So polite, but a great flirt. Worth breaking date with X to find out.”

Abby stared down at the bed. “I see. Is there anything else?”

Ben turned a few more pages, then stopped to read. “Ha…Yes, well, here she’s nicknamed him ‘my invisible man,’ and adds ‘but he hates it when I call him that. He doesn’t understand why we can’t be open about our relationship. I can’t tell him about X. Not yet, anyway.”

“I’d love to know who X was,” Abby murmured.

“Yeah, you and me both.” Ben leafed through the journal. “There are big gaps in the timeline. Sometimes she writes just a few words. ‘Bliss.’ Or ‘We were almost caught—by X!’” He turned a few more pages before stopping. “Abby, you need to read this.” He handed her the book. 

X found out. Threw a fit, said it can’t go on. I told him it would, and there was no way he could stop us. “I already have,” he said. “He knows what will happen if he does.” I told him to fuck off.

Took me three weeks to realize he was right. Andy wouldn’t return my calls, so I went to the courthouse and cornered him. At first he refused to see me, but I told him I wouldn’t leave until he did. That’s when he told me it was all a big mistake. 

Stupid, stupid me. 

Abby turned the page. “All it says next is ‘Being sent home.’ The date of the entry matches the time in which she came back to Alquith Hall.”

Ben picked up the book again. “The dates are blank, until the very last entry.” He read it out loud:

That asshole, Paul! How could he have introduced Abby to Andy? And now, they’re engaged? 

I want to kill myself.

No. I want to kill X.

Abby grabbed the book from Ben. “Do you think X is Paul?”

“My guess is no. Otherwise she wouldn’t have named Paul elsewhere in the journal.”

“I guess you’re right.” She didn’t sound convinced at all. “The date for this entry coincides with the date Andy and I announced our engagement. I told Maddy myself, over the phone. Now I know why she sounded so upset. I thought it was because she felt she might be losing me.” She flipped a few more pages. “Want to hear the very last entry? It’s dated the day after Andy was sworn in as senator.” She picks up the journal with shaking hands. “She writes, ‘He called. The Hay-Adams for cocktails, then the honeymoon suite. Bliss! My IM has come back to me.’”

IM. 

Invisible Man
.

She tossed the journal against the wall so hard that the spine broke. Loosened by the force, a few of the old journal’s pages fluttered onto the floor. 

Ben didn’t blame her for being upset. “You’re mad at Andy, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am! He should have told me about them. Had I known, I would have never…I would have never fallen in love with him, let alone married him.” She rose from the bed and paced the floor. “Why me? Why not Maddy? Was it for the money?”

“If money was his goal, both you and Maddy would have been equally desirable. That goes for the Vandergalen name and connections, too.” What had Paul called Andy? Oh yeah:
the son of a pig farmer
. 

“But he only chose me because I was the ‘good twin’.” The surge of anger now spent, she slumped back down on the bed and closed her eyes. “Maddy went out of her way to tweak the nose of the old guard. It made Uncle Preston furious. Her behavior burned lots of bridges, including the one Andy would have crossed, to be with her.”

If he loved her, Andy would have been at her side despite what anyone thought, including Preston,” Ben insisted. 

I know I would have, he thought.

“Ah, you see? You don’t know Andy any better than I did.” She shook her head slowly. Despite the sarcasm in her tone, her voice sounded miles away. “He did this for the power. I was a silly little fool to believe it was anything else. Well, it backfired. Instead, he ruined all our lives. So much for love.” Her voice drifted off.

He looked over at her. Despite her furrowed brow and her clenched fist, she seemed so helpless. He sat down beside her and patted her arm.  The feel of her smooth skin stirred something in him. Not desire, as Maddy’s touch had been capable of doing, but something deeper. 

Bliss.

Overwhelmed by his emotions, he lay down beside her. The blanket had gathered on the other side her. As he reached over to pull it toward him, too, she sighed.

He fell asleep holding her.