At Any Cost (8 page)

Max Hall returned to the kitchen, where Fallon was still guzzling her rum and coke. “I am meeting Ben Lambert to find out where the warrant originated.”

Lambert was the current director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Tom felt a little better about the situation—anyone who could demand an audience with the director on five minutes' notice was good to have on the team.

“I will see about getting your computer back, but that will depend on their evidence and what they are willing to let me know about their investigation.”

“Are they coming here?”

“No. If that changes, I will let you know before they arrive.”

“Are they going to arrest me?”

“Not until after I meet with them, if at all.”

“Oh my God,” she murmured. Fresh tears spilled from her eyes. She looked desperately to Tom.

“I doubt it, Fallon,” Max Hall replied. “It would be very unusual.”

“In the current administration, the vice president's son was arrested for marijuana possession,” she said numbly. “It's not as if having a dad in the White House can protect me from this administration's Department of Justice.”

“Actually, Fallon, you're wrong. Though I cannot speak for certain, I would bet if you were arrested and convicted of anything, your father would immediately pardon you. It would be a nonissue.”

That was cold comfort, but Fallon didn't reply.

Max Hall excused himself.

“I have no idea what to do,” Fallon said softly. “Should I go to the Blair House?”

“I don't know, ma'am.”

“Are you ever going to stop calling me ma'am?”

Tom smiled gently. “It's the appropriate term during work hours.”

Fallon perched a shapely buttock on a bar stool and looked mournfully into her drink. “Why are they dragging this up now? I'm not a drug dealer or user … I never even drink! Except now …”

“I believe you,” Tom replied. And he did. Fallon was honest as bean stew. “Thank you,” she said.

“I haven't done anything.”

“You're being very good to me.” Fallon took another gulp of her rummy coke. “Earlier and now.” He smiled gently at her.

She got up to splash more rum into the soda. Because she looked genuinely lost and in need of direction, Tom stood up, gently took the bottle from her, and set it on the counter.

“You've had enough.”

She looked up at him with wide, true-blue eyes framed in long, sooty black lashes. Her soft vulnerability made his heart constrict with empathy.

“I'm just really upset,” she whispered.

“I know. But you've had enough.”

The glittery panic that had been lurking in her eyes softened. Fallon drew in an unsteady breath. “I keep thinking shock troops are going to bash down my door.”

“They're not. Mr. Hall is meeting them now, remember?”

“Yes. But still.”

“I tend to believe him,” Tom offered.

She averted her eyes and listlessly began stacking a collection of exotic coins on her counter. Tom picked one up and studied it. An olive branch wreathed the words
20 Aenta.
Greek drachmas.

His heart sank. He was never going to be able to escape Greece.

“I don't want to stay here but I don't want to leave, because I feel like I need to protect my belongings. The thought of the FBI storming in here, pawing through my private space makes me ill.”

“If the FBI showed up with a warrant, you couldn't tell them what they can and can't look at.”

“I know. Strange to feel so helpless against this wall of government.” She actually smiled. “How ironic is that?”

“Pretty ironic,” Tom agreed.

“Maybe I should go to the Blair House.” With just two weeks until inauguration day, the Hughes had moved from their suite of rooms at the Willard Hotel to the Blair House, officially as guests of President Ballard. It was both traditional and practical for the president-elect to live just across the street from the White House for the harried two weeks preceding his own presidency.

“I'm sure your father would like to see you.”

Fallon rested her head on the bar. Her bereft, aimless expression made her appear much younger than her twenty-seven years. Tom gently pushed a lock of silky blonde hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. She looked up at him with an inscrutable expression. The glow he'd created in her face was gone now, replaced with fear.

“You're a nice guy under all that hardware,” she said softly.

Tom smiled. “Just trying to keep my protectee sober during office hours.”

Fallon stepped off the bar stool. “I guess let's go to the Blair House.”

Tom used his walkie-talkie to alert the control room.

Kevin White replied, “Standby.”

A moment later, White returned to the reserved frequency. “Rowland advises that a large crowd of media has gathered in the front of the building.”

Fallon blanched. “How do they already know about the warrant?”

Tom said, “Standby.” To Fallon he asked, “Do you still want to go?”

“Yes, but I want to avoid the media.”

Tom radioed his counterpart. “Avalon will go all the way down to the underground parking garage, level two. Line up at the elevator there.”

“Roger that.”

They left her apartment, Fallon taking special care to lock up. In the parking garage, the limos were idling. Tom opened the door of the primary vehicle and Fallon jumped in. The limo proceeded slowly through the electronic gates. Tom took in the scene through the windshield. Agent White had not been exaggerating; it was not just a single photographer or a reporter with an inside wire to the Department of Justice. It was
the media
, what seemed like
all of them
.

Tom looked in the rearview mirror to Fallon, who sat up straight and tall, her sunglasses shielding her eyes, focused straight ahead. As the Suburban nosed out of the garage to prepare to turn left, cameramen swarmed the SUV, pressed their cameras to the windows, and snapped. Flashes of light and sound penetrated the black windows of the limo, but Fallon appeared not to hear. She might be a scandal waiting to burst open wide, but the photos that would inevitably end up in the tabs and online gossip sites would depict only a dignified woman on her way to an ordinary errand, oblivious to the chaos surrounding her.

“How could you do this to me, Fallon?”

Fallon stood in the stately yellow Lincoln Room in the Blair House, feeling an invisible wave beneath the beautiful Aubusson carpets capsizing her, erasing all equilibrium. Her father was angry …
at her
. As if she had asked the DOJ to swear out a search warrant and take her computer deliberately to antagonize him. Blindsided, she had no answer. She just blinked, dumb as a cow.

Preston Taylor Hughes was a media dream. Able to deliver a prepared speech as if it were impromptu, with natural body language, and an excellent sense of timing, he was a quintessential politician. He also had the widest, most engaging smile ever to appear in Washington, which he used with ruthless precision. An imposing height, rich baritone voice, and full head of brown hair all created a potent package. Fallon detested the political animal he had become. He didn't know when to turn it off. He never seemed to realize that she was not an
audience
. She was his daughter.

With his polished political packaging ripped away, Fallon saw an angry man, weltering at her in exasperation and disappointment: her father in his
de facto
state of address. His manner of napalming political weeds to get to the heart of the matter might be respected by his political enemies and colleagues, but his aggressive, accusatory style was completely detrimental to actually relating to a member of his family.

“Do you ever think of anyone but yourself? Do you not realize what is going on here? A drug and sex scandal involving my daughter is not exactly how I wanted to begin my administration.”

“It's not a sex scandal.” Fallon took pains to avoid the glint of accusation in her words.

His mouth flattened into a grim line, well aware that was one area where both he and Elizabeth were vulnerable. At any moment, some bimbo could creep up from the sewers with risqué photos for sale at the right price.

His body looked tense, like he wanted to launch himself at her and shake her. “Fallon, do you realize the position you've put me in?”

Now he was playing hardball. Even as she heard the words, she wanted to shout
what about me?
But she couldn't muster a defense. The one place she desperately hoped would calm her shattered nerves would be here, in this nexus of power and family. How stupid. Ancient family dynamics didn't change just because she was in trouble or her father was about to become the most powerful man in the free world. How naïve to believe that just because she needed him, he would view her as his daughter, not put her on some political scale and determine whether she was more an asset or liability, and how to best spin this so his approval numbers stayed high. Since she was twelve, the first time he ran for governor of Montana, she had been expected to act always with her father's career first in mind. Like her mother, she was expected to care about her father's career more than anything else. But she didn't care. At least not like he wanted her to. She wanted a father, not a governor or president-elect.

Blake Henley, her father's chief of staff, paused in the entry with a phone to his ear. “He says it will be fifteen minutes.”

“Fine, but tell him it is an emergency.” Preston replied. Then to Fallon, he said curtly, “I've spent the morning appointing lawyers and making phone calls all over Washington.” His lips were pursed in disgust.

She blushed from being rebuked in front of her father's staff. Heart tripping, she turned and walked away.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“To see my mother,” she replied without looking back.

Fallon walked up the stairs to the suite where her parents were staying until the inauguration. She hadn't planned on her father accusing her of practically begging to be accused of murder, but she was prepared for her mother's reaction to be even worse.

Fallon hesitated outside the bedroom door to gather her courage, and then knocked. After a small silence, her mother called, “Come in.”

Fallon entered the Principal Suite Bedroom. A large four-poster bed featuring a dusty rose floral print canopy dominated the room. This morning, a fire crackled in the fireplace, lending a cozy English cottage mien to the room. On the opposite side of the room, two tall wooden doors were flung wide to admit a view to the Principal Suite Sitting Room. There, Elizabeth was sitting at the antique desk, her head bent to a stack of documents. As Fallon entered, she stopped writing and rose to her feet.

The woman who would be First Lady wore slim Chanel sailor pants that emphasized her long legs and a form-fitting cashmere sweater with a cowl at the neck. Her mother was always flawlessly dressed, as if she'd stepped out of the pages of
Vogue
magazine. Her silky blond hair was pinned back with a tortoiseshell clasp, curling under her earlobes, which were dotted with small diamond studs. Her face was flawlessly made up. Her fine pale skin was seemingly untouched by time, luminous, lit with some unseen depth like the surface of the moon. Her gray eyes were calm and penetrating, famously able to cry on cue; her lips remained youthfully plump but avoided the “trout pout” so often sported by the overzealous users of fillers. Her mother was ageless and dazzlingly beautiful.

She smiled at Fallon, embracing her. “Hello, darling.” Fallon shut her eyes, trying to detect the scent of alcohol, but it was futile to try to spot her mother's weakness that way. Elizabeth Hughes was too smart to allow herself to be accused of being drunk; she smelled of Bulgari perfume and spearmint breath fresheners—the same as always.

“Are they serious about that warrant?” Elizabeth asked smoothly. She took Fallon's hand and led her to a sofa.

“Yes,” Fallon replied. “They're accusing me of murder.”

A faint smile came to Elizabeth's lips. “That is so absurd. It is difficult to understand.”

It was not difficult to understand for Fallon. Indeed it seemed to her very frank in its aims to cause her embarrassment. She chose not to belabor the point, and her mother said airily, “Perhaps it will go away when we get into the White House.”

Elizabeth Hughes lived in a world where things simply went away when they were inconvenient, dispatched by unseen assistants, attorneys, and publicists.

Fallon frowned, wanting to explain to her mother that federal investigations do not simply go away; her work computer had been seized in a search warrant, and her life currently resembled all the order of a Jackson Pollack painting. But it didn't matter; her mother seemed to have lost interest already. She suddenly smiled, grasping Fallon's hand. “Come here. I have something to show you.” She rose from the sofa and walked into the bedroom, Fallon following a pace behind.

She stood near the vaulted canopy bed in the large feminine room. Her mother flung open the closet doors, revealing a nearly empty interior. Most of her clothing was already in storage at the White House, waiting to be moved into the residence. The pieces hanging in the closet were her mother's staples: exquisite yet understated clothing selected by stylists to convey “casual yet supremely elegant First Lady.” Elizabeth was preparing for her role as First Lady as she would a movie part. After relying her whole life on box office numbers to judge whether she was successful or not, she now cast the same importance on political approval numbers. They had been stratospheric since Preston Taylor Hughes won the election. Yet the wide-ranging approval had not imbued Elizabeth with instant happiness and on several occasions, Elizabeth voiced her dismay. Fallon had wisely held her tongue. Her secret reply was nothing would make her mother happy. For as long as she could remember, her mother's life had been a grim protraction of seething rage and disappointment.

Her parents despised each other and, at least in private, made no pretense otherwise. They both wanted to flee the scene of their marriage as if it were a fiery car wreck. Despite Elizabeth's acting ability, she was no expert at understanding or managing her own emotions and was adrift in trying to express the darkness that beat inside her.

In ten years, they had not eaten a meal together unless it was for some diplomatic function. Their interactions immediately took the form of fighting, as if it were one long fight, continuing for years with small respites to sleep or attend to business, only to be resumed, even more passionately, again the next time they saw each other. The veneer of calm in the lulls of their near-constant fights was almost as terrifying as the crashing, screaming battles because Fallon knew the untapped depths of her mother's cold fury and the incredible strength it took to maintain that controlled demeanor. One day, that thin veneer of composure, pulsing with resentment, was going to break.

It had not always been this way. In her teenage years, Fallon had loved to look at old romantic photographs of her parents. Their pictures were splashed on every magazine and newspaper: a beautiful movie star with her handsome, rich husband, nuzzling into each other, holding hands, sharing a kiss in Central Park one snow-covered Christmas, holding Fallon as a newborn as they gazed at each other like the whole world beyond them had faded to black.

They had not been faking their love. Something horrible but not dramatic had happened in the intervening years—the love that had once been all-consuming had slowly disintegrated. After it was gone, they could not even respect one another. In the space where happiness and contentment and commitment had once existed, hatred and resentment had thrived. Now they could not stand to look at each other.

Elizabeth guided a rolling garment rack from the closet. Gently holding up the plastic, she revealed a stunning one-shoulder silver ball gown. “What do you think?” she asked. A dreamy smile of pleasure appeared on her face as she lightly caressed the delicate fabric.

Fallon reached for something to say, but failed. Elizabeth had been looking forward to the inauguration because it was a connection to her movie star days—the glamour of beautiful styling, the veneration of the masses. Her mother craved
spectacle
and longed for her former life of acting and magnificent parties. So when she rolled out the gown, Fallon understood that the search warrant was nothing more than a passing inconvenience to her mother. She suddenly felt very small.

“It's beautiful.” Fallon murmured the statement her mother no doubt wanted to hear. She watched Elizabeth feign happiness at Fallon's approval, then look again at the gown, seeing in her mind's eye how beautiful she would look in the pictures after the inauguration. The pictures were more real to her than the experience.

“I should go,” Fallon said. “Dad is calling an attorney for me.”

“Not yet,” Elizabeth said with a little smile. “I have a secret to tell you.”

Fallon instinctively backed away. “Mother, we've discussed—”

“Not that kind of secret,” she said coolly. She walked back into the sitting room and collected the document on her desk, the one she had been working on when Fallon arrived.

“My agent has sent what has to be the finest script I've read in fifteen years,” Elizabeth said. “It's titled
Kill Shot
, directed by Quentin Tarantino.”

The room fell silent and Fallon realized she was waiting for some kind of disclaimer. Such as: “Wouldn't it be a hoot to actually do this?” Or: “Can you imagine?” Or, said with a smile of genuine depraved pleasure: “It would destroy your father to see me do this.”

Instead, it became painfully clear that her mother was serious. The excitement about the prospect of making the movie manifested in the glow of her eyes, the slight Mona Lisa smile on her lips.

“What did Dad say?” Fallon asked. It was the first thing that came to mind, and she instantly recognized that she had miscalculated. Elizabeth's eyes darkened as her mouth tightened, injured by her daughter's lack of instant support.

“You're just like he is,” she said with a soft, low tone. She said this without any apparent anger; they could have been discussing the weather or diminishing rainfall averages in Peru for all the emotion she conveyed. But Fallon's blood ran cold. “Why must everyone in this family have something for themselves but me? It seems terribly unfair. You have your career. Lord knows your father has his. Why is it that I am expected to simply sit quietly in the background? Am I nothing but a mother?”

This was the primary battle her parents had been waging for at least two years. Her mother's ardent desire to continue to make movies conflicted with Preston's desire to appear to be an average American husband and father. It did seem rather strange and unseemly for a First Lady to continue her career, a fact that puzzled Fallon. Women, after all, were expected to have careers and lives. Still, she knew that any hint of neutrality would be seen as fierce opposition. Suddenly the banality and appalling pointless predictability of the argument in the face of much graver concerns seemed ridiculous to her. At this moment, very powerful forces were conspiring to accuse her of murder. And her mother simply went on, murmuring delicately about her desire to act, how unfair it was for Preston to intervene in her career, how life without acting was dreadful and unfulfilling.

“I see you no longer require my presence for this argument,” Fallon said blandly.

Her mother blazed at her with a silent, cutting stare, yet oddly hurt.

Fallon walked away, shutting the bedroom door behind her. Alone in the corridor, she paused, revolted yet pitying her mother, and waited for the feeling to pass. When she was sure she was in control of herself once more, she walked down the long hallway to her brother's room and softly opened the door.

At the sight of him in his airplane-themed bed, her heart lifted. But in the next instant, she was disturbed because he was asleep. It was nearly two o'clock in the afternoon. Why was Evan asleep?

At his bedside, Fallon knelt down. His innocence and beauty made her ache with sadness. Growing up in this family was a curse. Even now, as he lay there, he was being abused. He was six; he didn't need a nap every afternoon. But it was easier for her parents and keepers to let him sleep than actually take care of him.