Bishop (Political Royalty Book 3) (7 page)

Before he threw the punch, something heavy hit the back of Matt’s head and his red-rimmed vision shifted to gray and then black.

––––––––

S
ANDRA WALKER SHIFTED on her heels, seamlessly adjusting her weight to give her feet a break without appearing to fidget. It had to be ninety degrees out and she was stuck standing in the sun, waiting for Shep to finish shaking hands. They talked about Arizona and its dry heat, but she failed to see the advantage. By the time her husband got done making the rounds, she’d still be sweating through her silk.
Please, God, let the sunscreen in her foundation be up to the job.
She’d put SPF40 moisturizer on under her makeup, but she still felt like a lobster.

At least the girls were home with the nanny and their grandparents instead of ruining their skin in the desert. They’d only been gone a day and she missed them already. But the logistics of having them on the campaign trail had gotten too complicated. As much as she wanted to, Sandra wasn’t ready to leave Shep to his own devices. It might not change his behavior, but she wouldn’t disappear and let him play house with another woman halfway across the country and back.

Her husband said he wouldn’t lie to her, so she was careful not to ask anything she didn’t want to know, but that didn’t mean she’d let him forget she was his wife. She was going to be first lady. If sleeping in awful hotels and standing in the sun in the middle of the desert was what she had to do to get the job, then that’s exactly what she’d do. And she’d make sure she was better at it than anyone else.
Just please let them finish before the sweat soaked through her blouse.
The last thing she needed was her picture in the
Post
sporting armpit stains.

Glancing around, she looked for the press that trailed her husband like puppies. Overenthusiastic puppies or angry attack dogs, depending on the day and the subject. The few she could see looked as wilted as she felt. None of them were paying any attention to her, which begged the question: what in the world was she doing waiting in the sun?

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and the bodyguard beside her straightened. Glancing over, she saw Becca hurrying toward her. It looked like she’d been crying. Sandra touched the guard’s arm to tell him it was okay, but he’d already relaxed back into his normal stance.

“Mrs. Walker,” said the girl, looking much younger than her twenty-odd years and not in a good way. Now that she was closer, Sandra could see the tracks of the girl’s tears on her pale cheeks. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I didn’t know who else to ask.”

“It’s no bother, darling. Is something wrong?”

She hadn’t seen the girl’s brother. Maybe something had happened. She hoped not. She’d started to like the charming flirt. People underestimated how good a little attention could make a person feel. The best men understood that and shared their compliments liberally. Matt made flirting an art form and as a woman frequently overlooked by her husband, she appreciated it, even if it didn’t mean anything. Especially because it didn’t mean anything. She knew the reporter would never mistake the attention for anything other than what it was.

The young woman glanced around them. They were several steps away from the crowd, but there were still quite a few people around. Too many if the other woman didn’t want to be overheard. From the look on her pretty, young face, she didn’t.

“Come on. Let’s go sit in the car.”

Grateful for an excuse to head to the air conditioning, she took the younger woman’s arm and started to lead her to the town car she’d convinced the campaign to rent. It gave them a way to get around when they needed it that was less cumbersome than the bus and it meant she didn’t have to ride in the sardine can with everyone else. After a couple of months on and off the trail, the bus had started to take on an odor all its own.

“Now tell me what’s going on,” she asked when they were safely ensconced in cool, civilized leather. The partition was up between the driver and the passenger area, and it offered as much privacy as they could hope to find on the trail.

The girl squeezed her hands together and Sandra reached over to touch her arm. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” said Becca, nodding. “It’s Matt. He’s been arrested, and he’s in the hospital. I don’t know what to do.”

Whatever she’d been expecting to hear, that wasn’t it. She had a hard time imagining the good-natured reporter working up enough energy to do anything that would land him in jail, and certainly nothing that would get him injured.

“It’s all my fault,” said Becca, sinking into her misery. “None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been so stupid.”

“I doubt it’s your fault, darling. Men have a way of getting into trouble all on their own. Start at the beginning and tell me what happened so we can fix it.” There were advantages to being a senator’s wife and a Walker, and she’d do anything short of involving herself in a scandal to help the young woman sitting beside her. “How badly is your brother hurt?” she asked, hitting the most important question and hoping the answer was one she could live with.

“Not too bad. Mostly bruises,” said Becca. “The other guy is in worse shape than Matt is.”

“Other guy? He was fighting?” Something felt off. Unless he’d been really provoked, Sandra had a hard time imagining Matt in a fight.

Becca nodded, blinking back a fresh onslaught of tears. “It’s all my fault. He was just trying to protect me. He never should have been there.”

Sandra’s stomach turned icy and she had a moment to wish for the heat of the desert. “Tell me what happened, Becca,” she said, lacing her voice with command. She had a feeling this was one of those truths she wouldn’t want to know but she wasn’t about to turn away from the young woman sitting beside her.

“A couple of weeks ago, I went to a party at one of the fraternities on campus. You don’t know me, but I don’t normally go to parties. And I definitely don’t drink.”

“But that night you did both,” said Sandra, keeping her tone neutral so she didn’t spook the other woman.

Becca nodded, tears spilling from her eyes.

Sandra took her hand and held it between both of hers. “Did someone hurt you, Becca?” Sandra had a flash of her best friend from high school, sneaking into Sandra’s bedroom window, her dress torn and dirty and her eyes haunted. It was the same look she remembered seeing in Becca’s eyes the first time she met her. “Were you raped?”

The tears fell freely as the other woman nodded. She swallowed hard, choking back a sob. “I think so. Yes.”

“You
think
so?”

“I passed out. I don’t remember. I woke up naked on a mattress upstairs at the frat house. The bastard posted pictures online.”

She shuddered.

Sandra squeezed her hand tighter, but as she talked, anger seemed to replace some of her vulnerability.
Good. Anger served a woman better than sadness.
If she could find a way to channel her pain, then she’d find a way to survive.

“I scrubbed the pictures as soon as I found them, but somehow Matt must have found out. He beat the guy up. Bad enough that they filed assault charges.”

“Is your brother okay?” Sandra weighed the risk of getting tangled up in a potential scandal with the need to help the poor girl. Either way, she’d make sure Becca and her brother got what they needed. The question was how close could she personally afford to get to the situation and was there an upside she wasn’t seeing?

“He got knocked out. Somebody came along. Saw them fighting and assumed Matt was the bad guy. He’s at the hospital. They want to watch him for twenty-four hours because of the head injury but he should be okay.”

“You said you scrubbed the pictures,” said Sandra, remembering what she’d said earlier. “What does that mean?”

“I’ve been watching to see if anything showed up. When it did, I made it disappear. I’m good with computers,” she clarified and Sandra filed the information away for later.
That kind of skill could definitely come in handy.

“When Matt’s released, they’re going to take him to jail. I need a way to post his bail and I don’t even have a car to get to him. I know it’s not your problem. I’m embarrassed to have to tell you any of it.” Her voice caught again and Sandra gave her hand a quick, sharp squeeze before letting go, not willing to see her sink back into the pain.

“You don’t have anything to be embarrassed about. Look at me, Becca. I mean it. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I went to the party. I drank the punch.”

“You did what almost every other teenager in this country’s done. That doesn’t justify what happened to you. It doesn’t.” She punched her last word, determination filling her as she spoke.
Every first lady needed a cause.
Sexual violence against women might be edgier than literacy, but edgier got better press. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of this together.”

S
TILL RUNNING ON ADRENALINE FROM his day, Walker dropped into a chair in the hotel suite they’d set up as a makeshift war room and dug into his paper-wrapped sub. As the aroma of oil and vinegar on salami and toasted cheese hit him, his stomach woke up with a vengeance. He hadn’t had a chance to eat since breakfast and passed starving four or five hours ago.

It had been so worth it. He’d started his day at a meeting with local farmers—ag innovators, really—who were using a closed aquaponics system to raise vegetables in the desert. The system had similarities to the tech he’d designed, but because of the geography and weather conditions, the Arizona farmers made water retention their primary focus, neck-in-neck with production. Instead of irrigating huge exposed fields and pouring thousands of gallons of water over the desert to get things to grow, they’d figured out how to use vented greenhouses and nutrient-infused water to grow food for the burgeoning population of Phoenix, all without wasting a drop.

He’d geeked out over the tech and been inspired by the group of men and women who were making it their life’s work to find a sustainable way to feed their neighbors. It was at its core his most basic passion and the reason he’d gotten into the race to begin with. It had also given his afternoon stump speeches some extra energy. He felt inspired and fed off the energy of the crowds, which seemed to be steadily growing. He still didn’t draw the numbers Collins did, but that seemed to be changing.

Either way, he’d spent some extra time working the rope lines and taking an endless stream of selfies with potential voters. He’d had a chance to talk to mothers who were worried about balancing their jobs with raising their children and fathers worried about how to pay for their kids’ education. Both sides were locked in a battle to try to make sure their families had everything they needed with less time and fewer resources. He wanted to help make things easier for them. Safer and more stable.

Some of the couples had three or four jobs between them. People working that hard shouldn’t still be struggling to make ends meet.
Moving America Forward
had become so much more than a campaign slogan. To him, it had become a promise to the voters to give them every opportunity possible to succeed—a promise he intended to keep.

It reminded him every day of why he’d decided to run for president and made him that much more determined to win. None of that diminished how he felt about Haven. It added to rather than subtracted from the things he wanted to do with his life. If he couldn’t figure out how to fit everything together now, then he’d just keep moving forward until he did.

Travis collapsed into the chair next to him, his fist wrapped around his own sub. Juggling chief of staff duties with essentially acting as the campaign’s CFO, he kept the same hours as Walker, but watching him, it was clear he didn’t have the adrenaline benefit.

“You looked whipped.”

“Funny, that’s because I am,” he said, unwrapping his sub and groaning as he uncovered the meatballs drenched in marinara. “Not all of us get off on shaking hands and lettuce farms.” He took a huge bite, breaking the gooey string of melted mozzarella that clung to the bun and effectively cutting off any additional conversation.

“Do you have the ad buy numbers for Wisconsin and Colorado?” Walker asked after they’d inhaled the sandwiches. After the primary in the morning, they had a couple of weeks before they had to be ready to caucus in Wisconsin. He’d let Haven persuade him to take a couple of days off to recharge, but he wasn’t about to take a chance on losing the momentum they’d started to build. Not that she’d let that happen, but he still needed to be in control.

“Yeah, they’re significant. About twenty percent more than what we talked about. Collins is doing a massive buy in Colorado, but we got in earlier. We’re in good shape.”

They’d gone back and forth in the beginning about how much money to sink into advertising before they saw the state of the race, but Haven insisted they go big or go home. The national race was different than any of the local ones he’d run in. There was more competition for airtime and the closer they got to the individual state contests, the more expensive it got. If they’d waited, they’d be spending more and playing catch-up.