Bishop (Political Royalty Book 3) (9 page)

Before he could sink entirely into the morass of self-pity, Haven came back, trailing a police officer in her wake. The guy crossed to his bed, his face clearly telegraphing a
you lucky bastard
look, and unlocked the cuffs.

“You’re free to go, Mr. Newman,” said the officer, shaking his head as if he still didn’t believe what happened. He wasn’t the only one. “The state of Arizona would appreciate it if you’d move on as quickly as possible.”

“He’s staying to cover the primary tomorrow, Officer...” Mrs. Walker stepped forward and leaned in to read the policeman’s name tag. “Jones. We’ll be on our way after that.”

Faced with the beautiful politician’s wife, the officer stammered his reply and hurried out of the room, looking almost as shell-shocked as Matt felt.

“I’m not sure I understand what’s going on here.” He rubbed his wrist where the handcuff had chafed and waited for someone to explain things to him.

Haven stepped forward—all business to Mrs. Walker’s charm.

“As the officer said, the charges against you have been dropped. You’re free to go.”

“I understand that much,” he said, trying to hide his growing frustration. “Why were the charges dropped?”

“The State of Arizona decided you’re more trouble than you’re worth, Mr. Newman. Don’t make me come to the same conclusion,” said Haven.

She gave him a look that had him seriously contemplating pulling the covers over his head. It was hard to feel like a bad ass stuck in a hospital bed. The women were clearly in control of this show.

“I understand why you did what you did, but it would be better for everyone if you refrained from going vigilante again. The get out of jail free card is a one-time play.”

He nodded and then the importance of what she said hit him.

“Becca?” He started to get out of bed, realized what he was wearing—or rather, not wearing—and settled for sitting up straight. He never meant for what he did to touch her. He sure as hell didn’t mean for it to force her to tell her story to people who were practically strangers.

“It’s okay,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Mrs. Walker, Sandra, helped me find my way through some of what I was feeling. She convinced me none of this, including what happened to you, is my fault.”

Her voice was steady, but he watched her carefully for any sign of false bravado. It was what he’d been trying to convince her of since the beginning. He should be happy she seemed to finally believe it, but the cynical bastard inside him had a hard time believing it could all be that easy.

“Your sister has inspired me to make sexual violence against women, particularly on college campuses, my primary issue as first lady.” Mrs. Walker came to stand behind Becca, letting her hand rest gently on his sister’s shoulder. Becca looked up at her as if she were some kind of queen and the cynical bastard clamped down on his chest.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and for Becca.” He met Mrs. Walker’s gaze and saw her eyes widen for a fraction of a second before sliding back to coolly placid. “But I will not have my sister used as some kind of poster child for your cause.”

“It’s not like that, Matt,” said Becca, looking more determined than he’d seen her in ages.

“Your brother is right to be concerned,” said Sandra, her voice smooth and soothing. “I want your sister to be as involved as she feels comfortable being, but I will not push her. What she says publicly is entirely up to her.”

“I don’t know how she will have time for any of this. She’s supposed to go back to school this week.” He closed his eyes for a moment, furious with himself for making things harder for her. Instead of eliminating the threat to her reputation from the frat, he’d painted a bull’s-eye on her with his fists.
How in the world had he ever expected this to work? Fuck.
“I’m sorry, Becs. I was trying to make it so you wouldn’t have to worry about that asshole when you went back. I’m afraid I just made things worse. I can take a leave of absence from work. I’ll come stay with you. Look out for you so you don’t have to worry.”

“Don’t be silly, you big goof.” She smiled at him, but he could see the sadness creeping back in around her eyes. She didn’t want to go back and this time it was all his fault.

“You’re majoring in something related to computers, right?” asked Haven.

“MIS—Management Information Systems,” said Becca. “It’s like acting as a link between computers and technology and the people who use them.”

“I may have an idea,” said Haven, smiling for the first time since she walked into his room.

“A
ND WE HAVE TO TAKE a long, hard look at our energy policies, make sure we know who really benefits from them and that we can both afford the cost and have the will to pay it.” Walker stood in front of the crowd of refinery and company heads at the Energy Summit, and slashed and burned his way through the speech they’d gone over together. Haven would be furious with him if he wasn’t saying exactly what she herself believed. “Alternative does not automatically equal good. We need to seriously consider our commitment to corn ethanol and start with an honest evaluation of the cost-risk-benefit. We can’t afford to hold onto a mistake simply because we spent a lot of time making it.”

The audience was stony-faced. Most of them made a significant chunk of change—tens of billions of dollars, actually—from the ethanol subsidies to start and then later from ethanol mandates sent down from the federal government. They didn’t want anyone, especially a Republican senator running on strengthening US agriculture, to look too closely at a lucrative industry that might never have worked as well as was promised. They counted on lawmakers having no opinion of their own and being happy to adopt the one laid out for them, especially when it came with a big fat campaign contribution.

In most cases, it was an easy sell. Who didn’t think alternative energy sounded like a forward-leaning idea? Lobbyists could get almost everybody to stand up and pimp for that. Never mind the fact that it took almost as much energy to make ethanol as it delivered and spikes in corn prices brought on by artificially inflated demand had much broader consequences. If nobody paid too much attention to the facts, things could continue to roll on unhampered, exactly the way the industry wanted.

“That’s not the way he wrote it, is it?” said Justin, coming to stand behind her.

She and Justin worked side by side for fifteen plus hours every day, but since the night in her hotel room when Walker showed up, they’d kept the focus squarely on campaign logistics, avoiding all talk of the man himself.

“Nope,” she said, unable to hide her smile. “That’s not how he wrote it.”

She and Walker had gone round and round about ethanol and the Renewable Fuel Standard. Travis had even gotten in on the action, reminding both of them that many of the big money donors paid a fortune to have the RFS included in the party platform and they weren’t going to support a candidate who went against their interests. In the end, it seemed like there was no good way around. Except it was wrong. She knew it and Walker knew it. Despite lobbyists preaching to the contrary, ethanol had at best a negligible effect on US fuel independence and at worst a detrimental one. It cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and benefited multi-billion dollar integrated oil companies with their names on the gas stations across the country.

None of that stopped her from telling him to follow the party line on ethanol, and it didn’t stop him from agreeing to it. The whole thing made her feel dirty, but she was long past holding onto ideals in the face of political reality.

Then he’d gotten up on the stage in front of the cable news stations and said the right thing—the true thing—and threw caution and party loyalty to the wind. The speech at the Energy Summit was unlikely to get a lot of play on the six o’clock news. He wouldn’t win the hearts and minds of the voters. Most of them would never see or hear about the speech. But the big money agribusiness donors would know. He’d publicly put them on notice, and that would come with a cost.

She should be furious with him. Travis would likely pop a vein but she couldn’t be angry, not when he’d stepped out of line to support the truth. Not when he’d lived up to the title of public servant.

“You really love him, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Haven nodded. She didn’t trust herself to turn around and face her friend. With her emotions already laid bare by Walker’s speech, she didn’t think she could handle Justin too.

“Fuck.”

“That about sums it up.”

“He’s got a wife. Kids.” Justin pitched his voice low enough so she was the only one who could hear him. They were far enough away from the audience and press but neither of them was foolish enough to take a chance on being overheard. “What happens when she finds out?”

“She knows.”

Justin put a hand on her shoulder, forcing her to face him.

“How did I miss the explosion?”

“There wasn’t one. Honestly, I don’t think there will be one. Their relationship is...” She paused, searching for a word. “Complicated,” she said, remembering when Walker himself had described his marriage that way. From the expression on Justin’s face, he wasn’t buying it any more than she had.

She thought about traveling with Sandra to get the reporter out of the hospital and her weird, almost maternalistic relationship with the young woman who started to work with the campaign. At first, Haven had been sure Sandra was using the pair, and she probably was, but there was more to it than that. She seemed to genuinely want to help the young woman as well.

She had no doubt Sandra had been furious when she caught Haven and Walker together, but she couldn’t decide if it was because they crossed a line or because she caught them. It was a stupid fine point, but it didn’t feel like Sandra was destroyed that her husband had been with another woman, more that she was pissed about his carelessness. There were about a thousand ways Walker’s wife could have tried to make her pay. At first she’d thought the crazy assault thing was one of them, but in the end Haven had to admit, the woman was too damn practical to waste her time on something that didn’t serve her purpose. Revenge wasn’t her goal; ascension was. She treated Haven like the employee she was and used her to further her goals, but so far at least, their interactions had been surprisingly impersonal.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know how to explain it. I would if I could.”

She turned back to the stage. She couldn’t face the recrimination and confusion in Justin’s eyes. Not when she couldn’t offer him an explanation or a promise to stop. Walker was winding up his speech. He’d be taking questions soon and she wanted to hear how his comments about ethanol played with the press.

“Don’t you think this is all just because he’s forbidden? You don’t want a commitment; you never have. And he can’t give you one. Are you sure you’re not just doing this because you know you can’t have him?”

She glanced back over her shoulder to the man who knew her better than almost anyone. “I’m sure,” she said, because she was. And on some level he knew it too.

“Can’t you just fuck him out of your system and move on?”

She stifled a snort, grateful there was still something to laugh about. “If I could, I would have done it in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t have risked the campaign or my career or any of it. I wouldn’t have risked you.” Her voice caught and she swallowed hard against the emotions.

“I don’t know if I can do this.” The calm resignation in his voice was worse than if he’d raged at her. At least then she’d have something to push back against. But she’d told him her truth and now he was telling her his. They’d reached an impasse and she knew he meant it about not being sure if he could go on. She couldn’t promise him things would change, so now he was as stuck as she was.

“What a cluster fuck.”

“Not yet,” said Justin. “But it’s heading that way.”

A smattering of applause broke out across the audience, the bare minimum required to be civil. With his comments about subsidies, Walker had thumbed his nose at a significant number of people in the room. They wouldn’t be quick to forget. The real question was how bad the fallout would get.

“What do you tell the voter who says your stance on ethanol is a step away from energy independence?” asked a reporter Haven didn’t recognize. She made a mental note to get the woman and her paper’s name after the event.

“You have to start by looking at the facts—both the intended ones and the unintended ones,” said Walker.

She heard the shift in his voice that signaled he was about to go policy wonk on them. As long as he remembered to close the circle and keep the audience with him, or at least the reporter who’d asked the question, he’d still be okay.

“Ethanol sounds like a good idea. Making fuel from something we can grow instead of buying it from countries that aren’t fond of us. It’s an easy sell, right?”

The reporter nodded along with him and Haven didn’t bother to hide her smile.

“So we agree to put some of our collective money—tax dollars—behind the idea to help get the technology off the ground and into our gas stations. About a nickel a gallon at its peak paid by the consumer, but if it gets us closer to a sustainable energy independence, it’s worth it.”