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"Local girl? Where'd you meet her? What's her name? Who're her people?"

"Her name is Becky Sturgis, but you wouldn't know her. She's trash, a nobody. I picked her up at a redneck lounge out on the highway. She was drunk when I got there. We scoped each other out, wound up dancing. We flirted, started necking. It got hot and heavy real quick. She was all over me. We either had to go outside, or it was going to get embarrassing. We'd barely cleared the door of the place before she pulled me to her. We did it right there against the wall of the building."

It would have been hypocritical to chastise his protege for a sexual indiscretion. When he was David's age, he'd had some pretty wild escapades himself. It was only with maturity that he had learned the value of discretion and good judgment. Nevertheless, he felt that some chastening was called for.

"Several great statesmen have been denied the White House because they got their brains and their peckers confused. They got it mixed up which one to screw with and which one to think with."

"I know that," David said tightly. "I honest to God thought she was harmless. She was pretty, sexy, and unencumbered. She lives alone, works at a dairy as a dispatcher for their delivery trucks, has no family to speak of."

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Clete grunted skeptically. "If she's so harmless, what brings you to my door at this time of night, bloodied up and looking like you might lose your supper on my dearly departed wife's prized oriental rug?"

"I . . . I killed her."

Clete's lips went so slack that the lighted cigar almost fell into his lap. Gradually he recovered his wits enough to leave his recliner and pour another brandy, this one for himself. He quaffed it almost as greedily as David had drunk his. Clete could see his dreams for the young man dissolving like a sugar cube.

David Merritt had so distinguished himself as a volunteer in the Armbruster campaign that he was soon offered a paid position. When Clete first met him, David had only recently been discharged from the Marines.

He was disciplined and intuitive. He required little or no supervision and executed every assignment with aplomb and expediency. It wasn't long before Clete vested him with more responsibility.

Following his election to the Senate, he invited David to join his staff in Washington- For the past two years David had proved himself a valuable asset and a quick study in politics. Clete had already laid big plans for him, because he saw that David had what it took to make an excellent politician.

He had a hands-on, working knowledge of economics because he'd had to make do with the meager resources available to him in his youth. In his spare time, he studied law and government procedure. He had a distinguished military service record. He was handsome and articulate and, until tonight, free of scandalous baggage.

It took every ounce of self-control Clete possessed not to walk over and slap the shit out of him for being so stupid. "I guess you had a good reason for killing her," he said harshly.

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"I swear to God it was an accident."

"Don't swear it to God," Clete roared. "Swear it to me, boy."

"I swear it, Clete."

He studied David's face for a long time but saw no signs of dissembling in the shattered expression. He was one scared young man. "Okay," Clete said.

"What happened?"

"First I've got to backtrack. After that first time, I began seeing her whenever we were here."

Clete rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. "At Christmas?"

"Yes, sir."

"Easter?"

David nodded.

"While you were courting Vanessa? You've been playing us both for fools,"

he shouted.

"You've got it wrong, Clete," David said emotionally, his voice cracking.

"You know how I feel about Vanessa. I love her and want to marry her, but.

. ."

"But you felt the urge to dip your wick into some trashy girl who gets drunk and screws against the outside wall of a redneck beer joint. Is that your idea of how to conduct your love life?"

The outburst cleared Clete's head. He returned to his recliner and let his temper simmer as he puffed furiously on his cigar. David wisely gave him time to calm himself. Finally he snarled, "Give me the rest of it." "On our last trip here, she called me to come see her out at her place. When I got there . . ." He paused, dragged his hand down his face. "I couldn't believe it. Her stomach was out to here."

Clete merely stared at him for several moments. "Hand me that brandy bottle." David complied, although Clete looked ready to clobber him with the crystal decanter. Clete

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took two swallows from it. "You're telling me she was pregnant?"

"She was then. She had the kid a few weeks ago. A boy."

"He's yours?"

"How the hell do I know?" David cried, raising his voice for the first time. "It's possible, but it's just as possible that he could belong to a dozen other men. She claimed he was mine."

"Was? Past tense?"

"She started bugging me to come see the baby, insisting he was mine. I was afraid that if I didn't do it, she'd do something really crazy.

"So I went over there tonight to give her some money. I thought that was the least I could do. But . . . but she was beyond reason, Clete. She threw the money in my face, said I couldn't buy my way out of my responsibility to her, said she'd settle for nothing less than marriage."

Every word was like another strike of the hammer, nailing shut the coffin of David Merritt's political future. Clete now feared he himself might lose his supper on his late wife's prized oriental rug.

"I told her straight out that marriage was not an option," David said. "I told her that I was already engaged to someone else, to a woman I love."

He paused and glanced at Clete. "I realize I haven't formally proposed to Vanessa, and I don't intend to until she's finished college, but she knows how much I love her. It's been more or less understood that--2'

"Get on with it," Clete rudely interrupted. "What happened when you told this tramp there'd be no marriage?"

"She went berserk." David sat down again and covered his face with his hands for a few moments. Finally, he lowered his hands and clasped them loosely between his knees.

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"She was using a dresser drawer for a crib. I guess her shouting had scared the baby. Anyway, he was screaming, and that seemed to drive her over the edge. She said she wasn't going to be stuck with a kid to raise alone, and then, she . . . she wrapped her hands around his neck and started choking him. I tried to pry her hands away, but I couldn't. She strangled him."

"Jesus Christ!" Clete gasped. "She killed him?"

David nodded. "I couldn't believe it. One minute he was crying, and the next, he was silent. Dead."

"Why didn't you call the police?"

"She didn't give me a chance," he cried. "The bitch attacked me. That's where I got all these scratches. She came at me like a wildcat. I had to protect myself. We scuffled. She lost her balance and fell against the corner of a built-in table. It must've fractured her skull. There's blood all over the place. She's dead."

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears couldn't be contained. He began to sob. Shoulders shaking, he cried like a baby. "One mistake. One mistake, and now all you've done for me, all we've worked toward, is ruined. And Vanessa. Jesus," he blubbered. "What will Vanessa think of me?

How will this affect our future together?"

Clete had spent too much time and care cultivating David Merritt for the presidency to throw it away because of a girl who wouldn't be missed and a baby who never should have been born. If all they had to consider were the political consequences of David's misdeeds, Clete would have cleaned up the mess to protect his investment.

But by bringing Vanessa into it, David ensured Clete's swift intervention.

He wasn't about to let his daughter's heart be broken by learning that the man she had adored for years and hoped to marry had impregnated some piece of white trash and then accidentally killed her.

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In the grand scheme of things, Becky Sturgis and her baby didn't amount to much, while David Malcomb Merritt was destined for greatness. One of these days he would wield more power than any other individual in the world. Why should all his potential be sacrificed to one error? Why should Vanessa's hopes and dreams be denied when she was blameless? Innocent of any wrongdoing, she would be the one to suffer most.

No way in hell would Clete let that happen.

"Okay, boy, pull yourself together." He approached David and gave his back a hearty whack. "Get a shower. Have another brandy. Go to bed. Say nothing about this to anyone. Ever."

David looked up at him, his expression bleak. "You mean-"

"I'll take care of it," Clete said.

David rose unsteadily. "I can't ask you to do that, Clete. Two people are dead. How are you going to-"

"Let me worry about the particulars." He poked David in the chest with his stubby index finger. "My job is to make the problem disappear. Your job is to clean up your act. You understand, boy?"

"Yes, sir."

"No more indiscriminate screwing around. When you gotta get off, you go to a professional for a nice blow job and send me the bill."

"Yes, sir."

"We can't get you elected president, then have a bunch of sluts come crawling out of the woodwork waving paternity suits, now can we?" Clete smiled.

Timidly, David smiled back. "No, sir."

"Now, where's this girl's trailer?"

Clete took care of the problem that night. As David had said, it was one hell of a mess, but the word impossible wasn't 208 Sandra Brown

in Clete's dictionary. In less than forty-eight hours, the entire Becky Sturgis incident was history.

David had never expressed any curiosity as to how Clete had made two bodies disappear with no questions asked. He never asked how Clete had managed to obliterate Becky Sturgis's entire existence. Taking his cue from Clete, David acted as though the incident had never occurred. In the eighteen years since, they had never mentioned it again. Not until a few mornings ago in the Oval Office, when Clete had subtly alluded to it. The death of his own grandchild had been a disturbing reminder of another young woman and her newborn son. The two incidents were dissimilar, but they bore enough of a resemblance to trouble him.

With vexing frequency a thought flitted through the senator's mind: Had David Merritt, and not the mother, killed that baby eighteen years ago? And if so, had he killed again?

Chapter twenty-two

.Tarrie kept a close watch on the door of the diner, eager for, yet dreading, Senator Armbruster's arrival.

In a region where Georgian architecture was prevalent, the eatery was a misfit. Its shiny, gaudy 1950s motif was achieved with gleaming chrome and turquoise vinyl. The floor was checkered with black and white tiles. At this time of night, business was limited to a few hospital employees and a teenage couple who were slurping alternately on melting milk shakes and on each other.

Nursing their coffee, Barrie and Gray occupied a booth in front of a wide picture window that afforded a view of the emergency room entrance. After his attack of nausea, Dr. Allan had taken a moment to collect himself, then had followed the grim cortege into the hospital. He hadn't reappeared, and there'd been no further activity.

Gray had said little. His eyes remained fixed on the doors through which Vanessa's body had been carted. He was seated with his forearms resting on the flamingo-pink tabletop. Occasionally he would flex his fingers into a fist, then straighten them rigidly. He looked tenuously tethered and extremely dangerous.

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Barrie cleared her throat. "They'll probably try and pass her death off as a suicide."

"Not if I have anything to do with it. Vanessa wouldn't have killed her baby, and she wouldn't have killed herself."

Impulsively, Barrie reached across the table and laid her hand on his arm.

Startled by her touch, he looked down at her hand, then up at her face.

"I'm sorry, Gray," she said. "I know you loved Vanessa. The baby . . ."

She hesitated. "He was yours, wasn't he?"

"What difference does it make?" he snapped, shaking her hand off his arm.

"He's dead and so is she."

Barrie took the rejection hard. Even her father, on the rare occasions when he had bothered to come home, had never physically rebuffed her or been intentionally mean to her.

"You go to hell, Mr. Bondurant."

She slid from the booth, wanting to walk out and leave him there alone to rot in his misery. If not for Senator Armbruster's imminent arrival, she would have. Instead she went into the ladies' room. Placing her hands on either side of the sink, she leaned upon it until she had worked up enough courage to raise her head and face herself in the mirror. Maybe she wasn't as aggravated with Gray as she was with herself. His pain was raw, his emotions honest. Hers were conflicting. A struggle between her professional interests and her conscience was creating a moral dilemma for her.

She was an eyewitness to an event that would make history. The career-making potential of the story boggled her mind. She became giddy at the thought of being the first and only reporter on the scene to break the story.

But a woman's wrongful death was hardly cause for celebration, especially when one was as personally involved

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as Barrie was. If she had ceased to probe the mystery surrounding the child's death, would Vanessa still have been killed? In pursuit of a hot story, had she gone too far? Was she in any way responsible for the course of events that had resulted in this tragedy, or had Vanessa's fate been sealed long before she invited Barrie to coffee?

The hell of it was, she would never know. For the rest of her life, she would be plagued by those haunting questions.