Mistress (7 page)

I double back to my cabin, taking a different route to avoid the bad guys. I hate to say that I hope they died in a collision with a tree, because I hate to wish death on anybody, but let’s just say it wouldn’t ruin my day.

I stay for a grand total of two minutes, long enough to pack a bag full of possessions. I try not to linger too long on the hundreds of bullets lodged in the walls, furniture, and floor, or on the fact that most of the glass wall on the lake-facing side of my cabin is in tiny shards now. I’ll never feel safe in this place again. And I owe Steve Sykes a new Jeep (or at least an old one).

I decide to stay close by and find a hotel for the night, or what remains of the night. There’s no real reason why those guys shooting at me, even if they are in one piece, would stick around Lake Anna, and if they were still on the hunt for me tonight, they’d likely be watching the highways. Plus I don’t trust myself driving long distances in the rain and dark on my Triumph.

I get a single room with a queen bed and a tiny bathroom at a chain hotel. There’s no couch in here, but there’s one of those cheap little love seats. I push it up against the door. Then I take my car keys and balance them on the manual latch on the door so that if any weight pushes on the door from the outside, the keys will drop to the floor and land on a strategically placed tiny hand mirror that I found in Steve’s Jeep. The sound of keys falling onto glass will, I hope, alert me if anyone’s trying to join me tonight. Clever, right? I saw that in
Conspiracy Theory
. Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts. I might have been the only one who saw it.

I probably won’t need that warning, because I doubt I’ll be able to sleep. I know this much: I need to. I still have a hangover from that little thing with my plane crashing to the earth, and tonight hasn’t exactly been a picnic, either. My heart is racing and my head is pounding and my limbs are jangling, but I know that underneath the nerves, I desperately need rest.

I pace the cheap carpet while my mind scatters in twenty directions like cockroaches fleeing light. Was President James Buchanan gay? Did John Wilkes Booth’s fiancée have an affair with President Lincoln’s son Robert? Isn’t it odd that Robert Todd Lincoln was present at two presidential assassinations but not his own father’s? I mean, what kind of odds are those—

Stop
. Focus, Ben. Concentrate on another set of odds: your odds of survival. Whoever’s trying to kill me only has to succeed once, after all. I have to succeed every time in avoiding them.

I turn the shower dial as hot as it goes and let the water punish me. I put my forehead against the wall and try to think about that lobbyist Jonathan Liu and what Diana might have known that got her killed and might get me killed, and then I’m thinking of Janet Leigh in the shower in
Psycho
and then that remake with Vince Vaughn, and that probably wasn’t his best career move, but then again he got to have sex with Anne Heche—or wait, that wasn’t
Psycho
,
that was
Return to Paradise
—anyway, I’m vulnerable, because how well can you defend yourself when you’re wet and naked?

Not very. I mean, I’m not much of a threat to anyone when I’m clothed. Naked, about the only thing I could do is scare somebody for a few seconds.

I dry off and put on some clothes that I brought from the cabin, stuff I haven’t worn for ten years, and try to relax, to think of something that won’t freak me out, to take a small break from all this so I can get some rest.

By 2:00 a.m., I’m convinced that Buchanan was gay.

By 3:00 a.m., it’s clear that, while Julia Roberts can obviously hold her own in a lead role, I prefer her in ensemble casts like the ones in
Mona Lisa Smile
and
Mystic Pizza
and
Steel Magnolias
,
which makes me briefly consider whether I’m gay, too.

By 4:00 a.m., I’ve put the presidents in alphabetical order.

And then I’m back to wondering about the odds of my surviving whatever is happening to me, and there’s literally an equation on a blackboard, and then Matt Damon puts down his janitor’s mop and picks up a piece of chalk and navigates through this complicated algorithm with confident strokes and then Ben Affleck shows up, first to apologize for
Gigli
and then to tell Damon that he should be doing more with his life than scrubbing floors, then Robin Williams walks in and tells me to seize the day, and I try to tell him he’s got the wrong movie but then Damon has completed the foot-long equation on the blackboard and just as he turns to me there’s a loud, tinny sound that startles all of us, and Damon says to me,
Hate to say it, Ben, but you’re toast
—

My eyes pop open and I lurch forward on the bed. I scramble to get a view of the door.

The keys aren’t teetering on the latch anymore.

They’ve fallen onto the mirror on the floor.

Someone just tried to open my door.

I quietly slide off the bed and slither along the carpet. I can’t see below the door frame. I have no way of knowing if someone is standing outside my door.

But those keys didn’t just fall off by themselves. Someone must have pushed against the door.

I hold my breath, count down the first twenty presidents, and wait for any further movement. I stare at that door until my eyes are playing tricks on me, until that door is breathing in and out, expanding and contracting.

I lie there perfectly still for at least ten minutes, my face pressed against carpet fibers of cheap quality and questionable hygiene. Maybe the sound of the keys landing on the glass mirror, meant to alert me, had the additional effect of spooking them. But it’s kind of hard to believe that men armed with automatic weapons would be scared off by a set of car keys and a hand mirror.

I push off the carpet to a crouch, then tiptoe toward the door, careful to stay out of the line of the door frame. If these guys are inclined to unload their weapons through the door, I don’t want to be on the receiving end.

I approach the door and hold my breath again and listen. Nothing that I can hear but the quiet hum of the cheap air conditioner in my room.

Okay, it could have been gravity, not an intruder. But I have to be sure.

From my position outside the door frame, I leap into the line of fire, so to speak, and peek through the peephole. Nothing. Nobody out there.

Okay. Maybe it
was
just gravity. Maybe I need to get a grip.

“It’s time to end this,” I announce to no one but myself. I’m not even sure what that means, because I’m not exactly in control of events, but it sounded cool and I’ll take any relief right now. Something Eastwood or Stallone would say before engaging the villain in a climactic scene. Load the chamber, cock the weapon, and say,
This ends here
. No—
This ends now
.

“This ends now,” I say to the mirror.

I have one card left to play. I’m going back to Diana’s apartment to grab the surveillance tapes. They’ll tell me who pushed her off the terrace.

Then I jump as I hear a short, loud buzz, then the same sound a second time. Terror fills me and disintegrates in the time it takes my brain to register that my smartphone, resting on the nightstand, has just received a text message.

I reach for my phone as though it were a hot burner on a stove. The sender has been blocked. The message is a photograph. It takes me a moment to get it in full view.

“Oh, no,” I mumble.

It’s a photograph of Diana’s brother, Randy Hotchkiss, lying facedown in a pool of blood.

And underneath it, these words:

Riding the Triumph in the misty morning air, I take a different route to Diana’s place this time. I’m not going to turn up 33rd Street and just walk right into a police detective—not to mention catch the attention of any mysterious guys in a Lexus. No, this time I’m entering Diana’s building from the rear, up the fire escape.

Cue the theme to
Mission: Impossible
.

I park the Triumph a couple blocks away and walk along the C&O Canal’s path, keeping company with joggers getting in their exercise before the workday begins. Then I head to the back of Diana’s building and take the rickety steps of the fire escape up to her floor.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could play theme music when you were walking around doing things? Especially during dramatic moments. I think it would inspire people.

I still have the key that opens the fire-escape entrance and her door. What I don’t have is any idea who might be watching this building right now, or whether I’m committing a crime just by entering. But I’m out of choices at this point.

I feel a wave of nausea as I take the wobbly steps, but compared to my other challenges the last couple of days, this is a walk in the park. I reach the top and enter the building, my heartbeat fluttering ever so slightly.

Her apartment is at the end of the hallway. There is yellow police tape across the door, so that removes any question about whether I’m supposed to go in there.

But I do it anyway. I walk in, and my breath is whisked away, memories cascading through me in waves. Diana. What were you doing, Diana, that brought all this down on you?

Focus, Ben. It won’t take two minutes to get those tapes and leave.

I look up at the smoke detector in her kitchen, the pinhole camera inside it. I grab the stepladder Diana always tucked next to her refrigerator and find the Phillips screwdriver she kept in a tray in her pantry and get to work. I’m unscrewing the second of two screws when I hear a noise from the other end of the apartment, a bottle falling over and rolling on glass.

Panic spreads across my chest. I climb down from the ladder as Cinnamon, Diana’s Abyssinian, comes jogging toward me.

“Hey, girl!” I cry out, surprised at how happy I am to see the cat. Maybe because I’m happy to see anyone these days who isn’t pointing a firearm at me. Or maybe it’s because Cinnamon is now the last vestige of Diana.

The poor thing is a nervous wreck. Has anyone been feeding her? I really don’t know. So I find some cat food in the pantry and give her a bowl. She forgets all about me and goes to town on the food.

I get the last screw out of the smoke detector and pop the bottom lid and—and there isn’t any camera or microphone. The surveillance equipment has been removed.

I jump down off the ladder and head into Diana’s bedroom and see that the motion-activated video recorder, disguised as an AC adapter plug, is also missing. I look behind Diana’s desk and check every outlet, but no, it’s gone.

Both of the surveillance devices I installed are gone.

And with them the identity of Diana’s killer.

I have no leads and nowhere to go.

After parking my Triumph, I walk the streets of the capital, stopping often to double back and watch for anyone paying close attention to me. I find a coffee shop in Georgetown and sit with my back to the wall, watching everyone who walks into the place. A muscle-bound Asian guy. Two cute college girls. An elderly woman and two grandchildren. A slick suit talking into his earpiece.

I don’t know whom to suspect. Anyone could be watching me anywhere.

At 10:00 a.m., I get a text message from the White House. The president is back from a week on Martha’s Vineyard and is holding a press conference at 2:30 this afternoon. It’s my week to cover the briefing room, and I consider asking my partner, Ashley Brook Clark, to cover it for me. But today it’s a welcome diversion.

Inside the Brady Room, the major network reporters are dolled up in their makeup, coiffed hair, and neatly pressed clothes, doing stand-ups, predicting to the audiences at home that the president will comment on the next secretary of agriculture, the unrest in Libya, and the resumed fighting in Chechnya. Me, I have an online newspaper, so I don’t need to care much about my appearance—but even for me, I’m looking worse for wear today. I’ve only slept a handful of hours over the last forty-eight, and, not being able to return home, I was forced to buy clothes at Brooks Brothers. My shirt is still creased from the package, and the sport coat is too big in the shoulders. I look like a disheveled kid.

The press secretary, Rob Courtney, is prepping us with some details of the president’s schedule over the next week and some background on the appointment he’s announcing today. I don’t need it. I’ve known who was going to be the next secretary of agriculture for two weeks now. It pays to know people on the inside. And when I say it pays, I mean that literally. Usually it’s Redskins or Nationals tickets. Several years ago, I flew a source in the State Department and his girlfriend to Manhattan and back for the evening in my Cessna. She had a wonderful birthday dinner at Moomba and I had a nice headline story about how the ambassador to Australia was planning to resign to run for governor of Ohio.

“Blue shirt, red tie,” predicts the reporter next to me, Wilma Grace. A running joke with us, and a running bet. Being the gentleman that I am, I always let her pick first.

“White shirt, blue tie,” I counter.

I look around the briefing room and slowly calm. I’m safe, if nothing else, within the confines of the West Wing, and seeing familiar faces is comforting.

“The president of the United States,” says Rob Courtney.

President Blake Francis strides in with the fluid ease that accompanies power, with a fresh tan from vacation, and with a blue shirt and red tie.

“You saw him today already,” I whisper to Wilma.

“Never said I didn’t.”

“That’s cold, Gracie. That’s cold.”

“You might want to take the price tag off your sport coat,” Wilma suggests. Yeah, I’m feeling better. I’m glad I came.

“Afternoon, everyone,” says the president. “It’s nice to be back. I can’t tell you how much I missed all of you.”

Polite laughter from those of us in the peanut gallery. The aides flanking him laugh like he’s just told the funniest joke ever uttered.

“Before I discuss the appointment I’m here to announce, I’d like to make one comment. Many of you were as saddened as I was to learn of the recent death of Diana Hotchkiss, who worked for several years on Congressman Carney’s staff and then as a liaison for the CIA.”

I blink. Did he—did I hear him correctly?

“And I understand that her family has suffered a second tragedy recently with the death of her brother,” he continues. “I’d just like to say that Libby and I send the Hotchkiss family our very best.” President Francis gives a presumptive nod. “Okay. Now, as you know, I promised that before I appointed the next secretary of agriculture, I would search high and low…”

I look at Wilma, who returns my glance but doesn’t seem to be registering any undue surprise. She shrugs her shoulders. “Some staffer on the Hill, I guess?” she whispers.

I nod back. Wilma obviously didn’t know Diana. She meant a great deal to me, but to most people Diana was one of thousands of faceless, ambitious staffers toiling behind the scenes of power.

So how did she warrant a mention in a nationally televised news conference with the president of the United States?