“Surely you know,” he said.
“Tell me,” Becky repeated.
“Those poor people at the Wild Times Bar the other night,” he said. “I read the brief on that — I wasn’t supposed to, but I did, you know, because it was lying there on a desk.”
Becky continued to nod, devoting all of her energy and attention to Zanger, except for the flash from her eyes that told David to shut up when he took a breath to interrupt.
Zanger continued, “Nobody was supposed to die. In retrospect, I guess that the shooting was inevitable, but you don’t think that way during the planning stages, you know? Not when your boss is telling you that everything is going to be fine.”
“So the president is involved with this?” Becky asked. She tried to remain cool when she asked the question, but the fact was she should probably stay away from the poker tables, too.
Zanger showed confusion for a few seconds. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “It’s the job title. Deputy White House press secretary. Okay. Well, they don’t let me touch any of the high-profile stuff. I work for Doug Winters, the chief of staff. I’m sort of, nominally, his spokesperson.” He looked away. “Only really, I’m more of his personal assistant. He and my family go way, way back. He trusts me.”
“Ah,” Becky said. “So the guy telling you that everything’s going to be fine is just the president’s chief of staff.”
“Right.”
“It’s not the president himself.”
“Exactly.”
David found himself not blinking as he listened, his mind screaming to him that this was going to make Watergate look like a minor distraction.
Zanger continued, “You can’t use any of this on the record.”
“It’s all deep background,” Becky assured. While she might well have been playing a bluff, her promise concerned David. If they did, indeed, come out the other end of this ordeal whole and free, they would have to tell the FBI and others about what they’d just heard. How could they do that and still accept the Pulitzer that would be coming their way?
Zanger seemed satisfied, though no less disturbed. “But I never in a million years thought that tonight would ever happen.”
Becky cocked her head. “Tonight?” she asked. “What part about tonight?”
Zanger cocked his head, too, albeit in the opposite direction. He seemed equal parts confused and concerned. “Isn’t that why you’re here? Isn’t that why the two of you came to my door?”
Becky waited for it, and David was glad. Some issues be allowed to play themselves out.
Zanger looked shocked. “Really?” he asked. “The kidnapping. I thought for sure that you were here about the kidnapping.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nicholas Mishin loved the sound of his sleeping house. Most nights, the one-story rancher in the Colorado hill country was too damn quiet. Ever since Marcie left with Josef — he was Joey now, he mustn’t forget — the house seemed to have lost its heartbeat. She’d taken the dog, too, so for too many nights and days, the otherwise comfortable house had been anything but a home.
For this week and next, though, that would all be different. Marcie had jetted off to some far-flung place with her rich new husband, leaving him alone with his son for the first time in ten months.
It was amazing how much children could change in a year. You expect it when they’re little, when every day brings a new skill and new adventures, but Nicholas had not been prepared for the metamorphosis that had consumed his boy between his thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays. He’d grown tall and lean — Nicholas estimated him to be five-nine — and despite the adolescent hair that would go from clean to oily in half a day, and the zits on his nose and cheeks and chin that were the focus of so much of his vanity, he fit every person’s definition of handsome. The California sun that was so much a part of his life while living with his mother had even managed to lighten his dark brown hair.
When Nicholas first saw Josef stepping out of the people mover into the arrival lounge in Denver International Airport, his gut seized at the magnitude of the change. He worried that in the months since they’d seen each other, the boy would have become a man so quickly that they would now have to get to know each other again as strangers.
Then Joey fired up that smile, and all the fears dissolved away. Without hesitation or embarrassment, he gave his old man a big hug, and from that second on, the missing slice of time stopped mattering.
It had been a great week, including three day-trips to the slopes — Vail, Copper, and Breckenridge — and an afternoon at the movies. Tonight, during dinner in front of the television in the family room, they’d agreed that tomorrow would be a lazy, do-nothing day, giving Joey a chance to catch up on his gaming and his e-mails, while allowing Nicholas to reestablish contact with the clients and colleagues he’d been pretending did not exist.
The evening had ended with a mind-numbing tutorial on World of Warcraft, a dizzying role-playing game that to Nicholas just felt like random violence, but he had to admit that the graphics were stunning.
That had taken them to the beginning of a new day, and much to Nicholas’s surprise, Joey had been the one to call it quits.
Now, an hour later, Nicholas still lay awake, listening to the peaceful sounds of the sleeping house.
He missed the old days when they were a complete family, but family dynamics were complicated things. While Marcie had been the first to wander from fidelity, he understood that he’d played a role in that. The obsession with work — he was an environmental engineer, which in fact was a far more interesting line of work than it sounded to people on the outside — combined with his even less healthy obsession with his mother’s current husband, had made him a pain in the ass to be around.
And it didn’t help that the media was so desperately anxious to throw fuel on his fires. They baited him and he swallowed the hook every time. All that negative energy and negative attention was too much for Marcie. He could have told them to mind their own business.
But he didn’t. And now the house had its heartbeat for only a few weeks out of the year. Yet more evidence of life’s most vivid lesson: Actions have consequences.
So, here he was, awash in consequences, and left with the struggle to fulfill another of life’s challenges: He could accept things as they were and enjoy his time alone with Joey, or he could burn with bitterness and be miserable. He could provide a happy environment for Joey or he could push his son away.
You only get one shot at any given moment in your life, and the wise man doesn’t squander a single one.
Nicholas sensed that he’d been lying awake since first getting into bed, but in a dark room, it was always hard to tell. You slip in and out.
Right now, though, he felt his heart hammering in his chest, and he didn’t know why. A bad dream, perhaps? A bout of sleep apnea, for which he refused to wear that ridiculous fighter-pilot’s mask?
He heard something.
He couldn’t quite place it, but it was different from the normal sounds of the house.
Had to take the dog, didn’t you, Marcie? It was more fuzz ball than watchdog, but that puffy little mutt had ears as sharp as any hound’s.
He lay on his back, watching the ceiling, which showed itself only as a darker shade of black in an otherwise black room.
He heard it again. The pop of a floorboard outside the master bedroom door, the one you had to step on to gain access to the room. He’d often called it his ninja burglar alarm.
Nicholas sat up in bed and squinted to see the closed door. “Josef?” he said. “Is that you?” Who else could it be?
Joey’s scream split the night like a hot ax, equal parts pain and fear. “Let go of me! Dad! Ow!”