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“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 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

Barrie 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.

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 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.

She washed her hands, thoroughly, then pressed a damp paper towel to her face. When she came out of the rest room, she saw Clete Armbruster approaching the entrance. She met him at the door.

“Senator Armbruster.” It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t rehearsed what she would say. He was an intimidating man under any circumstances. She certainly didn’t welcome being the one to tell him that his daughter was dead. “Thank you for coming,” she said lamely.

“Young lady, you’d better have a damn good reason for getting me up in the middle of the night,” he said, following her to the booth. “I wouldn’t be here except—” He came to an abrupt halt when he saw Gray Bondurant.

Gray stood up. “Clete, it’s been a while.”

The senator was not pleased to see him. Obviously he didn’t hold Gray in the highest esteem, and it was easy to guess why. A father would naturally resent a man who had damaged his daughter’s honor, especially if she also happened to be the First Lady of the United States, where more than personal virtue was at stake.