Exclusive

He massaged the ball of her foot. “You screwed up pretty bad, all right. This is even worse than the Justice Green incident.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said, almost in a whisper. “When Gray pulled back that sheet, I was prepared to see Vanessa’s lovely chestnut hair and creamy complexion. Instead, there lay a stranger. I was stunned. And then of course Armbruster erupted like Mount St. Helens. And Gray…”

“Gray?” he prompted.

“He pulled a David Copperfield and disappeared.”

Her foolhardiness would have severe consequences, but, of all of them, Gray’s vanishing act was perhaps the hardest to take. She was resigned to being the target of Armbruster’s vengeance. The senator would make her suffer for those few minutes that he’d believed his daughter was dead. For years to come, she would be the laughingstock of the Washington press corps. Whatever crumbs of credibility she had scraped together since the Justice Green debacle were now for naught. It would be years, if ever, before she regained a modicum of respect in journalistic circles.

Even if she hadn’t notified her own TV station, word would have gotten out eventually. Pennsylvania Avenue was like Main Street in any small town in America. Gossip and bad news were telegraphed with lightning speed. A fiasco with such a high-profile cast of characters couldn’t have been kept under wraps.

So she was braced for the ridicule. It would hurt. But not as badly as Gray’s desertion.

She had looked from Jayne Gaston’s death mask into his face, and one was about as animated as the other. Oddly, she’d been concerned more with Gray’s reaction than with Senator Armbruster’s. Of the two, the senator had been the more vocal and vituperative. His tirade had distracted her, and by the time he’d finished reviling her, Gray had vanished.

“I searched the hospital, then the parking area,” she told Daily. “No one remembered seeing him leave. My car was where we’d left it, so I don’t know what he used for transportation. He simply vanished.”

She picked at a loose thumb cuticle. “I guess he was mortified that a man of his experience had been drawn into the fantasy of an idiot like me.”

“Please,” Daily groaned. “Self-pity makes me want to puke.”

“I’m not—”

“You didn’t convince Bondurant of anything, and you flatter yourself if you think you could. You confirmed suspicions he’d already had, remember?”

“But based on what I told him, he killed Spencer Martin.”

?

?In self-defense.”

“Are we sure of that?”

“You doubt it?”

“Well, if Merritt didn’t have anything to hide, why would he have sent Spencer Martin to Wyoming to get rid of Bondurant? Because I had told him my wild theory, Gray must’ve misread the purpose of Spencer Martin’s visit, the timing of which was probably nothing more than coincidence. Merritt isn’t going to let his top adviser disappear without conducting an exhaustive search and investigation. Gray will be charged with murder.”

“He covered Martin’s tracks and probably disposed of the body so well that it will never be found,” Daily speculated. “No body, no murder.”

“That’s a technicality.”

“He didn’t seem overly concerned.”

“No, he was more concerned about Vanessa. When he thought she was dead, he looked like death himself.”

Gray Bondurant loved Vanessa Merritt. Not lusted after, loved. He loved her enough to sacrifice his career for her. He had resigned so that neither her marriage nor her public status would be jeopardized by a scandalous affair. He loved her enough to relinquish any claim to his son. It must have been torture for him not to be there when the child was born, and then to mourn his death alone, in virtual exile.

Barrie would never receive that kind of love, and peevishly felt that such devotion was wasted on a woman as shallow and selfish as Vanessa Armbruster Merritt. She was ill, true. But did that excuse her for being grossly manipulative? Why had Vanessa involved her at all? Why had she tossed out those red herrings for her to follow?

“He’s quite a stud,” Daily observed.

“Hmm. What? Who? Bondurant?” Barrie quickly retracted her foot and sat up. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You two didn’t…” He raised his eyebrows.

“Of course not.”

“But you would’ve liked to.”