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David was shitting bricks over this matter of Spence and Bondurant, just as Clete had known he would. David certainly didn’t want Bondurant to go on record as saying that Spence had been dispatched to assassinate him. Naturally, he would deny any such claims and turn the tables on Bondurant by calling him a traitor and a murderer.

But the damage would already be done, and it would be irreparable. Seeds of doubt would already have been planted in the public’s mind. Prior to an election year, this was sticky business for an incumbent. The opposition party would have a field day pointing out to an impressionable public the shady kind of characters their president surrounded himself with.

By betraying Gray Bondurant, Clete had made an enemy, but the man was expendable. Barrie Travis certainly was. He’d sliced-and-diced her credibility all to hell after that scene in the hospital morgue.

Even though they had David Merritt dead to rights, Clete had no qualms about stymieing their efforts. He couldn’t have those two loose cannons running around causing mishaps, jeopardizing his own plans to destroy David.

The

re was also the outside chance that, in their bumbling fashion, they would stumble across the Becky Sturgis affair. That would unquestionably ruin the President. But it would also ruin Clete Armbruster. In the lineup of his priorities, self-preservation was second only to power.

So, to keep Bondurant and the reporter occupied, he’d clued Attorney General Yancey to the fact that the former recon was the last person known to have seen Spencer Martin alive. Now that they’d been derailed, Clete’s aim was straight. He had to get Vanessa healthy and away from David permanently, then destroy him.

Meanwhile, David was on a verbal rampage. “Without discussing it with me first—”

“I’ve been trying for days to discuss it with you,” Clete interrupted. “You haven’t taken my calls. You were in Georgia yesterday. This afternoon you had that meeting—”

“I know what my agenda was, Clete. You could have waited until I was free before calling Yancey.”

“On the contrary, David. I did not feel that this could wait any longer. People have been asking about Spence.”

“What people?”

“People on your own staff. People to whom his absence is noticeable. You’ve been distracted, so they’ve come to me.”

“Why you?”

“Because you and I are so close.” Clete let the statement lie there like a gauntlet, daring David to pick it up. “Everyone assumes that you share your thoughts and concerns with me. If you discussed Spence’s unexplained absence with anyone, it would be with me.” He puffed contentedly on his cigar.

“Gray told you that Spence had come to see him?”

“That’s right. The night I met him and the Travis broad in Shinlin.”

“There was so much going on that night, how did Spence’s name even enter into the conversation?”

Clete frowned as though trying to remember. “I can’t exactly recall. Best as I remember, it was a casual reference. I probably wouldn’t have thought of it again if Spence had reappeared. But he hasn’t, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to. I did some snooping. His mail’s backed up. Nobody in his apartment building has seen him in weeks. He hasn’t returned phone calls. Looks like he went to Wyoming and got swallowed by a Teton, doesn’t it? Appears that Bondurant was the last person to see him.”

David laughed. “That language has such sinister overtones, Clete. Are you suggesting that Gray killed Spence?”

“Do you have another explanation?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” David replied testily.

“Yancey doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Yancey. I had reservations about appointing him. I wish now I’d heeded them.”

Clete chuckled. “Because he’s much like Bondurant. Always in your face over something. He doesn’t kowtow like the rest of them. In any event, he talked to somebody over in the FBI criminal division, who agreed that a little chat with Mr. Bondurant is in order.”

Clete stuck the cigar in the corner of his mouth, moved to the liquor cabinet, and poured himself a straight scotch. He held the cut crystal tumbler in front of a lamp and studied the play of light through the facets. “When they question Bondurant, I wonder how much he’ll tell them about Spence’s visit to Wyoming.”

He turned and looked pointedly at his son-in-law. The two men exchanged a long stare. David was the first to smile, in grudging respect for his shrewd mentor. “So you know. Gray told you.”

“That you sent Spence there to kill him? Yes, he told me. Makes one wonder what else he knows—or thinks he knows—that you’d rather keep quiet.”