At the Pleasure of the President (The Perfect Gentlemen 5)

“Before we get to that, let’s talk about Joy.” Gus’s eyes slid shut. When she opened them, Liz saw real pain there. “As much as I don’t want to, I think we have to start looking objectively at everyone around us, even Joy. We don’t have any proof that she was involved in anything, but what other young female family member could have taken Constance from that facility without someone alerting Frank Hayes?”

“But the woman who left with her that night was a blonde, according to the files,” Holland argued.

“It’s not hard to put on a wig.” Gus sighed. “But I can’t figure out why she would have procured Constance a rental and a bunch of booze and let the woman’s addiction do the rest. I can’t think of a single reason Joy would have wanted Constance dead.”

Everly shrugged. “Maybe someone paid that nurse at the hospital to say it was a family member, but it wasn’t?”

“Maybe.” Gus sipped her drink. “We’ll never know. But there’s also the fact that Joy had decided to work with Tavia’s foundation if she became FLOTUS.”

“You can’t think that makes her guilty of anything. Everyone thought the foundation was a good cause until they were exposed,” Sara argued.

“True. And maybe I’m jumping at shadows now,” Gus admitted. “Liz, did she ever say anything you found suspicious?”

She’d gone over those conversations a million times in her head. “No, but I have to be honest, I only accompanied Joy to a couple of those meetings with Tavia, and only because I wanted to make sure no one put pressure on Joy. She seemed so fragile most of the time. But I remember her telling me that if she became the First Lady, she wanted to concentrate on women and girls and gaining more opportunities for them.”

“I wonder if she had any idea the foundation’s mission was to find opportunities for those girls to get trafficked?” Gus mused. “I keep asking myself…if Joy was somehow involved in this mess, why? Why would she do it?”

Holland crossed the room to sit by Gus and take her hand. Of all the people here, those two had been closest to Joy. They’d been sorority sisters together. They’d remained close even after they’d pursued their own careers. “I don’t know. And I don’t even see how it’s possible. I thought I knew her so well. But if—and it’s a big if—Joy was a sleeper agent, she would have been well trained, and we met her when we were young and things like treason had never crossed our minds. So we can’t blame ourselves for anything we might have missed.”

“Still, she may have genuinely cared about you. There are complexities and nuances to every relationship,” Liz pointed out.

“But if she was a sleeper, then she probably lied to us,” Gus replied. “For years.”

“Maybe. About some things.” Lara seemed willing to embrace Liz’s line of thought. “But then again, maybe this is moot. All the evidence is merely circumstantial. But what are the odds those coincidences mean anything? Joy was born in the States. She wasn’t smuggled over from Russia. Why would she work for them?”

“That’s a valid question,” Gus said. “She didn’t need the money, and she’d never done a blackmail-worthy act in her life. I think she was even a virgin when she and Zack married. So if she was a sleeper, she would have been indoctrinated by her parents.”

“Paul Harding has always been wily and ambitious, which is another reason to be scared of whatever he’s planning. He visits Frank, you know,” Liz pointed out. “Regularly.”

“Do you think it’s possible he’s plotting to use Zack’s father in some scheme? Or…could they possibly be plotting together?” Gus looked shellshocked by that new and horrifying possibility, kind of like Liz felt. “I know Frank hasn’t seemed capable of remembering what year it is for some time, but—”

“What if it’s an act?” Liz finished her thought. “I caught him wandering into the Treaty Room recently. Zack likes to use it as his office away from the Oval. What if he’s spying on Zack and has been for years?”

“Roman thinks someone is.” Gus leapt to her feet and paced. “He won’t talk to me about it, and that scares me. All right. We need to be smart about this. Someone needs to figure out if Frank’s illness is real, and we damn straight need to know what Paul is up to.”

“I’ll start tracking Joy’s father,” Holland said. “I’m going to follow him wherever he goes for the next week or so.”

“Excellent.” This was what they needed. A plan. “I’ll do the same with Frank. Gus and I are here all day long.”

Gus sent her a conspiratorial wink. “We can shadow him and that head nurse of his. Frank gave us fits and acted up until all the others quit. But this guy seems to have the magic touch. How is that possible?”

Good question. Liz had wondered that herself. If Frank was spying on Zack, he would need someone to be his eyes and ears, someone everyone else would overlook, since Frank wasn’t very mobile on his own.

“Connor and I are re-checking the Secret Service agents.” Lara crossed her legs in a ladylike pose. “Freddy and I are also tracking some people on the Deep Web. I’ll let you guys know if we find anything. Oh, and we discovered that the vice president does, in fact, have some past indiscretions that definitely make him vulnerable to blackmail. Do you remember the stories about his brother having a love child by his mistress years ago?”

“Yes, it showed up in oppo.” Opposition research was a nasty but necessary part of life in politics. It referred to a candidate’s team investigating the opposition for any nastiness that would help in a campaign. In this case, she’d run the same types of investigations on all of the men and women they’d considered for Zack’s under ticket. Wallace Shorn had been clean; his brother…not so much. Ernest Shorn had a second family, one that hadn’t included his wife. “But he hasn’t been close to his brother in years. We didn’t see how that could touch Wallace.”

“A deeper dive seems to reveal a different story. Wally paid his ‘estranged’ brother half a million dollars right before he kicked off his campaign. Did you know that?” Lara asked, proving that despite her ethereal sweetness, she could find the dirt. “Even more digging suggests that Ernest was on a lengthy trip to Europe when the mistress’s second child would have been conceived. That kid was only seven pounds when he was born, so there’s no way she had an eleven-month pregnancy or something crazy. That most likely makes Ernest a liar.”

Liz felt her whole body flush. Son of a bitch. “Wallace, too, it seems.”

Lara nodded. “It looks like he’s been paying Ernest to shoulder all the responsibility. Why else would he have paid another million and a half dollars since that first payment to a brother he’s not even close to? And get this, Ernest is shacking up with the woman now. Left his wife and everything. He and the mistress are living quite well.”

All on Wallace’s dime because they were likely covering up for the VP. His wife’s shoplifting addiction made more sense now, and was the least of Wallace’s problems. “Damn it.”

Sara eased down beside her and offered her a chicken wing. “Want one? Food makes everything better.”

Liz picked it up and wished the spicy chicken could make all their problems go away.

“Eat up,” Gus said, shaking off her pensiveness. “The men will sneak up here at some point and probably raid our buffet because none of them were smart enough to cater food. Now, Sara, let’s talk about Mad.”

The pregnant woman fell quiet.

Even though Gus meant well, Liz felt sorry for her. “I’ll get you some dessert.”

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“Thanks.”

Liz rose and fetched her a colorful selection of macaroons. Tonight, Sara had helped her to feel as if she belonged. Everyone had, in fact. Despite all their problems, Liz found herself smiling as she picked up another plate.

* * * *

Mad sat back in the tiny apartment that had somehow become more of a home to him than his elegant Manhattan mansion. Well, he no longer had the classy estate since it had burned down, but he’d never been as comfortable in that place as he was here.

Because of Sara.

The bunker accommodations were crowded now, since Freddy and all his friends had stuffed themselves into the small room. They’d collectively agreed that they couldn’t risk him walking around the White House and potentially being seen. Of course, they also thought their wives were safely ensconced at their homes or hotel rooms, rather than a couple of floors above them plotting their own schemes.

How was he the only one who understood these women?

Mad thought about pointing out that Sara wasn’t taking a walk or hanging out in the bedroom. But that would be tattling.

“So you trust this Russian mobster, Dusan?” Zack was dressed as casually as he ever did in a dress shirt and slacks, sans tie and suitcoat.

“About as far as I can throw him, but he has plenty of reasons for not wanting Krylov to grab more power.” Gabe relaxed against the back of the sofa between Connor and Dax.

His recent trip to Moscow was the reason for this meeting.

It was hard to believe that they used to get together simply because they were all friends. These days, they didn’t talk about sports or work or their hookups. Not anymore. Now, they talked about who was gunning for them.

All in all, Mad would rather talk about basketball. And he wasn’t even a fan.

“So we have to hope he’ll find something useful.” Roman paced the floor, something he’d been doing since he’d walked in a half hour earlier. “I hope you didn’t promise him anything we can’t deliver.”

“I didn’t promise you would deliver him anything at all,” Gabe replied. “I promised him a hearty discount on a private jet. I was explicit about the fact that Zack would owe him nothing. Like I said, he’s got his reasons for agreeing.”