Page 118 of Boardroom Ties
“You fucking oaf!” the senator slurs as he uses the wall like a crutch to haul himself to his feet. “What the fuck are you doing? Do you know who the hell I am?”
I’m too stunned to reply. Did I get this all wrong? Is DeMaris innocent? Have I lost my damn mind?
“Hey, you! Dumbass! I asked you a question! Do you know who I am?” the senator yells again, louder this time.
I don’t answer. I can’t. My brain is still trying to reconcile the picture I had two seconds ago—Cass has been abducted, DeMaris is the head of Vainakh, I am her last and only line of defense—with the picture in front of me now:
A sloshed and irate politician with a split eyebrow, and Cass standing behind me, horrified.
Behind her, through the open powder room door, I catch a glimpse of an unconscious man slumped against the marble vanity. His tux tie is loosened, his shirtfront splattered with what can only be red wine vomit, and his mouth is hanging open inthe deep, untroubled sleep of a man who has been thoroughly defeated by an open bar.
I don’t recognize him. He’s nobody. The plus-one of a plus-one. A fool who promised to be on his best behavior and then quietly broke that promise to himself somewhere around the third Tabitha Twist.
Just like that, a new picture becomes clear.
The drunk idiot must have stumbled up to Cass in the dark, grabbed her, and then ended up in the women’s powder room to be deposited like the empty booze bottle he essentially is. Cass had probably been trying to roll him onto his side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit when I burst in playing Liam Neeson.
I look at her again. She’s staring at the senator.
Then at me.
Then at the senator.
There’s a slow, terrible understanding, blooming in real time:I have just blown up the plan.
Catastrophically. Irreversibly. I just hurled a sitting United States Senator into a wall hard enough to leave blood.
And I did it because I was so certain—so fucking, marrow-deep, bone-stupid certain—that I was protecting her.
“Are youdeaf,boy?” DeMaris is yelling now, propping himself unsteadily upright against the wallpaper. A thin red trickle is making its way down past his ear and into the starched collar of his shirt. “Do you have any goddamn idea?—”
“Senator,” I say coolly. Even now, I sound calm, though I’m anything but that. “I apologize. I mistook you for someone else.”
“Youwhat?Who the fuck do you mistake for me? Who thefuck?—”
Footsteps approach. Multiple sets, rapid. From the ballroom comes a small woman in a black sheath dress with a clipboard wedged under one arm and an earpiece. A wedding planner, clearly.
Two men in dark suits flank her. These must be private security, clearly, hired up for the occasion. One of them has a hand resting on the radio at his hip; the other is already wielding a Taser in one hand and a nightstick in the other.
“Senator DeMaris!” the planner cries out. “I heard a commotion. Is everything?—”
“Thisanimalassaulted me!” DeMaris jabs a finger in my direction. “I want himgone!”
The security duo steps up. That Taser is primed and ready. “Sir,” rumbles one, “I need you to come with me.”
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” I say, keeping my hands loose at my sides and very, very visible. “I thought?—”
“Now, sir.”
I could put them down. Both of them, easily. I have the Glock in the small of my back and a suppressor in my inside breast pocket. The planner doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d be able to outrun me. I could be out of this building in under ninety seconds, no witnesses left alive.
But then what?
Cass will be left in the lurch. Any second now, more people will stumble in and add themselves to the list of loose ends I need to handle.
No, there’s no denying the truth: The plan, the third window, is dead. Firmly closed.
It’s best for everyone if I just leave.
