Private Politics (The Easy Part) (3 page)

“So you’re going to play revolving roommates, then?” Millie asked. “Not so much lately, but...” She trailed off.

At this it was Alyse’s turn to blush. Liam had to remind himself to keep a smile plastered to his face. He’d never heard Alyse mention a guy romantically. Never heard Millie mention one, or many as it were, before. He wasn’t surprised exactly, but it stung.

“You don’t want to bring up love lives, Frank.” Alyse had recovered and set about giving her erstwhile roommate crap. “I might not be a serial monogamist—”

“Hey,” Parker said, “there’s no more serial about it.”

“No?” Millie asked.

“No. You’re off the market. Permanently.”

At this, Millie kissed him. It was chaste enough as these things went, just enough heat to let everyone in room know she agreed with Parker. Liam glanced away when his gaze caught Alyse’s and held.

She looked unsettled. Not unhappy, not jealous, just not normal. He wanted to push, to figure out how she felt, how long it had been since she had been kissed and whether she might consider him for one of the spots on her register, but he knew that he couldn’t and knew that the answers didn’t matter because she’d never want to.

Seemingly confused about how to proceed, she asked after an awkward moment, “How’s the, uh, blogging?”

Since they’d met, she had regularly asked some version of this question. Maybe she was genuinely interested, maybe she couldn’t believe he made money running a website. Hard to say.

“It’s great.”

He wished rather than believed that was true. Poindexter had started as a passion project, but given the state of the economy, and all the competition in digital publishing, he felt the sting of responsibility toward the people he employed. At the moment, he’d give anything for a big break. Some huge story they could own that would break them out the second tier of political blogs they’d been locked in for so long.

Rather than getting into all of that, he said, “We’re running a bracket right now to determine the best American political scandal of all time.”

The project was frivolous but might drive lots of traffic to the blog. He disliked how much that desire lay at the heart of his thoughts of late, but it was the reality of his field.

Her brow furrowed. “How would you even figure that out?”

“We came up with nominees in eight categories.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Policy blunders, election shenanigans, lying, bribery, criminality, generalized corruption, cronyism/nepotism and, uh, sex. Of course.” He really couldn’t say the word around her without turning into himself at fourteen confronted with a newly post-adolescent Jenny Miller. An apt comparison since this crush had as much of future as that one had.

“But how do you decide the winner of the matchups? It’s not like Watergate and Iran-Contra can meet on the field of battle.” She laughed at him now, but she looked so good doing it he didn’t care.

“The readers will vote, but we’re setting each matchup up with essays by historians, political analysts and bloggers. It’s been a logistical nightmare. Locating all those experts, getting people on standby for the later rounds...” He trailed off and offered a grin by way of apology. He didn’t want to bore her; he worried he was edging close to the limits of her politeness.

“Nixon and Clinton must have a lock on the final.”

Certainly that was what the majority of Poindexter’s commenters thought. “The dark horse is really ABSCAM. It’s got everything: bribery, an awesome law enforcement sting operation, an international angle, political asylum. It doesn’t involve the executive branch, so it lacks panache, but it’ll go further than people think. Its chances were improved by a first-round upset today.”

“Oh?”

“Tea Pot Dome went down.”

“Who beat them?” Parker reengaged in the conversation.

“FDR’s court packing.”

“That’s not an upset.” Millie wagged a finger at him. “That’s bad bracketing.”

“Never bet against FDR in an election—who doesn’t know that?” Alyse asked.

He could tell she wasn’t fully present for the rest of the night. Her distance might be because her roommate was abandoning her, whatever was going on at YWR, or something else altogether, but she was withdrawn and hurting in subtle, diffuse ways. Most distressing, only he seemed to pick up on it.

An hour later, when Millie yawned twice in a row, Liam rose. “That’s my cue.”

“Night, man,” Parker said from the couch.

As she opened the door for him, Alyse said, “I—I’m really glad you came.”

He was glad he was sliding into his coat so she couldn’t see his smile. He soaked up any and all attention from her.

“No problem.” He cleared the breathless adoration from his face, then turned back toward her.

“I mean, where would I have been without you?” She ran one hand over his forearm, squeezed him and smiled.

Any attention except that. The warmth in his stomach dissipated with each flutter of her eyelashes. He’d seen her glad-handle donors with that precise move. How aware was she of her own act? Was each movement calculated? He hated being one of those guys, indistinguishable from the crowd. He hated the act—and himself—even more when he fell for it anyway.

“Goodnight!” he said. Okay, snapped. His voice was sharper and louder than he’d intended, but still, he was pissed and he didn’t really care if she knew it.

She looked taken aback, but he shot down the hallway before he could do something stupid like apologize. After this mess was finished, he was done with her. She never looked out for anyone but herself, and that lesson was the only thing she had to teach him.

Chapter Three

Alyse practiced her innocent face in the bathroom mirror for the third time. She was going to need flesh memory on her side to get through the next ten minutes. She shook her head as if it were an Etch A Sketch and practiced once more. She smiled in her normal way—at least she thought it was her normal way; did she usually show that much tooth?—then allowed the corners of her mouth to fall a touch, her brows to pull together and her jaw to set in a “no, I’m not up to anything” look. Yes, that was good.

With another shake, she fluffed her hair and straightened her suit. In the harsh overhead lighting of YWR’s bathroom, she had a Cro-Magnon forehead, but that was only shadows she hoped. Her skin was sallow, as if she were recovering from mono. Maybe the after-dinner mint hue would work in her favor? She should have asked Liam’s opinion. This whole thing had been his idea.

Yesterday had been a mess. She’d seen those documents and gotten spooked. But the punched-in-the-stomach feeling she’d walked around with for a few hours had been a complete overreaction.

Millie, Parker and even Liam had made her feel more confident. They would figure this out—the explanation was probably totally obvious and benign—and once they did, they’d all laugh. As long as she didn’t have to go to prison and didn’t have her professional reputation ruined. This was the rare instance when everyone thinking she was shallow helped.

No, all she had to do was to enact their plan. Their brilliant, brilliant plan.

Ask Geri.

Diabolically clever, they were. It had taken four whole college graduates to come up with it. But really, where else could they start?

One of the guys who worked for Liam—she hadn’t actually realized that people worked for him, that a blog could generate enough income for multiple people, that he was really a small business owner—was investigating the companies and websites she’d found the day before. All off the record, of course, not as something they would ever write about. And she was going to ask her boss.

There was no computer jujitsu involved, but she thought she’d gotten the harder job. What if Geri were in on it, whatever
it
was?

For an awful moment yesterday, Alyse had suspected that was the case. But the more she’d thought about it in bed that night, the sillier her distrust had seemed. Geri cared deeply about the work YWR did; she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize their services. Besides, where would she have gotten the money in the first place?

That really was the key: where had the money come from? Because whoever Harding Investment Group and R. Cross LLC were, they certainly didn’t have this kind of cash lying around. So where did it come from and why was it being funneled into YWR?

There wasn’t any explanation that made sense. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but whomever it belonged to, why didn’t they just hire lobbyists directly?

Yup, she had no better idea today than she had yesterday, which meant she’d done enough stalling. Life’s problems were simply never solved in bathrooms.

She opened the door and shot quick glances in both directions before exiting into the hallway.
Stupid
,
stupid.
You aren’t in a John le Carré novel
. With a deep breath, she breezed through the office.
Tried
to breeze across the office. Two steps in, her left ankle buckled and almost sent her crashing into Chris Hannigan’s thankfully unoccupied desk. What the hell? She hadn’t had trouble walking in heels since the age of twelve when she’d put herself through a training program. This thing—this really silly, really terrifying thing—was doing a number on her.

Pulling herself up, she took off again, successfully this time, and a few steps later knocked on Geri’s door. As they were a fairly small operation, hers was the only private office. Alyse had dreams about having a door. She would know she’d arrived when that happened.

“Come in.”

She pushed into the space and was faced with a dilemma in the form of an empty chair. She didn’t usually sit when she went to talk to Geri, but maybe it would be better this time if she did. She’d have fewer things to think about if she were sitting. Fewer things might go wrong.

She must have stalled for longer than usual as Geri prompted, “Yes?”

“Uh...how are you?” She’d delivered the question standing up. Now she couldn’t sit; it would seem weird.

“Fine. You?” Geri had evidently decided this conversation wasn’t important. She’d rotated back to her computer, where several windows were open. Reports overlapped all over her desk, a mosaic of charts and images. If Liam could see this now, she knew that he’d agree with her. Geri couldn’t be involved in what was going on. She worked hard. She cared. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt YWR or its work. There was absolutely no reason to be nervous.

Feeling confident, Alyse skipped the pleasantries. “I was working on gathering materials for the audit yesterday.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I, well, there are some weird receipt letters.”

At this, her boss’s head snapped over and she angled her chair toward Alyse. Behind chunky, red-framed glasses, her eyes tightened. They didn’t narrow precisely, but her crow’s-feet got deeper.

“Weird in what way?” She sounded sharp. She should, of course. A senior staffer was bringing something to her attention. It would be crazy not to be concerned.

“The donations are big. Not
big
big, but good-sized. Mid-five figures. But...” It was difficult to know how to word it. Almost twenty-four hours later, she was working off a feeling as much as anything else. She finished, rather foolishly, “the corporations aren’t ones whose names I know.”

Geri laughed but her body didn’t participate. Her hands stayed roped together on her desk and her shoulders didn’t shake with amusement. “You don’t know the names of every corporation in America. Even your daddy’s not
that
well connected.”

Everyone at the office teased her about her family. Not that they’d ever met them or knew anything about how she’d grown up. Geri wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t exactly correct.

“Right. I wasn’t assuming I did. I did some searches.”

“What did you find?” The sharpness had honed to a point.
Tread with caution
, it said.

Almost without thinking, Alyse broke out the innocent face she’d been practicing. “Oh, you know, nothing too weird. Just some amateur-looking websites.” Geri had stilled now. She hadn’t blinked in at least five seconds. That couldn’t be healthy.

Alyse forced out an airy laugh, waved her hand in the air and then stopped abruptly. The gesture felt so awkward. Did she normally do things like that with her hands? She dropped the hand to her side, but it felt heavy and...obvious. How the hell did she hold her arms normally?

Geri still stared at her so Alyse filled the silence. “It’s just weird, don’t you think, that our corporate giving has increased so much?”

Okay,
so
not the right thing to say. That was going to increase, not release, the tension between them. There was no taking it back now, however. Several beats of silence ticked by during which Alyse grew more self-conscious. She really should have sat down; maybe then she would have known what to do with her body.

At last, Geri exhaled. With a detached smile, her boss said, “I’m certain it’s because of your great fundraisers.”

Everyone was always saying things like that and it was true: her fundraisers were great. But whenever Geri joined in, it seemed insincere—the verbal equivalent of a pinch on the cheek or a pat on the hand. Sweet condescension.

“Thanks. I’m sure you’re right.” The words stung her mouth as she accepted the stupid non-compliment. Accepted all the low judgments Geri had of her. She felt dirty. Like she’d walked home in late August and needed a second shower. What she needed now was an exit strategy.

“Look, I really stopped in because I’m going to get a coffee. Do you want something?”

“No, thanks.”

As Alyse turned to go, Geri said to her back, “I wouldn’t worry too much about the receipt letters, honey. Just make sure the tablecloths don’t clash at the event next month.”

Okay, so once,
once
she’d made a big deal about renting linens for an event because everyone knew that the basic runners at the Westin didn’t fall all the way to the floor. Three years later, no one would let it go. Because heaven forbid they should put together a professional event when they were asking people for their money.

No, “whimsical” would be an adjective people would apply to her. Not serious. Not smart. Not insightful. Which was why she was the only person who’d noticed that someone was laundering money through YWR’s books.

Maybe people should start coming to her for non-clothing-related emergencies. She might have spent the better part of a decade styling herself as a keeper of frivolous knowledge, but did that mean she’d missed her chance to develop any more tools for dealing with the world? Was sweet and shallow party girl really her only way of being in the world?

Her heels clicked out a tattoo of aggravation on the floor as she flew over to her desk and grabbed her purse and coat. No matter—the plan had worked. She’d learned that Geri was nervous but also that she didn’t think she had any reason to worry. Except Alyse did, because everyone thought she was an idiot.

She jogged down the stairs, pushing outside a few flights later. They were in that weird season between winter and spring when the sun never came out on the East Coast. The sky was unrelentingly stony for months at time, so of course she would have a personal crisis now: pathetic fallacy her ass. She dug out her phone and searched for Liam’s number.

When he answered on the second ring she asked, “Where are you?”

She’d been trying to figure out if he was free to talk, but it turned out he was in a coffee shop three blocks from her office. Rather than discussing things over the phone, she offered to join him.

A few minutes later, she located Liam. He had tossed himself into a deep purple armchair and his hands flew over the keyboard of the laptop balanced on his knees. It should have looked precarious, but it didn’t. He had naturalness with technology that couldn’t be learned, as if it were a part of him. She slid into the chair adjacent to his.

She probably wouldn’t have noticed him if she’d stopped in here for a coffee. Liam was almost the definition of nondescript. He had a round face, brown hair with lots of gold mixed in and gentle features. He looked soft and relaxed, as always. For whatever reason, he’d actually bothered to button his shirt all the way up for once, though it wasn’t ironed. No tie. She doubted he owned one.

He was utterly absorbed in whatever he was doing, not the least bit aware of the noise and movement all around him. Of her sitting next to him. Of the shuffling, nervous energy burning out of his feet, the only anxious parts of him.

She couldn’t have worked in a place like this. As it was, she liked the office best when no one was going to bother her. She would have been too self-conscious out in public to abandon herself to work with such commitment, not that she ever fell into the state Liam was in now.

Whatever he was doing, it must have been pretty interesting. His eyes flicked back and forth and his fingers had hardly stopped typing since she’d arrived. He’d always seemed nice, but she’d never realized he could also be intense.

She could take a break—evidently Geri didn’t think she did much anyway—but she didn’t have all day. She cleared her throat.

Nope, nothing. She did it again, louder. Still no response.

She leaned toward him to touch his arm when he looked up. At this admittedly intimate distance, his eyes were much more attractive than she’d noticed before. The chocolate brown was sprinkled with metallic facets and darker undertones. They were eyes you could fall into. His long lashes would have been better suited to a woman as they brushed his cheek when he blinked. Which he did, several times in rapid succession, because their noses were five inches apart and she was staring. Like an idiot.

Each blink seemed to clear the thick haze of thoughts until he seemed to see her, really see her, sitting next to him.

Startled, he managed a hesitant “Hi.” She didn’t know how he had meant to say it, but it came out husky, like he hadn’t used his voice in a while. Like he’d sound first thing in the morning.

They both gave themselves a little shake, him to get out of work-mode and her to dispel the weird and discordant bedroom-related thought. To cover her embarrassment, she laughed and said, “I didn’t know you worked down here.”

“I don’t usually. I was at a lunch seminar at Brookings.” He nodded toward Massachusetts Avenue a few blocks away. From their acquaintance, she knew he spent a lot of time at education events like those in addition to overseeing the staff of and writing for his political blog, Poindexter, which he’d started in college.

“Playing catch-up?”

“Yeah. News stops for no man. So what did you need to talk about?”

“Well, I enacted The Plan.” She raised a brow for dramatic emphasis.

Liam didn’t laugh as she’d expected him to; in fact, he seemed cold and distracted. Which he probably was, but still, he had offered to help her last night. Not five minutes ago he’d told her to come meet him. Why was he being a jerk?

She matched his tone. “She seemed concerned when I told her about my suspicions. She downplayed them. She all but said, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.’”

“You didn’t tell her the names of the corporations we’re looking into? You didn’t quote her a number about how many donations seemed suspicious?”

She pulled herself up straight, aware for the first time that she’d been leaning against the arm of the chair nearest him. “No, because I’m not stupid.” At this, his expression softened, but she ignored it. It was too late for nice. They were playing this businesslike and she could do businesslike.

She went on. “I know that it’s not hard evidence, but she seemed nervous I was asking about the receipt letters and she encouraged me to leave it alone. Doesn’t that mean something?”

He nodded. “I’ve got some stuff too. All the ones Doug has been able to find so far were incorporated around the same time. Also, they all used the same lawyer.”