Summer Rain (Lightning Strikes Book 3) (7 page)

"I love sushi, and Sushi Q is my favorite take-out place."

"Happy to hear it. I have to say, the name almost put me off."

His smile sent butterflies dancing through her stomach. She really should have sent him away, but it was too late for that. However, it wasn't too late to give him her bottom line.

"Before we eat, I feel like I should be up-front with you," she said. "As you know, I'm a legislative assistant to Senator Dillon. I research and review legislation, some of which will never make it to committee, much less into law. I talk to lobbyists. I talk to constituents. What I don't do very often anymore is talk to the senator. I don’t handle his schedule, and I don't tell him who to call back."

"Look, I get it. You have a job to protect, but you have worked for him for a long time, and I suspect you have some relationship with him." Patrick paused. "Did he or someone in his office ask you not to talk to me?"

"You have a reputation for causing trouble. You know that. I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised to hear that politicians tend to stay away from people like you."

"I'm going to take that as a yes."

"Take it any way you want, but I can't help you."

"Okay."

His easy acceptance made her frown. "Really? That's it?"

"You made your case. And since you saved my life, I don't want to put you in a bad position with your boss."

"I appreciate that."

He held out a tray of sushi. "Help yourself."

"Thanks." She took a California roll and popped it in her mouth.

For the next few minutes, they ate in relatively friendly silence, but Dani couldn't help thinking that there was more coming. A man like Patrick didn't give up that easily.

They'd finished off about half the sushi when he sat back against the couch, grimacing as he adjusted his position.

"You're hurting," she said. "Can I get you anything?"

"No. It's not a big deal."

"A stab wound is not a big deal? You're lucky that knife didn't hit anything important."

He tipped his head. "True. But I think you were my luck, Dani. You came out of the storm like an avenging angel. I saw a knife headed straight for my heart and then you were there, swinging your handbag at the guy's head and spraying chemicals into his eyes. It was the most shocking and amazing thing I've ever seen."

"It was probably not the best idea I've ever had, but I had to do something."

"I'm very grateful to you."

"Do you have any idea why that man attacked you? Did he say anything to you?"

"Not one word. He didn't ask for anything. He didn't tell me to get out of the park. He just started hitting me."

"Maybe he was mentally ill or high or…"

"Or he wanted to hurt me," Patrick finished.

"Is it possible you were targeted? I read about you online, about your book," she said, meeting his gaze. "You've made a lot of enemies in the last year."

"I have, but since everything went public months ago, there's nothing to be gained by trying to warn me off now. Everything I know I've already said."

"Maybe it wasn't a warning but a punishment. It could have been revenge."

"It could have been, but most of the players in the counterfeit drug cases were in states other than Texas. I don't think the book is connected to what happened in the park."

"Why were you there alone? Why didn't you leave with everyone else?"

"I wanted some time to myself. It's been a chaotic and busy few weeks. My focus was on the ceremony and getting the final construction and landscaping details done, making sure the press would cover the event and that people would show up for it." He blew out a breath. "I just wanted a second to think about my mom and what she would have liked about the park and the day."

"What was your mother like?" she asked curiously. "I don't mean as a congresswoman—I heard all that yesterday—but as a mom."

"It's not easy to separate the two in my mind. She worked in politics my entire life. Before she got to Congress, she was on the city council and the planning commission. Her community work was extremely important to her. But she still managed to show up for the big events in my life, and my dad picked up the slack when it came to helping with homework and that kind of thing."

"Did you feel close to her or were you tighter with your dad?"

He shrugged. "I knew she loved me, but it always felt like she had a bigger purpose in life. She was making a difference in the world. That was made clear to me early on."

She thought she heard a hint of pain in his voice.

"But I was always proud of her," he added. "My father adored her. He'd never let anyone say one bad thing about her. He was her protector."

"As he should be," Dani said, thinking that her parents' relationship had not been nearly that devoted. She turned her thoughts back to Patrick. "It appears that you're following in your mother's footsteps. You might not be in office, but your investigation on the counterfeit drug industry certainly made a huge impact."

"I think she'd be proud of what I've accomplished so far, but I'm not done yet."

"What do you think the senator can tell you?" she asked, knowing that she shouldn't even be broaching the subject with him, but she couldn't help herself.

"I won't know until we talk."

"I'm sure the crash was investigated in every possible way by numerous law enforcement and aviation agencies."

"It was, but it's possible something was missed or covered up. They didn't have a lot of data to go on. There was no black box, because it was a smaller, private jet. There was no distress call. The plane just went down suddenly and abruptly, shattering into a million pieces on impact. The investigation concluded that the crash was probably the result of some type of mechanical failure, aided by the stormy conditions, and possible pilot error. The pilot was a last-minute substitute, by the way, after the assigned pilot came down with food poisoning."

She sat up a little straighter at that piece of information, her curious, sharp mind intrigued by that fact. "I didn't know that."

"He was interviewed multiple times by the FBI. His story checked out. Or at least his wife testified to the fact that he'd been in the bathroom all night."

"But?" she asked, seeing the gleam in his eyes.

"Just because his illness was real doesn't mean it occurred in an organic way."

"Are you suggesting that someone poisoned his food?"

"It's possible."

"Anything is possible, but what's probable?"

"I need to know more before I can answer that question. And I would think you, of all people, would understand my motivation. I did a little research on you, too, Dani. Your father's plane also went down in a storm, no black box, no distress call."

"And it was never found, not one small piece of it," she said. "Of course I wanted answers, just like you, but there aren't any. It was an accident. That's what I believe anyway."

"What about the rest of your family?"

"My mother feels the way I do. My brother and sister are spinning like crazy tops, chasing the same kind of answers you are."

"Have they gotten anywhere?"

She hesitated and then decided she didn't need to share the events of the last six months with Patrick. She needed him to give up and go home, and telling him her siblings were finally unraveling a ten-year-old mystery would not help that cause. "No," she said belatedly. "Not really."

His gaze searched her face, and she found herself really wanting to look away, but she couldn't seem to break the connection between them.

"You're not a very good liar, Dani."

She really wasn't. "Look, I'm sorry for your loss, for your unanswered questions, for your frustration at not being able to find anyone to talk to you."

"I don't want you to be sorry; I want you to help me."

"I can't help you. And it's not just because I'd be risking my job to go against the senator's chief of staff, but also because I think you'd be better off looking ahead instead of backwards. You've got a great life going. Why don't you just live it? Isn't that what your mom would want?"

"Everyone keeps saying that's what my mother would want, but to be honest, I'm not so sure. She was always digging for truth. I believe that she'd want me to bring justice if justice needed to be brought. She'd want press coverage and a movie made out of her life. She'd want people to talk about her legacy. She'd want to be remembered. She always talked about wanting to be remembered."

His passionate words told her that they were getting to the real heart of his desire. "That's what this is about," she murmured.

"What do you mean?" he asked warily.

"You're starting to forget her. It happens. Suddenly, her voice isn't as clear, and you can't quite remember her expressions. Some things stick but others fade away. You thought you'd always remember everything in vivid, colorful detail, but you don't, and then you feel guilty."

He drew in a rough breath at her words, his eyes blazing with anger and pain. "You're referring to yourself, not to me."

"Am I?"

He got up and walked toward her window, staring out at the view for a long moment. "You can see the top of the White House from here," he said, surprising her with the abrupt change in subject.

"Just the roof—and barely."

"My mom wanted to be in the White House. She wanted to be the first female president. She would tease my dad about being the first husband and me being the first son." A pause followed his words. "She might have made it." He turned around and then returned to the couch. "Maybe you're partly right. When we were planning for the park opening, I couldn't remember when she'd first started talking about a park in that neighborhood. Her voice had gotten hazy in my head."

"I do know that feeling," she admitted. "My siblings think I'm cold-hearted because I don't want to chase the past, but it's also because it just hurts too much. I think you're in pain, too, but I don't believe you're going to find solace from that pain by going down the path you're on."

"That's possible, but it's not just that she's starting to fade in my mind, Dani. There's more."

"What?"

"When we were planning the park opening, I contacted Senator Stuart's family, and I spoke to his daughter Rebecca. I wanted to know if we could include her or her mother in the ceremony and told her that we would certainly like to honor the senator as well as my mother." His lips drew into a hard line. "Rebecca told me that the last thing she would want to be involved in was an event to celebrate my mother. She told me that my mother was having an affair with her father and that she was glad that they were both dead."

"What?" she asked in amazement. "Had you ever heard that before?"

"Never. I told her she was crazy. There was no evidence they were having an affair. But she said they'd had numerous late-night meetings in the days before the crash, that my mother insisted he make the trip back to Texas with her despite the fact that it was her mother's birthday. She said she overheard her dad talking to my mom on the phone about keeping everything a secret and no one could know." He paused. "The longer she talked, the more truth her story seemed to hold. After she hung up on me, I couldn't stop thinking about what she'd said. That's when I started wondering if I'd missed something. Maybe she had been having an affair."

"Did you ask your father?"

"No, of course not. I wouldn't go to him with a rumor like that. It would crush him. I've been trying to get confirmation or denial from other parties, but I'm not having much luck. My mother's chief of staff died a year after my mom, and I don't think my mother would have confided in anyone else on her staff. Senator Stuart's widow is traveling in Europe, which is why I could only reach Rebecca and not her. Stuart's former chief of staff, Craig Haller, who now works for another senator, is not returning my calls. Congressman Parker spoke to me briefly at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, but said he'd only met my mother once and didn't have any information about the crash. And, as you know, I haven't been able to speak to your boss, either. It's been my experience that the greater number of people avoiding me—the closer I am to some hidden truth."

"Or it's just that you're trying to get truth out of people who work in politics, and they're trained to spin and avoid and then spin again."

"Nice group you work with," he said dryly.

"I know the realities. Politics is a game, and you have to know how to play it."

"Which is why I need you, Dani."

Her nerves tingled at his words. She liked that he needed her but not what he needed her for. "I don't think so. You can open Pandora's box all by yourself. It's not a two-person job. As far as this whole thing is concerned, I'm Switzerland."

"I'm not asking you to take sides."

"I think you are." She got to her feet. "We should call it a night. I'm sure you're tired, and I know I am."

He gazed back at her, an emotion in his eyes she couldn't quite read. "Okay," he said finally as he slowly stood up. "But I'm not going to say good-bye, Dani."

Her pulse quickened at his words. "You should say good-bye and you should go back to Texas."

"I probably should, but I don't think you and I are done. I got a room at a hotel a couple of blocks from here—the Parkside Inn."

She couldn't believe he was setting up camp so close to her. "You're wasting your time, Patrick. You can pound all you want on some doors, but they're never going to open."

"I don't quit before I've tried."

"What about the attack last night? If you don't think it's connected to your last case, is it possible it's connected to the questions you're asking now? Who else have you spoken to about all this?"

"Not too many people. My cousin Marcus is the only one in the family I've talked to. I asked him not to share the information with his mother, who is my mom's sister. She would also be devastated to know there are rumors about my mother's fidelity."

"What about outside the family?"

"Congressman Parker, Rebecca Stuart." He paused, thinking for a moment. "I spoke to Beverly Larson. Her husband Ned was Stuart's staffer who died in the crash. She's actually remarried now to a congressman from Louisiana. She said she knew next to nothing about the senator, that Ned had been very diligent about maintaining the privacy of his boss, but as far as she knows, nothing was going on and there's no mystery about the accident."