LITMIR.BIZ

       Three

      Everything, it seemed, happened at once. One moment, Christine was just doing her job at the bank and trying not to think about the worst-case scenarios or Daniel Lee and his seemingly sincere offer of help. Or the way he filled out a suit.

      Suddenly, the alerts she had set up on web searches started piling up in her inbox. Clarence Murray had declared his candidacy for the open US Senate seat. Her phone started to ring, as if people had just been waiting for the official announcement. She was trying to read the article about her father and trying to answer the phone in her business-professional voice and saying no comment over and over again when it happened.

      Will Murray’s Granddaughter Cost Him This Election, Too?

      And there it was—the photo of her with Marie on her hip, alongside her Honda Civic. It wasn’t a good photo—clearly, it had been taken from some distance. The image was so grainy it could have been almost anyone.

      But it was her daughter. They knew where she was and they knew how to take pictures of her daughter and suddenly, Christine couldn’t bear it.

      With hands shaking, she pulled the nondescript business card out from underneath her office phone. She had wanted to throw Daniel Lee’s card away—but she’d been unable to do it. Because what he’d said had felt true, somehow.

      Would he actually help her? Or was he working an angle that she hadn’t found yet?

      Her phone rang again and this time, she recognized the voice on the other end. Brian White—the devil she didn’t want to know. “Ms. Murray,” he said, as if they were the oldest of friends. “I’m checking back in with you. As you may have heard, your father has officially declared his candidacy and I—”

      She hung up the phone. She didn’t want to hear his fake offers of help and she especially did not want to hear his thinly veiled threats.

      She did the only thing she could—she grabbed her cell phone and hurried to the ladies’ room. Daniel Lee’s card was a plain white rectangle of paper with two lines of text set directly in the middle—his name and a telephone number. She was shaking so violently that she misdialed the number twice before she finally got it right and even then, she sat for a moment on the stool in the farthest stall and wondered if she wasn’t about to make the biggest mistake of her life.

      But then she thought about the headline, the one implying that a fourteen-month-old baby had the power to decide elections. The photos would only get better and the headlines would only get worse.

      She hit the button and held the phone to her ear. “This is Daniel.”

      “Um, hello. You gave me your card—”

      “Christine? Are you all right?”

      She forced herself to take a deep breath and tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. No, she was not all right. Not even close. “Hi. Um, I need to know if what you said when you talked to me last week still applies. The offer about, um, helping me and my daughter?”

      “You saw the articles?”

      Her vision began to swim and she couldn’t tell if she was about to pass out or if she was just crying again. “There’s more than one?”

      There was a long pause. “That’s not important right now. What is important is that you make sure you and your daughter are safe and that we can get together and formulate a plan.”

      It sounded good. Someone was concerned with their safety. Someone had a plan and the means of enacting it. If life were perfect, this would be the answer to her prayers.

      Life had never been perfect. “How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you didn’t write those articles or take those pictures? How do I know you’re not setting me up?”

      “You don’t.”

      Well, if that didn’t just beat all. She let out a frustrated laugh. “You’re not inspiring confidence right now.”

      “I’m being honest. You and I both know that if I told you I had nothing to do with those articles and promised you that you could trust me, it would only make you doubt me even more.”

      Darn it, he was right. But the heck of it was, she didn’t have much of a choice right now. Her options were few and far between and there was no guarantee that when she went to pick up Marie after work today there wouldn’t be a pack of people with cameras waiting for them. “Fine. But I don’t have to like it.”

      “If you liked it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Instead, you’d be holding an impromptu press conference in the bank’s parking lot. We need to meet, Christine.”

      Her stomach turned. She leaned forward, putting her head between her knees. “I don’t want you in my home. Don’t take it personally.”

      “I don’t. Besides, I’m not going to your apartment. One of the worst things that could happen would be for a strange man to be photographed entering and leaving your apartment. Similarly, you can’t come to my place. If you’re followed—and I think it’s safe to assume you will be—that’s another set of headlines that neither of us wants.”

      Okay, so he was being honest. “You want to meet in public?” Because that also seemed like a bad idea.

      “And risk more media coverage? Out of the question.”

      She honestly didn’t know if this conversation was making her feel better or worse. “So if we can’t meet in private and we can’t meet in public, how the heck are we supposed to meet?”

      “You attend the Red Rock church, correct?”

      She squeezed her eyes shut. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you know that.”

      Red Rock was her attempt to bridge the evangelical teachings of her childhood with the faith that was in her heart. She needed a spiritual home and a nondenominational megachurch was a good place to disappear.

      Plus, they had a nice child care center. Going to Sunday services was as close as she got to a weekly break.

      “Which service do you normally attend—the nine a.m. or the ten forty-five?”

      “The later one.” This seemed like a bad idea. Meeting with a—well, she didn’t really know what to call Daniel Lee. He certainly wasn’t a friend. Maybe a spy? Finally, she decided on associate. Meeting an associate like Daniel Lee in church seemed colossally wrong.

      But sometimes, there simply was no right option.

      “Which side of the chapel do you sit on?”

      “I’m surprised you don’t know,” she snapped. Immediately, she added, “Sorry. I’m under a lot of stress right now.”

      “There’s no need to apologize. If I know which side you sit on, it’ll make it easier to find you. I don’t want it to look like you’re looking for me. I would like you to think if there is a classroom or a small alcove—an out-of-the-way place where we could chat without being conspicuous about it. Can you do that?”

      “There will be people around. Over two thousand people go to this church.”

      “We’re not hiding. We’re merely being inconspicuous.”

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