Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [85]
The POTUS shook his head. “Can’t dispute that.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “I am concerned about Gunn.”
“He’s the best in the private security business, Arlen. The Pentagon uses him all the time.”
“In Iraq,” Crawford pointed out. “Gunn is the kind of guy who thinks the whole world is Iraq and acts accordingly.”
“I can’t get any clarity on what happened at my house,” Carson said. “Gunn claims that Alli became increasingly agitated and then attacked one of his men when he went into the study to check up on her.”
“She looks like she’s sixteen years old, for the love of Mike!”
Carson nodded. “Her physical expertise was a surprise, I must admit.”
“But not her emotional state. Hank, it must have occurred to you that Gunn might be right, that after her incarceration and brainwashing that she … that she’ll never be the same.”
Carson looked like he’d bitten into a rancid peanut. “I don’t want to hear that.”
“Still, Gunn might be right about what happened.”
“And if he’s not?”
The president turned toward his companion and leaned in. “Am I hearing you right?” When Carson made no reply, he said, “Jesus, Hank, you’re as much of a cowboy as Gunn is. Forget him. Keep the plan in sight, would you? Forget about personal vendettas and concentrate. We’re on schedule. I did my part. I sailed your takeover of Middle Bay Bancorp through the SEC and antitrust briar patch without a hitch. Now focus on the integration. Without Middle Bay we’re dead in the water.”
Carson kept his mouth shut. He despised being spoken to like that by anyone, including the president of the United States. Carson was from Texas, he was a self-made man, and now, with immense wealth and power, he considered himself a force of nature, an island-state unto himself. Not for him the laws of the common man—he was beyond all that.
“Don’t worry about Middle Bay,” he said, when he’d regained control over his emotions. “I’ve hired the best forensic accountants in the business. That work is getting done. But, understand, it’s extremely delicate in nature. It can’t be rushed.”
“Agreed.” The president sighed and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Hank, I sometimes worry about you.”
Carson forced a smile. “I’m fine, Arlen. Just a little unnerved by my niece’s recent activity.”
Crawford nodded judicially. “I understand.” He loved playing the father figure. “Completely.” His hand squeezed his friend’s shoulder.
You understand nothing, Carson thought as he took his leave of the president and the Rose Garden. It was Caroline, pure and simple—if anything in life could be deemed pure or simple. This difficult-to-control rage—the urge to personal vendetta—hadn’t always been with him. It had manifested itself directly after Caroline’s disappearance. Sometimes he felt possessed by the rage, as if he’d turned into some mysterious person with whom he had only a passing acquaintance. At those times, he went down to the soundproof basement of his town house and spent an hour with his handguns—a Glock .38, a Mauser 9mm, and a .357 Magnum—squeezing off round after round, blowing holes in the center of the target. The growing stench of cordite helped, but not as much as the shooting, which cooled the boiling of his blood, but not his need to know.
If he squeezed his eyes shut he could see Caro, as if she were the subject of a photo from some lost time he’d found in a dusty trunk in his attic. Over the years, she had ceased to be a real person. Rather, she had become an icon, a symbol of his rage and frustration, because in this one instance all his power and all his money had availed him nothing. She was as lost to him as if he were a beggar on the street who had turned his back to scrounge a bite to eat, only to find his daughter had walked off or been taken from him.
In the dead of night, when he screamed in his sleep, it was because in his dream he knew that she had simply walked away, evidence of her rejection of him, a possibility he could neither condone nor tolerate. So, a man drowning in his own guilt, he clung to the theory that she had been taken,