The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [66]
In my pocket, my phone begins to vibrate. I pull it out and spot Lisbeth’s name on the caller ID. Good-bye rock, hello hard place. “It’s my mother,” I tell O’Shea. “I should go. She probably heard about Nico on the news.”
“Be careful what you say,” Micah calls out.
No doubt about that. Still, it’s a simple choice. Going with the FBI means they’ll ram me at Manning. But before I put the knife in Caesar’s back, I need to make sure I have the right target. At least with Lisbeth, I’ll buy that time to figure out what’s really going on.
“Think about it, Wes. You’re not alone,” O’Shea calls back as I duck out of the closet. Back in the hallway, I wait until the third ring just to make sure I’m out of earshot.
“Wes here,” I answer.
“Where are you?” Lisbeth asks. “You okay? Did they tell you Nico—?”
“Just listen,” I interrupt. “What you said earlier about finding stuff out for us . . . were you serious?”
There’s a slight pause on the other line. “More serious than a Pulitzer.”
“You sure? I mean, if you put yourself in this— You sure you’re ready to put yourself in this?”
Now the silence lasts even longer. This isn’t some fifty-word favor about the First Lady’s new dress. However they did this—Boyle, Manning, the Secret Service—you don’t pull this off without help from people at the highest levels of government and law enforcement. That’s the fight she’s picking. Even worse, when the word gets out, they’ll be using all that power to make us look like lunatics who saw a ghost. And the worm in the apple is, with Boyle alive, Nico has the best reason of all to come back here and finish his original job.
At the end of the hallway, I ram my hip into the metal latch of the door, which opens to the empty lobby of the theater. A rumble of laughter echoes from the auditorium. The Secret Service may’ve swarmed the back rooms, but from the sound of it, the President’s still killing onstage. On my right, a woman with white hair sells a four-dollar bottle of water to a man in a pin-striped suit. A set of two other Secret Service agents rushes through the lobby on a standard sweep. But what catches my eye is the slightly overweight redhead standing outside the theater, just beyond the tall plate-glass doors. Her back’s to me, and as she paces slightly in the cottony moonlight and presses her phone to her ear, Lisbeth has no idea I’m there.
“This is why I became a reporter, Wes,” she says through the phone, her voice strong as ever. “I’ve waited my whole life for this.”
“And that’s a nice speech,” I tell her, still watching from behind. “But you do know who you’re messing with, right?”
She stops pacing and takes a seat on the edge of one of the half dozen concrete planters that serve as a barrier against any sort of vehicular attack on the Kravis Center. When Manning moved to town, they went up all over. But as Lisbeth scootches back, her body practically sags into it. She can barely keep her head up as her chin sinks down, kissing her neck. Her right hand still holds the phone, but her left slithers like a snake around her own waist, cradling herself. The concrete planters are built to withstand an impact from an almost five-thousand-pound pickup truck traveling over forty-five miles per hour. But that doesn’t mean they offer any protection against the sickening recognition of your own self-doubt.
Lisbeth said she’d been waiting her whole life for this. I believe her. But as she looks out at the crush of Secret Service black sedans, their flashing red lights spraying crimson shadow puppets across the facade of the building, it’s clear she’s wondering if she has what it takes to make it happen. She sinks slightly as her arms cradle her waist even tighter. There’s nothing more depressing than when aspirations get guillotined by limitations.
Standing alone in the lobby, I don’t say a word. Eight years ago,