Long May She Reign (47 page)

Which was probably more honesty than either she or Preston could handle this morning.

“It might have kept me alive,” she said.

He looked up.

She had never quite thought of it this way, but— “Maybe I projected you onto him,” she said, “as a way to make myself feel brave enough to be able to have conversations, and treat him like a normal person. And because of that, maybe he ended up seeing me as a human being, too, and killing me became a less appealing option.”

“Or, you might just have been brave,” Preston said very quietly.

Meg shook her head. “I was terrified.” To the point of tears, a time or two, which had been mortifying. “Hell, I'm
still
terrified.”

“But, here you are,” he said.

More or less. “He enjoyed watching me be in pain. Like I was some kind of really fun science project.” To torment, and maim, and study. “And
inflicting
it was even more fun for him.” She glanced over. “Yesterday, in the hospital, you were so upset, you had trouble sitting still, or even talking to me.”

Now, he looked worried. “I left you alone too much. I should have—”

“Preston, you couldn't watch, because you're thoughtful and empathetic, and you knew that there wasn't anything you could do to help me,” she said. “You're nothing like him. You never will be.”

He sighed. “God, I hope not, Meg. It would make me absolutely sick if I were.”

It would make her pretty sick, too. “You know, I don't think you've called me ‘kid' once the entire time you've been up here,” she said. Not for months, now that she thought about it.

“No, I don't suppose I have.” He sighed again. “It doesn't seem to suit you anymore.”

Probably not. She looked down at her splint, and the metal pins protruding through her skin. “I'm pretty sure the kid died in the woods. And now you're all stuck with the fucked-up adult who came back in her place.”

He smiled, and touched her splint for a second. “I don't think you're ever going to hear anyone complaining about having you home again. And—the adult turns out to be very compelling, so you're safe there, too.”

Christ, he really was a lovely man. “How bad was it?” she asked. “When I was gone, I mean.”

He ran his hand across his hair, which he always kept shaved very close to his head, before answering. “It was a complete nightmare. Your father was practically insane the entire time, and your mother was so calm and silent that, for a while there, I was genuinely starting to think that she
was
insane.”

It was both hard, and easy, to picture those two reactions.

“As far as I know, she never cried. Not even once. She exploded a couple of times, but she never—I mean, it was—” He stopped. “Do you really need to know any of this?”

Yes. “It seemed like she cried for about a day and a half straight when I got to the hospital,” Meg said. That is, when they were alone together; not in front of the general public.

He nodded. “I think people were relieved that she did. Before that, it was as though she was some kind of—” He broke off. “But then, you'd see her walk, or reach for something, and she moved so slowly and carefully that you knew she was in such bad shape that she wasn't sure if her hands and feet were going to work properly.”

Often, there was
still
something of a deliberate quality to her mother's movements these days. Slightly stilted, and maybe half a beat late. “But, she ran the country,” Meg said.

Preston nodded. “
Aggressively
. Kruger—” who was the Vice President— “was great, though. Never tried to push her aside, or overstep his bounds, but he was right there with her the whole time, and she was cognizant enough not to sign off on anything without getting a feel for whether it was a rational decision, first. The whole staff was terrific, but no one in the country's ever going to know how absolutely staunch Hank Kruger was.”

Probably not, since Meg hadn't even known. She didn't run into the Vice President very often—other than in the Center Hall, sometimes, after her mother's kitchen cabinet meetings—but whenever she did, Mr. Kruger had always struck her as being a very considerate Southern gentleman, who never failed to stop, and smile, and ask how she was. “What about my brothers?”

“Almost as quiet as your mother, although Neal was—well, fragile would be the right word, I guess,” Preston said. “Mainly, we just tried to keep them busy—played a lot of cards, turned on the Red Sox whenever there was a game, made sure they ate and slept on schedule, that kind of thing.”

Meg nodded. “You and Dad, you mean.”

He avoided her eyes. “Well, I guess I meant me, mostly. Felix, and a few of the others. And, of course, Trudy, before she had to fly back for Jimmy's operation.”

Trudy's son had had a long-scheduled and, fortunately, successful kidney transplant right around then. Some of her parents' friends must have been around during the whole thing, but even if they were—especially if her father was pretty much out of commission—her brothers would have been inclined to depend on Preston. “Thirteen days is a long time,” she said.

Preston laughed the same nervous laugh they all laughed whenever that basic reality was mentioned. “Very long.”

It had been June when she got back, and now it was March. Summer, fall, winter, and the beginning of spring. “I guess I'd pretty much be a skeleton by now,” Meg said.

Preston actually closed his eyes.

A thought that it might have been better to keep to herself. Meg looked down at her good hand. Thin, yeah, but unmistakably healthy and alive. Bones she could see when she moved her fingers, or clenched her fist, but all safely covered by skin and muscle and tendons and veins. “Except that I don't think they ever would have found me,” she said. Nailed into that mine-shaft in the middle of nowhere, the whole area having been abandoned and condemned years before. The son-of-a-bitch had chosen his location well. “I just would have been—
gone
.”

Preston nodded, also looking at her hand.
Both
of her hands.

It would have been horrible to discover her body, and have the last traces of hope destroyed, but surely, it would have been even worse never to find any trace of her at all. For weeks, and months, and years, to go by, with no resolution. “Do you think my parents would have survived that?” she asked.

“I don't think
any
of us would have survived it at all intact,” he said.

For his sake, she elected not to point out that they hadn't, anyway. Also, there was one specific question which she had never, in all of these months, thought to ask. She looked around at the hotel dining room, seeing that, other than the hotel staff, and a few of her agents, they were just about the only people there. Presumably, breakfast service had ended, but it was still too early for lunch. “Why were you the one who took the call?” she asked.

He tilted his head.

“That day,” she said. She'd been too weak and injured to stand, but she'd managed to prop herself against a counter in that Georgia family's bright clean kitchen and dial the White House, while the poor, stunned kid who'd let her inside just stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “It didn't make sense that neither of my parents came on right away.”

Preston moved his jaw. “There had been a lot of crank calls. People who—well, pretty sick people.”

No doubt, but— “On the
private
lines?” she asked.

He didn't look at her.

“It's okay,” she said, although she could feel her heart beating a little faster from dread. “I want to know.”

“They were afraid that the numbers might have been tortured out of you,” he said. “So, the call could have been from anyone—and they didn't want to put your parents through that, unless they were absolutely sure.”

Okay. That was logical. “I probably didn't sound like myself, either,” she said.

He shook his head. “No. And, even if it was you—” He stopped again.

She gestured for him to go on.

Preston looked very tired. “They wanted to establish whether you were under duress, or—well, there was some concern that whoever had taken you might have been cruel enough to force you to call, and then make your mother listen to you be executed right over the phone.”

Jesus. But if the guy had been wired that way, they probably would have filmed it, instead, and posted the tape on the Internet, where deeply disturbed and amoral types would have downloaded grainy copies, and emailed it to one another, with indescribably obscene fascination.

“I happen to think they made the wrong decision on that,” he said. “If it actually had played out that way, it would have been absolutely unforgivable not to let one, or both, of them have a chance to speak to you.”

Meg shook her head. “Yeah, but Jesus, it would have
destroyed
them.”

His smile was extremely kind. “They would have done it willingly, Meg, with the hope that, during your last few seconds, it might have been a comfort to hear the voice of someone who loved you.”

And there, surely, would be the personification of selflessness. With a prime example of it sitting right across the table from her. She looked back at him. “But none of them had any compunctions about possibly letting
you
listen to me be murdered.”

He shook his head.

Very still waters, running very god-damned deep. And if she told him she was sorry, or even thank you, it would never come close to being enough. “You dear, sweet man,” she said.

“Well,” he said, self-consciously, and took a sip of what was now cold coffee.

It wasn't even lunchtime, and she felt as though it was the middle of the night. She would have expected him to change the subject now, or maybe take a glance at his long-silenced cell phone, but he just sat in his chair—slouched, really, staring at the remains of his coffee.

Which meant that there was still something—or maybe
several
somethings—haunting him.

“Whatever it is, please talk to me about it,” she said.

He shook his head. “I can't, Meg. You're really the last person—”

“I'm probably the last person you should tell,” she said, “but I might also be the
only
person you can tell.”

He nodded, and then sucked in one slow breath before meeting her eyes. “It never leaves this table, right?”

She nodded.

He checked her expression, and then nodded in return. “They had me spend two weeks looking at morgue photos.”

Okay. He'd already lost her. “I'm not, um—” She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Someone had to look at the photos, Meg,” he said.

Oh. Someone other than her parents, or Trudy.

“I had no idea how many unidentified bodies of thin, dark-haired Caucasian women turn up in this country, day after day—and, for that matter, all over the world,” he said, and shuddered. “All of these anonymous young women, most of whom suffered
horribly
before some animal somewhere—my God, it was endless.”

She had never considered that, either—and the concept was one that wasn't going to leave her anytime soon. “Yeah, but DNA, and dental records, and fingerprints, and—”

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “And there were some, who, because of size, or age, or decomposition, they could rule out instantly. But even though they were going to be doing all of the testing, if they had any doubts at all, they thought it was easier, and much faster, to have someone who knows you well take a quick look. That way, they could get a potentially reliable identification in thirty seconds, instead of having it take, say, an hour or two.”

Christ.

“Sometimes Bob Brooks would look, too,” he said, “but they generally came to me, first.”

And so, Preston—and Dr. Brooks—had been forced to go through the same ordeal over, and over, and
over
. For thirteen days. And nights, she assumed. It seemed cold in the dining room, and Meg repressed a shiver.

“A few of the times, I honestly wasn't sure. The build was right, and their faces had been—or there was other damage to the body, or—” He swallowed. “I'd have to go watch a live video feed, or have more photos faxed from whatever morgue or crime scene it was, and even then, I was about to fly to Texas one night before they thought to get a blood type from a body whose face and hands had been—Jesus. There are some truly evil people out there.”

All of this was making her head hurt terribly, and she had to fight the urge to slump down and rest against her good arm. If she hadn't been worried about cameras out in the lobby, she
would
have.

“See, even people who'd never met you weren't really playing with a full deck,” he said. “The whole situation was—I mean, most of the time, no one—the White House, the FBI, police officers, you name it—seemed to be in their right mind. And the phone would ring, or I'd hear my fax machine start, and—” He shook his head.

For months, she'd been leaning on him—and never really stopped to think about whether he might have some scars, too. Christ, what the hell was the matter with her? Susan had absolutely nailed it when she'd accused her of being self-obsessed. “I'm really sorry, Preston,” she said. “I had no idea.”

He smiled a tired smile at her. “Would you have done the same for me?”

“God, yes,” she said. God
forbid
.

He shrugged. “All right, then. Let's leave it at that.”

For now, maybe they should. Except that there was one small thing she could give him, which might help a little. “You're
nothing
like him,” she said, and meant every word of it this time. “You never will be.”