Wildcard. Rachel Lee

in every tree. The CIA sent in an agent dressed as a beaver, who returned a week later scratched, dirty, breathless and pregnant. The L.A.P.D. sent in two officers, who returned in ten minutes with a bloodied, beaten raccoon that was ready to admit it was a beaver. As for the FBI, they rounded up every animal in the forest and held them for six months while a forensic veterinarian examined their dental impressions.

      It had been the Bureau’s modus operandi since the reign of Hoover. Overwhelm the problem with manpower and science. It was effective. It was also slow. In most of the Bureau’s investigations, that wasn’t an issue. When you were going after a John Gotti or a Ted Kaczynski, whose crimes weren’t daily front-page news, you could afford to take your time and build a case brick by brick. But that wasn’t the situation here. The media, not to mention the attorney general, would be demanding daily briefings, with each one detailing new information and positive progress toward an arrest.

      The brute force method was not designed to achieve that. When it was misapplied toward that end, the Bureau inevitably ended up with egg on its face. Fifteen hundred Arab-American detainees were only the most recent case in point. Tom could see the writing on the wall, and the message wasn’t promising. He began to feel sparks of anger in the pit of his stomach. By sheer force of will, he battered them down.

      Willis continued the briefing, dividing the task force into teams, handing out assignments. Tom paid only cursory attention until Willis looked at Miriam.

      “Miriam, you and Tom will eliminate the wacko groups. I want to say we’ve left no stone unturned. Dig around on the Net. Get a list from our domestic surveillance guys. Crazies who’ve written against Lawrence. Run their files. I’m sure you’ll find a bunch.”

      “No doubt,” Miriam said. “He’s liberal, Catholic, handsome, single, a dad whose kids were kidnapped, running for president while dating a cop. Put it all together and he’s probably the darling of half the fringe organizations in the country.”

      “Probably,” Kevin agreed. “And it’s probably a waste of time. But I don’t want conspiracy nuts coming along to say we didn’t look. So look.”

      In short, Tom thought, he and Miriam were supposed to run down bullshit. On the case, but safely out of the way. It made sense. Miriam was too close to Grant to be in the middle of things. And Tom had no doubt where he stood in the Bureau’s hierarchy of competence.

      Then Willis spoke again, and this time his eye fixed on Tom. “I want everyone in this room to remember that at this time we are acting in a support capacity to the Florida offices, which are heading the investigation. If you find anything, it goes through me to them.”

      In short, no running off on your own. Tom gave Willis the nod he was looking for, but his neck felt as stiff as if it hadn’t moved in centuries.

      Watermill, Long Island

      “He might have been what?” The man tried to suppress his anger as he listened to the voice on the phone.

      “He might have been caught on videotape,” the caller said. “Word is the hotel had good security, and the FBI’s getting the tapes.”

      “And you can make sure that doesn’t happen?” the man asked, clearly expecting an affirmative answer.

      “No,” the caller replied. “I can’t. They know those tapes are out there. If the tapes vanished, that would just pile more shit on the doorstep. Besides, he can be sacrificed. We knew that from the start.”

      “So long as there’s no trail,” the man said.

      “I can handle the trail,” the caller replied. “I have that part covered. Don’t worry.”

      He hung up in disgust. What an absurd statement, after calling on his daughter’s wedding day, with two hundred guests arriving in an hour, to tell him an assassin he’d paid for might have been caught in the act on videotape, and then to say, “Don’t worry.” There was too much at stake for him not to worry.

      “Daddy, are you ready?”

      He turned and looked at his one and only daughter. This was the last afternoon that she would truly be his. In two hours, she would belong to another. A fine young man, of course. He wouldn’t have permitted anything less than the best for his girl. But still… The old bromide about not losing a daughter but gaining a son just didn’t work for him. Not when it came to her.

      He’d held her as a baby, taught her to walk and ride a bicycle, tended skinned knees and later skinned hearts, watched her graduate from high school, then college, then law school, quietly opened doors as she’d begun her career, and all the while she had been the one pure, abiding joy of his life.

      He rubbed his nose briskly and nodded. “Yes, darling. I’m ready.”

      She saw his face, read his thoughts, and came to him with open arms. Their embrace was tight.

      “Oh, Daddy. I will always love you first.”

      “I know, precious. I know.”

      If only it were true. If only anything were true.

      “Lovely ceremony, Edward,” Harrison Rice said, extending a hand. “Your daughter is a stunning bride.”

      “Thank you, Senator. I don’t quite know how to feel about it, but…thank you.”

      Rice held on to his friend’s hand for an extra moment while flashbulbs popped in the fading evening light. Some were wedding photographers. Others were society press on hand to cover “the wedding of the season.” The rest, and that was most of them, were covering Rice’s campaign…again. Or still, depending on one’s perspective. He pressed his face close to his friend’s ear and whispered, “I know exactly what you mean there.”

      Edward Morgan met his eyes for a moment and nodded. “Yeah, I guess you would.”

      For Rice, the past forty-eight hours had been an emotional whirlwind. It had begun with the assassination in Guatemala and its aftermath, as news camera crews chased him across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas to secure him as a guest on one talk show after another. He’d had to cancel a scheduled campaign appearance, although his staff had assured him that he would get far more mileage out of the TV time.

      He supposed they were right. The speech probably wouldn’t have made enough of a difference, even if he himself would have found it more reassuring. He always preferred a live audience to the blank eye of a camera. But he’d had too high a mountain to climb yesterday. Lawrence had been a lock in his home state of Florida. Rice had known he would have to win Texas and split the other two Southern states to have a chance. He hadn’t. Grant won decisively in Texas, Louisiana and Florida, easily giving him enough delegates to lock up the nomination.

      And Rice’s campaign had been over. For about an hour.

      Unlike most Americans, Rice had not been watching as Grant Lawrence was shot. He’d been sitting with his wife, taking a few minutes of silent consolation, away from the press and the cameras and his staff and even his friends. Some moments should be private, and that had been just such a moment. Until a staffer began pounding on his door, shouting, “Someone shot Lawrence!”

      Rice had emerged in time to see the first of the now endless reruns of the attack. He’d had to turn away. While they had been rivals in this campaign, he and Grant had been Senate colleagues for years. They had been guests in each other’s homes on numerous occasions. Rice had never felt as if he was on Grant’s short list of true confidantes, but he’d liked and respected him. He’d watched Lawrence cope with the death of his wife, and, years later, the brutal murders of his lifelong nanny and a former girlfriend that culminated in the kidnapping of his children. The man had endured enough. And now this…

      Now Rice was expected to carry the Democratic banner, the Grant Lawrence banner. His campaign had gone from dead to full steam ahead in the few seconds it had taken for a would-be assassin to squeeze the trigger of a handgun. Rice couldn’t help feeling sick about it, even as the object of his lifelong ambition loomed nearer than ever.

      “You