Flashback by Justine Davis (reading e books .TXT) 📗

ever and always had had time for her, and she’d been stunned to learn later on in her life that he’d once put a prime minister on hold for her.

“I love you, G.C.,” she said suddenly, unable to hold it back even if she’d wanted to.

“I know,” he said, and somehow that was a much better answer than just an expressed return of the emotion.

She was dressing when the phone rang again. This time it was Justin.

“It’s too quiet here,” he said.

“Here, too,” she said. “And empty.”

“Oh, yeah.”

His voice had gone low and husky, as if he knew she’d been referring to her bed. As he probably had. She was learning not to underestimate him.

After a moment he cleared his throat and said, “I finally got the dump on that pay-as-you-go cell phone. You got it right, I think.”

“Got what right?”

“Most of the calls on it are to D.C.—unlisted numbers. So that’s going to take a while, but your boy was definitely calling somebody there.”

He gave her the list of numbers and she added them to her ever-expanding stack of notes and papers and pages upon pages of reports. Allison had sent copies of everything she had found of her mother’s, which added a good inch to the stack of personal papers, which Alex hadn’t had a chance to go through completely yet.

“Got the ballistics on his handgun, too,” Justin said.

“Let me guess,” Alex said wearily. “It doesn’t match anything in any database.”

“Gee, how’d you guess?” His tone was nearly as wry as hers, and that made her smile.

After that, saying goodbye was suddenly awkward. Sex had definitely changed the dynamic. But she told him she was on her way to the farm, and he said to say hello to G.C. for him, and it was finally done.

Odd, she thought as she drove. It had never been so hard before. Perhaps it was all part of this moving to a new stage.

By noon she was at the farm, and after a rocketing run over the cross-country course aboard Twill, she was ready to tackle the mass of data and names.

First, across the simple lunch Sylvia had placed on the table set up on the big, farmhouse-style porch outside, she handed G.C. the list.

“I’m looking for any names to take off the list, or any to move higher up.”

She made no further comment, merely watched him for reaction to any of the names. She was aware that he knew many of them. Wouldn’t be surprised to find he knew them all. But she wanted his first, gut reaction, uncolored by her own suspicions.

She saw his eyes pause a time or two, and once she saw surprise, but G.C. had a finely honed poker face, and she doubted anyone who didn’t know him as well as she did would be able to read him at all.

“Well,” he said as he finally set down the page and nudged it back toward her. “That’s quite a list.”

“I know.”

“When you stir up the pot, you don’t do it halfway, do you?”

She smiled sweetly at him. “Wonder where I learned that?”

He chuckled, then gestured at the list. “Take off Rafski and Porter.”

He didn’t explain why, and she didn’t ask; Charles Bennington Forsythe hadn’t arrived at this position in life by being stupid or easily fooled.

“All right,” she said, and put a line through both names with the red pen she’d brought out for the purpose.

“I’d move Eckman and Yates and Duran down on the list. I don’t care for them personally, but I don’t think they’d resort to murder.”

She noticed he wasn’t asking her why any of these names were on the list. Either he already knew, which wouldn’t surprise her, or he trusted her as she trusted him. That made her smile inwardly as she marked those names with blue.

He said nothing after that for a long moment. Alex just waited, knowing that G.C. wouldn’t add his weight to her suspicions without long and careful thought.

“Rollins could move up,” he said finally. “And perhaps Corbin. They’re ruthless enough. And Rankin was next in line for Marion’s committee seat on Ways and Means.”

“That’s a big feather, isn’t it?”

“One of the biggest. And Rankin wasn’t happy when she got it.”

She circled the two names. And waited again. The silence drew out.

“I’m not going to mention him,” G.C. finally said. “You know I can’t be fair about him. We’ve been adversaries too long.”

She knew who he meant. He was way down on the list simply because of the unlikeliness of it. His name had been part of the folklore of her childhood, back when she’d thought of him simply as “The Enemy.”

Anybody who disagreed with her grandfather was, of course, wrong, but anybody who resorted to calling him names and then later telling lies was the personification of what she’d come to hate about this town.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll do that part.”

“Let Justin do it,” G.C. suggested, to her surprise. “He won’t have the prejudice we do.”

She stared at him for a moment. Her wonder that he’d suggested Justin was quickly overtaken by her admiration for this man who was her grandfather.

“He’s given you little but grief, unfairly castigated you in public forums, linked your name to a string of people he’s endlessly lambasted in the press, barely stopped short of false accusations, and you’re worried about being fair to him?”

G.C. smiled. “Don’t you see? Those are the very reasons I—we—must take the high road. He’s incapable of it.”

Her chest tightened with emotion, seeming to squeeze at her heart. She reached across the table and took his hand in hers.

“Charles Bennington Forsythe, you are truly an amazing man,” she said softly. “If time travel were possible, Washington and Jefferson would be proud to have you to dinner.”

G.C. laughed. “Now there’s a sizable compliment! Thank you, my dear girl. I only hope I can continue to be the man you think I am.”

He squeezed her hand, and for a moment neither of them spoke or needed to. Finally