CHAPTER TWELVE
"So tell me how you saved my life," she said after a long pause.
"I felt stupid as soon as I let that slip about Laphroaig 15. Obviously you know scotch better than I do. I knew there was a risk that you would know where I’d gotten it. It was out of my mouth and that very second I started beating myself up. Stupid, stupid, stupid."
He shrugged, and then continued.
"I held out some hope when you didn’t react and didn’t say anything more about it, and the conversation turned to other things. As the day went on, my hope got bigger and bigger."
"And then I nodded off for a while as it got to be pretty late at night. And when I woke up, you weren’t in the room, and you weren’t in the bathroom, and you didn’t come back after I waited and waited."
Matt shrugged again.
"I knew where you had to be. I had effectively told you. I figured I’d go and try to explain. Maybe if you heard it from me before you formed your own conclusion…"
He concluded.
"So I was walking up to the Buchanan Club when some dude barges out the front door and runs away down the street. He left the door swinging in the breeze, so I was walking up to see what’s up when I heard sirens in the distance. I ran inside, grabbed you… you know the rest."
Alyssa reached across the bar table to place her hand over his, and said, "The rest is that I’m not in prison waiting for a death penalty trial because of you."
He smiled at her for a second or two before he couldn’t take it anymore and looked away.
"I couldn’t have done anything else."
"Matt, you saved my life. And you’re saying it’s no big deal that I tricked you into telling me how to find the Buchanan Club. So I already feel bad about how I treated something that’s obviously serious to you, but I can’t help it. I have to know. Why couldn’t you tell me about Mike Vincent?"
He sighed.
"Somehow I was hoping you hadn’t learned before that guy attacked you."
She shook her head.
"‘That guy’ is Fred Harris. He and I have been crossing paths for as long as I’ve been in this business. And I looked in the RSVP book at the Buchanan before he got there. Vincent was the only name there who means anything to me. It has to be him, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me."
Matt looked away from her, and then back to her, and then away.
"I really don’t know what to do. I made a promise to him. I don’t know how I can keep it and discuss this honestly with you."
Chambers gritted her teeth.
"Yeah, well, once upon a time Vincent and I made promises to each other. He broke his, so I’m no longer feeling very bound by mine."
Matt tilted his head to one side.
"Tell me more."
Her anger at being betrayed got the better of her, tempting her into speaking about a subject she wasn’t really eager for Matt to discover.
"Pretty simple, really. We met a long time ago. I caught him at something, he caught me at something. Neither of us was exactly eager for our indiscretion, so to speak, to become public knowledge. I agreed to keep his secret, if he agreed to keep mine – it was one of my early jobs as a plumber, and he saw my face."
"So I’ve been protecting him from Tilman and Reeder and all the rest of them all these years, so they never knew how untrustworthy he was. And now he betrays me. Right when it matters most, his promise goes out the window, and he rats me out. Yeah, maybe you still feel like Mike Vincent’s word is worth something, but I don’t."
Matt stared at her. "Wow," was the only word out of his mouth.
"What?"
"Where to even start? Alyssa, you still get so angry, after all these years."
"You wouldn’t? I’ve been hunted for days, turned into a national devil on TV, all because he picked this moment to break his word. Yeah I’m mad. He sold me out. He betrayed me. If I had him in front of me I’d…" she shook her fist.
"Mike Vincent didn’t betray you, Alyssa."
She gave him a condescending stare.
"He was protecting you."
"Say again? How does telling the press I’m a criminal protect me?"
Matt closed his eyes and sat silent for a moment. Then he spoke.
"When Mike and I had our meeting last Friday, his one concern was that he had made a promise to you all those years ago – a promise to keep your secret if you kept his. He wouldn’t tell me very much about the bargain. He said he didn’t want to break faith with you, so he wouldn’t give me any details. But he said once upon a time you caught him in something and he caught you. The two of you agreed to keep each other’s secret."
Alyssa caught herself almost crying. Oh Matt, if you knew what he didn’t tell you…
"He came to me because we’ve been friends a long time. He trusts me, and I trust him. He was in a place where helping the man he loved and admired and wanted as a leader conflicted with a promise he’d made years ago, and he could trust me."
"So, Mike tells me he was ordered by someone high up on the West campaign to give the press a dossier full of facts and evidence about your record. He was told he must make sure it’s in the hands of the media by Monday. Is this timeline ringing a bell with you?"
Indeed it was. The meeting happened Friday, she broke into the West HQ on Sunday, West was murdered on Sunday, and Vincent was told to make sure the press had information about her before Monday.
It was pretty clear that this was it. This was the frame up. This was the plan to set her up as the patsy for the assassination. Mike Vincent had been given explicit instructions to be sure she was exposed at the moment the crime was discovered.
"Who gave him the…"
"Reeder," Matt replied before she could finish her question. "Senator Lance Reeder."
Her jaw open, Alyssa simply stared at Matt for a second or two. Then she whispered, "Of course. I just saw the TV news talking about it. As West’s Vice-Presidential pick, he's a natural as the replacement candidate for President when West was killed. Reeder could never have been a Presidential contender on his own. Now, he rides into office on the message of ‘Rich West gave his life for the cause. Don’t let his death be for nothing. Elect the man Rich West wanted to succeed him.’"
"Lance Reeder ordered Mike to give the media information that would make you look suspicious as a possible assassin. Two days later, Rich West is assassinated, and the biggest profit from his death goes to Lance Reeder."
Chambers just sat there quietly for a moment. She wasn’t sure what to say. She’d been wanting to know who killed West and who framed her for what seemed like years, even if it was only a couple days. Now she knew. Fred Harris pulled the trigger on West, and Lance Reeder hired it done and arranged to frame her.
"I want Reeder," were the words that finally came out of her mouth.
Matt shook his head, "Now Alyssa, be sensible."
"I want to kill him."
As deep as her criminal life went, she had never killed anyone before. It was the one line she never crossed. Beat people senseless, steal from them, provide intelligence that would be used to blackmail them… she had never committed murder. She never wanted to until now.
"No, Alyssa, you don’t want that."
"Yes, I do. You have no idea what he did to me."
"Obviously I haven’t suffered like you have, but I have been on the run with you for the past 24 hours, Alyssa. I have some idea.
"What’s more, I’ve known you since you and I were both too young to talk. You are not a murderer."
"Not yet."
"Alyssa, stop. I get you’re mad. Obviously you’re mad. And I get that you have a problem dealing with anger constructively."
She gave him an icy stare, and Matt held his hands in front of him protectively.
"If we can’t be honest at a moment like this, when are we ever going to be honest? You know I’m not wrong about that."
"So what? You just want me to find him, beat the daylights out of hi
m, and stop short of killing him? Is that what you want, Matt?"
"Of course not."
"Then what?"
He reached across the table to take her hand.
"I want you to forgive him, Alyssa."
There was a second of stunned silence before she laughed.
"Get real! The man made me into a national hate-figure. Have you seen what the 'man on the street' interviews have people saying about me? If I went to the center of this bar and shouted, ‘I’m Alyssa Chambers,’ there’d be ten guys beating me to death with table legs before you had time to call a photographer. Lance Reeder has the whole country believing that I killed the most popular politician in recent memory – the guy who was finally going to restore honesty and integrity to Washington, and as far as the press and the people know, I murdered him. I’ll never be able to go out in public again! Even if I clear my name, I’ll live out my life with most of the country believing it was a CIA conspiracy that got me off, and that I should have sat in the electric chair."
She paused to stare at him and asked, "Forgive him?"
"Exactly like I just did for you, about tricking me into giving Mike away."
Her eyes almost popped out of her head.
"Are you kidding me? You’re going to compare a little…"
But it wasn’t just that one thing, was it? It was his best source shut down. It was his office burned to the ground. It was his career-making story up in smoke. Those were all the things she had done to Matt. And even if he didn't know about the rest of the things she'd done wrong to him, he was still being her friend when she deserved it less than anyone.
But… Running for her life with the FBI literally shooting at her. Days with no friends and no comfort and no safety. Gunter Hauptmann’s bloody wreck of a corpse falling into her lap.
"I can’t Matt. I can’t just let it go, what he did to me."
"There is no peace without it, Alyssa. If you kill him for revenge, it’s not going to satisfy."
"Oh yeah? How do you know?"
"Trust me on this, Alyssa. Forgiveness is the only way to peace."
"I don’t know if I can. It’s like I’m seeing red. I’m so mad I can’t think."
"Then trust me to think. Let it go, Alyssa."
She sat silent. Alyssa felt a debt to Matt. She had been betraying him six ways from Sunday for years and yet when everything was on the line, he saved her life and risked his own freedom and reputation to do it. But her guts boiled at the thought of Reeder getting away with what he had done without paying. When she thought about him getting off scot-free, maybe ascending to the Presidency…
Chambers ground her teeth.
She tried to distract herself. She looked around the darkened bar, watching the ordinary people living ordinary lives, laughing and chatting and eating their burgers. She had lived like that once, and Lance Reeder had taken it all away from her.
That wasn’t working to take her mind off the anger. Her eyes fell on the television.
"By default, Lance Reeder has risen to the top of the West/Reeder campaign since the death of Rich West," the anchor said in the closed captioning running beneath the screen.
"I never wanted to be President," Reeder said in a quick cutaway clip. "I just wanted to serve in the best way I could and help a great man do great things. I’m not the quality Rich West was. No one is. He was one of a kind. All I am is the man he named to take his place if the worst happened. Well, the worst happened. I don’t feel I have any choice but to rise to the challenge as best I’m able."
The screen cut back to the news anchor. "The West/Reeder campaign – already in the process of changing their name to Lance Reeder for President – is holding a major donor fundraiser tonight on the campus of Georgetown University. There, Reeder expects to make his pitch to the elite of the elite of West’s supporters."
Alyssa turned back to look at Matt just as Matt turned to look at her.
"No," he said.
"We’re going," she said.
"Alyssa, this is not the way to solve your problem."
"We’re going," she repeated stubbornly.
"No, we’re not."
"Matt, look. I know you want me to let go of my anger. And yes, obviously you’re right. It’s not like I could deny it. We’ve been having this conversation since high school about how I get so enraged I just can’t see straight. But Reeder arranged for the murder of the man who might have finally changed American politics into something more like what it's supposed to be. Then he framed an innocent person for the murder. He deserves to be punished."
"No one is arguing that he doesn’t deserve to be punished, Alyssa. What he did was wrong – what he did to the country, and what he did to you. He deserves to be punished.
"All I’m arguing about is whether it’s in any way healthy for you to be the one who does the punishing."
"That’s not your call to make. We’re going."
"Maybe it’s not my call about whether or not vengeance is healthy for you, but it is my call whether or not ‘we’ are going because I will not help you become a murderer, Alyssa. I love you too much. If I can’t stop you, I certainly can refuse to help you. And I do. I will not help you murder Lance Reeder."
Alyssa felt something ripping her up inside. She had done so much wrong to Matt over so many years. He saved her life, and he forgave her for what he knew about. He would never forgive the stuff he didn’t know, but then, he didn’t know… She didn’t want to keep hurting him. She didn’t want to keep betraying him.
But Lance Reeder was not going to get away with murder. She didn’t want lying to Matt to be the price of justice. She never wanted to hurt Matt again. But…
"Will you come with me if I promise not to kill him?"