CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Matt stumbled groggily to his feet, but Alyssa barely waited for him. As he called her name, she marched up to the rear door of her home. She was beyond calls to wait or to listen. She was beyond anything but fury. It was one thing to realize that her father had tried to frame her; it was another thing to realize that her father was using Reeder's affair with her mother as blackmail material.
He had deliberately paid someone to kill her mother. He had paid Fred Harris to slip sleeping pills into her drink, with the inevitable result that their attempt to drive home was deadly. She died in the resulting car crash, and her father had hired it done.
Rage was an insufficient word.
She drove her foot into the heavy oak so hard it splintered next to the knob and swung open.
Behind her, Matt struggled to drag Harris behind them, into the house, so the guards wouldn’t find him unconscious on the lawn.
She stomped through the kitchen. Matt called out, "No! Alyssa, wait!" But his words were like a spider web trying to hold back a charging bull.
She stormed into the grand hall of the Chambers’ mansion, pistol at her side, teeth bared.
Once inside, she saw her father.
H. Franklin Chambers reclined in a wine-colored leather wing chair, a tumbler of scotch in one hand. His navy suit and solid maroon power tie weren't rumpled at all. He’d obviously sat completely undisturbed through the fight outside.
"Darling. Come in. I’ve been expecting you."
But Alyssa was done with games – done forever. Whatever use she might have had for her father’s decorum had evaporated when Harris spoke those words about Reeder and her mother.
Matt Barr came into the room just in time to see it – or rather, not see it. Just like her fight with the federal agents in his house, it happened so fast he couldn’t make out any of the details. Somehow, Alyssa was suddenly across the room, grabbing her father by the tie, whirling him feet over head to land with a thud on his back, air escaping from his lungs in a sound like a desperate cough.
Alyssa came down with one knee on his midriff, applying painful pressure to the nerves and organs right below the rib cage. She leveled the pistol right between Franklin’s eyes, not even an inch away. She knew from personal experience that from that perspective the gaping barrel would look wide enough to park a car in.
She screamed. "You killed my mother!"
He couldn’t answer. He still hadn’t recovered from having the wind knocked out of him when landing on his back. His eyes were filled with terror.
The scream had been an explosion of fire but now she waited, ice cold, holding the gun on him. When his breathing returned to normal, Alyssa said, "Talk. Spill it. I want you to confess it before I blow your head off. You sold her and me together to buy a President you could control. I get it now. Too bloody late, but I get it. But that’s not enough. I want to hear you confess it. Then you die."
Behind her, she heard Matt speak again. "Alyssa, wait–"
The .44 in her right hand, she held up her left hand, palm facing in the direction of the voice. The unspoken command to stop was clear, and Matt clamped his mouth shut. He thought he had seen the worst before. He thought he had seen the white-hot rage this woman carried around with her. But until that moment, everything he’d seen had been only a shadow.
There was good cause to be afraid of her.
But Matt was afraid for her.
Alyssa grabbed her father’s tie and jerked his head up off the floor, then dropped it back down. "Talk. Don’t make me hurt you more than I have to."
"You don’t understand–"
She slapped him before he could continue. "I don’t? I understand you killed her!"
"She did that to herself with rum."
She tightened her finger on the trigger. Her memory flashed back to the scene in Wheeler’s office, where she had done the same thing just to scare him.
Everything was different now. She would be pulling the trigger for good this time. The only question was when.
"You're going back to that lie you've been telling me since childhood? That she died of a stroke from drinking too much? Takes a lot of political muscle to keep a cover-up like that going for a lifetime, doesn't it? But you had it. And it gave you leverage over Reeder, too."
"You knew Mom was alcoholic. You knew she was lonely – you bloody well ought to, since it’s your fault. So you introduced her to a man who liked to take advantage of situations like that, then you sat back to wait for your blackmail material. And when it wasn’t happening fast enough, you hired my friend Harris to speed things along. All of that, and you try to tell me she did it to herself?"
Her father coughed again, and said, "OK, OK! Yes, I set her up to fall for Reeder. Yes, I knew she drank too much and wasn’t stable. But she and Lance were just supposed to get a DUI together! That would have been enough. She wasn’t supposed to die. That wasn’t my plan."
"I don’t care if it was your plan. It was your fault."
He shook his head without saying a word.
"And framing me for assassinating West? I suppose that wasn’t your fault either?"
"You’re a Chambers! You would have beaten the charge in court. You were never going to be found guilty!
Alyssa scoffed. "Even if I did beat the assassination charge in court, my whole life was going to be ruined. You don’t go through a trial of the century like that, on cable news 24/7, and expect to get your life back. And what about the rest of my life? Even if the evidence was enough to be found not guilty of the assassination, the evidence works the other way on all the charges that come with a lifetime of being a thief. Which evidence the FBI has now, thanks to you."
"You were going to win, Alyssa. You were always going to win. You’re a Chambers. You’re my daughter. Don’t you understand? I only took the risk because I believe in you!"
Her eyes went wide.
"Did you just seriously try to turn my torture into flattery? Gunter Hauptmann’s corpse in my lap was flattery? Because you believe in me?"
"I never wanted Harris to do that! He was acting on his own when he realized you had been in the office at the same time. He didn’t know you were there to be the patsy, so he tried to kill you. That wasn’t my fault!"
"And Pierce?"
Her father froze, silent. The terror was back in his eyes.
"Are you going to try to tell me that wasn’t your fault?"
"He knew I had worked with Harris in the past! He could have given evidence tying me to the shooter if Harris ever got caught. I had to give the order, I didn't have a choice! He could have blown the whole thing wide open."
He tried to shake his head – whether in denial or just fear of what she might do – but could only move it slightly.
"Please…."
"You ruined my life. You killed my friends. And you killed my mother with your scheming for power. You die."
She cocked the hammer back on Vincent’s revolver.
Her father gasped and stammered.
"Alyssa… no…."
"When I was a girl, all I ever wanted was for you to love me, and you betrayed me."
She adjusted her finger on the trigger one last time, and then it hit her.
The moment froze like a photograph.
"All I ever wanted was for you to love me, and you betrayed me."
Her jaw dropped open.
For the first time, her eyes left her father and flashed to Matt.
And her thoughts shattered into pieces and left the present, drawn like iron filings by a magnet toward that moment when she had freed Matt from captivity.
♦
"I knew, Alyssa. I’ve always known."
"What?"
"I saw you there. I came out of the restroom and saw you fighting that other guy. I recognized you clear as day. I saw you throw my laptop into the fire."
Chambers had stopped untying to simply stare at him.
"I told you once, Alyssa. I told you about it when you tricke
d me into telling you about the Buchanan Club. It’s forgiven. Gone. White as snow."
She shook her head slowly from side to side.
"I don’t understand."
"It’s the only way to ever get any peace when you’ve been wronged, Alyssa. It’s forgiven."
She finished untying him as she said, "Matt, I ruined your whole career. You could be big time by now. You could be one of the celebrity reporters if I hadn’t done what I did."
He nodded.
"It was a terrible time for me. When I had that documentation in my hand, proving illegal union contributions to a Senate campaign, I knew it was hot. It was the biggest story I’d ever had. I was daydreaming of my own show on a cable news network… bestselling political books… I wanted to be the new Bob Woodward, and I knew that story could get me there."
"And then the story was gone. Destroyed. My only copy of the evidence was burned in a deliberate fire. And the person who did it was the center of my world – the woman I dreamed of marrying."
Matt's words echoed in her memory.
He said, "All I ever wanted was for you to love me, and you betrayed me..."
They rang like bells on Sunday, over and over.
"All I ever wanted was for you to love me, and you betrayed me...
"I promise you Alyssa. I paid for this lesson the very hard way. It’s gone. Forgiven. White as snow. Everything you feel guilty about doing to me, you never have to feel guilty anymore."
"It’s the only way to ever get any peace when you’ve been wronged…."
♦
She stared at Matt, to see tears streaming down his face.
She looked back at her father, and the magnum revolver she was aiming at his face, and the terrified eyes of a man who knew his murder would be justified.
She looked to Matt, and Matt spoke.
"I love you Alyssa. You’re a strong, principled woman with ironclad self-control, and I love that about you."
She rose to her feet, and as she did she could hear her mother’s voice. It whispered across the years from their conversation about her first fight.
"Be strong…. Don’t let anger rule you."
Matt was right. She’d spent her whole life chasing the wrong idea of her mother’s last words. In that moment, she understood something she had never known before abut that scene in the hospital. Dying, her mother had tried to repeat the same advice she had given Alyssa at the age of ten. It wasn't just, "Be strong." It was "Be strong, don't let anger rule you."
Strong wasn't winning fights with other people. Strong was winning the fight with herself.
Alyssa flipped a switch on the side of the revolver, and its chamber dropped open. She tipped it up, scattered the cartridges on the floor, and threw the gun aside.
She nodded at Matt, then at the phone on the end table beside a chair.
"Call the feds. Tell them we have the assassins."
EPILOGUE
Matt Barr stood in the millimeter-wave scanner holding his hands above his head. He stepped out and smiled at the guard.
"You’re clean," the guard said.
Moments later, another guard passed him back his package, with a similar statement.
"Clean."
Matt smiled and wished him a nice day. He felt lucky to get the package back. Most of the time, visitors to federal prisons weren’t allowed to bring in gifts. They were supposed to be mailed, eventually reaching the prisoner after a long series of checks. It helped to have a Congressman pull some strings.
He stepped into the visitors' area, with its cheap furniture and federal utilitarian decor. On one wall hung a portrait of the Attorney General. On another, a portrait of the President. Perhaps it would soon be replaced by a picture of John Hicks or Lance Reeder. Mike’s hopes for a leader who could really change the country would have to wait.
One wall was all windows, looking out over the exercise yard. Matt found himself drawn to it as he waited.
Women in orange jumpsuits busied themselves with weights or other activities. But they all gave a wide berth to one in particular.
She moved, quickly and precisely, through a series of choreographed turns and motions. Although Matt knew almost nothing about such things, he had heard them described often enough. It was clearly a martial arts form – a series of techniques strung together in such a way that it looked half like a dance and half like a fight against invisible opponents.
Her hair was jet black again and growing quickly—it was already shoulder length. Her small frame spun with every turn, punching and kicking in an order Matt wished he understood. It was beautiful. Her hair flew with every turn, blowing over her eyes, masking the deadly serious look she wore.
She finished the form, bowing and standing at attention before an instructor or audience that only she could see. Matt imagined the black belt that belonged around her waist.
One of the guards walked up to her. The glass and the distance ensured Matt couldn’t hear, but he saw lips move as the guard spoke. Words were exchanged. Alyssa looked up toward his window. Matt waved, unsure if she could see him.
A few minutes later a buzzer sounded, and the guard in the visiting area went over to the rear door. There was a metallic clank, and the door swung open. Alyssa Chambers entered, walking with the same poise and composure she would have had in a business suit, lecturing students, or in a set of black combat fatigues, scaling the wall of a building.
She smiled at Matt and eased into one of the cheap plastic chairs in a small conversation square. Matt walked over and took the seat next to her. She patted his hand and said, "Thanks for stopping by."
"How could I not. How are you?"
"It’s not that bad really. I had a few fights in my first couple days, but none of them were a real challenge. Once you show you can beat anyone in here, there’s no problem being left alone."
"For all the years I’ve known you – even after I knew about your secret career – I never imagined you describing prison as ‘not that bad.’"
Alyssa smiled back at him.
"I don’t have secrets to keep anymore. Everyone knows everything about me. It’s amazing how that solves your stress problems."
"It’s still hard for me to take," he replied. "You proved them wrong. You proved you didn’t do it. You even handed them not only the trigger man but the man who paid to have the assassination committed, and instead of getting a medal, you’re in prison."
She shrugged.
"You saw the trial as well as I did. I can’t say they got anything wrong. I am indeed guilty of ten counts of breaking and entering, nearly as many counts of theft, a few random counts of assaulting a law enforcement officer… I pled guilty for a reason. It was a good deal. They only charged me with half of what I did."
"Besides, the media invested a lot of time and effort into getting people to hate me. The public wasn’t ready to buy ‘oops, we were wrong, she’s innocent.’ They had been told I deserved punishment, and they wanted to see punishment. I’m probably going to be the subject of conspiracy books for decades. My name’ll wind up synonymous with the grassy knoll.
"I don’t blame them for charging me."
Matt, bemused, shook his head. "I doubt your father is handling prison as well as you."
Alyssa shrugged.
"I’m not ready to talk about him yet."
An awkward silence followed, until the reporter asked, "What are you going to do now?"
She shrugged.
"Theoretically sit here for the next thirty years. I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. Being a professor was never more than a cover. Being an operative is over now. No one’s going to want to hire the one plumber everyone in America recognizes. I don’t know if I want to get out. I don’t know if I care. There’s nothing I want out there."
Matt gave her a lopsided grin and, with one hand, pointed vaguely in his own direction.
"I’d like it if you were out."
She smiled.
"I’m glad
you came to visit, Matt. That’s a change, right? I look forward to seeing you. I don’t know what happens from here. I like you and want you to come around again. Can you be comfortable with that and leave the rest for later?"
Matt nodded, smiling. It was the most she’d ever said about liking him.
"I brought you a present," he said, pulling the heavy book out from under his arm.
She raised her eyebrows. "Usually those have to come through the administration."
He gave her a wink. "We have a Congressman pulling strings. That makes it easier to get the Bureau of Prisons to allow an exception."
"How is Mike?"
"Good. Talking about maybe running for Senate."
"Following in Rich’s footsteps?"
"He won’t say it that way, but yeah. America needs a leader who puts principles over politics. We need a President who cares more about what's right than about what will win. We can't have Rich West, but I think Mike could be a good substitute. This gift is actually from Mike and his wife and me."
He passed over the thick, heavy book with a black, pebbled leather binding and title in gold.
"I think I have some idea how you feel, Alyssa. There was a time when I thought there was nothing out there I wanted. When I had reached rock bottom and felt like everything I cared about was gone, what helped me come back was learning to forgive, and learning the truth about loving someone."
The guard was trying to get Matt’s attention. His time was up. He stood and smiled at Alyssa one more time.
"Give that a read. It's written for people who need a second chance."
♦
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading my book. I’m honored and humbled. I’m already in your debt, but if you don’t mind one more favor, would you please review it? Your honest review helps other readers make up their mind about whether this is a good book for them to buy.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks God! Thank you Stephanie, again and always. Mom. Vicki: absolutely amazing editing. Sherrie Dolby-Arnoldy: more great editing. My sister Jane. Kris. EJ, for being one of the first beta-readers when Alyssa was half-finished and completely different. I have one friend who helps tremendously with my writing but likes to remain anonymous, so to him I'll just say, "Thank you, House Buck." For everyone I should have thanked and didn't, thank you and I'm sorry.
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