I’m coming for you, Sugarplum.
Block letters, from different print mediums. “No, the letter is not familiar.”
His brain was reeling. Someone was threatening Vivian. Someone was calling her Sugarplum. He knew that name. He knew the last time she’d heard it. It had been right before he’d shot Harold McGraw.
Joe’s jaw clenched as it finally dawned on him why two members of the Secret Service were here in his office.
“What the hell is this, Carl?”
“Sir, we’re looking into anyone who might have been involved in the Bennett kidnapping,” Agent Thompson answered. “As a person of interest.”
Joe nearly growled. “Carl, you have five seconds to shut this little puppy’s mouth and tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Sir—” the kid began.
“Thompson. Shut it,” Carl snapped. “Sorry, Joe. Direct orders. Vivian told her father about the letters and he asked us to look into it. She’s not under SS protection unlike her father. Although currently he only requires a detail when he’s out of the country.”
“The former president is in China. Shouldn’t you be with him?”
Carl frowned. “Never made it onto his detail team.”
Right, Joe thought. Because while Carl had for the most part been blameless in “the Bennett kidnapping,” as the puppy referred to it, it had still happened on his watch. The president wouldn’t have forgotten that. One more thing Joe could claim responsibility for destroying. Carl’s career potential.
“So you’re investigating the source of these letters.”
“She reported the letters to the MPD, but they haven’t been able to provide much information. She told her father and...”
“And the federal government is now involved. I get it,” Joe said, and he did. Alan Bennett was a commander of men. If he asked for something, he got it. Always. “But seriously, Carl? You have to know I would never...”
“I do. But here is the thing. According to Vivian, she only told one other person McGraw referred to her as Sugarplum.”
“Me?”
“No, her therapist.”
Joe tried to keep his expression blank, but it wasn’t easy. Not when the world knew what McGraw had done to her.
“But it occurred to me that you were there with her in the cabin,” Thompson said. “You might have heard McGraw use the name, as well. I communicated that to President Bennett, and he agreed you should be checked out, as well.”
Joe almost laughed. Bennett knew damn well Joe had nothing to do with terrorizing Vivian. This visit was just his way of telling Joe to stay clear of her. Which was why Joe hadn’t been all that surprised by their arrival. He’d almost expected it since learning she was back in DC.
Ten years was a long time. But not long enough to forget. At least not for President Bennett.
“I can’t help you,” Joe said finally.
He stood and shook hands with Carl. He ignored the puppy.
Then he decided he’d had a hell of day and needed a drink.
* * *
THE DOOR TO the bar opened, and a ray of bright light poured in. For a moment the place seemed to glow, then once more it sank back into its familiar gloominess. Joe could hear someone walking toward him on high-heeled shoes, delicately clicking against the floor. And he knew. He knew it before he turned his head.
“Hi, Joe.”
Vivian Abigail Eleanor Bennett. The last time he saw her, her eyes were swollen shut and her lips were parched and split. But now the angry red gash on her forehead had healed. The ugly purple bruises on her face and collarbone had vanished. Although he noticed she had dark circles under her eyes.
She was stunning. As a young woman she had been pretty, made even more so by how little she realized it. Ten years later and she was drop-dead gorgeous. Same blue eyes and long blond hair, but the ten years had only added to her looks.
Her mother had been a Southern Belle Beauty Queen champion, so it was no surprise where her looks came from. Still, it jolted him.
“May I sit?”
He nodded, unable to find the words after all these years. It was a tie between I’m so sorry I let you go and You ruined my life.
He couldn’t imagine it would be much different for her. Something along the lines of I shouldn’t have kissed you and You bastard, how could you let that monster hurt me?
The bartender approached her and hiked his chin as a signal he was ready for her order. Dom’s wasn’t a really formal place.
“I’ll have what he’s having.” She smiled.
“I’m having a shot of Jack and a Guinness chaser.”
“I’ll have a Chardonnay,” she said and then placed a bill on the bar, which Dom traded for the glass of wine.
Joe shook his head. It was surreal. He could turn his head and look at her. Talk to her. When for so long she’d been nothing but an image on a screen. For weeks after he’d been fired, he’d watched every second of media coverage he could find, replaying it over and over again so he could see for himself how she was healing. If the bruises were fading. If she was still favoring her right side.
Then, of course, came the interview. The one that was supposed to settle the incident and repair the American psyche. After all, if the president’s daughter could be abducted and abused by a monster, then no one in this country was safe.
Then the other incident happened. Joe hadn’t stuck around to watch that.
Now she was sitting next to him drinking a glass of wine he could tell was foul by the way she winced after every sip.
“What the hell are you doing here, Viv?”
She set the glass aside and turned to face him. Again he was struck by how beautiful she’d become. Or maybe he’d forgotten how pretty she’d been back then because he had always shut down those thoughts.
Mostly.
“I’m sorry about what happened today. I had no idea that Carl would...”
“Question me? Interrogate me? Suspect me?”
She gulped. “Any of those things, I suppose.”
Joe shrugged. “Hey, just another day getting my life turned upside down by the Bennetts. Not like that hasn’t happened before.”
Vivian nodded. “I guess I deserved that.”
She didn’t deserve any of it, he thought. Yet she deserved all of it, too.
“You
