Читать книгу Twilight Fulfilled - Maggie Shayne - Страница 8

“Congratulations, Senator MacBride,” the Senate Majority Leader said.

He’d just sailed into the room where she’d been waiting for over an hour, hand extended as he crossed toward her.

Rising, she accepted the handshake. He wore a huge smile—one of those toothy crocodile smiles she’d learned how to identify her first week in office. So she prepared herself for the storm of bullshit that was sure to follow.

“Thank you, Senator Polenski. And might I ask what is it I’m being congratulated for?”

The veteran senator just waved a hand in the air. “Your new appointment. But please, sit down. Relax. I’ll ring us up some refreshments and tell you all about it.” Walking to his desk, he reached for the phone. “What would you like? Coffee? Perhaps something a bit stronger, to celebrate?”

“I’d really prefer to know what I’m celebrating first, Senator.”

He set the phone back down and perched on the edge of his desk. She was still standing right between the two cushy chairs in front of the desk, on a carpet that was so deep, her sensible two-inch pumps nearly became flats.

He met her eyes. “You’ve been named head of the Committee on U.S.-Vampire Relations.”

She lowered her head, laughing softly. “Fine. Fine, I’ll have coffee. You can tell me all about it as we sip.”

He was stone silent until she had stopped laughing. She weighed the tension in the room and realized that he hadn’t been making a joke. Lifting her head slowly, she met his eyes, tiny blue marbles beneath a head of thick white hair that always looked windblown. “Come on, Senator Polenski, you can’t be serious.”

“I’m completely serious. Word is out that they exist, thanks to that idiot former CIA operative and his tell-all book. Most of them—and a good number of ordinary human beings, as well—have been wiped out by vigilante groups at this point, but our intelligence agencies believe there are a handful remaining. Surely you’ve been following all of this in the news.”

“I … I didn’t think it was … real.” She sank into one of the chairs, the wind knocked out of her. “I thought the official stance on the late Lester Folsom was that he was demented and suffering from delusions.”

“It was. Unfortunately, no one bought it. So now we need to own up. They exist. It’s real. John Q. Public is terrified, and scared citizens are dangerous citizens, MacBride. We need someone to get a handle on this. To calm the public. To see to it that these … creatures are contained, monitored and dealt with.”

She must have given away her gut-level reaction to his words, because he averted his eyes, and added, “As fairly and humanely as is practical, of course.”

“Of course,” she said.

He nodded. “You will act as the conduit between the CIA and the Senate. You’ll gather all the information available and ride herd on the man in charge of this mess, Nash Gravenham-Bail. Freaking mouthful. Rest assured, he isn’t going to accept your involvement easily. You’re going to have to ride him hard, do your own digging, know when he’s holding back and how much and push for more.”

“Get him to tell me everything. I understand.”

Rafe Polenski shook his head. “Gravenham-Bail will never tell you everything. But get as much as you can. Bring the rest of us up to speed, put together your committee members and with them, come up with a plan of action for us to consider.”

She blinked three times, shook her head and looked away.

“Well? What do you have to say?”

She drew a breath, opened her mouth, closed it again and drew another, searching her mind for words as her brain clogged itself up with questions. Clearly no one in their right mind would want to take this on. This was the modern-day equivalent, she thought, of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and God knew that hadn’t gone too well. For the Indians, at least.

Vampires. Good God. Vampires.

They were pushing this assignment onto a junior senator from the Midwest. Someone they thought was too naive to know better. Someone easily manipulated, easily controlled. She was none of those things. But she hadn’t been in office long enough for them to realize it. She knew exactly what was happening here. This wasn’t going to succeed, and someone was going to have to take the fall when the shit hit the fan. She had just been appointed to be the one.

She knew all of that.

And she also knew that she couldn’t turn the post down. One did not turn down Senator Rafe Polenski. The man was a legend.

“Well?” he asked, waiting, already knowing her inevitable answer.

She met his calculating eyes, and knew she was well and truly trapped. But maybe knowing what was going on would give her an advantage. Maybe she could outwit the snowy fox himself and live to tell the tale. Maybe she was a little smarter than this old-school, old-boy network member knew.

“Your decision, Senator MacBride?” he asked pointedly.

“Scratch the coffee,” she said. “I’ll have vodka.”