Читать книгу Private Justice - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 8

They were out there, waiting for him. Waiting to feed on his public humiliation.

Vultures!

The hairs on the back of Henry Thomas Kelley’s neck stood on end as his anxiety grew.

He knew they were there before he even opened the courthouse door and walked out of the venerable building. Before he ever saw them, he sensed them. A gaggle of reporters clutching microphones as if they were weapons to be wielded, deadly weapons that, with the echo of one misplaced word, could kill all of a man’s hopes, all his dreams. Kill everything he had built up over these long years.

Backed up by their cameramen, they were ready, willing and eager to record the downfall of what had been, just days before, a fairy-tale life—complete with a breathtaking, meteoric rise in the world of politics.

He’d been king of the world with no limit in sight. And now, now that he’d crossed the wrong people, expressed a hesitation where none had been anticipated or would be tolerated, the king, it appeared, was dead—and everyone wanted their chance to kick the corpse before it was dumped into an unmarked grave.

Hubris was a terrible thing, born of adulation and coming in on the backs of fawning lackeys. And Hank Kelley knew, to his shame, that he had been guilty of it. Been seduced by it. Everyone had wanted to be seen with him, be in his limelight. Use him.

And now, those same people were ready to rend his body into tiny, indistinguishable pieces.

Joyfully.

He had been married to one of the richest women in the world, an attractive woman who had loved him, giving him five sons and a daughter. He and Sarah had been the absolutely perfect couple with the perfect family.

Had been.

And he had let it all go to his head.

He had stopped deflecting the flattering attentions of all those beautiful women who seemingly wanted nothing more than to be with him. To love him.

Vain, flattered, he’d stopped resisting, and the trap, he now realized, had been set. A trap to be used against him whenever it was deemed necessary by the people he’d so naively trusted.

Apparently, now it was necessary.

Now, not one, not two, but six of the women he’d been involved with—calling themselves mistresses when that title hardly fitted—all tall, all willowy, all blondes, had stepped forward to point an accusing finger at the man they were all claiming had seduced them.

It had been the other way around. It was always the other way around. But the end result was the same. He had cheated. Cheated on the wife who had loved him, cheated on the public who had trusted him, and that was all the public cared about.

That and watching his public humiliation, his public fall from grace.

It made for a great show.

Taking in one long breath, Hank braced himself and pushed open the door. He would have lowered his head to avoid looking at them, but it would have been taken as an act of cowardice, and he might be many things, but a coward was not one of them.

With determined steps he began to make his way to his waiting vehicle, enduring a hail of questions that swelled into a storm of noise.

“Senator, Senator! Look this way!”

“This way!”

“Are you the father of that woman’s baby?” Someone shouted the soul-scraping question louder than her fellow reporters.

His mouth, so often seen with a radiant smile, was grim. He kept his eyes on his target, the car, and avoided making any eye contact with the swarm around him, no matter how tightly they closed in around him.

He pushed forward.

“No comment,” he finally bit off as the questions grew and multiplied, choking the very air around him. He was beginning to doubt he was going to make it to his car in one piece. It couldn’t end like this. Not here. Not before he found a way to apologize to Sarah for the grief he had caused her. He had never meant to hurt her. He just didn’t think.

He kept plowing his way through the human throng, making progress by inches. He needed not only to get away, but to find somewhere he could go and think. What was happening was not a coincidence.

But why now? Why this?

He needed answers.

After what felt like an eternity embroiled in an endless journey, he finally made it to his car. The driver, Joseph, was standing holding the rear door open for him, waiting. He was quickly ushered in, his useless lawyer diving in right behind him, and the door was secured.

Exhausted, relieved, he leaned back and exhaled a sigh filled with anxiety.

“Where to, sir?” Joseph asked after sliding into the driver’s seat and slamming the door.

Both sides of the somber, black customized vehicle were besieged by the relentless reporters, still trying to get a sound bite, a single damning word.

“Anywhere,” Hank cried. “Just away from here.”

The car was already in motion, burrowing through the throng. “You got it, Senator.”

“Damn fool idiot!”

Bonnie Gene Kelley was walking by the den where her husband of forty years, Donald, could occasionally be found when he wasn’t up to his elbows in yet another barbecue sauce, trying to create one to top the one he’d breathed life into the time before. All created to be used at his very successful chain of steak houses.

The sound of Donald’s voice stopped her in her tracks and she peered in.

“Talking to yourself again, dear?” she asked. It was getting to be an unfortunate habit, she thought. People were going to think he was losing his mental faculties if he wasn’t careful. “You know, if you want some company,” she told him, walking into the room, “all you have to do is ask.”

Donald continued scowling at the TV.

Glancing toward the flat screen, she asked, “What are you watching?” before she had a chance to focus on the face of the man on the monitor.

Her eyes widened. Oh my God!

“Donald, is that Hank?” she cried, completely stunned.

Donald was still communing with the image on the screen. “Damn stupid idiot,” Donald retorted angrily. With a snap of his wrist, he made the picture disappear, shutting off the set just as the words recorded earlier scrolled across the bottom of the screen. “He never could keep from messing up a good thing!”

“Donald, why was Hank in the middle of that ugly crowd? Is something wrong? Why was he on the news?”

Bonnie Gene turned toward her husband, expecting him to give her an answer or at least to share in her confusion as to why Hank was the subject of a news story.

Donald didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet. Not until he got his temper under control.

Shaking his head, his asymmetrically cut, shaggy white hair—that he insisted only she cut—moving about independently, he acted as if he hadn’t heard any of her questions and announced, “I’m going back to the restaurant. That barbecue sauce isn’t going to create itself.”

“Donald,” Bonnie Gene cried, raising her voice as he strode past her to the den’s threshold, “talk to me.”

“That was talking, Bonnie Gene,” Donald said as he walked out. “Thought someone who’s always doing it would recognize it when she heard it.” He didn’t bother turning around.

Bonnie Gene, frowning, picked up the remote and turned the set back on. But the news had moved on and cut to a commercial. A bright, smiling blonde with way too many teeth was extolling the virtues of her shampoo.

Disgusted, Bonnie Gene turned off the set again and, with an annoyed sigh, left the room, promising herself that she was going to get the information out of her husband when he came home for the night. She wanted to know what was going on. The senator from California, Hank Kelley, was Donald’s younger and, for all intents and purposes, estranged half brother. But family was family and she intended to get to the bottom of this.

Donald, she thought, had better come clean if he knew what was good for him.