Six days after she'd begun volunteering for the Brazer campaign, Eddie Brazer himself came by to chat with the volunteers. Ashleigh had shaken his hand. Three hours later, they'd been in bed together at the Four Seasons. Over the past three weeks, they had spent four lunch breaks together.
“You don't like the new ads?” Brazer asked. “'I believe in the Three E's: Education, Employment, and the Environment.' What's wrong with it?”
“It depends. Are you trying to put everyone to sleep?”
“You don't want to panic people,” Brazer said. “They want to hear that things will keep ticking like always, only better. Remember, it's mostly the elderly who vote.” He traced his fingers across her stomach, up to her breasts. “Now, enough about work...”
“I'm not kidding,” Ashleigh said. She'd insinuated herself into his life, even helping revise his speechwriter's drafts. Ashleigh had helped him make simple, emotional appeals for the issues that would appeal to his base: the need to protect the environment, the continuing importance of labor union s, the right of a woman to choose what to do with her own body.
“Fine, what's your big idea?” Brazer asked.
“Are you making fun of me?” Ashleigh teased. She lay her hand on his chest.
“Never. I love it when volunteer kids tell me to remake my entire campaign, four months from the election.”
“Hey, I'm on the payroll now,” Ashleigh said. “If you can't trust your Social Media Coordinator, who can you trust?”
“So you really think I should ax the ads.”
“It's not about the ads,” Ashleigh said. “You need to do something bigger, to generate tons and tons of media. Something that will make you a household name.”
“Like putting naked pictures of myself on Twitter?”
“Right, that would be a brilliant move.” Ashleigh had to force herself not to glance at the slightly parted closet doors. On the top shelf, between stacks of spare pillows and blankets, she'd stashed a video camera to record the two of them together. If you were going to hook up with a congressman, you might as well get full mileage out of it. “But seriously. People need to see you as a leader. A crusader.”
“Not the Muslim community.”
“I mean, you need a hot issue. Something you can use to attack the President and his whole party.”
“The economy. The endless wars.”
“Nobody understands the economy,” Ashleigh said. “And nobody cares about the wars. You need outrage. You need to make them feel threatened, and make them understand it's the President's fault.”
“You are diabolical.” He drew her down alongside him and kissed her. Brazer was in his mid-forties, married, reasonably good-looking, not that great in bed. “But if I'm going to be Jack the giant-killer, I'll need a pretty big ax.”
“I have a couple of ideas.”
“I knew you would.”
“Have you heard about this thing in South Carolina? A bunch of people disappeared in some little town. Homeland Security was all over it for a minute and then went away.”
“I don't think I've heard of that one.”
“People are saying that a bunch of people died, hundreds of people died. There was some kind of extreme toxin. Maybe even a bioweapon kind of thing.”
“What people are saying that?”
“On the Internet. A bunch of people.”
“Esmeralda, you can't trust everything you read on the Internet.”
“And don't talk to me like I'm some little old lady who just discovered the computer lab at her nursing home. I think there's something to this. I think somebody screwed up, and a lot of people died, and the White House used the Department of Homeland Security to cover it up.”
“You don't want to go poking around national security issues,” Brazer said. “That can explode in your face.”
“It's not so much national security. It's incompetence, death and a cover-up to hide their mistakes. I'm telling you, there's something to this story.”
“You're really attached to it.”
“I've just been looking for something you could use,” Ashleigh said. “This looks like a possibility to me. Lots of sloppiness and loose ends, on their part.”
“It sounds risky.”
“You just have someone look into it,” Ashleigh said. “If it looks like a good way to take a shot at the President, accuse him of corruption and lying to the public and all that, you can take it back to the Homeland Security oversight committee with you. Launch some hearings. You get to position yourself as a reformer uncovering abuse of power.” She kissed him, spiking him with more love. “If nothing else, you might scare somebody up there, and maybe they'll shovel you some money and political support in exchange for you shutting up about it.”