The Phoenix Candidate(62)

A pile of pillows. Can’t ignore the emptiness. The bed’s too big without him.

At three a.m. I give up and call room service, ordering a massive bottle of mineral water that costs as much as a pizza, and a salad—extra cucumbers, hold the lettuce, hold the dressing.

I lie in my pile of pillows with cucumbers on my eyes, sipping mineral water through a straw, really and truly hating Jared for leaving me alone.

For leaving me.

Does he really have so little faith in me that he thinks I’d just give up and let Darrow steamroll everything I stand for?

Is that what he thinks I’m made of? I remember our fights and the fact that he walked out on me once because I stood up to him. He knows what I’m made of, and yet he doesn’t think I’m strong enough for this.

Fuck him.

Fuck him for getting under my skin, into my head, and inside my heart.

For wrapping me in doubt about Darrow, and then practically gift-wrapping and hand-delivering me into Darrow’s campaign.

For causing my last sleepless night, and this one, and probably a dozen more before I finally exorcise our brief affair from my head.

That’s all it was. Not a relationship. Just an affair. Consenting adults spending a bit of time together. No strings, no commitments, no kissing.

Just sex.

In law school, Aliza and I had a name for casual hookups that lasted longer than a few nights. TMRs: Totally Meaningless Relationships.

I imagine in Jared’s ever-changing world, moving from state to state and campaign to campaign, TMRs are about all he has time for. I’m a fool for thinking I’m something different. Like he could want me for longer and deeper than just another fling.

Hell, I was nothing more than his vetting assignment. He just has a knack for mixing business with pleasure.

I hear a short vibration and pry a cucumber slice off my eyes. On the bedside table my phone screen is lit up with a text.





Trey: YT?

Me: YT? What’s that? YouTube?

Trey: No. You there? I don’t want to mess with your beauty sleep, but I think you need to see something.

Me: I’m getting zero in the sleep department anyway. What’s up?

Trey: I just emailed you a document. I couldn’t sleep tonight either. And I kept thinking about all the position papers we reviewed, and why the gun one was so specific.

Me: Specific?

Trey: It didn’t have the same tone as the others. It was a lot more prescriptive. A lot of very specific statements you must not make, but also a lot of recommended language that was just broad promises that didn’t really do anything.





I flip open my laptop and as I wait for it to boot up and connect to Wi-Fi, I pull the folder of highlighted papers open and shuffle to the one Trey’s talking about.





Me: I’m looking right now. I see what you mean.

Trey: Well, that’s kind of weird, don’t you think? So I kind of went down the rabbit hole in terms of research. I looked at a lot of documents.





My computer pings with an incoming email.





Me: What did you find? And where are you right now?

Trey: At the office.

Me: You went back to the office in the middle of the night to do research?

Trey: I never left, actually. When you went to catch your flight, I just kept thinking, and digging, and I found what’s fueling Darrow.





I open Trey’s email and I stare—pages and pages of campaign finance disclosure forms are appended in scanned attachments, each of them highlighted in our signature pink, yellow, and green color-coding.

There’s practically no green on these pages. No good news.

There’s plenty of yellow. Cash and contributions balances, key contributors and who’s controlling the funds.

But the pink makes these pages bleed.

Through a series of shell corporations and super-PACs, Darrow takes money from the gun lobby.

From the gun manufacturers.

From the gun-rights advocates who most recently organized an open-carry demonstration by a school.





Me: Holy shit, Trey. Darrow would never admit to this.

Trey: Doesn’t matter. The paper trail just did that for him.





I click through to the final pages of Trey’s scanned documents, where one of the named contributors and a top-five funder of Darrow’s campaign is quoted: “We don’t know if it’s going to be a Republican or a Democrat in the White House in 2016, but we’re going to make sure that no matter who wins, it’s a win for gun rights.”





Chapter Thirty-Seven





I close my eyes and let the makeup artist smudge liner along my lashes. She tsk-tsked at me for showing up to the television studio with pretty fierce bags under my eyes.

“We’re going to run a ninety-second spot as a lead-in to your segment to introduce you. You’ll be able to see the monitor but not hear the audio,” a producer explains. “Then Rick’s going to introduce you.”