For the Love of Gina: The President's Girlfriend (22 page)

He
retrieved it, sat the larger suitcase on the bed, opened it, and then packed
the smaller suitcase back inside the larger one.
 
He’d heard of quirky travelers who preferred
to place their more valuable possessions in locked suitcases inside of
suitcases, and since the smaller one was indeed locked, this may very well had
been the case.
 
But it didn’t matter what
the intentions were.
 
Ramsey knew it was
a match with her larger suitcase and it most certainly didn’t belong where it
was.
 
Ramsey grabbed the larger suitcase,
with the smaller one safely inside, and hurried back downstairs to return it to
its rightful owner.

Dutch
sat quietly in the conference room at Harber Industries as Marville and his men
attempted to explain away their unusual cost overruns.
 
But he was only half-listening.
 
The bottom line was that their expenditures
were unacceptable, and they would be the one to take the loss, not H.I., but he
allowed them to explain.
 
His mind,
however, kept floating back to Gina.

He
was so thrilled to be back on good terms with her that he could barely contain
his joy.
 
He hurt her, and he would
always regret what he did, but she was willing to forgive him.
 
That was the kind of woman he had on his
hands.
 
She was his gold standard.
 
Despite her pain and anguish and great
disappointment in him, she still had enough love in her heart for him to keep
their family together.
 
And Dutch was
just as determined to never hurt her again. He would never make any decision
that should be hers to make, without allowing her to make it first.
 
It wasn’t that Gina had grown up, and he was
finally seeing her that way, but Dutch had grown up.
 
He ran that household, he knew beyond a
shadow of a doubt that he ran his household, but Gina, he thought with a smile,
ran him.

“It’s
hardly funny, Mr. President,” Marville said as he looked at a smiling Dutch.

Dutch
looked back at him. “What’s that?”

“You’re
smiling as if our distress is funny to you.”

Dutch
wasn’t thinking about that man.
 
“Excuse
me,” he said and left the conference room.
 
Marville looked at Lenora Perry, wondering what in the world was up with
Dutch.
 
But Lenora could only shake her
head.
 
She didn’t know any more than he
did.

Dutch
stepped out into the hall and telephoned Gina.
 
Whenever she was this heavy on his mind, he phoned her.
 
He could hear the smile in her voice when she
answered.

“Well
hello there,” she said.

Dutch
smiled too.
 
“Hope you aren’t working too
hard.”

“Your
hope is realized.
 
I’m not working at
all.
 
I’m at home.”

“Home?
 
When you left here I thought you were heading
back to BBR.”

“I
was.
 
Then I received a phone call from
Sam Redding.
 
She said she wanted to talk
to me about Jade.”

“Talk
to you about Jade?”

“That’s
what she said.
 
Mother-to-mother.”
 

“That
doesn’t even sound like Sam.”

“That’s
what I thought, right.
 
I mean who would
have thought Sam could be sentimental?
 
But I think she’s as worried about Jade as you are.
 
Maybe more so.”

“I
think you’re right.
 
But I don’t
know.
 
They both need help if you ask
me.
 
Where is she now?”

“She
was going to spend the night, but she suddenly had to leave.
 
A friend of hers in Hartford had a stroke.”

“Oh
my goodness.”

“Yes,
so she took off.
 
But she spoke as if
she’s going to swing back through when she can, and have that conversation with
me.”

“I
don’t want you involved in their madness, Gina.
 
Sam is a brilliant woman, but she’s never been a practical woman.
 
And Jade is just . . .”

“Just
what, Dutch?” Gina asked him.

“Crazy
as hell,” Dutch said. “I hate to say it, but that young woman isn’t trying to
get it together.
 
And when people aren’t
trying to get it together, you know what you have to do?”

“What?”

“Leave
them alone.”

Gina
sighed.
 
“I hear you.”

“So
if Sam calls you again talking about meeting up with her, you let me handle
that.”

“Yes,
sir,” Gina said.

Sam’s
rental car, a Pontiac G6, stopped at the airstrip right near the small, private
plane.
 
Sam was still driving, Max was on
the passenger seat, and Jade was in the middle of the backseat.

“Where
is it?” Jade asked excitedly.
 
“I want to
be the one to press the button.”

“Not
until we get on the plane and take off, Jade,” Sam reminded her.
 
“That’s the plan.”

“But
what if it doesn’t work,” Jade said, “and we’re up in the air?
 
What if it doesn’t detonate?
 
You can claim you forgot one of your bags and
go and retrieve those explosives.
 
And we
can try it another day.
 
But if we’re
already in the air, we risk Gina finding that bag and implicating you.
 
And we won’t get a second chance to get rid
of Gina.”

Sam
looked at Max.
 
It was logical to
her.
 
“The hard work is done now anyway,”
she said. “By the time they work their way through the rubble and find Gina’s
body, we’ll be long gone, probably in Nebraska by then.”

Max
hated diverting from any plan, but they were right.
 
They had to make sure.
 
If it didn’t explode, Sam could always go
back to the Harber
 
house and retrieve
the smaller bag she left behind.
 

He
pulled out the specially made cell phone and gave it to Jade.
 
Then Sam gave Jade her personal cell
phone.
 
Jade excitedly phoned Gina.
 

“Put
it on Speaker,” Max ordered as they waited for her to pick up.
 
He wanted to hear that blast too.
 
Sam wouldn’t admit it, but so did she.

And
as soon as Gina answered, Jade could hardly contain her contempt.
 
“Hello, Gina,” she spat out.

“Hi.”
 
Sam’s name had come up on the Caller ID,
which prompted Gina to answer.
 
“Is this
Jade?”

“No,
it’s Spade.
 
Of course it’s Jade.
 
Who else would it be?”

“Your
mother’s name came up on the Caller ID and I know you aren’t with her right
now, that’s the only reason I asked.”

“Where
is she?” Max mouthed.

“Where
are you?” Jade asked.
 
“Are you still at
home?”

“Why
would you need to know that?”

Jade
sat upright.
 
She was going to love
saying it.
 
“Because this is the day that
you die, bitch!
 
This is the day that
your sorry ass finally leave the face of this earth once and for all,
bitch!”
 
Then she grinned.
 
“Bye-bye, cunt!
 
See you in hell!”

And
Jade pressed the button on the specially designed detonation phone Max had
given to her.
 
She pressed that button
hard.

But
as soon as that button was pressed, all three realized something was terribly
wrong.
 
They felt the car buckle and
shift, and then the rear began to lift off the ground.
 
Max, terrified, looked at Sam.
 
Sam, terrified, looked at Jade through her
rearview mirror.
 
And Jade, terror
seeping through her veins like liquid nitrogen, began to scream.

The
car flew up like a cannonball in the sky, and burst into a fireball
explosion.
 
The sound itself was
deafening for miles around.
 
And the
sight, from even further away, looked like a nuclear bomb had detonated and all
that was left, still floating high and twistedly beautiful, was a big, round,
mushroom cloud.
 

And
the destruction that Max, Jade, and Sam wanted to visit upon Gina Harber, was
visited upon them.
 

Every
piece of them.

EPILOGUE

In
the region of Chania, on the isle of Crete, a yacht fit for a king sailed languishingly
slow across the Mediterranean sea as if it had nothing but time on its
hands.
 
Dutch was at the controls,
steering aimlessly on purpose as the sun beamed across his handsome face and
the wind pushed back his soft black hair.
 
His Bermuda shorts were snug, his Hawaiian shirt was unbuttoned and wide
open, revealing a hard, tanned chest and strong, ribbed abs, and he couldn’t
seem to stop smiling as he steered the ship in a constant loop around the
bay.
 

Crader
McKenzie, with a fat cigar between his pearly white teeth, and in shorts and an
open shirt also, sat beside his best friend, riding shotgun.
 
Gina and LaLa, in big, floppy hats,
sunglasses, equally short shorts, and sipping tsikoudias with a twist, sat
behind their men like the women of leisure they’d been for these past few
days.
 
The children were back at the
private villa they were vacationing in, with their nannies, the housekeeping
staff, Crader and Dutch’s army of assistants, and Christian Bale, who
personally appointed himself the official babysitter.
 
Which only made the couples feel even
freer.
 
With Christian in charge, their
children, they knew, were in excellent hands.

Crader
looked at Dutch.
 
After all he’d been
through over the past three months, it was amazing, he thought, that he was
holding up so well.
 
But he was.
 
More than holding up.
 
He was, from what Crader could see, thriving.

“I
don’t know what it is,” Crader said, “but you look younger than you’ve looked
in years.”
 
Dutch laughed.
 
“Even after all you’ve been through, instead
of aging, you look younger.
 
But leave it
to you to have that kind of outcome.”

“Right,
yeah,” Gina agreed, smiling.
 
“The rest
of us look like death warmed over.
 
But
not Dutch.”

“Not
you either, Gina,” Crader said as he glanced back at her.
 
“Let’s correct the record here.
 
You’re looking great yourself.”

“I
told her,” LaLa said with a smile.
 
“She
and Dutch give the rest of us hope.”

“Ah,
thanks Loretta,” Dutch said.

Crader
looked sidelong at him.
 
“Thanks Loretta?
 
I give you the ultimate compliment and all
you do is laugh.
 
LaLa says something
nice to you and you give her a personal thank-you.”

Gina
and LaLa laughed.
 
Dutch did too.
 
“Loretta’s my girl,” Dutch said imitating
Gina.
 
“You know that.
 
She’s my heart.”

“Oh
yeah?” Crader asked.
 
“And what am I, a
man who you once considered your best friend, supposed to be?
 
Your butt?”

“More
like a boil on my butt,” Dutch said, and Gina and LaLa fell against each other
in laughter.
 
Crader shook his head and
laughed too.
 
It was that kind of
wonderful day.
   

“But
it’s all in the attitude,” Dutch continued.
 
“About looking young I mean.
 
It’s
all in how you decide to approach it.
 
What happened with Jade was awful, and it was tough.
 
Real tough.
 
But there’s nothing we can do to change it, nothing whatsoever, so we
elected to move on.”

“We
had to,” Gina agreed.

“Remember
when Jade said you got what you deserved after Marcus Rance harmed you, Gina?”
Crader asked her.

Gina
nodded.
 
How could she forget?
 
“I remember.”

“Well
life is a bitch because it seems to me she was the one who got what she
deserved.
 
Her and that crazy-ass mama of
hers, and of course that worm of worms Max Brennan.
 
And I mean no disrespect, Dutch.
 
I know Jade was your daughter, but---”

“But
the truth is the truth,” Dutch said.
 
“You aren’t disrespecting me.”

“Does
it still seem like yesterday, though?” Crader asked Dutch.
 
“What happened to Jade?”

“When
I can’t help but think about how close it came to happening to Gina, oh
yeah.
 
It sometimes seems like an hour
ago.”

“I
hear you brother,” Crader said.
 
“If
Ramsey would not have seen that small suitcase,” Crader added, shaking his
head, “it would have been a different story.”

“That’s
why I pray,” Gina chimed in.
 
“That was
no coincidence that Ramsey saw that smaller bag and put it right back in the
larger bag.
 
That was God’s grace.”

“Preach,
Gina, preach,” LaLa said with a laugh, causing Gina to laugh too.

“She’s
serious, Loretta,” Dutch said.
 
“That
woman of mine have me in church every Sunday now.”

Crader
smiled.
 
“Really?”

“Really.
 
Every Sunday.
 
And sometimes on Wednesday nights.
 
She’s so grateful to the Lord for looking out for her.
 
I’m grateful to the Lord too.
 
Mightily.”

“But
the ideal that Max Brennan would come crawling out of whatever cave he was
hiding in,” Crader said, “still bothers me.
 
He was on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

“With
his plastic surgery, his weight gain, the way he could afford to fly around on
private planes, made it far easier for him to hide in plain sight.”

“According
to my Attorney General, Sam and Jade thought they were going to have the same
plastic surgery performed on them.”

LaLa
looked at her husband.
 
“What do you mean
they thought they were going to have the same thing, Cray?” LaLa asked.
 
“It was a fact, wasn’t it?”

“No,”
Crader said, glancing back at his wife.
 
“Max planned to fly them to Nebraska all right, but only to kill them
once they got there.
 
Then he was going
to bury their bodies.”

Gina
shook her head.
 
“That man was evil
personified.
 
So he was just using Jade
and Sam to get to me?”

“Not
you, babe,” Dutch said, remembering all he’d been through with Max
Brennan.
 
“He was after me.
 
He wanted me to suffer.
 
Harming you, he knew, would do the trick.”

“That’s
what I don’t get,” Gina said.
 
“How in
the world did Sam of all people hook up with a joker like Max?”

“The
enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Dutch said.
 
“They both apparently hated my guts.”

“They
didn’t exactly love my ass either now Dutch,” Gina said, and the others
laughed.

“The
point is,” Dutch said, smiling too, “it amounts to the same thing.”

“Ah,
how sweet,” LaLa said.

Crader
rolled his eyes and looked at his best friend.
 
“You stop that right now, Dutch, I mean it.”

Dutch
looked at him.
 
“Stop what?”

“All
of that sappy love stuff,” Crader said and everybody laughed.
 
LaLa hit him playfully upside his head.

“No,
now, I mean it.
 
I’m not a touchy feely
man.
 
I get in enough trouble when La
starts comparing me to you.
 
Enough
already.”

“All
right,” Dutch said.
 
“We get your point.”

Crader
smiled, and shook his head.
 
And they all
leaned back and enjoyed the calming, sweet ride.
 
Although for Crader, it was all so
bittersweet.
 
Because he knew he still
had work to do on his marriage.
 
It
became crystal clear to him on the day of the explosion.
 

He
was in the Oval Office, on the phone with the Belarus ambassador, when his
chief of staff rushed in and told him what had happened.
 
When his staffer said that the ATF Director
believed that the bomb was meant for Gina, he and LaLa were aboard the Marine
One helicopter, heading for Newark, within minutes.
 
He held LaLa’s hand the entire trip.
 
It could have been Gina, they said.
 
Gina.
 
That was the part that got to Crader.

But
it wasn’t just the fact that it could have been Gina.
 
What also got to him was the flip of that
coin.
 
What if, he started thinking, it
had been LaLa?
 
What if his wife, the
mother of his daughter, had been blown to smithereens that day?
 
Crader wouldn’t have been able to handle that
kind of news.
 
And that truth, that
losing LaLa would cripple him, caused him to take a long hard look at his
relationship with her.
 
And that hard
look caused him to blink.
 
He couldn’t
lose her.
 
Not in a million years could
he lose her.
 
But he would lose her, he
knew, if he didn’t start treating her right.
 
Which meant, he decided on that fateful day, he’d better start doing
everything in his power to keep her.

And
later on the yacht, while he and LaLa were lying on their backs in bed in the
bowels of the boat, he made it clear to her again.
 
It was nightfall, and it felt so peaceful and
magnificent too, that he felt he had to go there.
 
“I’m above all men most richly blessed to
have you as my wife, La,” he said to her.
 
Then he turned to her.
 
“I haven’t
always remembered that.
 
Lately, hardly
ever.
 
But I’ll never forget it
again.
 
I promise you.
 
Not ever.”

LaLa
looked at him.
 
She’d seen the change in
Crader too.
 
Ever since they rushed over
to Dutch’s house and eyeballed Gina for themselves, he’d been as close to her
as white on rice.
 
He phoned her all
times of the day.
 
Even when his schedule
was packed solid with Situation Room-type meetings, he still found time to have
dinner with her and Nikki nearly every night.
 
She placed her hand on his chin and kissed him.
 
And even though Crader was a man with a
sexual appetite as big as his johnny, he didn’t turn it into anything but what
it was: a time to reflect, and to hold his wife.
 
Which he did.
 
He pulled her close, and held her all night long.

Dutch,
on the other hand, had his johnny so deep inside of Gina that she felt as if it
was wedged into her folds.
 
Which was a
sensual high for her in and of itself.
 
And the way Dutch was able to allow it to just rest there, throbbing
some, but mostly calm, always impressed her.

They
were lying down too, only they were in each other’s arms, Gina in front, Dutch
behind her, on the window lounger inside their cabin.
 
They were able to watch the calm blue waters
around them and reflect on a year that had seen more ups than downs.
 
And although the downs were far more
devastating, they chose to reflect on their ups.
 
On the fact that they were free of
Washington.
 
On the fact that Harber
Industries was now completely relocated and Dutch had more time on his
hands.
 
On the fact that BBR was looking to
open additional offices that would take a lot of the pressure off of the main
office, giving Gina more time on her hands.
 
They planned to travel and see the world.
 
Dutch, Gina, and Walter.

Gina
snuggled closer against him.
 
“Thank-you,
Dutch,” she eventually said into the silence.

He
smiled.
 
She was always thanking
him.
 
That was why he loved her so.
 
“For what?” he asked her.
 
He was behind her, holding her against him,
but he moved closer still.

“I
want to thank-you for being a wonderful, strong, kind man,” Gina said.
 
“For giving me Walter.
 
For giving me your undivided attention every
day we’ve been married.”

Dutch
kissed her on the side of her face.
 
“It
was my pleasure, love,” he said.
 
“Every
second I’m with you is my pleasure.”