officials. That’s enough for me.”
“When you understand why he did it, you won’t think that way.”
“Don’t pin your hopes on that strategy, Faith. Don’t do that to
yourself.”
“What if I say it’s both or none?”
“Then you’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”
“So it’s either me or him?”
“And it shouldn’t be that tough a choice.”
“I’ll just have to talk to Reynolds, then.”
“She’ll tell you the same thing I just did.”
“Don’t be so sure. I can be pretty persuasive. And I also happen to
be right.”
“Faith, you have no idea what’s involved here. FBI agents don’t decide
who to prosecute. The U.S. Attorney’s Office does. Even if Reynolds
sided with you, and I doubt she will, I can tell you there’s no way in
hell the lawyers will go along. If they try to take down all these
powerful politicos and cut a sweetheart deal with the guy who got them
into it in the first place, they’re gonna lose their asses, and then
their jobs. This is Washington, these are eight-hundred-pound gorillas
were dealing with here. There’ll be phones ringing off the hook, a
media frenzy, behind-the-scenes deals going a mile a minute, and at the
end of the day, we’ll all be toast. Trust me, I’ve been doing this for
over twenty years. It’s Buchanan or nothing.”
Faith sat back and stared at the sky. For a moment, amid the clouds,
she envisioned Danny Buchanan slumped over in a dark, hopeless prison
cell. She could never let it come to that. She would have to talk to
Reynolds and the attorneys, make them see that Buchanan had to be given
immunity too. That was the only way it could work. But Newman sounded
so sure of himself. What he had just said made perfect sense. This
was Washington. As suddenly as the strike of a match, her confidence
completely deserted her. Had she, the consummate lobbyist, who had
been tallying political scorecards for God knew how long, failed to
account for the political situation here?
“I need a bathroom,” Faith said.
“We’ll be at the cottage in about fifteen minutes.”
“Actually, if you take the next left, there’s a twenty-four-hour gas
station about a mile down the road.”
He looked at her in surprise. “How do you know that?”
She stared back with a look of confidence that masked a rising panic.
“I like to know what I’m getting into. That includes the people and
the geography.”
He didn’t answer, but hung the left, and they were soon at the well-lit
Exxon, which had a convenience store component. The highway had to be
nearby, despite the isolation of the surroundings, because semis were
parked up and down the lot. The Exxon obviously catered to open-road
truckers. Men in boots and cowboy hats, Wrangler jeans and
windbreakers, with trucking- and automotive-parts’ logos stenciled
across them, strode across the lot. Some patiently filled their rigs
with fuel; others sipped hot coffee, tiny wisps of steam heat rising
past tired, leathery faces. No one paid attention to the sedan as it
pulled up next to the rest room located on the far side of the
building.
Faith locked the bathroom door behind her, put the toilet lid down and
sat on it. She didn’t need to use the facilities; she needed time to
think, to control the panic hitting her from all sides. She looked
around, her eyes absently taking in the handwritten scribbles on the
chipping yellow paint covering the block walls. Some of the obscene
language almost made her blush. Some of the writings were
witty-belly-rocking funny, even-in their crudeness. They probably
surpassed anything the men had composed to decorate their rest room
next door, although most males would never concede this possibility.
Men were always underestimating women.
She stood, splashed cold tap water on her face and dried it with a
paper towel. About that time her knees decided to give, and she locked
them, her fingers curling tightly around the stained porcelain of the
sink. She had had nightmares about doing that at her wedding: locking
her knees and then passing out because of it. Well, one less thing to