“Oliver, what’s this about a secretary of yours found drugged on a park bench?”
“Yes,” Oliver said. “It’s a terrible thing, Todd. I—”
“How terrible?” Senator Davis demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“You know damn well what I mean.”
“Todd, you don’t think I—I swear I don’t know anything about what happened.”
“I hope not.” The senator’s voice was grim. “You know how fast gossip gets around in Washington, Oliver. It’s the smallest town in America. We don’t want anything negative linked to you. We’re getting ready to make our move. I’d be very, very upset if you did anything stupid.”
“I promise you, I’m clean.”
“Just make sure you keep it that way.”
“Of course I will. I—” The line went dead.
Oliver sat there thinking. I’ll have to be more careful. I can’t let anything stop me now. He glanced at his watch, then reached for the remote control that turned on the television set. The news was on. On the screen was a picture of a besieged street, with snipers shooting at random from buildings. The sound of mortar fire could be heard in the background.
An attractive young female reporter, dressed in battle fatigues and holding a microphone, was saying, “The new treaty is supposed to take effect at midnight tonight, but regardless of whether it holds, it can never bring back the peaceful villages in this war-torn country or restore the lives of the innocents who have been swept up in the ruthless reign of terror.”
The scene shifted to a close-up of Dana Evans, a passionate, lovely young woman in a flak jacket and combat boots. “The people here are hungry and tired. They ask for only one thing—peace. Will it come? Only time will tell. This is Dana Evans reporting from Sarajevo for WTE, Washington Tribune Enterprises.” The scene dissolved into a commercial.
Dana Evans was a foreign correspondent for the Washington Tribune Enterprises Broadcasting System. She reported the news every day, and Oliver tried not to miss her broadcasts. She was one of the best reporters on the air.
She’s a great-looking woman, Oliver thought, not for the first time. Why the hell would someone that young and attractive want to be in the middle of a shooting war?
7
Dana Evans was an army brat, the daughter of a colonel who traveled from base to base as an armaments instructor. By the time Dana was eleven years old, she had lived in five American cities and in four foreign countries. She had moved with her father and mother to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, and Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. She had gone to schools for officers’ children at Camp Zama in Japan, Chiemsee in Germany, Camp Darby in Italy, and Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico.
Dana was an only child, and her friends were the army personnel and their families who were stationed at the various postings. She was precocious, cheerful, and outgoing, but her mother worried about the fact that Dana was not having a normal childhood.
“I know that moving every six months must be terribly hard on you, darling,” her mother said.
Dana looked at her mother, puzzled. “Why?”
Whenever Dana’s father was assigned to a new post, Dana was thrilled. “We’re going to move again!” she would exclaim.
Unfortunately, although Dana enjoyed the constant moving, her mother hated it.
When Dana was thirteen, her mother said, “I can’t live like a gypsy any longer. I want a divorce.”
Dana was horrified when she heard the news. Not about the divorce so much, but by the fact that she would no longer be able to travel around the world with her father.
“Where am I going to live?” Dana asked her mother.
“In Claremont, California. I grew up there. It’s a beautiful little town. You’ll love it.”
Dana’s mother had been right about Claremont’s being a beautiful little town. She was wrong about Dana’s loving it. Claremont was at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County, with a population of about thirty-three thousand. Its streets were lined with lovely trees and it had the feel of a quaint college community. Dana hated it. The change from being a world traveler to settling down in a small town brought on a severe case of culture shock.