Born to Run by John M. Green Read Free Book Online

Isabel can squeeze in to fly back to join us. It’ll be hot for the evening news.”
    Debbie checked the notepad she always brought in with her. She and Isabel’s campaign manager swapped their bosses’ diaries every day so they could keep tabs just for times like this.
“Ms Diaz is meeting with Congressman Prentice in DC and then has a...”
    Ed set down the photo and banged his fist on his open closet door so it slammed back against the wall. “Spencer Fucking Prentice! What is this? Be-Nice-to-Democrats Day?”
    To Ed, Spencer Prentice wasn’t just a Democrat, he was far worse: not only had he once been one of those investment banker scum who’d almost ruined the global financial system, but
also Isabel had an affection for him.
    Ed knew that Spencer returned his scorn. The last time he’d been over for dinner—yes, she invited the liberal bastard into their fine Republican home—he’d overheard a
snippet of their conversation when he returned to the dining room after taking a phone call.
    “Isabel, Ed’s… using you.”
    Ed saw her give Spencer a twisted smile, “What makes you think I’m not using him?”
    It was a disquieting question. One neither Spencer, nor Ed, had ever entertained before.
    DEBBIE knew this would be a bad day. An hour later, the FDA’s latest rejection of the Clip’n’Drip technology came in. She had tiptoed the letter into
Ed herself. And to make matters worse, the Karim Ahmed affair had reared its head in Isabel’s campaign yet again. Debbie had never heard so many “fucks” in one day, not since she
stayed at that Nantucket hotel with the paper-thin walls on her honeymoon thirty years ago.
    Even with Ed’s heavy office door closed, she could feel the expletives pound into it from the other side. So no way was she going to disturb him to take a call from some sweet-talking Close-up TV researcher.
    Ed was a man people admired when it was opportune and loathed when it wasn’t, but those people only knew the rigid, unyielding Ed, the it’s my way, or the highway Ed. Yet, as
Debbie knew, if anyone demonstrated commitment and loyalty to him, he returned it and multiplied it, whether they were the men and women from his service past or even the lowliest worker in his
sprawling corporate empire.
    Debbie had been with Ed only eight months when her husband Angus was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Debbie, a professional, imagined she’d left her troubles at home but by the second
day Ed had sensed something was amiss and pressed her. He dropped everything, made calls, got Angus moved into a more comfortable room at the hospital till his battery of tests was completed,
arranged for the best oncologists to be swung onto his case, including the now-eminent son of one of Ed’s combat troops, and insisted on taking care of any expenses not covered by health
insurance. Despite Ed’s doggedness, they had to wait nine long days of Angus’s life before they got the prognosis… he had six weeks left.
    “What’s that?” Debbie asked when Ed placed the thick envelope on her desk. She opened it slowly. Two tickets to Edinburgh, Angus’s birthplace. Pre-paid hotel vouchers.
Thirty thousand dollars in cash.
    Ed could be as tough and gristly as a five-dollar steak, but if you looked after him, he looked after you.
    THOUGH Debbie didn’t know it, Ed’s mood that morning had also been also cranked up by last night’s Nightline , which he’d seen on his office TV
and replayed twice. The interviewer had hit Isabel with a crack Ed had heard several times before, though until then it had never been dignified with the gravitas of a major TV current affairs
program.
    It’s Inauguration Day… America’s first female president has her hand poised over the Bible ready to swear the oath, and her mother’s down in the
     front row. ‘Hey,’ her mom says proudly, nudging the dignitary beside her. ‘That woman up there… Her husband’s a general !’ A reaction, Ms