Protect and Defend by Richard North Patterson Read Free Book Online

she observed, “This could change the whole Court. Depending on what the President does.”
    “Because the Court’s so divided?”
    “Partly. But a new Chief Justice can be much more than just another vote.” Caroline’s voice assumed the tone of rumination. “Every first-year law student knows that
Brown v. Board of Education
ended legalized segregation in the public schools. But few learn that the first hearing left the Court sharply divided, with Chief Justice Vinson strongly in favor of
maintaining
segregation.
    “Before the result could be announced, Vinson died of a heart attack. Earl Warren took his place. The case was reargued, and Warren went to work, using all his skills of consensus-building and persuasion. The result was the unanimous opinion which, some would say, launched the civil rights movement and forced us to confront the issue of race.
    “Of course, as bitter as that was, the abortion issues
you’re
raising are nearly as divisive, and public life is infinitely more vicious. I don’t envy Kilcannon the problem.”
    “Do you know him?”
    “The President? Not personally. My loss, clearly.”
    Elliptical as it was, this was the closest Caroline had come to admitting the ambition Sarah believed she held. Emboldened, Sarah observed, “But you
do
know Ellen Penn.”
    “Yes. And I already owe the new Vice President my
current
job.” Turning, Caroline fixed Sarah with an enigmatic gaze. “Please, Sarah, don’t even
think about
it.”
    After a moment, Sarah smiled. “I’ll censor my thoughts, Caroline. But a girl can dream, can’t she?”

NINE
     
    A T A LITTLE past one-thirty in the morning, Kerry Kilcannon and Lara Costello entered the President’s darkened sitting room. Before this moment, she had never been upstairs.
    Elsewhere in the White House, Kerry had informed her, were fifty or so people—staff, the Secret Service—who knew where they were. “So now you’ve seen it,” Kerry said. “My new home. The crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system.”
    Smiling, Lara looked around her, sharing his sense of awe and strangeness. The room was carefully appointed in antiques. At one side was a small plaque left by Jacqueline Kennedy, saying:
This room was occupied by John Fitzgerald Kennedy during the two years, ten months, and two days he was President of the United States. January 20, 1961–November 22, 1963
.
    The glossy magazines compared her to Jackie. And it was all so unreal. Lara was no aristocrat: her father, an alcoholic Irishman, had abandoned his family when Lara was eight; her Latina mother had supported Lara and her sisters by cleaning other people’s homes; until two years before, when NBC had lured her from the
New York Times
, it had been a struggle to help her mother and pay off her sisters’ student loans. And she and Kerry were not married.
    Yet here she was at the White House, wearing a stunning Gianfranco Ferre gown, in the President’s private quarters.
    Hands in his pockets, Kerry stood at the window, watching a light snow fall on the grounds below. Lara touched his elbow. “Hard to believe, isn’t it.”
    Kerry did not answer, and did not need to. He had traveled a path even longer than Lara’s: an abusive father; a difficultchildhood; his adult self-image as the smaller, less gifted brother of James Kilcannon—a freshly minted Irish-American prince who, until his assassination, had been a senator from New Jersey. At thirty, his brother’s accidental successor, Kerry was forced to find his own way. Few, then, had imagined him as President; Kerry never had.
    Lara took his hand, watching his face in profile. Lean and fine-featured, every aspect of it was dear to her now, especially the eyes—their green-flecked blue irises were larger than most, giving a sense of deep intuition, of secrets withheld.
    “How long,” she asked, “before I turn into a pumpkin?”
    “Oh, Clayton’s commissioned a poll on that. In California, you get to sleep here. But