Pursuit by Karen Robards Read Free Book Online Page B

shepherded into the Yellow Oval Room. Mark recognized a famous singer along with some friends of the First Family. Throat tightening, he wondered when the Coopers’ two adult children, Laurie Donaldson and Brad Cooper, would arrive.
    He really didn’t want to be here for that one.
    “What about her?” he asked.
    “What do you know about her?”
    “Nothing except her name. Yet.” The implication that he soon would know everything there was to know about Jessica Ford was understood by Lowell, who nodded.
    “Yeah, well, we hear that she’s a lawyer who works for John Davenport. We’re trying to get hold of him now, but he’s not at home and he isn’t answering his cell phone. The information we have—and it’s preliminary, but we think it’s good—is that the First Lady called Davenport, and he sent the car.”
    “Why?” But at least that probably meant Annette Cooper wasn’t out there chasing the drugs she was being slowly, forcibly weaned off of after all. Or maybe she was, and Davenport had found out and sent a car and a subordinate to get her off the streets.
    “Who the hell knows?” Lowell looked grim. “Look, you go to this Ford woman, and you keep her the hell away from the press. Stay with her until you find out what she knows. And if she knows anything, anything at all, that could in any way be harmful to the First Lady or the President, you get her to keep her damned mouth shut.” The glint in Lowell’s eyes reminded Mark just how ruthless the Chief of Staff could be. “You fucked up, now you clean up the mess.”
    Mark’s mouth compressed. Then he nodded and stepped into the elevator.

5
    S omething woke her. What?
    Jess didn’t know. All she knew was that she was breathing hard. Feeling weird. And instantly uneasy. Even as her mind came to full awareness her senses were alert, spurred by a kind of edgy sixth sense that told her something was wrong.
    Where am I?
    Her eyes blinked opened on—nothing. A blur of darkness. The feeling of being inside, with four walls around her and a ceiling she could not see not too far above her head.
    Cold, so cold.
    Biting down on her lower lip, she tried to control the violent shivers that claimed her. She felt groggy, disoriented. As if she were floating, almost. Her head throbbed. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. Her body was one big dull ache that, paradoxically, did not hurt as much as she knew it should have. She had the feeling that she was alone, although earlier, she was almost certain she had heard her mother’s voice. Others she knew, too. Her sister Sarah’s, maybe.
    There were no voices now. No sounds, except a steady mechanical beeping and a dull hum and the slightest of drawn-out creaks. She didn’t know how it was possible that she could be so cold; she seemed to be swaddled to the armpits in layers of cloth. Against her body, the texture of the cloth was tightly woven and smooth, while the cloth her hands, which were on top of the pile, rested on was coarser and fuzzy. That, plus the firm resilience of the surface upon which she lay and the mounded softness beneath her head, led her to conclude that she was in a bed. A sharp, distinctive smell—antiseptic?—defined it further: She was in a bed.
    In a hospital.
    Annette Cooper. The wreck.
    Horror washed over her in an icy wave. Her stomach turned inside out. She felt a surge of dizziness so strong she almost sank back into the blackness again.
    Something’s wrong.
    That was the thought that kept her present. It was strong enough to beat back the wooziness that threatened to carry her away again.
    What?
    The darkness was not absolute, she discovered, as her eyes adjusted: There was the faintest of bluish glows to her right. Slowly she turned her head—moving required so much effort—to find that the bluish glow emanated from a cluster of free-standing machines near the bed. One showed what appeared to be a zigzagging line; it was the one producing the steady beep,