Pulse Points

“I don’t know. I haven’t told her.”

“My guess is she’ll shit a brick.”

“Probably. Maybe then she’ll feel better.”

Jack grunted. “Funny. Actually, she’s the one you needed to dump. She’s too much in-your-face, too ballsy to suit me. I don’t know how the two of you keep from butting heads on a daily basis.”

“We have our moments,” Tanner said, “that’s for sure. But overall, she does a good job. She has a mind like a steel trap, and you know how well-traveled she is in the political arena. That adds to her value.”

“How ’bout the fact that she’s a looker? Are you telling me that doesn’t fit into the equation?”

“I’m not screwing her, Jack, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I bet it’s not from lack of trying on her part.”

“How did we get off on this topic of conversation anyway?” Tanner lost his patience. “I can and will handle Irene, keep the bit in her mouth, if need be. So don’t worry.”

“As long as she does the job,” Jack mumbled, “I guess that’s all that matters.”

Tanner sipped on his coffee. “Like it or not, her strategy, along with yours and lots of others, has turned me into a viable candidate.”

“Not a damned easy task, either,” Jack muttered with a fleeting grin.

Tanner tightened the harsh planes of his face. “No one knows that better than me. I’ll never forget that day you approached me and asked if I was interested in politics. I thought you’d lost your mind.”

“That fateful day wasn’t all that long ago, my friend,” Jack mused, taking a drink of his coffee.

“It seems like forever. What with trying to jockey my business and my leap into politics, I often wonder what hit me. At times, it’s almost driven me over the edge.”

“Firing the Randolph Agency was apparently one of those times.” As if sensing Tanner was about to fire back, Jack raised his hand in a token of peace. “Sorry, didn’t mean to resurrect that dead horse.”

“Good, because you’re right, it’s dead. What you don’t know is that I’ve had to continually kick butt behind the scenes on practically everything they’ve done—media ads, slogans, posters, letters. You name it. But the real pisser has been the name recognition factor, key to my beating an incumbent. You’ve drilled that into me from day one. Somehow I never got that point across to that agency.”

“In defense of them, you’re a perfectionist and a hands-on kind of guy. That makes you hard to work for and with. I don’t see that changing with another agency.”

Tanner shrugged before a grin tugged his lips downward. “True, but I’d still like for someone else to do the grunt work, especially with this new project I’m working on.”

Since he was a longshot for the senate seat in District 2, it wouldn’t be wise to let his lucrative developing company suffer. It was his success in the business world that had been the springboard for this venture into politics, an asset that had escaped him until Jack had approached him.

Like he’d told Jack, keeping both his company and his political career afloat hadn’t been easy. They had consumed him. He was either working or campaigning 24/7. Not a bad thing, he guessed, especially since his wife’s death he had no one to go home to. Work had become a panacea for his loneliness.

“Have you thought about getting someone to mind the company store, so to speak?” Jack said into the short silence. “I don’t need to remind you what a formidable candidate Buck Butler is.”

“As in ruthless as hell.”

“That goes with the territory.”

When Tanner didn’t respond, Jack went on, “Sometimes I don’t think you have the stomach for politics.”

Tanner scowled. “Now’s a hell of a time to tell me that.”

Jack chuckled. “You’re honest to a goddamn fault, Hart.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Don’t, because Butler’s sure as hell not. He’s conniving and determined. And in the political arena, that can be a winning combination.”

Tanner leaned inward and jabbed his friend with brown eyes that had turned black with anger. “So are you trying to tell me something, Jack? That you’re sorry you supported me?”

“You know better than that,” Jack said, clearly backtracking. “I’m just keeping you on your toes, that’s all. Readying you for the grueling months ahead.”

“We’ve been friends long enough for you to know that I can punch below the belt with the best of ’em. And will if I have to.”

That was true. You couldn’t grow up the way he had, in and out of the foster care system because his mother’s love for the bottle far outweighed her love for him, and not learn a few underhanded tricks. He’d done a lot of things he wasn’t proud of, had his share of battle scars, but he’d learned from his mistakes, or so he hoped.

“Maybe you’re right,” Jack was saying. “Maybe you won’t have to stoop to his level and can hold to the high road. With your good looks, easy smile, razor-sharp mind and iron will to succeed, you just might whip Butler up-front and center instead of in the trenches.”

“Only time will tell,” Tanner responded in a suddenly tired voice.

“So do you have another agency in mind? Maybe a local one this time. The Parker firm would’ve been a good choice if that Parker woman hadn’t gotten killed in that parking garage.” Jack paused, his expression turning grim. “I still can’t believe that happened. What could that woman have possibly been involved in that cost her her life?”

“I have no idea,” Tanner said, “but it’s an awful thing. That’s one funeral I have to attend.”

“You knew her, huh?”

“Yeah,” Tanner acknowledged offhandedly, pointedly peering at his watch. “As much as I’d like to stay and shoot the shit, I’ve got to go. I have meetings lined up the rest of the day.”

Jack reached for the bill. “The coffee’s on me. You keep me posted.”

Tanner stood. “That goes without saying.”

The strong smell of coffee still filled his nostrils long after Tanner got back to his office in a plush complex on the west side of town. The affluent side, he reminded himself with a smirk of sorts, thanks in part to Norma Tisdale, his deceased wife.

When he’d married her his senior year in college, many an eyebrow had raised in that small college town. She’d been ten years his senior and from a very prestigious and wealthy family. He, on the other hand, had been a nobody who’d been raised on the wrong side of the tracks.

The two weren’t supposed to mix. But they had and very well, too. He knew Norma had died a happy woman despite the pain she had suffered from her heart condition. He had no regrets, having been faithful in his care of her to the day she died. She had rewarded him by leaving him the bulk of her estate. That had been seven years ago.

During those years, he had used the money wisely, and at the age of forty, he was a wealthy man in his own right. And while he seemed to have it all—looks, wealth, power—there was something missing from his life.

Love. He loved no one and no one loved him.

Even so, he didn’t feel sorry for himself. He simply buried himself in his work. For now, and maybe forever, that was enough.

You’re fucked.

Those words were like a litany inside his skull. He stopped his pacing and placed his middle fingers against his throbbing temples and pressed. Long after he’d removed the fingers, the pounding continued. He needed a fix badly in order to get hold of himself. Pushing the panic button wouldn’t do him one ounce of good. It would only serve to bring about his downfall.

He wasn’t sorry he’d killed her. The bitch deserved exactly what she’d gotten and then some.