Page 59 of Making It Live!

And now Jillian was having wine with my personal assistant like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I sat very still in the back seat while the math assembled itself.

Harry had been my assistant for three years.He'd seen my schedule, my moods, my unguarded moments.He'd noticed the scratch on the vanity.Harry knew more about my daily life than anyone.

Jillian knew Jimmy's side of our history.She knew about the note, and Jimmy's reasons for leaving.And Jillian Morris was not a woman who kept observations to herself.

Harry had my side.Jillian had Jimmy's.And they were sitting in a downtown wine bar comparing notes with the comfortable ease of people who'd been doing it for a while.

I should be furious.My assistant was fraternizing with the one person in this city who had the full file on my romantic history with Jimmy.The betrayal of it should have sent me calling Harry to demand an explanation.

But what I kept seeing, as the car carried me farther from that window, wasn't the betrayal.It was Harry's face.Relaxed.Laughing.Looking happier than I'd ever seen him look in three years of working for me.

Harry had a friend.A real one.Not a colleague, not a networking contact, not someone who tolerated him because he was my gatekeeper.

I didn't have that.

The thought arrived plain and enormous and I couldn't look away from it.

Terrence turned onto my street.The building appeared — glass and steel, immaculate lobby, the apartment that looked like a hotel suite nobody lived in.He pulled to the curb and I sat for a moment before reaching for the door.

Marla knew about the earpiece.Harry and Jillian were sharing notes.Jimmy's voice was back in my ear and my body had responded tonight like a plant turning toward light.Every wall I'd built had cracks in it now, and every crack was letting in the same thing.

The same person.

"Thank you, Terrence.Good night."

"Good night, Mr.Mackenzie."

I rode the elevator alone.Let myself into the apartment.Stood in the foyer and listened to the silence — the deep, curated, nobody-lives-here silence of a space designed to need nothing and no one.

Fire him or marry him.

I set my bag on the counter, poured a glass of wine, and sat on the sofa in the dark.Then I asked myself the question I'd been dodging since Marla said it: if everyone around me could see what was happening, how much longer could I pretend I couldn't?

ChapterTwenty-Four

Jimmy

Kendra Walsh called the control room at 5:58 p.m.

I was reviewing the final rundown — the kind of broadcast that ran itself — when her name lit up the direct line.Kendra was our White House correspondent.She'd been parked in the briefing room since three.Kendra didn't call the control room an hour before air unless something was on fire.

"Kendra."

"Jimmy, listen to me."Low and fast, the voice of a reporter standing in a hallway where the walls had ears."I have two sources in the West Wing.The President is going to resign tonight.One of them says it's connected to a federal criminal investigation — financial crimes, predating the presidency.I'm hearing grand jury."

My hand tightened on the phone.The floor seemed to shift beneath my chair.

"How solid?"

"Two independent sources.One is senior staff.The other was in the room when the VP was notified.Jimmy, Secret Service shifted protocol twenty minutes ago.Motorcade logistics are already changing.This is real."

I was on my feet."How long?"

"Address to the nation at nine.But the formal announcement could leak any minute.AP and Reuters will have it within the hour."

"Stay on the line."I muted her and turned to one of our assistant producers."Lisa — don't you know someone at Justice?Someone high up?"