Free Pursuit by Karen Robards Page B

look much older than his daughter wasn’t it.
    Anger bubbled. It was fueled by guilt, he knew. Mark told himself to chill.
    “What do you know about my job?” He kept his voice even and his gaze level on her face. “For that matter, how do you know who I am?”
    She didn’t ease up. “I’m an associate with Davenport, Kelly, and Bascomb, Mr. Ryan. Mrs. Cooper has been to our offices on several occasions, and you’ve been with her. And I’ve seen you at the White House, when I delivered some papers to her.”
    It was all Mark could do not to blatantly look her over again, which he figured would not be politic. The thing was, he didn’t remember ever seeing her, not in Davenport’s office and not in the White House. Not that he meant to say so.
    “That’s right,” he said, as if he recalled the occasions perfectly. “So, would you mind telling me what hotel Mrs. Cooper was in, and what she was doing there?”
    “Are you asking out of idle curiosity, or in an official capacity?”
    Keep it cool , keep it easy. “Part of my job.”
    A beat passed. Then she said, almost sulkily, “It was the Harrington. And I have no idea why she was there.”
    “So why were you there?”
    “Mr. Davenport sent me to meet Mrs. Cooper there because he couldn’t go himself.”
    “The First Lady was meeting Davenport at a hotel?”
    “In the bar. Apparently, she called him and asked to meet, but he couldn’t make it. He sent me instead.”
    “Why?” He couldn’t fathom a circumstance in which the First Lady’s close friend and trusted confidant would need to meet her in a bar, or would send a stranger—and he was as sure as it was possible to be under the circumstances that Mrs. Cooper hadn’t known Jessica from Adam before tonight—to meet with her in his stead. Unless, as Lowell had speculated, a drug deal of some sort was involved. Or maybe the heading off of one.
    “Because I live close by. Because I could get there quickly. Because Mr. Davenport trusts me.”
    “Ah.” Mark still didn’t get it, but why Davenport had sent a subordinate in his place really wasn’t the most important point he needed clarity on at the moment, so he let it go. “So you met Mrs. Cooper in a hotel bar. Then what happened?”
    “We left.”
    Mark stifled a glimmer of annoyance. The antagonistic vibes she was sending his way were starting to get old.
    “Care to elaborate?”
    “We walked out together to the car I had come in—Mr. Davenport had arranged for it—and drove away.”
    She stopped, closing her eyes. He waited. Her dark hair fanned out against the pillow as she turned her head away from him, showing glints of red amid the deep brown. Under the unforgiving glow of the harsh overhead lighting, her face looked almost as white as the pillowcase. Taking in just the damage to her that was visible, he felt bad for even questioning her. But time was of the essence here. He might—thank Jesus—be the first, but he wouldn’t be the only one to ask all this and more. He had to know what she was going to say.
    “So,” he finally said when it became clear she wasn’t going to resume talking anytime soon, “you and Mrs. Cooper are in the car, it drives away, and . . . ?”
    Her head turned back toward him, and her eyes opened again with a slow sweep of thick lashes. It seemed to cost her some effort to focus on his face. “That’s the last thing I remember. Getting into the car and pulling away from the hotel.”
    Mark made his voice even gentler. “What about the crash?”
    “I don’t remember it. I don’t remember anything from the time the car left the hotel until you found me. Nothing. At all.”
    She said the last “at all” as if for emphasis.
    There was a pause as Mark processed that. She’d been through a terrible trauma just hours before. Trauma often erased the events immediately preceding it from the mind, as he knew from experience. Therefore, it made sense that she wouldn’t remember, he decided. And it