Free We Know (aka Trust no One) (2008) by Gregg Hurwitz

opposition. Even their well-advertised silver anniversary hadn't inoculated Caruthers from pious question-raising about his suitability as a role model.
    Alan gestured toward the couple. When I raised my hands in bewilderment, he gestured again. Nervously I walked toward them, passing a number of empty chairs. I sat one chair away from them, past the table's curve, but the senator and his wife were too immersed in their conversations to notice me. Midday light came in through the window, framing their forms. I looked out with them across Westwood, Bel Air, the ribbons of smog caught on the Santa Monicas. Was I really here, pulled up to a table with Jasper and June Caruthers? Or was I still unconscious from the blast and dreaming this?
    "I'm sure you could if you wanted to, Governor. I've certainly been made a fool of by lesser men than you." Caruthers hung up, chuckled to draw his wife's attention, and swiveled to face me as if he'd known I was there all along.
    "Nick, glad you could make it. I'm sorry to ask you to run around like this."
    He was the most important person I'd ever been in close proximity to, except maybe when I'd sat next to Nolan Ryan on a Southwest flight. Caruthers had a shaving nick at the point of his jaw and a fleck of a cherry mole on his forearm. Both inexplicably surprised me. "No problem, Senator."
    He removed a box of gum from his pocket and popped a piece through the foil backing into his mouth. "Voters hate smokers," he said. "So I've been addicted to nicotine gum for twenty-five years." He tapped his wife on the shoulder, and she signed off and slotted the phone. "What's all that about?" he asked her.
    "The temperature in the auditorium for next week's debate," she said, offering me a disarming smile that said she'd get to me in a minute. Her modest chin added to a deceptively demure appearance, but she was one glance away from sharp or sexy. "We want seventy-three, they want seventy."
    "Why?"
    "Bilton is a sweater."
    "Oh, for Christ's sake. Have it at sixty. I'll make him sweat anyway."
    June's attention moved to the cluster of workers at the far end of the table. "We'll need antiperspirant for his forehead." She ran her freshly manicured fingers through Caruthers's hair, pushing it up from his forehead. "Something that won't chalk." As she rose, Caruthers feigned indignation, which she met with an amused grin. "Remember," she said, "this is why you married me."
    "Your ruthlessness?"
    "No. To save you the humiliation of sweating like a pig on prime time."
    "You forget: I have the resilience of a used-car salesman."
    "I don't think Vanity Fair intended that as a compliment, darling," she said, even as she shifted her focus to me.
    I half rose from my chair and received her feminine handshake.
    "Nick, it is such a pleasure. Thank you for what you did this morning, even if the boys in black didn't deal with you entirely on the up-and-up." I followed her stare to the door, but the agent's face remained impassive. She leaned over her husband, kissed him, and headed out before I could stammer a response.
    I felt disoriented, yanked out of my quiet existence into a plot I couldn't keep pace with. Everyone was being too damn polite, which told me that whatever I'd fallen into was as lethal as those innocuous-looking bundles of spent-fuel
    rods resting at the bottom of that pool. One thing was for sure: I was well out of my depth. I wiggled my sneaker ever so slightly--Charlie's key was still in there, insistent as ever.
    Caruthers regarded the crew waiting on the far side of the room. "Anything else?"
    The woman in the horn-rimmed glasses said, with barely contained anger, "Please do not ever again say 'ass' on broadcast television."
    "Come on. Voters like a little moderate swearing."
    "Not in Colorado Springs they don't." She studied his frown, decided to press the point. "Don't make me remind you and everyone else that you stepped in it on the family-values business."
    Alan redirected to cut the