Introduction

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Excerpt

Chapter 16
11:30 pm. The FBI protection detail for Jack Thompson
was not yet in place. It had been just a few hours since
they learned of the plot, and they were evaluating how seriously
to take it. Politicians received threats every day, most
of them harmless.
Strong and Associates were busy keeping close tabs on
Mr. Slick, Mr. Elevator, and Vince Fleming, all of whom were
nowhere near candidate Thompson.
Mr. Thompson and his top aide exited the elevator on
the nineteenth floor of the Peninsula Hotel, a five-star
hotel located on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. They had
just left another fundraiser, a dinner gala, one of three this
week. They proceeded down the hall to their hotel rooms,
which were across the hall and two rooms apart from each
other.
The couple in the hallway had just exited a room, or so
Mr. Thompson and his aide thought. The man and woman
were now walking together toward the elevators, but also
toward Mr. Thompson and his aide. In fact, these two professionals
did not have a room at the Peninsula. They had
just stood in the hall and waited for Mr. Thompson to get
off the elevator. An accomplice had radioed them when Mr.
Thompson was on his way.
The woman was somewhat attractive, about fifty years
old. The man she was with appeared to be about the same
age. Both were fit and athletic looking. He was wearing a suit
and the woman a cocktail dress. The well-dressed couple in a
nice hotel would not draw any suspicion.
The couple walked toward Mr. Thompson and his aide.
They slowed their pace to allow for Mr. Thompson and his
aide to split off as they approached their respective rooms.
As Mr. Thompson approached his hotel room door, his aide
had already swiped the room key to his door a short distance
away. The aide was opening his door when the commotion
began.
The woman brought her left hand up and cupped it over
her mouth, in some state of shock. With her right hand, she
pointed at Mr. Thompson and walked toward him saying,
“You…you are that politician! You…You voted for the Iraq
War!”
She slapped Thompson hard with her right hand on the
left side of his face and neck. He put his own hand up to the
left side of his face. It was stinging from the slap and also
burning.
The man escorting the woman restrained her and guided
her back away from Mr. Thompson. “I am sorry, sir. Please
forgive this. She lost her son in Iraq. She doesn’t know what
to do. Very distraught.”
Thompson’s aide was still standing at his hotel room
about twenty feet away. His hand was on his door, and
the door was open. He had almost started toward Mr.
Thompson after he heard the slap, but the situation had
defused. The matter appeared to be over. The man seemed
to have the woman under control, and the woman, now
sobbing with her head on the man’s shoulder, did not seem
to be a threat. The man was already escorting her toward
the elevators.
Mr. Thompson was shocked and caught off guard. He
did not feel pain in his neck and face right away. Rather, he
felt empathy—intense pain for a woman who had lost her
son.
Thompson said, “Very…very sorry about your son,
ma’am.” He thought about explaining that he never voted
for the Iraq War, or any war for that matter. He wasn’t in
Congress. He was, thus far, a former governor and a current
candidate for president. But what was the point of trying to
explain all that to a woman grieving the loss of her son? To
her, all politicians were the same. Maybe, he thought, she
recognized him from the news coverage of his campaign.
He just added, “Very sorry, ma’am—sorry about your
son, ma’am,” as the man and woman walked off.
With the couple now almost to the elevator, Mr.
Thompson and his aide looked at each other from in front of
their hotel room doors. Mr. Thompson shrugged his shoulders,
raised his eyebrows, and tilted his head to the side as if
to say, “Oh well.”
His aide took this as a sign that everything was okay
and shook his head in return. Both Mr. Thompson and his
aide nodded good night to each other and entered their
rooms.
Before the couple got to the elevator, the man brought
a zip lock sandwich bag out of his pocket, and the woman
placed her right hand in it. She then placed her hand, with
the plastic zip lock bag over it, down into her purse and held
her purse close to her chest. She would keep her fingers in
the bag and in the purse until they were in the car.
The couple looked down as they entered the elevator,
concealing their faces from the security camera that was
mounted in the top corner. The woman appeared to be crying,
with her head down in the man’s chest. He had his head
down over her, comforting her. They stood at the front of
the elevator, facing the doors, keeping their heads down and
their backs to the camera.
Very professional. No one would get a good ID from
the security cameras. And if they did, so what? The man
and woman both had elaborate disguises on—the woman
a curly wig and the man thick plastic eyeglasses and a
hairpiece.
Inside his room, Mr. Thompson removed his jacket and
tie and started to unbutton his shirt. He looked in the bathroom
mirror because he could still feel where the woman
had slapped him. He was surprised to see three deep fingernail
gouges running along his neck, from just in front of his
left ear to the corner of his jawbone. The scratches weren’t
dripping blood down his neck, but they were red and pooling
blood. He rinsed the scratches with cold water to clean them
and to stop the blood from oozing. He thought about asking
his aide for some Band-Aids or ointment but decided against
it. They all needed to get some sleep. His neck would be fine.
As soon as the couple got into their car, the woman held
out her hand, with the bag still on it. He pulled out a small,
sterile metal nail file. While leaving her fingers in the zip
lock bag, he reached inside the plastic bag and scraped the
nail file under each of her fingernails, scraping out some material
and capturing it all in the bag.
“Nice,” he said. “I think you got some real good ones
here.”
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Discussion Questions

1) How did you feel about the characters? Whom did you like/dislike and why?

2) Did you enjoy reading? Did the story pull you in or did you have to force yourself to read it?

3) In a movie version, who would play what parts?

4) Did any parts evoke a strong emotion in you? Which parts and what emotion?

5) Describe what you liked/disliked about writer’s style.

6) Name your favorite/least favorite thing overall about the book.

7) How do characters change or evolve throughout the story? What events trigger such changes?

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