Page 71 of The Illusion of Power (Passion and Politics #1)
BECK
S elene is gone.
Selene is gone, and the only thing we have left of her is the bracelet we gave her to prevent this exact thing from happening. That was supposed to keep us from spending days on end chasing down fruitless leads and cycling through the same fucking questions every five seconds.
Where is she?
Is she hurt?
Is she scared?
Is she still alive?
My hand turns to a fist around the plastic evidence bag when that question pops into my head again. I can’t get it out, can’t get past the sight of the clasp of the bracelet lying in pieces at the bottom of the bag, broken like my heart.
Cal had been the one to find it. His hands shook around his shattered phone as we followed the dot with her face on it to a hallway near the only exit in the polling center without a camera.
I kept asking him to let me hold it, to let me see, to let me lead us to her, knowing that life had already prepared me for what we might find.
He refused. Whether to spare me from experiencing that same pain or to maintain some semblance of control, I don’t know, but I appreciated it all the same.
Just like I appreciated the way he knocked me to the ground when the first explosion went off, using his body to shield me from harm.
The bombs outside and in the lobby had been small but powerful.
We were able to use footage from the camera people to determine that the initial blast originated from some black duffel bags that were strategically placed to blend in with the equipment bags belonging to the news crews.
The two that went off inside the voting area were a little bigger, causing a few fatalities, collapsing part of the ceiling, and damaging a couple of machines.
We knew from the moment we entered the scene that Selene’s body wouldn’t be among the wreckage.
The locator on her bracelet told us she’d gotten away from the blast site, and I held out hope that we’d find her in the hallway, hurt but alive.
Instead, we ended up with nothing but a broken bracelet and, a few feet away in the alley, an unconscious Charlie Monroe with a nasty head wound.
Cal is reminding me about the severity of concussions right now, while we’re standing outside of Charlie’s apartment. I’ve placed the evidence bag in my pocket, and the hand that was just clenched around it is poised to knock on her door.
“The doctor said her concussion was pretty bad,” he warns me when the knock is more of a bang.
“Don’t care.”
When I hear no movement on the other side of the door, I bang again. Hard.
“She already gave her statement to the FBI and Homeland.”
“Don’t care about that either.”
“I know you don’t.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, his jaw rigid as I start pounding on the door. “Just figured I’d remind you anyway.”
“You don’t care either,” I tell him, dropping my fist when I hear the sound of shuffling feet on the other side of the door. “You don’t give a fuck about her concussion or her statement, you give a fuck about Selene.”
“I do, but I also give a fuck about you, and we can’t find her if you’re in jail for harassing a federal agent.”
My chance to address his concerns is stolen by the loud click of a dead bolt being undone. Charlie’s face appears through the gap created by the chain on her door, and she squints against the sunlight.
“We need to talk,” I say, by way of greeting.
She rubs at her temple. “You should have called first.”
“No time. Unlock the door, Monroe.”
Cal’s urging gets the ball rolling. She closes the door and undoes the chain.
This time, when she opens it, it’s wide with a reluctant invitation.
It stays that way as she tiptoes back down the hall gingerly, walking like her whole body hurts.
I don’t care if she’s in pain, though, and I don’t care if I’m being rude when I start questioning her before she even settles into the armchair across from the couch we make ourselves at home at.
“Do you know what day it is, Charlie?” I cross my legs, resting clasped hands on my knee. She frowns. “Tuesday, November 5th.”
“Election Day, also known as the day Jacob Marsh plans to kill Selene Taylor.”
We don’t know that for sure because we haven’t heard from him.
There have been no ransom demands, no posts bragging about outsmarting the FBI and Secret Service, or mocking Aubrey for spending every minute he’s not drumming up votes in front of a camera playing the role of the loving, panic-stricken husband.
The quiet is worrying. It makes every second longer, every day without her more unbearable, and yet, I understand it.
Charlie said that Jacob was smart, that he wouldn’t make the same mistakes his father did.
Leland got found out because he overplayed his hand, so his son is being extra careful, playing things close to the vest, leaving us chasing our tails, ensuring we’ll be scrambling to make a plan when he finally reaches out, which will be today.
I can feel it in my bones.
Charlie seems to be feeling something in her bones, too. She grips her ribs and winces as she adjusts in her chair.
“Listen, I’m sorry that things happened the way they did. I wish I could have—” she pauses, biting her lip. “I wish I could have stopped this. I tried. I swear, I did, but there were just too many of them.”
Cal scoots to the edge of his seat, placing his elbows on his thighs. At first, I think he’s going to try to empathize with her, but his tone is wrapped in impatience when he speaks.
“Walk us through it again, Monroe.”
“Cal, I already have. I’ve given this statement twice. ”
“Then it won’t be a problem to give it once more,” he snaps. “Start with why you were out of the car when you had strict orders to wait inside the vehicle.”
She blows a breath of frustration through flared nostrils. “I had to take a call from my mom’s nurse. You probably don’t know this since you only call when you need a favor, but she’s sick.”
Skipping right past her attempt to guilt-trip Cal, I ask, “Why did you have to take the call outside of the car?”
“Because I didn’t have good reception.” She looks between us, seeing what I’m guessing are matching frowns of disapproval. “I know it wasn’t a good idea with all the cameras around, but that’s why I walked down the block a bit, to keep them from seeing me and potentially blowing my cover.”
“How long were you on the phone?”
“Three minutes and sixteen seconds.”
Cal doesn’t let her catch her breath, hitting her with another question immediately.
“When you heard the initial blast, why didn’t you come to investigate?”
“I knew the threat was in front, so I went to the back to clear the entrance and find Selene because I knew she was the priority.”
The use of ‘was’ grates against my nerves. “ Is ,” I remind Charlie. “Selene is the priority. She’s not dead, so don’t talk about her in the past tense.”
Her eyes flash with defiance, but she tempers her reaction with another heavy breath. “I didn’t mean it like that, Beck. I was just trying to be as accurate in my language as possible.”
Waving her off, I redirect the line of conversation. “Be accurate in your description of the events in the hallway. How did the bracelet get broken?”
As soon as I mention it, the evidence bag holding the bracelet seems to get heavier, weighing down the pocket in my jacket where it resides, pulling my shoulders down into a shameful slope.
We failed her.
We were right outside the room, on the other side of the door, and we couldn’t get to her.
Charlie said she had been hurt, that when she found her, she was pinned to the ground by debris.
She wasn’t able to confirm the extent of Selene’s injuries, though.
Everyone keeps floating the idea that we haven’t heard from Jacob because she might have succumbed to her wounds, leaving Jacob with a body to dispose of and a country to flee.
No part of me wants to accept that possibility.
“I don’t remember.” She squeezes her eyes tight, trying to recall, shaking her head when the memory won’t emerge.
“Everything was moving so fast, and Selene was hurt. I just knew I needed to get her out of there. We approached the door, and that’s when I saw the SUV.
It was black like the ones from the detail, but a little older.
” Her nose wrinkles. “That’s what made me stop short. It just looked off.”
“But you still went out the door,” Cal says. “Why?”
“Because Harris was behind the wheel.”
That sentence resonates with me as intensely as it did the first time I heard it.
Charlie wasn’t able to identify all of her attackers, but she identified Harris because, unlike everyone else, he wasn’t wearing a mask.
She said it seemed to her that he wanted to be seen, that he wanted Selene to know he was the one betraying all of our confidences.
After Charlie pointed the finger at Harris, we paid Anderson a visit, digging deeper into the ‘damning’ evidence that had been gathered against him.
He told us the same story he told Lennon and Charlie, which was that he’d never seen the phone before it was brought into the interrogation room in an evidence bag and that he’d only left the green room unattended at the news station because a breakfast burrito Harris got him wasn’t sitting right on his stomach.
Apparently, it had real cheese on it, and Anderson is lactose intolerant.
All of this information, coupled with the fact that Harris has been missing for as long as Selene has, should make it less shocking to hear the facts repeated, but it doesn’t. It just gives me another thing to be mad about, another person to picture hurting the woman I love.
“And he wasn’t alone?” I push the words past the lump in my throat that swells and throbs when Charlie shakes her head.