Chapter Five
Early the next morning, we’re sitting at Shea’s small kitchen table and sipping cups of coffee. I arrived before dawn and I’ve already given her a good spanking and fucking. She lives in a townhouse, an end unit, but her next-door neighbor is out of the country until February.
Now we’re chatting before I leave to go work out and grocery shopping, followed by returninghome to my apartment and catching up on laundry. I’ve let her wear a robe while we chat because it’s bitterly cold outside this morning, the house feels a little chilly in the kitchen, and she gets cold easily. I’m wearing sweatpants and nothing else.
We haven’t talked shop yet. Fucking and spanking first, because it’s easier for us to find time to talk than it is for us to find safe time andspace to fuck and…the other stuff.
Especiallythe other stuff. Vanilla fucking, or getting head from her, is easy to sneak in. But that gets boring, after a while, and we both need…
More.
“Explain your rationale,” she says.
I don’t need a map to know she’s shifted gears. “He’s media savvy—”
She held up a hand. “Hooo, that wasnotmedia savvy I saw on display when I watched the video lastnight.”
When I arch an eyebrow at her, she sits back and waves at me to continue.
“He’s media savvy,” I repeat. “He knows politics and government. He can parse complex policy into plain English. He’d be excellent at managing optics. He’s good with people. He’s got the face for it. This incident aside, normally he’s a calm, steady presence. I don’t understand why he snapped.”
I see somethingin her expression, and I arch the eyebrow again.
“I did some asking around last night,” she finally admits. “To see if anyone knew why he snapped. You have to admit, Chris, that was pretty…nuclear.”
My heart races.Please don’t be a brain tumor!Pleasedon’t be a brain tumor!“Yeah?”
“You were still out of town, so you probably didn’t hear about this. But here in DC, two young, black, gay malecongressional staffers were attacked outside a bar Thursday night. One of them is still in the hospital, and it’s unknown if he’ll survive. The attackers were two white guys, who witnesses got on video screaming racial and homophobic slurs at them. They were harassing the staffers inside the bar earlier, when the men wouldn’t give up their seats at the bar where a hockey game was on TV, and theywanted to watch it.
“Bar threw the drunk white assholes out, and the guys waited for the staffers outside, where they ambushed them, attacked them with bricks, and nearly killed the one guy. It’s being prosecuted as a hate crime. The irony? The staffers both work forRepublicanson the Hill.”
“Holy shit.” I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose.
There’s more, and she tells me. “Notthe morning show Markos’ ex-wife hosts, but three others on FNB insinuated that the staffers must have been doing something to incite the white guys to attack them. Word is pressure came from above to skew the story.”
I groan. “Oooohhh, Jesus Christ.” I’m reasonably certain I now know what made him snap last night.
But she’s still not done. “And apparently one of the attackers, who are bothin jail, thankfully, is the son of another congressional staffer. The network was pressing Markos to have the guy on his show last night so the man could defend his son’s character. The guy is friends with one of the network VPs.”
“Yikes.”
“It gets worse.”
I’m not sure I heard her correctly at first and I stare at her. “Howcould it getworse, Shae?”
“Markos learned literally minutes beforegoing on the air last night that the mother of the victim who’s still in ICU collapsed and died at the hospital.”
That would do it.
Maybe I haven’t personally spoken with Kevin Markos in twenty years, but I literally have never missed an episode of any show he’s been the host of. I’ve worn out several DVRs in my time from recording and watching him, and I’ve either watched the episodes later,or streamed them online. I obsessively follow him on social media. I spend an unhealthy amount of free time studying him the way I would any other subject I need to know about for my job.
Kevin might be conservative, but he’s always been a strident supporter of equal rights, and a vocal opponent of things like voter suppression and discrimination.
Knowing what I know about Kevin, no doubt thiswas a double whammy of epic proportions.
I open my eyes and look at her. “I suspect the circumstances are connected.”
She gives me a snarky expression but keeps it out of her tone. “That’s probably a safe bet.”
