CHAPTER 7
Colorado Governor’s Residence
Denver, Colorado
“You’re twelve goddamn points down, do you hear me?” The veins in Mark Larson’s neck were throbbing as he glared at his wife, Governor Theresa Larson, from across the room. “And if your run for president is finished, then I will be finished with you.”
The Larson machine was not a force to be underestimated.
Mark had made sure of that. Plenty of people out there would like nothing better than to take a swing at him.
People who would be only too happy to tie him down and make him confess to all the conniving and scheming and shitty things he had done.
His wife included.
Governor Larson silently counted to ten, exhaled audibly, and reached for a cigarette.
She continued to stare at him as he paced the room.
With each step she pictured smashing his handsome face with the big crystal ashtray on the coffee table in front of her.
But she knew it was too heavy, and that she wasn’t fast enough.
“Twelve points is a steep deficit,” Theresa admitted. “A lot of stars will have to align, but I know it can be done. Senator Harrison is a joke of a candidate, but somehow he’s leading. What’s the force behind him? I know his wife’s family is connected, but that much? I don’t think so.”
Before her husband could interrupt, Theresa continued.
“We know him for what he is: a social-climbing parasite and a philanderer. But the public loves Harrison’s charm and his lifestyle; they consider him the closest thing to American royalty since JFK.
And his campaign expertly feeds that Kennedy redux story to a willing electorate desperate for another fairy-tale narrative. ”
“Well, Harrison’s running a smart campaign,” Mark argued. “It’s you who cannot afford another mistake. We’ve worked for this very moment for years, yet you play it like it’s no big deal—like it’s a game,” he seethed. “It’s not a fucking game, Theresa.”
“Mark,” she answered earnestly, “everything has been fine with our strategy so far. I don’t understand—why are you so upset over an off-the-cuff comment?”
The governor had been boxed into a tight corner in a recent Morning Joe interview about her policy toward Taiwan and microchips, and whether she would or would not defend the island from the Chinese.
Of course she wouldn’t let the Chinese have free rein over the island, but all she’d said was that the current administration hadn’t figured it out yet, and that such a complicated foreign-policy decision would require the expertise of her future advisers.
She never said anything about independence. Case closed.
It was a safe answer to a loaded question. Any other politician would have given the same vague answer. But apparently that wasn’t good enough for her husband.
“We only have one chance at this!” Mark yelled, his face crimson with rage. “It is real, and it is war, and like I said, if you are out then I am out.”
He stormed out of the room and slammed the door hard enough to make several paintings rattle against the wall.
The governor lit another Marlboro, took a drag, and indulged in her recurring fantasy: killing Mark herself.
She pictured him on his knees, crying, begging her not to pull the trigger as she stood over him with a Walther pistol.
She imagined the whispered sound of the .
22LR bullet leaving a suppressed barrel, and the sight of the small hole in his forehead as he fell backward to the floor.
Then she’d shoot him in the balls.
The thought made her smile. She would make him pay one day.
Yet she had to admit that Mark was right about how far they’d come together. Her rise from local school board to the state legislature to the governorship—and now, the national stage—had been swift and magical.
With Mark or without him, Theresa Larson had to believe she could still grasp the prize. As her uncle liked to say, Bad things happen to bad people.