Page 71 of Midnight Secrets

“What?” Lauren glanced down at the drawing she’d made and blinked. “Oh. Yes. Wow. I’ve seen him on TV. It does look like him, doesn’t it?”

But Isabel could barely hear Lauren above the buzzing in her head, so when she spoke, her voice was loud. The group huddled around Felicity’s computer lifted their heads and looked at her.

“Hector Blake!” she shouted. “Uncle Hector.”

Her head felt like it was splitting open.

Joe was right beside her. She hadn’t even seen him cross the room. He opened his arms and she huddled against him because right now her skin wasn’t enough to keep her together. She was shaking so hard she was going to fly apart in a million pieces.

Uncle Hector.

He’d always just…been there. Her parents had been social animals with hundreds of friends and she’d grown up surrounded by people, Uncle Hector included. He wasn’t actually her blood uncle, but their families had been friends for generations and he’d grown up with her father.

She didn’t really like him, never had. He’d always seemed so pompous and self-important, but then she didn’t always like her parents’ friends. She didn’t have to. There were plenty of other people around to like.

She wasn’t even too sure her dad liked him. Her mom certainly hadn’t.

Hector Blake, Uncle Hector.

She was choking, shaking, trying to drag in air. Everyone was standing around her. Lauren and Felicity. Metal and Jacko and one of the two bosses. They were watching her as she fell apart.

No.

She stood straight, stepped back. Joe dropped his arms. He sensed she didn’t want the support. She had to be strong here. When she was standing apart, she wrapped her own arms around herself because she was the only one who could support her. She was the only one who could do this.

Memories were flooding in, an unstoppable flow, that night now clear in her head, so clear it was as if she was reliving it.

“Hector Blake,” she repeated, as if his name were some kind of horrible mantra. And she saw no surprise in anyone’s eyes.

“Tell us, honey,” Joe said.

“That night…” She stopped for a second, breathing heavily, breathing as if it was a job she had to do. No one shuffled their feet or coughed. No one betrayed any impatience whatsoever. They wanted to hear what she had to say and they were willing to wait for it, however long it took.

That gave her courage.

“It was about ten minutes to the time Dad was going to make his announcement. The evening looked completely spontaneous but three days of planning had gone into it, into the timing and what Dad was going to say. Everyone was excited. There was a lot of noise. People screaming, the piped-in music, it was like a wall of noise. But the planners knew that this would be the moment of maximum excitement before Dad made his announcement. And they knew there would be pandemonium when he finally threw his hat into the ring, officially. Dad’s advisors were all smiling, really happy. I’d gone out a couple of times with one of Dad’s press officers and I asked him if all this excitement was fake and he said no. He said a lot of people understood that they were on a trajectory that would take them straight to the Oval Office.”

She’d shaken her head at that and decided then and there that there wouldn’t be a third date. This thirst for power wasn’t something she understood. She barely understood it in her own father, even though she knew that in him, it was mixed up with an idealistic sense of mission. For the aides and hangers-on of the new campaign, there was no mission, no ideals, just the whiff of power.

She met Joe’s sober eyes, dark and steady. He was with her as she stepped into the past, into an unimaginably painful and brutal past.

“All the family was up on the stage except for me and Jack. I think he’d gone to the bathroom. I had to take a call. My agent, calling from New York with an offer. I was talking to her, walking around the podium for an exit because we could barely hear each other, when—” She drew in a deep breath. This part was well-known. “When we were cut off. I was checking my cell, thinking to call her back and then all the lights went out. It was like someone had waved a magic wand and created darkness.”

Her voice had gone up in a tremolo. She clenched her teeth, getting herself back under control. Or at least as much control as she could manage.

“But there were candles on the front tables, an array of them. They were going to dim the lights and they’d threaded the floral arrangements with tea lights. My mom insisted because she loves—” Isabel’s eyes widened in horror. Her mom didn’t love candles anymore. Her mom was in the cold, cold ground. Together with her father and three brothers. Her throat spasmed and she had to cough to loosen it. “Loved. My mom loved candles. There were also big wax bowls with several tea lights inside, surrounded by the floral arrangements. Beautiful. But more than that, they shed light.”

An eerie light, she remembered. Like footlights in theaters in the nineteenth century, lighting faces from the bottom, leaving features indistinct. Leaving the eyes in shadow.

And at the same time the world came to an end.

“There were—there were screams from all around the room. And a ripping sound.”

“AK-47s,” Joe murmured.

“Guns, yes,” Isabel said. “Machine guns. Those were in my dreams. There were men everywhere, it seemed. I couldn’t count them. Dressed in black, with black ski masks and black goggles. What you said was night vision gear. Outside the front tables which were lit by the candles, it was pitch-black. So they could see in the dark and we couldn’t.”

Her heart burned. Such a horrible cowardly thing. Shooting innocent people in the dark when they could see! Not even allowing for the possibility of anyone defending themselves, innocent unarmed people in the dark, against armed men who could see. “People were screaming in the dark, scrambling to get out of the way, and then they started falling. One masked terrorist planted himself on the other side of the tables with candles and opened fire on the podium. As if he were shooting ducks in a gallery in the county fair. Left to right.” She closed her eyes but the scene she’d repressed for months was painted on the inside of her eyeballs. Her memory had come roaring back to life and it was exactly as if she was living it again. “My mom, my kid brothers. Mowed down.” She shook.

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