Page 55 of Resisting His Target
“No.”
He nodded, respecting her answer. Understanding it. “I’ll find you somewhere else to stay.”
“I can do it myself. You’ve done so much already.”
Her polite tone made him want to scream, but all he said was, “If you’re sure.”
He gave the driver the name of his hotel. Given that they’d passed it when they left the convention center, it was only a few blocks away. They made the trip in silence, the car slowly pulling up to the curb.
“Thank you for everything you did for us, Ian. I’ll never forget you.” She longed to lean in for a brief hug, the familiar scent of her skin making him long to touch him still, but she didn’t do it.
“Goodbye, Jackie. Give Selena a kiss for me.” As he walked into the hotel, he couldn’t help but feel as if he was walking away from a life, just as surely as Jackie had once walked away from her own.
He was a steel skeleton, useful and strong.
It was better this way.
34
So this is a media frenzy.
Jackie waited in the arrivals area of Dulles Airport, Selena and Sloan’s plane already at the gate. In had been twenty-four hours since the convention, time she’d spent in the comfort and safety of Jax and Jessa’s house in the suburbs of DC, impatiently waiting for her daughter.
Sloan was well enough to travel after being hospitalized overnight for observation, thank goodness. Jackie owed him an enormous debt of gratitude for protecting Selena. Her daughter had also told her about Bill guiding her out of the forest and to the authorities who freed Sloan, a miraculous story she didn’t doubt for a moment to be true.
Levi Ludlow was arrested for attempted murder, for forcing her car off the cliff. He couldn’t be charged for SVX’s attack in Mexico, but the murder rap was enough to disgrace him and take him out of public life for good. Jackie had caught a glimpse of him with a towel over his face on his way from the arraignment, and heard he’d been released on bail shortly after.
Doug was already making the rounds on every talk show imaginable, weeping and trying to “make amends to the American people,” which told Jackie he hadn’t completely kissed off politics just yet and wasn’t likely to do so.
Do what you do best.
A flash went off in her peripheral vision and she resisted the urge to scowl at the photographer. It was pointless. She needed to wait for the public’s interest to die down—something that wasn’t going to happen until they got their fill, and a good look at Jackie’s daughter. There had already been speculation in the tabloids that the girl could be Doug McGrath’s, and while it would have been easier to refute those claims with Razorback by her side, she would be able to handle it alone with the documentation he’d signed.
That was his gift to her.
She hadn’t decided what the future should hold for her and Selena, whether they should stay in America or go back to Mexico permanently, but she was in no hurry to make up her mind after everything they’d been through. Jessa and Jax had said they could stay as long as they liked, and that open door was exactly what they needed right now.
Sloan’s head appeared above the crowd of people walking toward the gate, and he and Jackie smiled at each other down the long corridor. Happy tears once again fell from Jackie’s eyes. When they got closer, she could see Selena, and the waterworks really got out of hand. They embraced, the chaos, camera flashes, and time they’d spent apart all seeming to blow away like dust on the wind. There was just Jackie and her daughter, the way it was meant to be.
She’d hugged Sloan as tightly as she’d dared, though he was clearly in pain, and thanked him profusely. He’d scheduled this short layover in DC before returning home to New York, and they parted with promises to get together again soon.
Selena rested her head on her mother’s lap. “Where’s Razorback?”
“He went home, sweetie.”
“But I wanted to see him.”
“Sorry, baby. Not this time.”
“How far away is New York?”
“Too far.”
They arrived back at Jessa’s house. Selena was exhausted, and Jackie tucked her into bed before settling in front of the eleven o’clock news featuring Frank Gough, the reporter who’d helped her get into the convention. “Levi Ludlow was found dead this evening of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Former campaign manager to disgraced presidential candidate Doug McGrath, Ludlow had been accused of hiring a hitman to kill McGrath’s estranged wife, who’d been living in Mexico since her disappearance eight years earlier.”
Jackie frowned. “Poor Levi,” she said, more for the person he’d once been than for the person he turned out to be. It wasn’t a shock after all that had transpired, but it was still sad to see how his life had played out. He was hungry for power, and he always had been. That was his downfall.
Jackie sighed. While there was a peace that came with having her daughter back, she still felt unsettled. It would be so much nicer to have Razorback here with her on the couch. She longed to talk to him about Ludlow, about Selena and Sloan, about the future.
