Code of Honor полностью

Chadwick wore a baseball cap over her thick brunette hair. Not because she was trying to hide her identity from anyone in the trendy Adams Morgan restaurant called Madam’s Organ, but because David Huang had taken her to play baseball that evening. He sat across from her now, chatting amiably while he ate seasoned french fries like they would never go to his gut. David wore glasses, which made him look like an Asian version of Clark Kent. He was at least a decade younger than she was, but already had a hint of gray at his temples. That made her feel a tad less cougarish. He was Canadian — which, she supposed, explained why he was so damned nice — and worked as a lobbyist for a First Nations group out of Winnipeg. The fact that he was of Chinese descent didn’t seem to bother his employers at all. He was scary smart, and had the legal chops to go with his brains. Chadwick had met him at a function promoting Native literacy — something dear to her Native American constituents in her home state of Arizona. She’d been so smitten she couldn’t even remember who’d introduced them.

He’d keyed in on the very essence of her from the beginning, like he had some kind of secret dossier. She should have been alarmed. It was as if he knew her inner thoughts — but even spies didn’t have access to those. They both loved dogs, butter-pecan ice cream, and the color azure. He’d actually used the word. Azure. Just like she did, when others might wuss out and say “sky blue” or something equally lame. He’d quipped that it was too good to be true, like they were related or something. She’d flirtatiously said she hoped that was not so, just in case he also liked to sleep in nothing but a T-shirt. As it turned out, that, too, was a habit they shared — that very evening and many others over the next two months.

Chadwick’s adviser, Corey Fite, had pretended to be jealous when she started seeing David on a regular basis, but she knew he was relieved. That physical relationship had always been awkward, and a little one-sided — though a man always got something out if it, didn’t he, even if he was being used. Corey had been available, if a little too vanilla for a girl who liked butter pecan.

David Huang was anything but ordinary. He was smart and well read and traveled — and it didn’t hurt that he had muscles in places most men didn’t have places. Chadwick knew her colleagues on the Hill thought of her as a coldhearted bitch, a battle-ax, a Wagnerian Valkyrie complete with horned helmet — and she was all those things. But David Huang made her feel like a schoolgirl — like he was a professional boyfriend.

She reached across the table to touch his hand. “Want to go back to my apartment after this?”

“I want to,” Huang said. “But there’s something I have to do first.”

A television over the bar showed a smug President Ryan walking across the White House lawn to a waiting Marine One. Ryan wasn’t a bad-looking guy, she thought. Just evil.

David followed her gaze over his shoulder to the screen. “Look at the way he salutes. You can tell he wishes he was in the military.”

“He was a Marine,” Chadwick said automatically. She’d made it a point to know everything about her opponent. He could never run for President again, but he was powerful, and would surely try to shove someone he wanted down the country’s throat.

“A Marine.” Huang grunted, turning so he could get a little better view of the screen. “It’s no wonder he tries to start wars all over the world. What wouldn’t you do to bring him down?”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” Chadwick said.

Huang turned back around to fully face her, taking her hands in his on top of the table. “Really?”

“Really what?”

Huang’s playful demeanor turned to stone. “Would you do anything to bring Jack Ryan down?”

Chadwick drew her hands away, hackles going up.

“Why are you asking me that? You know how I feel.”

“Don’t be that way,” he said. “I just mean, you know, he’s a problem that needs to be fixed.”

She gave a skeptical nod. “I want him out of office.”

“And we can help with that.”

The way he said “we” made her shiver.

“Let’s talk about something else. I’m not comfortable with where this is going…”

“Nothing has changed,” Huang said. “But I do think it’s time we take the next logical step.”

He reached beneath the table and produced a cell phone, wrapped in the wires of a set of earbuds. He pushed it toward her.

“There is something you have to see.”

“I don’t have to do shit,” Chadwick snapped. She wanted to get up and leave, but something about the way he looked at her kept her rooted in place. The look in his eyes said he would feel really, really bad if he had to kill her.

“I’ll concede to that,” he said. “You do not have to see it, but you should.” He nudged the phone a little closer. “Please. Take a look for me.”

Chadwick groaned. She unwound the cord and tilted her head, pushing back her hair so she could insert one of the earbuds.