Sweet Hush by Deborah Smith

Author:Deborah Smith
Language: ara, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks, Inc.
Published: 2012-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

THE AIR IN HIGHLANDS smelled cool and green, like fresh money. The ritzy little town sat atop a plateau so high in the mountains northeast of Chocinaw County it might as well be in Canada. It had golf courses and art galleries, blue-cold fishing lakes and towering firs and million-dollar cabins outfitted like Adirondack mansions. The names of some of America’s wealthiest families were listed on the local tax roles, if you knew where to look for them. In a few hours, when the shops opened, Mercedes and Jaguars would line the streets.

But the town was quiet under pretty street lamps when our motorcade swarmed through. Motorcade. Yes. Me and Jakobek in a black SUV driven by a Secret Service agent, with more black SUV’s in front and back. Jakobek looked unconcerned in khakis and a pullover sweater—whatever he carried in his duffel bag, none of it was formal. I wore, after exactly ten minutes of complicated debate (Wear your best dress suit; show them you’re sophisticated; no, show them you’re so sophisticated you don’t care what they think, so wear jeans, like somebody from New York or California) I had compromised: good jeans, four-hundred-dollar Italian pumps I found at a suburban Atlanta consignment store for fifty dollars, and a navy cashmere sweater I bought at full retail for a speech to a regional meeting of fruit vendors. I twisted my hair up in back a black clasp, and slapped on just enough expensive make-up to give me the melted look of a teenager after a long, sweaty dance party. Helicopters, by the way, are hell on personal décor.

“Lt. Colonel Jakobek,” I said as we drove through the pitch-tar darkness of mountainous North Carolina, “if Al and Edwina Jacobs look their Sunday best at four a.m. after all we’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours, I’ll kiss their ring fingers and admit I should have voted for them.”

“Trust me,” he answered. “You have the advantage. They’ve never met anyone like you.”

I shrugged off the compliment, assuming it was one. I was trying very hard to trust him, considering that he hadn’t left me a whole lot of choices.

Our motorcade purred out of Highlands into the black shadows of winding mountain lanes and paved driveways snaking off to either side, disappearing past handsome, locked gates tucked deep into hundred-year-old oaks and massive hedges of rhododendron, the larger-leafed cousin of Chocinaw County’s delicate evergreen laurel.

Secret Service agents met us at one such gate and waved us through. I wrapped my hands tighter around my purse as our cars curled up the hidden drive onto the wooded knoll of a stone-and-wood estate home easily big enough to swallow my big farmhouse twice with room left for dessert. Agents in sweaters and slacks accessorized with little machine guns stood just outside the edges of the lawn’s landscape lights. To say it all felt surreal was a given. Other agents hustled to the SUV I shared with Jakobek, opened my passenger door, and said “Ma’am,” in the toneless way of law officers giving a traffic ticket.

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