The Impostor by R.J. Patterson

Author:R.J. Patterson [Patterson, R.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Jennifer Funk had stared at the list of potential employees for a new campaign strategist and weighed her decision. The list had been packed with Washington A-listers, at least in the political sphere. And they all had one thing in common—they all towed the party line. No rule breakers. No outside-the-box thinkers. No trailblazers. Just solid candidates with plenty of experience, but nobody that had felt like a home run hire, at least not to her. She had seemed resigned to accept someone who would do a solid job, albeit not one that would win her kudos for her bravery to take a risk with a lesser-known commodity. Just simply solid. Nothing more, nothing less.

And she’d hated it.

But that sense of dread vanished when she received a package from Chelsea Youngblood, who gave her insight into what Cameron Doyle’s camp was thinking. And they were thinking how she wanted to think, how she needed to think, how she had to think if she was going to resurrect her reeling campaign and surge to the front. The name almost shimmered on the page as she read it: Maverick Adler.

She hadn’t heard that name in several years, not since he was at the center of a lawsuit for stealing proprietary software for finding private card games and rebranding it as his own. The software business was quite the pivot from someone who just a few years earlier had been Washington’s most adored creative thinker, a man who single-handedly put the city’s collective think tanks to shame with his prolific ideas. In the last election cycle, he’d been responsible for generating the five best approaches to solving some of the country’s biggest problems as it related to education, transportation, taxes, healthcare, and Social Security. The only problem was five candidates had hired five different firms that all contracted with Adler. No one would’ve known, except for the dogged reporting of one journalist. After the dust had settled, an independent reporter sought to uncover who was responsible for all of the election cycle’s best ideas and found Adler to be the sole genius contriving these solutions.

But Funk hesitated.

The last time Youngblood floated an idea that the Doyle campaign was going to push, Funk stole it and paid a steep price. However, this wasn’t an idea. This was a person, a specific person, a person who could deliver on innovative ways to energize voters.

Imagine if I had all Adler’s best ideas last election cycle.

Lost in a world of “what ifs,” Funk snapped out of her trance when she heard someone rapping on her office door. She looked up to see Frank Parham on the other side of the glass, his forehead creased with rows of deep lines, every inch of them on full display and a vivid reminder of why people called him “The Bulldog.” He didn’t wait for her to wave him inside.

“Don’t do it, Jennifer,” Parham said as he tossed a manila folder onto her desk that landed with a thud.

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