Absolute Power Read Online Free PDF

ritual. He never had to worry about his fiancée stumbling onto this particular possession of his because she absolutely refused to enter his bedroom for longer than a minute. Whenever they slid between the sheets it was either at her place, where Jack would lie on the bed staring up at the twelve-foot ceiling where a mural of ancient horsemen and young maidens shared space while Jennifer amused herself until she collapsed and then rolled over for him to finish on top of her. Or at her parents’ place in the country where the ceilings were even higher and the murals had been taken from some thirteenth-century church in Rome, all of which made Jack feel that God was watching him being ridden by the beautiful and absolutely naked Jennifer Ryce Baldwin and that he would languish in eternal hell for those few moments of visceral pleasure.
    The woman in the photo had silky brown hair that curled slightly at the ends. Her smile looked up at Jack and he remembered the day he had taken the picture.
    A bike ride far into the countryside of Albemarle County. He was just starting law school; she was in her second year of college at Mr. Jefferson’s university. It was only their third date but it was like they had never lived without each other.
    Kate Whitney.
    He said the name slowly; his hand instinctively traced the curves of her smile, the lone dimple right above the left cheek that gave her face a slightly lopsided look. The almond-shaped cheekbones bordered a dainty nose that sloped toward a pair of sensual lips. The chin was sharp and screamed out “stubborn.” Jack moved back up the face and stopped at the large teardrop-shaped eyes that always seemed full of mischief.
    Jack rolled back over and lay the photo on his chest so that she stared directly at him. He could never think of Kate without seeing an image of her father, with his quick wit and crooked smile.
    Jack had often visited Luther Whitney at his little row house in an Arlington neighborhood that had seen better days. They spent hours drinking beer and telling stories, mostly Luther telling and Jack listening.
    Kate never visited her father, and he never attempted to contact her. Jack had found his identity almost by accident, and despite Kate’s objections, Jack had wanted to get to know the man. It was a rare thing for her face to hold anything but a smile, but that was one thing she never smiled about.
    After he graduated they moved to D.C. and she enrolled in law school at Georgetown. Life seemed idyllic. She came to his first few trials as he worked the butterflies from his stomach and the squeak from his throat and tried to remember which counsel table to sit at. But as the seriousness of the crimes his clients were accused of committing grew, her enthusiasm diminished.
    They had split up his first year in practice.
    The reasons were simple: she couldn’t understand why he had chosen to represent people who broke the law, and she could not tolerate that he liked her father.
    At the very last breath of their lives together he remembered sitting with her in this very room and asking, pleading, for her not to leave. But she had and that was four years ago, and he hadn’t seen or heard from her since.
    He knew that she had taken a job with the Commonwealth Attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, where she was no doubt busily putting former clients of his behind bars for stomping on the laws of her adopted state. Other than that Kate Whitney was a stranger to him.
    But lying there with her staring at him with a smile that told him a million things that he had never learned from the woman he was supposed to marry in six months, Jack wondered if Kate would remain a stranger to him; whether his life was destined to become far more complicated than he ever intended. He grabbed the phone and dialed.
    Four rings and he heard the voice. It had an edge that he didn’t remember, or maybe it was new. The beep came and he started to leave a message, something funny,