First Lady Read Online Free PDF

had taken one more turn for the worse.
    He sensed movement behind him and saw the Winona lookalike standing in the doorway chewing on another fingernail and watching every move he made. There was something distinctly protective about the glances she kept shooting at the crib. The kid wasn’t nearly the hard ass she pretended to be.
    He jerked his head toward the baby. “She needs her diaper changed. I’ll meet you in the living room when you’re done.”
    “Like, get real. I don’t change shitty diapers.”
    Since she’d been taking care of the baby for weeks, that was obviously a lie, but if she expected him to do it, she could think again. When he’d finally escaped from the Hell House of Women, he’d promised himself that he’d never change another diaper, look at another Barbie, or tie another frigging hair bow. Still, the kid had guts, so he decided to make it easy on her. “I’ll give you five bucks.”
    “Ten. In advance.”
    If he hadn’t been in such a foul mood, he might have laughed. At least she had street smarts to go along with all that bravado. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and handed over the money. “Meet me by my car as soon as you’re done. And bring her along.”
    Her forehead creased, and for a moment she looked more like a soccer mom than a sullen teenager. “You got a car seat?”
    “Do I look like somebody who’s got a car seat?”
    “You got to put a kid in a car seat. It’s the law.”
    “You a cop?”
    She cocked her head. “Her seat’s in Mabel. The Winnebago. Sandy called it Mabel.”
    “Didn’t your mother have a car?”
    “The dealer took it back a couple of months before she died, so she drove Mabel.”
    “Swell.” He wasn’t going to ask how she’d come into possession of a battered motor home. Instead, he tried to figure out how he was supposed to get a teenager, a baby, and a car seat in his two-passenger Mercedes. Only one answer. He wasn’t.
    “Give me the keys.”
    He could see her trying to figure out if she could get away with mouthing off again, then wisely concluding she couldn’t.
    Keys in hand, he went outside to get acquainted with Mabel. On the way, he picked up the cell phone from his Mercedes, along with the newspaper he hadn’t found a chance to read.
    He needed to duck to get into the motor home, which was roomy, but not roomy enough for six feet six. He settled behind the wheel and put in a call to a doctor pal of his in Pittsburgh for the name of a nearby lab and the necessary authorization. While he was on hold, he picked up the newspaper.
    Like most journalists, he was a news junkie, but nothing unusual caught his attention. There’d been an earthquake in China, a car bombing in the Middle East, budget squabbles in Congress, more trouble in the Balkans. Toward the bottom of the page was a picture of Cornelia Case with another sick baby in her arms.
    Although he’d never been much of a Cornelia watcher, she seemed thinner in every recent photograph. The First Lady had terrific blue eyes, but they’d started to appear too big for her face, and nice eyes couldn’t make up for the fact that there didn’t seem to be a real woman behind them, just an extremely smart politician programmed by her father.
    When he’d been at Byline , they’d done a couple of puff pieces on Cornelia—her hairdresser, her taste in fashion, how she honored her husband’s memory—bullshit stuff. Still, he felt sorry for her. Having a husband assassinated would put a crimp in anybody’s happy face.
    He frowned at the memory of his year in tabloid television. Before then, he’d been a print journalist, one of the most highly regarded reporters in Chicago, but he’d thrown away his reputation to make a pile of money he’d soon discovered he had little interest in spending. Now all he wanted out of life was to wipe the tarnish off his name.
    Mat’s idols weren’t Ivy League journalists, but guys who’d used two fingers to punch out hard-hitting