Hero Read Online Free PDF

the day his dad died, he looked down again, expecting to see his fists bruised, his knuckles raw and covered with blood.
    Zach saw nothing.
    More amazing, considering the fact that he’d just gone twelve rounds with a brick wall?
    He felt nothing.

6
    ZACH wasn’t the only one trying to settle back into the old routines and fit them around his new life.
    His mom was, too.
    Even before his dad had died, his mom had been working hard to help get Senator Robert Kerrigan of New York elected president, and not just because Senator Kerrigan went all the way back to Harvard with Zach’s dad the way Uncle John did. She believed in the good of the man. It was why she was back into the campaign full-time, throwing herself into it harder than ever.
    His mom, Elizabeth Townsend Harriman, was pretty famous herself. She was the daughter of a former U.S. senator, niece of a former secretary of state, and now ran the Townsend Foundation, traveling the world to give Townsend Foundation money away to people in need.
    “I need the work,” she had explained to Zach, “I need the outlet, I need something to take my mind off what happened. And on top of all that? This country needs Bob Kerrigan.”
    “Mom,” Zach said. “You don’t have to explain to me. I know how much Dad liked Senator Kerrigan. I see him sometimes on TV, and even I like listening to his speeches.”
    Senator Kerrigan had been a few years behind Zach’s dad at Harvard. And both of them had ended up in government service. Tom Harriman had become President Addison’s troubleshooter, the globe-trotter. Bob Kerrigan had started out as a New York City lawyer, become a judge and gone to work in the Justice Department before finally becoming President Addison’s attorney general.
    But eventually he’d moved back to New York and run for the U.S. Senate and won. Last year he’d surprised everybody—including Zach’s mom and dad—by announcing in the middle of his first term in the Senate that he was going to run to succeed President Addison, whose term limit of eight years was almost up.
    And he was supposed to be the same kind of long shot, the same kind of inexperienced guy that Zach knew President Addison had been. Except now he was the front-runner in the polls, even running against the current vice president, Dick Boras. Zach’s mom had explained to him that usually the sitting vice president was a shoo-in to get the nomination.
    Just not this time.
    When Zach had asked why not, she’d said, “Because Vice President Boras is old and mean and Bill Addison never should have picked him as a running mate in the first place.”
    “Works for me,” Zach’d said.
    Tonight, his mom was holding a fund-raiser for Senator Kerrigan at their apartment, her first big social occasion of any kind since Zach’s dad had died. Down the road, there would be a much bigger New York City event for Senator Kerrigan in Central Park, one that Zach’s mom was already planning in her head. For now, she was using the Harriman name—and Townsend, her maiden name—to attract people who were willing to make contributions to the Kerrigan campaign.
    “Small crowd,” she said, “but deep pockets.”
    “Ooh,” Zach said, “ rich people. My favorite !”
    “Hush,” his mom said, “and go make sure your nice clothes are clean.”
    He used an old line of his dad’s on her then, knowing it would make her smile.
    “Don’t worry about me tonight, Mom,” he said. “I promise not to bother the decent people.”
    She pointed upstairs. “Go,” she said. “I have to go into the kitchen now and yell at the caterer a little more.”
    But she looked happy just to be busy, the first time she had really looked that way to Zach since the funeral. That was good enough for him.
    He was keeping himself busy, too, on a campaign of his own.
    Just not one that he wanted to tell anybody about yet.
     
    Zach put on the same blazer and tie he’d worn to his dad’s funeral, telling himself that they