The Abduction

The Abduction Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: The Abduction Read Online Free PDF
Author: James Grippando
questions about her character. Was she hiding something? If so, would the American people elect as president a woman who had cheated on her husband?
    As the warm shower waters pelted her body, she recalled her mother’s words eight years ago, when Emily was abducted—the Leahy creed that “everything happens for a reason.” This morning, not even the creed made sense. Allison had come to terms with the loss of her daughter only by reasoning that she was destined to do something else with her life, something so great that it was beyond even motherhood. She immersed herself in volunteer work, eventually landing as executive director of the Benton Foundation and head of the Coalition for America’s Children, where she became friends with the First Lady. The crusade continued as attorney general and Democratic nominee for the presidency. Losing Emily would never make sense, but she had tried to make as much sense of it as she possibly could.
    The adultery scandal not only threatened her presidential hopes, but it shook the inner peace she’d built on the shaky bedrock of ambition.
    “I told you so,” she whispered to herself, staring at her wet reflection in the glass shower door. It was exactly what her mother would say if she were still living. Washington was fickle, she’d warned, especially about women. But Allison had been too busy climbing to worry about falling. “Women want to be her, men want to meet her,” was the way George magazine had summed up the Leahy phenomenon four years ago. “The class of Jackie O., the charisma of JFK,” the Times had proclaimed. She’d brought enthusiasm to her post, so much so that people had good-naturedly dubbed the Department of Justice the department of energy. Talented lawyers who ordinarily wouldn’t think of leaving their lucrative private practice were flocking to her door for low-paying government positions, just to work with her. She could start a fashion trend by wearing a sweat suit into the office on Saturday morning, or make a local restaurant “chic” just by stopping in for a muffin on her way to work.
    And now the slide—just eleven damn days before the election. Okay, Mom, you were right again. Now get these bastards off my back.
    By eight-thirty Allison had taken breakfast in her room, her bags were packed, and she was ready for a full day of appearances in Atlanta. She and David Wilcox shared the backseat of a limofrom the Buckhead Ritz Carlton to the downtown Five Points area. The FBI normally guarded the attorney general. As a presidential candidate, however, she also received Secret Service protection. A Plexiglas partition separated her and Wilcox from the agents in the front seat, giving them the privacy they desired. They said nothing on the ride down Peachtree Street, each deep in thought. The limo’s interior blackened, then brightened in the intermittent shadows of glass office towers. Finally Wilcox broke the silence.
    “I need to know, Allison.”
    Her head turned. “Need to know what?”
    He raised an eyebrow, as if she had to be joking. “Why did you dodge the question?”
    “Because it didn’t deserve an answer.”
    He chuckled, but it was an angry chuckle. “Who do you think you are, Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County ? Maybe it plays in the movies, but extramarital sex is still a serious political liability.”
    “Is it?” she said in a voice that challenged. “I must say that I find this whole controversy very intriguing. Think of all the philandering men this country has elected president. But the minute there’s the slightest possibility that a woman candidate may have been unfaithful to her husband, the old double standard kicks in. The entire nation is suddenly in a time warp. It’s like a throwback to 1952, when the cover of Look magazine asked about Adlai Stevenson, can a divorced man be elected president?”
    Wilcox was deadpan. “I would remind you that the answer to that question was no. And he lost to a
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