“I don’t have a problem. You’re the one with problems.”

“So all that great press you’ve been getting lately hasn’t been a problem for you?”

“Why, Nick, I didn’t realize you cared.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you made that very clear.”

He spun halfway around in the seat to stare at her. “Are you for real? You’re the one who didn’t return any of my calls.”

She glanced over at him, her face flat with surprise. “What calls?”

After staring at her in disbelief for a long moment, he settled back in his seat and fixed his eyes on the cars sharing the Interstate with them.

A few minutes passed in uneasy silence.

“What calls, Nick?”

“I called you,” he said softly. “For days after that night, I tried to reach you.”

“I didn’t know,” she stammered. “No one told me.”

“It doesn’t matter now. It was a long time ago.” But if his reaction to seeing her again after six years of thinking about her was any indication, it did matter. It mattered a lot.

Chapter 3

The Loudoun County seat of Leesburg, Virginia, in the midst of the Old Dominion’s horse capital, is located thirty-five miles west of Washington. Marked by rolling hills and green pastures, Loudoun is defined by its horse culture. Upon his retirement after forty years in the Senate, Graham O’Connor and his wife moved to the family’s estate outside Leesburg where they could indulge in their love of all things horses. Their social life revolved around steeplechases, hounds, hunting and the Belmont Country Club.

The closer they got to Leesburg, the tenser Nick became. He kept his head back and his eyes closed as he prepared himself to deliver the gruesome news to John’s parents.

“Who were his enemies?” Sam asked after a prolonged period of silence.

Keeping his eyes closed, Nick said, “He didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

“I’d say today’s events prove otherwise. Come on. Everyone in politics has enemies.”

He opened his eyes and directed them at her. “John O’Connor didn’t.”

“A politician without a single enemy? A man who looks like a Greek god with no spurned lovers?”

“A Greek god, huh?” he asked with a small smile. “Is that so?”

“There has to be someone who didn’t like him. You can’t live a life as high profile as his without someone being jealous or envious.”

“John didn’t inspire those emotions in people.” Nick’s heart ached as he thought of his friend. “He was inclusive. He found common ground with everyone he met.”

“So the privileged son of a multi-millionaire senator could relate to the common man?” she asked, her tone ripe with cynicism.