It was partly her looks. Younger, she would have been pretty; mature, nearing forty, she was beautiful. She had a smooth, soft face and dark, inquisitive eyes. He liked the whiteness of her skin, which was so un-Floridian. She was obviously comfortable with her body, which was fleshy in an erotic way, not stick skinny. She wore a midnight-blue dress that afforded a view of her strong legs well above her knees and of the swelling curves of her full breasts. She had an open, unflinching stare, not at all shy, not girly or cute. Her directness was as appealing to him as her physical features.

‘It’s not that I don’t care,’ Cab said.

‘You just think all politicians are the same.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, we’re not.’ Caprice stood up and moved to the opposite side of the gazebo. Her movements had grace. She turned around, leaning back on the stone ledge. ‘I was a political science major at UCF. I hated both parties, and I still do. They’re all about ideology, not common sense. My boyfriend, Lyle, he felt the same way. We were both ambitious. We committed ourselves to the idea of an independent, centrist party that would truly compete against the Republicans and Democrats, not simply be a spoiler movement. With Birch’s campaign, we thought we had taken the first step.’

‘I’m sorry. I know what you lost that day.’

‘With all due respect, Mr Bolton, you don’t. I’m sure your mother told you what we went through on that dais, but you can’t understand what it’s really like to lose someone you love, to stand there covered in his blood and brains.’

Cab didn’t reply. This wasn’t a game of tit-for-tat, but in reality, he had lost someone he loved in a violent way, too. On a beach outside Barcelona, he had come face to face with a woman named Vivian Frost. He had never fallen so naively head-over-heels in love with anyone like Vivian, and he knew he never would again. He’d given up everything for her, including his job with the FBI, only to discover that she was partnered with a terrorist – that she’d been part of a conspiracy that led to the deaths of twenty-seven people in a bombing at a Spanish train station. She’d lied to him. Manipulated him.

There, on the beach, he’d shot her in the heart.

He knew what loss was like.

‘Something like that changes you,’ he said, joining her on the other side of the gazebo.