Five minutes later, at the crest of the hill, he broke free onto a beautifully manicured lawn, where a garden party was underway. He saw the flicker of torches making silhouettes of the crowd assembled on the grass. Human noises burbled from the glitterati: laughter, rumbling voices, the clink of wine glasses. A hundred people, maybe more. Carillon bells played inside the tower, clanging out across the hilltop. The tune was familiar.

He slipped a hood over his head and steeled himself for the things to come. Awful, necessary things. He was a man with a mission. It was just that no one would know what that mission was.

*

‘Birch wanted a magical night,’ Diane Fairmont murmured as she studied the crowd from the raised dais that had been constructed on the lawn. ‘I guess he got one.’

‘I guess he did,’ Tarla Bolton replied.

Tarla swept her long blond hair from her face. Her friend was right. The night really did sparkle. Below them, beautiful people wandered in and out of the dancing shadows like fairies. She saw tall men in suits and tuxedoes. They were all men with money, which was what every politician wanted at his event. Women wore summer dresses fluttering in the hilltop breeze. The younger ones spilled cleavage from silk. Older wives eyed the interlopers with sideways cynical stares.

They drank Chardonnay. They laughed. They inhaled the moist wind of the Florida night and smelled yellow jasmine. The bells of the tower played, reminding her of children banging spoons on old metal buckets.

‘Do you know what the bells are playing?’ Diane asked.

Tarla cocked an ear, letting her diamonds dangle, and then she laughed. ‘It’s probably something old and classical, but it sounds like Supertramp. Remember that song?’

‘Which one?’

‘“Goodbye Stranger.”’

Diane’s face soured at the irony. ‘It’s about one-night stands, isn’t it? Birch probably asked them to play it.’

She turned away from Tarla and sat down in the chair behind the microphone. The loyal wife’s chair. When Birch spoke, the cameras would all catch her there. Smiling. Applauding. The woman behind the man, dressed in a conservative ensemble, attractive but unthreatening. That was the image Birch wanted for her now. Voters didn’t like trophy wives living in the governor’s mansion.

Tarla watched her friend wither in the heat. Diane’s skin was pale, not its typical gold from the summer sun. She’d spent most of the evening ducking the crowd. When Diane twisted her neck to stare at the pink tower, Tarla noticed a sharp stab of pain on her face. ‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘You don’t look good,’ Tarla said.

‘I’m fine,’ Diane insisted. ‘Drop it, darling, please. The campaign is exhausting. I’m tired.’