Lyle Piper, Birch’s chief of staff, hovered behind the candidate, barking instructions into a cell phone. His fiancée Caprice did the same. The applause continued; people repeatedly shouted Birch’s name like a religious chant. Lyle was small next to Birch, with a slight frame and bird-like skinny fingers. He had thinning blond hair cut like a conservative CEO, and he acted the same way. In the times Tarla had met him, she didn’t recall Lyle ever smiling. He was intense and preachy about everything from tax policy to cholesterol. Even so, he was less of a hypocrite than other politicians she’d met. He walked the walk about personal responsibility. Lyle had lost his parents four years earlier at age twenty-four, and since then, he’d been a surrogate father to two younger siblings. Not an easy job.

Lyle slipped an arm around Caprice’s elbow. Lyle Piper and Caprice Dean were a political power couple in Florida, but they were idealistic in a way that only young people could be. They still thought they could change the world. They thought a new, centrist political party would be different from the other two. They thought Birch Fairmont would be the face of something that could tear down the extremes on both sides.

Tarla could have told them right then that they were naive.

Caprice leaned down to Diane. If Lyle looked older than his years, she looked younger. She was pretty and full-figured, with long dark hair, fresh-scrubbed skin without a hint of a Florida tan, and bookish black glasses propped high on her rounded nose. She wore a burgundy waistcoat, black slacks, and high heels smudged with mud. Her voice cracked with excitement. ‘Isn’t this great?’

‘Wonderful,’ Diane said, her own voice hollow.

The two political aides sat next to Diane on the dais. Birch raised his arms to quiet the crowd, but they may as well have been celebrating the balloon drop at a convention. It was Labor Day, and they had all seen the polls. They smelled momentum, which was like adrenaline in the veins of political junkies. This was their man. Birch Fairmont, candidate for the United States Congress in the 12th District from the newly formed Common Way Party.

Tarla kept an eye on Lyle Piper and was surprised by what she saw. The cameras had left him, and something black flitted across his face. He clasped his hands in his lap and stared at his leather shoes with a stony expression. Caprice grabbed his hand, and the mask of enthusiasm slipped momentarily from her face, too. Whatever they told the world, they both knew the truth about the candidate at the podium. They were dancing with a devil. That was politics.