He could not hide the astonishment on his face that Kate had been able to identify him before he had even stepped inside. Her index finger diminished the volume just as Leon and his background singers were crooning into the first chorus of “River.” When she looked up to see that his eyes had changed from surprised to full-on puppy dog, she sighed.

She knew the look and the variations of it. The interns were the worst, the ones who elbowed their way to try and score a semester or two working for Washington Barbie. It was her least favorite of all the nicknames they didn’t think she knew about: Tennessee Tornado, Killer Kate and the Devil Wears Prada Pantsuits. Even with a master’s in public policy from Brown, a career as a policy wonk in Washington, and now a decade of service as a US senator, she still heard the whispers about herself behind the backs of her colleagues’ hands.

Kate knew how she appeared to Frank right now. Late night, sexy music, hair in a ponytail, glasses, and chewing on a pen. Hot For Teacher, she once found scrawled on a colleague’s fiscal notes, with an arrow pointing in the direction of her desk in the senate chamber.

Yes, Frank, that’s why I’m here so late. To seduce you. Come on over here and let’s read through some budget appropriations to really turn up the heat.

“What is it, Frank?” she said, turning back to her calculator.

He cleared his throat. “They found him, Senator.”

“Found who, Frank?”

“Your nephew.”

She saw him visibly flinch when she blinked and looked over her laptop at him. She didn’t mean to have the look; her mother always said it was a genetic trait she inherited from her father. It meant she gave a laser focus to whoever was speaking, her eyelids closing ever so slightly, with daggers glinting in her pupils.

“How do you know this?”

“Came across in an alert.” He held up his iPhone.

She glanced at her own phone. “I don’t see any alerts from the Post or CNN.”

He swallowed. “It wasn’t a news alert. It’s from … Hollywoodextra.”

The look changed now, and she saw him almost wince. That website had an almost criminal obsession with her family, frequently romantically linking her to actors and athletes, all of whom, in reality, requested meetings with her to discuss their environmental causes.

“Where is he? Is he OK?”

Please say he didn’t get a DUI.

“Little Rock. They didn’t say. It only read that they found him.”

Please say he’s not in jail.

“How? Did they source police?”

“No. It just reads that it’s an exclusive. The alert said that the site would broadcast their findings at midnight.”

Good to know that a high-priced private investigator couldn’t find him, but some crap entertainment website could.