Mirror Image

covered her face with her hands and began to cry. “I don’t know.”
    Van stood up and pulled on a tattered leather biker’s jacket. “I’ve got some moonlighting to do.”
    “Moonlighting?”
    Van responded to Irish’s question with an indifferent shrug. “I’ve been looking through some tapes in my library.”
    “What for?”
    “I’m working on a hunch.”
    Avery reached for his hand. “Thanks for everything, Van. If you see or hear—”
    “I’ll let you know.”
    “Do you still have that post office box key I gave you?” Irish asked.
    “Yeah, but why would I need it? I see you every day at work when I’m in town.”
    “But you might need to send me something when you’re out of town with Rutledge—something it wouldn’t do to mail to the station.”
    “Gotcha. ’Bye.”
    As soon as the door closed behind Van, Irish said, out of the side of his mouth, “That dopehead. I wish we had a more reliable ally.”
    “Don’t put him down. I get annoyed with him, too, but he’s been invaluable. He’s been a friend, and God knows I need all of them I can muster.”
    She checked her wristwatch—the one Tate had bought for her. Since retrieving it from Fancy, she hadn’t taken it off. “I’ve got to go. It’s getting late. Tate asks questions when I’m late, and I’m running out of plausible excuses. There’s only so much shopping a woman can do, you know.” Her feeble attempt at humor flew no better than a flatiron.
    Irish pulled her into a hug. He clumsily smoothed his large hand over her hair while her head rested against his shoulder. “You love him.” He didn’t even pose it as a question. She nodded her head. “Jesus,” he sighed into her hair, “why does it always have to be so goddamn complicated?”
    She squeezed her eyes shut; hot tears leaked onto his shirt. “I love him so much, Irish, it hurts.”
    “I know what that’s like.”
    Avery was too absorbed in her own misery to acknowledge his unrequited love for her mother. “What am I going to do? I can’t tell him, but I can’t protect him, either.” She clung to Irish for strength. He hugged her tighter and awkwardly kissed her temple.
    “Rosemary, all ninety-eight pounds of her, would fly into me if she knew I was letting you stay in a life-threatening situation.”
    Avery smiled against his damp shirt. “She probably would. She relied on you to watch over us.”
    “I’m letting her down this time.” He clutched her tighter. “I’m afraid for you, Avery.”
    “After today, seeing that bloodcurdling poster, I’m a little afraid for myself. I’m still considered a conspirator. God help me if he ever discovers otherwise.”
    “You won’t reconsider and let me call the authorities?”
    “Not yet. Not until I can point an accusing finger and say, ‘That’s the one.’ ”
    He put space between them and tilted her chin up. “By then it might be too late.”
    He hadn’t needed to caution her of that. She already knew. It might already be too late to salvage her career as a broadcast journalist and establish a future with Tate and Mandy, but she had to
try.
She hugged Irish once more at his door before telling him good night, kissing his ruddy cheek, and stepping out into the darkness.
    It was so dark that neither of them noticed the car parked midway down the block.

Forty-Three
    The spontaneous trip to Houston to address disgruntled policemen had gone extraordinarily well for Tate and boosted him three points in the polls. Daily, he closed the gap between Senator Dekker and himself.
    Dekker, feeling the pressure, began to get nasty in his speeches, painting Tate as a dangerous liberal who threatened “the traditional ideals that we as Americans and Texans hold dear.”
    It would have been a perfect time for him to use Carole Rutledge’s abortion as ammunition. That would have blown Tate’s campaign out of the water and probably cinched the race for Dekker. But whatever tactics Eddy had used on the extortionist had apparently been effective. When it became obvious that Dekker knew nothing of the incident, everyone in the Rutledge inner circle breathed a collective sigh of relief.
    Dekker, however, had the endorsement of an incumbent president, who made a swing through the state in pursuit of his own reelection. Rutledge supporters feared that the president’s appearance might nullify the gut-busting progress they had made.
    Actually, the president was fighting for his life in Texas. The rallies