Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

you said the senator’s life was scheduled in fifteen-minute chunks of time, and that your job was to make sure that time went smoothly. So here’s the deal. Sometime over the next two days, I want five minutes with him. And with you. Alone.”
    Henry said, “Impossible.”
    “Then make it possible,” she said curtly. “After all, you’re paid to solve problems.”
    This time, she hung up on him.

    T WO HOURS LATER , her phone rang. She picked it up and a tired voice said, “A deal. The Center of New Hampshire hotel. Two this afternoon. Room six ten.”
    “Sounds good to me,” she said.
    “Look, you need to know that —”
    Taking more pleasure in it this time, she hung up on him again. And went back to sleep.

    L ATER THAT DAY , Beth drove to Manchester — the state’s largest city — and instead of going into the pricey parking garage, she found a free spot about four blocks away. She trudged along the snowy sidewalk and walked into the hotel, past guests and people streaming in and out. In one corner of the lobby, there were bright lights from a television news crew filming an interview with somebody who must be famous.
    She took the elevator to the sixth floor, got off, and within a minute, she found room 610. A quick knock on the door and it opened up within seconds, a frowning and worn-looking Henry Wolfe on the other side. He was dressed as well as ever, but his eyes were sunken and red-rimmed. Beth had a brief flash of sympathy for him before remembering all that had gone before, and then she didn’t feel sympathetic at all.
    He started to speak and she brushed by him and into the room.
Wow,
she thought. This wasn’t a room. It was a palace, bigger than the interior of her double-wide trailer. Couches, chairs, big-screen television, kitchen, bar, and doors that led into other rooms. Flowers and baskets of fruit and snack trays and piles of newspapers.
    She turned to Henry. “Is this what they mean by a suite?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Look, Mrs. Mooney, before the senator comes in, I really need to know that —”
    “A suite,” Beth said, shaking her head in awe. “I’ve heard of hotel suites, but to think I’d ever actually be inside of one, well, I never figured.”
    “I’m sure,” Henry snapped. “Mrs. Mooney, we don’t have much time before the meeting and I must insist —”
    She made a point of looking around again. “All of those nice senior citizens, the retirees who send your senator a dollar bill or a five-dollar bill or whatever they can scrape together to help elect him president, do you think they know that their money is paying for this suite? And all those who donated time and money because they believed in the senator’s idea of justice, what do you think they’d say if they knew what his son did to my daughter?”
    “Mrs. Mooney —” he began again, and then another door within the suite opened up, and the senator walked in, tall, smiling, wearing a fine gray suit and a cheerful look. The room he was emerging from, she saw, was filled with well-dressed men and women, most with cell phones against their ears or in their hands, and then the door was shut behind him.
    The senator strode over, and Beth felt her heart flip for a moment. It was one thing to see him on the cover of a magazine or a newspaper, or on the nightly news, but here he was, right in front of her.
My God
, she thought.
What am I doing?
This man coming at her could very well be the next president of the United States, the most powerful and famous man on the planet. And she was a single mom and a hairdresser. For a moment she felt like turning around and running out the door.
    Then she remembered Janice. And she calmed down.
    “Mrs. Mooney,” the senator said, holding out a tanned hand with a large, fancy watch around his wrist. “So glad to meet you. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”
    “Me too,” she said, giving his hand a quick shake. “And, Senator, I know you’re very, very busy. In fact, I can’t imagine how busy you are, so I will make this quick.”
    The senator looked to Henry, who looked to her and said, “We appreciate that, Mrs. Mooney.”
    Beth took a breath. “So here we go. I’m sure you know your son’s actions, what happened to my daughter, and the agreement that was reached between me and Mr. Wolfe.”
    The senator said, “If there’s something that needs to be adjusted in the agreement, I’m sure that —”
    “Senator,” Beth said