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throat all but gagging her.
    “Courage, Will,” Gabe breathed from behind unmoving lips. “No shame. Chin high.”
    She took a wobbly breath and answered the reporter, “You’re referring to a personal matter that has no bearing on my new position. The events under investigation took place well before my father’s death, and I have confidence the truth will come out over time. Until then, I have no comment on it.”
    “But you’re wrecking a good man’s reputation and have no evidence to support your wild claims, both of which call into serious question your fitness to hold your father’s job,” Paula Craddock followed up.
    Gabe leaned forward aggressively, but Willa surprised herself by placing a restraining hand on his arm. He yielded the microphone to her reluctantly.
    Willa borrowed a page from her teacher’s playbook, and looked out across the sea of faces like a chiding parent addressing a room full of unruly five-year-olds. She spoke gently, but with unmistakable steel in her voice. “I said no comment. And I mean no comment. I will never comment on this matter, and I will blacklist any reporter who persists in questioning me about it. Understood?”
    A disconcerted murmur rose, and she sagged in relief as the governor’s press secretary hustled forward to call an end to the press conference and make a few off-camera wrap-up comments about the governor’s schedule for the rest of the day.
    Gabe’s arm went around her waist as her legs all but gave out from under her. “I told you, you should have eaten more breakfast,” he commented. “You’re going to look damned silly if you faint after putting them all in their place like that.”
    She smiled up at him weakly. He told a hotel employee to bring the senator a glass of orange juice, and she remembered at the last second not to look over her shoulder for her father.
    One of the governor’s aides hustled up to her. “The governor wanted me to let you know your Secret Service detail will arrive tomorrow. Would you like us to provide you with police protection in the meantime?”
    “Heavens, no,” she exclaimed. She just wanted her life to remain as close to normal as possible.
    The fellow scurried off as a hotel employee arrived with a pitcher of orange juice and poured her a glass of it.
    While Gabe watched on, she drank up the refreshing liquid obediently.
    “Now what?” he asked.
    Now what, indeed.

Chapter 5
    G abe climbed out of his SUV in front of his folks’ old place in Vengeance. The neighborhood had changed a lot since he’d been a kid. Back then it had been shabby, bordering on squalid. But sometime in the past decade, the crowd at Darby College had declared this area funky and cool, and had moved in to gentrify the place. Refurbished bungalows with neat paint jobs and new lawns now lined the street.
    As for him, he kind of missed the old days. Coming back here used to remind him of where he’d come from. Who he was. Now it felt foreign and fake.
    He supposed he should have expected the news crew parked on his front porch, camera and microphone at the ready. He’d been too distracted to spot the white van before. “Paula Craddock, isn’t it?” he asked. “What do you want?”
    “I hear you’re an old family friend of the Merrises. What do you think of Willa’s accusations against James Ward?”
    “I think whoever told you I’m a friend of the Merrises was smoking crack,” he snapped.
    “You were all over Willa Merris today at the press conference. A regular knight in shining armor for her. It looked to me like the two of you are more than friends.” She added slyly, “A lot more.”
    “Climb up out of the gutter onto the curb, Paula. The girl just lost her father, and she’s dealing with a ton of crap right now.”
    “Right. The alleged rape. She didn’t look very raped to me.”
    An image of Willa cringing away from his touch, her eyes big with fear, flashed through his head. “And what exactly does a raped woman