Page 82 of Lock ’N’ Load

“Sgt. Connors,” Barbara Ashburn said. “It’s obvious how much you care for this young lady, but please allow my son to explain.”

Grabbing onto Matt’s arm, Trista met the other woman’s gaze. “You’re Erica Sands, aren’t you?”

She smiled, and the skin around her sharp blue eyes crinkled. “Yes, dear. Although, I haven’t heard that name in a very long time.” She held out her hand, waiting patiently for Trista to take it. “Please, come sit with us. You both have my word that no harm will come to you.”

“Matt?” Trista looked up at him to see his brows bunched, his jaw clenched as his gaze swept the room.

“Hear them out, Sgt. Connors.” Deputy Director Windham gave Matt a curt nod.

Without a word, Matt put his arm around Trista’s shoulder and guided her past Mrs. Ashburn to the conference table. He pulled out a chair for her, waiting for everyone else to sit. In all, they were ten at the table, including Fenway, whose jaw was quickly bruising from Matt’s punch, and Mitchell Hentz, who’d apparently been lurking somewhere in the corner, staying safely out of the fracas. The only other man she didn’t recognize introduced himself as Special Agent in Charge Bradley Gotesman, from the FBI’s Washington, D.C., office. The other FBI agents and Secret Service agents guarding the presidential candidate stood discreetly by the closed doors.

Matt sat to Trista’s left, Mrs. Ashburn to her right. Senator Ashburn sat directly across from them, allowing Matt to glare directly into the eyes of the man he believed tried to murder Trista and had Thomas George killed. Either the senator was an accomplished actor or the look on his face truly was one of sincere regret.

Beside her, Mrs. Ashburn took Trista’s hand in hers. “I’d like to tell you a story of a very naive, stupid woman who married a very bad man. The only good thing to come from my marriage to Will Sands was my sweet boy.” She paused to give Senator Ashburn a gentle smile, which he returned. “By the time Michael—or Billy, as you know him to be—turned eight, I’d long since figured out my husband was a domestic abuser. But he loved our son and restricted his abuse to the hours when Billy was at school. Any time he left marks on my face, I lied about how I got them.”

“One day, I forgot my mitt,” the senator interjected. “I wanted to play ball with my friends after school, so I snuck home to get it. Nobody at school even knew I’d left. We lived far off the main road and nowhere near any other neighbors. When I got home, my father was yelling so loudly at Mom he never knew I’d opened the kitchen door to see him punching her repeatedly in the face and the ribs. She was already badly injured, with multiple broken bones and internal injuries.”

Mrs. Ashburn opened a manila envelope, then pulled out several photos and handed them to Trista and Matt. Trista gasped. The woman in the photos was barely recognizable. Both eyes were swollen shut. Her face was bruised and cut, with multiple stitches.

“This is you.” She looked into Mrs. Ashburn’s kindly eyes, and her heart went out to this courageous woman who’d suffered such incredible pain at the hands of her husband and still survived.

Mrs. Ashburn slid the photos back into the envelope. “I had these taken in case the law ever caught up to us. If they did, I wanted the police to see the damage Will’s fists inflicted. But I couldn’t take that chance, so I took Billy and ran. I didn’t want any of this to touch him.”

“You were in no shape to kill your husband,” Matt said in a sympathetic tone. “The prints on the knife found at the crime scene were small, but they weren’t yours. Were they?” The way he said it, Matt’s last words were more a statement of fact than a question.

“They were mine.” Senator Ashburn’s face hardened. “I killed my father. Stabbed him with his own knife. I don’t think I cut him very deeply, but I must have hit an artery. Before I knew it, the kitchen floor was covered in blood.” The senator’s eyes took on a faraway look, as if he was reliving that day all over again.

“The authorities assumed my mother killed him.” The adoring look he gave his mother was filled with unshed tears. “I don’t know how she managed it with all her injuries, but somehow she drove us out of there and across three states before stopping for medical attention. When we finally pulled into a hospital, she lied to the doctors, saying some men held us up at gunpoint, took everything we had, then beat my mother to within an inch of her life.”

As Mrs. Ashburn met her son’s gaze, a thin trickle of tears ran down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what the police would do to a little boy who murdered his father. They could have taken him away from me and thrown him in a cell somewhere. I didn’t want that for him.”

“Given your injuries, don’t you think the police would have agreed it was a case of a young boy defending his mother’s life?” Matt asked. “Even forty years ago, no prosecutor would charge an eight-year-old boy protecting his mother from an abuser.”

“Perhaps.” Mrs. Ashburn wiped at her tears. “But this was backwater West Virginia. My brother-in-law, Avery Sands, was friends with the sheriff at the time, and since sheriffs are elected officials, I couldn’t risk him launching an investigation into Billy’s actions just to pacify Avery. I considered confessing to his murder myself, but I had no other family, and Billy’s care would have fallen to Avery, who was just as evil as Will.”

Trista placed a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder, inherently understanding the unconditional love between a mother and child, and praying she’d one day get the chance to experience that love for herself. “You fled to protect your child.”

Mrs. Ashburn sniffled, then smiled and covered Trista’s hand with her own. “And I don’t regret it for a second.”

“What we do regret,” Senator Ashburn interjected, “is the deadly sequence of events our actions kicked off forty years later and how many others suffered because of it. Especially you, Ms. Gold, and Thomas George.”

“While it wasn’t made public,” Mitchell Hentz added, “trace amounts of digitalis were found in George’s blood. But he didn’t have a heart condition.”

Matt leaned his forearms on the table, sending the senator a stone-cold look that would make most men cower. “Are you telling us you didn’t have him killed to keep him from publishing his story and outing you as a murderer?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, sergeant. Thomas George’s death will haunt me for the rest of my life.”

“Then who killed him? Because whoever it was is still out there. And to them, Trista represents the same liability. You’re still conveniently leaving out the driving force behind your so-called sequence of events.”

“It was the rezidentura, wasn’t it?” Trista asked, knowing with growing certainty that this whole thing was somehow connected to the chat she’d overheard.

“Concentrated digitalis,” Hentz said, nodding, “is one of the many suspected favorite poisons of our neighborhood rezidentura, Alexy Lukashin.”

“Why do the Russians care about who you really are or what you’ve done?” Not for the first time since they’d sat down, Matt narrowed his eyes on the senator. “They’re blackmailing you.”

For a moment, the senator didn’t respond. Nor did anyone else. It was as if this entire meeting had been choreographed by him under strict orders that this was his story and his alone to tell. She suspected they were about to delve into deeply classified information of international significance.

Senator Ashburn glanced at his mother. “When we changed our names, we could never have imagined the path our lives would take. As a boy, becoming president of the United States never crossed my mind. The only things of importance in my life back then were that we got away from my father and playing baseball with my friends. We began a new life under new identities, never intending to mislead the American people about who I really was. The years sailed by and thanks to my mother’s unfailing support, I became a U.S. senator.”