At Risk of Winning (The Max Masterson Series Book 1) (7 page)

his next recollection had come from the hospital bed, where he had lain unconscious for more than a day. “Three lie dead, scores injured in Patriot Bombing” ran the banner heads and cut-lines from the major news agencies. Masterson found out that Adrianna was dead by the media account on the internet, who described her as “Senator John Minuteman Masterson’s beautiful longtime companion.” No mention of her unique and wonderful spirit or her intelligence. Just that she was pleasing to the eye, and the senator had kept her around.

Neither his doctors nor his friends had the guts to break the news of her death. he had to see it on the internet from the surveillance video every twenty minutes for three days. he finally filtered out the news account. he had memorized every second, but he didn’t want to relive the horror of it all, as if turning it off would stop the constant replay in his mind.

Max was nineteen when she died. he was off at school when news of her death hit the airwaves, and he was on a plane within an hour. he didn’t take it well. She was the first woman he had ever loved, from the moment he had been placed in her arms. She had tutored him seven days a week, and they had accompanied the senator on his many trips. Max would have a room in the hotel suite, and Adrianna slept with his father. Sometimes late at night, he could hear their lovemaking. It was natural to him, and he developed a natural outlook toward sex as a result. he had lost a mother, teacher, and friend.

They huddled at the grave site in the rain for more than an hour after the other mourners had left, not speaking, just staring. Father and son felt her loss in the same way. They had lost their first love. The father had lost her as a man loves a woman, and the son felt the loss as a child loves a mother. Now the father was doing his best to prepare his son for another loss.

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ChAPTER FIFTEEN

I doubt if I will be around for Max’s thirtieth birthday, and I know I won’t be here for his thirty-sixth.” he paused again, while the eyebrows joined in the middle below the scowl of his advisor’s wrinkled forehead. “Luke, I know that this won’t happen for another fifteen years, but I want to hire you to run Max’s election.” This time, the scowl turned into unabashed surprise.

“Senator, I have been your man for twenty-five years, and you have always been able to count on me to help you run for any seat you chose to pursue, and I’m damn good at what I do.”

“Yes, my friend. That’s why I chose you.”
“I just have one question.” This time it was his turn to pause, and during the break in conversation, he looked at the senator for some sign of dementia that would explain his bizarre statement. Finding none, he proceeded. “Senator, what in Betsy’s brassiere are you talking about?” Luke had a colorful way of describing his feelings about matters at hand.
To dispel any thoughts that he had become suddenly detached from reality, Masterson launched into his plan, detailed and complete, that described his strategy for Max to attain the office of president of the United States. By the time he had concluded, Postlewaite had twenty-three pages of notes. Together with the information wirelessly transferred to his database from the senator’s home database, the plan was complete in every aspect. Together with the material that had been meticulously compiled in anticipation of the meeting, he would leave the Masterson estate with the most innovative and optimistic plan for a campaign that he had ever imagined, even in his youthful forays into politics. he hoped that he would still be around to implement the plan when Max became old enough to actually run for the office.
One aspect of the plan that was glaringly evident was the lack of opportunity given for feedback on the idea. Senator Masterson had a plan, it was his plan, and he knew it was controversial. he didn’t want conventional thinking to mess it all up.
“Postlewaite, I have already transferred your fee into your bank account. I assume you’ll take the job once you see how generous it is. I want you to begin working behind the scenes immediately.”
“But Senator, I can’t start running a campaign fifteen years before the candidate qualifies to run! I have other projects I’m working on! I can’t—”
“I don’t want to hear that you can’t. I only want to hear about how you can. I have hired you on a fifteen-year retainer to devote all of your efforts to the campaign. Oh, and by the way, don’t talk to Max about it until I have told him he’s running.” Anticipating the outcry, he preempted the response. “I know, I know. he knows I want him to run. he just doesn’t know that I’m serious about it. You know how I get when I set my mind to things.”
Postlewaite smirked and snorted loudly in response. They locked in a mutual gaze that signified that the senator had found a campaign manager. It was irrelevant that the candidate was oblivious that he would be running for president, or that the plan would not be carried out until after its architect was dead.
“how are we going to fund this thing?” Max’s new campaign manager was already working on the clock, which he anticipated would occupy all of his thoughts for the next fifteen years. It was a life-defining job, and he took his goal seriously. If the senator wanted his kid to be president, by God, he was going to deliver. That’s the reason he had been picked for the job.
“I already funded it. The investments will mature one year before Max’s thirty-sixth birthday, and when they vest, they will automatically transfer to the campaign account, and you’ll be rolling.”

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ChAPTER SIXTEEN

When a young man has a beach house in the panhandle of Florida, and he is attending law school in the frigid Midwest, he immediately becomes the companion and best friend of all of his pale classmates. Max didn’t complain. The thought of spending ten days in Florida after a brutal Michigan winter was an abiding dream by the time cabin fever kicked in. his childhood years in Virginia were punctuated by frequent vacations to the Florida beach house, and the annual pilgrimage to Apalachicola meant he would be accompanied by up to twenty of his classmates, male and female.

Although he never pursued women, they seemed to be drawn to him like moths to a candle. his male friends wanted to be around him for that reason, too, even if it meant sleeping on the floor like puppies. The girls got the beds. All except Max. he kept the master suite to himself. The door was open to anyone, unless, of course, he was busy, and he was busiest with Debbie, his default roommate for the duration of his time back in Florida. Debbie was preoccupied with keeping the other girls from visiting, and Max just enjoyed being the object of female attention.

College was a time of experimenting. Yearly pilgrimages to the senator’s “district home,” the anchor of residence that qualified him to run for Senate from Florida, was Max’s mandatory destination. Its proximity to Tallahassee and the politicos of the state capitol made the beach house a “must attend” when Senator Masterson held his annual oyster roast fund-raisers. Old guests didn’t bother for an invitation. They just dropped in when they knew John Masterson was down home for some fishing. This torch had been passed to Max, who wasn’t running for anything. It was assumed by the locals that he would someday seek his father’s seat in Washington, but Max had a standard response to the almost daily pestering: “I’m not a politician.”

Regardless of his repeated denials of harboring any political aspirations, Max was treated to local celebrity status just the same. The quiet world of the Florida Gulf Coast was made more interesting by his visits.

By the time the caravan of law students had arrived in Apalachicola and had made the turn onto highway 98 to parallel the coast for the ten miles to Indian Beach, they had already stopped at the ABC store to stock up on their beverage of choice. Max bought a bottle of Cabo Wabo tequila, some limes, and supplemented it all with a hot bag of boiled peanuts. he bought his from the same roadside vendor who had sat under the umbrella alongside the road for as long as Max could remember.

“hi, Clayton. What’s new and exciting down these parts?” “You know, Mista Max. If you ain’t fishin’, ya’ll need to hump down the road to Panama City. Go to Club ‘Vela and watch them girls takin’ their T-shirts off.”
“Clayton, I’ve known you all your life so far, and I don’t know that you’ve ever been out of Franklin County. how do you know those girls are taking their tops off?”
Clayton chuckled, his mouth opening long enough to show an irregular row of yellow stained teeth with a gap on the bottom where his incisors once grew. Max knew that the missing teeth were the result of a drunken brawl down the road about a mile at a local oyster shack where the locals hung out most days. The sign out front merely advertised “Cold Beer.” It was enough to keep the locals happy.
“Mista Max, are you stayin’ down to the beach house again?” Clayton had a keen sense of the obvious.
“No, Clayton, I thought I’d bunk with you for a few days,” smiled Max as he swung into his convertible Ferrari and plopped the bagful of groceries in Debbie’s lap.
“Well now, Mista Max, I’d hafta think about that . . .”
The tires spun on the gray gravel as the entourage traveled the final leg to their spring break. Two miles down the road, they swung onto a white-sand dual track, a path known to locals as the “maneater.” Drivers unfamiliar with driving in sugar sand inevitably became stuck in the soft white dunes that lined the driveway. A local industry of four-wheel drive truckers earned beer money pulling tourists out of the sand, and each spring break was a boost to the sleepy local economy.
The cars pulled up to the two story beach house, its lights glowing in a welcome of sorts. The sun was setting over the Gulf of Mexico, an orange good-bye until the next day. Too late to visit the beach, they settled for assembly in the kitchen, the nerve center of every home get-together. After they stowed their bags, they were intent on becoming spring break inebriated. It was a test of their limits and was the foundation of a diminishing number of blurry memories that they would carry through adulthood. They had arrived.

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ChAPTER SEVENTEEN

Over a half-century of continuous abuse from sunlight, salt spray, and occasional hurricane winds, the Masterson home, referred to by the senator as “Anchor house,” took on a weathered look. The yellow paint and white trim seemed to Max to look duller with each visit.

Maybe next time, I’ll put these guys to work putting a new coat on it, he thought. Dad probably won’t even notice, though. He doesn’t come down here often enough to know the difference. It seems the older he gets, the more I have to pry him away from Fairlane. He hates plane travel, and the drive down and back takes too much out of him these days. I may have to surprise him with a private flight down just to get him into a reminiscing mood.

Max carried the two duffel bags containing a week’s worth of Tshirts, shorts, and bathing suits up to the master bedroom on the second floor while the remaining members of the entourage claimed the remaining sleeping space on the first floor. Inevitably, someone would end up sleeping on the floor beneath the dining room table, but at twenty-two years old, the hardness of the sleeping surface never seemed to keep anyone from getting a good night’s sleep. The alcohol helped to numb the discomfort.

Once they had moved in and the refrigerator was stocked with liquid refreshment, the deck was the next stop. Drinks in hand, the group sat in the abundant Adirondack chairs while Max fired up the barbeque grill. As the sun set, the idyllic orange and pink pastel clouds turned to burgundy before the sun slid low over the Gulf of Mexico.

Florida legend has it that at the moment the sun touches the horizon over the Gulf, if you are focused at that very spot on a clear evening, you can see the “green hiss,” a momentary flash across the horizon. Max had never seen it, but he had repeated the legend to the uninitiated at every rest stop on the trip down I-75. All eyes were focused on the horizon as he moved up behind his companions with a large squirt machine gun filled with ice water.

Just as the sun touched the water, Max trained the blast of the water on the back of the heads of his classmates. In one sweep, he soaked his startled victims. “There’s your hiss! Did you feel it?” The screams were his desired result and began the raucous party that lasted long into the night.

Gradually, the last stragglers turned in, and Max quietly slipped away with Debbie hand-in-hand, walking barefoot through the dunes. An experienced navigator from his many visits as a young boy, he was careful to steer wide of the sandspurs that lined the path. At the shore, Max held her tightly as the moon slid beneath the horizon. This was a special time, when the darkness took over and the stars seemed to hang at arm’s length. he had no difficulty picking out the Southern Cross from the constellations that he had committed to memory. Max turned toward the house, lit against the night sky, then turned and kissed her slowly, their lips full and warm. “I want you.”
“Max, you didn’t exactly have to go out of your way to impress me.” “I know, but I just want you to know.”
“What?”
“There will always be other women.”
Debbie didn’t need to respond. Not verbally. her body pressed

against his, and the silence took over. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hold him for long, but she savored this moment and pressed her full breasts against his chest. he kissed her with the hot passion she sought so urgently. Their tongues intertwined for moments that turned into minutes, their hands roaming in increasingly bold strokes. They briefly parted, panting from the intense passion.

“You’re with me now, and I have you all to myself,” she said in a husky voice. She grabbed his hand tightly and led him to a solitary depression between the dunes.

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ChAPTER EIGhTEEN

One of the most dangerous aspects of spring break is not the amount of alcohol that a college student can consume in one evening nor their ability to go without sleep for long periods. The prodigious amount of youthful hormones flowing through the young blood vessels of this age group is the main cause of high risk behavior. Sure, the alcohol and sleep deprivation enhance it, but the core reason is those ever-present hormones.