We were both quiet for the longest time, just looking at each other, tears trailing down her cheeks in a steady flow.

“Goodbye,” she said finally, in a choked voice, and fled.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She didn’t come back, and I’m ashamed to admit, for about the first six months, I was mostly relieved about that.

I was just so conflicted where she was concerned.

It was touted as the trial of the century, though Diana J. Baker wasn’t technically the vice president anymore when it all took place.

I didn’t get a front row seat for the proceedings.  Hell, I didn’t get a seat at all.

I was left as in the dark as everyone else in the country, watching the coverage on television.

Diana had a wily team of attorneys who postponed and argued about every little detail, insisting until the very end that the entire case needed to be thrown out.

The evidence against her, however, was staggering.  Countless incriminating papers with her signature, accurate accountings of exactly where and when specific crimes took place, recordings of her admitting to illegal acts, and shock of shockers, even videotape of the woman alluding to her part in some of the crimes.

When it became public that the mysterious witness who’d gathered the brunt of the evidence was the assumed dead granddaughter, well, needless to say, the press had a field day.

About a third of the evidence was ruled inadmissible, but the other two thirds were more than enough to do the trick.

She was found guilty for an impressive roster of crimes, including multiple counts of conspiracy, extortion, racketeering, money laundering, bribery, embezzling, voter fraud, felony counts of financial corruption, obstruction of justice.

The list went on and on.  Diana had been playing a very dirty game for her entire political career, and it was finally all laid out there, for the world to see.

They even managed to get her for tax evasion.

They couldn’t make the murder charges stick, but the rest would keep her in jail for the remaining years of her life, and more importantly, completely destroyed her reputation and effectively ended her political career.

Her husband, Jonathan Mitchell Baker, was also dragged into the mess, facing many of the same charges.  His lawyers sold him as the silent, innocent spouse, but he didn’t fare much better than his wife.

Iris, with her hair dyed black again, glasses on, looking solemn and achingly beautiful as she took the stand in the eleventh hour of the proceedings, became a national sensation overnight, particularly with the male half of the country.  She started getting added to hottest and sexiest lists in various publications, and was considered, in general, to be something of a hero.  People loved the idea of a gorgeous, brave, brilliant young thing taking on a crooked politician and coming out ahead.

I’d graduated from conflicted to just missing her by then.

Of course, no one that big ever went down alone, and as numerous dangerous figures became implicated in the crimes, the danger to Francis Baker, as she was known, was overwhelming.

It all came to a head just days after she finished testifying.  The story went that, while in transit, at a stoplight, a van pulled up beside the car she was being transported in, and six men in ski masks jumped out of said van.

She was dragged from the car, and her driver and one of her bodyguards, who were both wounded in the attack, witnessed her being shot at point blank, in the temple.  One of her bodyguards was also reportedly killed, a big blond man, they said, though no name was divulged.

I was devastated, though I didn’t believe, at first, that any of it was true.

It was just too convenient, her disappearing forever only after completing her mission.

It’s not like it would be the first time she’d faked her own death.

But weeks turned into months, months to years, with still no word from her, or even of her, and I began to believe.

EPILOGUE

TWO YEARS AFTER THE TRIAL

I was jogging through the park park, just outside my neighborhood.  It was rare outside weather for Vegas.  We got about one day of it a year, and I figured I should take advantage.

I was stopping to take a drink and tighten a shoelace when I felt something.  An odd sensation across the back of my neck that had me looking up and then around, doing nearly a full circle before I spotted what it was that had disrupted my peace of mind.

It was Heath, the bastard, striding towards me, his hard eyes on me as though no time had passed.

It was a shock to see him, to say the least.

A shock and a joy, as he was connected to Iris, and anything connected to her, anything that could give me information, or even closure, was what I had most desired to see these two long, lost years.

But that wasn’t the thing that had a weight pressing in on my chest like concrete.

On his hip was a small child, a boy.

The boy was wrapped around him, head on his shoulder as though Heath was a normal human, instead of a Heath.

A human that the boy adored.

It was perturbing.  All of it.

But one thing in particular was the most perturbing of all.

The boy did not look like him.  It may have been his child, but he did not favor him.

The boy had messy brown hair, and as he drew closer, I saw his warm caramel eyes.  In fact, every feature of his face, from his straight little nose, to his tiny clenched jaw, and his pursed little mouth was familiar to me.

My heart seized up in the most horrible, wonderful way.  My teeth were clenched so hard my jaw ached.

It was indescribable, this feeling of absolute certainty and disbelief.