SCOTUS: A Powerplay Novel Read online

  “They had a gun. I don’t think whether you hurt them should be much of an issue. You didn’t beat him needlessly, did you?”

  “No, and I had ample opportunity to. But I took out the bigger one by clotheslining him—my forearm to his trachea. Let’s just say that breathing is something he’ll be working at for a while.”

  She watched him, her beautiful eyes somber.

  “When I saw the news report, I thought two things,” she said softly. “The first was, oh my God, he’s here in DC.” She gave him a wry smile. “And the second was oh my God, he was almost killed.”

  He looked at her, a strange ache rolling through his chest.

  “And then, the next thing I know, you’re walking onto a stage in front of me. I have to say, discovering you were in DC wasn’t a huge surprise. Finding out you’d nearly been mugged to death was sort of par for the course, but seeing you walk into the White House press conference as the president’s nominee to the Supreme Court? That was…” She paused, searching for the right word. “Surprising in the very best way.”

  He chuckled, because she still did that thing where she made up words, expressions, whatever. She’d always been so damn entertaining when she got going, funny made-up words falling from her ruby lips like little bits of joy.

  “Mugged to death?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “Is that a thing?”

  “Totally,” she answered, grinning.

  “Well, I think I was more startled than you when I saw you sitting with the press corps. At least you had a warning that I was in town.”

  He took a gulp of coffee, remembering that he’d seen her hair before he ever saw her, and he’d recognized her from that alone. After twelve years. Yeah, the woman had fucked with his head permanently.

  And that was the moment he knew that no matter how incredible she looked, how charming he still found her, or how much he would give to ruck up that skirt of hers and get her off right there in the coffee shop, he needed to stay the hell away.

  Deanna Forbes was the only woman he’d ever loved, and she was also the only one who’d ever chipped away at his resolve, his self-esteem, and his ability to bend the world to his will. After she’d dumped him, he’d gone to Yale and nearly flunked out his first semester. He’d had doubt, something that hadn’t ever entered his worldview before. It was hell, and it took him his entire first year to recover. Truth was, after twelve years, he still hadn’t fully recovered.

  But he’d recovered enough of his bullheaded mojo that he’d ended up near the top of the class, had done a stint as editor of the law review, and walked the stage straight to a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Norman. Yeah, he’d recovered in all the ways that showed, but he knew deep inside was a tender wound that would never completely heal. It kept him at a distance—from his colleagues, his mentors, hell, even his best friends. It was the knowledge that even someone who professed to love him could find him lacking simply because of the color of his skin. And if the woman who’d once agreed to marry him could feel that, then the rest of the world surely must too.

  Yes, Teague thought as he stood and took one last swig of his coffee, Deanna Forbes had nearly destroyed him twelve years ago, and he simply wouldn’t allow her the chance to do it again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he straightened his tie. “I didn’t realize how late it is. I need to check in at the office. I think they have something planned to celebrate the nomination.”

  Her face fell, and he gritted his teeth.

  “Of course,” she answered. “Thank you so much for the chat. It was really nice to see you again after all these years.”

  He nodded. “Are you going back to the office now?” he asked, immediately wanting the words back. He shouldn’t care what she was doing next. They’d had coffee, been polite as adults do; now they would go back to their very separate lives.

  “Yes. I need to file the story on your nomination.” She suddenly seemed subdued, but he reminded himself that she wasn’t his problem to worry about—even though doing so was apparently still second nature to him.

  “Well, I’ll look forward to reading it.” He wasn’t sure what to say next, so he went with “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure,” she murmured.

  Then he flashed her a smile that he knew was about as phony as the Rolex watches his brother used to give him for Christmas. He turned and walked away, but instead of feeling lighter with each step, he felt heavier, weighted, sluggish. He felt like he’d felt every day since he drove an old BMW away from her in a dark parking lot.

  Deanna watched Teague’s tall, broad frame stride out of the coffee shop and slumped back onto the stool.

  My God, the man was beautiful. And so done with her. But then what had she expected? It had been over a decade. And she’d been the one who ended it. Handed him back the sweet diamond he’d saved for months to buy her, promising that he’d get her a bigger, better one as soon as he had his first job after law school. She’d been the one who let her parents’ covert racism disguised as concern distract her from who she was, what she believed, what she felt—in her heart. The fact that she seemed to be right back to watching him walk away was fitting and well deserved.

  She’d betrayed a fine man, the kind that women the world over dreamed about. Teague Roberts was not only bright, ambitious, and generous, he was also responsible, committed, and honorable. He’d been the one who wanted to get married before they moved to Connecticut. He’d said, “It’s not fair to ask you to change schools and move for me if I’m not going to be one hundred percent committed to you. I’m asking a lot of you, and I want to give you everything in return. My heart, my home, and my promise that I’ll be here for you for as long as I live.”

  She’d cried that night, tears of joy, as he placed the ring on her finger and said so solemnly, “Dee, marry me, and let’s change the world.”

  And she’d agreed—promised—that she would. She’d marry him, she’d stand by him, she’d fight by his side.

  And then she hadn’t.

  Her phone vibrated from inside her bag, and she pulled it out, seeing Brice’s name on the screen.

  “Hi, Brice,” she answered.

  “Hey. I just saw the nomination on WNN. Can you put together something for the morning edition so that we won’t simply be regurgitating the cable networks?”

  The problems of print news in a digital age.

  “Yes, I’m on my way back now to file it,” she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder and weaving through people toward the door.

  “Good. This nomination is going to be bloody. I want you focusing on nothing else until further notice. I want a series of in-depth exposés on Roberts and the confirmation process. The opposition party will be digging deep and hard, and I’d really like us to know it all before they do. It’s embarrassing to have the party hacks show us up. We’re the press; uncovering the dirt is our job.”

  Deanna swallowed, stepping into an alcove off the sidewalk. “You want me to be the point on the nomination?” she asked.

  “More like the point on the nominee,” Brice answered. “You’ve been following the whole thing up until now, no reason to put someone else on it. Your life should get a lot more interesting now that you finally have an actual name for the nominee. Use that investigative talent we hired you for and tell America exactly who Teague Roberts is.”

  Before she could answer, Brice was talking to someone else in the room and telling Deanna they could discuss it more when she got back to the office. He signed off, and she slowly dropped the phone into her bag, leaning against the brick wall behind her.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t investigate Teague. The fact was she already knew probably his deepest secret, and something that she felt pretty certain would tank his nomination. But she would never tell a soul that story. And it didn’t give her journalistic integrity a moment’s distress. She strongly believed in the press’s obligation to inform the American public of t
hings that could impact their well-being and that of the nation. But what she knew about Teague’s past? That in no way threatened America or its people. The only thing that did was give people like her parents an excuse to denigrate a brilliant, talented man who would serve the Supreme Court and the US Constitution faithfully.

  No, Deanna wasn’t going to divulge the secrets she knew about Teague, and that meant she was going to put her entire career at risk. The thing she’d devoted herself to for years, giving up relationships, losing touch with friends, missing out on most of the things that people in their twenties and early thirties lived for. She’d done it to become a top investigative journalist at one of the few remaining significant newspapers in the nation.

  And now she was going to risk it all because the simple fact of the matter was she’d never stopped loving Teague Roberts, and in the end, that meant everything.

  Chapter 4

  Teague lay in bed, bare-chested, eyes glued to the nearly dark ceiling of his room. His brownstone was adequate, but not what a partner in a prestigious DC law firm could afford. However, he kept his own life simple. Expensive custom suits, because that was what people saw when they looked at him, but a seven-year-old BMW—yes, he still loved the German engineering—and an adequate house. He did it in part because it was what he was comfortable with, but also because he supported his mother these days, having bought her a house a few miles from their old apartment block in Chicago so she could still attend the same church and hair salon.

  He’d made her quit her job as a nurse’s aide at the hospital, and now she was a woman of leisure, volunteering at the health clinic near his old high school, going to church committee meetings, and even taking a few trips with the church to participate in civil rights marches and humanitarian events. He was proud of his mother. She hadn’t wanted to accept his support, but once he’d pressured her into it, she’d found ways to put it all to good use. She was the happiest she’d ever been, and at sixty, she was healthy and vivacious.

  And Teague was committed to making sure that she was guaranteed her current lifestyle for as long as she lived. So, he kept his own needs simple, and poured the majority of his money into her care and investments that would serve them both in the future.

  And now here he lay, staring at the ceiling in his eminently practical brownstone, wishing like hell he didn’t still have a hard-on for Deanna Forbes. The hard-on in and of itself wouldn’t be a big issue—he had plenty of women he could call on to solve that problem—but it was combined with the knowledge that she was probably the one person in the world who could ruin the plans he’d very carefully been laying for the last decade.

  Because Deanna knew that his brother wasn’t in fact, dead, as he’d been saying since he was seventeen, but in a maximum security prison in California.

  Teague rolled to one side, punching the pillow before repositioning his head on it. His gut ached as he thought about that day when he was sixteen and his brother had come into their shared bedroom in the small apartment on the fifteenth floor of the public housing building they’d called home.

  “Teague!” Roland had hissed as he shook Teague from side to side.

  “What? What the fuck, man? It’s the middle of the damn night.”

  “You got any money? I need it.”

  Teague knew that his brother was a member of the Gangster Disciples, and that he both dealt and used drugs. He didn’t want to help Roland out, but Roland was a big guy, seven years older than Teague. If he decided that Teague was going to give him all his money, then that was what Teague would be doing.

  “What do you need it for?” Teague asked, sitting up partway in his small twin bed that was positioned underneath the room’s one window.

  Roland made a strange choking sound, then wiped his arm across his mouth. “I fucked up, man. I gotta get outta here before the cops find me.”

  Teague was wide-awake then, reaching for a T-shirt as he flicked on the small lamp that sat on the milk crate next to his bed. “Shit, Ro, what happened?”

  Roland blinked a couple of times in the new light. Teague could see the exhaustion in his brother’s eyes. Roland only turned up at home every few days, so Teague didn’t know how often he did drugs, but now he could see that Roland had lost weight, his T-shirt hanging loosely on his broad shoulders. They had different fathers, but they both took after their mother, and Roland had the same light eyes and high cheekbones that Teague did.

  “It was an accident, T,” he said, sorrow in his voice. Roland wiped a shaky hand over his hair. “Chief sent me to do a deal,” he continued, referring to one of the lieutenants in the gang. “It was supposed to be the usual shit. We’d dealt with these guys before. They pick up product from us and distribute over on the West Side.”

  Teague’s hands itched, and he could feel his palms sweating. Roland was never anything but calm, cool, and collected. A consummate soldier in the gang’s army. Whatever had happened was bad, Teague had no doubt about that.

  “But when I got there, none of the guys I’d seen before were at the meeting. There were five of them, and they started circling me right away, saying they weren’t going to pay for the product.”

  He turned his desperate eyes to Teague. “If I’d let them steal it from me, I’d have been a dead man walking.”

  Teague nodded, knowing the truth in Roland’s words.

  “I pulled my Glock—I didn’t have a choice, man.”

  “Fuck,” Teague gasped. “Did you shoot one of them?”

  “If I had, I wouldn’t be here getting ready to run, T. My boys would take care of that shit for me. There was a kid…” Roland broke down then, tears running down his face. “He came out of nowhere—out the doors of the building maybe, or around the corner. Fuck, I don’t know, but I was walking backward, my gun aimed at the guy who was the leader. I hadn’t fired a shot, but then one of the others pulled on me. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, and I just reacted, swung, and fired, three times fast. And then I saw the kid.”

  He sobbed quietly, his face in his hands, and Teague sat across the tiny room from him, heart frozen in his chest.

  “He was small, man, like five or six, and he just…crumpled. And then this chick started screaming, and the other guys took off. I didn’t know what to do, and this chick—the kid’s mom or sister or something—she kept screaming for someone to call 911, and I panicked. I ran.”

  Teague swallowed, a fear like nothing he’d ever felt rushing through him. “We need to get Mom,” he said quietly, wishing his mother wasn’t working the night shift at the hospital.

  “No! No way, and don’t you tell her about any of this.” Roland recovered his tough exterior in a heartbeat, standing and giving Teague a hard look. “Just give me whatever money you got and I’ll be out of here. But if anyone comes looking for me, you can’t tell them you seen me tonight.”

  Teague nodded, knowing that Roland was only compounding a terrible mistake, but helpless to do anything about it.

  As Roland stuffed some clothes into an old backpack, Teague gathered all the cash he had on hand from his job at the local grocery store. It came to about two hundred and fifty dollars and had taken him three months to save. He gave the majority of what he earned working four to seven after school every day to his mother to help with groceries. He knew he ate a shit ton of food, and whenever Roland showed up, he could clear out the entire fridge in a few hours.

  As Roland stood at the door to the apartment in the dark, Teague handed him the money that he’d planned to use for their mother’s birthday present—a new vacuum cleaner so she wouldn’t have to sweep the carpets with an old broom anymore.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back, T,” Roland said, putting a heavy hand on Teague’s shoulder. “You keep doing what you’re doing, though. You’re a good kid. You’re going to get out of here. Don’t let anyone keep you from it.

  “And stay away from the Disciples, man. They’ll come looking for me, but

  don�
��t talk to them. And if they give you too much trouble, you go to my buddy Q. He’ll get ’em to back off. But don’t tell anyone, not even Q, what happened or that you saw me tonight, you got it?”

  Teague nodded, finding it hard to swallow. He and Roland hadn’t been close in years, but he loved his brother, and he didn’t want him to leave.

  Roland squeezed Teague’s shoulder, then pulled him in for a hard, quick hug. “Do the shit I’ll never get to,” he whispered, and then he was gone, out the door, into the dark and dangerous night of Chicago’s South Side, and away from the only home he’d ever known, and the only two people in the world who loved him.

  Teague sighed into the warmer, safer DC darkness, wishing like hell he didn’t have to think about that night and the subsequent days at all. It had been nearly two full weeks before the letter had come from a jail in Los Angeles where Roland had been picked up for possession of methamphetamines with intent to distribute. He sent the letter to Teague, but Teague showed it to their mother. She cried for an entire day, and then she cleaned herself up and instructed Teague to pack up his belongings. A month later, they moved to a newer housing project, and Teague started a new school, a college prep charter school where most of the kids were from solid working-class families.

  Once Roland was in the penal system in California, the state of Illinois was able to track him down and charge him with the murder of the little boy who had accompanied his gangbanger father to steal drugs from Roland and the Gangster Disciples.

  Because he was already in prison, he was tried in absentia. The day he was sentenced to life in prison without parole, Teague’s mother didn’t shed a tear. But six months later, she sat Teague down and explained the lie that would follow him all the way to tonight, when his appointment to the United State Supreme Court hung in the balance.

  “It’s too late for Roland. I know it and you know it. But I won’t let him ruin your life too. You want to be a lawyer. You want to be on the Supreme Court of the United States. Only two other black men have done it, and you’re going to be the third, but not if you have a brother in prison. It’s hard enough to achieve the things you want with skin like ours. A brother who murdered a child will be the end of your dreams.”