First Daughter by Eric Van Lustbader

and Emma would be exposed to a wide variety of students from all over the world. All Jack saw was the pretension of the consumerati: Mercedes, Bentleys, and tricked-out Hummers disgorging siliconed mothers, cell phones blaring Britney Spears, yapping dogs the size of New York City rats, the flash of platinum Amex cards held aloft. He had been obliged to take out a second mortgage on their house in order to pay the exorbitant tuition. He fervently wished he'd fought harder, insisted that she attend Georgetown or even George Washington, the other colleges to which she'd wanted to go, but Sharon had dug in her heels, wouldn't listen to either him orEmma. She wanted her daughter to have the kind of education she herself had always dreamed of getting, but never had.
    Nina said, "I feel I should warn you that if Hugh Garner got wind of our roles in his task force, he'd find some way to discredit us with the powers that be, so that even the president-elect couldn't save us. That's what a political animal would do."
    "I don't concern myself with politics," Jack said, his mind still engaged by Emma.
    "I'm with you on that, but you'd better give it some attention now." Without her coat Nina shivered against the advancing chill of evening. "Hugh Garner is a political animal, par excellence."
    Jack took off his coat, but before he had a chance to sling it across her shoulders, Nina shook her head.
    "Alli's life is beyond adversarial parties, beyond politics altogether."
    "I suppose it would be," Nina said dryly, "in another universe."
    Nina looked around at the thick stand of old oaks, gnarled into fantastic shapes, the sly shadows moving in and out beneath the cathedraled branches. "This place reminds me of something. I almost expect the devil to come bounding through the trees."
    "Why d'you say that?"
    Nina shrugged. "Ever since childhood, I've expected dreadful things to happen that I can't escape."
    Jack inclined his head. "It's only the path the students take into the heart of the trees."
    "Who knows what goes on here?"
    They picked their way through the failing light into the clotted shadows of a dense copse of trees. The heavy rain had thickened the underbrush considerably, made the ground springy, in places almost marshy, impeding or slowing their progress. A moment later, ducking around a low-hanging tree limb, they burst out into a tiny clearing. The last rays of slanted sunlight turned the copse's heart a reddish gold,as if they had stumbled upon a coppersmith's workshop. An immodest west wind molded Nina's skirt to her well-muscled thighs, provoked eerie sounds from the interweaving of branches that spread weblike all around them.
    At the base of a tree, where the root flare rose up just above the ground, was a mound of freshly dug earth.
    "What have we here?"
    She followed Jack as he knelt beside the mound of earth. Scooping the earth aside revealed a recently dug hole. Jack pulled out an odd-shaped item six or seven inches on a side wrapped in oilskin.
    Nina's mouth opened. "What the hell—?"
    Carefully, Jack brushed off the dirt and skeletal leaves that had adhered to the oilskin, peeled back the moist covering, revealed inch by inch what was inside.
    Pale, almost opalescent flesh appeared to bleed in the ruddy sunset light. It was a hand, smallish, delicate of fingers, ringed, nails blunt-cut like a boy's. Nevertheless, it was the hand of a young girl—a young girl who had been immersed in water, judging by the deeply wrinkled flesh of the fingertips.
    Nina looked at Jack, said, "Dear God, is it Alli Carson's?"
    Without touching the hand, Jack scrutinized the gold-and-platinum ring on the pale, cold third finger.
    "This is Alli's ring," he said. "I recognize it." He pointed. "Also, look at the nails, no polish or clear lacquer. Alli's nails are square-cut, like a boy's."
    "God in heaven," Nina said. "She's been drowned."

N INE

    I' VE JUST been reading over E-Two's latest manifesto," the president said when Dennis Paull