No.

She stood straight, stepped back. Joe dropped his arms. He sensed she didn’t want the support. She had to be strong here. When she was standing apart, she wrapped her own arms around herself because she was the only one who could support her. She was the only one who could do this.

Memories were flooding in, an unstoppable flow, that night now clear in her head, so clear it was as if she was reliving it.

“Hector Blake,” she repeated, as if his name were some kind of horrible mantra. And she saw no surprise in anyone’s eyes.

“Tell us, honey,” Joe said.

“That night...” She stopped for a second, breathing heavily, breathing as if it was a job she had to do. No one shuffled their feet or coughed. No one betrayed any impatience whatsoever. They wanted to hear what she had to say and they were willing to wait for it, however long it took.

That gave her courage.

“It was about ten minutes to the time Dad was going to make his announcement. The evening looked completely spontaneous but three days of planning had gone into it, into the timing and what Dad was going to say. Everyone was excited. There was a lot of noise. People screaming, the piped-in music, it was like a wall of noise. But the planners knew that this would be the moment of maximum excitement before Dad made his announcement. And they knew there would be pandemonium when he finally threw his hat into the ring, officially. Dad’s advisors were all smiling, really happy. I’d gone out a couple of times with one of Dad’s press officers and I asked him if all this excitement was fake and he said no. He said a lot of people understood that they were on a trajectory that would take them straight to the Oval Office.”

She’d shaken her head at that and decided then and there that there wouldn’t be a third date. This thirst for power wasn’t something she understood. She barely understood it in her own father, even though she knew that in him, it was mixed up with an idealistic sense of mission. For the aides and hangers-on of the new campaign, there was no mission, no ideals, just the whiff of power.

She met Joe’s sober eyes, dark and steady. He was with her as she stepped into the past, into an unimaginably painful and brutal past.

“All the family was up on the stage except for me and Jack. I think he’d gone to the bathroom. I had to take a call. My agent, calling from New York with an offer. I was talking to her, walking around the podium for an exit because we could barely hear each other, when—” She drew in a deep breath. This part was well-known. “When we were cut off. I was checking my cell, thinking to call her back and then all the lights went out. It was like someone had waved a magic wand and created darkness.”

Her voice had gone up in a tremolo. She clenched her teeth, getting herself back under control. Or at least as much control as she could manage.

“But there were candles on the front tables, an array of them. They were going to dim the lights and they’d threaded the floral arrangements with tea lights. My mom insisted because she loves—” Isabel’s eyes widened in horror. Her mom didn’t love candles anymore. Her mom was in the cold, cold ground. Together with her father and three brothers. Her throat spasmed and she had to cough to loosen it. “Loved. My mom loved candles. There were also big wax bowls with several tea lights inside, surrounded by the floral arrangements. Beautiful. But more than that, they shed light.”

An eerie light, she remembered. Like footlights in theaters in the nineteenth century, lighting faces from the bottom, leaving features indistinct. Leaving the eyes in shadow.

And at the same time the world came to an end.

“There were—there were screams from all around the room. And a ripping sound.”

“AK-47s,” Joe murmured.

“Guns, yes,” Isabel said. “Machine guns. Those were in my dreams. There were men everywhere, it seemed. I couldn’t count them. Dressed in black, with black ski masks and black goggles. What you said was night vision gear. Outside the front tables which were lit by the candles, it was pitch-black. So they could see in the dark and we couldn’t.”

Her heart burned. Such a horrible cowardly thing. Shooting innocent people in the dark when they could see! Not even allowing for the possibility of anyone defending themselves, innocent unarmed people in the dark, against armed men who could see. “People were screaming in the dark, scrambling to get out of the way, and then they started falling. One masked terrorist planted himself on the other side of the tables with candles and opened fire on the podium. As if he were shooting ducks in a gallery in the county fair. Left to right.” She closed her eyes but the scene she’d repressed for months was painted on the inside of her eyeballs. Her memory had come roaring back to life and it was exactly as if she was living it again. “My mom, my kid brothers. Mowed down.” She shook.

Joe put his arm around her and bent low to her ear. “Honey, you don’t have to—”

Joe meant well but he was wrong. Isabel pushed away. “Oh, but I do, I do. Teddy—a bullet shattered his head. He dropped to the floor and there was only mist spattering my mom and Rob. Mom had already been shot but she was still on her feet. She was turning to put herself between the shooter and my father and Rob but the shooter got her in the back.”

How could the memory have been wiped? How could she have possibly forgotten it? Dead people on the podium, her wounded mother, blood pouring from a shoulder onto her pretty cream-colored suit, turning with her arms wide, wanting to catch her kid brother except the only thing she caught was a bullet.

“It sometimes took two bullets, but the guns killed everyone. Methodically, coldly. The gunman was making his way across the podium. Dad was struggling with—with Hector. Dad was trying to get to Mom and my brothers but Hector was holding him. Wait.”

Isabel held up a finger and stared into the distance. No one in the room moved. No one even breathed.

She ran through the sequence in her head. She almost didn’t believe herself, but the events rang true somewhere deep inside her.

“This is what happened. The gunman was picking off the people on the podium, Dad was trying to get to Mom and the boys but Hector was holding him. At that point, another gunman shot the man next to me and he fell on top of me. He was a big man, knocked the breath out of me. The gunman killed the man standing next to Hector. Cyrus Lowry, the former secretary of state. Dad went to school with him. Cyrus fell, the gunman pivoted...” Isabel closed her eyes, saw everything. “Hector was standing next to Cyrus. The gunman all of a sudden pulled his machine gun...up.”

“Like he didn’t want to shoot Blake?” Joe asked.

“Exactly. Exactly as if he had orders not to shoot Hector. And the two exchanged glances. Both nodded. Then the gunman, oh God!” She reached for Joe’s hand, found it. “The gunman brings his gun down, aims and kills Dad. Hector was spared. Deliberately.”

Silence.

“So Blake was last man standing on the podium.” Joe’s voice was harsh. Isabel looked around at her little audience. The women looked shocked, pale. The men looked grim, as if unsurprised at this example of human wickedness.

“Yes. And he turned away, but before he did, he—”

“What, Isabel?” Lauren asked softly. She still held the portrait of an eminently recognizable Hector Blake between two fingers.

“He saw me. I was on the ground, half-crushed by this man, but I was able to lift my head. We were both in the small circle of light thrown by the candles, the rest of the huge hall black and filled with bloody corpses. And...and he saw me. Saw me watching him just as he was turning away. There was still a huge amount of noise. The machine guns were still firing and, though the moans and screams had died down a lot, there was still screaming. So Hector gestured to the man who’d killed everyone on the podium to catch his attention and then pointed at me on the floor. I imagine what he wanted wasn’t immediately apparent because the gunman’s head was swiveling, trying to see what Hector wanted. And Hector’s face tightened...and I have never seen that expression on a man’s face before. Pure malevolent evil.”