Balance Point by Robert Buettner

happened, officially. But it was nice of him to mention it.
    The Senator raised his eyebrows at Kit. “Kitten? Did you misspeak?”
    Kitten. Just when I was starting to not hate his guts.
    Kit’s father wrapped an arm around the Weasel, one patrician to another. I think the Weasons fled Philadelphia aboard the same refugee yacht as the Trentins and the Borns. “Brad! You know Catherine can’t be specific about her work.”
    Same mud, same blood, Edwin. It was my work too, thank you very much.
    But neither could Edwin Trentin-Born be specific about his work. Which tonight, political fundraising aside, consisted of hooking his daughter up with a mate of better breeding and prospects than some mutt officer three ranks her junior. Brad Weason was on his way to becoming President of the United States. President of the United States is like King of the Earth, but with an expiration date. And Edwin Trentin-Born wanted his daughter to be queen. At least that was how I saw it.
    A fat man wearing a thin blonde oozed up to The Weasel.
    Kit’s father lit up. “Ernesto! Shake hands with Florida’s newest senator!”
    The Weasel excused himself from Kit and me and picked Ernesto’s pocket for the next forty-five seconds.
    Kit took my arm while she tapped her father’s elbow. “Daddy, we’re going down to the boathouse to check on Daisy. I bet her bright work hasn’t been polished for a month.”
    Daisy was a boat Kit had sailed since she got it as a ninth birthday present.
    Her father nodded without glancing back.
    The Trentin-Born boathouse stood on pilings above the waters of the Gulf, at the end of a two-hundred-foot-long pier that was lit by flickering kerosene lanterns. The night was still, and the two of us walked alone, listening to the waves lap the pilings as distance faded the sound of the band and the crowd.
    When we got halfway out along the pier I said, “Your father still hates me.”
    It was cooler out over the water. Kit hugged my arm tighter. “No, Daddy just hates my work. Two administrations ago Daddy was Secretary of freakin’ State, Jazen. The most civilized public servant in America can’t accept that his daughter serves the public by doing unspeakably uncivilized things.”
    I shook my head. “No. He can’t accept that you do them with somebody who’s unspeakably uncivilized. Kit, my only family was a downlevels midwife who delivered me illegally.”
    “Your parents are still alive.”
    “If you believe Howard Hibble. But not even Howard knows where they are now. Compared to people like you and Weason I’ve got the heritage of pond slime. Weason even has a silver medal.”
    “Equestrian? Jazen, that’s more poof than the one I got for sailing.”
    I shrugged. “I thought Trueborns were proud of their Olympics.”
    Her eyes widened. “Omigod.” She poked my chest. “That’s why you wore these!”
    “No.”
    “Yes!” She stood back, rolled her eyes. “God, you’re so insecure.”
    “It was Howard’s idea. So I wouldn’t be insecure.”
    She smiled. “Jazen, I don’t care rat shit for Brad Weason. Or whether your parents are A-List.”
    “Your father does.”
    “You think I care rat shit for what Daddy thinks?”
    I tucked my hands into my pockets and shrugged. She had a point. “If you did care you’d stop shooting bad guys for a living.”
    Demure as Kit looked with her diamonds glittering in the moonlight, I had watched through a spotting scope while she exploded a bad guy’s head at twenty-two-hundred yards. Then did the even-badder guy crouching next to him without a hitch in her breathing. Daddy couldn’t have envisioned that when he tickled her, pink and naked, in the delivery room.
    We walked on to the boathouse. The house recognized her, unlocked, and turned on the lights. Daisy hung from ropes and pulleys attached to the ceiling, her hull dry and gleaming beneath the floods and her bright work securely wrapped against corrosion.
    “God, I missed you, Jazen.” Kit