Tracie Peterson Read Free Page A

board.”

Three
    Russell Owens pulled back the powder blue damask drapes from the sliding-glass window that led to his patio. Sunlight flooded the room, falling on stacks of unopened boxes and haphazardly placed furniture.
    He grimaced at the sight.
    His small west-side apartment was temporary election headquarters for Kerns, and boxes of campaign materials mingled with ones marked “FRAGILE” gave the apartment a warehouse appearance. Russell had barely set down his own things before Kerns had begun parading campaign necessities into his home. Given his upcoming schedule, Russell knew it would be a long time before everything got sorted out properly.
    Switching on the television, Russell sat down to a Sunday afternoon of Kerns-focused work. He glanced at the TV, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and picked up his notes. A large stack of newspapers covered his glass-topped coffee table, and beside these were clippings from magazines and business newsletters. All of the articles pertained to Kerns in one way or another, and it would be Owens’ job to sort through the mess and deem the effects of each in regard to his candidate.
    Sipping a hastily made cup of coffee, Owens grimaced at his ineptness in the kitchen and put the drink aside. First thing tomorrow, he would locate the coffee maker, no matter how many boxes he had to search through.
    He listened to the TV news broadcaster give a sketchy report on two legislative bills before turning his full attention to the task at hand. Jotting rough notes on a legal pad, he pored over one article after another. KERNS REPRESENTS FARMERS, read one headline. This was good, Owens decided. It would make for a good campaign quote at a later date. The next newspaper article was not as favorable: KERNS SEEKS TO COVER UP CHEMICAL SPILL. Owens read through the article and found the story of Sheldon Industries’ battle with the EPA to be quite fascinating. Toward the middle of the story he circled a paragraph that he would use as a compaign slogan. “Robert Kerns supports the needs of Kansas industries over the safety of local residents. . . .” Of course the quote would be trimmed to end after the word “industries.”
    The game was beginning to be fun. Owens smiled and circled additional bits of information before turning his attention to a list of possible running mates for Kerns. The list was long and unreasonable. Owens immediately took to black lining any name that even mildly represented a problem. Having done his homework on the men listed, Owens saw the list diminish in size until only two possibilities held any real interest for him. And even those names conjured up the possibility of a political crisis. One man was well known for his support of the death penalty—an issue that Owens hoped to keep out of the public eye for as long as possible. The other man had created his own business in computers and had become an overnight phenomenon across the state. But he had a reputation for being a playboy. In and of itself, it wasn’t necessarily all that damaging, but in conservative Kansas, it just might be the one thing to send voters running to the other side.
    “And on the local scene,” a female reporter was saying, “I had the opportunity to spend a day with Cara Kessler. Mrs. Kessler is the co-founder of HEARTBEAT Ministries, a statewide youth ministry that seeks to give spiritual direction, job training, and education to Kansas young people.”
    Russell looked up, not really knowing why. He found an attractive brown-haired woman smiling back from the twenty-seven-inch screen. She looked like the stereotypical country sweetheart with her shoulder-length hair just turned under at the ends.
    “Cara Kessler, you’ve been most notably described as a ‘dynamo’ and ‘spiritual torchbearer.’ Your ministry workwith HEARTBEAT is nationally acclaimed, and HEARTBEAT’s founding motto, ‘Youth are the pulse points by which we monitor the heart of our nation,’ has even been