First Family (62 page)
Her destination was just up ahead.
A mailbox.
She ran her walker right up to it, using a free hand to balance herself against the stout property of the U.S. Postal Service. With her other hand she reached into her purse and pulled out the letter. She paused and looked at the address one last time.
She had spent considerable time writing the letter. The younger generation, with all of its tweets and Facebook and cryptic texts and emails where no actual language or grammar were involved, would never have understood taking the time to compose a handwritten
missive such as this one. But she had wanted to get the words just right, because what she was writing about was so extraordinary. At least to her way of thinking.
The addressee’s name was written in block letters to make it as clear as possible. She did not want this piece of mail to go astray.
General John Puller, Senior (Ret.).
She was sending it in care of the VA hospital where she knew he was staying. She knew his health was not good, but she also knew that he was a man who could make things happen. He had risen nearly as high in the military as it was possible to go.
And he was also her brother. Her younger brother.
Big sisters were special to their little brothers. While they were growing up he had done his best to make her life miserable, playing an endless series of practical jokes on her, embarrassing her in front of her boyfriends, competing with her for their parents’ affections. It was different when they became adults. Then it was like the grown man was desperately trying to make up for all the hardship he had caused his older sister.
She could count on him to sort this out. More to the point, he had a son, her nephew, who was very good at figuring things out. She reckoned this letter would eventually end up in his capable hands. And she hoped he came down here. It had been a long time since she had seen her nephew.
Too long.
She opened the lid of the mailbox and watched the letter slide down the metal gullet. She closed the lid and then opened it twice more just to make sure the letter was in the belly of the box.
She turned her walker around and made her way back to the cabstand. She had a favorite taxi driver who had picked her up from her home and now would drive her back there. She could still drive but chose not to tonight.
The mailbox was situated at the end of a one-way street. It was easier for him to park where he had, leaving her with only a short walk to the mailbox. He had offered to post the letter for her, but she had declined. She needed to do it herself, and she also needed the exercise.
He was a youngster to her, only in his late fifties. He wore an old-fashioned chauffeur’s hat, although the rest of his outfit was decidedly more casual: khaki shorts, blue polo shirt, and canvas boat shoes on his feet. His tan was so uniformly dark that it looked like the product of a UV bed or spray-on tan.
“Thank you, Jerry,” she said, as she climbed, with his assistance, into the backseat of the Prius. Jerry folded up her walker and put it in the rear of the car before getting into the driver’s seat.
“Everything good to go, Ms. Simon?” he asked.
“I hope so,” she replied. For the first time she looked and felt truly nervous.
“You want to go back home now?”
“Yes, please. I’m tired.”
Jerry turned around in his seat and scrutinized her. “You look pale. Maybe you should go see a doctor. Got enough of them in Florida.”
“Maybe I will. But not right now. I just need some rest.”
He drove her back to her little community on the beach. They passed a pair of soaring palm trees and a sign set on a brick wall that read, “Sunset by the Sea.”
The sign had always irritated her, because she lived by an ocean, not a sea. Technically, she actually lived on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the Panhandle of Florida. She had always thought that “Sunset Coast” or “Sunset Gulf” sounded better than “Sunset by the Sea.” But the name was official and there was no changing it.
Jerry drove her to her house on Orion Street and saw her inside. A typical residence for this part of Florida, it was a two-story structure with cinderblock walls covered in beige stucco with a red terra-cotta roof and a two-car garage. The house had three bedrooms, with hers right off the kitchen. It was thirty-one hundred square feet in an efficient footprint, far larger than she needed, but she had no interest in moving. This would be her last home. She had known that for a long time.
She had a palm tree out front and some grass and decorative rocks in the yard. In the back a privacy fence ran along the property line, and she had a small reflecting pool along with a bench
and a table where she could sit, drink her coffee, and enjoy both the cooler mornings and the final rays of the evening light. On either side of her house was another house pretty much exactly the same. All of Sunset by the Sea was pretty much the same, as though the builder had some large machine to spit the houses out off-site to later be transported and erected here.
The beach was behind her house, just a short drive or long walk to the sugar-white sand of the Emerald Coast.
It was summer and the temperature was in the low seventies at nearly six in the evening. That was about twenty degrees cooler than the high for the day, which was about average for Paradise, Florida, at this time of the year.
Paradise, she thought. A silly, conceited name, but she also couldn’t say it didn’t fit. It was beautiful here most of the time.
She would take heat over cold any day. That’s why they had invented Florida, she assumed. And perhaps Paradise in particular.
And why the snowbirds flocked here every winter.
She sat in her living room and gazed around at the memories of a lifetime. On the walls and shelves were photos of friends and family. Her gaze rested longest on a picture of her husband, Lloyd, a natural-born salesman. She had fallen in love with him after World War II. He had sold her a bill of goods, too, she supposed. He always claimed to be more successful than he was. He was a good salesman but a bigger spendthrift, she had found. But he was funny, made her laugh, didn’t have a violent bone in his body, never drank to excess, and he loved her. He never cheated on her, though with his job and the traveling involved, he certainly had had chances to wander from his marriage vows.
Yes, she missed her Lloyd. After he’d passed away, she’d discovered he had a sizable life insurance policy he’d kept in force. She’d taken the whole of it and bought two stocks. Apple and Amazon. This had been way back. The two A’s on her report card, she liked to call them. The investment return had been enough to allow her to pay off the mortgage on this house and live very comfortably on far more money than Social Security alone would have allowed her.
She had a light supper and some iced tea. Her appetite wasn’t
nearly what it once was. Then she watched some TV, falling asleep in front of the screen. When she awoke she felt disoriented. Shaking her head to clear it, she decided it was time to go to bed. She rose with the aid of her walker and headed toward her bedroom. She would sleep for a few hours and then get back up, start her day over again. That was her life now.
She noticed a shadow of movement behind her, but had no chance to feel alarmed about it.
That was to be Betsy Puller Simon’s last memory.
A shadow behind her.
A few minutes later there was a splash from the backyard.
Absolute Power
Total Control
The Winner
The Simple Truth
Saving Faith
Wish You Well
Last Man Standing
The Christmas Train
Split Second
Hour Game
The Camel Club
The Collectors
Simple Genius
Stone Cold
The Whole Truth
Divine Justice
First Family
True Blue
Deliver Us from Evil
Hell’s Corner
The Sixth Man
One Summer
Zero Day
The Innocent
The Forgotten
New York Times
bestsellers
Split Second, Hour Game
, and
Simple Genius
, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell return in David Baldacci’s heart-pounding thriller…
FIRST FAMILY
A daring kidnapping turns a children’s birthday party at Camp David, the presidential retreat, into a national security nightmare.
Former Secret Service agents turned private investigators, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell don’t want to get involved. But years ago Sean King saved the First Lady’s husband, then a senator, from political disaster. Now the president’s wife presses Sean and Michelle into a desperate search to rescue a kidnapped child. With Michelle still battling her own demons, the two are pushed to the limit, with forces aligned on all sides against them—and the line between friend and foe impossible to define… or defend.
“What Baldacci does best is provide thrills, chills, and suspense. This novel is a total surprise from beginning to end.”
—
Columbus Telegram
“The story unfolds wonderfully. It’s another top-flight thriller from this bestselling author, and it’s good to see King and Maxwell again.”
—
Oklahoman
“Frightening… shocking… Sean and Michelle [are] surely one of the more interesting teams of private investigators… Baldacci is a more subtle writer now, able to tell stories of deep moral ambiguity and to create characters who balance on the line between hero and villain.”
—
Booklist
“It’s his eager, expansive imagination that drives his books… Like other thriller writers, Baldacci depends on a mixture of inventive plotting, appealing characters, luck, and consistency. Unlike others, his books rely more on characters’ relationships than whiz-bang technology or procedural twists… What he offers is in some ways more unusual.”
—
Newsweek
“It’s always a good thing when David Baldacci brings back former FBI agents King and Maxwell.”
—
New York Daily News
“Teems with the well-researched, inside-the-Beltway details we expect from him… with a smorgasbord of suspects, a detailed peek at inside-the-Beltway machinations… It’s the appealing characters and the emotions their plights provoke in us that make FIRST FAMILY stand out, though. They’re also what separate Baldacci from a crowded field of bestselling thriller writers.”
—
Richmond Times-Dispatch
“David Baldacci has earned his place as one of America’s top thriller writers with his string of No. 1 bestsellers… And it’s not just the general public nabbing up the books. President Clinton picked
Simple Genius
as his favorite book the year it came out. Other books have been read by leading figures in politics and the media.”
—James Rollins,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Doomsday Key
“Baldacci excels at making the improbable believable… Baldacci’s careful plotting and confident depictions of national security procedures make this a thinking man’s thriller.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“Baldacci is indisputably one of the greatest thriller writers of the last decade… Rather than write the same type of book several times, Baldacci has repeatedly traveled away from his comfort zone, with astounding results.”
—
Strand Magazine
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