First Family (8 page)

“Okay,” Sean said slowly, watching her closely.

“So you’ll do it?” She laid her hand over the top of Sean’s.

He looked at Michelle, who gave a quick nod. “We’ll do it.”

T
HEY LEFT THE CHURCH
. The Town Car was not waiting for them.

“I guess we didn’t pay for a round trip,” muttered Michelle.

They were starting to walk across Lafayette Park when Sean said, “Hold on to your organs. Here they come.”

The two men were marching with a shared purpose. One was Sour Face, the FBI agent. The other one Sean knew well, as did Michelle. He was Secret Service, higher-up Secret Service named Aaron Betack. The man’s distinguished career at the Service had swiftly propelled him from the trenches to the power tower, and Sean noted he had quite the spring in his step right now.

They blocked Sean and Michelle’s way.

Sean feigned surprise. “Hey, you guys out for a stroll too? Great minds and all.”

Sour Face said, “We know where you’ve been and who you just talked to and we’re here to put the kibosh on it right now. The last thing we need are two cowboys—” He paused and leered at Michelle. “Excuse me, and
cowgirl
screwing this up.”

“I never did get your name,” said Sean pleasantly.

“FBI Special Agent Chuck Waters, WFO.”

“That’s good to know,” put in Michelle. “Because I’ve just been referring to you as
dickhead.
”

“Maxwell,” snapped Betack. “You show some damn respect.”

“Show me something I should respect and I will,” she shot back.

Waters inched closer to her and waggled a finger an inch from her nose. “You just back the hell off, little lady.”

Since Michelle was nearly four inches taller than Waters, she said, “If I’m a
little lady
that must mean you’re a dwarf.”

“And just so you know,
Chuck
, this little lady here can kick all of our asses without breaking a sweat, so back off,” said Sean.

Betack, who was the same size as the six-foot-two King with even broader shoulders, cleared his throat and gave his FBI colleague a cautious look and then a shake of the head. Waters’s face flamed red but he did take a noticeable step back.

Betack said, “Sean, you and Maxwell are not investigating this case. Period.”

“Last time I looked at my pay stub it didn’t mention Uncle Sam.”

“Nevertheless—”

“There’s no nevertheless. We met with a prospective client. We have agreed to represent said client. This is America. They allow that sort of thing here. Now, we have a case to get working on.”

“You’re really going to regret this, King,” barked Waters.

“I’ve regretted a lot of things in my life. And yet here I am.”

He pushed past them and Michelle followed. She made sure to let her elbow impact with Waters’s shoulder.

When they got back to Michelle’s SUV she said, “I was really proud of you back there.”

“Don’t be. We just made enemies of two of the most powerful agencies in the world.”

“Go big or go home.”

“I’m serious, Michelle.”

She put the SUV in gear. “So that just means we have to solve this thing fast.”

“You really think that’s even remotely possible?”

“We’ve cracked tough stuff before.”

“Yeah, and none of it happened fast.”

“Allow me to be cautiously pessimistic. Where to first? Tuck?”

“No, the kids.”

As they drove along she said, “And what did you think of Jane Cox’s story?”

“It seemed pretty straightforward.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“And you didn’t?”

“You never did tell me how you know the lady.”

“How does anyone really know anyone else?”

“Cut the existential crap. I want to know how you know her.”

“Why does that matter?”

“It matters because if your judgment is clouded—”

“Who the hell says my judgment is clouded?”

“Come on, I saw how she put her hand on top of yours. Did you two have an affair or something?”

“You think I was banging the president of the United States’ wife? Give me a freaking break!”

“Maybe she wasn’t the First Lady when you knew her,” Michelle said calmly. “But I don’t know that because you refuse to tell me, your
partner
, anything about it. Talk about a one-way street. I’ve bared my guts to you, I expect a little reciprocity.”

“Okay, okay.” He fell silent and looked out the window.

“Okay, what?”

“I did
not
have an affair with Jane Cox.”

“Did you want to?”

He shot her a glance. “What do you care?”

Michelle, who’d been grinning at him, now looked flustered. “I, I don’t care who you lust after. That’s your business.”

“That’s good to know, because I’m really into lust privacy.”

There was an awkward silence as they drove along.

Michelle was racking her brains for some other line of questioning and gratefully pounced on it. “But you were gone from the Service long before her husband ran for the Oval Office.”

“He was also a U.S. senator before that.”

“But what’s the connection with the Service? Or did it not have anything to do with that?”

“It did. And it didn’t.”

“Great, thanks for clearing that up.”

He remained silent.

“Sean, come on!” She slapped the steering wheel in frustration.

“This can go no further, Michelle.”

“Yeah, I’m a real blabbermouth.”

“I’ve never told anyone this. No one.”

She glanced over at him and noted the grim expression. “Okay.”

He settled back in his seat. “Years ago I was working presidential advance team duty in Georgia. I went out to have a late bite to eat with another agent. He left to get back on shift but I was off for the night. I took a stroll, scoping out the place, with an eye to doing some recon for trouble spots along the motorcade route. I’d been walking around for about an hour. It was maybe 11:30. That’s when I saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“Dan Cox.”

“The president?”

“He wasn’t president back then. He’d just been elected to the Senate. If you recall, he served a full term and then a couple years of his next before running for president.”

“Okay, you saw him, so what?”

“He was in a parked car in an alley, dead drunk, with some chick going down on him.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“You think I’d make that up?”

“So what happened?”

“I recognized him. He’d actually been at a briefing we did for the local officials in anticipation of the president coming to town.”

“So what was he doing getting ‘serviced’ in an alley by a woman who wasn’t his wife?”

“Well, I didn’t know it wasn’t his wife at the time, but it was still dicey. He was in the same political party as the president and I didn’t want this to make waves before the man came down. So I knocked on the car window and flashed my shield. The chick jumped off him so fast I thought she was going to go right through the car roof. Cox was so wasted he had no idea what was happening.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I told the lady to get out of the car.”

“Was she a hooker?”

“Don’t think so. She was young but not dressed the way you’d
think a hooker would be. I remember she almost fell out of the car trying to pull her panties on. I asked her for some ID.”

“Why?”

“Just in case this came back to bite me in the ass later, I wanted to be able to find the lady.”

“So she just gave you her driver’s license?”

“She obviously didn’t want to, but I told her she had no choice. I bluffed her and told her if she didn’t I was going to have to call in the police. She let me see her license and I wrote her name and address down. She lived in the city.”

“What happened after that?”

“I was going to call her a cab but she just took off. I started to go after her, but then Cox began making noises. I hustled back to the car, zipped up his pants, pushed him into the passenger seat, got out his license to get his address, and drove him home.”

“And that’s where you met Jane Cox?”

“That’s right.”

“Boy, some introduction. Did you tell her everything?”

Sean started to say something, but then paused.

“Discretion the better part of valor?”

“Something like that,” he said. “I just told her I’d found him in the car ‘under the weather.’ Although you could smell the perfume on him and there was lipstick on his shirt. I carried him into the house and upstairs to the bedroom. It was pretty awkward all around. Luckily their kids were asleep. I’d shown her my ID when I first got there. She was incredibly thankful, said she’d never forget what I’d done for her. And him. Then… then she sort of broke down crying. I guess this wasn’t the first time this had happened. I… I sort of held her, tried to calm her down.”

“You
sort of
held her?”

“Okay, I had my arms around her. What the hell was I supposed to do? I was trying to comfort the woman.”

“Was that when you were lusting in your heart?”

“Michelle!” he said sharply.

“Sorry. Okay, you were sort of holding her. Then what?”

“When she stopped crying and composed herself, she thanked me again. She offered to drive me back to town but I didn’t think that was such a good idea. So I walked for a bit and then grabbed a cab.”

“That was it?”

“No, that wasn’t it. She called me. I don’t know exactly how to phrase it; we became acquaintances and then friends. I believe she was really grateful for what I’d done. If someone other than me had found him like that he probably wouldn’t be president right now.”

“Don’t be too sure. Politicians aren’t exactly known for their morality.”

“Anyway, I knew the ins and outs of the town pretty well and she picked my brain about it. I think she came to know the workings of D.C. better than her husband did.”

“And that’s how you got to know Tuck and his family?”

“Jane invited me to a few functions. I don’t think Dan Cox even remembered me. Or remembered that night. I’m not sure how she explained my presence to him, but he never questioned it. After he was elected president I didn’t really see that much of them anymore, for obvious reasons. Folks like me don’t travel in those circles. And I was out of the Secret Service and out of D.C. by then. But she always sent me a Christmas card. And I kept in touch with Tuck and his family. When we moved here, they were some of the first ones to welcome me back.”

Michelle looked surprised. “How come you never introduced me to them then?”

A grin eased across Sean’s face. “Hell, I didn’t want to scare them off.”

“So here you come to the lady’s rescue one more time.”

“Like they say, déjà vu all over again.”

“Yeah? Well, let’s hope we live through it. They almost got me the other night and I’m using up my nine lives at an alarming rate hanging around you.”

“Yeah, but it’s never dull either.”

“No, it’s never dull.”

S
AM
Q
UARRY DROVE
on rutted roads back to Atlee. The Patriot he’d used to kill Kurt sat on the truck seat next to him. He pulled up in front of his pre–Civil War pile of hand-formed bricks and local stone, as the Alabama dust swirled around the truck’s tires, looking more like simmering heat than dirt fists of the Deep South. He didn’t move for the longest time. He sat there, hands on the wheel, staring at the twenty-ounce Patriot with its firing pin safety mechanism. He finally flicked a thumb across one of its grip pads, trying to shove from his mind what he’d done, by touching the very instrument with which he’d done it.

He’d nearly crashed the Cessna on the flight back. He’d started shaking uncontrollably right after takeoff. Then at barely two hundred feet up he’d caught some wind shear and his wings had rotated nearly vertical. Later, he figured he’d come a few seconds from losing lift altogether before regaining control and soaring upward as the aircraft claimed its buoyancy.

He’d always kept Daryl close to him when his son was growing up. The boy had never been too special in the brains department, his father knew, but he loved him anyway. He was loyal, that boy was. Did whatever his daddy told him to. And what he lacked in intellect he more than made up with dogged determination and attention to detail; attributes he shared with his father. Those traits had worked well for him in the Army. He, Kurt, and Carlos had signed up and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning eight combat medals among them and surviving the worst that the enemy could throw at them, including dozens of IEDs.