Night Is Mine (24 page)

He considered answering with the truth. “I’m busy proving to my best friend how stupid I can be about one particular woman.” And he might have, if her father hadn’t been sitting right beside her. She’d never mentioned what her parents did for a living. He could feel his palms sweating where they rested on the arms of the chair he’d chosen across from the Director of the FBI.

Clearly he’d landed solidly in the “bad surprise” category and that knowledge came with a bitter taste he didn’t like at all. It meant she really was doing the impossible, sleeping with the Commander-in-Chief despite his being married.

“I thought you might need help. That attack came too close to succeeding.”
And if you weren’t such a perfect pilot, it would have.
He’d seen the tape on the news, and it had scared a decade off his life.

“I have a lot of untapped leave, the front is quiet at the moment, so I put in for some time.” And had cashed in yet more favors to get it on such short notice. Now he actively owed people, something he never did.

She leaned forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped. As she stared down at them, her hair swung forward and hid her face.

“Okay… Okay,” clearly talking to herself.

“Can I ask what you’re doing here?” He had some guesses, but they didn’t make sense. She was more than chef and pilot, but he couldn’t figure out what. Harem girl to the President?

“Someone is trying to kill the First Lady.”

“Apparently,” the FBI Director told her.

“Apparently?”

Her father nodded. “It helps keep my thinking flexible.”

“Apparently,” she echoed. “Apparently President Matthews wants me to find out who.”

She told him about her role as bodyguard. That clearly was news to her father as well. Emily was so good at secrets, Mark thought. Who could tell what she was thinking? Did she know he was the one who’d made love to her? That was the question he really wanted to ask and couldn’t. During the kiss at the White House a couple of hours earlier, he’d been relieved that she had clearly known. But now that he knew the truth about her, he just wanted to be as far away as possible.

Jim would be so proud. Mark had found new levels of dumb. He’d gone and trapped himself next to the woman he wanted, and he’d probably have to help her sneak into bed with her lover. To keep himself from breaking something, he focused on the stories she was telling of limousines, model airplanes, and highly classified light weapons.

“And the First Lady doesn’t trust the Secret Service?” Her father sounded incredulous. A worst-case scenario if ever there was one.

“That’s black. Actually, that’s black-in-black.”

Mark blanched. White operations ended up in the news. Often were even fed to the news, after the fact of course. Invasion of Baghdad, both times. Capture of Saddam Hussein. Downing of bin Laden.

Black Ops were operations that were never told to anyone anywhere at any time for any reason, except for other people with similar clearance and commitment. Like that sweet bit of flying Beale had done to fetch the defecting North Korean. That one had been chatted around SOAR, but not a single member of the outfit would ever tell an outsider. It had also been a key in his requesting her and her copilot at the end of their training.

Black-in-black. Never told to anyone outside of the action team. Ever. Those operations happened once every couple years to the unfortunate, never in their life’s service for the lucky. Black-in-black never went as planned. And it was always a royal, terrifying, life-threatening mess when it slid sideways, which it did every single time.

Fourteen years in the service, ten working with Special Forces, and this was only his third. Emily knew the phrase, so she’d probably been part of one while flying for the 101st Airborne.

“So, what’s the play?”

“The play? You’ve already chosen it for us. You’re playing my ex-mercenary boyfriend who knows nothing about my real past.”

Playing Beale’s boyfriend was a role he’d have given a year’s pay to hold, if he didn’t now know what lay behind it. He could dream of a bonus track or any other special features, but not with a cheating woman.

“Okay.” He did his best to swallow his disappointment. “Where are we operating?”

“The White House!” The words exploded out of both men at once.

That’s where the game was, and Emily couldn’t change it.

“Wait. Wait. Wait.” Mark had both hands up. “You’re talking about a black-in-black military operation in the most well-known building on the planet? And, in case you’ve forgotten, the military is not authorized on U.S. soil. That’s so illegal that I don’t even know where to begin.”

“He’s right, dear. It would require a presidential executive order, and even that might not hold up. I’m sorry, but we can’t proceed with this.”

She hung her head again. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to pretend to be with Mark. It was too dangerous to both their careers, especially because she apparently had no control when he was close. Didn’t want to have control.

But she also didn’t have any choice in what they were doing. Her Commander-in-Chief and the best friend she’d ever had were counting on her.

“How do you do this, Daddy?”

When the silence dragged out, she looked up at him. He was studying her closely. He nodded to himself.

“You have learned the keeping of secrets. It is different training than we have as agents. Our life is sifting secrets, unraveling them to see what lies behind. The bottom line is to just say what you are thinking and then we can go over it carefully.”

“But my feelings are biased.” She managed not to glance at Mark. Not knowing what he was thinking hurt. And he appeared to be cutting up pretty stiff and commander-like for reasons she couldn’t fathom. Hadn’t his kiss buckled her knees just a few hours earlier? Well, she wasn’t about to tell him any more of her past than she was going to tell her father.

“You hate Katherine Matthews.”

She felt as if she’d been punched back into her chair. “But… How?”

A soft smile touched his lips, one of those rare moments when only her father was present, without any “agent man” behind the eyes.

“Trust that I know my daughter well enough to see what she was thinking even when she was twelve years old and standing on a curb.”

“Was I so obvious?” This time she did glance at Mark, but clearly he was completely at sea at the moment. Please let him stay that way.

“Only to a father who loves his little girl. Now accept that I know the bias and just say it.”

She huffed out another breath, managed not to check Mark, and went for it.

“I don’t hate her. I don’t like her, but even more, I don’t trust her. I have suspicions, but I can’t confirm them on my own.”

“What are they?”

This time she shook her head. “They haven’t jelled yet. All I can say is there’s a real itch I can’t scratch and I’m not seeing where it is. I’d like to find it before it kills me.”

Both men sat back at that.

Mark spoke first. “Well, we still can’t operate at the White House with any sort of mission. Even you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing already. Do you even know what black-in-black means?”

His tone cut at her. It hurt worse than any of her gunshot wounds had. He’d been light, funny, and his kiss had promised so much. Something had changed and now his bitterness drove at her heart.

To hell with him. She’d survived seven black-in-blacks over the past four years and prayed that number eight would be luckier than those. They’d been unadulterated hell, each and every one, despite each achieving a successful conclusion. But a black-in-black never ran as planned and it never came easy.

Placing Mark Henderson in the role of her boyfriend had sounded like a huge plus when she’d first thought of it. That was before he’d made it clear that their night in the hospital had only been about the sex.

She thought hard and fast, but she had no other options. She had signed up to play what could be an incredibly dangerous game. If even a part of her guesses came true, this was going to be a tough one. Just ten minutes after adding Mark to the team, the operation was already heading down the toilet.

Time to talk his language.

She reached into her back pocket and pulled out Peter’s note. She hadn’t even read it yet.

“Hate to chap your ass, sweetheart.”

She handed it to her father, who read it twice before handing it to Mark. Mark read the front twice, checked the back, the inside of the envelope, and then read it again.

“Is that genuine?”

“Care to ask him yourself?”

They both shook their heads.

Mark whispered the sentence aloud.

“‘Captain Emily Beale is hereby authorized to do what she deems is necessary to ensure the security and safety of the United States of America without oversight or judgment. President Peter Matthews.’” He looked at the blank back and rubbed a thumb over the raised presidential seal letterhead.

Exactly what she’d feared Peter had done.

It was the craziest of documents. It simultaneously represented the greatest level of trust between both parties and the greatest level of danger to both parties. She could theoretically nuke the Capitol Building with Congress in session, using the power granted to her by the President. It gave her the creeps to touch the letter. She folded it back into her pocket as quickly as possible, then buttoned the flap.

“That’s insane.”

She nodded. Empires had fallen due to abuse of such a document.

“And, Dad, the first thing I need is help smuggling my boyfriend into the White House.”

Mark had wanted to bring at least one weapon, but Emily had insisted not. Now, as he lounged once more against the counter in White House security’s single-wide, he was glad he’d listened. These guys had a level of inspection he’d never witnessed before. Agent-in-Charge Adams, first-name-not-supplied, made sure Mark was practically strip-searched even though “Ms. Beale” had vouched for him.

He knew by heart the background check they were set up to find. And could answer a thousand questions about it without repeating himself, which was the first sign of a fraud. He’d been up most of the night studying.

His fake profile said it all. Rich kid. Surfer, thrill seeker, college dropout with mediocre grades in psychology and a fair set of stats in college ball. No luck trying to hook up with the NFL pros. That made up the first-level cover story. The one they were meant to drill holes in. Right down into a fictitious murky past.

Paramilitary, retired. Ex-mercenary.

Even deeper in his file, there laid unconfirmed rumors that he’d knocked over a Colombian kingpin he’d been hired to protect and pocketed a huge wad of ready cash, on the scale of two suitcases full. The weakness of the first cover and the strength of the second would distract anyone from remembering the major sitting in Beale’s hospital room. Now he surfed the best beaches, played in the casinos, and… right, he was supposed to be relaxed and easy, not stressed so hard that if they decided to do an anal cavity search they wouldn’t be able to get a latex-gloved finger in.

“Hey, Emma, honeybunch.” He did his best Texas drawl, remembering to use the nickname they’d selected. “Em” had been violently rejected. No big surprise; it was her lover Peter’s name for her.

Emily smiled brightly at him on cue.

“Did I mention that I just bought that offshore Super Boat I told you about? The one that won them two little races and that one big one down Australia way. A sweet little fifty-footer with twin 1,200-horse turbines.”

He made a show of glancing at his wristwatch. Five thousand dollars of the finest watch ever built by man. He could tell that the main guy recognized it. A statement of wealth and a fixation with the military. It was marketed as designed by Special Forces, and he knew a few other guys who wore it. It was also exactly what a rich, ex-paramilitary guy would wear.

“As of…” He waited for the second hand to arbitrarily reach fourteen. “Now, I own her.” He dropped his arm on the counter, leaving the watch in plain view.

“I’m having her flown up for the Florida Keys race in a couple weeks. You should come down and be my throttle man. Wear that virtually nothing string-bikini I bought you.” He turned to face the agents. “Damn but she looks hot in it. She flashes that around, and ain’t no one else will even remember that his throttle isn’t in his shorts.”

Not impressed. The only agent looking the slightest bit green with envy was a young kid who probably had less than a year since agent school. Mark wasn’t real happy with this tack, but he was still furious with Beale. He’d never touched another man’s woman. Ever.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice the extra Secret Service guards watching next door to Emily’s or to learn that the neighbors were the President’s parents. Now Stephen Beale’s comments made sense. Emily had loved the boy next door when she was twelve and was now enjoying the bonuses of being stateside and living in the White House. Maybe he could feel a little bad for Katherine Matthews getting the short end of this stick.