Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) (5 page)

All of which was sensible and understandable and they were only doing their jobs. But it meant that I didn’t get to see my mom or dad for over two hours, until my dad overruled the head of the Secret Service and said he’d damn well drive
himself
to the hospital if they didn’t agree to take him.

Part of me almost didn’t want him to come. I knew there was a very real possibility that the entire attack, including me getting shot, had been just a ploy to lure my dad to the hospital without adequate security measures. Like everything in my life, things that happen to me are seen through the lens of how it might affect him. That’s why I’m
the President’s daughter
to most people and not
Emily.

Kian had been right about my leg: the bullet had gone straight through the muscle and out the other side without touching the bone. With some physiotherapy, I’d be fine. I remember thanking the doctors again and again and trying to persuade them to go help someone who was hurt worse. I did everything I could to find out where Kian was but there was too much confusion and the injured were spread between too many hospitals: eventually, I heard he’d been treated, questioned for a long
time by the FBI and then released.

The FBI were everywhere. It was the worst attack on American soil for years. What drove me mad was how the news media kept relating it to
me.
They kept referring to an attack on the President’s daughter until I finally screamed at a reporter that they should be focusing on the twenty-two people who hadn’t been as lucky as me.

At first, the media just called it an
attack,
but within about eight hours it became a
terrorist attack.
A group calling themselves the Brothers of Freedom claimed responsibility and the media went
nuts
for a solid week with pundits speculating on where they’d come from and how they’d managed to strike so viciously, so effectively, right in the middle of DC. The group was a homegrown, extremist militia whose idea of freedom seemed to be anarchy: they wanted the end of government and, specifically, the flag and the constitution, the end of taxes, the end of laws and a society based on all-out dog-eat-dog chaos. There was a heartening lack of sympathy for them—the entire nation seemed to be firmly allied against them. But that didn’t make them any less dangerous.

Neither shooter was apprehended. Helping the FBI to put together a photofit of the second shooter was easy because his face was burned into my memory forever. I went through hundreds of mug shots, too, but couldn’t identify him. Somehow, both men had sneaked out of the city and vanished. The media, always desperate to find someone to blame, raged against both the FBI and the Secret Service, demanding to know how this could happen. The director of the FBI made some defensive comments about needing more funding and better surveillance. The Vice President surprised everyone by turning it into his personal cause. For years, he’d been pushing for more surveillance and tougher laws, but now he brought it all together into a bill. Given the climate, there were no end of co-signers eager to jump on the bandwagon.

And me? That night I went home to the White House, patched up, medicated and as safe as a person could be. I hugged my mom and dad, went to the most secure bedroom on the planet and waited to heal.

But I didn’t heal.

I got worse.

Emily

It started the night I got home from the hospital. Maybe I should have expected it. The doctors had expected it: they’d given me details of people I could talk to if I needed to (I nodded and promised I would) and offered me something to help me sleep (I turned it down). But I was focused on my leg and how lucky I was that the bullet hadn’t shattered a bone or shredded a nerve and left me in a wheelchair for life, or just hit me in the chest or head and ended me right there. I thought I was okay.

And then, at about two a.m., when the residence was quiet and still, a man broke into my room and stabbed me in the chest.

It wasn’t a nightmare. I’d had nightmares. This was something else. I felt the weight of him on top of me, felt the knife slip between my ribs, When I woke up I could see the dark blood on the sheets and on my hands and it took long seconds before it faded.

I climbed out of bed: I couldn’t stay in it because I was
sure
the sheets were blood-soaked, no matter how many times I checked to make sure they weren’t. Three times, I told myself angrily not to be so freaking silly and forced myself to limp back into bed and get under the covers, only to stagger out again a few moments later, physically shaking with fear. I wound up sitting in the doorway between my bedroom and bathroom, hugging my knees and trembling. I stayed like that until the dawn broke through the drapes and then I breathed a little easier because I assumed the fear would disappear with the night.

I was wrong.

When I hobbled over to the window, I saw the sun rise on a world filled with threats. Every slow-moving car could contain a gunman, the window whining down to reveal a dark barrel pointed right at my head. Every man—every
woman
—walking down the street was hiding explosives under their coat, ready to swerve towards me and cover the distance between us in less time than it took to scream.

I’d always known I was in danger. But it was the first time I really felt it, in all its bone-deep, horrifying certainty. When you know something like that, you can’t think of anything else.

I couldn’t go outside. The dreams were bad enough, but at least I could tell myself that they couldn’t hurt me. Outside, the threat was real.

At first, it wasn’t too bad. My injured leg meant that no one expected me to attend events anyway. I hunkered down in the residence. If someone asked how I was doing, I said
fine,
because I’d convinced myself that this was just a temporary glitch and normal service would soon be restored. For the same reason, I didn’t call the therapists the doctors had recommended. Six people had died and it was
my fault
because, ultimately, it had been
me
the gunmen had been targeting. I’d been lucky enough to survive: what right did
I
have to be messed up?
It’ll get better. Give it time.

There was another factor, too. I’m not just
Emily,
I’m the President’s daughter. A lot of the time it’s like being a freakin’ fairy tale princess: I know how lucky I am. But there are strings attached. Ever since my dad took office, I’d done my best to support him. I’d been to every press event, watched every word I said to the press... I even agreed to take a job with my mom’s charitable foundation, even though it wasn’t what I wanted. And I’m okay with the sacrifices: my family is a team.

If I let myself crack up over this, if I had to go to therapy, I felt like I’d be letting the team down.

But the nightmares didn’t go away. I slept because I was exhausted but I woke several times a night. Sometimes I was out of bed and across the room, cowering in a corner, before I fully woke up. I dreamed that I was shot and stabbed and poisoned. I dreamed that men tied me and tortured me and raped me, that they killed the people I loved. And every time, it was worse because it was somehow my fault.

I could barely function, much less go out. But the longer I stayed inside, the more frightening the outside world became. The day before, I’d been itching to move out of The White House and get a place of my own. Now, it was my one safe haven.

The first warning sign was the memorial service for those killed, in the Rose Garden, I stood between my mom and dad and shook hands with the relatives, I told them how brave their loved ones had been and how we’d never forget their service and I meant every word. But I felt like the facade was shattering in slow motion, big jagged cracks with nothing but a dark void between them. Not bolting for the safety of the White House was like trying to stand my ground as an 18-wheeler truck roared straight toward me. Every time the cameras clicked, my stomach knotted as I waited for the first bullet to slam into me.

That day was a turning point. Something snapped inside me and, from then on, I
couldn’t
leave. I couldn’t take the chance that something awful would happen. So I made excuses: I said my leg hurt, I told them I had to prep for the new job I was due to start soon with a charitable foundation... anything but the truth.

***

It had been a full month—it wasn’t as if the date could pass without me noticing because the TV news channels were full of the “one month anniversary.” A full month of me being weak and stupid and people growing silently frustrated with me.

Tonight’s the night. This has to stop.

Tonight, I had to go out. A concert by the New York Philharmonic at the John F. Kennedy Center. A limo ride, a thirty-second walk across the red carpet and a few hours in a big, safe room listening to great music.
Easy.
Except that thirty seconds would feel like thirty years. Except every camera click would make me want to throw up.

I dug my nails into the palms of my hands and marched off to see my dad. The more people knew I was going, the harder it would be for me to back out.

I caught him coming out of the Oval Office. “Emily!” He gave me big, warm, Texas smile. “Feeling okay?”

My dad is in his sixties and what people call
intimidatingly tall.
Six-foot-four with hair that’s still got some black in between the silver. He has a way of looking at you that makes you feel like no one else in the world exists.

“Great,” I lied. “Didn’t mean to disturb you. I just wanted to say I’m definitely coming tonight.”

I saw the relief break across his face and it cemented my decision. I’d been cooped up long enough: I had to fight this thing.

And then, just as I was feeling good, a hand landed on my shoulder. “That’s great news, Emily,” said the Vice President. “Good to see you getting back to your old self.”

I gave my best fake smile and counted the seconds until I’d be free of his hand. I could feel my guts twisting, the
wrongness
throbbing down from each finger that touched me, like being plugged into evil.

Let me tell you about the Vice President.

Edward Kerrigan is handsome in a safe, bland sort of a way. He has curly blond hair that probably made him a really cute kid and big gray eyes that look good in photos, but are utterly soulless when you see them in real life. If you stranded a choirboy on a desert island at age eight and left him to grow up by himself with no parents, no moral compass, killing animals with his bare hands to survive, when you came back in thirty-five years he’d look exactly like Kerrigan.

Other women go nuts for him: women in their thirties, even women in their twenties. I sometimes wonder if there’s something wrong with me because I can’t stand him. The guy’s got it all: he’s rich (and it’s not daddy’s money, like a lot of politicians: he built up his company from nothing and was CEO for years), he dresses well and he’s never been hit with a scandal. His wife is beautiful. His kids are adorable.

And yet….

Imagine the most enticing cake you’ve ever, ever seen. Smoothly frosted with thick chocolate frosting, intricately decorated with sugar flowers. It looks
perfect.
Everyone’s inviting you to take a big ol’ bite.

But you know—you just have this instinct—that it’s a trick. That just beneath the frosting, instead of light, perfect, sponge, it’s a solid block of squirming, crawling maggots and roaches. It doesn’t matter how good it smells: the thought of biting into it makes you want to hurl. But
only you know
. Everyone else wonders what the hell’s the matter with you.
Don’t you like cake?

That’s how Edward Kerrigan made me feel. Every. Single. Time.

The hand on my shoulder rubbed. Not in a sexual way. More like he was stroking a puppy. “I’m going to see to it,” he told me, “that those bastards can never do this again.”

Both my dad and I stiffened because we knew exactly what he was talking about:
The Guardian Act.

It was the Vice President’s bill, the one he’d announced in response to the attack in the park. Lately he’d been all over the media talking about it, using phrases like
a new era of security
and
leaving the bad guys no place to hide.
The bill promised to end terrorism by putting a huge new security force on the streets, together with more surveillance. To a public in shock, it sounded like a good idea. And while there was plenty of opposition from grassroots protestors and people like the ACLU, the media were divided... and starting to lean his way. Stoking the public’s fear of more terror attacks was a good way to sell papers.