Tuck looked dumbstruck by this, but Sean said, “Fine, you think about it and let us know.” He rose and motioned Tuck and Michelle to join him in leaving.
“Tuck, why don’t you stay here with the children?” said Jane.
He didn’t even look at her. “No thanks.”
Tuck stalked out of the room. Michelle and Sean followed him.
Betack had turned to join them when Jane said, “I’ll never forget this betrayal, Agent Betack. Never.”
Betack wet his lips, but whatever he was about to say back he seemed to think better of. He turned and left.
As they were leaving the White House, Sean pulled Betack aside. “Aaron, one thing.”
“You need any freelance investigators? I see an involuntary career change coming in my future.”
“I do need you to do a little sleuthing.”
“Meaning what?”
“The letter the First Lady got.”
“She said she destroyed it.”
“Considering that just about everything that’s come out of the lady’s mouth has been a lie, chances are even money that she didn’t.”
“And you want me to find it?”
“I’d try. But I think someone might notice me snooping around here. I understand the security’s pretty good.”
“Do you realize what you’re asking me to do?”
“Yeah. I’m asking you to help save a little girl’s life.”
“Where the hell do you get off hitting me with a guilt trip like that?”
“Would you do it if I didn’t hit you with it?”
Betack looked off for a moment. When he stared back at Sean he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
After they dropped off Tuck back at Blair House, Sean’s phone buzzed. He answered, listened, smiled, and clicked off. “I can feel the tide turning a little.”
“Why? Who was that?” asked Michelle.
“My language department friend. They might have something to tell us about the marks on Pam’s arms.”
CHAPTER 51
WE’D EXHAUSTED just about everything we could think of,” said Phil Jenkins, Sean’s professor friend at Georgetown University. “Of course it wasn’t the Chinese Yi as you initially suspected. Wrong alphabet. But college professors love a challenge like this, so I called in other faculty from some of our interdisciplinary studies. At least it beat grading fifty exams.”
“I bet,” said Michelle as she perched on the edge of Jenkins’s desk in his cluttered office. She would have opted for a chair but the two in the room were piled with five-pound books.
“And you found what?” asked Sean impatiently.
“Ever heard of Muskogean?”
“Isn’t that a town in Wisconsin, or maybe Oklahoma?”
“That’s Muskogee. No, it’s Indian. Native American Indian. Without getting too technical, it’s a family of languages, actually.”