As Pam walked off, Jane focused on Willa. The girl was a curious mix of maturity coupled with frequent flashes of the preteen she still was. She could write better than some adults and discourse on subjects that would befuddle many folks far her senior. And she possessed a curiosity about things that was not limited to issues common to her age group. Yet if one watched her, one would see that she giggled impulsively, used “like” and “wow” liberally, and was just starting to discover boys with impulses of both disgust and attraction typical of the preadolescent girl. That reaction to the opposite sex would not change much when Willa became an adult, Jane well knew. Except the stakes would be far higher.
The party ended, goodbyes said. Jane Cox stepped on board the chopper. It wasn’t designated as Marine One because the president wasn’t riding on it. Today, it was strictly ferrying the B-team, Jane knew. And that was perfectly fine with her. In private, she and her husband were equals. In public, she walked the obligatory two steps behind.
She strapped in and the door was swung shut and secured by a uniformed Marine. Four stoic Secret Service agents shared the ride with her. They lifted off and a few moments later she was staring down at Camp David, or the “Birdcage,” as the Secret Service had code-named the retreat, where it was cradled in the Catoctin Mountain Park. The chopper turned south and thirty minutes from now she would land safely on the lawn of the White House.
In her hand she held a note that Willa had given her before they’d left the party. It was a thank-you letter. She smiled. It was not unusual that Willa already had one prepared. The note was written in a mature voice and said all the right things. Indeed, some of Jane’s staff could have taken a page from her young niece’s etiquette handbook.
Jane folded the letter and put it away. The rest of the day and night would not be nearly as pleasant. Official duty called. The life of a First Lady, she had quickly learned, was
one of a frenzied perpetual motion machine buffered often by bursts of tedium.
The chopper’s skids touched grass. Since the president wasn’t on board there was little fanfare as she made her way to the White House. Her husband was in his working office near the ceremonial oval one. She had made few demands on him when she’d agreed to stand by him in his run for the nation’s highest office. One of them was that she could enter his inner sanctum without announcement, without being on the official visitor’s list.
“I’m not a visitor,” she’d told him at the time. “I’m your wife.”
She approached the president’s “body man,” officially known as the Special Assistant to the President. He was at that moment looking through the peephole in the door to the Oval Office prior to going in and breaking up a meeting that was running behind. He was the person charged with keeping her husband on schedule and functioning at maximum efficiency. He did so by rising before dawn and devoting every moment of his waking life to whatever the man needed, often by anticipating these needs even before the president. In any place other than the White House, Jane thought, the “body man” would be simply called a wife.
“Get ’em out, Jay, because I’m coming in,” she told him. He moved with alacrity to do just this. He had never once “peeped” her. And never would if he wanted to keep his job.
She spent a few minutes with the president and told him about the birthday party, before going to their living quarters to freshen up and change her clothes for a reception she was hosting. As darkness fell a few hours later she returned to her “official” home, tugged off her shoes, and drank a much-needed cup of hot tea.
Twenty miles away, newly twelve-year-old Willa Dutton screamed.
CHAPTER 2
SEAN LOOKED at Michelle as they drove along. A brief look, a sizing-up glance. If she felt it, she didn’t comment. Her gaze stayed straight ahead.
“When’d you meet them?” she asked.
“When I was in protection. Kept in touch. Really nice family.”
“Okay,” she said absently, staring out the windshield.
“Have you seen Horatio lately?”
Michelle’s hand tightened around her cup of Starbucks coffee. “Why did you follow me down to his office?”
“Because I knew what you were going to do.”
“Which is what exactly?”
“Break in to try and find out what you told him when you were hypnotized.”
Michelle remained quiet.
“Did you find out?”
“It’s pretty late to be going over to someone’s house.”
“Michelle, I think we need to talk this—”
“What you need to do, Sean, is not go there.”
Sean stared out at a night that seemed to be closing in on him.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“You didn’t answer mine either,” he said in an annoyed tone.