Under His Protection

by Isabella Laase

  Returning his gun to his holster, he helped her to her feet, and she forced a smile toward the wide-eyed little girls. “That was a lot of people playing hide and seek, wasn’t it?” she asked in a strained tone. “I’II bet it was almost scary.”

  The shaken family quickly saw her reasoning, and the mother held her voice steady. “It sure was. I don’t think I want to play with those mean boys anymore, though. They were too rough.”

  The giggling little girls introduced Victoria to an entire flotilla of identical rubber duckies while Cruz went to the parents. “I’m glad you’re all safe, sir,” he said gently, shaking the man’s hand. The young parents wouldn’t sleep anytime soon, but the little girls had already eliminated the frightening scene from their memory.

  “Do you know who I am?” Victoria asked the trembling mother who nodded without speaking. “If you have a piece of paper. I’ll write down my private address and phone number. Call me in a few weeks. I’d love to set up a personal visit to the White House and a photo op with my dad for the girls. Let that be something they remember, not this.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” said the little girl’s mother sincerely. “Stay safe, Ms. Bradford, and take care of yourself. And thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied softly. “It’s nice to use this crazy notoriety of mine for something positive for a change. And I have the best Secret Service bodyguard in the whole country, so don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  * * *

  Despite her bravery in front of the little girls, Victoria’s hands were shaking when they walked back to the parking lot. He dropped the FBI cell phone in the back seat of the car, holding his finger over his lips to keep her from speaking. Returning to the apartment seemed to be another bad idea, so he directed her to a small bench in front of the condo. The extra-long sight line relieved some of his tension, but it didn’t eliminate his fears.

  “Are you really okay?” he asked again in a tight voice. “Does anything hurt?”

  “Really, I’m fine,” she said in a shaky voice, rubbing her head where he’d grabbed her by the hair. “I think I did more damage to him than he did to me, but I also don’t think he expected you to be there. He seemed surprised when you yelled and that was enough to make him lessen his grip, and I could pull away. But none of this makes sense. You said that the FBI were the only ones who knew where we were. How did anybody find us?”

  “MacMillan knew where you were,” said Cruz without emotion. “And that’s one more person than I knew about when I woke up this morning. And why did they find you as soon as the FBI thugs left? Were they waiting out here these past three days, just hoping you’d show up unsupervised, or did they time this attack to coincide with the FBI withdrawal?” She wasn’t going to like the question, but he had to ask. “Are you sure you didn’t tell anybody we were here?”

  “You’ve got to stop asking me that,” she said with a frown. “I told you, no. Besides, I didn’t even know where we were going when we were back in DC. You didn’t tell me until we got in the car.”

  “Then that takes us back to either a government leak or a tracking device. A tracking device would explain all the media leaks, too, but the FBI either gave us our supplies or checked our possessions for surveillance equipment before we came to Delaware. What did you bring with you besides your clothes?”

  “But that’s crazy,” she said, standing nervously. “Why would anybody in the government want to track me? My Secret Service detail almost always knew where I was, and the only other thing I brought with me was a few bucks and my driver’s license.”

  The first piece of something solid finally came to the table, and Cruz froze. “Did you give your wallet to the FBI to check before we left DC?” She easily could have forgotten to give them something so small. She also took it everyplace she went.

  “I don’t remember, everything happened so fast,” she stuttered, reaching into the back pocket of her jeans and handing him the gray piece of leather.

  It was small enough that it would carry maybe a credit card or two, her license, and a few dollars, but the undefinable lump in the back side caught his immediate attention. It was almost inseparable from the original design, but it was there if you were looking for it. Turning away from her confused face, he took his pocket knife to carefully slit open the seam.

  “Hey,” she protested. “That was expensive, and it was a gift. Do you really need to do that?”

  “Look at the stitching on the inside,” he said, pointing his finger along the seam. “It’s not the same as what’s on the outside.” Slicing it open the rest of the way, he manipulated the edges until the small electronic device about the size of a quarter fell to his palm.

  She stared at him with her mouth open, and he continued with a growl. “That’s how people tracked you, including the press, and this is the only tie we have to the guy who just tried to drag you into a van. Who gave this to you?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she protested vehemently. “My mother gave me that wallet. For all I know, my parents put that thing in there. It might not have anything to do with any of this.”

  “Did you have it the day you disappeared after fighting with your father? He said that it took hours to track you down that day, but if he’d had this, it would only have taken him a few minutes.”

  “I don’t remember, Cruz...” She was getting overwhelmed and nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t know. And what does this have to do with the government? None of this is making any sense. I bet that my father did this.”

  “Think, Victoria. Did you have your wallet the day you fought with your father? That was the same day we met in the Oval Office. You didn’t have your bag with you when I spanked you.”

  “I... yeah...” she admitted slowly. “I drove my car that day, and I took it to a friend’s house that night. I probably had my big bag because my keys are buried in the bottom, and it has some overnight stuff when I make last-minute decisions. I would have put my wallet in the bag, but I usually leave it all in the car when I’m there so you wouldn’t have seen it.” When he raised an eyebrow, she defended herself with a wave of her hands. “Oh, come on. Don’t give me that look! Who’d steal my car at the White House?”

  “Then this wasn’t planted by your parents because your father would have found you a lot faster. And what about the feds? Did you give the wallet to them to check out before we left DC?”

  “I think I did,” she said. “It was probably in my backpack, as long as they saw it, but I guess it could have been in my jeans, too. I’m really not sure, but I still don’t understand. What good would anybody get from tracking me, except to make my father’s life more difficult, and that’s a long way from planting a bomb next to his bedroom.”

  “Maybe the tracking device is related to the bomb and maybe it isn’t, but none of this rules out some rogue agent who’s pissed off with the world.”

  “Like MacMillan?” she asked slowly. “I’ve seen him before. I think I’ve seen all of you guys at least a few times, wandering around the buildings.”

  “He’s one, but there are dozens of others. Then there’s the possibility that the FBI just did a shitty job checking your things, or you didn’t show it to them, which sets up another whole layer of nongovernment suspects, your friends, their friends, a random party you went to and left your bag unsupervised for the fifteen minutes it took to slip this into your wallet. Shit, if your mother gave you this, then this thing could have been planted in high school.”

  “The whole publicity storm didn’t get bad until I was about halfway through college,” she admitted, “and that was long after my mom died. The press respected that ban on bothering presidential children until then.”

  “There are way too many unknowns,” he said, standing next to her, “and until I find out what the hell is going on, I’m holding everybody under suspicion. We’re leaving here tonight, and there’s no way I’m taking you back to DC. Nobody’s goin
g to know where the fuck we are, and we aren’t coming back until I get some real answers from people I trust.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  That single piece of metal had shaken her almost as much as the heart-stopping stranger who’d grabbed her hair to pull her into a waiting car and the explosion at the White House that left behind nothing except blood and death. Individually, each one should have forced her to hide behind a bottle of her father’s scotch until she’d numbed the emotions to a manageable level, but together, they’d morphed into a fear with no name and no boundaries, the terror running so deep that she struggled to contain it.

  She’d long since self-identified as a strong woman who was capable of taking care of herself, no matter what the world dropped at her doorstep. But this was all too much. Everything she’d ever taken for granted, from her faith in family and friends to the integrity of the US government, had come under suspicion. And for a frightening few seconds, she’d stared at his profile, questioning his commitment in a life where allies and enemies had become indistinguishable. “What are you feeling right now, little bit?” he asked gently, using the intuition that never ceased to amaze her.

  She didn’t answer right away, but she knew that he’d expect the truth. “Broken,” she responded without inflection. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  “I know that all of this is pushing the limits of believability,” he said, taking the back of her hand and kissing it gently, “but I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe, and the best way to do that is to surround you with people I trust. Right now, that isn’t going to happen in DC.”

  She was smart enough to realize that nobody could guarantee her safety, and she appreciated the fact that he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. She also knew with one hundred percent certainty that he would protect her, even at the cost of his own life. That nightmare did nothing to make her feel any better, but it did force her to take a deep breath, reconnecting slowly to her feelings for him and the security she’d always found by his side. “Nobody is getting killed,” she said with a weak smile. “Nobody else, anyway, but especially not you, so don’t do anything stupid. But you can’t just disappear with me. People will look for us.”

  “Except for the guns and the cash, we’ll dump all of our stuff and the tracking device back in the condo. As soon as I can get a burner phone, we’ll let your father know that you’re safe and that should take any legitimate government agencies off our tail. But the first thing we need to do is ditch the car where they won’t find it for a few days. We need about an eight- or nine-hour head start.”

  “Then where are we going?” she asked, rubbing her toe aimlessly in the dirt. “I’m not sure that I really want to know, but it seems like the right thing to ask.”

  “I was stationed in Dover for a few years and the Florida boy in me came down to the beach pretty regularly, so I have some idea where we are and where I want to go next, but let’s just take one step at a time. The less we say out loud until we get away from here, the better I’ll feel. But you need to understand that this isn’t going to be easy. You might not agree with, or even understand, every decision that I make, but you’re going to respect my right to make it. And to do that, I need to hear you say that you trust me.”

  “I do,” she said quickly. “For a few seconds there, I didn’t think I’d trust anything or anybody ever again, even you, and it took me a few minutes to reboot. It’s just that, I don’t know, it’s hard to find faith when somebody is literally trying to kill you, like over and over again.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Cruz. “None of this could be related or all of it could be. We can theorize, but don’t let the theories destroy your strength. And if nobody can find you, nobody can hurt you.”

  They drove in silence, heading south on the beach road toward Ocean City, Maryland before turning away from the coast, passing small resort towns filled with families enjoying the last few warm days of September. With big bags of popcorn or drippy, messy ice cream cones, they looked so content and happy that she felt like an alien, weighted by drama that she’d never imagined.

  In a huge housing development off the main road, he pulled into the parking lot of a high-rise facing one of the big bays. Gathering the single backpack filled with weapons, he took her hand to move her down the road. She stayed quiet for almost twenty minutes, waiting for something, anything, to happen, silently wiping a few stubborn tears that had stained her cheek. She had her hair up under a baseball hat and the requisite sunglasses further hid her identity, but each step away from the little gray car felt as though she were walking into some sort of a void, the unknown bringing too many unsettling mental images of more danger, but finally, she spoke. “It’s never going to be the same again, is it?”

  “What isn’t going to be the same, little bit?” he asked, his attention on everything around them in full Agent Cruz mode.

  “I know that I’m struggling to visualize any safe place right now, but I also know that this isn’t it. Why do you think that this two-lane road is so much safer than DC with the all the people my father has to protect us, or even that condo back there that looked just like this one?”

  “We aren’t staying here, but anybody with a government connection will be looking for that car so we need to get away from it. With any luck at all, it’ll take them a few days to find it here. Big lot and no parking permits required.”

  “But I don’t want to go any further,” she said, pulling back on his hand and allowing the rare whine in her tone. “What are we going to do, walk the whole way?”

  “Nope,” he said, snapping his fingers and pointing at an old red pickup parked in front of a small cottage. “There’s our ride. Come on.”

  “We’re not going to steal a car! That’s illegal. Besides, don’t you think somebody will miss that thing and start looking for it? We’d be better off in the one we had. Let’s go back and get it.”

  “Keep your voice down,” he warned, looking around at the empty street. “We’ve got to get out of here, and I can’t rent a car with either one of our credit cards. And look at it. It’s a fifteen-year-old, beat-up truck that they probably keep down here just to play in the sand. The house is all closed up with hurricane shutters and the weeds look like they haven’t been touched in weeks. These people don’t live here. It’s a vacation place, so even if they do show up, we probably at least have until the weekend, and we’ll be long gone by then.”

  “You could get arrested, Cruz!” she persisted, taking a few steps away from him and this whole crazy plan. “I’m not letting you steal a car!”

  He took her by the elbow to hold her in place. Lowering his voice even further, he growled, “I know that this is hard, but you need to listen carefully. We have no idea who is out there. The further off the grid we are, the safer you are. I’ll get the car back to them, and with any luck at all, they’ll never even know it was missing.”

  “But come on!” she insisted, failing to pull away from the firm grasp that burned her skin. “We can’t commit a felony.”

  “The felony was committed when a guy with a gun tried to pull you into a van by your hair. I’m not playing games anymore. This isn’t some BDSM scene you’re controlling with a safe word. They’re expecting us back in DC soon, and we need to be long gone before they realize we’re missing, so you’re going to fucking do what I say, and you’re going to do it quickly.”

  A trickle of fear ran down her spine as she tried to pull away from him a second time, but he held on even tighter, giving her a small shake. “Do you understand what I’m saying? This is my decision, not yours. If we get caught, you need to make that clear to the authorities, and if you give me even a remotely hard time, I’m going to pull that stolen car onto some dark, deserted road and beat your ass so you can’t sit uncomfortably for the rest of the trip. Are we clear?”

  It took a few seconds for the rolling waves of fear to dissipate enough to reason. He was giving her the chance
to deny all culpability for the theft. All she wanted was for him to take her into his arms and rub her back until the fear went away completely, but time was clearly their enemy. He was right. Either she trusted him, or she didn’t. It was that simple, and the answer was just as simple.

  “Fine,” she said, willing her voice to sound strong. “I understand. But there’s no way that you’re going to take a kidnapping charge in addition to grand theft auto. I’m joining you of my own free will, so you need to just shut down this whole manly, protective charade.” The veins had started to bulge on his neck to mark his growing temper, and her ass twitched in quiet rebellion against her stand. “Relax, Agent Cruz,” she said quietly. “You’re the one who said I was strong, and you don’t get to turn that off just because you want to be all macho.”

  The small smile appeared at the corner of his mouth to assure her that she’d deflated his temper. Pointing toward the car, he added, “Then get your ass over there, Bonnie, while Clyde figures out how to start the damned thing.”

  Expecting some crazy hot-wiring skill, she nervously kept an eye out for any potential witnesses, but instead, he jimmied a garage window to let himself into the house and came back with a set of car keys. “What?” he asked innocently when she raised her eyebrow. “The keys are going to make this a lot easier. Let’s go.”

  “How many felonies do we plan on committing, anyway?” she asked dryly. “Because I think I should know how long my prison sentence is going to be.”

  “Stop worrying. Besides, your dad carried Maryland in the last election, so there’s something like a fifty-one percent chance that the owner’s a supporter. That might keep me out of jail.”

  The four-lane highway heading north had a lot of stop and go traffic from the approaching rush hour, and they were about an hour down the road when he reached behind him to grab the blanket they’d found in the back of the extended cab. “I’m going to run into the discount store up here. Climb in the backseat and get down on the floor. Cover up with the blanket, and I’ll be back quickly.”