DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN

by Mallory Monroe

  And he stood there, calling her name, begging her to open the door, to let him in, to not lock him out, and she stood right on the other side of the door, leaned against it, tears flowing freely down her face. It was the prom all over again. It was the date who was no better looking himself, but who constantly kept looking past her, over her, around her, for a better deal than her.

  And she, like the stone they took her for, was supposed to understand.

  She walked away from the door, away from his pleads, and went to bed.

  SIXTEEN

  Two hours later and Gina and Christian were playing Gin Rummy at the card table, Dutch was on the sofa with his sleeping son in his arms, and Liz was seated beside him, telling him about her trip to L.A. and some of the clients she used to serve, including one who would rather lose millions of dollars in endorsements just to get revenge on his soon-to-be ex-wife. Dutch was slouched on the couch, one arm holding his son, the other flapped over his head, listening intently to that witch.

  And that was what she was, Gina believed, as she looked at her husband. She didn’t trust her, didn’t like her, and probably never would.

  When Crader came back into the Family Room, looking as if he’d just lost his entire family, Gina became concerned. She had assumed he had been with LaLa all this time, especially since LaLa had left the room in search of him some two hours ago.

  “Where’s La?” she asked him.

  “Don’t ask,” Crader said and Gina and Dutch glanced at each other.

  “Nurse Riley,” Dutch said and Penelope Riley, inwardly thrilled, hurried to the sleeping child.

  “Come on, Little Walt,” Riley said as she took him from his father’s arms, “it’s time for you to go.”

  When she and the baby had gone, Dutch looked at his friend. “What’s happened?” he asked him.

  “I’m an asshole, that’s what happened,” Crader disgustedly replied.

  Nurse Riley, however, was well into her plan. As soon as she walked into the second floor Nursery, she closed the door and pulled out her cell phone. Dialed the number Caroline had provided. “I’m coming out now,” she said, and hung up.

  Then she got busy. Grabbing the large overnight bag she arrived with, taking the few clothes out, and then, lifting up the false bottom, revealing a compartment just big enough. She then reached into an enclosure on the outside of the bag, pulled out her needle and cylindrical vial, filled the needle, and then injected the still sleeping Harber baby.

  Her hands were shaking as she placed the baby into the cleared compartment, fit the false bottom back into the bag, and then put her clothes back on top. She tossed her cell phone into the side pocket of her nurse’s smock, placed the overnight bag on her shoulder, and headed downstairs.

  She could hear conversation coming from the Family Room, but nobody heard her. And she was quick about it, walking across the living room, across the foyer, and exiting out of the front door without one eye on her.

  As expected, Secret Service agents had the property blanketed, with two of them at the front door.

  “Nurse Riley,” one of the agents said, well familiar with the middle-aged nanny. Some evenings in DC, when she was leaving the White House to head home, he would escort her to her car, bidding her a good night.

  “Hello, son,” she said cheerily without breaking her stride. “I’m going to spend the evening in town with friends of mine,” she said, “since Little Walt’s asleep.”

  “Need a ride provided, ma’am?”

  “Oh, no thank-you very much,” she said. “Not on a gorgeous night like this. My friends are going to pick me up beyond the perimeter anyway, since that’s as close as you folks will allow anyone to get, but it’s perfect for me. It’ll give me a chance to get some exercise. Stretch these legs. You get to be my age you have to keep working these old bones. So you boys have a good night.”

  “You too, Nurse Riley,” both agents said and watched the kindly old grandmotherly type as she walked away, without so much as a by-your-leave, with the son of the President in her bag.

  “Just tell us what happened, Crader,” Dutch ordered. “I know you don’t want to talk about it. I know it’s personal and you that’s not your style. But Loretta is our friend. What’s happened?”

  Gina and Christian were glued to their seats, both staring unblinkingly at their cagey host, a man who never seemed to be at a loss for words, but couldn’t seem to find one single word this time.

  “Crader, what is it?” Dutch asked again.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Liz said and as soon as she interjected herself, Gina knew whatever it was, she was the cause.

  “Did she catch you with Liz?” Gina asked.

  “How dare you!” Liz said, feigning offense. “We may have started out on bad terms, and you may have all of these preconceived notions about me even though you barely know my name, but you will not be disrespectful to me that way.” She looked at Dutch. “I would strongly suggest, Dutch, with all due respect, that you get your wife, who has been nothing but unfair to me, to back off.”

  Dutch, however, was still staring at Crader. “Did she catch you with Liz?” he asked him.

  Liz’s heart dropped. She couldn’t afford to lose Dutch’s confidence.

  Gina was pleased. About time, she wanted to say.

  “Yes,” Crader said, so disgusted with himself that he didn’t bother to look at any of them, not even Liz.

  “That’s a lie!” Liz proclaimed.

  Christian, however, was already up and hurrying for LaLa’s bedroom. Gina stood to, to go check on her friend, but first she looked at Crader.

  “Why would you do something that vile?” she wanted to know. “Why would you do that to a sweet soul like LaLa?”

  Crader ran his hand through his crop of brownish blonde hair. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

  “Oh, yeah, right,” Gina said with angry sarcasm, “you couldn’t possibly have meant that. I mean, how could fucking a woman you just met be interpreted any other way than as something that would be a great help to LaLa?”

  “Why are you on my case, Gina?” Crader wanted to know. “That bitch over there,” he started, but was too angry, and still too disgusted with himself, to continue.

  Gina, however, was not persuaded. “That bitch over there--”

  “Now wait a minute,” Liz said, feeling under siege for real now.

  “---wouldn’t have done anything to you that you didn’t allow her to do,” Gina continued. “That bitch over there didn’t owe LaLa any allegiance, any faithfulness, anything but mutual respect which bitches like her never pay anyway. But LaLa gave you something she doesn’t just give away without great cost. And you owed her to at least understand that.”

  If he thought he couldn’t have felt worst when LaLa wouldn’t open that door, he was wrong. Gina’s rage made him feel even worst.

  Gina left, to go and check on her friend. She could hear Liz trying with all she had to explain herself to Dutch, but she could also hear Dutch giving her a scolding she wouldn’t soon forget. He thought he had an ally in her. He thought she was that good person who never failed to present herself as this loyal, kind, devoted soul to him in a way she didn’t bother projecting before others. But now the veil had been lifted.

  About time, Gina thought again.

  Yet as soon as she walked out of the Family room, through the long corridor, and entered the Livingroom area, she stopped in her tracks. A sense of foreboding, a kind of heavy-handed dread, suddenly came over her. She tried to dismiss it; to decide it was just the fact that she was in a strange house at a strange time in her life. But as soon as she took another step, that dread gripped her again. And like a song that suddenly popped in your head, those words Nurse Riley said popped into hers.

  Come on, Little Walt. It’s time for you to go, she’d said.

  But it was odd for her to say that, Gina thought, a frown encompassing her face. Of course she could have easily meant that it was time for him to go
to bed, but she didn’t say that. She also didn’t say what she always, but always said when she put Walt down to bed:

  Bedtime, Little Walt, was always her mantra. Bedtime, Little Walt.

  Come on, Little Walt. It’s time for you to go.

  Gina knew she was probably being silly. She suspected she was overreacting big time. But that dread didn’t grip her for nothing.

  She hurried up the stairs, knowing that LaLa probably needed her desperately, but also knowing she just had to make sure first.

  But as soon as she arrived just outside the wide-opened Nursery door, she knew like she knew her name that something was wrong. And when she entered the Nursery, and saw that her baby and her baby’s Nanny were not in that room, she screamed.

  Dutch’s heart rammed against his chest when he heard such a blood curling scream coming from his wife. He ran out of that Family room, with Crader and Liz right behind him, down the corridor, and into the Livingroom just as Gina was running down the stairs.

  “They’re gone!” she cried.

  “Who’s gone?” Dutch asked, running to meet his hysterical wife.

  “I searched upstairs, I searched for them, but they’re gone, Dutch!”

  “Our baby?”

  “She took our baby. Nurse Riley took our baby!”

  Dutch ran to the front door, with Crader on his tail, with Gina and Liz and now LaLa and Christian coming out of LaLa’s bedroom, and running too.

  The agents at the door and many others around the premises ran as soon as they saw what looked like a hysterical president.

  “Nurse Riley,” Dutch said. “Have you seen our child, have you seen Nurse Riley?”

  “Nurse, yes,” the agent nervously said. “She said she was going to spend the night with friends in town.”

  “Was our baby with her?” Gina asked.

  “No. All she had was an overnight bag.”

  As soon as he made that statement, the agent in charge had his transmitter devise out and was running.

  “Close down the Island!” he ordered. “Mickey is loose!” he yelled, which his agents knew was code that the president’s child was missing. “Mickey is loose!” he kept yelling as agents were already cranking up the emergency SUVs.

  Dutch and Gina were about to head for one themselves, but was stopped by one of the agents.

  “You can’t, sir,” the agent said to the president.

  “Watch me,” Dutch said as he grabbed his wife’s hand and ran for the truck. Crader, whom the agents knew well as former Senator McKenzie, was allowed passage too.

  But Liz, LaLa and Christian were stopped in their tracks. They could only stand and stare as the convoy of SUVs were flying off of the estate, one behind the other, in pursuit of a kidnapper.

  It was only then, after the vast majority of agents were gone, and as a few ordered them to remain outside while they “re-secured” the home in case a bait and switch had occurred, Liz, in all of her audacity, walked over to LaLa.

  “Listen,” she said. “About what happened with Crader. It really wasn’t what you think. I mean, it was inappropriate, yes, it was, but it wasn’t like serious or anything like that.”

  LaLa stared at her, amazed. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked her. “Do you think I care about something like that at a time like this? Get away from me!” she yelled, crying now, not for herself, but for that poor child. Praying that that wonderful baby was not harmed.

  “Come on, La,” Christian said, glaring at Liz, and pulled her into his arms.

  Dutch, Gina, and Crader were in the same SUV as the agent in charge. The agent already had his laptop out with their surveillance video posted. Nurse Riley could be seen walking and then getting into a Honda Civic. They had already run the plates-rented; were already coordinating with local police; helicopters were already in the air. Fighter jets were on their way.

  But the SUVs raced through the bedroom town, taking no chances, relying on no-one but their own speed on the ground. And when the call came in that the getaway car had been spotted, they raced so fast that they almost end up airborne on two tires as they swerved around a corner to get where the sighting occurred.

  Gina’s heart was racing even faster than the SUV was, and so was Dutch’s, as they both stared out at the blackness with a kind of fear that was lifelike in its intensity. Never, not ever in their entire lives, had they been so scared.

  And when the agent in charge yelled, “That’s it! That’s the car!” and they looked and saw the Honda quickly surrounded by SUVs and helicopters buzzing overhead, they cried.

  “Praise God!” they proclaimed and wanted to get out immediately.

  But the agent wouldn’t allow it. Not until the perpetrators were apprehended. They even locked them, along with Crader, inside. And just as he did, a male subject and then Nurse Riley bolted from the car and tried remarkably to make a run for it. They were apprehended within seconds.

  Dutch and Gina were then allowed out of the SUV. They ran, with Gina outrunning her husband, to the car where their child was expected to be. They didn’t see the child, but they saw the overnight bag. Agents were going through it, in case of explosives, and once again Gina and the president were forced to stand back. They had already broken every law on the books by allowing them there in the first place.

  But as soon as the tactical team concluded that there were no explosives and the baby was pulled safely out, Gina broke free and ran to her child.

  He was groggy, but he was alive.

  “They gave him some sleeping concoction,” an agent said, with the vial in hand. “We’ve got to get him checked out at the hospital, ma’am.”

  Gina was more than ready to go. But as soon as she turned, with her child in her arms, she saw Dutch leaned against the SUV, clutching his heart, dropping to his knees, and then falling out unconscious.

  Gina stopped in her tracks. She couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. Dutch, her husband, the strongest man she knew, on the ground like that?

  But it was only mere seconds because the Secret Service were on him, grabbing him up, putting him in the ambulance that always had to be onsite wherever the president was, and took off to the hospital.

  At the same time, the Secret Service, along with Crader, were grabbing Gina and Little Walt, putting them in one of the SUVs, and hurrying them to the same hospital.

  But it was all a blur to Gina. She just sat there, staring at her child, staring out of the window at the ambulance carrying her husband, and she felt as if there was some mistake. All of their troubles were supposed to be behind them now. After all that they’d been through, she thought it was over. She thought they had won.

  But this didn’t feel like a victory, she thought, as the sirens whirled, as the ambulance and SUV whisked first her husband, and her and her child, to a place she never dreamed, when this day began, would ever be their end.