by Josie Brown
Jack runs toward me. Whereas my stone prison made it virtually impossible to hear my mission team’s chatter, the words he utters now come in loud and clear. “She’s on the P Street side! Meet us there!”
He lifts me into his arms and holds me as if he never wants to let me go. “I thought I’d lost you forever,” he whispers through his kisses.
I laugh. “What, are you kidding? I’m almost Mrs. Jack Craig! There’s not a team of assassins alive who can keep me from my happily ever after.” I give him a come-hither wink. “Wait until you see what I have planned for our wedding night.”
“I’m counting down the days.” Tenderly, he tears the mask off my face. It is covered with soot. He stuffs it in his pocket.
I shudder. “I guess I can use it again, come Halloween.”
He laughs. “I’m glad to see your sense of humor is back.”
I roll my eyes.
“Hey listen, ‘Almost Mrs. Craig,’ I vote we don’t wait for the honeymoon for some curl-your-toes sex. Not that we need the practice, but now that this shindig is over, what do you say to us taking the rest of the night to explore the few Tao sexual positions that are not yet part of our repertoire? I’ve heard tell that the one known as ‘Silkworm Spinning a Cocoon’ has women screaming from the rooftops, begging for more.”
I feel my right eyebrow arch. “‘Heard tell,’ or ‘heard it for yourself?’”
In mock shock, he raises his hands. But it would be easier to buy his innocence if he weren’t chuckling at some distant memory. “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” he concedes. Leaning into me, he adds, “As consolation, I hope you’ll join me tonight in the attempt of a never-before-initiated Ananga Ranga position known as ‘the Dragon Turns.’ I promise you—”
Just when he’s about to say something that I’m sure will keep my heart fluttering in anticipation, we hear a loud crash:
The first floor has collapsed into the basement.
The force of the roiling blaze spews from the broken window, throwing Jack to the ground, with me still in his arms.
My landing is softer than his: on top of my mister.
Really, not so soft—where it counts most. “You’re always so happy to see me,” I purr.
“Donna! Jack! Are you okay?” Abu runs up to us. Dominic is right on his heels.
I nod as Abu helps me to my feet. “Thank God, yes!”
Dominic taps his cell phone. “Ryan is on the line.” He frowns. “He says POTUS somehow found out we’re here—and he wants to see us, pronto.”
Jack mutters, “Why am I not surprised that Lee knows our whereabouts?”
Still more proof –at least, in Jack’s eyes—that Lee is Quorum.
For now, the honeymoon is over.
Chapter 2
Breaking the News to Your Bestie
There is a right way to break the news of your impending nuptials to the world. When telling, specifically, your bestie, here’s how to do it with sensitivity and care:
First of all, do it in person. This way, you can see for yourself the range of emotions created by your wonderful news. You’re sure to see the surprise in her eyes (along with the tears. How many times did she claim you were wasting your time with him?); anxiety (she’s under the assumption that things will change between you. Funny, you feel the same way, but for different reasons. Whereas, before you envied her belle-of-the-ball exploits, from now on she’ll be jealous of your happily-ever-after ending); doubt (if she insists he’ll get cold feet before the wedding, tweak her nose and tell her how cute she is when she’s got your back), and finally resignation. (Don’t be surprised if she chooses a funeral theme for your wedding shower. And please don’t be miffed should you discover that she’s asked the rest of your friends to chip in for a gift card to the best divorce attorney in town.)
He will also have to break the news to his best bud. Make sure you’re there when it happens, so that you can hear for yourself what his friend thinks of you.
Gentle hint: words like skank, hag, whore, and bitch are not a good thing. However, proving him right won’t get you the results you want: veto power on any and all jerks in his posse.
Of course, you know that the best posse for him is just one other: YOU.
With all that has happened tonight, Lee is the last person I want to see.
While I stood vigil over Jack when he was in a coma, Lee came to the hospital room. I confronted him with Catherine’s accusations that he was Quorum.
Angrily, Lee grabbed me. He wanted me to believe him when he told me she was wrong.
Despite his rage, he longed for me. It was obvious in his eyes. In his touch.
At that moment, Jack woke up from his coma. I ran to Jack’s side. I smothered my beloved with kisses. Then I proposed to him.
For the past weeks, Jack had been proposing marriage. Each time, I’d said no. Foolishly, I presumed that where and how he popped the question was more important than the fact he’d proven his love for me, time and time again.
It’s funny how your beloved’s near-death experience puts everything into perspective.
Jack accepted my proposal with a kiss that promised a lifetime of love.
When I looked up, Lee was gone.
Now, I’m face-to-face with him again.
Jack doesn’t see me giving Dominic the cutthroat sign: a finger swiping my throat. I can’t face Lee, not after the ordeal I’ve gone through. I need time to put something else in perspective: If Lee is a Quorum member, Ryan will want to use me as the bait to trap him.
Dominic winks gamely, then proclaims into his cell phone, “No problem, Chief. Yes, okay, got it: We’re expected at the West Wing, but we’re to take only one car. Local operatives will retrieve the other vehicles. And I assume they’ll take Donna to our hotel? After her ordeal, I’m sure she’s too shook up to…” He frowns. “But—but, Chief, to put it politely, she looks beastly! If I had no personal knowledge of her usual shopworn frumpishness, I’d mistake her for some skanky Fourteenth Street slagger—”
My “usual shopworn frumpishness?” The nerve of that wanker!
The only reason I’m not smacking him silly is that Jack bared his teeth when Dominic compared me to a “skanky slagger.” He may beat me to the punch, literally.
I guess I should calm down, considering the favor Dominic is supposedly doing for me.
“—Seriously, Boss, despite the fact that she is in no condition to meet with POTUS, no one can deny that her continual surliness will certainly—”
Dominic pauses. His omnipresent smile has faded. The way Ryan is yelling, he could be heard across the Virginia state line.
Finally, Dominic sighs. “The president insists, does he? Ah! Well then, our liege has spoken. His knights—and handmaiden—must obey.” He gives me the slightest shrug, as if to say I’m sorry.
I won’t argue that point.
Abu pops the trunk to retrieve my overnight valise. He hands it to Jack, who hops into the back of the limousine after me. Dominic is about to join us, but Jack blocks the door. “Donna has to change before we get to the White House. She looks—let’s see, how did you put it? Oh yes: ‘beastly. Like a skanky slagger.’” He twists a thumb toward the front of the cab. “Abu has plenty of room up there.”
Abu shakes his head. “I dunno. I doubt he’s ever sat in the front seat of one of these things. What if he gets seasick and tosses his cookies?”
Dominic shifts his eyes in my direction. I mouth the word, Sorry.
He starts to say something, but holds his tongue. Instead, he slams the door as he gets into the cab’s front passenger seat. My guess is that he’d rather not wave down a cab or hop an Uber to the White House, since it’s not exactly smart spycraft.
I’ll have to make it up to him somehow.
Note to self: purchase a Swedish massage at the Hotel Bel-Air’s La Prairie Spa, followed by afternoon tea and crumpets for two, as I’m sure he’ll talk the masseuse into joining him.
The cottage suite is on him.
/> “It’s a good thing you brought a suitcase of civilian duds on this mission,” Jack says encouragingly. He opens the case—
Where he finds a sheer nightie.
The fantasy that puts a naughty grin on his face is replaced by a frown that reflects the reality of our situation. “Um…no. Okay, let’s see what else we’ve got here.”
He holds up a bra and panties with peek-a-boo cutouts in strategic places: not exactly a proper change of clothes for a confab at the White House.
They are made of chocolate.
When Abu stops short, a can of whipped cream rolls out of my case and onto the floor.
Jack stares down at it, mesmerized. I know what he’s thinking:
This is what we could—what we should be doing right now.
Hell, right here, for that matter.
As tempting as that is, calmer heads—mine, as opposed to the one beneath his waist—must prevail. To bait the truth out of Lee, we’ve both got to stay on task. I snatch the canister off the floor. Tossing it back into the case, I murmur, “It might be quicker if I look.”
I rummage in my valise and pull out a bra, panties, a slip, and a demure navy Tadashi Shoji lace sheath dress. “Close your eyes,” I command him, knowing full well that he’ll do nothing of the sort.
Instead, he leans back into the seat, a grin of anticipation on his face.
I’ve just unzipped what’s left of the gown from hell when Abu turns a corner so sharply that I’m thrown off the seat.
My squeal gives Dominic an excuse to crane his neck backward—just in time to see my double nip slip before I right myself and cover up my naughty bits.
Dominic is so entranced that he totally misses Jack’s glare—until my betrothed commands Abu to roll up the privacy glass. As it rises, Dominic finally turns around, but first he gives me an approving wink.
I forgive him, only because I know he can’t help himself. It’s primal, in the same way in which a male dog must lick its balls.
There will be no more peek-a-boo. A bigger game is afoot: Risk.
At stake: our futures.
“Don’t blow your stack,” I warn Jack. We’re outside the Oval Office, waiting for the president’s secretary, Eileen Woodley, to beckon us in.
“Give me some credit,” he hisses back. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. I won’t blow it now.”
Egad, Eileen must have overheard him too, because she looks up from her computer and gives me a sympathetic wink with a whisper of a smile. I like Eileen. She’s one of those women who men describe as solid, which every woman knows is Man-Code for, she wasn’t hired for her looks.
Considering she’s been with Lee since his very first dotcom success, I would guess her skill set is much more important: say, helping him stay focused, initially in the tech world and now at the White House. Despite what Jack thinks of POTUS, Lee’s loyalty to the person who has always had his back says a lot about him.
Acme has also shown him loyalty. If Jack accuses him of being in league with the country’s worst enemy, I hope he remembers this.
“Let me take the lead,” Jack murmurs.
I smile demurely. “But, of course.” Like, duh. The smartest thing I can do is keep my mouth shut and let the men duke it out.
Dominic will also be in the meeting, and Ryan will be on speakerphone.
But Abu has opted out. “In case you want a quick pick-up, I’ll leave on my tracker,” he reassures us. Like Houdini, he’s always planning his next escape.
I can’t say I blame him. When Abu was an infant, he and his folks caught the last plane out of Baghdad before the Shah’s regime fell to the Ayatollah.
Eileen may not be a looker, but the fact that she is ignoring Dominic makes her as tempting to him as a raw steak to a beagle with a tapeworm. Only when he sits at the edge of her desk does she turn to face him, and that’s in an attempt to scare him with a withering stare. Had he been looking at her face instead of her bosom, he’d have been as frightened as Jack and me.
Instead, he murmurs, “That is a simply stunning brooch, milady.” His finger hovers much too close to the black opal in the center of a gold setting. He waits for the usual response: A giggle, perhaps; or a shyly stammered thank-you. The best of all would be a flirtatious double-entendre—
But no, not a peep.
Just a frosty glare.
Oh shit.
Dominic stares back. It’s oh-so-primal for him. I feel as if I’m in the Serengeti, waiting for a lion to take down a gazelle with one mighty pounce and one sweep of its claw.
But this time, Dominic is the gazelle.
Jack and I exchange glances. From the look on his face, I can read his mind:
He’s insulted the person closest to Lee. We are so fucked.
But just then, Eileen shrugs, lifts her hand and pats the brooch. “Old family heirloom. It’s my lucky charm.” She nods toward the Oval Office doors. “The president will see you now.”
Dominic slides off the desk. Before she can protest, he bows slightly, lifts her hand, and brushes it with his lips.
“Fresh,” she mutters under her breath.
But she’s smiling.
Now that it seems all’s well that ends well, Jack smacks Dominic in the back of the head.
Lee will be harder to charm and it won’t be Dominic who can do it.
Lee stands tall. He faces the window, looking out onto the Rose Garden. When he finally turns around, he isn’t smiling, and he doesn’t offer to shake hands. Instead, he nods curtly at the couches flanking the coffee table that sits dead center on the beige carpet bearing the presidential seal.
He’s not alone. A Secret Service agent—broad-shouldered, over seven feet tall, his copper-toned hair buzzed in a military cut—closes the door behind us, then positions himself in front of it. I guess that’s in case we try to make a run for it. I recognize him from my previous meetings with Lee. His last name is Muldoon, but I think his first name, Lurch, is a joke on Lee’s part.
An aide is also in the room. The man sits in the wingback chair farthest from the president’s desk. The other wingback, closest to the desk, is where Lee will sit when he chooses to join us.
The aide is tall. He has dark hair and deep blue eyes. He can’t be more than twenty-six, if that. It’s easy to envision him wowing the girls with his WonkSpeak on First Thursday at Lounge 201; in other words, he’s a real heartbreaker.
He swipes furiously at an iPad, but his eyes aren’t on the screen. They are on us. He is following his boss’s lead. In other words, the most we’re granted is a grimace and a soft declaration, “Todd Courtland.”
“Jack Craig,” Jack responds with a nod. He points to me. “And this is—”
Todd raises his hand. “No need for introductions. The president has already given me the lay of the land.”
Okay, gotcha. So that’s how it’s going to be.
Jack and I sit together on one of the couches. Dominic takes the other, but positions himself close to Lee’s chair.
The silver tray on the coffee table holds a Waterford crystal pitcher and six cut crystal glasses. I pour some for myself. Dominic follows suit.
No one says anything until Eileen’s husky voice announces via speakerphone, “Mr. Clancy is on the line.”
“Put him through,” Lee responds.
“Mr. President, I hope all is well with you and the family.” Ryan isn’t much of a talker to begin with, so I’m surprised that he opts for happy-pappy patter.
“Happy and healthy, one and all.” Can Ryan detect the ice on the line?
If so, he pretends otherwise. “I hear that you’ll all be spending a good six weeks at the Western White House for the summer.”
I met Babette when she and her first and now deceased husband, Jonah Breck, built their palatial compound in Hilldale: Lion’s Lair. Later, she married Lee there. It’s where they make their home when they aren’t at the White House.
“In this case, your reconnaissance is right,”
Lee concedes, as if it isn’t always the case. “We leave D.C. in a day or two, now that Janie is out of school for the summer. As you well know, that doesn’t mean the world stands still.” He frowns as he considers the implication. “With that in mind, let’s do this.”
He takes his seat. He turns to me, not Jack. His tone is congenial, in fact, conspiratorial—but his eyes are ice cold. “Donna, tell me: what brings you to D.C.?”
I know better than to lie to Lee. He and I are beyond it.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t couch my words in such a way that he doesn’t necessarily learn or guess the truth: that we don’t trust him.
That is, Jack doesn’t trust him. Not since Lee’s name popped up on an eight-year-old stock prospectus for Graffias International, the Quorum’s legitimate financial arm.
I’m on the fence until we find evidence that he knew of Graffias’ connection with the Quorum.
As for Lee’s trust of us, here goes everything:
“We’re following the trail of Xia’s White House contact.”
I watch Todd out of the corner of my eye. He scowls, and the scrolling has stopped, so I guess I have his attention too.
Lee leans in, as if I’ve made the most intriguing statement. “If I remember correctly, you accused me of being her contact.”
My face flames hotly. “Our intention was to rule you out.”
A slight smile rises on Lee’s lips. “You said, ‘was.’ Does this mean you’ve done so?”
His question hovers menacingly in the air like a vulture over fresh road kill.
Jack leans back into the couch. His eyes are lowered, as if he’s drowsy.
As if he hasn’t a care in the world.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
On the other hand, Dominic could be a corpse, now that all the blood has left his face. Gitmo isn’t the tropical resort he has in mind for his upcoming vacation. Besides, his kind burn so easily.
Will Lee recognize Dominic’s lack of rosy pallor as his gambling tell? I pray not, but he has seen it before: when they faced off in a high-stakes Baccarat game on Fantasy Island, a resort financed by one of Lee’s companies. In truth, it’s how Dominic looks when he goes into anaphylactic shock. But Lee may not have known it was happening at the time—
