Cole leaned forward on the loveseat. “I don’t remember an owl,” he said. “The lights went out and you fell asleep. I saw lighting flashing in the treetops.” He smiled gently, as if hoping not to insult her. “Maybe you were dreaming.”
Linda frowned and crossed her arms in front of her chest and face, hugging herself as if to protect against a blow. Cole stood, picked up the crocheted blanket from the back of the loveseat, and laid it over Linda’s injured leg. The President’s face had paled. “Can I get something to drink?” she asked, looking up, forcing a slight smile onto a pained face. “Some tea, maybe?”
Cole nodded and headed to the kitchen, apparently eager for the opportunity to help ease their confusion. “You want caffeine?” he called. He glanced out the window.
“God, yes!”
Linda, huddled under the blanket, watched thoughtfully as Cole filled the kettle. Her wariness softened and her breathing eased and she relaxed her arms, letting them fall into her lap. She smiled at the strange elegance of Cole’s movements. He was really an attractive man, when you got used to him. Not that he couldn’t use a little tweaking around the edges. A new haircut, maybe. A different shirt. And the way he kept twitching his face. But the raw materials were certainly there. Cole turned to her and smiled, as though he could hear her thoughts. Linda blushed, brought a hand to her heart. What the hell was she thinking?
Cole put the kettle on the stovetop and leaned over the sink to look out again into the night. Linda spun quickly to follow Cole’s gaze, her mind suddenly filled with the image of a huge, furious owl, its talons outstretched to seize her, swooping down from a lightning bolt and battering its beak against the windowpane behind her head. Her heart hammered and she raised an arm to protect herself. But there was no owl. All she saw was her own reflection and the black trunks of trees. And the small shards of sky she could see beyond the trees were clear and full of stars: not the sort of sky that would bring lightning.
She took a deep breath and turned back around. The owl soared from her thoughts as quickly as it had attacked. Her heart caught a snag as she looked at Cole; God, he was beautiful. She could feel his arms around her and— But Jesus! Her thoughts! She cleared her throat, shifted her bottom on the sofa, hoping that physical movement would ground her in reality. “It feels different from a dream,” she offered, needing to hear her own voice resound in the real world, needing to feel at least that much control.
Cole walked back to the living room and sat in the loveseat. He took a long breath and closed his eyes, ran his fingers through his thinning, black hair, as if plowing for memories. He looked at Linda. “I don’t know. All I remember is that the lights went out and the lightning flashed and I got up and got some water. But the lightning was … strange.” His face clouded with dismay. “What just happened, Linda?” he asked. “Did something just happen?”
Cole’s simple question called Linda to attention like an inspired teacher finally reaching a distracted student. Yes. Of course. Something had just happened. And she could dimly imagine what it was. Linda pulled the blanket up over her arms and considered Cole with eyes full of cheerless secrets. She could feel the explanations he needed piling up in her throat, straining against her fear, demanding to be heard. They’d been talking of her mother, and who had her, and why. Linda knew that those questions would not just go away. Still she hesitated, as if, by refusing to speak her nightmare, she could keep it from entering the world. Over the past few months, this dreadful knowledge had devastated her own sense of who she was and what she was doing. Only now was she beginning to truly accept that the reality of their collective situation was not as it seemed. How could she bring that to Cole and his kids? How could she bring that to her people? It was as if she’d been given Pandora’s ancient box as an inauguration gift. If she opened the lid, its contents might destroy the whole world.
And yet she knew she would speak. She saw little choice. In the end, it’s why she’d fled. Cole had earned the right to know, and she saw no way she could continue on her own. She swallowed her fear like a mouthful of gravel. The words began to flow. “So, I’m not sure where to start.”
Cole puffed a mocking snicker. “You could start by telling me why you think we just saw an owl at the window.” He winced, as though immediately regretting the reckless sarcasm in his voice. “Sorry.” He reached out to the President as if to retrieve his words. “I just … I need to know what’s going on.”
The kettle sang and Cole rose at once to get the tea. In a moment he was back with a steaming cup of Black Dragon.
Linda took the cup and smiled. “I want to tell you about a dream I did have.”
“Not a dream about bugs and owls?”
“No. A different dream. I had it this afternoon, lying here on your sofa, though how I can manage to remember a dream with those pills in my system I’ll never know.”
“So what was the dream?” Cole sat next to the President on the sofa.
“I’ve had it before. Lots of times, especially in the past few months. And it’s always the same.” She paused, took a sip of her tea. “I’m walking. Just walking. All around. Through a city, lots of people, tall buildings. At first I’m not sure where I am, but eventually I realize I’m in D.C. I walk around the Mall, through the government buildings. And everywhere I go there are a few people who start to follow. Pretty soon I’ve got a fairly big crowd tailing after me. And I keep walking, through more cities, across the countryside, over farms and bridges, through mountains and woods. More people join up, following me. And all the time I’m headed somewhere, looking for someone. I never know who, though I know they’re dear friends of mine, people that I love. I’m going to be with them. There’s an excitement in my heart, a joy so strong it hurts. And the people following me, they all share this with me. We’re going someplace together, though I’m the leader. I’m the one who knows how to get there. Or supposed to anyway. But we never get there. I always wake up.” Linda pulled absently at the teabag in her cup. “Except for today.”
“What happened today?” asked Cole.
Linda glanced at Cole, then back down at her tea. “Today I turned the corner.”
“Corner?”
“I always come to this street corner. I’m back in a big city with lots of traffic, and the sidewalks are just packed with people following me. And I know that what I’m looking for is right around that corner. If I can just keep walking I’ll see it. But always before, just when I got to the corner, I woke up. Today I walked around the corner.”
“What did you see?”
Linda opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. She frowned and moved her head slowly from side to side, unsure, confused, as if trying to adjust an antenna that could better access her memory. She started again, dropped her shoulders in resignation, closed her eyes. “I don’t … nothing …,” she said with a deep outbreath. “As soon as I think I have it, it’s gone. I thought I knew. I know I turned that corner.” She looked at Cole and slumped again into the sofa. “Apparently I’m not allowed to remember.”
Chapter Four
4.1
“I had her! Shit, I had her!” Bob punched her pillow, then threw it across the room, knocking her current knitting project, an Andean-style hat in rainbow colors, from the tiny white table that stood between her two armchairs.
Mary took Bob’s hand and stroked it gently. “It’s okay, hon,” she cooed, “It’s okay.” A soldier passed by in the hallway, muttering curses under his breath as he hurried. Mary slid over and quietly shut the door, then picked up the pillow and returned to the end of Bob’s bed. “They’ve got a lead on a car.”
Bob stared at the wall.
“A green Cutlass. 1983. It was stolen from some guy’s driveway. About a mile from Ground Zero. The guy says he noticed it this morning when he went out to feed his dog.”
Bob gave no sign that she had heard a word.
Mary rose and went to the window, adjusting the blind so that she could look out into the nig
ht sky. It was only a simulation, but it was disturbingly real. “Spud won’t say whether they tagged her or not. And Mork just smiles, if you can call that a smile. I think they did. That’s probably why she ran. I think they want her to run.”
Mary returned to sit on the end of the bed. Bob looked her in the eye for the first time since she’d entered.
“So what happened?” asked Mary.
Bob closed her eyes to remember. “I had her. I was right inside and she was pretty clear. But he woke her up really quickly, that motherfucker.” She opened her eyes to look at Mary. “That tall guy she’s with.”
“Anything else?” Mary knew to ask. There were always more details, but sometimes it took a bit of work to pry them out.
“They’re there. Following her.”
“You mean the Life?”
“Yeah. Half a dozen woks, maybe. And I think I saw an Angel.”
“Fuck.”
Bob shuddered. “Yeah.”
“So did you learn anything from Ma Kettle?”
Bob shook her head. “I didn’t have time to read her. She was right in my face the whole time, cussing me out something fierce. Like that’s gonna help.”
Mary rubbed her eyes. “I talked to the General again.”
“Yeah? What’d he say?”
“He said ‘kill the bitch’.”
Bob’s eyes went wide. “When?”
“As soon as she screws up and goes to sleep again without her pills. As soon as you can get in.”
“Ellen is protecting her. I had to fight her to get past.”
Mary rose and walked to the door, stopping to wick a tear from her eye before she opened it. “That won’t be a problem next time,” she said. She closed the door quietly behind her.
4.2
“Do you remember this last summer? It was the 4th of June. I was supposed to give the commencement address at my old high school in Pierpoint.” Linda was stretched out on the sofa, her eyes closed and shielded by her left arm.
Cole nodded, coming back from the kitchen with another cup of tea. “Yeah. I remember reading about it in the paper. You showed up late and spoke for, what, ten minutes or something? And it didn’t seem to make much sense. You took off without a word. Everybody was upset.” Cole slid the loveseat closer to the sofa and sat softly, setting his cup on the glass-topped table between them.
“And Weiner, my Press Secretary, came out the next day and apologized and explained how sudden crises in the Middle East had distracted me and almost kept me from showing up at all.”
“Oh, yeah,” Cole answered. “He said something about you defusing some new hostage situation.”
Linda scoffed. “It was all bullshit.” She glanced up through the window. It hung black above the sofa like a door to another world. Cole followed her gaze. The trees were barely discernible in the darkness. Above them, through the canopy of leaves and needles, he could just make out the moon, a thin fang of ash and bone. Linda leaned forward and fluffed the pillows that propped up her back, sank back into them, and then pulled herself into a sitting position with a frown. Wincing, she moved her leg. A puzzled expression passed over her face, as if something was not right. She looked over at Cole, one eyebrow raised in bewilderment. “All bullshit,” she said again.
“So why did you screw up that speech?” Cole asked, his face tense and tight, caught between the rock of ignorance and the hard place of knowledge, angry to be stuck anywhere at all. From outside came the dim ringing of the phone.
“I’m … I’m afraid you’ll think I’m crazy,” said the President.
Cole clapped his hands and began to laugh. “Gods, Linda, I already think you’re crazy! I think I’m crazy! There’s a phone outside that keeps ringing even though it’s not plugged in. And twenty minutes ago the house was surrounded by helicopters or who knows what the fuck and … and those eyes… I think I can take a little more craziness!”
“Shh!” Linda cautioned. She pointed toward the kids’ rooms upstairs.
Cole caught himself and nodded. “Okay,” he whispered. “But keep going.” His voice was heavy with warning.
The President stared at Cole, the dense and pointed gaze of a wounded animal, pain and need flavored with a touch of dread. Cole stared back, unwilling to give ground, sitting tightly at the edge of breath. This woman, President or no, had invaded his home, and the secrets she carried and hesitated to divulge could threaten his children. And himself. The eyes at the window had ignited a cold fear deep within him. His heart pounded. His hands could find no rest, skittering across his lap, clenching and unclenching like the pulse of his distress. He raised his eyebrows high, as if he could stretch his face to make it fit his anguish, then inhaled deeply, forcing a slight smile through his frustration. He needed her to trust him. He needed her to know that he was on her side. “You have to tell me,” Cole said softly.
With a long inhale, Linda closed her eyes. “Okay. On June 2nd, at nine in the morning, I attended what I thought would be my daily briefing, down in what they call “the classroom.” For some unexplained reason it’d been moved from the Oval Office and Bickle, my Chief of Staff, had not shown up for our usual session beforehand. When I walked in to that meeting, I found something I would never have expected.”
4.3
The President strode down the hall to the “classroom,” noting Bickle’s absence at the door. She’d hoped to find him waiting for her, and to have at least a moment with him alone before the briefing. But the door was closed and the hallway was empty. Something was off, but she felt too hurried to say exactly what. She opened the door and stepped in, expecting to see her staff seated at the long, leather-clad mahogany conference table that nearly filled the low-ceilinged, windowless room usually reserved for roundtable security discussions. At the table’s end nearest her sat four men, only one of whom she knew: Frank Edmonton, a junior member of the Secret Service detail assigned to her personal protection. Edmonton, young and redheaded and handsome, like a leading man from the golden age of cinema, smiled and rose and walked to the doorway to shake the President’s hand.
“Mrs. President,” he said.
“Mr. Edmonton?” answered the President. She sniffed the air in the room. There was a faint odor she could not quite place. Oil? Perfume? “Am I in the wrong place? Where’s Bickle?”
Edmonton smiled even wider, showing bright, even teeth. He laughed. “You’re in the right place, ma’am. Bickle … um … Please, sit down. Let me explain.” He motioned toward the empty leather chair at the head of the table.
Linda eyed the agent suspiciously. “Not quite yet, Mr. Edmonton. I think I’ll stand right here until you tell me what’s going on. Where’s Bickle? Where’s Weiner? Where’s the meeting I thought I was walking into?” She motioned toward Edmonton with a wave of the hand, an angry teacher waiting for the truth from an unruly student. This was way outside the bounds of protocol. “Well?”
Edmonton’s eyes went dark and bitter, the smile pushed to the sides by a look of undisguised contempt. He glanced over Linda’s shoulder and nodded. Linda turned to see a fifth person in the hallway behind her, a small, pale, and strikingly beautiful woman holding a small pistol at her hip.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Linda blurted. The woman advanced and pushed the gun into the President’s stomach.
Edmonton, behind her, put his hand on Linda’s shoulder. “Please, Mrs. President, sit down. Let me explain.”
Linda backed away from the gun, slid into the chair that Edmonton held for her. Her mind was blank, save for an image that crowded into view: her dead husband with a look of shock on his face. Edmonton took his own seat across from the door.
Linda looked at the men around her, then at Edmonton. How could men she’d never seen before get into this room? “What do you want?”
Edmonton was back to his smile. “You’re probably thinking about calling for help, Mrs. President. Or that somebody will come looking for you any minute now for one thing or another. You�
��re wondering where everybody is, the folks who were supposed to be here. Please believe me when I say that all of this has been taken care of. You will not be missed, you will not be heard, and you will not be found. And as long as you don’t do anything stupid, you will not be harmed. Do you understand me?”
Linda could only stare. Edmonton had the smart-ass attitude of many young men with power. Power but no perspective. Washington was full of such types, but she had worked hard to rid her staff of them, or so she had thought. They insulted her at some visceral level, and she wanted nothing so much right now as to put a knee to this young man’s groin. Her lower lip trembled with rage.
Edmonton smiled and slapped the President’s shoulder. “I think you do understand,” he said cheerily. “Good for you.” He nodded toward the woman. “I guess that’ll be all for now, Bob. You can go. But don’t go far.” The woman slipped her gun into a black leather sling under her suit jacket, nodded quickly at the men at the table, and left.
Edmonton winked, nudging Linda with his elbow. “I just love a powerful woman, don’t you?”
Linda stared, waiting until Edmonton’s smile faded away. “What do you want?”
Edmonton wore a look of shock. “Why, to brief you ma’am! That’s why we’re here, isn’t it gentlemen?” The others nodded. One, in military dress, highly decorated, wiggled his nose like a ferret.
“Cut the bullshit, Edmonton,” said the President, her voice tired. “Just get on with it.”
Edmonton looked wounded, but not for long. His smile, grounded in the confidence of real power, bounced right back. “Okay!” he chirped. He looked at the others. “She’s the boss, right?” More nods, some laughter.
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