Athena Force 7-12

by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees

  She flung herself forward, into the coming shot, with the intent to grab Dunst and twist over the railing with him as she went down.

  The shot rang out.

  She felt nothing. No impact. No burning pain of supersonic lead ripping through her body.

  As she flew through the air toward Dunst, a look of infinite surprise crossed his face.

  And then she hit him, a bone-grinding impact of body on body. But instead of resisting her, he collapsed, going as limp as a rag doll beneath her. Instead of carrying them over the balcony, her roll to the left slammed them into the iron railing harmlessly.

  Damn!

  She blinked, focusing on Dunst’s face, inches from her own. His eyes were glassy. She smelled something metallic.

  And then she noticed the neat, kidney-colored hole in the center of his forehead. He’d been shot? By whom?

  She became aware of shouting around her. Male voices. Nearby. Adding to the chaos of sound floating up from below.

  A hand landed on her shoulder from behind. Pulling her roughly away from Dunst. A pistol thrust past her nose, pointed in Dunst’s face. A foot hooked under Dunst’s shoulder, rolling him onto his side.

  And she stared at the hand-size piece of skull ripped away from the back of his head. A spreading pool of blood and brain matter dripped through the iron grillwork floor. Dunst was dead.

  She looked up numbly at the man beside her. Agent Tilman.

  “You okay?” he bit out.

  She blinked. Was she okay? She had no idea. “I guess so,” she mumbled. And then her brain kicked into gear again. Oh, God. Gabe! “That bastard shot Gabe!” she cried out.

  Tilman’s jaw rippled with the same adrenaline-enhanced fury still roaring through her. “He better not have.”

  “I’ve got to see him,” she declared. “Be with him in case…” She couldn’t finish the thought. He had to live. She leaped to her feet and took off running for the stairs, Tilman on her heels.

  Somewhere in that interminable flight back down all those stairs, she started to breathe again. Vaguely she registered Tilman shouting into his radio behind her. Something about clearing a path and letting the two of them through. She raced past a dozen Secret Service agents and FBI men who plastered themselves against the walls of the narrow stairwells to get out of her way.

  Finally, she reached the ground floor and ran for the Rotunda at full-tilt. She skidded out onto the marble floor.

  A crowd of civilians were herded into one corner, filing out of the Rotunda toward the House chambers. Gun-toting men roved the space, and a cluster of news reporters chattered excitedly into microphones, huddled by the far wall. But then she spotted what she was searching for. A cluster of paramedics and Secret Service agents bending down over a prone form on the floor. Gabe.

  She tore across the space between them and shoved through the mass of bodies.

  And lurched to a halt as he grinned up at her jauntily.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he said lightly.

  She looked down. His shirt was open, revealing a bulletproof vest, which was also opened to reveal a four-inch purple spot low on his right side. She fell to her knees as Gabe sat up. Thank God he was all right. A cold wash of realization passed over her. When had this become so damned personal? For surely the sick-to-her-stomach, weak-kneed relief coursing through her was much more than professional concern.

  “What in the hell were you doing out here?” she bit out.

  “Owen almost had me out of here. I’m afraid I wasn’t going willingly. I had a feeling you were behind all the commotion.” He paused. “I was worried about you,” he confessed.

  “I was too late,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  He smiled. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. It was your scream that caused Owen to dive on me. You saved my life. Again.”

  A grim voice spoke from somewhere above her head. “I don’t mean to intrude, sir, but I need to talk to the lady. Now.”

  She looked up.

  Owen Haas loomed above them, his expression furious. He glared at her and gritted out from between clenched teeth, “Maybe you’d care to explain to me how you always happen to know exactly when and where these damned terrorists are going to attack. Are you their person on the inside?”

  8:00 P.M.

  Diana lurched. His words struck her like a fist in the face. “I beg your pardon?”

  Gabe spoke up with quiet authority beside her. “Why don’t we take this conversation somewhere more private?”

  She climbed painfully to her feet, the aches and pains of her fight with Dunst abruptly registering with her conscious mind. She felt as though she’d been run through a meat grinder. Maybe a little stretching and twisting was in order to work out a few of the kinks. Except then she tried it. Oww. So much for that idea. That jerk really got some good licks in on her before Tilman shot him.

  A paramedic helped Gabe to his feet and a wall of Secret Service agents closed in around him as their charge went vertical. She caught the brief grimace on his face as he started buttoning up his shirt. Even through a bulletproof vest, a slug from a high-powered rifle could break a rib. He had to hurt at least as bad as she did right about now.

  “This way,” Owen bit out.

  “No. Wait,” Gabe ordered.

  Owen’s head whipped around. “We need to get you to safety, sir.”

  “We need to let the American people know I’m alive and unharmed,” Gabe countermanded quietly.

  “This is a matter of your security,” Owen growled back with quiet intensity.

  “This is a matter of national security,” Gabe replied impassively. “I insist. I’ll take responsibility for whatever happens to me.” He turned to face her and asked casually, “Could you tie my tie for me? I’m lousy at it without a mirror.”

  She reached up, in minor shock, and retied the red silk tie around his neck. The act was intimate and felt extremely odd in this giant room with all these people standing around, watching. She felt naked. Exposed. Like her feelings for this guy were right out in the open for everyone to see.

  Gabe watched her intently as she performed the service for him, his amber gaze never leaving her face. An unmistakable heat built between them, or maybe that was just the blush burning her cheeks. She tugged the knot into position under his chin and adjusted his collar slightly. He pulled his suit coat closed, and she smoothed the lapels. Dang. She couldn’t keep her hands off this guy, not even in front of a crowd of people in the Capitol Building of all places!

  “There,” she murmured, “You look perfect.”

  “It’s the makeup they made me wear for the cameras. I actually feel like I’m going to puke.”

  “I can imagine. But you’re holding up great.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not like I have any choice. This reminds me of something I heard Ronald Reagan say many years ago about being President. He said he couldn’t imagine anyone being a successful President without being an accomplished actor. I’m beginning to see what he meant.”

  She smiled up at him reassuringly. “Just keep up the act for a few more minutes. Then you can go somewhere private and fall apart.”

  Diana started as Gabe’s hand closed on her elbow. “Come give me moral support,” he murmured.

  As if Gabe Monihan needed moral support! The guy had just faced a second assassination attempt in a single day, and he seemed totally unconcerned by any danger to himself right now. Although, that was part and parcel of being President. He was supposed to be strong and steady in the face of a crisis. And it didn’t hurt that Richard Dunst’s brains were splattered all over the walls upstairs. That particular threat was pretty darned neutralized at the moment.

  Owen was not a happy camper, but he motioned his men to follow her and Gabe as they struck out across the floor of the Rotunda.

  The cameramen facing Gabe figured out what was happening before the news anchors with their backs to him did. The lights swung away from the talking journalists as Gabe strode into
their midst. She gazed up at him in shock as all the stress and discomfort of having just been shot melted away from his face.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I’d like to make a brief statement.”

  The reporters all stammered their permission to go ahead.

  She blinked as the monolithic eyes of the cameras pinned black stares on them, and she shrank back as much as she could from Gabe in the press of Secret Service agents hemming her in. This was Gabe’s show, and she had no interest in being seen beside him on national TV.

  He began to speak, confident and relaxed. “I wanted to let the American people know that, yet again, I am fine. Thanks to the quick thinking and tremendous skill of my security team, I am safe and sound.” He grinned boyishly. “I promise we will get this inauguration done one way or another, tonight. I’m thinking about dragging Judge Browning into a men’s room and taking the oath right there, just to get it over with.”

  A chuckle from the hovering press corp.

  Gabe continued, “The important thing is for the American people to remember that no matter what heinous crimes terrorists attempt to perpetrate on this nation, they will never bring down the democracy that has made this nation strong. No act of terror has ever brought down a democratic government, and no act of terror is about to do it now.”

  A reporter shouted out of the crowd, “When are you finally going to become President?”

  Gabe grinned. “Well, we’re going to take a little while to regroup and get all the right people back together, and then we’ll try this thing again. You know what they say. The third time’s a charm.”

  She simply could not believe how calm he was being about all this. She was a complete wreck, and she wasn’t even the target of the killers.

  As a chorus of jumbled questions got shouted at him all at once, he raised a polite hand. “I’m sorry, folks. I can’t take any more questions just now. I’ve got a little business to take care of, but I’ll be glad to speak to you at the press conference I’ll be holding tomorrow.”

  Whether or not a press conference had been on his schedule, there surely was one now. She had visions of his staff seeing this live interview and scrambling away from their televisions frantically to arrange an impromptu press conference.

  Gabe turned away from the cameras and took her elbow again, moving swiftly with her across the space back toward the abandoned stage where he was supposed to have become President. Owen and his men closed in on the two of them, confining them in a tight cordon of big, protective bodies that moved them onto and across the stage.

  “So why aren’t you dragging Justice Browning into some office and doing the deed right now?” she asked under her breath.

  “He’s having a little trouble with his heart at the moment. Apparently, he’s not used to getting shot at. The medics were worried about him and sent him to a hospital for observation for a couple hours.”

  “Too bad.”

  He nodded. “It would’ve been nice to get it over with. But I’d feel funny anyway, taking the oath of office while a dead man is lying in the rafters over my head. Even if he did try to kill me.”

  She could understand that. She refrained from looking up at the team of police taking pictures of the corpse on the catwalk overhead and allowed herself to be herded, along with Gabe, through the small doorway behind the stage.

  She looked over the shoulders of the agents behind her at the crowd of reporters. “Are you sure you shouldn’t have stuck around and answered a few of their questions?”

  Owen answered brusquely for him. “That’s what press secretaries are for. Right now, you two are getting under cover and we’re going to have a talk.”

  The Secret Service agent hustled them down a short hallway and into a small office. Glaring sternly at her, he pointed at a chair in front of the desk. She sat down in it while he perched on the edge of the desk. Lord, it felt like being hauled down to the principal’s office to be chewed out. Except this was a thousand times more serious than any accusation she’d ever faced at the Athena Academy.

  As worried as she was by Owen’s inexplicable leap of logic, she still waited him out. It never paid to look overeager in stating her case, no matter how innocent she was.

  Owen sighed heavily. “Start talking.”

  She was vividly aware that Gabe stood in the corner off to her right, watching her silently. She respected both of these men immensely and had no interest in playing games with either one of them. And so, she started talking.

  “Owen, I don’t know where you got the idea that I’d do anything or associate with anyone who would hurt Gabe. I’ve been busting my butt for weeks trying to break into this Q-group, and today they finally stuck their heads up high enough for me to get a position fix on them. I have access to a top-secret, high-tech database to help me analyze their movements, and because of that, I’ve been able to stay only a step or two behind these jokers.”

  “How did you know Dunst would be on that catwalk?”

  “It was the only hole in your security. You had everything else covered. But you weren’t looking within your own ranks for a threat.” She added hastily as a black scowl crossed Owen’s face. “It’s not like you should’ve expected a threat from the inside. I only thought to do it because I know Richard Dunst.”

  Gabe’s brows slammed together right along with Owen’s.

  Surely Gabe didn’t take that the way it sounded. Surely he trusted her more than that! She corrected herself. “I don’t know him as in being acquainted with him. I only meant Dunst was one of the people I’ve investigated and I know his MO. He was caught in a Q-group takedown three months ago, and his escape from Bolling was just too timely to be coincidence. He’s a disguise artist and a trained killer. Speaking of which, has the agent he replaced been found yet?”

  Owen shook his head in the negative. “The FBI is searching the upper floors now.”

  What was going through Gabe’s mind? He was standing there motionless, his expression completely unreadable. Did he believe these accusations Owen was flinging at her? Surely not! But why wasn’t he leaping to her defense, then? Of course, it wasn’t his job to defend her. It was his job to stay out of Owen’s way and let his security chief rake her over the coals. Besides, Gabe was about to be President of the United States. He couldn’t afford to let his personal feelings enter into any decision he made.

  What had Gabe said a few months back in response to a press question speculating about a decision he might make? Something to the effect that, he’d rather base his decisions on facts than speculation. She ought to be pleased he’d extended that philosophy to this situation. Except all she felt was hurt and abandoned by his sudden, cold reserve.

  She turned back to her accuser. “Owen. You saw me jump on Gabe this morning on that balcony. Did that look like a calculated move to get into his good graces? Or did that look like the reflex of someone fighting like crazy to keep Gabe alive?”

  Owen’s expression waxed thoughtful. She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and was dismayed to see Gabe cross his arms across his chest. Was that more comfortable for his bruised ribs, or was that a defensive gesture of rejection? Oh, God. Why did the people who were supposed to care about her always leave her?

  She continued in a rush. “Weird stuff has been happening to me all day. My house got broken into at oh-dark-thirty this morning. An FBI agent I’d never met before made wild accusations against me. Out of the blue, some Army Intelligence guys picked me up for questioning. Some wacko posed as my grandfather’s driver and tried to kidnap me. I’m telling you, somebody’s freaked out by my investigation of last October’s attempt on Gabe’s life and is trying like hell to stop me.”

  “Who?” Owen barked.

  She threw up her hands. “I wish I knew! But I can tell you this. Whoever it is, he or she or they are also behind the attempts to kill Gabe today. You agreed with me in the bunker this afternoon that a third party was pulling both the Q-group’s
strings and Dunst’s. When the Q-group failed, Dunst was sent in to finish the job.”

  “You can’t know that for certain. Unless you’re working for them, of course.”

  “Sure, I can. I was in the Q-group chat room on the Internet a couple hours ago when the order was sent out to kill Gabe.”

  Both men lurched at that one.

  “I’ve got transcripts of it at home on my computer. A bunch of my hacker buddies were there with me, trying to track down the identity of whoever gave the order.”

  Owen still looked suspicious. Okay. She could see where that sounded bad. But dammit, those hackers had provided vital assistance with her investigation!

  “I’m not kidding,” she argued desperately. “I’m way deep inside this conspiracy, and someone knows it. If anything, I’m a security risk to Gabe because they’re coming for me next, and I could draw them to him. But I am not now and never have worked with these jerks. I swear.”

  She looked back and forth between the two men. Neither one’s facial expression gave away a thing.

  She continued to hammer away at the stone wall that was the two men. “Let me ask you a question, Owen. Who tipped you off that I was working with the Q-group? Did it come from within the Secret Service or from outside it?”

  He frowned at her implication. “My organization is not compromised,” he declared forcefully.

  “Oh yeah?” she challenged. “Then why was I able to trace whoever gave Dunst the order to kill Gabe to CIA Headquarters in Langley? There’s a rat somewhere in the government. And he or she has to be high up. How else did Dunst know to be here, tonight? If the CIA’s compromised, why not the Secret Service? It would explain how the bad guys knew so much of Gabe’s plans today, particularly the details of when and where he was going to be inaugurated this evening.”