by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees
She started as a heavy hand landed on her shoulder from behind. She whirled, her hands coming up defensively.
“Agent Tilman,” she exclaimed under her breath. “How’s everything going?”
“I was about to ask you the very same thing. I figure it can’t be a good thing that you’re here.”
She smiled humorlessly. “I was just talking with Gabe earlier about how trouble does seem to have a way of finding me.”
He shrugged. “Maybe you just have a good nose for finding it. Smelling anything interesting this evening?” he asked lightly.
“Actually, I am,” she replied with quiet significance.
His gaze snapped to hers, questioning. Concerned. “Come with me.”
She nodded and fell in beside him as he politely elbowed his way out of the room. It was a whole lot easier to move through this dense crowd with a grim-looking linebacker at her side. They stepped out into a broad, elegant hallway, stretching away from the East Room all the way across the ground floor of the stately building.
As soon as they were clear of the East Room, Tilman’s stride stretched out to a near run. It was all she could do to keep up with him without breaking into a trot. He turned a corner and stabbed a button for an elevator. One of the doors in front of them slid open immediately. He dragged her inside the small cubicle.
As soon as the door closed, he asked tersely, “What have you got this time?”
She answered grimly, “Less than before. I think someone very highly placed in the government may try to have Gabe killed again. Maybe not tonight. Except…”
“Except what?” he prodded.
“Except I’ve had this gut feeling all evening that it would happen before he became President.”
“We’re big believers in gut feelings in the Service. And a whole lot of us have been getting gut feelings, too. Do you have any idea at all what’s planned?”
She shook her head regretfully. “None.”
“He’s about to be sworn in.”
She asked, “How many people is he exposed to?”
“No more than two dozen. He’s in the Situation Room, now. No assassin could possibly penetrate it.”
Her intuition jelled into screaming certainty all at once. No assassin could penetrate that group unless Freedom One was in it, and Freedom One had decided to personally knock off Gabe. And that’s exactly what was about to happen.
“Who’s there with him?” she demanded urgently.
The elevator came to a stop and they stepped out into a narrow corridor. Tilman turned to face her. “His new cabinet. The Joint Chiefs. A couple members of the Supreme Court.”
She said around the tightness in her jaw. “That may do it. Within that bunch may very well be the final assassin.”
Tilman’s jaw sagged for an instant before it snapped shut and fire lit in his eyes. “Let’s go,” he bit out.
They took off running down the hall, shoving aside everyone and everything in their path. They skidded to a stop in front of a closed door guarded by a pair of burly men. “Let us in,” Tilman snapped.
“Nobody’s supposed to go in or out,” one of the agents protested. “Haas’s orders.”
“Monihan’s in danger. There’s a killer in there and this lady may know who he is.”
The men’s faces registered shock as the roster of people in the room passed through their minds. But, to their credit, they didn’t waste time arguing about the absurdity of Tilman’s claim. One of them punched a number code in the keypad beside him and Tilman shoved the door open. Diana leaped past him and burst into the room.
Startled faces turned toward her. There was Gabe at the far end of the room, in an open space beyond a long conference table. His left hand rested on a Bible and his right hand was raised in the air. An elderly, black-robed figure stood in front of him, holding the Bible. Justice Browning. Thomas Wolfe stood just behind Gabe. And as Tilman had said, members of Gabe’s inner circle ranged around him in a loose arc.
In the millisecond it took her to register all that, several faces in the room registered her identity, as well. Gabe’s eyes lit in pleased surprise followed by alarm. He knew full well what her bursting into the room like this meant.
Owen Haas leaped to the same conclusion as Gabe did when he saw her and Tilman come bursting through the door. She watched, as in slow motion, his elbow came up and he shoved aside the new Secretary of State to take a step forward toward Gabe. His face creased into lines of grim determination. He didn’t know where the threat was going to come from, but he was as certain in that endless instant as she was that it was going to come. Please, God, let Owen be in time to get his body in front of Gabe.
And then she registered the only two other faces in the room whose expressions shifted away from surprise to something else. They both darkened in displeased recognition of her. Thomas Wolfe. And General Eric Pace, the Army Chief of Staff.
And both of them reached into their coats.
Which one of them was it? Which one was Freedom One? She couldn’t take out both men. There wasn’t time and they stood too far apart, Wolfe on Gabe’s right and Pace to Gabe’s left. Like Owen Haas, she took a slow-motion step forward, preparatory to leaping for one of the men.
Eric Pace’s name had only shown up once, on a list of frequent attendees to defense conferences along with some of the known S.A.F.E. members. Wolfe’s writings, on the other hand, were the foundation of S.A.F.E.’s work. He’d opposed Gabe in a bitter primary campaign, much of it centered around their wildly differing views on dealing with terrorism. He’d tried to unseat Gabe after the election on the grounds of mental unfitness for the job—to steal the Presidency. He’d waylaid her this morning and attempted not to let her see Gabe, as if he already knew who she was and what she’d been there to warn Gabe about.
She leaped for Eric Pace.
The leader of S.A.F.E. would never make himself as obvious a target as Wolfe had.
She flew through the air, tackling the barrel-chested general, slamming him into the ground and landing squarely on top of him. He fought beneath her, twisting and turning in an effort to throw her off. She hung on to him grimly. It was like wrestling a bear. A big, strong, angry one.
Without warning, a deafening sound echoed in her ears, so loud it took her a moment to identify it as a gunshot. A huge jolt of force exploded between her and Pace.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gabe stagger as something or someone struck him.
And then all hell broke loose, people shouting and Secret Service agents diving all over the place. Gabe went down under a pile of agents, and she was abruptly crushed by several men, herself.
“Gun!” one of them shouted practically in her ear.
“Blood!” another one of the men on top of her yelled.
“Someone’s hit! Medic!”
Good Lord willing, the bastard had shot himself in the gut. The other people in the room were shoved back, and the chaos resolved itself into two piles.
A voice bellowed beside her, “I’ve got the weapon.” That was Agent Tilman. “Hold him down!”
The pile around her squirmed and heaved as Pace fought like a madman beneath her. It felt like the time she rode a wild bronc and nearly broke her neck. Her lungs started to burn, and she was having trouble breathing. With all these two-hundred-twenty-pound jokers on top of her, it was no wonder.
She turned her head, searching for a pocket of air in the smothering pile of wool suits and brawn. And came face-to-face with Eric Pace. At a range of about two inches. His eyes blazed with insane fury.
“Freedom One, I presume?” she managed to gasp.
His eyes glazed with manic intensity. “You bitch,” he snarled. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”
“I believe I’ve prevented you from assassinating the President of the United States.”
“You’ve weakened our nation. You’ve made us vulnerable to terrorism. I was going to win the war against it, going to protect this nati
on the way it ought to be protected. But you’ve ruined it all.”
“I think…that’s a decision…for the people…of this nation…to make at…the polls.” She forced the words out of her flattened lungs.
Dang, she was having a hard time breathing.
“I’ve got his arms,” someone shouted.
Pace gave a violent heave beneath her and she felt his legs kicking out beneath hers. Spittle flecked the corner of his mouth.
“Give it up, Pace,” she ground out. “It’s over.” She dragged air into her protesting lungs. She blinked a couple times to clear the pinpoints of light dancing in front of her eyes. She was starting to feel light-headed. “S.A.F.E. is finished.”
Pace froze for an instant, staring at her in shock. Didn’t think anyone knew about his secret little conspiracy, did he? Surprise, surprise.
Apparently, that brief moment of advantage was all the Secret Service needed to finally subdue him. Someone bellowed that they had his legs immobilized. The guy on top of her blessedly rolled away from her. Hands lifted her roughly to her feet as she was yanked away from Pace. She took a staggering step back as a phalanx of Secret Service agents rolled Pace over, jerked his hands behind his back and slapped handcuffs on his wrists. They dragged him none too gently to his feet.
Gabe and Thomas Wolfe stood shoulder-to-shoulder, and Wolfe mopped at his forehead with the handkerchief he’d pulled out of his coat. Gabe snarled, “Why, Pace? Why me?”
The general growled back, “You’re weak. This country needs a man like Thomas Wolfe at the helm. This was all about putting him into power, where he belongs.”
Gabe’s gaze snapped to his vice president.
The look of stunned disbelief on Wolfe’s face had to be legitimate. He stared in shock at the Army general and then turned to face Gabe. “I had no idea. No idea whatsoever that he was planning something like this. Of course, I’ll step down. I’ll tender my letter of resignation first thing in the morning.”
The guy sounded completely shell-shocked, as if he could be knocked over by a feather right about now.
Gabe said shortly, “Don’t send me any letters, yet. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
Wolfe nodded, his gaze bewildered.
Agent Tilman, who still held her elbow, jolted beside her. And looked down. “Jesus, Miss Lockworth. You’re bleeding.”
She looked down and saw a large bloodstain spreading down the right side of her sweater.
Gabe leaped past Owen Haas. “Where’s that medic?” he shouted.
His arms went around her, and he picked her up, carrying her over to the conference table. He laid her down on it gently.
She looked up at him in blank surprise. “I’m shot,” she said rather obviously. But it was the only thing that came to her mind.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he murmured reassuringly. “Don’t worry.”
Hands raised her sweater and eased her slacks down to her hips. Something wet and cold that burned like acid was pressed against her side. “Ouch!” she exclaimed, lurching with unpleasant surprise.
A gray-haired man that eyed her side like a doctor commented, “Well, we know her lung isn’t collapsed if she can yelp like that.”
He swabbed at her side, tossing away several bloodied gauze pads. She lifted her head, twisting her neck to look down at her injury, but the doctor ordered her to lie back down and stay still.
The doctor fussed around for another minute or so, smearing a cream of some kind on her skin. It numbed the growing burning sensation a fair bit, and she sighed in relief. The sound of tape tearing accompanied the doctor pressing a thick wad of gauze against her side. After he’d finished bandaging the wound tightly, the doctor pronounced, “It’s just a graze. She’s going to be fine.”
Gabe leaned down over her and his palms came to rest on her cheeks. “Thank God,” he said fervently.
She gazed up into his worried eyes. She reached up and smoothed away the lines of worry from his brow. And smiled. He smiled back.
Owen Haas cleared his throat from over Gabe’s shoulder, breaking the spell of the moment. It probably wasn’t proper Presidential protocol to sprawl all over the Situation Room briefing table making goo-goo eyes at the commander-in-chief.
She sat up, wincing at the sudden, sharp pain in her side. Gabe’s hand was right there on her elbow, steadying her.
She flashed him a look of gratitude. Then she demanded, “Are you President yet?”
He laughed aloud. “Not yet.”
“Well, good grief, Gabe Monihan, let’s get on with it. You can procrastinate like nobody I’ve ever met before.”
Laughter filled the room.
Gabe held her arm solicitously, helping her gently to her feet. Her side stung sharply, but she wasn’t going to lie around on some table while he became President, darn it.
“Let’s do it, Wendall,” Gabe said.
The elderly man in the black judge’s robe stepped forward. “Now where were we?” he asked drolly.
More chuckles sounded around the room. But they faded away, and a solemn silence enveloped the space. Gabe took the Bible out of the Justice’s hands and turned to face her. He cleared his throat. “Diana, it’s traditional that the first lady holds the Bible for her husband when he’s sworn in. My mother was planning to do it this afternoon, but the day’s events have been a little much for her. Would you do me the honor of holding it for me?”
Her eyes opened wide. That wasn’t the sort of request someone made of some random hot babe they wanted to have a casual fling with. She looked up questioningly into his eyes. “Are you sure?”
He gave her a smile that melted her heart right there on the spot. “I get feelings about things sometimes. I just know when they’re right. And you’re the one for the job. I’m sure.”
She had no idea whether or not he was talking about simply holding the Bible or much more. But it was clear he intended to give them a chance to find out. And so did she. “It would be my great honor to hold the Bible for you, Gabe.”
He held out the book. Their fingers brushed as she took it from him, and as he laid his palm on the leather cover, he flashed her an intimate smile.
And then, standing by her side, Gabe raised his right hand, vowed to uphold and defend the Constitution, and became President of the United States.
CHECKMATE
DORANNA DURGIN
Published by Silhouette Books
America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given
to Doranna Durgin for her contribution
to the ATHENA FORCE series.
Thanks to William Sanders and Robert Brown
for wicked cool gun trivia, and to Judith Byorick
for finding the inadvertently silly bits and to
Evanescence for providing Selena with a theme album.
And big thanks to Catherine Mann, for making sure
I got the Predator details down right!
Dedicated to survivors everywhere.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 1
Berzhaan.
What a mess. Political unrest from within, political pressures from without, a country seething with unreleased social tension and unspoken dangers.
It was exactly what Selena Shaw Jones needed. Distraction.
She stood on the crest of a rubble-strewn hill in Berzhaan and knew herself for a coward. She stood amidst the revered ruins of the Temple of Ashaga and knew she should have been at home, workin
g things out with Cole. She shouldn’t have retreated like a wounded child, unable to face the truth. It wasn’t a reaction typical of her—of the controlled, perfectionist FBI Legal Attaché who traveled the world to develop counterterrorism programs in other countries and to create teamwork between those countries and the United States. Of a woman with extensive experience and training in dangerous situations, from fraught negotiations to firefights.
Emotionally, unexpectedly wounded. And no idea how to deal with it. So Selena had indeed retreated, all the way across the ocean to the brand-new legate office in Berzhaan’s capital, Suwan. So brand-new that her support staff had not yet arrived, and she spent most of her time with the U.S. ambassador, strategizing ways to build trust with a wary Berzhaani prime minister—or with the prime minister himself, attending flashy government functions to establish her presence here.
The rest of the time she spent learning the lay of the land—figuratively and literally. It was one reason she’d come to this shrine of ruins. The other…she’d heard this was a peaceful place. A contemplative place. A place where even a distressed Special Agent might sort out her thoughts.
She looked back down the steep hill she’d just ascended, a challenging obstacle course of rocks both large enough to climb over and small enough to turn an ankle. Below, the village of Oguzka looked peaceful, unchanged by its proximity to the shrine. No tourist attractions, no shacks lining the road offering trinkets to rich Europeans and Americans. Just families, going about their lives.
