Maci groaned.
“Why do I always end up transporting the crazies? He is the real President. He won the popular vote. The Electoral College isn’t coming back, and your guy wouldn’t have won anyway.”
“I didn’t say that President Johnson wasn’t real. I said the man you protected today is an imposter.”
“What?” Maci said, then almost kicked herself for asking.
“That wasn’t Archer Johnson. That man is an imposter.”
Maci scoffed.
“That was definitely Archer Johnson.”
“No, he was not. The real Archer Johnson is in danger, and you stopped me from helping him.”
Maci sighed.
“You can work on the mentally unfit case all you want, but there are no exemptions for attempted assassins. You will go to prison for this, and you likely won’t ever be released. Pretending to be crazy with me isn’t going to change that.”
“I’m not pretending to be anything,” he said, sounding quite serious. “There’s something huge going on in DC, and I’m trying to help.”
He sounded eerily calm, and Maci couldn’t shake the weird feeling his words gave her. She shook it off, dismissing his claims and concentrating on the road ahead. Sixteenth Street was a pain any time of day, and the sun was setting, making visibility awkward even with her sunglasses.
The man shifted in the back seat, but she ignored him. The cage between them was thick, the openings too small for even his fingers to get through. She was safe in the car with him, even if he was making her feel very uncomfortable.
Too bad, she thought, thinking about his firm jawline and wide set shoulders.
Why did the handsome ones always have to be crazy?
CHAPTER TWO
The man was silent as she continued driving, trying not to let the stop and go traffic get on her nerves. They were only a few miles away, so it wouldn’t be much longer. Then she could interrogate the man and throw him in the deprivation chamber until she came back to work the next day. Overnight with no sound or light had a way of breaking even the toughest of criminals. And if that didn’t work, she had more tricks up her sleeve.
Her mind kept going back to what he had said about Archer being replaced by an imposter. Before she did anything, she wanted to call a friend of hers who worked as a forensic psychiatrist at the Smithsonian. Abigail Greene specialized in the abnormal psychology and diagnosis of historical figures, but she had plenty of modern day experience as well. She didn’t usually consult, but Maci had a feeling that Abby would love to talk to the man in her car, even if just for an hour. Maci couldn’t be sure, but she thought there was a possibility that the man was suffering from Capgras Delusion. His insistence that the President had been replaced by an imposter sounded sincere, and Maci could not help but wonder if the man was actually ill, versus just evil.
“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly, surprising herself.
“Logan,” he said.
“Where were you before you went to the Lincoln Memorial today?”
“At home, getting ready for work.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m in the Secret Service.”
“Are you sure about that? Are you sure that you aren’t impersonating a Secret Service agent?”
“Quite sure. I’ve been in the Secret Service for five years now.”
“What made you believe that the President had been replaced? Is this a new feeling, or have you felt this way for very long?”
“It’s not about how I feel. It’s the truth. Archer Johnson isn’t who you think he is.”
“That is where you’re wrong,” she shot back, kicking herself for letting this deranged man get to her, but she’d had enough. “I’ve known Archer Johnson since I was a little girl, and I can assure you that he is exactly who I think he is. He always has been.”
“Look,” the man said, his voice quiet and calm. “I’m not saying that the real Archer Johnson isn’t who you think he is. I’m saying that this man that you protected today is not the real Archer Johnson. He’s a clone. He’s been put in place by a-”
“Please stop,” she said, frustrated with this man. “You’re delusional, or you’re trying to build an insanity defense. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to call a friend of mine and see if she can help you. You’re still going to the Hole, and you’re not getting out until I get to the bottom of this, but if you actually are sick, you’ll get the help you need. So quit talking.”
“I’m not sick,” he said. “I’m not insane. You’re not listening.”
“I am, believe me,” she said. “I’ve heard every word that you’ve said, Logan. You’re not going to convince me of whatever story you’ve concocted in your head. It’s simply not true, and I won’t entertain it. I would know if Archer wasn’t himself.”
The man was silent in the back, and Maci took that as a good sign. Maybe he was having a lucid moment, and he had decided to keep his mouth shut. That would be for the best, and it would make her life easier. Traffic was heavy, and it was grating on her nerves. She could turn on the siren and lights that were recessed in the top of the vehicle, but then she would have to attempt to work her way around the crush of heavy traffic, and she wouldn’t get far. Traffic was crawling, and there was just no way around it.
She turned on the radio, clicking between the stations that she had preset on the vehicle. One of the perks of being SSE was that she got to keep her company vehicle as long as she worked, but the government picked up the tab for maintenance, insurance, and gas. She put in long hours and busted her ass, so she felt like she more than earned it, but it was also nice to have things taken care of for her so she could focus on her job.
“Do you have a preference?” she asked Logan without taking her eyes off the busy commuter traffic. “Classical?”
He said nothing.
“Classical it is, then,” she said, turning the station to a pleasant volume level and smiling when one of her favorite pieces started.
She sighed, her body relaxing as the sweet sounds of the violin filled the small space. Logan’s tirade against Archer had really gotten under her skin, and she’d been agitated, though outwardly calm. She needed to relax. Being on edge didn’t help her stay focused and alert; it just left her twitchy.
You caught the bad guy, she thought triumphantly. Focus on that, and deal with the rest later. She smiled. That was the right thing to do. Focus on the positive and leave the rest for later, when she could actually do something about it. Right now, stuck in traffic that was lurching forward at best, she couldn’t do a thing about this man and his attempt to assassinate the President. She could only sit there in the car and hope that it didn’t take more than an hour to get across town. It wasn’t looking good.
She heard the man groan almost imperceptibly in the back seat, but she ignored him. He was tightly bound, and he’d been cleared of weapons. There was nothing for him to do back there, and she was a little worried that any eye contact with him would encourage him to start going on about his delusions again. Since he had just stopped his ranting and raving a few minutes before, Maci was in no hurry to get him riled up again. As long as he was still breathing when they got to the Hole, she’d done her job.
Speaking of breathing, she thought, noting the suddenly labored breathing from the back seat. She looked at the rearview mirror, then gasped, unable to believe her eyes. She slammed on the brakes, looking over her shoulder and cursing. A horn blared, followed by another, but she made no move to drive forward.
The man that she had placed in her back seat was no longer the man he had been. Angrily, she realized that she hadn’t checked his ID, or she would have seen the tiny decal that registered him as a shifter.
And she would have known to give him a shot of muscle relaxant to prevent shifting. She couldn’t contain a shifter in this vehicle, and she couldn’t take him alone. But she had missed it, never dreaming that the man who had gone after the President was a werewolf.
She flipped open her glove box, searching through the various items, looking for the tiny autoinjector that would render him immobile long enough for her to call for backup to meet her at the Hole. Her hand finally closed around the injector that looked like a normal ink pen. She pulled the cap off and groaned when she saw that the tip had turned red, indicating that the contents were expired and unusable. Even if she could get close enough to administer the dose, it wouldn’t work. The chemicals had broken down already and were inert.
“No,” she said, watching in horror as the man behind her pulled his massive, hairy arms apart, his elongated face staring at her unapologetically as the last of his human features faded away into the visage of a large wolf. “Stop!”
The cuffs fell away, and the wolf, still half man, punched the bulletproof glass, pushing the window out in one large piece of glass that was now floppy, the shattered pieces held together by the heavy black tint.
He reached out and opened the door from the outside, running out into traffic, still on two legs.
Maci pushed down on the accelerator, jumping the curb and going after him, horns still blaring as she took off after him. She raced down the edge of Sixteenth Street, going as fast as she could with half of her tires on the road. Traffic was stopped now, with hundreds of drivers staring in awe at the man running down the road, his body still shifting as he ran faster than any man could on two legs.
One car had pulled out away from its lane, the driver parked and holding up his cellphone to take a video of Logan as he completed the shift, landing on all fours and taking a hard left turn, heading into Rock Creek Park.
“Move!” she yelled out the open window, but the man flipped her off with his free hand, not even bothering to move so she could squeeze past.
Maci threw the door open, running across the street now littered on both sides with stopped traffic that was too busy watching Logan to focus on the road.
She jumped, sliding across the hood of a car and startling the driver. Her feet hit the ground, and she was off, headed into the nearly two-thousand-acre park in the middle of the city as the sun set in the west. She had her gun out, ready to shoot him even though she knew that it wouldn’t do much good. Her bullets were the standard bullets that came with her handgun. Even if they were silver, it wouldn’t matter; Logan was already in the woods. No matter how fast she ran, there was no way that she was going to catch him.
She ran anyway, hitting the jogging trail and watching the ground for his prints. They were easy to tell from the others because they were almost twice the size of an average dog print. She followed the prints until they left the trail, groaning in frustration when they stopped suddenly.
Peering into the trees on both sides of the trail, she couldn’t tell which way he had gone. The prints stopped abruptly, and from the way they stopped and got much deeper in the soft trail dirt, it was impossible to tell whether he had leapt right or left.
She yelled out in frustration, kicking the dirt with her shoe and turning back the way she had come. He was gone, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
She jogged back to the trailhead, crossing the street and getting into her battered SUV. She pulled into traffic, ignoring the barrage of horns and heading for the Hole. Of course, now the traffic was moving faster as the last bits of light gave way to night and the commuters that had gotten off at five made their way home to have dinner. Meanwhile, Maci was going to have to explain where her prisoner had gone.
Slamming her fist on the steering wheel, she cursed out loud. Her otherwise perfect capture was going to be marred by this. She had saved the President’s life on live television, but she knew that the only thing anyone would care about was the fact that Logan had gotten away. And without having looked at his ID, she didn’t even know his name.
Why hadn’t Chad said anything? He had frisked the guy, even going through his wallet. Had Chad even noticed the little emblem built into the ID cards of all shifters in America when he had looked? Or had he been too busy to pay attention?
Maci shook her head. There was no use going over it in her head until she was exhausted. She had made a mistake, letting Chad step in and frisk the man when she was putting him in the SUV. She should have done her own frisk as a precaution, but she had thought Chad capable of doing his job.
Maci’s phone rang. When she looked at the caller ID, she groaned. It was Archer.
“Hello,” she said, putting the phone to her ear.
“Are you at the Hole yet?”
“No,” she said, sighing heavily. “Archer, he got away.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was a shifter, a werewolf. I didn’t know, and I didn’t give him anything to keep him from shifting. He shifted in the back of the SUV and took off.”
“Where did he go?” Archer asked, his voice calmer than Maci would have expected.
But that was Archer for you—cool under pressure and always thinking before he spoke in anger.
“He went into Rock Creek Park. I followed him, but he got away.”
“Of course he did. You couldn’t outrun him on two legs.”
“I’m sorry, Archer. I should have checked the ID. I missed it.”
“Do you really think that he would have had his real ID on him?” Archer asked, his voice gentle. “You saved my life today, and I was calling to thank you. We’ll catch him, Maci. Don’t beat yourself up over the rest. You were amazing today.”
“Thank you,” she said, not feeling the least bit like she deserved the praise.
“Where are you headed?”
“The Hole.”
“Why?”
She thought about it for a minute and realized that she didn’t know.
“I honestly don’t know,” she admitted. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Look, Maci. We have his picture from earlier. It’s all over the news. I’ll mobilize a team to look for him. Why don’t you go home and get some rest?”
“Sir?”
“Maci, you’ve been working yourself to the bone for me the past two weeks. You need to rest. You’re no good to me if you’re tired. Go home, rest, and enjoy your weekend. I’ll see you on Monday.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t help thinking that this wouldn’t have happened if I had been paying attention.”
“You were paying attention when it counted,” Archer said. “Get some rest, Maci. The world needs you. I need you.”
“Thanks, Archer,” she said. “I mean that. Let me know if they catch him.”
“When they catch him,” Archer said, hanging up before she could say anything else.
She smiled as she put the phone down, then picked it up again and dialed an all too familiar number.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Farmer,” he said. “Dare I ask what you’ve done to the SUV?”
“Hey, Davis. I need to drop it off.”
“How bad?”
“A window is knocked out, and I’m pretty sure more than one commuter scraped their car getting by me instead of going around.”
“How did that happen?”
“I left it on Sixteenth Street while I chased a perp.”
“Maci. Seriously? You parked the SUV on Sixteenth during rush hour?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m coming in right now. I’ll need something to drive home in.”
“Man, Maci. You make my life hard.”
“I do my best,” she teased, even though she didn’t feel good about the situation that found her taking her SUV to the SSE’s car guy. “I’ll be there in five minutes. Do you have something for me to borrow over the weekend?”
“I don’t have any SUVs. Just a two-seater.”
“That is fine. I don’t think I’ll be transporting prisoners this week. I’m pretty sure that Archer is about to give me a week off. Instead of freaking out that I let the perp get away, he told me to go home and rest.”
“You are a bit of a worka
holic, Maci. Maybe a week off wouldn’t be bad.”
“Bite your tongue,” she said. “Get the other car ready for me. I don’t want to hang around all night.”
“Got it,” Davis said. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
They hung up, and Maci took a right at the next light, heading for the body shop in the thinning traffic.
She was there in less than three minutes, pulling in and parking in front of Davis’ office. He came out, whistling under his breath as he took in every ding and scrape.
“You weren’t kidding,” he said, bending down to check out a particularly bad scrape. “I’m going to need more than the weekend to get this back into tip top condition. You can take the loaner, but I’ll have to give you a different SUV on Monday or Tuesday if you can’t keep the two-seater until next Friday.”
Maci shrugged.
“I’m indifferent.”
“You say that now,” Davis said with a smile. “But I only have one loaner left, and I think you’re going to get attached to this one.”
He motioned to her to follow him, grabbing a set of keys from his pocket and hitting the disarm button as he went around the corner to the garage in the back.
“Make sure you put this in your garage at home,” he said, tossing the keys to her.
“A 911 Carrera?” she said, taking in the black convertible. “This is nice.”
“Don’t fall in love with it,” Davis chided her. “It’s for deep undercover work, but it’s all I have left. It’s been a rough week for government vehicles.”
He gestured to a few of the vehicles in the bay, many of them worse off than her own SUV.
“Ouch,” she said, sucking in a breath. “That is a lot of damage.”
“You’re not the only one who has had a rough week. Have a great weekend, and get some rest. Try not to drive this one into the ground.”
She shook her head, getting in and starting the engine. The engine purred, and Maci fell in love.
“That look on your face,” Davis said, patting her arm. “It’s like you just fell in love.”
“I did. I’ll see you Friday. Take your time with the SUV. I’m in no hurry to get it back.”
The Wolf In The White House Page 2
