No ring.
Some insane part of her brain said, “Goody.”
If she could slap it, she would.
Way too classically Alice. “Oh look, an intriguing rabbit hole, I think I’ll fall down it.” Of course, she usually fell for useless pretty boys. She’d bet that phrase had never been used to describe the White House Chief of Staff. Beautiful and, by reputation at least, brilliant as well. He was so far out of her league that it almost hurt. Still, she did wish she’d worn something nicer than her Christmas turtleneck and the old cardigan she’d knit a couple years back. It was her comfort sweater, made in a dozen shades of autumn forest browns and dusky reds.
“So, Dr. Alice Thompson, what did you bring us?” The Chief of Staff was back, all smooth and businesslike. He glanced up and over her head. “We’re good here, Kenneth. Thanks.”
She tipped her head back on the chair far enough to see the upper part of the upside-down Marine, her shadow who she’d completely forgotten about, looming close behind her. He offered a precise nod, did a neat snap turn, and walked out of her range of view with the back of his perfect white hat being the last thing to disappear.
Her head spun a little as she brought it back upright. She really needed some sleep.
Then she remembered what she held in the thin portfolio. It had kept her awake for three days, it would keep her going a bit longer.
That and the fact that, no matter how casual and collected he’d sounded, Dr. Daniel Drake Darlington III’s hands still hadn’t moved from the pull tab on the Advent calendar.
# # #
Daniel couldn’t help noticing the quirk of a smile across Dr. Thompson’s lips. With the unruly mop of hair, it was hard to tell, but she appeared to be staring at his hands.
He looked down.
The Advent calendar still lay in his lap. His hand half an inch from grabbing the little number “1” ribbon. Still.
Her smile bloomed, but she’d shaken down a few more of those soft-flowing curls and her eyes were almost invisible, except as a bright glint. Damn, it was about the cutest thing he’d ever seen.
He slapped the calendar closed and dropped it atop the nearest stack of papers. It over-balanced the stack, which slid to the right. In his sleep deprived state, he was nowhere near fast enough to stop the falling dominos as Chinese manufacturing cascaded into Arctic ecology and on into the Baja oil spill. Daniel rescued the calendar, but the oil spill took out the most recent fisheries and timbers trade reports. The budget was almost big enough to stop the whole thing, would have been if it weren’t sitting on top of the east Africa political report he’d been trying to review for the last three days.
The budget slammed to the floor with a crash loud enough that they all jumped a bit. A minor blizzard of paper followed it to the oriental carpet.
Kenneth stuck his head back in the door, but the President waved him off. All Daniel could do was watch the out-of-control disaster as file folders spilled open one after another to release a fresh splash of white and blue sheets of paper. Spreading like some cubist piece of floor performance art.
The President glanced at the pile of reports fluttering to a landing beside his chair.
“Janet is gonna be so pissed at you,” his boss practically crowed at him.
“Janet?”
Daniel heard Alice’s voice, tentative for a moment.
“His secretary. She’s lethal about Daniel’s methods of organization.”
Alice stretched up to peer at the disaster beyond the President’s chair.
Then she aimed that impossibly cute smile at Daniel. This time those twin, hazel-colored laser beams were exposed with an easy head shake that flopped her hair back.
“How soon does she get in? Can we watch? Where do we get popcorn?”
Chapter 3
Daniel read through the CIA intelligence report for the third time.
“If this is right, we’ll need a very unique asset.”
POTUS looked over at him, “I know just who to call. Even if it’s not a ‘go’ yet, we can start moving the asset into position.”
Daniel nodded. “We can do it from the Game Room.” He started around his desk, but had to double-back around the other side to avoid the paper disaster. His watch claimed barely one a.m.; there’d be plenty of time to fix it before Janet arrived and sentenced him to death by paper cuts.
He arrived by Alice’s chair as she offered another jaw-cracking yawn.
“Sorry. I— Sorry.”
She’d slipped even lower in the chair, far enough that the only thing keeping her from flowing down onto the floor were her knees bumping into the front panel of his desk.
He offered a hand to help her to her feet.
She did her one-eyed inspection of him for a moment, then accepted the offer. Her hand was deceptively strong for how fine-fingered and delicate it appeared. She rose to her feet in a smooth, fluid motion that bespoke some form of training. He’d seen it before somewhere.
“Ballet?” He knew it was wrong even as he said it.
“Sad.”
“Why are you calling me sad?” Daniel knew he was missing something.
She laughed, a bright, merry sound that he could only describe as elfin, though she wasn’t but a few inches shy of his own five-eleven.
“S. A. D.”
“You’re S.A.D.?” he barely managed to choke out.
Even the President looked shocked by that one.
The Special Activities Division was the CIA’s black ops squadron. They were better trained than even the Army Rangers and were deployed in far more questionable situations.
She grinned wickedly, “Now you’re the one saying I’m sad? I’m half tempted to say, ‘yes,’ just to see you twitch. But no. They offered us senior analysts a month of S.A.D. training to better appreciate what could and couldn’t be done in the field. Found I liked the physical part, though I’d never be crazy enough to go for field ops. There’s an on-going course at the gym. I don’t do the weapons or field skills, but there’s dance, yoga, strength training. I keep that up.”
Daniel tried to get to the gym a little each day and do some weight training. He had the sudden feeling that, despite being a slip of a woman, she could probably beat the stuffing out of him. And senior analyst? If she was much past twenty-six or seven, he’d be shocked. Senior analysts usually sported decades of experience.
She freed her hand, which he didn’t realize he’d still been holding until its soft, strong warmth had been removed. She turned to follow the President who waited by the door. Alice Thompson passed close enough for Daniel to smell the woman, past her soap or shampoo; a heady scent of springtime in winter washed over him. She left him wobbly on his feet, as if he were the one who hadn’t slept in three days.
She and the President both stood at the door watching him.
“You coming?” Peter Matthews offered him a knowing smile over Dr. Thompson’s shoulder.
And Dr. Alice Thompson merely offered that crazy, elfin laugh.
All Daniel knew was that he couldn’t wait for next opportunity to get that close to her again.
Chapter 4
“You said we were going to the Game Room. This is—” Alice nearly choked on her words as she watched Daniel press a palm against a glass plate reader. She’d been tired enough to not think much as they descended from the main level down a long flight of stairs.
She didn’t need the two Marine Guards at perfect attention to indicate what lay behind these heavy doors. She’d seen enough movies to know they stood at the entry to the Situation Room. A place that in many ways served as the political center of the planet. Decisions made here affected global politics, started and ended wars.
“Game Room. Definitely.” Mr. Smooth-Chief-of-Staff Daniel Darlington was back in place. “Most administrations call it the Woodshed, but President Matthews is Washingt
on D.C. born and bred. Didn’t seem appropriate.”
Alice still couldn’t believe that she’d flustered the White House Chief of Staff. She. Alice. It was pretty flattering. Well, maybe it was lack of sleep that warped her perceptions, though she felt alarmingly awake at the moment, even if her body didn’t.
“There are refreshments,” the President spoke in such a friendly, normal fashion that it was proving difficult to remain gobsmacked by being in the President’s presence. “An amazing video system attended by the finest Marine Corps technicians. Global politics is more like chess than say, Chutes and Ladders, but there are pieces always in motion and we try to keep track of them in here. So, the Game Room fits.”
The Marines pulled back the double doors and Alice felt herself sucked inward as if by a vacuum.
Without preamble, President Matthews called out to what appeared to be an empty room, “I need to speak with Majors Beale and Henderson. They’re probably still at that little SOAR base in Pakistan.”
A disembodied voice spoke in soft, clearly articulated tones, “A few minutes, Mr. President.”
“Pakistan?” she whispered to Daniel. With relations the way they were in Pakistan, it was hard to imagine that there was a U.S. airbase still there. Though with SOAR. Maybe. The Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment often showed up in the damnedest places on her reports. The Night Stalkers, as they called themselves, were even called on by the CIA’s S.A.D. because no one could deliver a crew by helicopter the way SOAR could. Or get them back out as consistently. Though CIA pilots would never agree, Alice had seen the reports and it was true.
“Pakistan,” the President confirmed. “A special deal. Bati airbase is a small desert location that gives our folks close access to the Hindu Kush passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their primary mission there is to curtail the massive arms flow that Pakistan is sponsoring. However, in exchange for the airbase and certain other considerations, the Pakistan government also receives, shall we say, stabilization assistance along their contested border with India.”
That was just about the craziest arrangement she’d ever heard. But it also explained the oddities of the mission to take down Osama bin Laden. SOAR helicopters had penetrated deep into Pakistan as if coming out of nowhere, no reports ever emerged of where the flight had begun. One leak said northern Afghanistan, but that made even less sense. But perhaps from the secret, Pakistan-sanctioned airbase at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains. That would explain the infiltration issues she’d been unable to puzzle out.
After they’d raided bin Laden’s compound, they fled the country while being chased across the border by Pakistani jets. They must have been very slow jets to allow the helicopters fly from so far in-country, get clear of Pakistan airspace, and fly out over international waters. Or they had a secret pact with the government. Therefore, the Pakistani jets had chased the American helicopters for form’s sake, but not been allowed to interfere because of special on-going military agreements. That made the whole bin-Laden operational logistics make sense, finally.
Alice appreciated that. There was a back-burner portion of her thought processes that worried and chipped away at unexplained problems. That one had been there for a year or more, and now she could tell by the sudden mental silence that enough of the pieces were in place and she could let it go.
It also illustrated different aspects of the notorious southwest Asian schizophrenia. It was the reason her job never grew dull. It was like they thought with both sides of their brain, separately. Iran, a paranoid, extreme Islamic nation that cast aside all things Western, was now one of the few space powers on the planet. Afghanistan, desperate to shed the mantel of the Taliban, reviled the U.S. presence to suppress the brutally violent fanatics. The dichotomy of thought and action remained endlessly fascinating.
Daniel offered her some coffee and a doughnut. But her nervous system was so scrambled with exhaustion that she settled for hot chocolate and a croissant to avoid the bizarre effects caffeine would perpetrate.
As they sat at the table, the giant screen at the end of the room lit up. A beautiful blond glared balefully out at them.
“What the hell do you want at this hour, Sneaker Boy?”
Sneaker Boy? Alice looked around to see who she was addressing. The President was smiling at the screen.
“Morning, Squirt. What are you so surly about?” There was a tease in his voice.
Daniel leaned over to whisper in her ear, “Childhood friends.”
Alice turned to glance at him which brought them nearly nose-to-nose. Just the slightest bit of lean and they’d be kissing. She looked away quickly and took a large bite of her croissant to cover just how stupid her brain could be when she was tired. Her cat would be laughing at her for being such a goofball. If she had a cat.
The woman on the screen covered her face with both her hands as if impossibly weary. “Peter, you idiot!”
Alice choked, coughed, and spewed a small cloud of flaky croissant crust all over the polished Sit Room conference table.
“What time is it?” clearly meant as a rhetorical question. Rhetorical with an acid bite.
“One a.m. our time,” the President responded pleasantly. “Makes it midday for you.”
The woman uncovered one eye and just scowled at the President.
“Oh, right.” He didn’t sound very chagrined.
Alice finally got it, too. The Night Stalkers were called that for a reason. They lived in a flipped clock world, flying missions at night, sleeping during the day. The President had just rousted them after two or maybe three hours of sleep. And by the look of it, last night had included an exhausting mission.
She idly wondered if a report of it might be crossing her desk at the CIA even now. No, she’d left the southwest Asia desk six months ago. For half a year she’d been specializing in the craziest, most isolationist country on the planet.
And when she’d pulled her latest report on North Korea together, the Director had sent her scampering to the White House to report.
The Night Stalkers. The President had asked for Majors Beale and Henderson. That meant this was Major Emily Beale. Alice inspected the sleepy woman more closely. She’d shown up in enough of Alice’s reports over the years for her to know about the legend the woman had become. She out flew everyone, with the possible exception of her even more famous husband. Well, famous to the very small world of those who knew about black ops helicopter pilots.
All Alice saw was a sleepy looking woman in a sand-colored t-shirt.
“At least I didn’t wake Mark.”
A square chin in need of a shave appeared over Beale’s shoulder, “I wish, Mr. President.”
A hand reached out and filled the screen for a moment as it realigned the camera a bit higher. The two most successful pilots in SOAR history now looked out at them. Their most captivating features were Henderson’s gray eyes and Beale’s brilliant blues, almost as bright as Daniel’s. Even rumpled, tired, and grumpy, they made a beautiful couple.
Alice had always wondered how she’d look as part of a couple. Her sporadic relationships typically burned out long before her imagination had time to really take hold. And any efforts to make a portrait-type image, even in her head, had never gelled. Even in her naïve teenage years she hadn’t been able to imagine herself a couple with her massive crush, Leonardo di Caprio. And by the time Firefly’s Nathan Fillion came along, she’d lost the dreamy-eyed teenager completely.
She glanced again at the profile of the man seated beside her in his three-piece suit in the depths of a Washington D.C. night. Daniel was concentrating on the screen at the moment, revealing only his profile.
Him she could picture easily.
Chapter 5
Alice was positively weaving by the time they left the Situation Room and passed by the Marine guards.
Daniel offered his arm.
She slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow, as if they were a couple promenading through a formal garden rather than striding along the West Wing basement hallway. Alice took a deep breath, trying not to acknowledge how much she enjoyed the feeling.
“Set her up in one of the spare rooms.” The President nodded to her.
Stay in the White House? She stumbled on the carpeted steps, would have tumbled to the ground if not for Daniel’s support. Yet another proof to her mother that she lacked any of the grace that ten years of childhood ballet should have taught her.
“I’ll get her settled and be right back down, Mr. President.”
Not that she’d stay awake long enough to get back to her apartment. Once she’d handed off the information that had kept her awake for three days, she felt limp.
“No, we’re done. We needed to get Emily in motion. Next steps tomorrow. I’m just going to swing through the office for a minute and then go back to bed.”
At the head of the stairs, Daniel turned her to the right, resting his left hand over her own where it curled about his right forearm. The sudden warmth felt both startling and comforting as her fingers were freezing cold by contrast. She’d pushed through enough M-LOS projects, as she called the ones causing massive lack of sleep, to know her body would go through chills and dizziness until she had at least a half dozen hours under her belt.
The chill only deepened as they walked the West Colonnade, passing the Marines standing stock still in heavy winter coats, rifles at the ready.
“They do that all winter?”
“I know. Pretty wild, hunh?” He pretended a shiver that she could feel through his arm, even as one of the Marines opened the door for them to enter the Residence.
In moments they were inside the Palm Room, Daniel acting the genial tour guide. His words blurred beneath the grandeur of everything. The room, little more than a pass-through with a bench, a marble table, and some potted palms, was alive with lacy woodwork and watched over by clearly historic paintings of Lady Liberty. The double doors beyond led to a wide, red-carpeted hallway, marble archways, chandeliers.
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