My Hero

by Mary McBride

  “Tolerable.” It was his standard reply. Nobody really wanted to hear that his head was still aching, his balance was often touch and go, his leg hurt like hell and his knee had locked up on him again this morning. Plus he didn't want word to get back to his superiors at the Secret Service that his recuperation wasn't right on track as he'd led them to believe.

  “I'm glad you're doing well,” she said. “The President sends his best.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We need to ask a favor of you, Cal.”

  Oh, brother. The we implied there'd been at least one meeting and his name had been mentioned. Janet had probably drawn the short straw and got to make the call.

  “No,” he said.

  “What do you mean, no? You don't even know what it is.”

  “I don't need to know. Whatever it is, Janet, I can't help you.”

  “Just listen for a minute, will you?”

  She didn't give him much choice as she immediately launched into some long-winded monologue about a TV documentary, the upcoming one-year anniversary of the assassination attempt, and Randolph Jennings' eternal gratitude for Cal's cooperation.

  “The documentary is tentatively scheduled to air in mid-September,” Janet said, “and could be a real boon to the reelection campaign. It'll be part of the VIP Channel's biography series. You've probably seen it. The shows are very well done.”

  “Nope. Haven't seen them. We don't get TV out here in Honeycomb,” he drawled at the same time he was looking out the window at Dooley's huge satellite dish that brought in something like eleven thousand channels, only two of which were ever watched for cooking shows and rodeos.

  He could tell from Janet's faint, sympathetic, Sarah Lawrence murmur that she believed him. “Well, trust me,” she said. “They're quite good. They'll be calling this segment ‘Hero Week,’ Cal.”

  He snorted.

  “Let me tell you a little more…”

  “Not interested, Janet.”

  “Cal, if you'd just—”

  “Sorry.”

  What followed next was a stubborn silence, a staring contest across two thousand miles. Cal could just picture Granite Janet sinking her eye teeth into her lush bottom lip, pulling at a hank of light brown hair, twisting it around her index finger before she planted the abused lock behind the ear unencumbered by the phone, all the while glaring out through her always open office door, ready to bite off the head or gonads, depending on his crime, of the next guy who dared to enter.

  For a minute—oh, damn!—he missed his job and the West Wing so much he almost wished Starks' bullet had wiped his memories clean instead of just short circuiting some of them.

  “Cal, maybe I'm not making myself clear. The VIP Channel is going to do this profile of you whether you cooperate with them or not. Their producer is on her way to Texas this evening, I'm told. President Jennings would be extremely grateful if—”

  “All right, Janet. God dammit.” Hero Week. Shit.

  “Oh, good.” She didn't dwell on her victory. Janet had way too much class for that, and was too smart to give him an opportunity to renege. “Let me give you the producer's name. I have it here somewhere. Cal, I'm going to put you on hold a second. Don't you dare hang up on me.”

  Hero Week. He wanted to snap the receiver in half, maybe bash it against the metal plate in his skull and see which dented first. After nine months, interest in the assassination attempt had slackened. It was yesterday's news. Old stuff. Nobody had called him in weeks, thank God. Even the Secret Service wasn't trying to trot him out as their poster boy anymore.

  He wasn't a hero. He'd just been doing his job, and if he had to do it again—which admittedly he did just about every night in his brutal dreams—he'd zig rather than zag when he threw that body block into the President to push him back through the door they had just exited. That way the bullet that grazed his head before it smashed into his thigh might have just hit the leg. Of course, without his head to slow it down a bit, the slug might have shattered his femur. You never knew. The hero business was pretty unpredictable.

  “Cal?”

  “I'm still here, Janet.”

  “The producer's name is Holly Hicks. She'll be flying into Houston tonight, and we thought…”

  There was that we again.

  “…it would be a nice touch and show a real spirit of cooperation if you were the one who met her at the airport.”

  “In Houston?”

  “Yes. She's flying from Newark to…” He could hear papers shuffling. “Yes. Intercontinental Airport in Houston. She's on Continental. ETA is nine P.M.”

  Cal shook his aching head and considered telling Janet that Houston was over two hundred miles from Honeycomb. But then he thought about his Thunderbird and the top down under clear blue skies and his foot jamming the accelerator while the T-bird ate up and spat out big stretches of road going northeast on 59.

  “Okay. Nine P.M. I'll be there,” he said.

  “Great. I'll let them know in New York.”

  “What was her name again? The producer?” Cal reached for a pen and a scrap of paper, suppressing the frustration he felt at having to write down even the most minor items before they eluded his memory.

  “Holly Hicks,” Janet said.

  He was grateful when she repeated the flight information for him in addition to the name.

  “I'll fax her your picture from our press file so she can find you at the airport.”

  “That'll work,” he said. “You've still got my press file?”

  “Damned right I do. You don't think I want to do all that work all over again when you come back, do you?”

  “Janet, I'm not…” Hell. Cal forced a laugh. “Yeah. Couldn't have been easy, tracking down all those credentials and awards.”

  “You've got that right.” Her voice went soft. “I heard about the divorce, Cal. I'm sorry.”

  He never knew how to reply. Did he laugh it off and say “It would have happened anyway”? Or choke up, as was often the case, and try not to say “I'm ashamed because I don't know why I married her in the first place”? What?

  “Yeah, well…” he finally replied, hoping it translated as hey. No big deal.

  “So, when can we expect to see your indestructible bod and your stony expression back here in the White House?”

  “Soon,” he lied.

  After hanging up, Cal dragged his fingers through his hair, encountering the subtle indentation of his repair job, wondering why Janet bothered faxing this Holly person a photo by which to identify him when a metal detector would have accomplished the same damned thing, maybe even better. He probably didn't even look like any of his old pictures. He probably looked as different, as terrible as he felt.

  Suddenly he regretted every word he had just spoken on the phone. Except for his agreement to make the drive to Houston. That he was looking forward to.

  Chapter Three

  The plane was crowded, which came as a complete surprise to Holly who couldn't for the life of her imagine why so many people were headed—and apparently quite willingly—to Texas. She was seated toward the rear of the plane, between a large man and his equally large wife, both of whom carried on a conversation during most of the flight. Holly had offered to exchange seats with either one of them, but, no, Norman sorta cottoned to the aisle seat while Denise was happy being by the window. That's how they always flew. They thanked her kindly and then went right on talking to each other as if the seat between them were empty.

  Holly kept her elbows to herself and almost wished she were deaf while she stared at the screen of Mel's laptop on the pull-down table in front of her. At her feet, tucked safely in her handbag, was the fax from the White House that had come in just moments before she'd left the office for the airport. When she got back home, she was going to have it framed. Not the picture of Calvin Griffin, even though he was nice looking enough, but the cover sheet bearing the seal of the President of the United States. It was a pretty good bet no graduate
of the Bi-County School of Cosmetology had ever received a fax like that, and she wished her mother were still alive to see it.

  Her parents had died when she was in college, the victims of a joy-riding fourteen-year-old in a stolen Camaro. The state troopers had been pursuing him down I-37 just as Bobby Ray and Crystal Hicks, their radio blaring “Stand By Your Man,” happened to get in the way. Holly hadn't been back since the funeral, although she did correspond with her cousin, Cassie Hicks Devane, who had a daughter, Madison, with a vague interest in broadcasting and a powerful desire to be Miss Texas.

  Now, in Seat 25B, wishing she were flying to Peoria or Nome or Siberia—anyplace but Texas—Holly was trying to come up with a decent hook for the hero story.

  She'd spent the morning boning up on the assassination attempt in Baltimore last September. Predictably, all the wire services and major news magazines had devoted the bulk of their coverage to the shooter, Thomas Earl Starks. He was a disgruntled postal worker—weren't they always?—with ties to several foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing militia groups, although the general consensus was that the man had acted alone when he fired his M-16 rifle from an upper level of a parking garage. Starks' confiscated diaries indicated an intense hatred of Randolph Jennings as well as the belief that the President was the unwitting pawn of several foreign governments, primarily Denmark and Iceland, which might have been funny if the man hadn't actually acted on his bizarre notions.

  It was no surprise, either, that the twenty-nine-year-old Starks was a loner whose family, which consisted of a mother and two sisters in Valparaiso, Indiana, hadn't even heard from him in years. Apparently Thomas Earl Starks fit the assassin profile from the top of his schizophrenic head to the tips of his toes.

  As far as Calvin Griffin went, the coverage was mostly about his actions in those frightening seconds that sent scores of people—press, White House staffers, bystanders—scrambling for cover while he threw a hard body block into Starks' target, quite literally taking one of the bullets meant for President Jennings. Heroic as it sounded, the fact remained that it was Special Agent Griffin's job to do just that.

  Personal details about the agent, however, were few and far between. He was thirty-seven years old, a Texan, recently married at the time of the shooting, with no children. Actually, his wife got more attention from the press than he did last September, especially in the tabloids where she was pictured coming and going from the intensive care unit, usually in a limo, always dressed to the hilt with her hair perfectly done and enough gold bracelets and rings to set herself up in the jewelry business. Holly had a vague memory of seeing her on Larry King Live.

  As for Griffin himself, he had been a Secret Service agent for about a dozen years following what appeared to be an undistinguished career at Texas A & M and a stint in the Marine Corps.

  His photograph, in black and white, didn't help much. With his clipped hair and cool gaze and stern mouth, Calvin Griffin looked like a recruiting poster for the Treasury Department. Alert. Athletic. Bright enough. A suggestion of arrogance, perhaps, in the tilt of his head. A stubborn angle to his jaw. Maybe the slightest hint of humor in the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes. Interesting? Not very. A hero? Hardly.

  Holly didn't really have a handle on him yet. As a producer, that handle was what she desperately needed to put together a solid piece for Hero Week. She needed a hook to hang her story on, a way to organize and present all the facts and opinions she was about to learn. So far, she figured she had two choices for her hook. The story of Calvin Griffin, Hero, was either “We always knew he would be” or “We never thought he'd amount to a hill of beans.” A few preliminary interviews ought to point her in one direction or the other.

  All things considered, she really wished she'd been asked to produce a segment on Thomas Earl Starks, who was now in a federal penitentiary in Indiana. The shooter struck her as far more interesting than the victim. Starks had spent years working his way up to his heinous crime while the Secret Service agent had merely reacted in a split second to the gunfire. Not much there to work with as far as a story went. For all Holly knew right now, Calvin Griffin didn't even have a middle name.

  Her seatmate, Norman, leaned to his right, further encroaching on her space. “You see any lights down there yet, Denise?”

  “Not yet, honey bunch.”

  He sighed. “Well, we oughta be landing soon.”

  Holly glanced at her watch, then closed Mel's laptop. In another few minutes, she'd be back in Texas.

  Yippee ki oh.

  Cal checked his watch. The plane was half an hour late, which had allowed him ample time to question his sanity in the airport bar.

  The White House wanted a hero? Fine. Great. He'd showered and shaved and even splashed on a little Calvin Klein prior to putting on a suit and tie and his shoulder holster for the first time since the assassination attempt. This Holly person was going to be looking for a Secret Service agent, so he figured he might as well look the part even if he felt like a damned imposter.

  Hero Week.

  Shit.

  Over his sister's vehement objections, practically over her dead body, Cal had gotten to the airport without a hitch, and he even remembered what color the level was where he'd parked in the garage. Yellow. He stole a quick glance at the palm of his hand where he'd written it, just to be sure. Only the “Y” was visible, the rest having been washed away by the moisture from several bottles of beer.

  He left a twenty on the table in appreciation of the waitress' reliable service and blessed reluctance to chat, then he made his way toward the gate where the plane from Newark was due to arrive.

  With his badge and photo ID and a working expression only slightly softer than Mount Rushmore, he cut through airport security like a blade through butter, and for a moment—a few curt nods, a pleasant tension in his jaw, and several confident, purposeful strides—it felt as if he were back on the job. Back in control. There was the warmth of his firearm snug against his ribs. The military shine of his wing tips. The subtle pressure of a perfectly knotted tie that signified he was on the job. Cal knew he missed it, but only now did he realize just how much. Desperately. Achingly.

  As quickly as the realization occurred, he shunted it to the farthest reaches of his consciousness. He wouldn't let himself think about how much he missed the job. He didn't dare. Starks' bullet hadn't only affected his physical health and short-term memory, but it had also played havoc with his emotions. They'd been dangerously close to the surface these past nine months, and even though he seemed to be getting better in that department, he wasn't always sure what might spark a rage or sneak up on him to make his throat close and his voice break and his eyes burn with tears. The unexpected rages were at least macho. But the tears. Jesus. They ought to be putting him on Freak Week instead of Hero Week.

  His head was relatively clear and his emotions in check by the time he got to the gate, where people were already coming through the door from the jetway. Men, mostly, in suits, juggling briefcases and carry-on bags and cell phones. Cal leaned a shoulder against a concrete post while he surveyed the crowd from behind his dark glasses.

  A small, pretty brunette paused in the jetway door, gazed hopefully around the waiting crowd, then lifted a hand to wave at a man with a toddler slung under his arm.

  The next likely candidate for a producer was a tall redhead in a big-shouldered pinstripe suit who looked like she'd had a few too many Bloody Marys between Newark and Houston. She walked his way, but then Big Red lugged her one-suiter right past him without a second glance.

  Okay. Maybe this Holly wasn't on the plane. Maybe there'd been a change of plans. Maybe they'd canceled Hero Week. Maybe…

  He saw her, frowning down at the photo in her grasp, eye-balling the crowd before she consulted the picture once again. She wasn't any bigger than a minute. A strawberry blonde in curvy jeans and a luscious strawberry-colored tee. The fact that she looked good enough to eat didn't entirely escape him.

&nb
sp; Her gaze slid right past Cal, not once but twice. He must've looked worse than he imagined, or else this Holly wasn't all that bright. Then all of a sudden he realized he was wearing his shades, a hard habit to break after so many years of scrutinizing crowds. He dragged the glasses down his nose, and when her gaze traveled back, it stayed.

  A smile—half recognition, half relief—worked its way across her mouth. She took in a visible breath and started toward him in a succession of movements that signaled firm flesh over delicate bones and devilish hips. Fine, feminine attributes that Cal hadn't been even remotely aware of during the past nine months. He shifted off the concrete post, more than a little aware of them now, as well as the effect they had on him.

  Her hair was chin length, curly, just this side of wild, and the color of a pale lager laced with pink glints from the glow of a jukebox, a jar of honey on a sunset window sill. She really did look good enough to eat, this Holly, and much to his dismay, Cal realized he was famished.

  “I'm Holly Hicks,” she said in a voice that was part sugar, part Cayenne pepper, and a pinch of Texas. “The producer from the VIP Channel. Are you…?”

  “Cal Griffin.”

  The hand she offered him was small and sleek, with short nails and no rings to cut into his palm.

  “I really appreciate your meeting me,” she said, her tone brisk and businesslike. Her green gaze broke away from his to search the general vicinity. “Oh, good. There's a rest room. If you don't mind…”

  “No. No problem.”

  “Could you hold this for me a moment?” She shrugged a black strap from her shoulder and handed him the laptop case. “And this?” She set her carry-on bag at his feet. “Thanks. I appreciate it. I'll be right back.”

  “I'll be right here,” he said.

  She was so tiny that Cal lost sight of her once she edged into the flow of passengers making their way toward the main terminal. He located an empty chair and sat, laptop on lap, carry-on bag beside him, hero turned baggage handler.