She felt guilty about the abuse her body was taking with the endless hours and stress of moving from one horrific case to another, but what was she supposed to do? Quit because she didn’t look like the women on the cover of Cosmopolitan? She consoled herself with the fact that their job twenty-four hours a day was to make themselves look good. Hers was to ensure that people who broke the law, who hurt others, were punished. Under any criteria she reasoned she was doing far more productive things with her life.
She swiped at her own mane; it needed to be cut, but where was the time to do that? The face was still relatively unmarked by the burden she found increasingly difficult to carry. Her twenty-nine-year-old face, after four years of nineteen-hour days and countless trials, had held its own. She sighed as she realized that probably would not last. In college she had been the gracious recipient of turned heads, the cause of raised heartbeats and cold sweats. But as she got ready to enter her thirties, she realized that what she had taken for granted for so many years, that what she had, in fact, derided on so many occasions, would not be with her that much longer. And like so many things you took for granted or dismissed as unimportant, being able to quiet a room by your mere entrance was one she knew she was going to miss.
That her looks had remained strong over the last few years was remarkable considering she had done relatively little to preserve them. Good genes, that must be it; she was fortunate. But then she thought of her father and decided that she wasn’t very lucky at all in the genes department. A man who stole from others and then pretended to live a normal life. A man who deceived everyone, including his wife and daughter. A man you could not depend on to be there.
She sat at her desk, took a quick sip of the hot coffee, poured in more sugar and looked at Mr. Simmons while she stirred the black depths of her nighttime stimulus.
She picked up the phone, called home to check messages. There were five, two from other lawyers, one from the policeman she would put on the stand against Mr. Simmons and one from a staff investigator who liked to call her at odd hours with mostly useless information. She should change her telephone number. The last message was a hang-up. But she could hear very low breathing on the end, she could almost make out a word or two. Something in the sound was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. People with nothing better to do.
The coffee flowed through her veins, the file came back into focus. She glanced up at her little bookshelf. On top was an old photo of her deceased mother and ten-year-old Kate. Cut out from the picture was Luther Whitney. A big gap next to mother and daughter. A big nothing.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” The President of the United States sat up, one hand covering his limp and damaged privates, the other holding the letter opener that a moment before was to have been the instrument of his death. It had more than just his blood on it now. “Jesus Fucking Christ, Bill, you fucking killed her!” The target of his barrage stooped to help him up while his companion checked the woman’s condition: a perfunctory examination, considering two heavy-caliber bullets had blown through her brain.
“I’m sorry, sir, there wasn’t time. I’m sorry, sir.”
Bill Burton had been a Secret Service agent for twelve years, and a Maryland state trooper for eight years before that, and one of his rounds had just blown apart a beautiful young woman’s head. Despite all his intense training, he was shaking like a preschooler just awakened from a nightmare.
He had killed before in the line of duty: a routine traffic stop gone wrong. But the deceased had been a four-time loser with a serious vendetta against uniformed officers and wielding a Glock semiautomatic pistol in a sincere attempt to lift Burton’s head from his shoulders.
He looked down at the small, naked body and thought he would be sick. His partner, Tim Collin, looked across at him, grabbed his arm. Burton swallowed hard and nodded his head. He would make it.
They carefully helped up Alan J. Richmond, President of the United States, a political hero and leader to young, middle-aged and old alike, but now simply naked and drunk. The President looked up at them, the initial horror finally passing as the alcohol worked its effects. “She’s dead?” The words were a little slurred; the eyes seemed to roll back in the head like loose marbles.
“Yes, sir.” Collin answered crisply. You didn’t let a question from the President go unanswered, drunk or not.
Burton hung back now. He glanced at the woman again and then looked back at the President. That was their job, his job. Protect the goddamned President. Whatever it took, that life must not end, not like that. Not stuck like a pig by some drunken bitch.
The President’s mouth curled up into what looked like a smile, although neither Collin nor Burton would remember it that way later. The President started to rise.
“Where are my clothes?” he demanded.
“Right here, sir.” Burton, snapping back to attention, stooped to pick up the clothes. They were heavily spotted — everything in the room seemed to be — with her.
“Well, get me up, and get me ready, goddammit. I’ve got a speech to give for somebody, somewhere, don’t I?” He laughed shrilly. Burton looked at Collin and Collin looked at Burton. They both watched as the President passed out on the bed.
At the sound of the explosions, Chief of Staff Gloria Russell had been in the bathroom on the first floor, as far away from that room as she could get.
She had accompanied the President on many of these assignations, but rather than growing used to them, they disgusted her more each time. To imagine her boss, the most powerful man on the face of the earth, bedding all these celebrity whores, these political groupies. It was beyond comprehension, and yet she had almost learned to ignore it. Almost.
She had pulled her pantyhose back up, grabbed her purse, flung open the door, run down the hallway and even in heels took the steps two at a time. When she reached the bedroom door Agent Burton stopped her.
“Ma’am, you don’t want to see this, it’s not pretty.”
She pushed past him and then stopped. Her first thought was to run back out, down the stairs, into the limo, out of there, out of the state, out of the miserable country. She wasn’t sorry for Christy Sullivan, who’d wanted to get screwed by the President. That had been her goal for the last two years. Well, sometimes you don’t get what you want; sometimes you get a lot more.
Russell steadied herself and faced off with Agent Collin.
“What the hell happened?”
Tim Collin was young, tough and devoted to the man he was assigned to protect. He was trained to die defending the President, and there was no question in his mind that if the time came he would. Several years had passed since he had tackled an assailant in the parking lot of a shopping center where then presidential candidate Alan Richmond had been making an appearance. Collin had had the potential assassin down on the asphalt and completely immobile before the guy had even gotten his gun fully out of his pocket, before anyone else had even reacted. To Collin, his only mission in life was to protect Alan Richmond.
It took Agent Collin one minute to report the facts to Russell in succinct, cohesive sentences. Burton solemnly confirmed the account.
“It was either him or her, Ms. Russell. There was no other way to cut it.” Burton instinctively glanced at the President, who still lay on the bed oblivious to anything. They had covered the more strategic portion of his body with a sheet.