Nicholas tore the covers away and threw his feet to the floor. “Josef! What is it?”
He’d taken only two steps when the door exploded open, and then they were on him.
There was something unnerving about seeing the third-floor offices lit up in the middle of the night. Jonathan noticed it as Boxers pulled the Batmobile into the garage at the rear of the firehouse.
As he stepped out, he waited for the sound that so often came next. The pounding of paws rumbled in the night as JoeDog, completely invisible in the dark, galloped from wherever she’d been to greet him with a running body-block.
He stooped and braced for it, and took it without falling. “Hello, Beast,” he said, rubbing her ears. He allowed his face to be licked a couple of times, and then the reunion ritual was complete. If he’d been coming in through the front door, she’d have had to run a couple of victory laps up and down the sidewalk. Who knew why?
“You treat her better than you treat people,” Boxers said.
“I like her better than I like people.”
Jonathan led the way through the back door into the mudroom that led to his living room, swatting wall switches to illuminate his sprawling man-cave. Fearless, protective creature that she was, JoeDog was careful to keep Jonathan between herself and Boxers.
Once inside, all semblance of firehouse disappeared, giving way to ornate oriental carpets and elegant yet cushy furniture. Jonathan had a thing for leather, and the upholstery in the place showed it. Dom D’Angelo, his best friend and local parish priest, once told him that his decorating aesthetic ran toward early hotel lobby.
JoeDog headed for her favorite club chair and settled in for the night.
An open stairway midway down the right-hand wall was the only architectural detail that remained of the old fire station — along with the brass pole that extended from the second-floor landing to the ground floor. Having spent so many hours polishing it as a boy, Jonathan couldn’t bring himself to take it out when he remodeled the place.
The door at the top of the stairs led to a vestibule that to the right opened to the second floor, the sleeping floor, and to the left through a reinforced steel door that joined the stairway that led from the street to the office spaces on the third floor.
Jonathan opened the stairway door and let Boxers go first onto the landing. The night guard — a youngish former Air Force PJ named Sam Franco, who’d left a leg behind in Afghanistan — stood at the third floor landing.
“What’s up, Sam?” Jonathan asked.
“We’ve got a special surprise for you inside,” Franco said. “But Ms. Alexander made me promise not to tell you.”
“You know I don’t like surprises, right, Sam?”
“Yes, sir, I do. But the worst you can do is fire me. Ms. Alexander can make my life hell forever.”
“Kid’s got a point,” Boxers said. “He’s already earned his combat badge.”
Jonathan scanned his thumbprint, punched the code into the cipher lock, and entered what he figured was going to be an entertaining night.
If Jonathan’s living room was the hotel lobby, then his office was the lounge. Huge by any reasonable standard for offices, the themes of oriental carpeting and comfy leather continued, but in here, the addition of carved walnut paneling gave the space a feeling of warmth that Jonathan loved. His tastes were the polar opposite of Venice’s chrome-and-glass aesthetic.
His visitors sat in the expansive and expensive conversation group in front of the fireplace that dominated the right-hand wall. Jonathan’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the source of the mystery.
First Lady of the United States Anna Darmond, née Yelena Poltanov, sat with perfect posture in the Hitchcock armchair on the far side of the hearth. In the frenetic light of the well-stoked fireplace, she somehow looked regal in stretch pants and a bulky sweater that would have made a perfect fashion statement in Telluride.
“Mrs. Darmond,” Jonathan said. “How nice to see that you’re not dead.”
Irene shifted in her seat. “Jesus, Scorpion.”
Jonathan’s preferred seat in this section of his office was a wooden rocking chair marked with his name and the Seal of the College of William and Mary. After too many back injuries to count over the years, it was the only chair that reliably gave him the support he needed. No one else ever sat in his rocker.
“Okay, Yelena, let’s have it,” he said, settling in and crossing his legs. “How come your Secret Service detail is dead and you’re not?” He used her old name in a deliberate effort to get a rise, but no one in the room flinched. If anything, the First Lady merely looked bored.
Behind him, he heard the rattle of glasses from the bar as Boxers helped himself.
“I know what you think of me, Mr. Grave,” Yelena said. “Director Rivers has told me everything. I understand your anger, but I assure you that it is misplaced. I am not a murderer, and I am not plotting any terrorist schemes.”
“Yet here you are hiding, when you could be lounging in the middle of the most secure cocoon in the universe.”
The squeak of a cork told him that Boxers was going for the good stuff, and then the faintest aroma of peat confirmed that he’d selected scotch.
“Security cuts both ways, Mr. Grave,” Yelena said.
“Digger.”
“As you wish. But great fortresses make great prisons.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Promise me you’re not going to whine about the loneliness of the bubble.”
A glass bearing two fingers of Lagavulin arrived from over his right shoulder. In Boxers’ hands, the tulip glass looked more like a shot.
“You need to hear her out, Dig,” Irene said and the Big Guy helped himself to the remaining club chair. “Open that big mind of yours.”
Jonathan recognized her words as a rebuke and he dialed it back. “Okay, Yelena, the floor is yours.”
“I prefer to be called Mrs. Darmond.”
“And I prefer to be in bed at this hour.” Jonathan took a sip of scotch. Liquid contentment. He knew he was being a shit, but it was calculated shittiness. He wanted her to be off balance. Enough people sucked up to her every whim. She needed to know that he was not among them.
Yelena looked to Irene. “Is it important that I be humiliated?”
“My office, my rules,” Jonathan said.
Irene narrowed one eye, clearly annoyed. “If you think Digger’s annoying, wait till you get to know Big Guy.”
Boxers threw Irene a kiss and took a sip from his glass.
Yelena drew a deep breath, settled herself. “I am not planning terrorism,” she said. “However, my husband is.”
Jonathan recoiled. “You mean the president of the United States?”
“He is the only husband I have.”
“Now, anyway,” Boxers said. He responded to the angry glare with a shrug. “Hey, I’m just keeping it honest.”
“And honesty is important, Mrs. Darmond,” Jonathan said. “Irene wouldn’t have brought you here if you didn’t need my help. I’m not putting my life on the line for anyone who doesn’t tell me the complete truth. I don’t care who they are, or what their husbands do for a living.”
“I’m not asking you to risk anything,” Yelena objected.
“Uh-huh,” Jonathan said. “Now, who is President Darmond planning to terrorize?”
“I understand that you’ve already seen the drawings.”
Jesus, was there anything Irene hadn’t told her?
“I’ve seen a lot of drawings,” Jonathan acknowledged. “Bridges, tunnels, a building here and there.”
“The airliner that was shot down at O’Hare,” Yelena said. “That was him.”
“Bullshit,” Jonathan said. The word was out before he could stop it. He conceded that Darmond was a disaster as a president, but come on. “Why would he do that?”