Tammy manages a smile. “There are three pastimes in Boston: sports, politics, and revenge.”
Amanda gets up. “A good trio to learn. All right. Be at the firm at your usual hour tomorrow. Stroll in like you don’t have a care in the world. And for God’s sake, don’t even think of talking to the press. Or your neighbors. Or anyone else, for that matter. You could talk to your best friend tonight, under a cloak of secrecy and Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream … and she’ll turn around and sell your story to the National Enquirer in a heartbeat. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do,” she says, glad to think that her boss is leaving her home.
“Good,” Amanda says, walking to the door. “Now I need to start working our potential client list, including that rube from Oklahoma, Lucian Crockett.”
Tammy waits a second and calls out to her, “Just so you know, I’m getting a cleaning company in here as soon as I can, and I’m going to bill it to the firm.”
That brings an amused nod of the head from Amanda. “You do that. And just so you know … and this isn’t for distribution either—the First Lady appears to be missing. At least that’s the rumor I’ve heard.”
Tammy can’t smell the old tobacco smoke anymore. “Missing?”
“Yes, as in she’s disappeared. Not for public information, but I hear that she was so pissed at the President that she ducked out from her Secret Service detail and is on the lam.” Another dry chuckle from her boss. “If I was her, I’d be on a one-way trip to Reno, to get divorced and laid by some twenty-year-old stud, just … because.”
She leaves and the door shuts behind her, and Tammy rubs her tired face.
Holy God.
What now?
Tammy lowers her hands, picks up her purse, takes out her iPhone.
Usually it’s her favorite object, enabling her to communicate with anyone on the planet, but now … it looks and feels like an unexploded hand grenade.
She almost puts it back in her purse … but she has to know something.
Tammy turns on her phone, slides through a couple of screens, and—
Holy shit.
One hundred and twelve missed calls.
A hundred and twelve!
She skims through them, seeing familiar networks and the names of familiar reporters, skim skim skim, and no, there’s no familiar number, not the one she’s looking for.
Tammy jumps when her phone starts ringing.
The caller ID function on her phone says 202-456-1414.
The White House main switchboard.
She gingerly answers it. “Hello?”
“Miss Doyle? This is the White House. Please hold for the President.”
CHAPTER 24
AFTER BRIAN ZAHN finds the First Lady’s untriggered panic button, I make a phone call to Parker Hoyt. He starts arguing with me, until I say, “Mr. Hoyt? This particular pile of shit is mine until the President takes it away. I’m not asking permission. I’m just telling you what I’m doing. Have a nice afternoon.”
I then make one more phone call, to an old friend who’s now working for the enemy. Luckily I have his private number, and when I tell him what I need, I still have to repeat myself three times before he reluctantly agrees.
“All right, Sally, you’ve got it,” he says, “but if I have to, I’ll throw you under the bus so fast that only your pistol and shoes will be recognizable.”
“Randy,” I say, speaking to a very handsome and very capable ex–Secret Service agent whom I briefly dated prior to marrying my soon-to-be ex-husband, and with whom I spent many a lonely hour standing watch in hotel basements or empty rooms. “Trust me, that will be one very fair and happy exchange.”
After I hang up, we’re all together, sopping wet from just above our knees to our soggy shoes. I’ve taken the wet piece of stationery and slid it into a plastic envelope for later examination by our forensics section, just to make sure it’s CANARY’s handwriting. In another plastic envelope is the panic button pretending to be a piece of jewelry. I walk around in a big circle with my arms folded before me and see the three agents are staring at me. I shrug. “Now we wait.”
“How long?” Brian asks.
“As long as we have to,” I say, and then I check the setting on the Motorola XTS 5000 radio attached to my belt—along with a set of handcuffs, pepper spray, my SIG Sauer P229 pistol, and ASP expandable baton—and then I toggle the microphone at my wrist and say, “Scotty, Sally calling.”
This is an encrypted channel, and I don’t like fooling around with code names that can be forgotten under pressure. “This is Scotty, go.”
I say, “We’re going to have visitors coming shortly. Send them along.”
“Got it,” he says. “What about the stable’s owners? They’ve already come around once, wondering where … someone is, and why I’m out here.”
“Tell them … damn, I don’t know,” I say. “Tell them something. Sally, out.”
When I lower my wrist, my phone rings, and I check the incoming number and whisper an obscenity. “Todd, this is Sally. What’s up?”
Todd Pence, my neighbor and a Navy vet, says, “Sally, I’m sorry, but I gotta leave in a few minutes.”
I turn away from the other three agents. “What’s going on? Is Amelia okay?”
“Oh, she’s great,” he says. “But my older sister Phoebe … she lives alone and is older than me and is on the Social Security, and her damn water tank is leaking. She tried calling a plumber but the rates they charge—”
“Todd, please …” I take a few more steps. “Put Amelia on, will you?”
Some seconds pass and a sweet voice comes on and says, “Mom? You busy?”
Good Lord, what a question. “Um, yeah. Look. Mr. Pence says he has to leave ahead of schedule. Are you okay with that?”
I can sense her eye-rolling through the tone in her voice. “Oh, Mom, I’ll be fine. Honest.”
“Okay. You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snaps back. “But … when do you think you’ll be home?”
“As soon as I can, hon, as soon as I can,” I say. “But make sure the doors and windows are locked and that you carry the phone around with you, okay?”
“Yes, Mom,” she answers, putting about a ton of attitude into each syllable.
“Good girl,” I say. “Put Mr. Pence back on.”
My neighbor and child-care provider—last year Amelia got angry with the term babysitter, and I promised never to use it again—comes back on the phone and we have a brief conversation. I put the phone away just as the sound of the helicopters reaches us.
Two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters come into view, low, over the near trees, the branches whipping around from the wash coming from the spinning blades. They land downstream at a wide, grassy spot, and as the engines slow down, I run to the near one. A gold banner encircles the low part of the fuselage, where black block letters read HOMELAND SECURITY.
The side door slides open, and a man jumps down, wearing a dark-gray jumpsuit and black combat boots. Around his slim waist is a black leather utility belt, holding a handheld radio and a pistol holster that’s also strapped to his muscular upper thigh. He pulls off a pair of sunglasses to reveal a face that is flush and rugged, and his sandy brown hair flutters from the moving air. A name tag says ANDERSON, and we exchange a brief handshake as we move away from the engine noise.