ONE
Washington, D.C.
“SHE’S DEAD.”
These words, spoken by his daughter, jerk Jack McClure out of sleep.
Covered in sweat, he turns in the darkness of his bedroom. “Emma?”
The faintest cool breeze stirs the hair on his head.
“She passed by me a minute ago, Dad. Or is it an hour?”
Hard to tell, Jack thought, when you’re dead.
“Emma?”
But the ghostly voice was gone, and he felt the sudden lack of her. Again. A great abyss on whose edge he teetered like a drunk reeling out of a bar. He drew a breath, gave a great shudder, and lunged for his cell phone. Punched in the number of Walter Reed Medical Center and heard the familiar voice of the night nurse.
“Mr. McClure, how odd you should call at this moment. I was just about to dial your number.” She cleared her throat and when she began again her voice had taken on a formal, almost martial tenor. “At two fifty-three this morning, the former First Lady, Lyn Carson, expired.”
“She’s dead.” The echo of Emma’s voice caused another shiver to run down his spine.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” the night nurse said.
“Have you notified Alli?”
“I haven’t yet, but as instructed I’ve called Mrs. Carson’s sister and her brother-in-law.” She meant Henry Holt Carson, Alli’s uncle. “As well as Secretary Paull, of course.”
“Okay.” Jack thumbed the sleep from his eyes as he swung his legs off the bed. “I’ll take care of informing Alli.” He padded toward the bathroom.
“Sir, is there anything—?”
“At the end … did she regain consciousness?”
“No, sir, she never did.”
“Stay with Mrs. Carson.” He squinted as he turned on the light. “I’ll be right over.”
* * *
“IT’S THE end of an era,” Dennis Paull said as he and Jack stood by Lyn Carson’s bedside.
No one knew that better than Jack. Ten months ago, he had been in the vehicle following the president’s limousine in Moscow when the limo had skidded on a patch of ice. Almost everyone in that car, including President Edward Harrison Carson, had died. All except Lyn Carson, who had slipped into a coma. Despite two surgeries, the first on board Air Force One, the second here at Walter Reed, she had failed to regain consciousness. Both procedures had succeeded only in prolonging her twilight life.
“Did you call Alli?”
Jack nodded. “Several times, and they said they’d get the message to her.”
“What about her cell?”
“Fearington has a strict policy about cell-phone use.” Fearington was the FBI Special Ops school in Virginia.
“Even for this?” Paull shook his head. He was now Jack’s boss. He had hired Jack after President Carson’s fatal accident. Jack, who had worked for ATF, had been tapped by Carson as a strategic advisor immediately following his old friend’s inauguration. That all ended as abruptly as it had begun, and Paull, seeing his opportunity, had scooped Jack up. Now Jack tackled the antiterrorism assignments that daunted Paull’s other agents, using his dyslexic mind to unravel puzzles no one else could handle.
“Rules are rules.”
Paull took out his phone. “We’ll see about that.” While he was waiting, he said, “You must’ve moved heaven and earth to get her in there.” Then he held up a finger. “No answer.” He closed the connection.
“Fearington periodically goes into lockdown as a drill.”
Paull nodded and put his phone into his pocket.
“But the truth is Alli did her own heavy lifting,” Jack went on. “She passed the entrance exams with the highest marks they’d seen in more than a decade.”
“Smart little thing.”
Jack snorted. “It takes more than smarts to get into Fearington. After her father was killed, she wouldn’t talk to anyone, even me. She curled up into an emotional ball. But there was so much anger inside her that when I took her to my gym, she slid on a pair of boxing gloves and started pounding the heavy bag.”
Paull laughed. “I’d like to have been a fly on the wall.”
“Yeah, she almost broke her right hand. Then I began to teach her how to box and, damn, if she didn’t pick up all the fundamentals right away. At first, she didn’t have a lot of power, as you can imagine, but then, I don’t know, something clicked inside her. She was like a ghost—it seemed as if she could anticipate my punches. She has this ability. By reading a person’s face she knows whether they’re lying or telling the truth. Now she’s extended this ability to knowing what they’re about to do.”