Saving Liberty (Kissing #6)

by Helena Newbury

Kian sprang to his feet and twisted around to face the stand. He and the gunman fired at the same time.

  And Kian missed.

  I let out a scream as I saw a bullet hit him in the shoulder and knock him back on the ground, his pistol bouncing out of his hand. Then the gunman was right up against the stand, looking down at me and the kid.

  My arms tightened around the kid. I rolled us over, wincing at the pain in my leg, so that the kid was hidden beneath me. I stared up at the gunman with fear and desperate, irrational anger. “Why?” I begged, my eyes finally filling with tears.

  He had close-cropped blond hair and strong, craggy features: he’d almost have been good looking, but the cold deadness in his eyes made him terrifying. “It’s just business,” he said with a shrug. And leveled his gun at me.

  Kian

  I was down. My right arm was useless: I could barely move it. That left my left, and I was a lousy shot with my left even when it hasn’t been clipped by a bullet.

  But a lousy shot is better than no shot.

  I gritted my teeth and rolled towards my gun, crying out as my injured shoulder mashed into the ground. I clawed my pistol from the grass, came up to sitting, aimed one-handed at the gunman and emptied the magazine. Every shot sent pain reverberating through my arm and I gritted my teeth and panted through it.

  On my final shot, I managed to wing him. It was enough to make him duck down behind the stand.

  And then, behind me, I heard the most welcome sound in the world: sirens. And the thump of helicopter blades. They were coming.

  The gunman peeked over the top of the stand. I was hoping he hadn’t heard my gun click empty and thought I still had a few rounds left. We glared at each other. He was definitely ex-military: I could see it in the way he carried himself, in the way every decision was coldly tactical.

  Including the decision to retreat. He turned and fled, disappearing into the trees just as a small army reached us.

  They swept in on both sides of me: Secret Service agents in suits, DC police in uniform and SWAT guys in full tactical gear. Everyone was suddenly pointing guns at me, which was when I remembered I was sitting there in civilian clothes with a gun in my hand, six feet from the President’s daughter. I let my gun fall from my fingers and four guys pinned me to the ground.

  I saw them separate Emily and the kid and then Emily was lifted into the air and carried off at a run by two Secret Service guys. She stared at me until she disappeared from view. Her eyes were huge and terrified, as if she’d never feel safe again.

  Emily

  I live in the White House.

  Not the part of the White House you see on TV, with its grand white columns and Oval Office. Deeper. The residence, where the President’s family lives while he’s in office, a place the press aren’t generally allowed and where your public tour won’t take you. Deeper still inside that are the bedrooms and the last room you come to, right at the end of the corridor: that’s mine.

  I was protected by a fifteen mile aerial exclusion zone, backed up by anti-aircraft defenses. Inside that, the most fiercely-guarded, closely-monitored ground perimeter in the world. Inside that, bulletproof windows to guard against crazed gunmen, tire shredders to deal with suicide bombers in vans and reinforced doors to protect us from rampaging mobs. Within the walls, hallways patrolled by armed Secret Service agents who could swap their handguns for assault rifles in the event of a breach, security doors that could seal off the residence and evacuation routes down to the secure bunker in the basement in case of absolute, total security failure.

  I was the best-protected woman in the world, beyond anything envisaged for a princess in a fairy tale.

  And I still didn’t feel safe.

  Things after the park are a little blurry. I don’t remember spacing out, or going catatonic, or whatever you want to call it. But I can only piece together about half an hour of memories of that afternoon and apparently I was at the hospital for over six hours, so clearly I wasn’t there for some of it.

  I know that I was taken to the designated emergency evacuation hospital for the President and his family, and that I was treated in a closed-off corridor guarded by the Secret Service, so I didn’t see any of the other people who’d been hurt. I know some were taken to other hospitals and that there were twenty-two injuries in total, enough for the hospitals to call on all of their trauma staff.

  I know that I was lying face-down on a bed with a doctor working on my wound when I heard that the number of deaths was confirmed at six. Four Secret Service agents, one cop and one man identified as a private security contractor. I threw up, when I heard that, especially because no one had been able to tell me where Kian was, or how badly he was hurt. When I eventually found out that the guy killed was a park security guard in his sixties, I slumped on my bed in relief... and then immediately hated myself for being relieved, as if the fact it wasn’t Kian made it any less awful.

  No kids were hit. No one knew if that was by design or by sheer luck, but I offered up a prayer of thanks.

  Hale, the head of my Secret Service detail, would live, but the bullet he’d taken in his side took him off active service: he’d be working a desk for the rest of his career.

  The Secret Service’s first move, almost as soon as the first shot was fired, was to evacuate the President to the bunker: they were worried about coordinated attacks and were fully expecting shooters to start advancing across the White House lawn. The First Lady was in Texas, giving a speech: she was rushed off stage and secured in her hotel room.

  All of which was sensible and understandable and they were only doing their jobs. But it meant that I didn’t get to see my mom or dad for over two hours, until my dad overruled the head of the Secret Service and said he’d damn well drive himself to the hospital if they didn’t agree to take him.

  Part of me almost didn’t want him to come. I knew there was a very real possibility that the entire attack, including me getting shot, had been just a ploy to lure my dad to the hospital without adequate security measures. Like everything in my life, things that happen to me are seen through the lens of how it might affect him. That’s why I’m the President’s daughter to most people and not Emily.

  Kian had been right about my leg: the bullet had gone straight through the muscle and out the other side without touching the bone. With some physiotherapy, I’d be fine. I remember thanking the doctors again and again and trying to persuade them to go help someone who was hurt worse. I did everything I could to find out where Kian was but there was too much confusion and the injured were spread between too many hospitals: eventually, I heard he’d been treated, questioned for a long time by the FBI and then released.

  The FBI were everywhere. It was the worst attack on American soil for years. What drove me mad was how the news media kept relating it to me. They kept referring to an attack on the President’s daughter until I finally screamed at a reporter that they should be focusing on the twenty-two people who hadn’t been as lucky as me.

  At first, the media just called it an attack, but within about eight hours it became a terrorist attack. A group calling themselves the Brothers of Freedom claimed responsibility and the media went nuts for a solid week with pundits speculating on where they’d come from and how they’d managed to strike so viciously, so effectively, right in the middle of DC. The group was a homegrown, extremist militia whose idea of freedom seemed to be anarchy: they wanted the end of government and, specifically, the flag and the constitution, the end of taxes, the end of laws and a society based on all-out dog-eat-dog chaos. There was a heartening lack of sympathy for them—the entire nation seemed to be firmly allied against them. But that didn’t make them any less dangerous.

  Neither shooter was apprehended. Helping the FBI to put together a photofit of the second shooter was easy because his face was burned into my memory forever. I went through hundreds of mug shots, too, but couldn’t identify him. Somehow, both men had sneaked out of the city and vanished. The media, always d
esperate to find someone to blame, raged against both the FBI and the Secret Service, demanding to know how this could happen. The director of the FBI made some defensive comments about needing more funding and better surveillance. The Vice President surprised everyone by turning it into his personal cause. For years, he’d been pushing for more surveillance and tougher laws, but now he brought it all together into a bill. Given the climate, there were no end of co-signers eager to jump on the bandwagon.

  And me? That night I went home to the White House, patched up, medicated and as safe as a person could be. I hugged my mom and dad, went to the most secure bedroom on the planet and waited to heal.

  But I didn’t heal.

  I got worse.

  Emily

  It started the night I got home from the hospital. Maybe I should have expected it. The doctors had expected it: they’d given me details of people I could talk to if I needed to (I nodded and promised I would) and offered me something to help me sleep (I turned it down). But I was focused on my leg and how lucky I was that the bullet hadn’t shattered a bone or shredded a nerve and left me in a wheelchair for life, or just hit me in the chest or head and ended me right there. I thought I was okay.

  And then, at about two a.m., when the residence was quiet and still, a man broke into my room and stabbed me in the chest.

  It wasn’t a nightmare. I’d had nightmares. This was something else. I felt the weight of him on top of me, felt the knife slip between my ribs, When I woke up I could see the dark blood on the sheets and on my hands and it took long seconds before it faded.

  I climbed out of bed: I couldn’t stay in it because I was sure the sheets were blood-soaked, no matter how many times I checked to make sure they weren’t. Three times, I told myself angrily not to be so freaking silly and forced myself to limp back into bed and get under the covers, only to stagger out again a few moments later, physically shaking with fear. I wound up sitting in the doorway between my bedroom and bathroom, hugging my knees and trembling. I stayed like that until the dawn broke through the drapes and then I breathed a little easier because I assumed the fear would disappear with the night.

  I was wrong.

  When I hobbled over to the window, I saw the sun rise on a world filled with threats. Every slow-moving car could contain a gunman, the window whining down to reveal a dark barrel pointed right at my head. Every man—every woman—walking down the street was hiding explosives under their coat, ready to swerve towards me and cover the distance between us in less time than it took to scream.

  I’d always known I was in danger. But it was the first time I really felt it, in all its bone-deep, horrifying certainty. When you know something like that, you can’t think of anything else.

  I couldn’t go outside. The dreams were bad enough, but at least I could tell myself that they couldn’t hurt me. Outside, the threat was real.

  At first, it wasn’t too bad. My injured leg meant that no one expected me to attend events anyway. I hunkered down in the residence. If someone asked how I was doing, I said fine, because I’d convinced myself that this was just a temporary glitch and normal service would soon be restored. For the same reason, I didn’t call the therapists the doctors had recommended. Six people had died and it was my fault because, ultimately, it had been me the gunmen had been targeting. I’d been lucky enough to survive: what right did I have to be messed up? It’ll get better. Give it time.

  There was another factor, too. I’m not just Emily, I’m the President’s daughter. A lot of the time it’s like being a freakin’ fairy tale princess: I know how lucky I am. But there are strings attached. Ever since my dad took office, I’d done my best to support him. I’d been to every press event, watched every word I said to the press... I even agreed to take a job with my mom’s charitable foundation, even though it wasn’t what I wanted. And I’m okay with the sacrifices: my family is a team.

  If I let myself crack up over this, if I had to go to therapy, I felt like I’d be letting the team down.

  But the nightmares didn’t go away. I slept because I was exhausted but I woke several times a night. Sometimes I was out of bed and across the room, cowering in a corner, before I fully woke up. I dreamed that I was shot and stabbed and poisoned. I dreamed that men tied me and tortured me and raped me, that they killed the people I loved. And every time, it was worse because it was somehow my fault.

  I could barely function, much less go out. But the longer I stayed inside, the more frightening the outside world became. The day before, I’d been itching to move out of The White House and get a place of my own. Now, it was my one safe haven.

  The first warning sign was the memorial service for those killed, in the Rose Garden, I stood between my mom and dad and shook hands with the relatives, I told them how brave their loved ones had been and how we’d never forget their service and I meant every word. But I felt like the facade was shattering in slow motion, big jagged cracks with nothing but a dark void between them. Not bolting for the safety of the White House was like trying to stand my ground as an 18-wheeler truck roared straight toward me. Every time the cameras clicked, my stomach knotted as I waited for the first bullet to slam into me.

  That day was a turning point. Something snapped inside me and, from then on, I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t take the chance that something awful would happen. So I made excuses: I said my leg hurt, I told them I had to prep for the new job I was due to start soon with a charitable foundation... anything but the truth.

  ***

  It had been a full month—it wasn’t as if the date could pass without me noticing because the TV news channels were full of the “one month anniversary.” A full month of me being weak and stupid and people growing silently frustrated with me.

  Tonight’s the night. This has to stop.

  Tonight, I had to go out. A concert by the New York Philharmonic at the John F. Kennedy Center. A limo ride, a thirty-second walk across the red carpet and a few hours in a big, safe room listening to great music. Easy. Except that thirty seconds would feel like thirty years. Except every camera click would make me want to throw up.

  I dug my nails into the palms of my hands and marched off to see my dad. The more people knew I was going, the harder it would be for me to back out.

  I caught him coming out of the Oval Office. “Emily!” He gave me big, warm, Texas smile. “Feeling okay?”

  My dad is in his sixties and what people call intimidatingly tall. Six-foot-four with hair that’s still got some black in between the silver. He has a way of looking at you that makes you feel like no one else in the world exists.

  “Great,” I lied. “Didn’t mean to disturb you. I just wanted to say I’m definitely coming tonight.”

  I saw the relief break across his face and it cemented my decision. I’d been cooped up long enough: I had to fight this thing.

  And then, just as I was feeling good, a hand landed on my shoulder. “That’s great news, Emily,” said the Vice President. “Good to see you getting back to your old self.”

  I gave my best fake smile and counted the seconds until I’d be free of his hand. I could feel my guts twisting, the wrongness throbbing down from each finger that touched me, like being plugged into evil.

  Let me tell you about the Vice President.

  Edward Kerrigan is handsome in a safe, bland sort of a way. He has curly blond hair that probably made him a really cute kid and big gray eyes that look good in photos, but are utterly soulless when you see them in real life. If you stranded a choirboy on a desert island at age eight and left him to grow up by himself with no parents, no moral compass, killing animals with his bare hands to survive, when you came back in thirty-five years he’d look exactly like Kerrigan.

  Other women go nuts for him: women in their thirties, even women in their twenties. I sometimes wonder if there’s something wrong with me because I can’t stand him. The guy’s got it all: he’s rich (and it’s not daddy’s money, like a lot of politicians: he built up his company fr
om nothing and was CEO for years), he dresses well and he’s never been hit with a scandal. His wife is beautiful. His kids are adorable.

  And yet….

  Imagine the most enticing cake you’ve ever, ever seen. Smoothly frosted with thick chocolate frosting, intricately decorated with sugar flowers. It looks perfect. Everyone’s inviting you to take a big ol’ bite.

  But you know—you just have this instinct—that it’s a trick. That just beneath the frosting, instead of light, perfect, sponge, it’s a solid block of squirming, crawling maggots and roaches. It doesn’t matter how good it smells: the thought of biting into it makes you want to hurl. But only you know. Everyone else wonders what the hell’s the matter with you. Don’t you like cake?

  That’s how Edward Kerrigan made me feel. Every. Single. Time.

  The hand on my shoulder rubbed. Not in a sexual way. More like he was stroking a puppy. “I’m going to see to it,” he told me, “that those bastards can never do this again.”

  Both my dad and I stiffened because we knew exactly what he was talking about: The Guardian Act.

  It was the Vice President’s bill, the one he’d announced in response to the attack in the park. Lately he’d been all over the media talking about it, using phrases like a new era of security and leaving the bad guys no place to hide. The bill promised to end terrorism by putting a huge new security force on the streets, together with more surveillance. To a public in shock, it sounded like a good idea. And while there was plenty of opposition from grassroots protestors and people like the ACLU, the media were divided... and starting to lean his way. Stoking the public’s fear of more terror attacks was a good way to sell papers.

  My dad, like me, could see the true horror of what he was proposing: martial law... but much, much worse than anything our country had ever known after a disaster. Because the Vice President wasn’t proposing that we use the army to protect us: he wanted to use private military contractors. Tens of thousands of them, enough that there would be no way they could all be adequately trained. Every street corner would have a goon with an assault rifle on it, with the power to stop and search anyone they wanted. Suspects would be interrogated where necessary, and the bill contained passages that overturned the ban on enhanced interrogation techniques—in other words, torture. Without the training and oversight of the real military, abuse of power would be rife.