by Mary McBride
He shook his head and stepped back again.
“Do you like whips? Stun guns?”
He shook his head harder. Another step, and his shoulders made contact with Bossy on the side of the truck.
“Cattle prods?”
Eugene made a little strangling sound just before he bolted. The next thing Angela knew, he was shoving two wet quarts of milk at her; then he leapt into the driver's seat and gunned the vehicle backward down the driveway.
She laughed out loud, and was still laughing when Bobby called to her from the back door.
“Ange, grocery shopping at ten. Sharp.”
Oh, good. Action.
Mrs. Riordan came downstairs on the stroke of ten, as she had threatened, and by ten-oh-two they were in the ancient Caddy, headed toward beautiful downtown Hassenfeld. Bobby was at the wheel, Angela in the passenger seat, while the president's mother sat in back, unaware that behind her, at a discreet distance, were Doug and another agent in a reinforced SUV.
After her little interlude with Eugene, having to come up with instant menu plans for the unscheduled shopping trip didn't do much for Angela's mood, and it only worsened when she noticed Bobby's jaw tighten along with his grip on the wheel as they drove past a seedy road-house called the Wayward Wind. So that was where he'd picked up the bimbo.
Staring daggers at him was not an option with Mrs. Riordan in the back seat, so she merely cleared her throat knowingly and readjusted her seat belt to relieve some of the pressure on her heart. Okay. So he hadn't slept with the little tart. What did he want? A medal for gallant restraint? Angela hadn't slept with Rod either, and he wasn't just some pickup. The man was practically begging her to marry him, for heaven's sake, and still she wouldn't go to bed with him. She wouldn't do that. Not while she was Bobby's wife.
Outside the Caddy's window the cornfields and scattered farmhouses were gradually giving way to homes with neat little yards as they approached the town. They bounced over some train tracks and blew past a big blue Kiwanis billboard that welcomed them to Hassenfeld.
“Turn left on Madison,” Mrs. Riordan commanded from the back. “Save Mart is halfway down the block.”
To his credit, Bobby didn't even clench a muscle in his cheek when he had to brake hard to make the turn on such short notice. To his discredit and eternal damnation, he looked amazingly sexy today in a pair of faded jeans that hugged his muscular legs and perfect butt, along with a white polo shirt that looked molded to his chest. Even the president's mother hadn't expressed the slightest disapproval of her new employee's rather casual uniform.
The other new employee, however, was having an exceptionally bad hair day and probably looked like a dog after only a few restless hours of sleep, all of them spent turned on her unaccustomed side, away from her bed-mate. She was already tired of wearing slacks to conceal an ankle holster that was making a permanent crease on her leg, and the very last thing she wanted to do this morning, next to going bowling with Eugene, was push a cart around a supermarket to buy food that she would then be obliged to cook.
Like most things in her life, she couldn't take the cooking part of this assignment halfheartedly, without caring how the meals turned out. Another agent might've fed Mrs. Riordan peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Kentucky Fried Chicken for the duration, but it just wasn't in Angela not to give her best effort. She wasn't a quitter or a shirker, in spite of what some people thought after she'd walked out on her marriage.
Bobby dropped them off at the door. Angela followed Mrs. Riordan inside the supermarket, giving the place a quick once-over and finding nothing at all suspicious, just average Hassenfelders going about their daily business. The president's mother wouldn't allow her to assist her with a cart.
“I'm quite capable of doing this myself,” she said, wrenching a metal cart from its snug mooring among others, then flowing ahead toward produce, leaving Angela standing stupidly for a moment before tugging out her own cart and following in Crazy Daisy's wake. Where that nickname came from, she had no idea. The woman was difficult, no doubt about it, but Angela only hoped she would be this independent when she reached the age of seventy-six. At the rate she was going, she thought, that just might be next week.
While Mrs. Riordan was hefting cantaloupes, sniffing and inspecting each one from stem to stern, Angela snatched a plastic bag from a rack and began to fill it with the Golden Delicious apples she intended to use for a tuna Waldorf salad. The recipe was one of her mother's greatest culinary tricks, adding apples and onions and raisins and walnuts and mayo to canned tuna, instantly waldorfing the bland fish into a delicious meal. The president's mother had said she didn't mind a few surprises now and then, and the tuna salad would make an excellent lunch for her, especially with a slice of cantaloupe, and because Bobby hated tuna, that gave it even more appeal.
Smiling almost wickedly, she picked up some Boston lettuce to serve as a lovely bed for the salad, then wheeled her cart toward the onion bins to choose a few of those. While she was debating between the yellow and the white varieties—one was milder, as she recalled, but which?—she felt a distinct warmth at her back, an aura of heat punctuated by the fragrant scent of familiar aftershave.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Bobby whispered close to her ear, his warm breath sending a succession of little shivers across her neck and along her spine. The temptation to turn, to melt in his arms, was nearly overpowering.
“Fine with me.” Angela moved a few safe inches away and reached for a big white onion. “Why don't you make yourself useful, Bobby, and find me a box of raisins? Not the generic kind. The good ones in the red box.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” He snapped a crisp salute. “Where's Mrs. Riordan?”
“Right over—” Angela looked toward the display of cantaloupes where she'd last seen the woman. “Oh, God. She was right over there by the melons.”
The playfulness drained from Bobby's expression. Without another word, he took off like a broken field runner, pushing shopping carts and shoppers out of his way.
They'd screwed up. Oh, boy, had they screwed up. And they had absolutely no excuse. The fact that nobody seemed to be taking this threat all that seriously, other than their politically motivated director, didn't mean she and Bobby shouldn't be doing the job they'd been sent here to do. If they kept allowing their personal problems to interfere with their duty, they weren't just risking their careers, they could be risking Mrs. Riordan's life as well.
Bobby, of all people, should have realized that from day one. He should never have let anything come between him and his protectee. For her part, she needed to remember she was Mrs. Riordan's protector first and her cook a distant second, so she didn't become distracted by apples and onions and Boston lettuce, not to mention Bobby's aftershave.
She cursed again, wishing Doug had allowed them to use the radios and receivers that kept agents instantly in touch with one another. She could have worn her hair over her earpiece, and Bobby could have pretended to be almost deaf as long as he was pretending to be almost human. Just as she was about to sprint toward the front of the store, she saw Bobby give a thumbs-up signal from the end of the aisle. He'd found her. Thank God. Angela let out an audible sigh of relief.
When Bobby found her, Mrs. Riordan's shopping cart was blocking the liquor aisle, where she had abandoned it while she stood yards away, pondering the bottles on a shelf, oblivious to the bottleneck she was causing. He moved the cart and offered an apologetic shrug to the inconvenienced customers.
“You don't happen to know anything about sherry, do you, Robert?” she asked, as if he'd been standing right there beside her all along.
“Not a thing, ma'am. I'm pretty much a beer and pretzels man, myself.”
“So I gather.” She gave a knowing little cluck of her tongue, then followed it with a sigh. “Well, I'm at a loss here. My husband was the one who had the expertise in wines. I might just as well throw a dart. Do you have any suggestions at all?”
; Bobby eyed the bottle-laden shelf. “This would be for your bridge group?” he asked.
“That's correct.”
“Well—” He reached for an import. “This might give your friend, Bootsie, a proper little jolt.”
She started to laugh, but quickly suppressed it. “Put it in the cart, will you? Now I need to find some interesting cookies or crackers. Come along.”
He moseyed behind her, pushing the cart. She was a trim woman, despite her lack of exercise. Today she was wearing tailored beige slacks and a matching sweater with a scarf draped around her neck. A stiff-sided handbag swung from her crooked elbow, bumping every customer she passed, but nobody seemed to mind. She was the president's mother, after all. Crazy Daisy. Crazy like a fox, Bobby thought.
As they rounded an end cap, he caught sight of Angela, deep in conversation with a butcher. She was hooking her blond hair back, left and right, so the guy must've been giving her an argument about something. God, she was pretty. Bobby could've stood there all day and watched her.
He didn't envy the poor butcher. Who argued about meat, for God's sake? Only Angela, or Miss Prim, as she was known in her family. Once she got an idea in her head, there was nothing anybody could do to dislodge it. Her opinion of him was a prime example. She thought if he didn't howl like a lone coyote over Billy's death or break down and blubber the way her father and brothers did, he wasn't properly grieving. She thought…
“Robert!” Mrs. Riordan called out from the adjacent aisle.
Christ, he'd lost her again.
“Yes, ma'am,” he muttered, casting a final glance at his wife and the poor bedeviled slob behind the meat counter. Hell, it looked as if Angela wanted him to cry, too.
Angela prowled the dairy department, cooling off. Stupid butcher. Everybody in Washington and Los Angeles and every other place she'd ever lived did a custom grind for chili—every butcher! everywhere!—but this bozo didn't even want to hear about it. She heaved a wet gallon of milk into her cart, cursing Eugene for good measure, then tossed in half a dozen yogurts, feeling as if her confrontation at the meat counter had just depleted her calcium levels drastically, not to mention what it had done to her blood pressure and her mood.
Okay. She was crabby. But who wouldn't be when their exciting career in law enforcement had suddenly become a drab, domestic hell? Maybe being a cook was secondary in this assignment, but she still had to come up with some decent meals, for heaven's sake. How could she do that when she couldn't find the proper ingredients?
She was crabby, and she was once again neglecting her primary duty, mere moments after she'd vowed not to do it again. It was just so hard, being with Bobby like this. She kept thinking about Button Brothers, the little corner grocery in Georgetown. When they were first married and were lucky enough to have a weekend off together, which wasn't often, she and Bobby would stroll down O Street arm in arm just as the sun was setting.
Sunsets usually made him blue, so Angela would knock herself out trying to cheer him. She'd gotten better at it, too, turning his frowns into smiles and sometimes into outright, genuine, sidesplitting laughter. He didn't laugh often, though. But when he did …
One evening, when they'd stopped in Button Brothers to pick up something for their dinner, Angela was in the dairy section when she heard Bobby's rare and wonderful laughter ring out. She rushed back to the other side of the store just in time to see her husband and brother-in-law, both of them still in their serious Secret Service suits and ties with their sidearms barely concealed, in the middle of their boyhood juggling act.
Oranges and cucumbers, three of each, arced high between them and fell into their hands with glorious, colorful precision, around and around and around, while shoppers and checkers and stock boys stood watching, their mouths open and their hands clapping in absolute delight.
Angela picked up a zucchini to use as a microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, out of Wishbone, Texas, by a strange, circuitous route, and now appearing in your neighborhood supermarket, the one, the only, the Amazing Holland Brothers.”
The show went on a full ten minutes, Bobby laughing all the while, his head thrown back in sheer joy and his eyes sparkling, making it look so easy, simply effortless, keeping all that produce in orbit. He even managed at some point to throw Angela a happy look that somehow said “You're a part of this act, too.” That look of love and inclusion, along with Bobby's laughter, had zapped her heart more effectively than any stun gun.
It was Billy who seemed to be struggling. It was Billy who started to blink and to sweat and to lurch a bit until finally their perfect timing deteriorated, the flying oranges and cukes thunked one by one to the floor, and the Amazing Holland Brothers collapsed in each other's arms, laughing, to wild applause—none of it wilder or happier than Angela's.
Dear God. She hadn't thought about that incident in a long, long time. Little wonder. Just a week after that amazing moment, Billy was dead, and the world itself seemed to deteriorate, to tumble down around her.
“You're part of this act, too,” Bobby had said with his shining eyes and his warm smile, and then he'd shut her out.
Glaring down now at the shopping list she'd scribbled, Angela realized she'd forgotten the celery for her Waldorf tuna salad. She maneuvered her cart around and headed back to the produce department, against the flow of traffic, looking for Mrs. Riordan as she went, but not seeing either her or Bobby. Great. It was a safe bet they weren't juggling somewhere. They were probably already through the checkout lane, cooling their heels at the front of the store, waiting for her.
After she grabbed a bag of celery, she aimed her cart toward the checkout lanes, where she discovered Bobby paging through a copy of the National Enquirer.
“I'm ready,” she said. “Where's Mrs. Riordan?”
“Right there.” He angled his head toward the checkout line on his right, apparently far too intrigued by the baby who was born whistling “The Star-Spangled Banner” to break his concentration.
“Where?” Angela demanded.
“Right there. In line.”
“No, she's not.”
Bobby looked, then snapped the tabloid closed and shoved it back into the rack. “She was standing right here,” he said, moving toward the unattended cart that was being pushed along in line. “This is her stuff in here. Sherry. Crackers.”
“Jesus, Bobby,” Angela breathed.
“Okay.” The brief confusion disappeared from his face, replaced by grim determination. “She probably went back for something she forgot. You take the front, Ange. I'll sweep the aisles from the back. She's got to be someplace in between.”
“Right,” she replied, far too professional to point out that their protectee had probably just been snatched from under his nose while that nose was buried in the scandal of the week.
Angela wove through carts, scanning each aisle as she passed, seeing Bobby on the other end, doing the same. They repeated the procedure. There was no Mrs. Riordan in between.
While Angela spoke with the store manager, Bobby trotted outside. “She's not in the car,” he said when he came back.
“She's not in the store, either. The manager checked.”
Angela could almost see the color drain from Bobby's face. She forgave him for reeking of beer and Chantilly last night. He was in a sea of trouble now. And so, dear God, was she.
8
Let's get Doug,” Angela said.
“Not yet,” he snapped.
“Bobby, we have to. Mrs. Riordan's gone.”
He didn't think so. There was no way in hell that woman would have gone quietly with an abductor, even at knife- or gunpoint, and no way anyone could have bagged her or drugged her without being seen by at least a score of snoopy midwestern housewives or retirees. In fact, now that the initial adrenaline rush was releasing its grip on his brain, Bobby was beginning to feel pretty foolish, like the victim of a really slick con.
While they stood in the checkout line, Crazy Daisy had plucked a tabloid out
of a rack, opened it, and after an indignant sniff had handed the magazine to Bobby.
“Read this, Robert.”
“Uh. No, thank you, ma'am.”
“Read it.”
The woman would've made a hell of a drill sergeant, Bobby thought, and he reminded himself that on this assignment the Secret Service was tasked with keeping their protectee not only safe but happy, as well. They weren't supposed to upset the president's mother in any way, shape, or form. In light of that, he gritted his teeth, took the tabloid from her clenched fist, and focused on some cockamamie story about Martians and a high-level coverup in the Cincinnati police department.
That was it, of course. The diversion. The con.
“Where are the rest rooms?” he asked the manager, who'd been hovering around them, wringing his hands and quietly moaning, for the past few minutes.
“Over there.” The man pointed. “Just to the left of the courtesy counter.”
“Thanks.” Bobby turned his attention to Angela, who was looking a little pale and panicky herself.
“We lost her,” she said, as if she couldn't quite believe it.
“No, we didn't. Stay here, Ange. I'll be right back. Don't alert Doug.”
“But regulations—”
“Not one word. You hear me?” He was throwing away the rule book on this one, and he hoped to God he was right.
“But—”
“Just don't, Ange,” he growled. “Not yet. Give me two minutes.”
Daisy's knees were stiffening up from sitting cross-legged on the commode. She had briefly considered standing on the white plastic seat, but it had looked slippery, and she was afraid of falling in. Now that would be a headline! President's mother drowns in public toilet!
She was glad she had had the foresight to choose the rather spacious handicapped stall, because by now she would have been quite claustrophobic in one of the smaller ones. As it was, the pernicious odor of faux pine was nearly making her swoon.
Cloistering herself in the ladies’ room to elude her armed guards hadn't been her intention originally. She'd sincerely wanted to come to the store for sherry and treats for tomorrow's bridge game. On the drive into town, however, and then in the store itself, she had sensed the hostility between the two young people. Well, hostility on the part of the young woman, at least. Poor Robert seemed less hostile than enshrouded in gloom. Naturally he deserved to pay for his actions of the previous night, but Daisy felt sorry for him nevertheless. He reminded her of her husband, Charles, in some strange way, and Daisy devoutly wished she could take back every dagger she'd ever glared at him and every frosty word she'd ever spoken.