"I was pretty stunned to see you there too."
"We were never happy there, you know. Me and your mom."
"Apparently not."
"Do you remember much of it?" he asked cautiously. "You were so little. Not much more than a toddler."
"Dad, I wasn't a toddler. I was six. But, no, I don't remember much about it."
"But you remembered how to get there?"
Michelle lied and said, "That's what we call GPS."
Sean fiddled with a potato chip on his plate while he tried to look everywhere except at father and daughter. "I'll be right back," he said and got up and left before either of them could say anything.
"He's a good man," Frank said.
Michelle nodded. "Probably better than I deserve."
"So you two are like a couple?" He gazed over at his daughter.
She fiddled with the handle of her coffee cup. "More business partners," she said.
Frank glanced out the window. "I worked a lot back then. Left your mother alone too much. It was hard. I see that now. My career as a cop was my life. Your brothers have balanced things a lot better than I ever did."
"I never felt ignored, Dad. And none of the boys did either as far as I can tell. They worshipped you and Mom."
"But did you?"
The look in his eyes was so pleading, she felt the breath harden in her throat. "Did I what?" But she already knew.
"Worship us? Me and your mom?"
"I love you both very much. I always have."
"Right, okay." He went back to his lunch, methodically chewing his sandwich and drinking his coffee, the veins in his strong hands pronounced. But he never looked at her again. And Michelle could not bring herself to amend what she'd already said.
As she and Sean were cleaning up after the meal someone knocked at the front door. She went to answer it and came back a minute later holding a large cardboard box.
Sean put the last cup in the dishwasher, closed it, and turned to her. "What's that? For your dad?"
"No, for you."
"Me!"
She set it down on the table and read the return address. "General Tom Holloway? Department of Defense?"
"My two-star buddy. Looks like he came through with the AWOL records."
"But how did they get here?"
"I e-mailed him on the drive down to Tennessee and left this address just in case he had something and we were still down here. Open it up, quick."
Michelle used a pair of scissors to slit open the box. Inside were separate plastic binders, about three dozen of them. She pulled a few out. They were copies of official Army investigation reports.
"I know he's your friend and all, but why would the Army provide a civilian with this stuff? And do so with such speed?"
Sean took one of the binders and started sifting through it.
"Sean? I asked you a question."
He glanced up. "Well, aside from the football tickets I might've let slip that the White House was behind our investigation and that any cooperation they could lend would be personally pleasing to both the president and the First Lady. Knowing the Army, I'm sure they checked that out and found it was true. First rule in the military, never do anything to piss off the commander in chief."
"I'm impressed."
"That's apparently what I live for."
"So we go through these?"
"Page by page. Line by line. And hope to God it's the break we need."
A door slammed. Michelle rose and looked out the window in time to see her father climb in his car and drive off.
"Where do you think he's going?" asked Sean.
Michelle sat back down. "How should I know? I'm not the man's keeper."
"The man saved your life."
"And I thanked him for that, didn't I?"
"Before I go any further, am I getting close to the point where you usually tell me to go to hell?"
"Perilously close."
"I thought so." He turned back to the binder.
"I do love my father. And I loved my mother."
"I'm sure. And I know these things get complicated."
"I think my family wrote the book on complicated."
"Your brothers seem pretty normal."
"I guess I got all the issues."
"Why did you want to go back to the farmhouse?"
"I told you, I don't know."
"I've never known you to take an idle trip."
"First time for everything."
"Is that how you want to leave it with your dad?"
She gave him a look. "Exactly how am I leaving it?"
"Up in the air."
"Sean, my mother was murdered after apparently cheating on my dad. The woman who killed her almost killed me. My father saved my life, but there are issues there too, okay? In fact, for a while there I thought he'd been the one who killed her. So excuse me for being a little conflicted right now."
"I'm sorry, Michelle, you're right."
She laid down the binder she was holding and put her face in her hands. "No, maybe you're right. But I don't know how to deal with this, I really don't."
"Maybe you start with just talking to the guy. One-on-one, nobody else around."
"That sounds absolutely terrifying."
"I know it does. And you don't have to do it."
"But I probably do have to do it if I ever want to get past this." She stood. "Can you take over going through these? I'm going to try and find my dad."
"Any idea where he might've gone?"
"I think so."
CHAPTER 66
JANE COX RODE in the limo coming back from Mail Boxes Etc. Unbeknownst to her, the FBI had run a trace on the post office box she'd been visiting every day. They had come up empty. Phony name, paid in cash for six months, and no paper trail. They'd given the store manager hell for not following the rules.
"This is how 9/11s start, you clueless moron," Agent Chuck Waters had snapped at the middle-aged man behind the counter. "You let a terrorist cell get a mailbox here with no background info, you're helping the enemies of this country attack us. Is that what the hell you want to be remembered for? Aiding and abetting Osama bin Laden?"
The man had been so distressed by this tongue-lashing that his eyes had actually started to tear up. But Waters had never seen this. He was already gone.
Jane reached the White House and climbed slowly out of the car. She had not been seen much in public as of late, which was a good thing, actually, because she looked older and haggard. The HD cameras deployed now would not have been too flattering. Even the president had noticed it.
"You okay, hon?" he'd asked during a brief stopover on the campaign trail where he would give an address to a group of veterans followed by a belated visit from the women's college basketball national championship team. She had gone straight from the limo up to their private quarters to find him sitting there going over some briefing papers.
"I'm fine, Danny. I wish people would stop asking me that. I'll start to think there's something actually wrong."
"The FBI has briefed me about these visits to the post office box."
"And not the Secret Service?" she'd said quickly. "The spies among us?"
He sighed. "They're just doing their job, Jane. We're national property now. National treasure, at least you are," he'd added with a quick smile that usually did the trick in boosting her spirits.
Usually, but not today. "You're the treasure, Danny. I'm just the baggage."
"Jane, that's not-"
"I don't really have time to waste on this and neither do you. The kidnappers communicated with me through a letter. It gave me the post office box and a key to that box. They said I would receive a letter at some point and to check that box every day. I have. And so far, no letter."
"But why work through you at all. Why not Tuck?"
"Yes, why not Tuck? I don't know, Danny, because I apparently cannot think like a kidnapper."
"Sure, sure, I didn't mean that. So maybe we w
ere right. They're going to ask me to do something in order to get Willa back. It can't be money because your brother has more of that than I do. Hell, we can barely cover our personal grocery bills at this place. It must be tied to the presidency."
"And then it becomes problematic, like you said. Emasculate the office, I believe were your words."
"Jane, I will do all that I can do, but there are limits."
"I thought the power of the Oval Office was unlimited. I guess I was wrong about that."
"We will do all we can to get her back."
"And if all we can do isn't enough?" she said angrily.
He stared at her, a slightly hopeless look in his eyes.
The most powerful man in the world, she thought. Emasculated.
Her anger cooled as suddenly as it had risen. "Just hold me, Danny. Just hold me."
He rushed to do this, pressing her tightly against him.
"You're shivering. Are you coming down with something? You've lost weight too."
She stepped away from him. "Look, you need to go. You have your speech in the East Room."
He automatically checked his watch. "They'll call up when it's time."
He went to hold her again, but she moved away, sat down, and stared off.
"Jane, I am the president of the United States. I am not without influence. I can probably help."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
The phone rang. He picked it up. "Yes, I know, I'll be down in a minute."
He bent down and kissed his wife on the cheek. "I'll come back up and check on you later."
"After the women's basketball team."
"Just what I've always wanted to be around," he quipped. "A bunch of leggy women far taller than I am."
"I've got some events too."
"I'm going to have Cindy cancel them. You need to rest."
"But-"
"Just rest."
As he started to walk away she said, "Danny, I will need you at some point. Will you be there for me?"
He knelt beside her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I will always be there for you, just like you have with me. Get some rest. I'll have them send up some coffee and something to eat. I don't like how thin you're getting. We need some more meat on those curves." He gave her a kiss and left.
I have always been there for you, Danny. Always.
CHAPTER 67
MICHELLE PUT THE SUV in park and climbed out. Her shoes touched hardened dirt and she looked up at the old house with the dying tree, the rotting tire swing, the skeleton truck up on blocks in the back.
She glanced across the street. At the house where an old lady named Hazel Rose had once lived. Her house had been meticulous, the yard the same. Now the structure was beyond saving; a bare few inches from giving one last heave and falling down for good. Yet someone was living there. Toys were strewn across the front yard. She could see laundry flapping in the breeze on the line in the side yard. It was still a depressing scene. Her past was eroding away before her eyes, like sludge off a mountaintop.
Hazel Rose had always been kind to Michelle. Even when the little girl stopped going over there for the tea parties she gave for neighborhood kids. Why that memory had slipped into her mind just now, Michelle didn't know. She turned back to the house, knowing what she had to do, even if she didn't want to do it.
Michelle's hunch had been right. Her father's car was parked in front of hers. The front door to the farmhouse was open. She walked past his car and then by the stunted remains of the rose hedge.
That's what it was, she now recalled. A rose hedge. Why had that popped into her head? And then she remembered the lilies on her mother's coffin and telling Sean that her mom preferred roses. And she had felt a pain in her hand, like a thorn had pricked her. But there was no thorn, because there were no roses. Just like now. No roses.
She walked on, wondering what she would say to him.
She didn't have long to think.
"I'm up here," his voice called out to her. She gazed up, using her hand to shield her eyes against the sun. He was standing at an open window on the second floor.
She stepped over the fallen screen door and walked inside a house she had called home for a brief time when she was a child. In a way she felt like she was traveling back in time. With each step she was growing younger, less confident, and less competent. All her years of living, her experiences in college, in the Secret Service, as Sean's partner, were dissolving away. She was six years old again, dragging a battered plastic baseball bat around, looking for someone to play with.
She eyed the old stairs. She had slid down them on flattened cardboard when she was a kid. Something her mother didn't really like, but she remembered her father laughing and catching her as she hurtled down.
"My youngest son," he sometimes called her because she had been such a fearless tomboy.
She headed up. Her father met her on the landing.
"I thought you might come here," he said.
"Why?"
"Unfinished business, maybe."
She opened the door to her old room, walked over to the window, and sat on the edge of the sill, her back to the filthy glass panes.
Her father leaned up against the wall and put his hands in his pockets, idly stabbing the scuffed wooden floor with his shoe. "Do you remember much about this place?" he asked, his gaze fixed on his shoe.
"I remembered the rose hedge when I was walking up to the house. You planted that for an anniversary, didn't you?"
"No, your mother's birthday."
"And somebody chopped it all down one night."
"Yes, they did."
Michelle turned to look out the window. "Never found out who."
"I miss her. I really miss her."
She turned back to find her father watching her. "I know. I've never seen you cry like you did the other morning."
"I was crying because I almost lost you, baby."
This answer surprised Michelle and then she wondered why it had.
"I know that Mom loved you, Dad. Even if she… if she didn't always show it exactly the right way."
"Let's go outside, getting sort of stuffy in here."
They walked along the perimeter of the backyard. "Your mother and I were high school sweethearts. She waited for me while I was in Vietnam. We got married. Then the kids started coming."
"Four boys. All in four years. Talk about your rabbits."
"And then my little girl came along."
She smiled and poked him in the arm. "Can we say accident?"
"No, Michelle, it was no accident. We planned for you."
She looked at him quizzically. "I guess I never really asked either of you about it, but I always assumed I was sort of a surprise. Was it because you were trying for a girl?"
Frank stopped walking. "We were trying for… something."
"Something to hold you together?" she said slowly.
He started to walk again but she didn't. He stopped, looked back.
"Did you ever consider divorce, Dad?"
"It was not something our generation did lightly."
"Divorce is not always the wrong answer. If you weren't happy."
Frank held up a hand. "Your mother wasn't happy. I, uh, I was trying to work at it. Although I'd be the first to admit that I spent too much time on the job and away from her. She raised the kids and she did a great job. But she did it without a lot of support from me."
"Cop's life."
"No, just this cop's life."
"You knew about Doug Reagan, obviously?"
"I saw some of the signs that she was attracted to him."
Michelle couldn't believe she was about to ask this, but she had to. "Would it have bothered you if you knew they had slept together?"
"I was still her husband. Of course it would have hurt me, deeply."
"Would you have put a stop to it?"
"I probably would've beaten Reagan within an inch of his life."
"And Mom?"
"By not being around for her?"
"In some ways, that's worse than cheating."
"You think so?"
"What's a quick fling in the sack compared to decades of indifference?"
"Dad, you weren't gone all the time."
"You weren't alive when the boys were little. Trust me, your mother was a single parent for all intents and purposes. You can never get that time, that trust back. At least I never did."
"Did you cry for her too?"
He held out his hand for her to take. She did.
"You cry, sweetie. You always cry."
"I don't want to stay here."
"Let's go."
Michelle had nearly made it to her SUV when it happened. Without any warning at all, her feet pointed toward the house and she started to run.
"Michelle!" her father screamed.
She was already inside the old building and racing up the stairs. Feet pounded after her. She took the steps two at a time, her breaths coming in gasps, as though she had run miles instead of yards.
She reached the top. The door to her bedroom was closed. But that was not her destination. She raced to the door at the end of the hall and kicked it open.
"Michelle, no!" her father roared from behind her.
She stared into the room. Her hand went to her gun. She flicked off the cover strap. The Sig was out, pointed straight ahead.
"Michelle!" Feet pounded closer.
"Get away from my mom!" she screamed.
In Michelle's mind her mother looked back at her, terrified. She was on her knees, her dress half torn off. Michelle could see her mother's bra, the indentation of her heavy cleavage, and this exposure terrified her.
"Baby!" Sally Maxwell yelled out to her. "Go back downstairs." Her mother was young, young and alive. Long white hair had been replaced with soft dark strands. She was beautiful. Flawless, except for the torn dress, the terrified expression, the man in Army fatigues standing over her.
"Get away from her. Stop hurting her!" Michelle screamed in a voice she had only used for arresting someone.
"Baby, please, it's all right," said her mother. "Go back downstairs."
Michelle's finger slipped to the trigger. "Stop it. Stop it!"
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