“Collins, let them demand.” Phillip stood up, and the room blurred slightly. He leaned on the table for support, hoping that Katherine wouldn’t notice. “We will let them know what we can when we are ready,” he said. “We control the news. Not them.”
“Mr. President, I’m afraid it’s already gotten out of control.” He pushed the tablet toward Phillip, and he and Katherine read the blaring headline on the screen:
Target: President Grand
In a second assassination attempt on the life of President Phillip Grand, a bomb exploded outside the gates of Water Reed National Military Medical Center, killing a hospital security guard and critically injuring a Secret Service agent. Sources say …
“What sources?” Phillip asked.
“They’re all anonymous,” Collins said.
“Word is leaking out, Phillip,” Katherine said, turning the screen toward her. “It was only a matter of time. Collins is right. We have to get in front of this.”
“And there’s more …” Collins said, his eyes wide with worry. “The Times has gone with a story … something about a Hello Kitty watch.”
Dammit, Phillip thought. He pivoted the tablet toward him and skimmed the article that Collins pulled up, pinching the screen to adjust the text size. This wasn’t good: If Olsen had run with the story, that meant he must have received confirmation from elsewhere, another reliable source. And from what Phillip could glean it was another anonymous source. If that didn’t point to a leak in the White House, Phillip didn’t know what did.
“Mr. President,” Collins said, picking up his tablet, “have you heard from Ja—”
“I want you to work with the First Lady on this,” Phillip said.
Katherine’s head whipped around, and she frowned at him. “We have entire staffs dedicated to press and communications, Phillip,” she said.
“I know, but Jamie isn’t here, and this requires your expertise. I need you now,” Phillip said. He also needed his wife to keep busy so she wouldn’t worry about him. He would rather Katherine be grumpy than scared.
She let out a long exhale, one that was pointedly filled with dissatisfaction. “Oh, all right,” she said, dropping her arms. “Let’s go, Collins.”
“Thank you,” Phillip said, reaching for Katherine’s hand. She squeezed it quickly and then let it go. “See if you can find out anything on Olsen’s source.”
“I’m not your damn press secretary, Mr. President,” Katherine whispered as she walked away. “But I’ll do what I can.”
As Phillip watched them leave the kitchen, his eyes met Charlotte’s. She was staring at him with a troubled look. He smiled, and although his daughter’s big blue eyes showed concern, she smiled back.
“Mr. President, is there anything that you can tell me, anything unusual, maybe, that you remember from what you saw at Walter Reed, just before the explosion?” Brandon asked. “Did you get a good look at all the people standing on the sidewalk?”
“You really think he was there?” Phillip asked.
“It’s a definite possibility.”
Phillip tried to remember, but his head was beginning to throb again. He had led a public life for so long that faces tended to blur into one another. Only the little boy stood out. “I’m afraid not.”
“How about right before the explosion? What can you remember?”
“Well … I asked Agent Summers to stop. He said they were waving us through, but I was pretty adamant. We stopped. I talked to the little boy, whose sister prodded him to engage with me … Is she okay? The sister?”
“Yes,” Brandon said. “Just a few cuts and minor lacerations.”
Phillip nodded. “And then moments later was the explosion.”
“Security was waving you through, you say?” Brandon asked.
“Yes, is that relevant?”
“It could be.”
“Why? You think someone knew?”
“At this point, I’m simply taking note of the facts, but, yes, it is possible. And if that’s true, then whoever did this didn’t seem to care very much about injuring his or her fellow security staff—or any of the innocent people on the public street. Let me make a few calls.” Brandon unhooked his phone from his belt. “If you remember anything else, please let me know, and, with all due respect, Mr. President, until you get the all clear from me, please don’t leave the White House, under any circumstances.”
“I won’t,” Phillip said. “Thank you, Brandon.”
From the corner of his eye, Phillip saw Rudy Ray Mitchell enter the kitchen, and for the first time since he had met his vice president, the sight of him filled Phillip with trepidation. Rudy Ray searched the crowded space, and when he spotted Phillip he crossed the room in a hurry.
“Phil! Phil!” His large frame glided like a barge. “Are you all right?” Rudy Ray eyed Phillip’s forehead. “Dear Lord …”
“I’m fine, Rudy Ray, thank you,” Phillip said. He tried to focus on Rudy Ray’s sincere eyes and not Clark’s words whispering inside his head: He came in second among the most likely suspects. With all that had happened, Phillip was feeling inclined to believe that Clark had a point: Rudy Ray ducking out of the Walter Reed visit at the last minute—even with a legitimate reason—seemed suspicious. At the moment, though, it was too much to consider. “How was the play?” Phillip asked.
“The play? Who gives a damn about a school play? What can I do?”
Phillip looked around the room. The agents were all either on their phones or talking privately to one another. Unless they instructed him otherwise, Phillip had learned that it was best to stay away and let them do their job.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do at the moment,” Phillip said.
Rudy Ray put his hand on Phillip’s shoulder. “I should have been there,” he said. “I should have been in the car with you.”
The comment surprised Phillip and then burrowed under his skin. He studied Rudy Ray’s genial expression, the one that had helped Phillip get elected, and shrugged. “How could you have known?” he asked, wondering if he’d see any kind of reaction in Rudy Ray’s eyes. He didn’t.
“Well,” Rudy Ray let go of Phillip’s shoulder, “I’ll stick around anyway, in case anything turns up.” He stuck his hand in one of the crinkled potato chip bags and said, “Please call me if you need anything,” before wandering to the other side of the kitchen.
Phillip touched the bump on his head. His vision was becoming blurry—not enough to alert Katherine or Dr. Stapleton, but enough to tell him that he needed to rest for a bit. He crossed the room to where his mother and children were sitting.
“You should lie down,” said his mother, who was sitting primly between Charlotte and Philly. “I think you know that.”
Phillip couldn’t remember how many times he had come home with black and blues or bumps as a child and his mother would glance at him coolly and say, “You should lie down.” It was her answer for just about any situation—injuries, accidents, chaos, a bad grade on a spelling test. Phillip was sure he got his penchant for thinking things through from all those times he was told to lie down in his bed as a boy.
“I know, I will.” He glanced at his children. “How is everybody here? You guys all right?”
“Yeth,” Phillip Jr. said, pressing down on a stumpy white crayon. Charlotte simply shrugged. She was looking at her coloring book, with a crayon in her hand.
“What’s the matter, cookie?” Phillip ran his hand through her curly hair. “Do you want to come with me to the Oval Office? I’m going to rest for a bit. You can play with your tablet and keep me company. Would you like that?”
She looked up at him, her blue eyes wet. “Are you gonna die?” she asked, looking at his head.
“What?”
Her eyes were wide, waiting for an answer, and Phillip reached down and scooped her up. Charlotte wrapped her legs around his waist, and he pushed back the curls from her face. “Not a chance. Look around at all the men and women who are
here to protect us.”
Charlotte didn’t look around. She appeared skeptical, an expression that mirrored her mother’s from just moments ago. She touched the bruise on his head. “Abraham Lincoln got hurt on his head too. My teacher said so.”
“Ah, sweetheart, Abraham Lincoln was shot. That was something different. And that was a long, long time ago when they didn’t have the people to protect the president like they do now. This is just a bump. Look.” He moved his forehead closer so she could inspect it. “This will heal and get better. Do you know why?”
She shook her head.
“C’mon, you’re with me every morning, right? What do I eat?”
“A healthy breakfast?”
“That’s right. And that has made me strong and smart. Just like you.”
Charlotte gave a reluctant smile.
“I’m as healthy as a horse. Right, mother?”
“A horse that needs to lie down,” his mother said firmly, adjusting Philly’s grip on his crayon.
Phillip could always count on his mother for some plain talk. Most people had considered his father the rock of the Grand family—with his distinguished military career and tough guy persona—but while his father provided a source of strength it was his mother who provided the voice of reason.
“I’m going, Mother. Philly, would you like to come too?”
“No, dank you,” he said, grabbing a blue crayon.
“I’ll stay here with him until he finishes,” his mother said.
“Thank you.” It had surprised even Phillip how much he had come to rely on his mother when his family made the move to Washington. While they were known to check in with one another often, mostly during their weekly get-togethers at Taryn’s Diner back in Albany, he wouldn’t consider the relationship they had to be close. He had mostly brought her along so that he could look after her and so she wouldn’t be lonely after his father’s death, but the truth was that he didn’t know how he would have gotten through the past year without her.
“Well, it looks like it’s just you and me, cookie,” Phillip said. Charlotte wrapped her arms around Phillip’s neck and laid her head on his shoulder, which made him feel wobbly again, but he adjusted his grip on her and carried her out of the kitchen.
It took them twenty minutes to get to the Oval Office, since practically every member of Phillip’s staff, upon seeing him, came out of their offices to offer him kind words and well wishes. The only noticeable omission was Clark, whom Phillip could see was, not surprisingly, back in his office. His chief of staff—who had sustained a broken nose after the explosion—was standing in the middle of the room, bandages across his face, thundering something to his interns who were by his side, typing feverishly on their tablets.
Phillip closed the door to the Oval Office and placed Charlotte on one of the sofas.
“Are you going to sit with me, Daddy?” she asked.
“In just a minute, Charlie.” He took out one of the tablets he kept in his desk for the kids and handed it to her. “You play for a little bit, okay? I need to make a phone call.”
As Charlotte inched back on the sofa, Phillip sat behind his desk. It took several big breaths before the dizziness subsided. He hoped that these episodes passed, because what he needed now was to focus. He picked up the phone.
“Janice?”
“Yes, Mr. President?” his secretary said in her kind, gravelly voice.
“Janice, can you connect me with Walter Reed? I want to check on my agents.”
As Janice patched him through, the images played again in Phillip’s mind—the little boy waving his flag, his sister urging him forward, Rudy Ray putting his hand on Phillip’s shoulder, Edna offering to stay on as his housekeeper, Clark talking about intern pools and suspect lists. They were all circling like hands of a clock. He rubbed his temples.
“Mr. President?” a voice said on the other end of the line. “This is Dr. Ortega, head of emergency medicine.”
“Dr. Ortega, how are my men?”
There was a pause. “I’m afraid I have bad news, Mr. President. Agent Chodat succumbed to his injuries just moments ago. He didn’t make it, sir.”
The dizziness reared its ugly head, and with the phone to his ear, Phillip laid his head on his desk, watching a sideways Charlotte poke at her tablet. He closed his eyes.
What is going on, he wondered as the tinny voice of Dr. Ortega spoke in his ear, and where the hell is Wilcox?
CHAPTER 16
Wilcox stepped off the aircraft at Yellowstone Regional Airport and hurried down the airplane stairs to the tarmac.
“Agent Wilcox?”
A regional federal agent with slicked-back blond hair stepped forward from a sedan. Wilcox nodded, tucking his tie into his jacket.
“I’m Agent Gannon. Right this way, sir,” the agent said and opened the back door.
Wilcox got into the vehicle, joining two other agents, one of whom was driving, and the car sped out of the airport. He had had second thoughts about traveling to Wyoming and had almost turned the plane back when he received word about the second attempted assassination of the president, but with Agent Fuller on the ground and Phillip Grand and family safely back at the White House for the time being, he wanted to see this through once and for all.
“What have you got?” Wilcox said. He had been able to track Phillip Grand’s call to the number of a burner phone. Although his voice message had not yet been accessed, the phone’s last activity had been the night before somewhere within the vicinity of a town called Cody. Wilcox knew he was probably overstepping by tracking the president’s phone call; however, President Grand had reinstated him to investigate the attempted bombing at the White House, and to do that Wilcox was sure he needed to contact Jamie Carter.
Gannon held up a paper map from the front seat of the sedan. “This is the area in question,” he said.
“What’s there?” Wilcox asked.
“Nothing, really.”
Wilcox looked out the car window at the flat land around him and the mountains in the distance. He wondered why Jamie Carter was there. On the plane, he had done some research, and of all the properties Faith Carter had inherited from Don Bailino across the United States, none were in Wyoming. Also, based on Jamie Carter’s phone records and what he knew about the Carters, she had no friends there—these days, she seemed to have no friends at all. Since her abduction five years ago, she had virtually kept to herself.
“Any hotels in the area?” Wilcox asked.
“About forty,” Gannon said.
“Forty?” Wilcox asked incredulously. It would take days to go through them all. Gannon handed him a piece of paper. “What’s this?”
“You asked about large pieces of property in the area. These three listings are the largest.”
“Are they some kind of rental or hotel property?”
“Not that we’re aware of, sir,” the agent said.
“Who owns the homes?”
Gannon pulled up the data on his laptop. “One is owned by a Silicon Valley corporation. It looks as if it is used as a vacation home for the CEO.”
“And the others?”
“The second is owned by an old rancher whose family has lived in the area since the late eighteen hundreds. And the last is an old coal mining camp.”
“Coal mining?”
“Coal mining was crucial to this territory’s development going back about a hundred and fifty years,” Gannon said with pride.
“Who owns it?”
Gannon checked his tablet. “A company by the name of Inlaid Boon.”
“A tile company?” Wilcox asked. “In a coal mining facility?”
“Unfortunately, not likely. Many of the coal mines have been shut down in this region.” Gannon consulted his tablet. “Don’t know what the company does. It doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything.”
“Who runs the company?”
“Hmmm …” Gannon scanned the screen. “Looks privately held. The owner is
listed as a D. Carter.”
Carter.
Perhaps Jamie has a relative out here, Wilcox thought, although Carter was a fairly common surname. “Do you have any images?” he asked.
The agent lifted his tablet from the seat and showed Wilcox the screen. “These are images of all three properties,” he said. “We got these from Google Earth.”
Wilcox studied the digital photos, none of which looked remarkable in any way. “When were these taken?”
“In the last ten years or so,” the agent said. “Hard to say.”
“Anything more recent?”
“I’ll get a current satellite image.”
Wilcox glanced at the other men in the car, who remained silent. The only sound was the tires charging across the roads, which were slick from the melting snow.
“Here you go, sir,” Gannon said, handing Wilcox the tablet. “These were taken just a few minutes ago.”
Wilcox looked them over and brought the screen closer to his eyes. Two of the images looked virtually the same as the ones he had seen from Google Earth, but one of them looked vastly different. “Which one is this?” he asked, pointing to the image.
“That one? That’s the old coal mining property. Inlaid Boon. D. Carter.”
A three-story home had replaced the mining facility. A smaller structure had been built beside it, next to what looked like a large greenhouse. Although the property was covered with snow, Wilcox could see a compact vehicle was parked on the premises and the tracks of what looked like a large animal, perhaps a wolf. He zoomed in on the image using the tablet’s touch screen and examined the structure more closely. It appeared to be a contemporary-styled log cabin. A few feet away were two brown patches in the shape of human bodies in the snow, one big and one small.
The skin on the back of Wilcox’s neck began to prickle.
“This one,” he said, handing Gannon the tablet. “Let’s go here first. And step on it.”
CHAPTER 17
Bailino washed his hands in the kitchen sink while keeping his eyes on Jamie, who was sitting on his bed dialing the phone he had given her.
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