by Laura Hayden
“I’ll be right there. Tell me where ‘there’ is.”
He gave her directions to his apartment, which he described as “almost in Crystal City.” Since time was obviously of the essence, Kate merely threw on jeans and a sweatshirt and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. As much as she might want to look like a lawyer in a sharp suit and perfect makeup, she would have to contend with only sounding and acting like one.
A heavy rain had been falling since midnight, and as a result, water flowed fast in the gutters and congregated in the low spots on the side of the road. But despite the more treacherous road conditions, she managed to dress, drive, and arrive in less than twenty minutes.
To her surprise, she learned that Nick didn’t live in one of the glass and steel high-rise buildings, but a very mundane, squatty brick apartment house that, from the outside, looked as if it hadn’t been renovated since it was built in the early fifties.
Evidently his position as a lobbyist with Better Energy Alliance didn’t include a paycheck large enough for fancy digs. When she knocked on the door, someone other than Nick answered. For one moment, she worried that she’d mixed up the directions and knocked on the wrong door. But she took a closer look at the man standing in the doorway and pegged him immediately as FBI.
“You the attorney?” he said in a gruff voice.
“Yes. And you?”
He dipped into his pocket and pulled out a leather wallet and showed her his photo ID that proved he was with the Bureau. Special Agent R.T. Stoffler.
“What’s the R.T. stand for?”
“It doesn’t. It’s just R.T.”
“Good to know. Where’s my client?”
“In the kitchen.” He stepped back to allow her to enter the apartment. She shrugged off her wet coat, looked around, and found a peg rack conveniently placed next to the front door. After depositing her coat there, she turned to take in the view.
Although the living room was sparse, its furniture all matched in a sort of cheap, nondescript, nonpersonalized way. It was obviously a furnished apartment. A dozen or so boxes—about half of which had been opened, the other half still sealed—had been piled in the corner.
The agent led her to the kitchen, where Nick and a second agent stood at the counter. She’d expected to see Nick being grilled, not drinking coffee and talking sports.
When he spotted her, he stopped in midsentence and developed a guarded smile. “Oh, good, you’re here. Thanks for coming out.”
She didn’t hide her displeasure. “In the rain,” she reminded him.
“Especially in the rain,” he repeated. “We’ve been just shooting the breeze until you got here. Special Agent Deakins has been working heavy on the good cop routine in hopes that he’ll disarm me with his congeniality and rip some sort of confession or something out of me. I’m not quite sure yet.”
Kate thought the second agent was going to choke on his coffee, his motives having been so plainly interpreted.
But Nick wasn’t finished. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a dollar, and handed it to Kate. “Your retainer, ma’am.” He then turned to the two men. “Special Agents Stoffler and Deakins, may I present my attorney, Kathryn Rosen.” He waited for the slightest pause before adding, “The White House chief of staff.”
The two men stared at her, trying to look past her übercasual clothes, her utilitarian hairdo, and her makeup-less face. Recognition dawned.
“Ma’am?” Agent Deakins nodded toward the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. “We apologize for not recognizing you immediately.”
She decided to give the man a break. “I doubt my own mother would recognize me like this.” She accepted the seat. “Now what questions do you want to ask my client and about what topic?”
“His whereabouts prior to the crash that killed a woman named Maia Bari and a man named Timothy Colton.”
Kate didn’t have to fake an air of exasperation. “What questions do you have that I haven’t already answered for your superior?”
All three men looked somewhat puzzled, Nick included. Deakins was the brave one to speak. “Someone in our organization has already spoken with you?”
“Yes.” She leaned across the table, her palms outstretched. “Do you not compare notes or check with your superiors before showing up on a man’s doorstep in the wee hours?”
Deakins dropped into the seat across from her. “We weren’t aware you’d been involved in the investigation.”
“I happen to have been with Mr. Beaudry the night that the accident occurred.”
Stoffler tried this time. “So you spoke with our field supervisor?” He named a name.
“No. Higher than that.” She was now playing a game and waiting for them to catch on.
He mentioned another name, evidently higher up in the food chain.
“Higher.” At their continued confusions, Kate decided to play her trump card. “A few days after the unfortunate incident, I spoke with Director Richfield, who asked me questions in the privacy of the Oval Office so as to spare the president any undue discomfort or embarrassment of any publicity concerning the fact that her chief of staff offered an alibi for the whereabouts of the president’s ex-husband on the night of question.”
At their stunned silence, she added, “Evidently you didn’t get the memo.”
Deakins stood quietly, guiding the cheap kitchen chair back under the table as if it were a Chippendale original of unfathomable worth. “No, ma’am, we didn’t get the memo. However, please be assured that we’re anxious to determine why that key piece of information was not adequately relayed to us.” He turned to Nick. “Sir, please accept my personal apology for disturbing you in the middle of the night.” Deakins then turned to Kate. “And, ma’am, I highly regret that you had to come out here on what turned out to be—because of us—a fool’s errand.”
Moments later, the two agents were gone, the door closing with only the quietest noise behind them.
Nick stared in the direction of their departure. “If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed it.” He turned to Kate. “Was that the truth? The director of the FBI actually questioned you?”
She nodded. “I was mortified. Sitting there in the Oval Office—Emily looking on. It was like being called into the ultimate principal’s office.”
“I can imagine. And he asked questions about me?”
She nodded. “Had you arranged to meet me, why were you there, when did I first see you, what condition were you in . . . Things like that.”
“I bet Emily was having a blast.”
“I don’t know about that. She admitted to being the one who saw to it that you had a ticket to the Constitution Ball.”
“Really? She actually admitted to it?”
Kate nodded. “Surprised me, too.”
He shook his head. “Will wonders never cease?” He looked up, then colored slightly. “I really appreciate that you were willing to come out here in the middle of the night and act as my lawyer.”
“I’m glad you called. I doubt anyone else could have found the right answers to make them hightail it out of here.”
“You had the right ammunition, for sure.”
An awkward silence muffled their conversation like a heavy blanket of wet snow. But instead of snowing, the rains outside had subsided from roaring storm to gentle mist.
Despite her better efforts to stifle a yawn, it escaped nonetheless. “I . . . I better head home and try to get some more sleep before I have to go into the office.”
He stood and offered a hand to help her up. “You don’t know how much I appreciate this, Kate. Having a friend I can call on . . .”
“Even in the middle of the night,” she supplied with a grin. “I didn’t mind helping, Nick. Not at all.”
He led her to the apartment door, helping her with her raincoat. “Drive carefully.” He pushed back the curtains that covered the living room window. “I think this is only a momentary lull. The weather forecast fo
r tomorrow is more of the same.”
“At least if it starts up again, I won’t have to contend with much traffic.”
“True. Good night, then. Or good morning, as the case might be.” He opened the door and cold air seeped into the living room.
“Good night.”
“Drive carefully.”
“I will.”
Nick put a merciful end to their awkward good-bye by giving her a hug that felt as confusingly pleasant as had the kisses they’d shared earlier that evening. He complicated matters even more by tightening his arms and saying, “I really do appreciate everything, Kate.”
She liked the brief sense of security of his arms. For a passing moment, she could simply enjoy having someone else be protective of her and give her a break from being her own primary protector, defender, and all the other roles she played as a single female in a position of high authority within the White House.
He then leaned down, his lips brushing her ear, and in a husky whisper, said, “As to our little problem? I pulled some strings and should be getting a copy of the original filing documents for the last shell corporation that links you know who with the stock options. He hid everything as a Panamanian foundation, not a corporation.”
The moment of intimacy dissipated and the reminder of the duties of her immediate world flooded back. He pulled away a little and offered her a grin of triumph. “That’s why you had a hard time finding it.”
“How did you ever pull that off?”
“My father had twelve brothers and sisters and my mother had seven. I have first cousins almost everywhere in the world, including one who’s an expat living in Panama. He runs an employment company and specializes in providing a wide variety of services to law firms, everything from shredding services to the night janitorial staff. He was able to get a copy of the original dated application and all the requests for changes. It’ll show a clear picture of the foundation’s origins and when certain changes were made.”
“I assume it’s just as illegal in Panama as it would be here, right?”
“Knowing Donnie? Absolutely. He’s never been one who played well within government restrictions. It’s the reason he doesn’t live in the U.S. anymore.” Nick sighed. “My family runs the gamut of everything from working stiffs down to what my mother always called ‘guttersnipes.’ I’d like to think I skew more toward the working stiff side of the family tree.”
Kate suddenly realized she was still within the circle of his arms. She pushed back, their business conversation not matching the more personal nature of their position.
“When are you supposed to receive the files?”
“They’re coming by courier tomorrow. Or I guess that would be today—this afternoon.”
“Then you need to find a place to stash the proof.” She looked at his apartment. “Not here.”
“Of course not.” He concentrated for a moment. “What about my storage unit? When I left the city to move back to Louisiana last time, I gave up my apartment, so I had to get a friend to pack up and store my stuff in one of those month-by-month storage units.” He thumbed back over his shoulder. “When I returned, this was the only place I could find on short notice. And since it was furnished, I just left the other furniture and stuff in storage.”
“If they get a warrant for your apartment, they’d probably also include any satellite storage units. They can track stuff like that down through bank records, credit card files, or such.”
He winked. “They can’t if there’s no paper trail. The buddy who packed everything up? He owns the moving and storage company. He’s not charging me, so there’s no way anybody can track it down.”
“So you’ll hide the papers there?”
“Seems like the best solution. I can get you a key to the place as well to make sure you have access to it.” Lightning split the sky and thunder rumbled several seconds behind the light.
The rain began to fall again. “I . . . I better start home before it gets worse.”
“Good night, then.” He reached for her hand. Then after a moment’s hesitation, he pulled her closer to him for one long and thrilling kiss that sent a bolt of electricity clear down to her toes.
When they finally broke apart, he kept his grasp on her hand and drew in a breath that was almost shaky. “Oh, boy.”
She held on to his hand as much for balance as anything else. “My sentiments exactly.”
“This . . . still confuses me.”
Kate felt her face redden. “Me too.”
“So what are we going to do about it?”
“Go slow?”
He nodded, giving her a much more chaste kiss on the forehead. “Agreed.” He gave her hand one last squeeze. “But it’s not going to be easy.”
KATE DRAGGED HERSELF to her office a few hours later, coming to the conclusion that she’d finally lost the boundless energies of her youth—the vigor that allowed her to easily overcome any interruption of her normal sleep pattern. Evidently, when the pendulum had swung back after their two hard years of campaigning where sleep was a luxury rather than a necessity, she’d gone from surviving effortlessly on a couple hours of shut-eye to needing as much as possible in order to function the next day.
When had forty-five become ancient?
And when did a couple of kisses keep her from falling back to sleep, especially when she was exhausted? Once Kate had arrived home, she’d stayed awake for another half hour or so, suffering from a persistent, non-erasable memory loop where she relived the kiss and tried to interpret what it might mean to her and to Nick.
But now that she was at work, her attention was drawn fifteen or so different directions simultaneously. One of those directions was the weather.
Winter had been alternating between “colder than usual” and “warmer than usual,” bypassing “usual” as quickly as possible when fluctuating from bitter to dreary to mild and back to bitter again. Although the White House had been monitoring severe weather around the U.S. and dealing with the aftermath of heavy snowfalls in the upper Midwest, record rainfalls in California, and wildfires in the Rockies, it was the building storms in the Atlantic that threatened to affect the White House on two different levels. Question one: What sort of economic impact would potentially dangerous weather have on the East Coast? And question two, the more highly personal: What happens if it hits Washington as hard as they’re predicting?
I don’t have time to worry about the weather, Kate told herself as she hurried to the first of six back-to-back morning meetings. Nevertheless, she instructed her aides to give her weather updates between each meeting. As the chief of staff, she would have to adapt the president’s schedule to accommodate the foul weather, perhaps postponing a trip on Marine One to Andrews, where Emily was scheduled to welcome back returning troops. Then again, chances were equally good that the troops would be either delayed or rerouted due to the weather.
By eleven o’clock, the decision was made to reroute the incoming flight to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, thus relieving Emily of that particular duty.
In the midst of her next meeting, Kate felt her phone vibrate twice, signifying an incoming text message. Surreptitiously she opened it to read the not-too-cryptic message:
The eagle has landed—N
Although Kate didn’t really expect any burden to lift from her shoulders, somehow she felt slightly more encouraged when she got Nick’s news. But that feeling dissipated once Emily got her behind closed doors between meetings four and five.
“Congratulate me. I got rid of one more complication in the ongoing saga of Dozier Marsh.”
Kate tried to hide the fact that her heart had jumped straight up into her throat. “What complication?”
“Something you, Jack, and I failed to consider when we were talking about correcting our problem. We skipped right over that part.”
“What complication?” she repeated.
“Maia was blackmailing Dozier, right? But we never asked ourselves how. What
actual evidence or proof or such did she hold over his head?”
This time Kate failed to hide her reaction.
Emily watched her carefully. Too carefully? “See? It could have been a critical error—a loose end that could have tripped us up. But luckily we found it.”
“We?” Kate found her voice and knew a certain amount of opposition would be expected. “Do you have some plumbers I don’t know about?”
Emily raised one eyebrow. “Very funny. Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to know the answers.”
“Emily . . .”
The president dropped to the couch and made a show of propping her feet on the coffee table, a position that no one in their right mind would attempt in the Oval Office but her.
The message?
Her office. Her rules.
“At my insistence, our investigators—well, actually your investigators; good ones too, may I add—found the proof in, of all places, Maia’s cell phone. She had one that could record video and audio, and turns out she’d made a recording of Dozier bragging about how much he stood to earn when he exercised his option. She even had him explaining all about long call stock options and the intricacies of hiding assets in offshore accounts.” She shook her head. “Poor old fool.”
Kate’s head felt as if it would explode with the possible implications. “What makes you think she didn’t send a copy of the video to somebody else? a hundred somebodies, at that?”
Emily’s smile bordered on predatory and she rose and walked toward Kate. “You told me you selected the company because they were thorough but discreet. And they were both. They said they checked her phone as well as her phone records. She never sent any files to anyone because she didn’t have the capacity on that unit, and that would have been the only way to upload it elsewhere.” She clapped Kate on the shoulder as if to congratulate her on their joint triumph.
Kate’s skin stung at the site of the contact.
Emily continued, unaware of anything but her own sense of accomplishment. “I just thought you might like to know that there will be no loose ends. Jack is taking care of our paperwork problem. He got out before the storm and is flying to Panama City even as we speak.”