“Cade can’t touch me. I’m an officer of the United States government.”
“Treason is a death penalty offense. Cade doesn’t need a judge and jury to pass sentence.”
Wyman managed to look hurt. “You’d really have him execute me? Just like that?”
“Let’s not find out. There’s still a good man inside you somewhere. I know it. Do the right thing, Les. Walk away from all this. Think of it as a second chance.”
Wyman was genuinely touched. Even if it was bullshit, Curtis sounded like he believed it. He sounded like he wanted there to be a shot at redemption for his vice president, despite all he’d discovered and all he had to suspect.
And without the Shadow Company at his back, maybe Wyman really did have a chance now.
Wyman nodded. “I guess I have no choice.”
“It’s for the best. You’ll see that.”
Wyman held out his hand. “I suppose you’re right,” he said.
And Curtis, being who he was, stepped forward to take it.
Wyman raised his other hand and sprayed the president in the face with the tiny aerosol can.
“Les, what the hell—?”
He stopped and opened and closed his mouth, as if tasting something foul. Then he looked up, his eyes suddenly wide. Curtis, skin flushed with sweat, fell to his knees.
Wyman, trembling almost as badly as the president, forced himself to slow down as he carefully peeled the plastic glove from his hand, using it to wrap the small spray can. He’d been sure he was going to get some on himself even as he was terrified it wouldn’t work.
He’d received the poison from the Shadow Company years ago but never felt brave or desperate enough to use it. He found it in the back of his safe a few days ago and checked it for an expiration date. Was it possible for something like this to go bad?
Apparently not. Curtis was on his knees, face gray, unable to breathe or move.
The poison was a molecular variant of nicotine. It passed through the skin on contact and flooded into the bloodstream, causing massive constriction of the arteries. At the same time, it triggered a huge release of adrenaline, causing heart rate and respiration to spike.
The result: instant heart attack.
He put the glove and the can inside the hole in the lining of his suit jacket pocket. Only the most thorough searcher would find it there, and he didn’t expect to have anyone tear apart his clothing.
Wyman couldn’t quite believe he’d really done it. He’d been carrying the toxin around with him for weeks, like a seventh grader with a condom stuffed in his wallet, both anxious for and dreading the opportunity to use it. But when he knew Curtis was about to dump him, there was nothing left to lose.
Now he pushed himself back into action. If this was going to work, it had to look right.
Still shaking like a leaf, he hurried behind the desk, moving around Curtis’s pain-racked form. His hands trembled as he searched inside the desk drawer for the hidden pack of smokes. He took it out, and the smokeless ashtray, and then lit one of the cigs and quickly puffed it to life.
The poison looked no different from the ordinary ingredients of a cigarette on any toxicology screening. President Curtis’s one bad habit was about to catch up with him in a very ugly way.
While Wyman fumbled with his props, he wasn’t watching Curtis. The president knew he had one last chance. On his knees, clutching the desk like a lifeboat, he focused all his strength on the panic button across the desktop. All he had to do was tap it, and the Secret Service would kick in the door and catch Wyman in the act.
He strained, reaching, reaching—
Wyman saw the president’s hand just in time. He grabbed Curtis’s wrist, holding it like a snotty Kleenex.
Curtis’s body went limp then. He had nothing left.
Wyman shoved, and the president rolled gently onto the carpet.
Wyman took a glance at himself in a mirror on the wall. He was covered in flop sweat, face etched with terror. This was how he should look, he decided. Not guilty, but frightened—for his friend, his boss and the nation.
Nobody would question him too closely. He was the Vice President of the United States.
He looked again at Curtis on the floor. Correction: he was now the President of the United States.
Wyman took a deep breath and hit the panic button himself.
A siren blared. “Hurry, hurry,” he screeched into the desk intercom. “It’s the president— My God, I think he’s dead.”
ZACH LOOKED at the e-mail again on his pad. He’d tried to drag it to the trash several times. But he always brought it back and clicked it open again. It read:
Zach,
You were right. I don’t think I can be in your world.
Love,
C.
_____
THEN HE SWITCHED over to another window: H2OMG!, a new Hollywood gossip blog. The lead item read, “First Daughter Hooks Up with New Boy-Toy.” He’d been staring at that one for a while.
Ours is not to reason why. Now he understood why Griff always said that.
“You’re reading it again,” Cade said from his position across the room, typing at the Reliquary’s PC.
Zach sighed. Cade had been back from Madigan for a day. Zach was still pissed, but they were speaking again. He wasn’t sure giving Cade the silent treatment was the vampire’s idea of punishment, anyway.
“That’s annoying, you know?” Zach said. “I don’t monitor your Internet usage.”
“I’m sure you have better things to do.”
“Oh, come on. I’m not supposed to be insulted? This guy isn’t even on network TV. She dumped me for someone on basic cable, Cade.”
Cade tensed. Zach could feel it: a shift in the vampire’s demeanor that charged the air like static. It usually meant violence was imminent.
“No,” Cade said.
Then a siren blared. It was earsplitting, like something left over from an air raid in World War II. The lights in the Reliquary dimmed and flashed.
“No,” Cade said again.
Zach noticed that the desktop computer was scrolling text down its screen. His own pad had dumped the windows he was looking at and replaced them with the same rolling chunks of information.
He recognized them: Secret Service emergency codes.
SINATRA DOWN… SINATRA DOWN… EN ROUTE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER…
Then the newswires broke in as well.
PRESIDENT SAMUEL CURTIS REPORTED DEAD…
Zach looked up at Cade, stricken.
Cade was looking at the screen, reading it as fast as the information scrolled down.
“Cade,” he said, and realized he couldn’t hear his own voice above the wailing siren. “Cade,” he said again, yelling this time.
Cade hit a button on the wall. The siren died suddenly.
Cade did not turn around.
“What the hell was that?” Zach asked.
“Alert system. Installed after JFK.”
“Not what I meant.” Zach realized he was still yelling. He didn’t care. “The president—”
“Heart attack.”
The words stunned Zach. He realized he was sitting down. On the floor. He’d missed his chair somehow.
For an absurd second he wished the president were here to deliver the news, like he did with Zach’s father. Then he felt the chasm open up inside him.
After everything they’d done—everything they’d fought—it didn’t seem possible. His mind simply couldn’t accept it.
Apparently, neither could Cade.
He finally turned and showed Zach his face. His fangs were fully bared. His eyes were blood-red slits in a mask of fury and pain and hate.
It was the most terrifying thing Zach had ever seen.
“God damn it!” Cade bellowed, and smashed his fists through the computer. He tore the button for the siren off the wall. Something shorted out and the lights flickered and went dead.
Zach couldn’t see Ca
de in the sudden darkness. But he could hear him. Display cases and relics shattered as he plowed through them, leaving broken glass and splintered wood in his wake.
Zach was grateful he didn’t have to look at Cade’s face. The only light left in the Reliquary came from the screen of his pad, now on the floor next to him.
The last update scrolled past: VICE PRESIDENT WYMAN SWORN INTO OFFICE ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE… LESTER WYMAN BECOMES THE 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA…
Zach and Cade had a new boss.
Judging by the howls of rage, Cade already knew.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve been the recipient of a great deal of kindness since the first installment of Nathaniel Cade’s adventures was published. The names here are only a small sample.
Many thanks to:
My peerless and patient agent, Alexandra Machinist; Rachel Kahan; Ivan Held; Victoria Comella; Tom Colgan; Patrick Fitch; my mother and relentless publicist, Carol Whiteman; Bryon Farnsworth; Amanda Rocque; Philippa Roosevelt; Vin and Emily Rocque; Megan Underwood Beattie; Lisa B. Jenkins; William Heisel; Britt McCombs; Richard Feliciano; the legendary Beau Smith; Beatriz Chantrill Williams; Elizabeth Pontefract; Carrie Hoff; Tom Alfaro; Eric Almendral; Leslie Klinger; John Connolly; Lucas Foster; Gregory Veeser; the College of Idaho; Bridget Butler and her son Camden; and Fountains of Wayne for the clip-on tie and rub-on tan idea.
The map illustration is by Eric Almendral.
Special thanks to Peter Levenda, author of the Sinister Forces trilogy, and Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, authors of The 80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, for their gracious permission to quote from their books. For anyone looking for clues as to the real secret history of America, I recommend starting with them.
And as always, thank you to Jean, and Caroline, and Daphne, for being the reason why.
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