First Family

by David Baldacci

  you say that?” His voice was hard, fierce.

  She stared back at him. “Because I’m somebody’s daughter too.”

  Yes you are , thought Quarry. You just don’t know whose. He closed and locked the door behind him.

  Minutes passed and then the door opened again. The lady was standing there, Quarry behind her.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said.

  He shut the door and Diane Wohl moved cautiously forward and sat down at the table. Willa joined her and turned the lantern light up higher.

  “How are you doing?” Willa said gently.

  “I’m so scared it’s hard for me to breathe sometimes.”

  “Me too.”

  “You don’t act scared. I’m the adult but you’re obviously a lot braver than I am.”

  “Did he talk to you at all? The man?”

  “Not really. Just told me to come with him. To see you.”

  “Did you want to?”

  “Of course, honey. I mean… I mean it gets so lonely in that room.”

  She eyed the books. Willa followed her gaze. “You want some books to read?”

  “I’ve never been much of a reader, I’m afraid.”

  Willa picked up several and slid them across to her. “Now would be a good time to start.”

  Diane fingered the cover of one. “He’s a very strange kidnapper.”

  “Yes he is,” Willa agreed. “But we still need to be afraid of him.”

  “Trust me, that won’t be a problem.”

  “We almost got away,” said Willa defiantly. “We were like so close.”

  “Because of you. I was probably the reason we didn’t get away. I’m not very heroic.”

  “I just wanted to get back to my family.”

  Diane reached out a hand and gripped the girl’s arm. “Willa, you are very brave, and you just have to keep being brave.”

  A sob jumped from her throat. “I’m only twelve. I’m just a kid.”

  “I know, sweetie, I know.”

  Diane slid her chair around the table and put her arms protectively around Willa.

  The girl started shaking and Diane held her tight against her chest. She whispered to her, that things really would be okay. That her family was no doubt fine and that she was definitely going to see them again. Diane knew Willa would never see her mother again, because the man had told her she was dead. But still she had to say it to the stricken little girl.

  My little girl.

  Outside the door Quarry leaned against the wall of the mine and rubbed an old coin between his fingers. It was a Lady Liberty he was planning on giving to Gabriel. Not for eBay. For college. But Quarry wasn’t really focused on the coin. He was listening to Willa cry her heart out. The wails from the little girl swooped up and down the shafts of the mine, as had decades ago the moans of battered miners, and generations before them the shrieks of Union soldiers dying of diseases that riddled their bodies.

  Yet he couldn’t imagine any more painful, heartwrenching sound than what he was hearing now. He slipped the coin back in his pocket.

  He’d gotten his affairs in order. People he cared about were provided for. After that, it was out of his hands.

  People would condemn him, of course, but so be it. He had endured far worse than the negative opinions of others.

  Still, he would be glad when this was over.

  It had to be over soon.

  None of them could take much more of it.

  Sam Quarry knew that he couldn’t.

  Late that night he took the truck to see Tippi. This time he went alone. He read to her. He played the tape of mother talking to her daughter.

  He looked around the ten-by-twelve-foot confines of Tippi’s world for all these years. He’d memorized every piece of equipment needed to keep her alive here, and had pelted the staff here with questions about each one of them. They had no idea why he was being so inquisitive, but that didn’t matter. He knew why.

  When he finally gazed down at his daughter’s withered face, her atrophied limbs, her skeleton of a torso, he felt his own big frame start to droop as though gravity had decided to exert more force on him. Perhaps as punishment.

  Quarry had no problem with punishment, so long as it was dealt out fairly, evenly. Only it never was.

  He left the room and ventured to the nurses’ station. He had to make some arrangements. It was time for Tippi to finally leave this place.

  It was time to bring his little girl home.

  CHAPTER 49

  LOOK, KING, we have orders to keep them all here,” said the agent to Sean and Michelle.

  They were at the entrance to Blair House. The decision had been made to allow Tuck and his kids to remain at the residence where they would have the full protection of the Secret Service, at least temporarily.

  “All I’m asking you to do is to let Tuck Dutton know that we’re out here. If he wants to see us, there’s really nothing you can do about it, is there? He’s not a criminal. He’s not in protective custody. He’s here voluntarily. And if wants to leave, you have to let him leave.”

  Michelle added, “We’ll keep a close eye on him.”

  “Right, and it’s my ass on the line to the president if anything happens to his brother-in-law.”

  “I’d actually be more afraid of the First Lady,” advised Sean.

  “I’m not going to get Dutton. Now I suggest that—”

  “Sean?”

  They all looked up at the front door. Tuck was standing there holding Colleen in one arm and a cup of coffee in the other.

  “Mr. Dutton, please get away from the door,” warned the agent.

  Tuck put Colleen down and told her to go join her brother. Then he set down the coffee cup and came outside.

  “Mr. Dutton!” The agent took a step toward him as two other agents moved forward from their outside posts.

  Tuck held up his hand. “I know, I know. You’re here to protect me. But why don’t you go protect my kids? I’ll be fine.”

  “Mr. Dutton,” the agent began again.

  “Look, buddy. I’m only here because my sister said it was okay. Great, I appreciate it. But the fact is this is America and I can leave here with my kids any damn time I want, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. So go hang out with my kids or go smoke a cigarette while I talk to these folks. Okay?”

  “I’ll have to let the First Lady know about this,” the agent snapped.

  “You do that. And she might be the First Lady to you, but to me she’s just the older sister whose panties I used to let my friends see for a buck a peek.”

  The agent’s face flushed. He glanced angrily at Sean and Michelle, then turned on his heel and went inside the house.

  “Tuck, that’s a side of you I’ve never seen,” said Sean as they walked down the street across from the White House.

  Tuck flicked a cigarette out of a pack, cupped his hands, and lit up. He exhaled a small cloud of smoke. “It gets to you, you know? I don’t know how Jane and Dan do it. Talk about a freaking fishbowl. It’s actually more like living your life under the damn Hubble Telescope.”

  “Every flaw revealed,” said Michelle, as her gaze swept, like radar, grid by grid, in front, to the side, and also behind them. They might be in one of the safest spots on earth, but, as she well knew, that could change in a single explosive moment.

  “How are the kids?”

  “Scared, nervous, anxious, depressed. They know Pam’s gone, of course. And that’s devastating enough. But not knowing what’s happened to Willa. It’s just too much. It’s killing all of us. I haven’t slept a wink since they took me off the drugs in the hospital. I don’t even know how I’m functioning.”

  Michelle eyed the cigarette. “They’ve only got one parent left now, Tuck. Do yourself and them a favor and cut out the cancer sticks.”

  Tuck dropped the smoke on the pavement and crushed it with the heel of his shoe. “What did you guys want with me?”

  “O
ne thing.”

  Tuck put up his hands. “Look, if this is that crap about Willa being adopted.”

  “No, it’s actually about the guy you saw Pam with.”

  “Did you talk to him? Who is he?”

  “He’s a Secret Service agent. A pretty high-ranking one,” said Michelle.

  “His name is Aaron Betack. And he basically says you were wrong in identifying him as the guy you saw with Pam.”

  “Then he’s full of shit. I was staring at him through a clear glass window. No more than ten feet. It was him! I’d swear on a stack of Bibles.”

  “We believe you, Tuck,” said Michelle.

  “And there might be an easier way than the Bible thing,” added Sean.

  “What do you mean?”

  Sean pointed across the street. “He’s over there right now. We saw him go in. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Betack?”

  “Yep,” said Sean.

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “We want you to call your sister and ask to see her with us. When we get in there we want her to call Betack in and we’ll confront him with what we know. Then if he wants to lie to her face, let him.”

  Tuck suddenly didn’t seem so sure of himself. “I’m sure she’s pretty busy right now.”

  Michelle took hold of his arm. “Tuck, you just buried your wife. Your oldest child has been kidnapped. I don’t think you should be worried right now about your sister being busy.”

  Sean eyed him intently. “What’s it going to be?”

  Tuck pulled out his cell phone. “Five minutes?”

  “Works for us,” answered Sean.

  CHAPTER 50

  SEAN KING, who’d worked presidential protection detail when he was in the Secret Service, had been allowed in the top security clearance-required White House Situation Room when guarding the president. Yet he had never seen the private quarters of the First Family. That omission had now been corrected. After riding the elevator up and being let out of the small cage by a genuine elevator operator, he and Michelle looked around at the room they were in. It had luxurious furnishings, heavy moldings, and beautiful flower displays. Then his attention returned to the woman who was sitting on the couch across from him, a cup of hot tea in hand. A warming fire crackled in the fireplace. Across the street, protestors could be heard chanting about something in Lafayette Park.

  Jane obviously heard this too. “You’d think they would have held off, with everything that’s happened.”

  “It’s done by permit,” said Michelle. “They have to take their shot when they get it.”

  “Of course.”

  She looks tired , Sean thought. And it obviously wasn’t just the campaign. The tiny lines on the First Lady’s face were more pronounced, the pouches under the eyes thicker, the hair not as meticulous as usual. She also seemed to have lost weight. The clothes she wore hung more loosely.

  Michelle’s gaze was on Tuck. Jane Cox’s brother sat next to his sister, shooting nervous glances around the room. He held a mixed drink that had been brought to him by one of the White House attendants. He gripped it so tightly his fingers were white. The guy probably wanted to light up, but the White House was a no-smoking zone, much to the chagrin of many stressed-out folks who labored there.

  “How are John and Colleen doing?” Jane asked.

  “Not great.”

  “We can have them stay here, Tuck.”

  “It wouldn’t matter, sis. It’s not the place.”

  “I know.”

  Tuck looked around the spacious room. “And this house doesn’t really seem geared for kids.”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Jane. “Remember Dan Jr. had a birthday party in the State Dining Room when he turned sixteen. And lots of small children have lived here. Teddy Roosevelt’s family. JFK’s.”

  “It’s okay, sis, really.”

  She glanced at Sean. “Thank you for making it to the funeral.”

  “I told you we’d be there.”

  “We left things in an awkward way the last time we talked.”

  “I thought I was pretty clear, actually.”

  Her mouth set into a frown. “I’m trying to handle this as professionally as possible, Sean.”

  He sat forward as Michelle and Tuck watched him nervously.

  “And we’re trying to find Willa. I don’t really care whether we accomplish that professionally or not so long as we get her back. I hope you don’t have a problem with that.” He glanced at Tuck. “Either of you.”

  “I just want my daughter back,” Tuck said quickly.

  “Of course,” said Jane. “That’s what we all want.”

  “Good, I’m glad we have that settled.” He gave Tuck an encouraging nod.

  Tuck opened his mouth. “So… is Dan around?”

  Sean rolled his eyes and sat back while Michelle just stared at Tuck like he was the biggest loser she’d personally ever seen.

  “Working in his office. Then he’s flying to the West Coast late tonight. I’m to join him there tomorrow, but my plans are up in the air right now, as you can imagine. I doubt that I’ll go now.”

  She eyed Sean. “Have you got anything to tell me?”

  “No, but I think your brother does. That’s why we’re here, in fact.”

  She glanced at Tuck. “What is it?”

  Tuck swallowed the rest of his drink so quickly, he nearly choked. When he recovered he still didn’t say anything.

  An exasperated Michelle said, “Tuck saw Agent Betack meeting with Pam about a month before she was killed. Agent Betack denies that happened. We wanted you to have him come in here and settle the issue once and for all. We know he’s at the White House. We followed him here, in fact.”

  Tuck’s gaze was glued to his shoes as his sister first looked at Michelle and then over at Sean.

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Why not?” asked Sean.

  “Because Agent Betack did meet with Pam.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I asked him to.”

  For a very awkward minute, the only sound was the crackle of the fire and the faraway chants of the protestors.

  Surprisingly, it was Tuck Dutton who broke this silence.

  “What the hell is going on, sis?”

  She put down her tea. The look she gave each of them, coming to finally rest on Tuck, was one of the oddest Sean had ever seen. It was a combination of dominance and desperation. And he wasn’t quite sure how she pulled it off, but she did.

  “Don’t be stupid, Tuck.”

  The tone, Sean thought, was just a tad ugly for a sibling who’d just buried his wife.

  “How am I being stupid by asking that question?”

  “Pam suspected you were having an affair. She came to me for advice. As usual, I tried to smooth things over for you.”