On Your Mark

by M. L. Buchman

“Didn’t think it was.”

  “What if it wasn’t an attack either?”

  “But—” then he stopped for a long moment. “A trial run?”

  “That’s what I thought at first. Then Miss Watson suggested—”

  “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Reese wondered just how few people knew about the spy in the White House basement. “What if it was a test?”

  “A test,” Jim rolled it over his tongue like he was tasting it. “A test of the Motorcade’s defenses?”

  This time she decided to keep her thoughts to herself and pray that Jim didn’t reach the same scary conclusion she had.

  “No. If it was a test, they were testing for something that they didn’t know. You. They wanted to test what you could do, because you’re what they don’t know about.”

  She tried to stay perfectly still, to not give away her next thought. But she felt it along the entire length of their bodies lying together when the realization hit him.

  “It’s an inside job,” he barely whispered it. “The truck wasn’t stolen until after the New York team was mobilized. And to have it in that place, at that precise moment… But the Secret Service never had a traitor before…” The way he tapered off said that he agreed that they did now.

  And that was the moment that Reese knew she could completely trust Jim Fischer. They were lying too close together for his shocked reaction to be faked. And his first, instinctive reaction was to crush her against him as if he could somehow protect her by simply holding her close. As if he could take the bullet to spare her.

  The last man to protect her unconditionally had died in a shattered stock car.

  Since then she’d forgotten what it felt like—had always relied on herself alone.

  Then Jim sealed the bargain with a whispered question.

  “What are we going to do?”

  We. Not her. We. She could definitely get to like the sound of that.

  Chapter Nine

  Jim had asked for time to think about Harvey Lieber’s offer to join the mobile team of the Presidential Protection Detail. This morning he and Malcolm marched straight in and took the job.

  He and Reese had brainstormed through the long afternoon, then over a dinner of delivery pizza—his five acres in the woods wasn’t that far from DC civilization. Malcolm had gotten his usual pizza crusts from Jim—Reese ate hers. After dinner, they were still nowhere on figuring out who else to trust.

  It was an odd problem. The Secret Service trained them to trust no one except the other members of the team. But when it became impossible to trust the team…

  He’d favored telling Captain Baxter—the man had run the White House branch of the Uniformed Division for four Presidents and been Jim’s boss for three years.

  Reese didn’t know him from Adam and favored telling Harvey Lieber. He’d been with the President for nine years, ever since Zachary Thomas had been nominated for the Vice Presidency. But he’d always struck Jim as an unimaginative hard ass. He’d also been the one to personally promote Reese into her new position. Had that been a setup?

  For the moment, they’d decided to keep everything to themselves.

  They’d had sex again last night, but there was an overlay of tension now. Despite what the movies portrayed, being in fear for your life and suspicious of everybody did not enhance sex—not even in a them-against-the-world unity. They’d held each other close, but neither of them had slept well. Breakfast had been a fast and silent affair of leftover pizza. And the RV’s shower wasn’t built for two, even if they’d been in the mood.

  “Welcome aboard,” Harvey shook his hand and waved him into a chair. Malcolm plopped down at his feet as if the transition from Uniformed Division to the Presidential Detection Detail was the most normal thing in the world. He just hoped to god it was.

  Baxter looked in, saw what was happening, and cursed. “Hate to lose you, Fischer. Make me proud.” Then he was gone, back to his office with just that much ceremony.

  “I’d like to give you a manual for your new duties, Fischer,” Harvey was tapping his fingers together. “But we don’t have one. We’ve never embedded a K-9 team inside the Motorcade before. They always travel ahead to prep the site. I’ve got reports of your work during the First Lady’s trip, both prior to the event and during the event itself as well as your scores from yesterday’s refresher training.”

  Jim didn’t like that Harvey was still calling it “the event” rather than “the attack.” Just because they couldn’t confirm the latter didn’t make it any less true.

  “I’m assigning you to Agent Reese for now. You won’t ride in Stagecoach, but she’s already familiar with some of your methods. Tad Doogan is the head of the Motorcade, but he has enough headaches at the moment without adding another direct report agent to his list. I want you to work with the team and figure out how you fit into our processes.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jim also didn’t like that Harvey didn’t refer to Malcolm, though he was sitting right there. Baxter would have said “you and your dog” or “you and Malcolm.” Harvey acted as if Malcolm didn’t even exist. With each passing second he was feeling better about advising Reese not to talk to him about their conclusions.

  “Two more things. First, you do anything to screw up the efficiency of my Number One driver and you’ll be walking patrol at a sewage plant.” His tone made it clear that they were no longer discussing any on-duty actions.

  Jim thought they’d been circumspect, but apparently not enough. Or did it somehow show on him? What would show? That he was completely gone on Reese Carver? He’d sure been wearing a goofy smile yesterday—Reese had commented on it a couple times. She didn’t smile much, but she’d certainly come back to his bed for more, so it was hard to complain. But the tension today had wiped that smile off his face. At least he thought it had.

  “Two, you’ve got forty-eight hours to get integrated into the team. ”

  When Jim looked at him in surprise, Harvey’s grin was as plain evil as a rattler’s.

  “The President will be going to a new exhibit dedication at the flight museum at the Udvar-Hazy Center two days. From there, he’s flying to Nashville to address the Cattle Industry Convention on his way to a triple header in his home state of Colorado. First, a speech at his alma mater of the Air Force Academy. Then on to the Olympic Training Center to have lunch with his mom, she’s a swim coach there, and this year’s athletes. Finally, a party fundraiser in Denver. Every stage has ground transport. Hope you like the hustle, boy.” And Harvey turned back to whatever his next crisis was.

  Jim scooted out quickly to let Harvey get back to it. Now he stood in the middle of the bustling Secret Service Ready Room wondering what the hell to do next.

  He dialed Reese. Harvey had said he was assigned to her. It would be nice to hear—

  “What?”

  “That’s how you answer the phone?”

  “Yes. Now, what?”

  Jim could feel her glower over the phone.

  “Waiting here.”

  And he’d bet that wouldn’t last long. “I’m assigned to you. So, um, where are you?”

  “HQ Room 304,” and she was gone.

  He stared at the phone for a moment and wondered how to read her. Was she angry? They hadn’t discussed him coming over to the Presidential Protection Detail. Maybe he should have. Or maybe she was just busy? No one focused on the lane they were in harder than a race car driver. So now he’d been demoted to a distraction?

  “You got to wake up with her, dude.” It might not have included wake-up sex, but she’d felt absolutely incredible in his arms. Not sure when he’d be back here in the West Wing, he gathered up all of his and Malcolm’s most essential gear before heading out the door at a trot.

  Dilya waved at him from where she walked the First Dog along the North Portico as he hustled out the gate into Lafayette Square and turned east for the six block walk back to the Secret Service Headquarters Building where he’d parked his tru
ck to begin with. She looked as if she wanted to talk, but he wasn’t ready for some question about the nature of his relationship with Reese if it was modeled on Regency England.

  He wasn’t ready to discuss it with himself!

  Had he really thought that he was ruined for all other women by a couple-three nights with Reese?

  He had. Moreover, it was true. Yet they hadn’t spoken a word about what was happening between them; it had all been about work or in a silence that passed for understanding. If only he knew that it had indeed been understanding and not a path leading out the door and onto the open road.

  Damn it! They were following the plot of Dilya’s story. They were definitely in a relationship, as sure as the give-and-take of Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy, and they definitely weren’t talking about it.

  “Not a lot of Presidential Motorcades in your day, Mr. Darcy,” he muttered as he crossed 14th Street against the light. A high-heeled blonde in a dark blue jacket and skirt so tight that it screamed look at me, eyed him strangely as he passed her by. That he didn’t even give her a second look told him just how completely Reese had moved into his head and locked down his libido.

  He slotted his ID at the security desk and headed up to Room 304. Inside was what he could only call ordered mayhem.

  Cubicles were grouped in clusters down one side of the long room. Small signs indicated their functions: Route Security, Building Security, Police and Military Liaison, Air Transport, and more.

  A dozen different agents were huddled around a central table. Built into its surface were eight large flat screens. Five displayed different maps: DC, Nashville, and three screens that must be Colorado. Each map had a red route and several blue routes.

  He spotted an area that was labeled Motorcade Personnel and dropped his and Malcolm’s gear there before joining Reese at the table. She was in the thick of it and looked as if she absolutely belonged. She didn’t acknowledge his arrival with even a nod but, as she appeared to be at the center of three different conversations, he wouldn’t take it personally.

  “Sidekick—” the President’s Secret Service codename “—will be at the Udvar-Hazy Center for two hours,” Tad Doogan’s slightly nasal and very Harvard-haughty tone sliced into Reese’s headache.

  Even her tiny nod to Jim and Malcolm had been ill-advised.

  “We’re directly under the Dulles flight path. We’ll move him by Marine One helicopter from the South Lawn direct to Udvar-Hazy. He is keynoting a brief ceremony to open the exhibit featuring the Combat Search and Rescue Sikorsky MH-60 that he flew during his service in Yemen, Somalia, and other classified locations. His old unit is having an on-site reunion afterward. We will then transport him again by Marine One helicopter to Andrews where he will board Air Force One.”

  “Why not bring Air Force One to Dulles?” Jim’s question cut off every side conversation.

  “And who are you?” Doogan did his best down-his-nose look at Jim. He had humbled entire teams with that look.

  “I’m the Motorcade’s new K-9 dog handler.”

  “And what do you know of the logistics of moving the President?”

  Reese winced on Jim’s behalf, but there’d been no chance to warn him about what he was walking into. Actually, she hadn’t even thought to do so, which was yet another unkindness.

  Jim had held her last night when she’d most needed it. All the prior day she’d been groaning under the load of new knowledge: safety, protection, and her inability to meet those needs. If she’d been even half a second slower to respond, the three leading women of the land would be a bloody smear on the concrete barrier wall of the FDR Drive in New York. But she hadn’t been. And somehow Jim holding her had helped her come to terms with that.

  “I know that flying him thirty miles in the wrong direction, from Dulles back to Andrews, wouldn’t be my first choice for security. When I drove convoys for the Army, that was always a fear—they knew exactly where we had to go because there was only one road from Karachi to Kabul. But I see on each of your maps here that you have multiple routes in case of last minute changes. Bad guys know that the President always departs from Andrews Air Force Base. So, for once, I wouldn’t.” Jim shrugged easily as if he was impervious to Tad Doogan’s ability to use his glare to burn a hole right through your ego.

  “Actually,” General Arnson, the commander of the Marine One helicopters, spoke up, “I’m going to agree with the young man. If we time the landing, we could taxi Air Force One into position here at the holding area from Runway 1R. It’s one mile from Udvar to that point along a secure road inside the airport perimeter. Run a small Motorcade along that road, then get him in the air.”

  Apparently Arnson was also immune to Doogan’s lethal abilities. But if she drove that short leg of the Motorcade, then she couldn’t be in position in Nashville in time to be the driver there.

  Doogan’s glare was now boring holes in the table. There was a dead silence until he snapped out without looking up.

  “Fine. Carver will drive Stagecoach from Udvar-Hazy to Air Force One. A relief driver will then move the car over to the service area at the east end of Runway 30 to load up on a C-17 and reposition it in Colorado. We will have a second Motorcade pre-positioned in Nashville. Essential Motorcade personnel will be provided with seats on Air Force One so that they don’t fall behind. That includes Jamieson, Walker, Carver, and I suppose whoever you are,” he waved a dismissive hand at Jim. “Now would everyone just start doing your jobs.” He aimed a final eye-launched laser at Jim before stalking off. Everyone else dispersed rapidly into smaller groups or hurried to their desks.

  “He’s a real sweetheart,” Jim whispered once they were the only two left at the central table.

  “That was him in a good mood.”

  “How’s your mood?”

  “I missed Malcolm. Thanks for bringing him by,” she kept her voice deadpan as she knelt down to pet the dog. And she did feel better. The impossible vice of pressure across her scalp had eased the moment the two of them had walked into the room.

  Jim offered a sigh as heartfelt as his dog’s for not getting his own slice of pizza last night.

  Not wanting to give away how glad she’d been to hear Jim’s voice on the phone, she’d kept her responses curt so that no one else could read anything into them. Her body had jolted at his arrival, evoking a hot flush of memories of how skilled a lover Jim Fischer was. He’d made any of her inadequacies seem irrelevant or even nonexistent, though she knew better. She could feel the heat brushing her cheeks, so she momentarily buried her face in Malcolm’s fur. The heat Jim’s mere presence was igniting throughout her body would have to wait for later.

  How odd to be looking forward to a lover. She looked forward to a race or a challenging drive. Lovers were mostly for briefly soothing frayed nerves or finding a release for whatever was bound up inside her and couldn’t find any other outlet.

  “It’s too bad humans don’t have engine rattles and exhaust pipes.” If they did, she’d know exactly what they were thinking. What she herself was thinking. Instead it was all muddled up inside her, and Jim Fischer seemed to be the one causing more muddle than usual.

  Jim was smiling in a way that promised a scatological thought was on his tiny, trucker mind. Not the kind of exhaust pipe she’d meant.

  Reese cracked him up. She saw everything as some version of a car, as if humans were so easy to diagnose. He wondered if her occasional humor was intentional. Of all the agents in the room, he didn’t recognize a one he could ask. It was as if the Motorcade was a world that had somehow passed him by unnoticed for so long.

  Phones rang, keyboards were pounded on, and a large calendar covered a whole section of one wall. An agent—with a habit of squeaking his marker in ways that were making both him and Malcolm twitch—was marking upcoming travel. Six-country, eight-day East Asian tour next month. Three days at the First Family’s farm in Tennessee. A meeting on the Hill.

  Each, he realized, required an immense mob
ilization of manpower and equipment. Layered on in separate colors were travels for other key protectees: Vice President, First and Second Ladies, Speaker of the House, a visit by the British Prime Minister. The more layers he saw, the more there were to see. It was a rare day where some element of the Motorcade wasn’t on the move.

  Before he hit complete overwhelm, he turned back to Reese and their next mission.

  “So,” he looked at the maps on the table, because if he looked one more time down her blouse as she knelt over Malcolm and admired the bra that he’d helped put there just a few hours before, he wasn’t going to be thinking of anything except how soon he could take it off again.

  “So?” She rose to her feet and looked at the projected maps with him.

  “Primary Motorcade route,” he traced the jogging blue line across Nashville.

  “And alternates,” she traced the red lines. “Some are designed to cross the main route so that we can bail out onto them if there is a traffic problem or a detected threat. Some don’t and are true alternates in their own right.”

  “And you memorize them all?”

  Her steady gaze said that was a given.

  Right! Reese Carver didn’t like repetitions of the obvious.

  Had she pre-mapped a variety of routes through their relationship? He’d rather not ask.

  “Where do I fit in?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” Reese looked as if she was answering both questions, even though Jim had meant to be asking about the Motorcade.

  “Okay, then, I’ll start.” He looked at her steadily and saw her eyes go a little wide.

  “Maybe that would be good,” she said it softly. Softly as in a bedroom voice. She was such a driven person that it had never occurred to him to take the lead in where their relationship might go—he’d been along for the ride and enjoying himself. Which might explain where Margarite and the other women of his past had gone, following their own lead with no guidance from him.

  Well, he didn’t like the idea of Reese Carver drifting away due to his negligence. He hated the idea of her with another man.