by James Smythe
None of us knew. In the FBI – I came from the FBI, FBI to secret service desk job to politics, like that was a normal route – there’s a rule about serial killers. First time they kill it’s to see how it felt, or because it was an accident. The second kill was because they found something in the first that they liked, and they wanted to see if they could recreate that feeling, that high. It can still be a coincidence, and it’s not quite a pattern.
I heard POTUS on the phone to the First Lady, checking on her and the kids, and then … We know it wasn’t static now, right? It was that garbled, fragmented noise that you get when you drive out of a tunnel with the car radio on, as it becomes clearer, picks up the signal again. It suddenly went from noise to words. My Children, it said, and then faded back into the static as quickly as it came. Our driver, I forget his name, he looked like he was going to hurl. Pull over, I screamed at him, and he did. The agents in the vehicles flanking us ran from their cars, swarmed ours, and I threw open my door. Get him to the White House, I said, and then I saw POTUS, and he looked absolutely terrified. I’d seen this man face down talks about nuclear disarmament, negotiate peace treaties, win an election, for God’s sake, and he always looked calm. That was how he was going to be remembered, we always said during the campaign: the calm President, the cool one, the collected one.
In the FBI, it was one kill for a mistake, two because they liked it. We used to sit in the offices and pray that a third body never turned up, because if it did … Well, then you’ve got a real problem on your hands.
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Blue Door
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © James Smythe 2013
James Smythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Ebook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780007428618
Source ISBN: 9780007428601
Version 1
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