Flowerbed of State (36 page)

I grabbed his lapels and peeled my lips from his.

“Um . . . um . . .” What had we been talking about?

“Have I told you yet how beautiful you look tonight?” he whispered in my ear.

“No, but I like how you express your approval.” Excitement bubbled in my chest. If his kiss had the power to knock me breathless, what would happen if I invited him up to my bedroom and let him do more than kiss?

“What’s that?” A commotion at the entrance had caught Richard’s attention. “John’s in trouble.” The Secret Service agents seemed to have all converged in one spot. Richard and I moved closer to get a better view of what was happening.

Was that the head of CAT, Mike Thatch, arguing with President Bradley?

The First Lady spotted me and directed the Secret Service to allow us to come closer. Because there was really no danger to the President and First Lady, just a minor disagreement, Richard and I easily squeezed through the tight circle the Secret Service agents had formed around the First Family.

“What’s going on?” I asked Mrs. Bradley when I reached her side.

She hooked her arm in mine. A sparkle of excitement lit her eyes. “We’re springing a little surprise for the press pool. They follow John and me everywhere, dutifully recording our movements. But we’ve been attending many private events like these lately where the press pool is banned from coming inside and watching the proceedings. They’re stuck in a stuffy van for hours, waiting to follow us back home with really nothing to report. But not tonight. Come on.”

“Give us five minutes to secure the area,” Thatch told the President, who nodded.

It actually took more than ten minutes for the Secret Service to give the okay. By that time, nearly everyone at the event was speculating on what President Bradley planned to do.

“He’s going to sing,” someone whispered behind me.

I doubted that.

“We know what this is about,” Richard whispered in my ear.

I nodded as we preceded the President and First Lady outside. The press pool had gathered around the restaurant’s entrance along with Dupont Circle residents, who’d lined the street in order to catch a glimpse of the First Family.

Uniformed and Secret Service agents dressed in dark suits eyed the crowd suspiciously and moved quickly to intercept anyone who tried to get too close. I spotted a few CAT agents patrolling in the background.

The President’s limousine stood running at the front door, ready to whisk the First Family away as soon as the surprise had been sprung.

Richard stood behind me with his hands on my shoulder. The First Family took their place in front of the press pool. Senators Pendergast and Finnegan pushed their way through the crowd to stand at the President’s elbow.

Once everyone had settled down, President Bradley cleared his throat. Photographers began snapping nonstop, their flashbulbs blinding.

“Many of you in the press pool have become as close to me as family. We practically all live together at the White House.”

Several members of the press pool chuckled.

Mrs. Bradley squeezed her husband’s hand. When he continued, he gazed lovingly at his wife. “There’s going to be a new addition coming to live with us at the White House.
Two
new additions, actually.”

A collective gasp rose from within the press pool.

“Margaret has given me the best gift a wife can give her husband.” His smile grew wider. So did the First Lady’s.

“We’re having twins,” she said.

Someone started to clap. Others joined in.

Cheers and whistles filled the street.

“John’s a crafty man,” Richard said, shaking his head. “Just like me, he’ll do anything to win. The morning news will be about the pregnancy, not about how he spent the week butting heads with senators and Wall Street without accomplishing anything.”

“I’m sure that’s not why—” I’d started to say.

The rest of that thought got caught in my throat as I spotted Joanna Lovell. What was she doing here? She stood at the edge of the crowd gathered from the surrounding neighborhood.

She wore the same suit and running shoes from two days ago, but they looked freshly pressed and clean. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and her face had been cleaned of makeup.

A large flowered bag was slung over her shoulder, as if she’d spent the day shopping. She looked so harmless that when I first spotted her, recognition didn’t fully kick in until I saw her reach into that bag and pull out a—

“Gun!” I broke away from Richard and lurched toward her. “There! She’s there!”

But I was too late.

The Secret Service agents who dove toward her were also too late. The gun had been fired but I don’t remember hearing it go off.

Senator Pendergast went down first.

And then Brooks.

A CAT agent jumped in front of me. Bullets that would have struck me peppered his chest. He fell backward, knocking me down with him.

Other Secret Service agents swarmed the area with their guns drawn. The Presidential limousine’s tires screeched as it sped away from the curb followed by several black SUVs. I prayed the President and First Lady had escaped unharmed.

As I pulled myself up, I noticed the CAT agent who had saved me remained crumbled like a broken toy soldier on the sidewalk. Grabbing his shoulders, I rolled him over onto his back.

“
Turner!
”

I
ran my hands over Jack Turner’s chest. He wasn’t my sidekick and wasn’t even my friend. So why was I crying? I pressed my hands against the three dark bullet holes that had torn through his uniform in an effort to stanch the flow of blood.

But there wasn’t any blood.

A heart has to beat for a bullet wound to bleed. Thanks to Turner for bringing up memories I had hoped to leave buried in my past, I remembered that grisly detail from my mother’s death.

No heartbeat. No blood. No life.

Turner was dead.

“
No
.” Tears clogged my throat. I cradled his lifeless body in my lap and buried my face in his chest. He’d saved me. He didn’t have to do it. He didn’t have to fling himself into the line of fire for me. But Turner had that damned hero complex, and that’s what heroes did—they sacrificed themselves. “Oh, Turner.”

“What the hell are you doing?” a raspy voice asked.

I raised my head, expecting to find Richard.

I didn’t expect to see that the dead guy I’d been cradling in my arms had opened his eyes.

I yelped and dropped him on the pavement. “You—you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Bulletproof vest.”

“Of course.” I patted his ruined vest.

He pushed my hand away. “The bullets still pack one hell of a punch. Come morning my chest will be a rainbow of bruises, but you don’t have to cry. I’m fine.” He jumped to his feet and thumped the vest’s ceramic insert. “These really are top-of-the-line, military-grade body armor.”

“Wait,” I called.

“They’ve got the shooter.” He pointed to his earpiece as he trotted away. “It was Joanna.”

 

THE SECRET SERVICE CORRALLED EVERYONE
who’d attended the wildlife charity event back into the restaurant while a pair of ambulances roared away with their sirens blaring, rushing Senator Pendergast and Brooks Keller to the nearest hospital. So far, no one I’d asked knew the extent of either of their injuries. They’d both been shot, but no one else had been hurt.

“I don’t understand what’s going on. Why would Joanna want to shoot at the President?” I asked Agent Cooper, hoping he could answer at least that question for me.

An uncomfortable hush had descended in the room. A couple of people were whispering as if they were attending a funeral. Most looked shell-shocked, staring blankly at nothing.

I followed Agent Cooper as he took charge of the investigation, giving orders to the officers on duty. Looking sorely out of place with his tweed suit in the midst of black-and-white tuxedos, he snatched a crab cake as he passed the buffet table.

“Didn’t have dinner,” he explained.

“Didn’t eat much tonight myself,” I said, and popped a crab cake in my mouth. They were excellent. “Joanna had a grudge against Brooks. I understand that. But President Bradley and Senator Pendergast were both pressing hard on passing the kind of banking legislation that Joanna and her gang of protesters wanted.”

Cooper shook his head as he chewed. “Don’t know. But she’s in custody, so you can bet we’ll find out.”

“Will you?” I wasn’t so sure.

Richard came over with his BlackBerry glued to his ear. “How much longer before they let us go home?” he asked Cooper.

“I’m wondering the same thing,” Senator Finnegan agreed as he joined us.

“Well, we’ll need to take everyone’s statement. Once that’s done, I suppose you can go.”

Several partygoers standing near us seemed to wake up from their state of shock. One man shifted nervously from foot to foot. A few others sighed loudly. The volume of the conversations increased sharply.

Janie Partners must have noticed the rising tension, too. She had a short conversation with the string quartet. A few minutes later they started to play one of Beethoven’s opuses.

Detective Hernandez arrived not long after with his team of detectives. After conferring with the FBI and Secret Service, Hernandez directed his men to spread out across the room with notebooks in hand to assist in taking statements from everyone in the room.

Lucky me, I got the special treatment. Detective Hernandez, Agent Cooper, and the Secret Service’s top man at the White House, the Assistant Director in charge of Protective Operations, William Bryce, all wanted to personally talk to me.

“Are the President and Mrs. Bradley okay?” I asked as soon as the men had settled around one of the buffet tables that had been cleared.

“Thanks to your sounding the alarm and taking quick action, they’re safe,” William Bryce said.

“Really?” I beamed not only because I was happy to know that the First Family was safe, but also because this was the first time the Secret Service hadn’t scolded me for something I’d done. “How about Senator Pendergast and Brooks Keller? Have you heard about how they’re doing?”

Bryce nodded. “The senator only suffered a superficial wound in her arm. It bled like the devil, but she’ll be home by tomorrow morning. I heard she’s still planning on bringing her grandchildren to Monday’s Easter Egg Roll and that she’s giving her doctors at the hospital hell.”

“That’s good to hear. And Brooks?”

“The last I heard, he was still in surgery. He took a bullet to the stomach.”

“God, he’s going to be in a world of pain for a long time to come.” I winced, remembering.

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” Cooper said, frowning at me. “Why? Did something—”

“Let’s go over what happened.” Bryce, who knew my past from my security clearance check, didn’t let the FBI agent finish his question.

The four of us reviewed the events as they’d happened in great detail. Because Detective Hernandez wasn’t on hand when the shooting started, he asked the most questions.

By the time we’d finished, I had a sinking feeling that they were missing an important piece of the puzzle.

“You don’t think Joanna killed Pauline?” I asked Agent Cooper.

He flicked his pen several times. “I think she was involved, yes. You knew that both Pauline and Joanna were sleeping with Brooks. We have reason to believe that Pauline may have been responsible for Joanna getting fired and blacklisted.”

“Yes. I’d heard that, too.”

“That’s more than enough motive for me.”

The other men nodded.

“But what about Senator Pendergast?”

“What about her?” Agent Cooper asked.

“Why would Joanna try to run her down with a car the other day? What’s her motive there?”

“There’s no evidence connecting the hit-and-run to any of this,” Cooper pointed out.

“If that’s true, why did Joanna shoot the senator tonight?”

Bryce sighed. “Bullets were flying everywhere. Until we get a clear picture of what Joanna had planned, if she ever gives us one, we don’t know who she targeted. My money’s on President Bradley. If she’d been gunning for anyone else, she could have picked an easier place to do it.”

But the only people who had been shot were Senator Pendergast and Brooks Keller. And those last bullets seemed to have been aimed at me. If not for Turner’s heroic dive, I doubt I would have survived the night. I hugged my arms to my chest and leaned forward in the chair.

And yet, Joanna had no apparent reason to want to kill the senator, the president, or me. Perhaps Bryce was right and her spray of bullets had been random. But why would she open fire like that? What had made her snap? Did Mr. Baseball Cap push her into something that she couldn’t control?