Foreign Éclairs (8 page)

He shook his head. “They would feel like they had to
do
something. If they did, it would only make things worse.”

I came around to his side of the countertop and put my hand on his shoulder. “Give them a chance. They were kids once, too. They’ll understand. And believe me, they need to know what you’re going through.”

He nodded as though he’d expected me to say that.

“You’ll get through this,” I said. “I promise you will. It won’t be easy, but as long as you stay true to yourself and don’t give in to the Seths of the world, you’ll be okay.”

Gav showed up in the kitchen less than a minute after Josh left. “Your timing is amazing,” I said.

“One of the perks of the job,” he said as he came over to give me a kiss. “I get to loiter in the White House without anyone chasing me off. I’ve been here for about fifteen minutes, but didn’t want to rush you.”

“I appreciate that,” I said as I peeled off my apron and smock then tossed them into the laundry. “Josh and I had a nice chat.”

“What did you wind up making?” He looked around the still-pristine kitchen. “Whatever it was, you sure cleaned up fast.”

“No cooking today.” When he cocked an eyebrow in question, I shook my head. “It’s classified,” I said.

“Sounds serious.”

“What do you remember about middle school?” I asked.

“Three of the most miserable years of my life.”

“Exactly. ’Nuff said.”

I pulled a vivid blue V-neck sweater over my lightweight shirt. Eyeing Gav’s charcoal suit and shiny shoes, I glanced down at my dark slacks. “I originally planned to change clothes at home, but with the time crunch, this is as dressed up as I’m going to get. Is that okay?”

“You look wonderful. And besides, we’re going to Suzette’s, not a reception at the Kennedy Center.”

“So Jason was able to accommodate the delay?”

“Yep.” He looked at his watch. “You ready?”

*   *   *

While we drove to Crystal City, we discussed our days, and I shared my hopes about hiring Lottie Catalano to fill Cyan’s spot. Gav agreed that it didn’t seem right to wish for someone’s home purchase to fall through, but said he hoped for the best.

A fire engine clanged, rushing up the street as we parked Gav’s car in our apartment building’s lot. With mild temps and the air soft with the scent of autumn, it would be a lovely evening for the quick walk to Suzette’s. For the briefest moment, I considered running upstairs long enough to switch out of my work clothes into something nicer, but decided not to delay.

“You sure you don’t mind being seen with me?” I teased.

He squeezed my hand. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

We walked no more than thirty steps when I turned to look behind me. “Is that
another
siren?” A fire engine roared past us in a blaze of lights, its horn warning automobiles and pedestrians to get out of its way. “That’s the third one to pass us in the last minute.”

Two blocks ahead, a police car racing toward us took a hairpin left turn. Seconds later, another followed. “Whatever’s going on, it’s big,” Gav said.

At the next intersection, through a clearing, he pointed south over the top of the nearby buildings where gray smoke twisted into the dark sky. “It looks like the beginnings of a fire.” He gave a quizzical look. “Or the end of one. But why all the heavy equipment if it’s under control?”

“That has to be near Suzette’s,” I said. “The same street, for sure.”

He gripped my hand a little tighter. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

As we picked up our pace, an ambulance rushed by, followed by two more police cars.

At the end of the block, we turned right and stopped in our tracks. “What is going on?” I asked.

Gav didn’t answer. Before us, the entire street was in chaos. Emergency lights flashed from every direction, nearly blinding me. The next block—where we were headed—was completely obstructed. Cops shouted, trying to establish order, urging people back and away. But from what?

The lingering smoke, though dissipated, was acrid and biting. I coughed, clutching Gav’s arm. “Look.”

Suzette’s restaurant was located three buildings in from the corner where we stood. Or, at least, it had been. The front of the establishment was missing. Reduced to rubble. Utterly destroyed. The former cheerful doorway and the bright front window was now a blackened and charred mess.

It hurt to breathe. “Gav? What happened?”

A cop shouted for us to get away. When we didn’t immediately comply, he started toward us. “Move along, folks. You can’t be here.”

Gav pulled out his ID. “I want to talk with whoever’s in charge.”

The cop hesitated a split second. “Over there.” He pointed ten feet west, where three men in suits huddled. Their arms
were crossed, and they wore solemn expressions. “One of them.”

Our favorite restaurant looked as though some Godzilla-like creature had reached over and clawed the entire front of the two-story building away. The front of the apartment above the restaurant had been sheared off, leaving the rooms open to the elements, looking sad and vulnerable, like a destroyed home in a war zone.

“What about Jason?” I asked. “Where is he? I hope he’s all right.”

Gav didn’t speak as we picked through uneven chunks of concrete and piles of debris I couldn’t begin to identify.

“Gavin,” one of the men said when he spotted us. I didn’t recognize him, but from his appraising glance I got the impression he recognized me. “What are you doing here?”

“We had dinner plans, Cummings,” Gav responded. He acknowledged the two other men with a nod. “What happened?”

Cummings stepped away from his group and gestured for us to join him. “Wish I knew,” he said quietly. “Call came in about twenty minutes ago about a gas explosion.” He shook his head and lowered his voice. “This was no gas explosion.”

Gav and I were still holding hands. His grip tightened and his jaw clenched. “What was it?”

Joe Yablonski stepped into our group. “That’s the question we need to answer, isn’t it?” The big man nodded a greeting to each of us. “Agent Cummings, Agent Gavin. Ms. Paras.”

“Joe,” Gav said. “What are you doing here?”

“Taking control of the situation. And I’ll need your eyes and ears on this one,” he said. Turning to Agent Cummings, he said, “Would you please see Ms. Paras safely home?”

“But—” I said.

Yablonski’s eyes were just as steely as I remembered.
“No arguments, Ms. Paras.” To Cummings, he said, “I want an agent outside her door around the clock. Call in whoever you need.”

“Yes, sir,” Cummings said.

Yablonski turned to Gav. “Let’s go.”

“It’ll be okay, Ollie,” Gav said as he broke away.

I wanted to hug him, but Yablonski’s sharp rebuke to Cummings—“Get going”—forestalled that plan.

I called to Gav as Yablonski led him away. “Be safe.”

Without breaking stride, he turned. “I will.”

*   *   *

Two hours later, after watching news coverage of the explosion on every possible station and refreshing my browser again and again, hoping for updates that never came, I began to pace. Every media outlet parroted the same story: gas explosion at a neighborhood restaurant. Five people injured and taken to area hospitals. No one confirmed dead. Not yet, at least. Gas company officials investigating. Authorities keeping the public far away until the area was safe again.

Cummings’s words taunted me: “This was no gas explosion.”

Then what was it?

I checked the time on my cell phone for probably the forty-third time in the past half hour. I desperately wanted to call Gav, but knew that I couldn’t. When he was busy with Yablonski, he had no time for interruptions. He’d call me when he could.

My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. When Agent Cummings had brought me back, food had been the last thing on my mind. He’d walked through my apartment exactly the way Agent Romero
had the first time she’d brought me home, and he assured me that he, or a colleague, would remain outside my door all night.

That was small consolation now when what I wanted most was to have my husband here.

Almost as though I’d willed it so, my cell phone came alive in my hand. Gav’s ring. “Are you okay?” I asked the moment we connected.

“I’m fine,” he said in a far more brusque tone than I would have expected. “Have you eaten?”

Startled by the question, I hesitated. “No, but—”

“Meet me at the car,” he said. “We’ll grab something.”

“But—”

“Ollie.” His tone was off. Way off.

“Okay,” I said. “How soon?”

“Two minutes.”

I hung up, grabbed my coat and keys, and flung open the front door, having momentarily forgotten about my bodyguard. Agent Romero stood there. “Cummings had to go,” she said. “Looks like you’re stuck with me again.”

“Gav’s meeting me downstairs,” I said by way of explanation.

She frowned. A second later, her phone rang. She held a finger up, indicating that I should wait while she answered. Less than thirty seconds later, she ended the call. “I’m to escort you to him.”

Romero and I took the elevator down and, true to her word, she stayed by my side until Gav wrapped his arms around me, thereby relieving her of duty. “Thank you very much,” he said. “Are you here all night?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Have a nice dinner. I’ll see you both when you return.”

The moment we broke apart, I asked, “What in the world is going on?”

Gav didn’t answer. Instead, he held out his hand. “Let me see your phone.”

I gave it to him.

He examined it closely. “This hasn’t been out of your possession recently, has it?”

“Not at all. I keep it with me wherever I go. This was in my pocket when my purse was stolen.”

“What about at the White House? Do you ever leave it unattended?”

“No, never.”

He handed it back. “When you made our dinner reservations for Suzette’s, did you use this or the apartment’s landline?”

I thought back. “The landline.”

“Let’s walk,” he said.

He led me through the sea of parked cars to the main street. The same street we’d taken earlier this evening. Instead of heading south, however, we walked north. Gav and I were notoriously quick-paced, but tonight we strolled.

The air had cooled tremendously. I shivered. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He waited until we got to a bench. “Have a seat,” he said. When I did, he made a slow circuit around it before sitting down next to me.

“Jason is okay. He was pretty badly injured, but he’ll make it. His restaurant, on the other hand . . .” Gav sat forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. “I hope he has good insurance.”

I waited for him to continue, knowing he would at his own pace.

“There was no gas leak,” he said after a pause. “But I assume you already knew that.”

“Got that impression, yes.”

“Suzette’s was destroyed by an IED.”

I knew from the first time Gav and I had worked together, long before we even liked each other, that an IED was an improvised explosive device.

“Who would want to target Suzette’s?”

“Here’s where it gets interesting.” Tension tightened his face, deepening his cheeks and accentuating his jawline. A vein throbbed at his throat. He raised his eyes, checking the area around us again. “Remember how we talked about signature bombs? And how we can sometimes trace a bomb to its creator through an analysis of its components and composition?”

I nodded.

“Our forensics team will be analyzing the debris to confirm, but Yablonski and I are convinced that the bomb that destroyed Suzette’s today was created by the same person who set off the bomb at Cenga Prison on Sunday.”

When I gasped, Gav turned to face me. “I wasn’t able to share specifics when you asked, but after tonight, Yablonski is greenlighting including you in the investigation.” He took both my hands. “The bomb that went off at Cenga Prison was almost certainly the work of Armustanian terrorists.”

“Which means that the bomb at Suzette’s was theirs, too?”

“Yes.”

Realization crashed, humming in my ears and quickening my heart. I stiffened, but Gav held tight to my hands as I reasoned it out. “Yablonski is allowing you to tell me all this because
we
are targets?”

He nodded.

I turned away, picturing the destruction I’d seen tonight. “The front of Suzette’s was blown off. Our table,” I said. “If Josh hadn’t asked to work with me in the kitchen—if we hadn’t been delayed, we would have been there tonight when the bomb went off.”

Gav nodded again.

“The Armustanians knew our plans, didn’t they?” I asked. “And that’s why you asked which phone I used to make the reservation. The landline. They’re taping our phone calls?”

Still holding my hands, he spoke quietly. “We believe it may be worse than that. We believe that when your purse was stolen, they were after your keys. We believe they bugged the entire apartment.”

“But I had the locks changed the next morning, remember? Agent Romero and I walked through the entire apartment that night to make sure no one was—” My hands flew out of Gav’s into the air as the answer came to me. “Of course. They
were
in our apartment that night. They let themselves in while I was busy giving my statement to the Secret Service and the police.”

“Most likely, yes.”

Snippets from that evening came back to me in a rush. “James mentioned confusion in the lobby that evening. How much do you want to bet that it was a distraction to allow someone to sneak past him unnoticed?”

Gav looked sad. “As a doorman, James is ineffectual at best. Even on a good day he tends to fall asleep at his post.”

The bombers had been in our apartment. And I’d never suspected it. My stomach somersaulted. “They’ve been listening to everything, haven’t they?” I sucked in a breath as horror set my gut spinning again, this time shooting bile up the back of my throat. “Cameras? Do you think there are cameras in our apartment?”