President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (31 page)

“But she’s
all right?” Dutch had the look of a child seeking approval.
 
It broke Allison’s heart.

Ralph
glanced at Allison.
 
Then he looked back
at the president.
 
“She’s still alive, sir,”
was all he was willing to say about it.

“What do you
mean she’s still alive?” Dutch snapped.
 
“Of course she’s still alive!
 
Why
would you make a statement like that?”

“Because it’s true, Dutch!”
Ralph said.
 
He and
Dutch were old friends.
 
And although he
was not a political figure, and had a very non-personal role to play as head of
the Secret Service, this was personal with him now.
 
Somebody shot his good friend’s wife on his
watch.
 
This was personal.
 
“She’s fighting for her life,” he said.

Dutch stared
at his old friend, but he was still unable to fully appreciate the words he
spoke.
 
Then he ran his hand across his
face.
 
This couldn’t be happening.
 
He just knew this could not possibly be
happening, not to Gina.
 
Not Gina!

“What did it
. . . How did it . . . What happened, Ralph?”

“She went to
visit Jade, who, incidentally, is okay thank God.”

“What
happened to Gina?” Dutch asked impatiently.
 
Although a part of him was naturally pleased to hear that Jade was fine,
he didn’t want to hear about anybody else right now.
 
He
couldn’t
hear about anybody else right now.
 
“Tell me what happened to my wife!” he ordered.

“She went
over to
Jade’s
house,” Ralph continued, “and there was
a trap apparently set for her.”

A frown
appeared on Dutch’s face.
 
“A trap?
 
What kind of
trap?”

“A gun, an
assault rifle, had been rigged to fire on her entry into the home.”

“Good Lord,”
Dutch said, running his hand through his hair, his heart hammering.

“It was
rigged to fire five rounds,” Ralph went on.
 
“And it did.”

“
Five times
?”
Dutch asked amazed.
 
“She was shot
five times
?”

“Three solid
hits, one graze, and one complete miss, sir.
 
Four of the five bullets did hit.”

Dutch ran
his hand across his face again.
 
He felt
as if he was in quicksand.
 
Slowly sinking.
 
“Who
would do such a thing?” he asked in an almost rhetorical question to no-one,
his eyes trailing around the car.

“We believe,
sir,” Ralph said, “that Mr. Rance is responsible.”

Dutch looked
at Ralph. “Marcus?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You believe
her own brother did this to her?”

Allison
covered her mouth in shock, tears already in her eyes.
 
Ralph nodded his head.
 
“Yes, sir,” he said.

Dutch shook
his head.
 
“Where is he?” he asked.
 
“Where is that sonafabitch?!”

“We
don’t.
. . we don’t know where he is, sir.
 
But we’re searching.”

Dutch
frowned.
 
“You mean to tell me that
asshole was able to shoot my wife four times and walk away from it?”

“He set the
trap first, sir, and then he left.
 
But
we’ll find him, I promise you that.
 
We
had no idea.”
 
Ralph was looking almost
as distressed as Dutch.
 
“We were right
outside the door, sir.
 
Protocol did not
allow us to go inside that home without a reason or invitation.
 
We had no idea what Rance had done until we
heard the rapid fire.
 
We arrived
immediately, immediately, sir.
 
But the
First Lady was already down.”

Dutch closed
his eyes.
 
The idea of Gina down, with
bullets riddled through her body, punctured his heart.
 
He wasn’t there to protect her.
 
He wasn’t there to shield her.
 
He wasn’t there!
 
And it was unbearable to Dutch.
 
Unbearable like a
nightmare.
 
He wanted out of this
nightmare.
 
He wanted to wake up from
this!

Then he
thought about his son.
 
His innocent, defenseless son.
 
He opened his eyes.
 
“What about Little Walt?” he asked, panic
surging within
him.
 
“You’ve got to take me to Little Walt!”

“He’s fine,
sir,” Ralph assured him.
 
“We’ve shut
down the White House and secured the Nursery.
 
Walter Harber, Junior is in our complete protective custody, sir,” Ralph
made clear.
 
“The nannies do not even
have access to him right now.”

Dutch
exhaled.
 
He knew he had to pull it
together.
 
Then he thought beyond Walt
and Gina.
 
“You said Jade was okay?”

“Jade is
fine, yes, sir.
 
She
nor her mother were harmed.
 
Jade, in
fact, insisted on being airlifted with the First Lady.”

Dutch
thought about Jade.
 
He thought about her
sometimes stinging resentment of Gina.
 
He looked at Ralph.
 
“Watch her,”
he said.

This edict
confused Ralph.
 
“Sir?”

“I didn’t
stutter.
 
You watch that young lady.
 
You call your agents on that helicopter right
now and you tell them to watch Jade.
 
You
tell them that I don’t want her anywhere near my wife right now.”

Ralph
glanced at Allison.
 
What was he talking
about?

“You heard
me!” Dutch roared.
 
“Contact your
people!
 
I don’t want Jade, or Sam, or
anybody else near my wife right now.
 
It
may sound cruel to you, and I may sound heartless toward my own child, but I
don’t give a fuck how it sounds.
 
I don’t
know if they had a hand in this trap that was set for Gina or not, and I’m not
taking any chances.”
 
My sorry ass had
already taken too many chances, Dutch wanted to add.
 
He’d already ignored too many clues that were
staring him in the face!

“Yes, sir,”
Ralph said nervously, and began making contact with the agents that were in
full escort of the First Lady’s body.

Crader sat
on the sofa and waited for LaLa to talk to him.
 
She had said she understood him
now,
especially
after what she had done, and then she sat him down to tell him what it was
exactly that she had done.
 
Only she
couldn’t find the words to tell him.

Not that he
wanted to know.
 
He didn’t.
 
Unfair as it seemed, given what he had done,
a big part of him didn’t think he could handle the thought of another man
touching his wife.
 
But he knew he had to
know.
 
He had to know if his actions
drove his wife into the arms of another man.

“I could
never be in love with someone,” LaLa began, “and then allow another man to
touch me.
 
That’s what I’ve always
said.
 
That’s how I’ve always led my
life.
 
I couldn’t understand how you
could have slept with another woman, or even flirted with another woman, if you
truly loved me.
 
I just couldn’t believe
it was possible.”

Crader
stared at her.
 
“But you believe
it’s
possible now?”

LaLa was too
ashamed to look him in the eyes.
 
“Yes,”
she said with a frown on her face.

“What
happened, La?” he asked her.

But the
agony LaLa felt almost paralyzed her.

“Tell me,”
Crader insisted.
 
“It’s bad.
 
I already know it’s bad.”

That
declaration, that he was already suspecting the worse, helped her to face
him.
 
She looked at him.
 
“I
was.
. . home and
thinking about what all I had to do today.
 
I wasn’t expecting. . . I didn’t expect it to happen.”

“You didn’t
expect what to happen?
 
Tell me,
love.
 
Just tell me.”

“I never
dreamed I would . . . I could . . .”

“Who’s the
guy?” Crader suddenly had to know.

But LaLa was
still too involved in her own share of the blame to even think about pointing a
finger at someone else.

“Tell me,
La
.
 
Who’s the guy?”

The door to
the office of the vice president flung open so hard it bounced back from its
hinges.
 
Christian Bale, his face white
as a sheet, ran in.

Crader
jumped to his feet.
 
LaLa was dazed.
 
Had he heard their conversation?

“What is
it?”
 
Crader wanted to know.

But Christian
couldn’t speak.
 
He just stood
there.
 
Then he ran to the table, grabbed
the remote, and turned on the television.
 
It didn’t matter what channel.
 
Christian knew it was live on every channel.
 

Crader and
LaLa immediately looked at the television, too.

“…has been
shot,” the news anchor was in the middle of saying as soon as the TV clicked
on.
 
“I repeat
,
the First Lady of the United States, Regina Harber, has been severely wounded
in a hail of gunfire inside her stepdaughter’s home.”

Crader’s
heart almost pounded out of his chest.
 
LaLa placed her hand over her heart, to force herself to breathe.
 
And Christian collapsed against the table,
still unable to utter a mumbling word.

Marcus Rance
poured
 
himself
a glass of bubbly and reclined on the private jet as it steered him further and
further away from his homeland.
 
He was
ready to celebrate.
 
It had gone better
than he could have ever dreamed.
 
It was
such a clean getaway that he could hardly contain his joy.

And he had
given it time.
 
He had given it more than
enough time to hit the airwaves.
 
Now, as
he relaxed, he finally clicked on the television set in front of him.
 
And sure enough, he thought with a grin, it
was breaking news.

“Nobody can
believe it,” the reporter was saying as he stood outside of the home Marcus
once shared with Jade and Christian.
 
“The blood, the carnage.
 
According to our sources it was a horrific scene.
 
Who could do such a thing, everyone’s
asking.
 
Who would have shot to kill the
First Lady?”

Marcus
smiled turned into a frown.
 
What was he
talking about?
 
The
First Lady?
 
Did he say the First
Lady?

“But that
was exactly what somebody had done,” the reporter went on.
 
“Authorities tell us that someone, and we
believe they know who the suspect is, shot to kill Regina Harber, our First
Lady, and they shot her four times.”

The glass in
Marcus’s hand dropped involuntarily, and crashed to the floor.

The
presidential motorcade arrived at the helipad to make the final leg of the
journey to Bethesda Naval Hospital by chopper.
 
Dutch and Allison were scurried out of the limo and onto the aircraft
quickly, with a wall of agents on either side of them.
 
They were seated, buckled in, and lifted
away.

Dutch lobbed
his head backwards, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, as emotional
exhaustion began to overtake him.
 
He
felt as if he’d aged a hundred years in a matter of minutes.
 
And talk about blame.
 
Just before he was ushered out, he was in a
meeting where Congress was pointing a finger at him, and he was pointing a
finger at them, when everybody knew both were responsible for this economic
mess.
 
But Dutch knew, painfully, that he
and he alone was responsible for this mess that his wife, that his precious
Gina, found herself in.