Kevin’s ex-wife, best friend, and my wife’s press secretary—who’s all thesamewoman, sorry, I know that’s confusing—was murdered blocks from her DC townhome last week.
The shooter has not yet been caught, nor are there any substantial leads.
There is no rational reason to assume these two events are connected, two distinctly differentcrimes almost ten months apart. With every available government agency possible working the two cases, no one has thought they’re connected other than by tragic coincidence.
Except in my brain, thereissomething going on. This is kind of what I did for a living. One of my duties was threat assessment, which meant connecting the completely discrete and seeing how they fit together to form a largerpicture.
My gut is telling me thereisa connection, and that connection is through us as the First Family. This is not random, even though I have no proof. Everyone from my protective detail to the Secret Service director listens to me and nods and humors me, because I have a rep as a hard-ass for safety protocols and quadruple checking every last detail. They think I’m overreacting.
But letme tell you what—no protectee was killed or seriously injured on my watches—ever. I’m not talking stupid accidents like tripping, or falling off a bicycle.
It enrages me that there are no arrests in either case.
It terrifies me that the children could be in danger.
Oh, yeah. Adding to my already incredible stress, there’s also the little matter of Portia is up for reelection the first Tuesdayin November, just a couple of weeks away, and we are now the guardians to my twin nieces and little nephew.
AKA Petal, Pixie, and Pyro.
He’s got a thing for fireworks, and he picked the name himself after he saw it on the code name list and we explained what it meant, so shut up. He’sfive.
It was that, or he was going to pick “Pecan,” because he loves pecan pie, and I don’t feel like listeningto five years of PPD agents arguing if it’s “PEE-can” or “puh-CAHN.”
And, duh, there’s two kinds of people—those who pronounce it correctly, and those who pronounce it the first way.
Losing Lauren has hurt all of us, but Prophet especially so. He’s the reason she was working here in the first place. He and Lauren worked at the same conservative cable news network when they met, and they weremarried for four years. It was an amicable divorce, and they remained close friends after.
Fast forward to six years ago, when a long series of events that started with him and I meeting at Spring Break in Daytona twenty years prior and having a week together neither of us could forget, ended with him literally melting down on live TV.
A week later, Portia and I stepped in, gave him a choice,and moved forward together, the three of us.
It wasn’t that simple, of course. There were some lies told by her, some by me to him and to her, and a helluva lot of hard work on the campaign trail and behind closed doors.
When Portia was elected POTUS two years later, the first hire Prophet made, on election night, was Lauren. He’d already told her he was gay, and hinted there was a guy fromyears ago. Then he hintedIwas the guy, and that what Portia and I have is a mutual kind of beard sitch.
Which was a total fucking lie, because he’d long since stepped into Sir mode with Portia. He’s as in love with her as we are with him. And, yes, obviously, my wife and I definitely have a full relationship. She’smine.
But she’s alsoHis.
Prophet wasn’t even supposed tobehere tonight,but Portia gets this thing sometimes where she can’t eat. I don’t mean she won’t eat—shecan’t. She’ll puke it up. It’s a stress reaction. No matter what, no matter how I try, the sadist in me that she loves can never help her with that, and neither can Special Agent Bruunt, or the First Spouse, or even just plain Christopher Bruunt, her husband.
Believe me, I’vetried.
Her Prophet, however,has the magic touch with His girl.
I wasn’t going to tell hm she still wasn’t eating, because even she admits after a few days her stomach will straighten up and she’ll be fine. Kev was trying to take a few days for himself to regroup and get his feet under him so he could get back to work with the election looming. Instead of staying at the White House, he’d retreated to the townhouse we allshared before Shae was elected. I visited him the past two nights to give him some stress relief.
But I’m guessing Leo, Shae’s body man, probably spilled the beans to Kev about her not eating. Kev unexpectedly showed up tonight to spend some time with her in her study and coax some food into her.
And now I’m taking him back to the townhouse to givehimsome personal time.
With me, he’s Kev,and he’s my boy, and I’m his safe space, his higher power. I can protect him from the world—or so I tell myself.
I want nothing more than to love and nurture him. Sure, with spankings, but he likes that.
With Shae, from me she needs the sadist, the primal man who won’t take no for an answer, who scares her in all the good ways and who can wrest control from her until she’s ready and able totake it back. A temporary mental break she can choose or not, depending on whether she needs it or not.
As Prophet, he can bring Portia in line with a raised eyebrow, a silent gesture. She’s a fierce lawmaker and executive officer in her own right, but we all need downtime. The thinking part of her brain never shuts off in healthy ways without a little assistance.
