“Are you, now?”
“Yes. Can we collect Mr. Cruz, please?”
He steps closer, staring up at me, defying me to say what he knows I want to say. “Anything else?”
It’s the evil smirk that finally does it. I duck my head to speak in his ear, covering my mouth with my hand.
“Point proven,Sir.”
He reaches up and adjusts my bowtie. “What point would that be?”
Because of how my hand’s positioned I can easily reach out and flick the daith piercing in his right ear. “Thatpoint, Mr. Walsh.”
He laughs. “I’ll tell the detail we’re ready to depart,MisterPresident.”
“You do that.”
He casts me another cocky smirk over his shoulder as he walks away and maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I won’t be pinning him down and fucking him tonight.
Maybe, with help from Leo, I’ll be on the bottom.
Yay!
As stressed out as I feel, had I known this day would mark a descent leading to one of the worst moments of my life, I might have savored that innocent, self-absorbed anxiety I put myself and my men through.
And I might have made far different choices.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
NOW
I pagethrough the briefing book my national security advisors brought me. Right now I’m wearing jeans and a Cornhuskers hoodie and I’m locked in my private study off the Oval Office with the two officials conducting today’s PDB. Leo and Jordan are upstairs in the residence and enjoying well-earned time alone together.
What I’m stuck on right now, believe it or not,isn’twhat Leo and Jordan are doing without me.
I know. Hard to believe, right?
No, in this moment I’m in work mode and completely focused. Two years into this job and I’m able to compartmentalize like a motherfucker. I’m processing what I was just told and paging through the info in the briefing binder. This is the last item of my briefing, which was actually fairly light today.
This last item, however, has the potential to be pretty damned serious.
Then again lots of things brought to me in the PDB have the potential to be pretty damned serious and end up amounting to nothing. If I panicked at every heads-up I’m given about potential national security threats I’d be in worse shape than I already am.
Sitting back, I close my eyes for a moment. “We don’t have any solid intel?”
“We’re working on developing several possible lines of inquiry based on the informant’s intel, sir,” the first agent says.
There’s word that a man named Pasha Belyaevskin, who’s a Russian national with close ties to several oligarchs, is bragging about getting involved in some sort of operation supposedly taking place at an unknown future time on US soil, in conjunction with a pseudo-religious group that’s a perennial political pain in my ass.
“We have to walk a fine line between gathering intel and violating people’s rights,” I say, opening my eyes. “Even those of foreign nationals. I’m not comfortable requesting FISA warrants at this time. Not if we don’t have hard proof.”
The second agent refers to his material. “We’re not at that stage yet, sir. We won’t apply for FISA warrants until we’re certain there is actionable intel—”
“Confirmedintel,” I say. “Corroboratedintel. No goddamned yellow-cake uranium bullshit. You need to make sure you go to all the appropriate agencies and verify this isn’t something they’re already working on. I don’t want any interdepartmental pissing contests that end up thrown out of court just because people step on each other’s intel ops. I also want everyone sharing information. Create a joint task force, if need be, or wrap this investigation inside an existing one that overlaps.” I turn the page to the next point. “And we don’t have any concrete links to US citizens on US soil plotting anything in concert with this guy, do we?”
“No, sir,” the first agent says. “Not yet.”
I wish I could remember their names but they’re not my usual briefers and I’ve already asked them their names twice. I’ll feel like an idiot if I ask them a third time.
