Jamie kept his anger to himself and throttled the urge to call into headquarters and report in. He’d have to rely on Kyle getting the word back to the MDF for him, because he doubted he’d be left alone long enough to speak with anyone. The Secret Service were all on high alert, which was understandable, but Jamie had been dealing with shit like this for nearly his entire adult life. He didn’t need minders telling him what to do when he had a better idea of what was going on thantheydid.
“Destination?” Jamie asked without looking up from histablet.
“The senator wanted to regroup at the hotel your family is staying at, but it could be compromised. We’re relocating to a secure location,”Burwellsaid.
“Where?”
Burwell seemed to recognize that Jamie wasn’t in the mood to argue. “The FBI office in downtown LosAngeles.”
Jamie glared at his tablet as he opened up a message uplink to Katie.Assassination attempt on my father. Regrouping and will try to get out of here soon. Sent Kyle onahead.
Her response came a few seconds later.Whatthefuck?
Alert the director. I’ll call in when I can. Pull every security feed from the area that you can find. My gut tells me this is Declan or Cillian working on orders of thePavluhkins.
I’monit.
Jamie spent the rest of the drive to the FBI office updating his team, passing on Ariella’s travel information to Kyle, and getting his thoughts in order for the fight ahead with his father. The Boston rally scheduled for tomorrow needed to be canceled, but convincing his father of that was going to be damn near impossible. Some days Jamie really wished his father would worry about his own safety over the goddamn pollnumbers.
The SUV didn’t have lights running for the drive to the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, but they still got there in a decent amount of time despite traffic on the road. Burwell called ahead when they were ten minutes out. The Secret Service and half a dozen FBI agents met them in the restricted parking garage to escort Jamie up to the level his family was currentlyensconcedin.
He left the borrowed gun behind in the SUV and followed after the FBI agent who didn’t bother introducing herself and merely said, “Thisway.”
They’d put his parents and sister in an interior conference room, no windows to the outside world. When Jamie entered, several campaign aides were on multiple uplinks, his father was arguing with someone Jamie didn’t recognize, and his mother was dictating orders to Ariella with a calmness that was betrayed by the white-knuckled grip her hands had on the back of a chair as she peered over her assistant’sshoulder.
“Everyone out,” Jamie said, pitching his voice loud and clear over the buzz of conversation going on. “I want to meet with my familyalone.”
The sharp order had everyone pausing for a brief, wide-eyed moment, before most people scrambled to obey. Several higher-ranking campaign aides looked like they were set to stay, but one steely-eyed glare from Jamie got them moving. Only after everyone was out of the office and Jamie had activated the soundproofing did hespeak.
Looking across the room at where his father stood, Jamie said, “You need to cancel the Bostonrally.”
“Absolutely not,” Richardsnapped.
“Richard, please, think about what you’re doing,” Charlotte said, sounding tired and stressed out. His mother looked more than a little rattled, but only because he knew how to see it in the ever-smiling façade of the politician’s wifeshewore.
“Iamthinking about it, and I’m not going to back down from my campaign simply because someone is trying tokillme.”
“If Kyle hadn’t seen the sniper first, you would bedead, Father,” Jamie said, the words practically ripped out of him. “Maybe you should have taken the threats against you a little more seriously rather than use it to feed your goddamn pollnumbers.”
Richard glared at him, cold anger filling his gaze. “Watch your tone with me, son. I wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’tforyou.”
Jamie wished he could deny that fact, but he strongly believed the people who tried to kill his father today were part of the terrorist groups the MDF was hunting down. That meant a high probability of Stanislav being behind the assassination attempt. That fear was something Jamie didn’t have the luxury of giving in to at themoment.
He’d deal with that problemlater.
“Maybe you wouldn’t be,” Jamie conceded. “But you’ve had threats against your person before this, and have done the same thing now as you did back then—use it to bolster your status in the Senate. You can spin this all you like for the campaign, I don’t fucking care. But the people who are probably behind the attack aren’t people you can mock on the news to prove your mettle to your supporters and think further retaliation won’thappen.”
“You should cancel Boston, Father. Boston Common is out in the open like today was. What if someone tries something like this again?” Leah said, sounding more subdued than sheusuallywas.
Jamie glanced at her, seeing the worry on her face as clear as day. “Exactly.”
Richard didn’t immediately respond to the request from his children, and Jamie braced himself for the forthcoming answer. He knew his father, knew how Richard picked his political fights and made shark deals in the boardroom before he won his first campaign. Family was not immune to hisanger.
“We’ve bent over backward as a family to accommodate the decisions you’ve made in regard to how you live your life and the job you do, Jamie,” Richard bit out, voice rising a little from his anger. “It’s no longer acceptable for you to make the demands you do. We are not yourteam, we are yourfamily.”
“My teamismy family,” Jamie shot back, meaningeveryword.
He’d led them, fought with them, nearly died with some of them, and buried too many others. They might not be of the same blood, but they’d all bled together on the battlefield more times than he could count. Jamie refused to let his father trivialize the relationship he had with the men and women he had the honor toservewith.
