Brooks grabbed my arm before I could even take a step, shaking his head.
“Didn’t you feel her being taken?” Athena asked, looking as angry as I felt. “They said they took her from the hospital.”
“We would have if she hadn’t shut us out the day you took her from the house on the Cape,” Dallas shot at her looking ready to yank his IV out and go guns blazing to try and find her.
Athena looked like he’d reached out and slapped her. “I didn’t ask her to do that!”
“You may as well have. Face it, all of this is your fault, lady. If you had more control over your emotions, none of this would have happened,” Dallas, who apparently had nothing to lose at this point, said.
“Dallas!” Brooks looked like he wanted to go over to his brother and slap a hand over his mouth but wasn’t sure if he could let go of my arm either.
Athena’s face flushed and suddenly she looked human and not like the perfectly poised president that I’d grown accustomed to seeing on the TV. “You have no idea what was going through my mind at the time, young man.”
Behind her, McDaniels and Collier had seemed to have frozen, looking unsure if this was something for them to even get involved with in the first place.
“Hey!” Zeke, who’d been pretty quiet for most of the ensuing argument, finally boomed over the raised voices that immediately dropped. “Can I see that video again?”
“You want to watch the video of my daughter being held hostage again?” Athena asked incredulously.
Zeke looked like he was trying not to roll his eyes. “Please?”
Athena hit play on the laptop again and Zeke turned it toward himself, squinting at it again for a minute until his furrowed brow smoothed and he grinned. “Good girl.”
“Care to explain?” I asked.
“They kept her in her same clothes that she had on in the hospital yesterday.”
“Yes, I assume they don’t have different things wherever the hell they’re keeping her,” I said, turning the laptop so I could try to see whatever Zeke was seeing.
Zeke looked at Athena. “What is your theory about how they kidnapped her?”
“We think they crashed into her SUV just like the first kidnapping attempt, took out her security team, and kidnapped her from there. We found her usual SUV on the route back to the White House and all four agents except for Agent Kidwell dead inside of the vehicle.”
That information tickled my brain strangely.
“Why would they kill every agent except Agent Kidwell?” Dallas asked, his brain working faster than mine as he peered at the picture of Lennon over Zeke’s shoulder, his earlier anger gone as the more logical side took over.
“I had been meaning to talk to you about it earlier,” Zeke explained. “I was hoping it was just me being paranoid. But I remembered her being on the outer security team the last couple of monthsandshe was on the original team the night Agent Brady was killed.”
“She’s been a part of the Secret Service for years,” Agent Collier chimed in. “She has an impeccable record and has been long overdue for a promotion.”
“So why did Agent Brady never recommend her for one?” Dallas asked. “Was he the kind of supervisor that held agents back from promotion for no reason?”
Collier had no answer for that.
“So are you saying she has something to do with this?” Athena asked as she stared at her daughter’s limp form on the video.
“It’s a theory,” Zeke hurried to say. “But I’m betting if you pulled hospital video footage from the front of the hospital, Lennon and Kidwell won’t be getting into a typical standard-issue SUV and they sure as hell won’t be going back toward the White House.”
“Damn, you thought about all of that without me?” Dallas whistled. “Maybe I’m not the smart one of the group anymore.”
“You were in a coma,” Zeke said, giving the alpha a nudge with his elbow. “If it makes you feel better my brain really hurts from all of the thinking.”
“So why are you looking at the video? What does that have to do with Kidwell?”
Zeke grinned. “I wasn’t sure if my paranoia was right, but my mother always taught me it was better to be safe than sorry.”
Getting out of the bed he trotted to the other side of the room where we’d piled our bags and pulled out our laptops.
