“Adams, where are you and Flicker at?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
He hated when our protectee wasn’t in his line of sight at all times—especially at such a crowded venue.
Turning so that my back was to Lennon, I sighed before responding. “She’s on the balcony. Needed some air.”
“Well get her back in here. Dinner’s about to start and she’s got a speech to give.”
As if she could hear Maverick’s voice in my ear, Lennon shot me a wry grin. “I take it it’s time to head back inside?”
I nodded dumbly and watched as her slender shoulders rose in a long sigh before she downed her glass of champagne and straightened her spine.
“Well?” she asked, plastering the plastic smile of a president’s daughter on her face, the same one she’d been wearing all night.
It was like her own personal version of a suit of armor that deflected any ounce of criticism from the people that were constantly scrutinizing her. “Shall we?”
With that Lennon walked ahead of me, the skirt of her gray-blue evening gown flipping around her as she stepped off of the terrace and back into the glittering ballroom, ready for the rest of the night.
Chapter Four
Swing State Rally — Phoenix, Arizona
3 months & 2 weeks until the election…
The Arizona heat beat down on the top of my head, soaking into the black fabric of the Secret Service standard uniform suit that was threatening to choke me alive.
One of the best things about working overseas for the state department in unstable countries had been the fact that most folks over there didn’t give a shit what you looked like so long as you were able to protect them.
I could have shown up in basketball shorts and a t-shirt and they wouldn’t have blinked.
Now I was stuck wearing a tie in what amounted to the heat of Satan’s taint and I was damn near about to melt. But Maverick insisted we look the part, especially seeing as we were now on camera because we were following Lennon closely, so the monkey suit it was and I was about to melt on the spot.
At least I was on one-to-one duty with Lennon and standing off to the side of the temporary stage and in front of a massive shop fan. I didn’t even want to imagine how the other guys were feeling as they stood in the front of the stage and scanned the crowd of people dressed in ‘HOLLOWAY FOR REELECTION’ gear.
Why anyone thought doing an outdoor rally in the dead of one of the hottest summers on record was a good idea was beyond me.
Not only was it boiling hot, but a bitch to cover protection-wise.
There was added security all around what basically amounted to an open field and temporary towers had been constructed on all four corners of the perimeters to watch the crowd from above in case some nut with a gun decided to try anything funny.
And it wasn’t just for Lennon’s protection either—the vice president was supposed to give a speech after her, though the guy had yet to emerge from his air conditioned tour bus at all today.
I’d always heard that a vice president was supposed to be somewhat of a foil for the president themself—picking up the slack where the president may lack.
In this case Vice President Frank Delano was exactly what Athena Holloway was not: a man. Not only that, he was a man from the deep south of Louisiana that possessed a level ofcharming charisma that the more stoic Holloway could never possess with her famously known no-bullshit attitude.
President Holloway was incredibly competent and beautiful, but as far as I could tell she easily got lost in the weeds of overexplaining her policy. She was, what most would refer to as, a gigantic political nerd.
Delano, on the other hand, just winked and shot his pearly-white smile at the nearest female reporter and the crowd was mush in his hands. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he himself ran in four years if Holloway was successful in her reelection bid.
“My mother always used to remind me to speak clearly and with a purpose. Dinner table conversation usually consisted of academic-level reports about what my brother and I were learning in school and how it could be applied to other facets of life,” Lennon said, her voice echoing over the crowd of onlookers as she gave them a practiced, wry grin. “My father, on the other hand, was a dreamer. He saw the best in everyone he met—including my mother who he always viewed as a warrior for justice. He instilled that same mentality in me. Now I dream of a world where the rights of every citizen in this country are enshrined…”
Lennon continued, talking about how omega’s rights differed in all fifty states. No two states treated one of the most vulnerable populations the same.
“Flicker is going off script,” Brooks commented in my ear, his voice colored with surprise.
“POTUS is going to be pissed,” Zeke commented and my eyes found his as he glanced back at the stage, his gaze shifting up to where Lennon was speaking at the podium dressed in a purple skirt-suit that looked far too old for someone like her to be wearing.
It was a far cry to the comfortable sweatpants and t-shirt she usually wore on the tour bus we’d been trapped on together for the past two weeks.
