“You should go,” Malone said.
“How do I leave with so much to be done?” she asked. “How do I drive away in my fortified SUV while everyone here is still in danger?”
“We’ve received an urgent order to get you back to the White House immediately,” Q said. “I’m afraid I have to insist you come with us right now.”
Sam looked around at the still-unfolding disaster outside the heavily damaged MPD headquarters, at her brothers and sisters in blue working a scene that included multiple casualties, a stolen corpse and a missing young woman, and knew a moment of absolute despair at being forced to leave.
“Go, Sam,” Freddie said. “We’ve got this.”
“Ma’am,” Q said, his tone as urgent as she’d ever heard it.
Sam gave a short nod and let Q propel her rapidly toward the SUV. Another agent was waiting to open the door for her, because God forbid she do it herself.
Sam didn’t recognize the female agent. “Is there any word on Vernon?”
“He’s being checked at the ER, but he says he’s fine and wants to get back to work,” Q said.
“I’m glad he’s being his usual feisty self.”
“We are, too,” Q said as he drove out of the parking lot, dodging pedestrians, EMS vehicles and personnel as they made their escape.
When they’d traveled a few blocks from HQ, she tried calling Amara but received the busy signal again. What the hell was going on with cell service? The minute she could, she’d be trying to figure out why the Russians would want Ivanov back so badly that they’d cause a massive international incident to create a distraction so they could steal him. Especially since his dead body had been dumped by people in a vehicle with diplomatic plates in the first place. Why would they dump him and then set off a bomb to get him back?
She hoped the answer to that question would explain this madness.
* * *
Nick paced the Oval Office as Terry and Nick’s lead agent, John Brantley Jr., looked on with an increasingly distressed expression. They wanted him moved to the bunker beneath the White House where the Littles already were, but he wasn’t going without Sam.
“Mrs. Cappuano is on her way home,” Brant said.
“That’s good,” Nick said with a sigh of relief. Thinking of her being in danger, especially because of him and his administration, was unbearable. They’d been informed by Sam’s detail that Sergei Ivanov’s body had gone missing after the explosion. “I want to see Gretchen.”
“Right away, sir,” Terry said.
After he left the room, Nick glanced at Brant. “Is Scotty home yet?”
“Almost.”
Nick wanted them all home, and he’d wanted it done an hour ago. Scotty had been finishing an important exam and was now on his way home with his detail. The agents made critical decisions on the fly every day as they walked the tightrope between providing robust security while allowing his family members to live their lives. Here he was, safe in a gilded cage, while Sam and Scotty were still out there, vulnerable because the Russian president could be on a rampage over the U.S. VP’s involvement with his chief critic.
And all of it was the fault of the woman who came into the Oval Office, looking like a shell of her former confident, poised, polished self. Good. He hoped she was suffering over the shit storm she’d caused. Accompanying her was FBI Director Sally Monroe.
“Why would the Russians bomb the MPD headquarters to get Ivanov’s body?”
“They did what?” she asked, her expression gone flat with shock.
“You heard me, Gretchen. Why did they want to get him back badly enough to inflict a terrorist attack on our capital city?”
“I… I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“Think hard about what Ivanov told you he was doing here. We need to know everything you know, and we need that information right fucking now.”
Gretchen began to cry as she visibly trembled. “He told me he was meeting with supporters, people who backed his cause.”
“Who were these people he met with?”
“He never told me. He only referred to them as supporters.”
