Thor eyed her strangely.

“Give me a break.” Linda’s feet were riveted to the sidewalk. But there was no explaining to a dog that the broad green lawn and white stone building on the other side of the stout fence was anything more than a giant park specially designed for dogs to go pee in.

Even as she stood there, gawking through the black iron fence at the White House like any other tourist, a USSS dog team came working along the sidewalk. Before she could see their dog, it was easy to spot the handler: six feet of strapping immensely fit male in the black uniform and jacket of the Uniformed Division. Dark sunglasses despite the recent sunrise.

She envied the thin leather gloves protecting his hands. She’d found a battered pair of fingerless shooter’s gloves in her gear, but they didn’t keep her hands much warmer. Her last duties in Africa and Fort Benning, Georgia, hadn’t called for anything more. DC’s bitter winter was contending with fall evenings in Vermont and she’d forgotten how cold those were.

But rather than a proud German shepherd parting the crowd like a plowshare, a handsome springer spaniel nosed his way out of the crowd, swinging a little left and right to check the air swirled about by the few early morning joggers. It was still too early on a chilly morning for tourists and protestors to flock to the White House fence, but the dog team was already on duty.

The handsome dog handler stopped in front of her wearing a big smile.

“First day? I know the look. Still feels that way every time I look at the place.” He turned to his dog. “Gute Hund.” The dog immediately relaxed its vigilance and came over to meet Thor.

“Uh, yeah. Guess so.” Linda wondered if she could sound any lamer.

“Malcolm,” he nodded toward the spaniel presently trading butt sniffs with Thor. “I’m Jim.” Maybe he was okay despite his looks—it took a true dog handler to introduce his animal first.

“Thor. I’m Linda,” and she wasn’t going to get tagged with being lame. “One word about his name and you’ll find yourself on your ass real fast.”

Jim held up his warmly gloved hands palm out.

“Just sayin’,” she put on her nicest tone.

“Hey, we floppy-eareds gotta stick together,” again the unexpected genuineness of his smile. “Though Thor is kinda the extreme example I’ve seen.”

“Floppy-eareds?”

“Friendly dogs. PSCO—Personnel Screening Canines Open Area. You’ll see. The Emergency Response Team and the other behind-the-scenes dogs, they get the big muscle. We get the total sweethearts,” the last he spoke in happy dog, squeaky pitch to Malcolm, who thumped his short tail against Jim’s leg.

It made her like him even better—again the sign of a true dog handler. Maybe the world wasn’t all made up of Jerk Jurgens. Or handsome chocolatiers.

“Well, gotta go. We got bad guys to catch. Go see the captain, he’ll get you off on the right foot. See ya down the fence line. Later, Thor. Such,” he told Malcolm, who instantly headed forward into the thickening morning crowd along the fence line. Jim waved at her and moved off. She half wondered if he even remembered her name. Then she caught him glancing back…and she knew the timing: calculated to let him check her out, then glancing away fast when he knew he’d been caught.

Fine. Whatever.

A second UD officer separated from the crowd and followed Jim and Malcolm. He didn’t have a dog; instead he had an AR-15 assault rifle slung across his chest. Teams of two.

She headed to the gate and showed her temporary ID to the guard inside the entrance’s security hut. He scanned it, looking back and forth between her and the screen a couple of times before returning it. Then he waved her toward the metal scanner and she just rolled her eyes at him.

“What?”

“Collar, leash, handcuffs, sidearm, utility knife, taser, spare magazines…should I keep going?”

He leaned forward and looked down over the counter. “Oh. Didn’t see your dog down there.”

She held up the badge again, which said Secret Service K-9 on it rather than pulling out a baton and cracking him smartly on the head. She was learning patience.

“Right. Okay. But that’s a temporary. Can’t let you on the grounds while armed without an escort.” Before she could think what to say, he was on the phone. It only took a moment. “You’re expected. You can go through, but wait by the door.”

She walked through the metal detector, which squealed in several nasty tones but, as no one shot her, she kept moving. She walked down a short hallway watched over by an attentive looking agent behind a tall counter made of louvered metal.

Thor swung aside and came to a halt as he sniffed at the screening.

“You’re screwing up my job,” the agent grumbled.

Linda tried to figure out how.

Thor was wagging his tail. The same way he had when he’d met Malcolm the springer spaniel along the fence line.

Then she felt it and looked up. Warmth! She raised her hand, the one not holding Thor’s leash, closer to the source. It felt so good. A fan was blowing a slow waft of warm air down over her. It was…oh! Just enough to drive the air down and through the louvers along the counter. An EDT—Explosives Detection Team—dog would be on the other side of the louver beside the disgruntled agent.

“Tell him that Thor says hello.”

“She,” the agent looked down at his own dog, out of sight behind the counter, with a growl deep in his throat.

And apparently some of the White House handlers were closely related to Jerk Jurgens.

Linda tapped her thigh and led Thor out of the entry screening hut. Outside the air was fresh and the sun bright. She didn’t mind the cold as much as she had earlier. Until she tucked her fingertips under opposite armpits and realized they were chilled to the bone.

Captain Baxter—by his shield and name badge—came up to her and held out a hand. “Sergeant Linda Hamlin. That like the Pied Piper of Hamelin or like Linda Hamilton in Terminator?” Naming her for the movie star was not one of her mother’s kinder acts—not that her mother was known for that particular trait.

“Neither, sir.” She had been named for Linda Hamilton, but for her role in Beauty and the Beast so Linda could properly deny any association with Terminator. An unfortunate similarity in looks that she’d never been able to live down made it even worse. She managed not to clench her jaw, but considered seeing just what attack skills had been taught to Thor.

The captain continued blithely on as he guided her toward the West Entrance to the White House, unaware of just how close she’d come to unleashing some wholly inappropriate response. “So, Jurgen finally found someone willing to give the little scruff ball a chance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Assessment?” He asked it just a little too casually. Was he messing with her? Or did he know things she didn’t and this was some sort of test?

“His acuity is exceptional. Good-natured, yet deeply trained to the handler-dog bond. Whoever trained him I suspect is highly qualified. Though I understand he’s the first dog from a new kennel.”

“Stan Corman. Navy SEAL, retired.” The captain made a chopping motion with one hand against the biceps of his other arm. “Lost his dog and his arm at the same time. The two of them saved my life a couple years before that. Got out while I was still in one piece and came on board here. He landed at some place in nowhere Montana named Henderson’s Ranch. I owe the man a chance and then some.”

So, she’d done something right in accepting Thor. Wouldn’t that just tick off Lieutenant Jurgen.

Through the foyer, again the badges cleared by security, and down a long hall crowded with rushing people.

Her nerves, which had bolted her to the sidewalk outside the fence line, blew up so high that she was amazed the White House roof didn’t go with them. She was inside the bubble of the Commander-in-Chief. To her right were the doors to the Situation Room where any number of her last ten years’ missions had been authorized. The Navy Mess.

While she gawked, the Vice President strode in chatting with the White House Chief of Staff as if it was a normal, everyday occurrence. She was so out of her depth. Only Thor’s light pull on his leash kept her moving forward at all.

At the far end of the hall, Captain Baxter led her through a door labeled United States Secret Service. This at least felt familiar from her training. The craziness on the other side of the door? She’d be perfectly happy to never cross the fence line again. She and Thor would patrol the streets, and the people in here she’d just leave to do whatever people in here did.

The Secret Service Ready Room was packed with desks along the walls—about half of them occupied. At one end was a briefing area that could hold twenty or so agents, at the other were two glassed-in offices barely big enough to hold a desk and a chair each.

In one sat an agent with light brown, close-cropped hair. He was a few inches shorter than Clive and about half his size… Now why was she thinking about the chocolatier? She shook her head to clear it. The agent punched at a keyboard as if he was trying to kill it. The sign beside his office door didn’t even bear a name, just PPD—Presidential Protection Detail.

Baxter led her into the other office marked UD—Uniformed Division.

He jabbed a finger at the lone chair as he closed the door.

She sat. Thor lay down at her feet.

Dropping into his own chair, Baxter slapped a hand on a file thick enough to be her entire personnel file and then some.

“All of this true?”

“Not having read it, sir, I wouldn’t know.”

“Commendations coming out of your goddamn ears, Sergeant. If you brought this to me, I’d have chucked it in the trash because I’d know one thing for certain—that you were a lying suck-up, forging shit to get near the President.”

“Sir.” Linda didn’t know what else to say. She hadn’t been some superstar, just a woman trying to play it dead clean in a man’s world.

“Number of female dog handlers qualified to fight with the 75th Rangers: one. Number of female dog handlers in any branch of the military with not one, not two, but three medals for valor including a Bronze Star—all with the V for “in combat” on all three: one. Clearance Top Secret with SCI and SAP.”

And Linda hoped that she’d never see another thing like it. Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Programs information was always a nightmare.

“Seventeen of your actions over the last five years are redacted so that even I can’t tell what the hell you were doing. You care to tell me?”

“No, sir.” She wasn’t at liberty to do so, no matter what his clearance.

“Good girl.”

Okay, not girl. Not even woman. Soldier! Training in silence was all that let her keep the comment inside. Besides, only seventeen of her missions redacted? That meant that a number of her missions were so highly classified that they weren’t in her file at all—at least not the version made available to the Secret Service.

“What in the name of all that’s holy and the US Army are you doing in my office?”

“Reporting for duty?” What kind of a trick question was that?

Baxter stared at the closed file for a long moment before looking back at her. “Draw me a map, Hamlin. US Rangers to US Secret Service. How did you get here?”

“There was a flyer in my DD 214 discharge packet. USSS K-9 team recruiting. Be all your dog can be. Sounded like me.”

He barked a short laugh. “I like it. But we don’t do that. We don’t have flyers.”

“Well, someone put it there. Looked better than going back to Vermont.” Throwing herself naked into the Potomac in January looked better than that.

Baxter harrumphed. Then scowled at Thor, who had lain down at her feet.

“Damned if I know what to make of it. We get good men applying for this job, a lot of them.”

He didn’t emphasize men, so she kept her thoughts to herself.

“Most of them straight out of college with some nutso ideas about glory. Takes forever to straighten them out and some we never do. That’s not you.”

“That’s not me,” Linda agreed.

“A woman with a decade of service and half of it with the 75th Rangers,” he mused to himself. “I’ll be damned.” Without further comment, Baxter leaned over his desk and slapped a hand against the wall.

While they were waiting for whatever response, he dug a bright-brass USSS Uniformed Division badge out of his pocket and tossed it to her. She pinned it to her uniform’s left lapel, taking only a moment to rub her thumb over the embossed image of the White House and the small blue plaque at the bottom with “Sergeant” etched into it.

A moment after she had it affixed, the door opened and the agent from the PPD office next door stepped in and closed the door behind him.

“This her?”

Baxter just nodded.

Her what? Linda didn’t have time to be more than puzzled by the remark.

“Hello. I’m Harvey Lieber, Senior Special Agent in charge of President Zachary Thomas’ protection detail.”

“Linda Hamlin,” she’d have stood if there was room, but there wasn’t.

“Out of the friggin’ blue,” Baxter grumbled.

“And?”

Baxter eyed her. “Jurgen doesn’t give anyone top marks. I keep him out at Rowley to scare the ego out of all the rookies, even the agents back for refresher training who are getting too cocky. He gave them to her, though. I told you about Stan Corman sending me a dog.”

“That?” Lieber looked down at Thor, who began batting a front paw in his sleep as if chasing a rabbit.

Linda hoped it was a little field bunny, because he wasn’t all that much bigger than a jackrabbit.

“That,” Baxter agreed.

“Should do nicely.”

Linda twisted around to get a better look at him, but it didn’t tell her anything.

“Can you be presentable?” Agent Lieber looked down at her.

She waved a hand at herself. This was how she came. In uniform with her hair and teeth brushed.

“I mean in a high-end social crowd. Not asking if you’re pretty—that’s obvious and irrelevant, though not a bad thing in this situation. Asking if you know how to behave.”

“My mother wishes I did.” Mom had always been pushing her into the political events in Montpelier, Vermont—as if it was Albany, New York, or some other much larger and more important state’s capital. Was she supposed to become a conniving politician like her mother, whose ethics had nothing to do with reality and everything to do with partisan stratagems and counterattacks? Or was she supposed to become like her father, teaching at University of Vermont, Burlington, because of all the coeds who flocked to handsome poli-sci professors whenever his wife was off to Montpelier?

“Which means you know how, you just hate it. Couldn’t care. Your call, Baxter. First Family flies out in an hour, I can’t deal with this right now.” And just that fast he was gone.

“What the hell?”

Baxter raised his eyebrows.

“Sir.”

* * *

Clive went through his morning routine on autopilot.

The Chocolate Shop was so small that it was a good thing there was a coat closet between it and the main kitchen. The twenty-foot-square room was immaculate and, with all of the counters and equipment, left little space for anything extraneous like his coat.

The conching machine ground happily away in the corner, smoothing and heating the chocolate to uniformly distribute the cocoa butter throughout. It’s background hum always made him feel as if everything was okay. The dark chocolate required three days of conching. It had taken some real magic to squeeze the machine into his tiny kitchen, but the results were absolutely worth it.

He studied several of the sketches he’d taped on the face of the spice cabinet. He peeled away the chocolate cake he’d made for Christmas and the white chocolate and strawberry streusel from New Year’s Eve. He liked to think of it as clearing the decks for what came next. Many other surfaces had neat rows of images that inspired him, but the spice cabinet was only for the actual desserts he was going to make and he never repeated.

He unlocked the pantry and main chocolate storage cabinet that kept everything at fifty degrees. His supplies were all in place.

A peek inside his smaller storage cabinet, which he left at sixty degrees and never locked, said that the overnight damage hadn’t been too severe. He made a point of leaving “extra” confections there, which were frequently raided when the staff had to work late. He made a mental note to keep the level of truffles a little higher and form the chocolate bars smaller. Apparently people felt too guilty taking the larger chocolate bars when raiding his kitchen. He took a few minutes with a hot knife to cut them neatly into halves and thirds. He lay a small bet with himself as to how many would survive another night.

Of course whenever Clive caught a “thief,” he took deep umbrage and soundly berated the individual—it was the only time he unleashed his father’s brogue. “An’ what makes ye think that ye deserve such snashters, you blaggard?” And the like. Lasses, of course, were treated more kindly. It came out half drunken-Scot and half pirate-captain—all in good fun.

The “public” cabinet was a good testing method for new creations. He’d leave several options, and often discovered that one had been completely cleared out and another barely touched. Last night had been an even fifty-fifty, so nothing new to learn there. He found that disappointing, he’d rather thought his lavender-brushed honey truffles would be more popular than the vanilla-cream-filled extra-dark bonbon.

“Back to the drawing board, lad.”

Which reminded him of yesterday’s sketch. Drawn, but now he’d have to write out the process of execution.

He took his time heating milk to two hundred degrees, rinsing his favorite mug under the boiling-water tap to bring it up to temperature, and then mixing in his homemade cocoa powder. He sipped it, but it wasn’t quite right. Christmas was recently gone—the holiday madness that wracked the White House kitchens every year had subsided—but it was too abrupt. He fished a whole nutmeg out of the pantry and used a rasp to grate a little over his mug. A pinch of allspice and a quick stir. He let it steep for a minute or two to blend properly, then tasted it again.

Yes, just a little nostalgia after the holidays to soften the blow of descent from the madness of the holidays into the bland, unending stretch of January. Nothing ever happened in January…except for mesmerizing dog trainers.

He sat at the marble counter with his cocoa and his notepad, finally allowing himself to flip to the sketch he’d made yesterday while out at the James J. Rowley facility. He studied it carefully. It was pretty enough—a white chocolate, half eggshell with jagged edges, filled with a bourbon mousse and crowned with fanciful dark chocolate work.

Something wasn’t right there. At least not yet. Perhaps because the crane also looked like a stork and neither the President nor the Vice President had reproduced yet. That created a mixed message that he wasn’t wholly comfortable with. A bluebird perhaps? Did Southeast Asians believe in the bluebird of happiness?

Something more bothered him, but he was having trouble pinning it down.

Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines. The only thing their flags had in common was the color red. Hard to play off that.

Using Marou chocolate from Lam Dong province might please the Vietnamese delegation, but might well insult the others for perceived favoritism. While the Philippine chocolatiers were doing well, only Kablon and Malagos came close to the same standard. And Japan didn’t make chocolate at all. Regrettably, to avoid offense, he’d have to go South American or African. But that still didn’t solve the lack of a Japanese element.

The dessert felt almost old hat—three different grades of chocolate to make…

No. He wanted something…

The words were eluding him. He knew from experience that only when he found the right words could he then design the confection.

He studied the sketch again. It was pretty enough, but it was lacking in meaning.

He crumpled up the page and tossed it away. Yesterday it would have been good enough, but not today.

Clive doodled on the corner of the next page while he contemplated what had changed. It wasn’t merely enough to achieve, he wanted to excel. Something had shifted in his understanding of what he did.

Life was like that, perceptions growing and changing in fits and starts, and he’d come to anticipate their arrival. By the time he understood that he was a chocolatier, he had already graduated from the CIA—the Culinary Institute of America—and slaved for four years under the eagle eye of two different masters, one in Chicago and another in LA before finally going to work for the great Jacques Torres in Manhattan. He sipped his hot cocoa again after raising it in a toast to the signed photograph of Torres and himself on the wall.

The invitation to the White House had shocked Clive until he had looked back at his steady climb up the ranks of the nation’s dessert kitchens post-Torres: the Beverly Wilshire in LA, The Plaza in New York, The Greenbriar…

Only in retrospect did his life ever make sense.

He was less certain about what had changed last night, though something definitely had. He was no longer content with a design that just yesterday he would have happily created and he knew would have been well received.

Whatever the seed of the change, he could see more clearly now. It was not enough for his dessert to be pretty and a topic of conversation. It had to have meaning. It had to have…purpose.

There! That was the problem. He knew almost nothing about the purpose of the dinner he was designing for.

He tapped his pen on the page. Who to ask? The kitchen team wouldn’t know any more than he did. Chef Klaus was not exactly an elevated thinker. An elevated chef? Absolutely. But thinking wasn’t an ingredient he used very often.

Clive sipped at his cocoa for inspiration, but only found an unpleasantly lukewarm concoction that had a little too much allspice in it.

Miss Watson would know, but he couldn’t imagine bothering her with anything as trivial as a chocolate design.

What was it Miss Watson had said about Linda? That she saw no boundaries.

Maybe that was it. Maybe he now saw a boundary that was behind him. One that had limited his vision. The problem was that every time he turned around, he saw Linda Hamlin’s face.

It took him a moment to understand the he really was seeing her face.

“You came!”

* * *

Linda could only blink in surprise.

She hadn’t actually come looking for Clive, but he seemed so happy about her arrival that she didn’t want to gainsay him either.

Finally, in self-defense, she held aloft the map she’d been following. Rather than sending her and Thor to the fence line—the standard location for floppy-eared dogs to patrol—Captain Baxter had given her a map. Actually a book of maps—who knew the White House was such a vast complex.

“President Zachary Thomas and the First Lady are traveling—three days in Tennessee at her family’s ranch,” Baxter had rattled off his instructions so fast that only her military experience let her keep up with them. “Vice President Daniel Darlington is up on the Hill for the day. Go learn the White House. I want you and Thor familiar with every square inch.” She was beginning to discover quite how tall an order that was.

Not wanting to bother anybody until she felt a little more sure of herself, she’d chosen to first explore everything below the Ground Floor. The West Wing was generally acknowledged to have three floors: the Ground Floor she’d entered on that included the USSS office and the Situation Room, the State Floor with the Oval and other key offices, and some more office space on the Second Floor. She’d discovered a labyrinth of two more stories below that, including several places where a Marine guard waited, so she decided to tackle those later. This included a massive new complex under the north lawn that had been built between 2010 and 2014 that she somehow doubted even her full-access pass would allow her into.

On second thought, rather than waving the book of maps aloft, with its bold “Secret” label on the cover, she tucked it in her vest pocket. She had no idea if Clive was authorized to even know that some of the areas existed.

“I’m so glad that you’re here.”

“You are?” She’d barely met him yesterday.

“I am,” his big voice boomed about the tiny kitchen. “Welcome to my kingdom.”

“Um, I don’t want to appear rude, but isn’t it a little small for a kingdom?” The room was perhaps twenty feet square, and that was only if it was stripped to the walls. Instead, every single nook and cranny was packed solid. White marble work surfaces, massive doors to walk-in refrigerators, and lots of fancy kitchen machinery. The center six-by-six-foot work table left barely enough room around it for two people to squeeze by each other.

On the few uncovered wall surfaces were pictures of too astonishing a variety to quite take in: peacock feathers, cobblestone streets in the rain, a postcard of modernist art. They all blurred together. Only the area around a portrait of a smiling man shaking Clive’s hand seemed to rise out of the general noise.

“Nonsense!” Clive bounced to his feet. “It’s a splendid kingdom! Come. I’ll give you the grand tour, then I will ply you with tasty treats because you must come to my aid.”

Linda tried to keep up, but three separate agendas in a single sentence seemed a bit much. “Maybe I should just…” She made the mistake of turning her head for a moment to wave down the hall that supposedly led to the Flower Shop. It was her next destination and then the three unlabeled rooms merely marked Storage beyond that. She’d found many interesting things that were marked that way on the map, none of them having to do with storing anything.

Her ill-timed distraction allowed Clive time to scoop up something from the counter and cross two of the four steps that defined the breadth of his kingdom to squat in front of Thor.

“He can’t eat chocolate,” she warned him off. “It’s poisonous to dogs.”

“I know that. How about a little bacon? I’ve been testing a savory treat, baked maple-glazed bacon with a chocolate drizzle that I haven’t applied yet. Is this okay?” He held aloft the piece of bacon.

Thor was nearly shivering with anticipation.

“Ja,” she whispered to the dog, who practically snatched it from Clive’s fingers the moment she gave him permission. Clive clearly knew to keep his fingers out of the way when dogs and bacon were involved. Technically, it was bad form to let anyone feed a Secret Service dog other than its handler, but Clive seemed okay.

Okay?

He was on his knees by her dog, thumping him lightly on the ribs as Thor made quick work of the treat.

“Now,” in a deceptively smooth and light motion for a man of his size, Clive was on his feet once more looking down at her.

At six-four he seemed too large for the kitchen, and so close that she had to crane her neck slightly to look into his eyes. He was thinking hard about something, but she had no idea what. Then he had her arm in his grip and was tugging her over the threshold that only Thor had crossed.

In moments he was describing shining machines with words she’d never have applied to them or didn’t recognize at all.

A grinder was neither for coffee beans nor smoothing down the side of an M-ATV where a bullet had pierced the heavy armor.

Conching was something done for days on end though she didn’t understand what or why.

The tempering vat didn’t seem angry at all.

“In the past, the White House Chocolate Shop has always relied on the production of chocolate by others. Chefs took the finished product in bulk and worked it from there. Whenever I can, I step back earlier in the process. I don’t have room for a cocoa nib roaster, but I have control of the rest of the line after that point. Here, I’ll show you the difference.”

He pulled on a latex gloves before reaching into one of the coolers. On a tiny white plate, he placed three bite-size pieces of chocolate.

“Taste these. Start with that one,” he pointed.

Unable to pull back from the rushing vortex that was Clive Andrews in his element, she gave in and tasted the first one.

“Nice enough, right? Melts well. Smooth on the tongue. A little crunch when you bite it. Swallow and the flavor lingers for several moments.”

She tasted all of those things, none of which she’d ever noticed before.

“Now, a sip of plain seltzer to clear the palate,” he handed her a glass that he’d been pouring. “This should be lime sorbet, but I don’t have any handy at the moment.”

When she opened her mouth to protest that she didn’t have a palate, he popped a second piece in her mouth.

“Notice the sharper snap when you bite on it. There are hints of the terroir. A suggestion of vanilla, though I haven’t added any to this batch. The melt is slower, teasing at your senses as it unfolds. When you finish, it lasts, convincing you… Almost whispering in your ear,” he leaned in and did just that. “More. Eat a little more.”

She tried to pull back, but her body said to lean in. The two canceled each other out, but she wouldn’t soon forget the way his voice lowered and teased like the chocolate did.

“More seltzer now. And now the third piece.”

She didn’t even make a pretense of reaching for it, instead just opening her mouth and closing her eyes as he popped it into her mouth.

“Bite it,” he whispered.

She did. The snap was fresh and crisp. Behind it came a tidal wave of sensations. So smooth, it was almost like cream. Flavors wandered by, teasing, enticing, promising…and delivering. She breathed in through her nose and the flavor built and unfolded. It was just chocolate and vanilla, but it seemed to unravel and entice with so much more. She didn’t know what any of them were, but they were both magnificent and subtle in the same moment.

“Now notice—”

“Hush,” she reached out and clamped her hand over his mouth. “I’m having a moment here.”

His smile tickled against her palm.

* * *

Clive had long ago learned the power of good chocolate over women. But never in his life had he so enjoyed watching one eat it.

When Linda closed her eyes, her face softened. The fiercely focused Secret Service professional revealed an unexpected gentle side—transformed from brittle, sharp-edged sugar work to smooth chocolate sculpture. No longer bundled in her jacket against the January chill, her sleek athleticism still defined her, but it was no longer all of who she was.

Then she opened her eyes. Between one eyeblink and the next, Sergeant Hamlin returned. She pulled her hand away from his mouth as if she’d been electrocuted.

“Okay. That was tasty. I’ll admit that.”

He couldn’t help laughing. She might think she was all the tough dog handler, but now he knew better. He’d seen the woman behind the wall. And he wanted to see more.

“I have work to do. Thanks for the chocolate.” And that quickly, she almost slipped out of his reach.

“Wait!”

“For what?” Linda turned to look at him from halfway out the door. The woman moved as if attached to a teleporter.

“I have a problem.”

“The third item on your agenda.”

“I have an agenda?”

She rolled her eyes at him, but he still didn’t know what she was talking about. Under normal circumstances his next agenda might be how to get Linda Hamlin out to dinner, then into his bed, but in her Secret Service mode that wasn’t going to happen.

He thought about reaching for her, but that too had shifted.

One moment she’d had her hand over his mouth—a teasingly gentle touch. So close that he could smell her. Unscented soap and shampoo left her own natural flavors to fill the air around him: the softness of honey and the warmth of fresh ground chili powder mixed with the freshness of new-fallen snow. She presented the most evocative sensations he’d ever encountered.

The next moment she was…herself. Half out the door and all about getting on with whatever business had led her past his shop.

“You said you needed my help.”

“I did?” He did? “I do.”

And he’d think of why in a minute, but if that was enough to hold her in place…

“Oh. Right,” he moved back to the stool at the counter in front of his notepad, hoping that would draw her back into the shop.

She waited at the threshold. Well, if that was the best he was going to get, it would have to do for now.

“I need to make a special dessert. Something…relevant.”

Again, the waiting silence that he was learning was Linda’s answer to so many questions.

“The leaders of Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan will be here next week. Something about some islands. Do you know why?”

“Why would I know that? This is my first day in the White House.”

“Do you know what islands they’d care about?”

“For those three together? Probably the Spratlys. China has claimed them though they lie six hundred miles south of the People’s Republic. They’ve dredged the reefs to build islands, one of which is now a heavily equipped military base offering them a significant forward projection of air and naval power. They’ve done all this despite United Nations’ rulings that they didn’t have the right to do so.”

Clive could only blink in surprise. “Why would they do all that?”

“It extends their territorial control. For one thing, it places them at the center of a major oil tanker route reaching all of the way back to the Persian Gulf. They want to protect that supply chain as well as they can in future years. Possibly even preempting all three of those countries’ supplies for their own benefit. Taiwan’s and Korea’s as well, for that matter. Without massive oil imports, there is no China, no matter how fast they burn coal.”

She’d already completely shifted his understanding of the upcoming meal. A white chocolate egg with a bourbon mousse was completely irrelevant to the proceedings. New Birth had nothing whatsoever to do with this kind of problem. He needed to completely rethink it.

He could feel her watching him, but he didn’t know what to say. How many of his desserts had he delivered with such little understanding of what was actually occurring upstairs in the State Dining Room?

Between one eyeblink and the next, his doorway was emptied.

Linda and Thor were gone as if they’d never been. He rushed to the door and caught only the briefest view of the two of them moving silently down the hallway before they turned a corner and were gone. So he hadn’t imagined everything—she actually had been here.

He returned to his marble counter and looked down at his blank sketch pad trying to visualize what did belong there.

Except it wasn’t blank.

His earlier doodle was of a small dog and just a hint of a woman’s face no clearer than a ghost’s.

* * *

“Would your dog like a biscuit, my dear?”

Linda checked her map again. White House Residence, Subbasement Two, Room 043-Mechanical.

Then she looked back at the woman. She was tall, silver-haired, and had a pleasant smile. She waved a hand at a ceramic cookie jar in the shape of Snoopy’s red doghouse, complete with the dog himself lying on the ridgeline as a handle. It sat on a small walnut side table.

Room 043-Mechanical had a ceiling of tangled pipes mostly lost in overhead shadows. But the room itself was warmly lit by a gas fireplace set inside a white-and-gray marble mantel at the far end. An old, disused looking desk sat close by the door, with a lone stool in front of it. Beyond that, a long room led past several bookcases to a cozy sitting area. Deep, cheerfully floral armchairs sported lace doilies over the arms.

Linda hesitated and inspected the shadows more carefully. Weapons of war were collected along the tops of some of the bookcases closer by the desk. Not just war, but clandestine war. They were the weapons that might have been used by an assassin or a spy. The Arsenal knife, with a .22 six-shot revolver built into the handgrip. A Ruta Locura single shot .22 LR rifle that could break down into a pair of carbon-fiber tubes—stock and barrel—no bigger around than her thumb and each as long as her forearm. Add a scope and it still weighed under a pound and a half. Utterly lethal and very hard to detect. It made the sniper rifle from The Day of the Jackal movie look clumsy.

Deeper into the room, the Tiffany lamps with their cheerfully colored shades lit framed portraits of women. Some in evening gowns, others in military uniforms.

“Yes, I’m sure Thor would enjoy a treat,” Linda agreed to buy herself a moment longer to inspect the curious collection and the woman in the midst of it.

The woman made a show of lifting the lid and selecting just the right dog biscuit, then handing it off to Thor. He took it delicately from her fingers, rather than the sharp snap of Clive’s bacon, before lying down to happily grind it into the room-filling, white Persian rug.

“Would his handler like some tea?”

She could only nod. Linda’s head was spinning. She’d abandoned her basements-first plan after escaping Clive’s chocolate shop. That had sent her tramping all through the upper floors of the Residence, feeling like a voyeuristic intruder.

Still uncomfortable approaching Clive’s shop, she and Thor had investigated the East Wing from the top story First Lady’s offices down to FDR’s bomb shelter below the northeast lawn. A small plaque had informed her that it was rated to withstand a five-hundred-pound bomb—early WWII had been a kinder, gentler era in some strange ways.

Deep in the lowest basement of the East Wing, she’d turned away from the tunnel leading to the Treasury Building and instead followed the one that ran from the FDR shelter below the East Wing into the lowest level of the Residence, and beyond that, connected to the West Wing.

Deep under the lawn between the East Wing and the Residence, she passed The Truman Shelter. It had been built with nuclear weapons in mind and was significantly more substantial, if little more welcoming than FDR’s concrete cube. It was set up as a complete safe room, but it too stood with its door open and no guard in attendance. Another part of the White House’s buried history that none of the public would ever see.

Once more beneath the Residence itself, she and Thor had investigated air conditioning and heating machine spaces. She’d fed him a snack from her bag and let him rest for a while outside the elevator machine space.

She’d carefully avoided Clive’s shop, though she could still feel his smile against her palm. It seemed to belong there. She wanted to go back. Taste another piece of his magnificent chocolate and perhaps see if his smile tasted as good as it felt.

Whoa! Where had that idea come from?

She hadn’t been in a relationship since RAF Lieutenant James. Her team had been stationed with the British attack helo pilots at Kabul for six months, and she’d spent three of them happily in his arms whenever they were both on base. He’d been like the first of Clive’s chocolates: not deep, but definitely nice enough while it lasted. There had never been a second-chocolate-level relationship for her. Something inside her was broken that didn’t allow for any of those. Her emotions were broken, just like her mother’s—a sour taste indeed.

Once more on the move, she’d rounded a corner past Electrical Switching Control in the lowest subbasement of the Residence and—stepped into a Victorian tea room complete with a silver-haired matron dispensing dog treats.

“Please, Miss Hamlin. You have walked a long way. Take a seat.”

“You know who I am.” A pointless statement. Somehow the woman also knew she’d walked miles today exploring the President’s House. Probably knew Linda’s tour was barely half done even though the day was almost over.

“I’m Miss Watson,” she didn’t bother wasting breath to confirm her knowledge of Linda’s name. She poured tea from a white porcelain teapot covered in sweet pea flowers. On a small table between the two chairs, she placed a matching plate with unadorned shortbread biscuits.

Linda could feel Clive’s pained expression two stories above. He’d have dipped, sprayed, or sprinkled them with something. Certainly he’d add elegant little designs on the tops like the ones she’d spotted on the chocolates in a small cabinet he’d shown her.

“You have an…interesting office, Miss Watson.” A Victorian sitting room in the lowest subbasement of the White House made that an understatement. A pair of hinged bookcases had been swung back against the walls of the elegant room. Linda saw that if they were closed, the sitting room would disappear and only the dingy but dangerous little office would remain.

“Thank you, my dear.” Miss Watson sat in a chair across from her and picked up her knitting.

Linda focused on the picture above the woman’s head. It was of a dark-haired beauty in a golden, quasi-Egyptian metal bikini. “Is that…”

“Mata Hari. Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod. Falsely accused, tried, and executed by the French for being a double agent—15 October 1917.” Miss Watson didn’t look down at her knitting, instead watched Linda intently. “They needed a sacrifice to their flagging morale, so they shot Mata Hari for being a former wanton during a time of constricting morals as much as anything else.”

Inspecting other photos that hung about the room, Linda decided that some questions were best not asked aloud. But Miss Watson began answering them anyway.

“Marthe Cnockaert, WWI—specialist in explosives.” Miss Watson indicated another image with a flick of the end of her knitting needles. “Sarah Emma Edmonds was an American Civil War master of disguise: male, female, black, white. Manuela Sáenz, 1800s—a fascinating and dangerous woman who destroyed a leader in Peru and was instrumental in creating Simón Bolivar in Venezuela. Nancy Wake, WWII. One of the most highly decorated servicewomen of the war, she topped the Gestapo’s most wanted lists.”

Who was Miss Watson that she had a room decorated with portraits of female spies?

Linda decided that her best option was to keep quiet and sip her tea. Thor, done with his biscuit, looked at her longingly until she gathered him into her lap. He sighed happily and flopped backward with his head in the crook of one of her arms and appeared to fall instantly asleep. He acted as if they’d been together a lifetime rather than twenty-four hours.

The clicking of the knitting needles stopped abruptly and Linda became aware of Miss Watson inspecting her closely.

“What drives you, Miss Hamlin?”

“I’m not sure what you mean. Dogs, I suppose.”

“That answer is too easy, Miss Hamlin. Do you not find it so?”

“I can’t say that I ever thought much about it.”

“Oh, that’s unlikely.”

Linda blinked.

“Come, my dear. You are sitting in a library built upon histories of the exploits of the world’s greatest spies, male or female. Some worked for intelligence gathering, others in undercover roles to take down hated regimes. Some of them hated our nation, yet they too adorn these walls. Runway model Anna Chapman—2001-2010 in London and New York for the Russians,” she indicated a striking redhead posed in black leather pants and a lacy bustier while holding a chromed MP-443 Grach pistol as if she knew how to wield it. “Ethel Rosenberg and Ruth Greenglass—Manhattan Project for the Soviet Union. Wild Rose Greenhow—a noted spymaster for the Confederacy versus Elizabeth Van Lew who served a similar role for the Union. A woman of such caliber as yourself has most assuredly thought long and deeply.”

Miss Watson finally pointed a knitting needle at the center of Linda’s own chest like an attack.

“I’m not a spy.”

“If you were, you wouldn’t be here—though your picture might be. But your illustrious career leaves little reason to suspect your loyalties. My question is rather what are you, my dear?” The pointing needle turned once more to the mundane task of turning linear yarn into a three dimensional object.

The contrast of the inquiry couched as a mild threat made Linda inspect her tea. Her cup was only half empty, but she tested herself to see if she felt woozy or drugged. The room didn’t spin. She felt no more inclined to speak than normal. She closed her eyes and felt no different. She—

Miss Watson snickered quietly.

Linda opened her eyes.

The needles had again stopped clicking and Miss Watson was using an embroidered kerchief to dab at the corners of her eyes.

“What?”

“Watching your imagination is lovely, my dear,” she barely managed over her quiet laughter.

“My—” Miss Watson had observed her thoughts. If not a mind reader, then she was certainly well trained in observing human expression. As well trained perhaps as Linda herself was at reading the signals of a dog’s feelings. And that kind of training implied…

She scanned around the room once, twisting to make sure she didn’t miss any of the pictures tucked on shelves or hanging over the mantelpiece.

“Where is your photo?”

Miss Watson’s laugh brightened even more, leaving her unable to speak at all.

“Oh, that will teach an old woman,” she fanned herself with her handkerchief once she had mostly recovered her composure. “After all these years, you would think that I knew better than to make assumptions. You are the first to ever unmask me.” Then she unclipped a gold locket from about her neck, flicked open the cover, and gazed at it a moment before handing it across.

Linda looked down at the two tiny images within. One was of a young and beautiful woman. Though it was black-and-white, it was easy to imagine her brilliant blue eyes looking straight out of the picture from the cargo bay of a Vietnam era UH-1 Huey helo. The other was a closeup. In that one, she looked severely Russian: her blonde hair pulled sleekly back, sitting in the lap of a terribly handsome Soviet-era general with two stars on his golden shoulder boards.

“The first was shortly after my return from my third undercover mission to confirm the number of prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton and other camps, gathering intelligence used during negotiations at the Paris Peace Talks. Sergei, on the other hand,” she sighed softly and a smile lit her features. “Poor Sergei had no secrets from me. Not once did he suspect any of my secrets.”

Linda closed the locket and handed it back.

“You are more than you appear to be, Miss Watson.”

“The best of us always are, my dear. We always are,” she placed the locket once more around her neck and returned to her knitting.