Jim followed Reese up the back stairs of Air Force One and tried not to feel like he was getting ready to leave the planet. He was certainly headed for a whole new world.

He’d been able to watch Air Force One just taxiing into position as their Motorcade had raced along the back road from the Air and Space Museum. Even for that short distance on a closed road, over a dozen vehicles had been involved: Route Car, Stagecoach, the five heavy-duty Suburbans carrying various aspects of the Secret Service, the cluster of press vans, and an inevitable ambulance. Overhead he’d been able to hear the pounding beat of Overwatch—a Marine Sikorsky Black armed to the teeth.

“I don’t even hear it anymore. It’s always there,” Reese noticed where his attention had strayed. “Keep moving or you’ll get run down.”

Now the rush was for everyone joining the flight to race up the back stairs in the time it took the President and the senior staffers to ascend the front ones. The plane would leave when he was ready, not when everyone in the back was.

The members of the press clearly knew that as they crowded up the stairs behind him, most carrying small suitcases. For himself, he’d tucked a toothbrush and a change of underwear into Malcolm’s pack and called it good.

He’d never walked under a 747 on the runway before and it was daunting how large it was. Planes never seemed that big when walking to them along an enclosed jetway. But this thing was massive. It blocked out the entire sunset sky. He could feel the weight of the responsibility of the Presidential load far more than from his first short ride in the Motorcade. All this, all these people, were to make sure that one man traveled safely.

At the head of the stairs, Reese headed out the left-side door into a seating area that looked like any other business class section he’d had to walk past on his way to the cheap seats. A glance behind revealed that the press exited the stairs via the right-side door.

“They get a boxed-in area on the other side of the fuselage from us. Fourteen seats, paid for by their agencies in the hopes of getting some tiny scoop from the President. They can’t enter the rest of the plane without a personal escort by one of Harvey’s boys.”

“Harvey’s girls don’t count?”

She ignored him and led them to a pair of seats. The seats were generous enough for Malcolm to join them on the area between his feet and Reese’s.

He was starting to recognize the faces who came into their side of the aircraft: four members of the PPD led by Harvey Lieber and two of the other drivers. The rest were unknown to him, but were easily identified as being attached to the plane rather than the Motorcade. They wore blue uniforms. Over their left breast, their name was stitched in white. Over their right was the Presidential Seal with “Air Force One” stitched above it.

“Is it me or is the air in here getting a little thin?”

“It’s not you,” Reese offered. “I’ve only been aboard a few times. Mostly I’m on the C-17 transport with the vehicles.”

He wanted to take her hand, hold on to some concrete evidence that he wasn’t so far in over his head. But he was…and he knew it. Two days assigned to work with Reese. He’d pictured at least meals and two nights together to explore a little of what was going on between them.

That idea had died in the first ten minutes.

“Joining the Motorcade is normally a three-month indoctrination. You have two days, so let’s get to work.”

Meals had been eaten while standing up or studying videos of simulated attack scenarios. Each had come with a twenty-page manual of what to watch for, position by position. The response scenarios had taken less than two minutes, but he’d had to watch some a dozen times to see how all of the pieces were moving at a deep level of coordination. Once he’d spent a day doing that, Reese ran him through a video he’d already seen dozens of times, the attack in New York.

A journalist had also taken a series of superb photos and videos that hadn’t been available during his initial debriefing. The photographer had caught the feeling—and detail—of being right in the middle of every moment of the attack.

Step by step, Reese led him through the entire event second by second, displaying all of the different angles on the various screens of the central conference table. Much of the team had gathered around—it was the first-ever attack on the Motorcade in history that hadn’t been repulsed while still several blocks away.

Each instant had a coordinated action.

“If a crisis occurs while you are traveling within our company,” Tad Doogan had said in one of his tones, “I would highly recommend that you remain in your vehicle. Such an action will vastly increase the likelihood of survival for you and your animal.”

Jim had wanted to brush off the warning, but Reese’s deadpan expression stated that she’d heard worse advice.

As the frame-by-frame continued, Jim began to realize that perhaps she and Doogan weren’t kidding. The agents who had poured out of the flipped SUV that had been caught in the truck’s wreckage had moved quickly and aggressively to create a zone of protection despite how badly they’d just been rattled. And they’d done it in seconds.

On Day Two, they’d taken him out to James J. Rowley Training Center, but this time it was a full Motorcade, not just Reese. They moved into the winding streets of the simulated residential neighborhood.

They’d placed an agent in the back seat of the Lead Car with him. “Want to observe how you and your dog react.”

Jim had served in the Army for six years and done dozens of training exercises here at RTC, so he hadn’t expected anything surprising. He should have. The Motorcade was an attempt to reproduce the security offered by the White House and Air Force One, except in a mobile form. It was an incredible experience.

Malcolm’s main complaint had been when the agent riding with them had asked him to roll up the window just because it was thirty-six degrees outside.

Jim’s main complaint was that for two nights he hadn’t slept with Reese Carver. Somehow, both nights he’d found himself driving home alone and he didn’t like it one bit. He’d have been glad to plummet into sleep beside her and wake up together just getting dressed.

Instead, they hadn’t so much as brushed fingers since that one morning in his fifth wheel. Reese was deep in the task, so deep that maybe she didn’t even see that she was pushing him away.

He’d always been a family-oriented guy, he knew that much—he saw more of his parents and siblings, who were scattered all over the country, than most of his coworkers did who grew up in Baltimore or Charleston and had family nearby. Having Reese beside him when he woke up in New York and the one night at his place had him thinking about it for himself as well.

Reese had made it damn clear over the last two days that he’d been far too naive.

He glanced over at her as Air Force One roared down the runway, powering its way aloft with a surprising rate of climb. He almost felt as if he was an astronaut pushed back in his seat.

Reese sat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes closed.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Feels like a stock car coming off the line,” her voice was soft and whispery with nostalgia. “Pressed back in your seat. Two, three, four hundred miles of a challenging race just waiting for you to push the envelope. To find the edge and ride it through the heart of the pack. I miss it sometimes.”

“Ever think of going back?”

She rocked her head side to side without opening her eyes. “Got a taste for doing something more important. Saving the First Ladies. That was something. We did that.”

“You did.” That had been clear from the videos. If she had been a single moment slower to respond, the entire rear of the Suburban would have been crushed. That had been clearly demonstrated by what the truck had done to the nose of the following Suburban instead.

“You’d have done the same,” she opened her eyes and looked at him. It seemed it was the first time they’d had a moment to really look at each other in two days.

“I’m just a trucker, not—”

“Hate to break this up. You two are with me.” Harvey Lieber was standing in the aisle by Jim’s elbow. The climb had eased, though they weren’t up to cruising altitude yet.

Jim hadn’t realized how closely they’d leaned their heads together as they talked quietly over the four big engines’ roar.

“Three of us,” Jim popped his seatbelt and nudged Malcolm awake with his foot.

“Right,” Harvey said dryly before heading up the aisle.

A glance at Reese. She didn’t know what was going on either.

They passed through the luxurious guest area with eight seats for guests plus two more tucked in corners occupied by agents watching the guests. Lieber didn’t stop as they moved past the staff area, a big conference room with eight executive armchairs and a line of couches along the wall encircling a sprawling table of walnut, or even the senior staff lounge where four people were huddled together debating something.

“Uh.”

Harvey continued leading them forward past the galley and a doctor’s office presently configured as a small conference room.

They were fast running out of airplane.

A naval officer sat in the last chair in the long hallway they’d been following forward. At his feet sat the black leather briefcase of the nuclear football—the launch codes and communications gear that was never more than a hundred feet from the President in case he had to launch a strike.

Across from him sat a massive black man who Jim was fairly sure was the head of Secretary Matthews’ protection. His hands were big enough that he could probably break Air Force One in two if he needed to.

Jim considered turning and sprinting for the back of the plane, but it wasn’t nearly far enough away.

Harvey finally stepped through a double door bearing the Seal of the President painted in gold on the mahogany.

There was even less air here than there’d been at the rear of the plane.

Reese had been within steps of the President any number of times, but she’d never actually met him. As a driver, her job was to stay behind the wheel of the car and be ready to move.

Now she was standing in his unoccupied office.

“He’ll be with you in a minute. Sit. Don’t touch anything.” Then Harvey stepped out and closed the doors behind him.

She looked at Jim in desperation, but what right did she have to look there for comfort? For two days she’d tried to rediscover herself.

She depended on no one.

She needed no one!

Yet she’d spent almost every waking moment with Jim and enjoyed every second of it. She’d learned to anticipate his moods, partly by watching him, partly by watching Malcolm. Jim’s sharp mind had been revealed behind his easy manner as they’d dissected video after video.

The only way to keep her head clear had been to get away—steer clear of him each night. Which had worked brilliantly. She’d lain alone in her bed both nights, thinking of him. Wishing him there beside her. Missing his silence in which to explore her thoughts.

Now she didn’t dare speak. The President’s flying office was a disorienting space—it felt twisted inside the square space. The President’s chair was in the forward corner and a curved desk defined the power of the position by its sheer size within the small area. For visitors there was a single armchair near the hull and a curved sofa lined the other two walls. Anyone seated there would be a head shorter than the President.

Jim dropped onto the sofa as if it didn’t matter and Malcolm climbed up beside him to rest his head on Jim’s thigh.

Resigned, Reese was most of the way into the lone armchair when the door opened.

The President stepped in.

Jim jumped to his feet.

She tried to, but was past the tipping point and had to bounce off the cushion with all the guilt of a little girl caught playing in her parents’ room.

“Stand up, Malcolm,” Jim whispered and gave his dog a hand sign.

Malcolm rose to all fours on the couch and wagged his tail.

It earned Jim a smile from the President, which Reese felt was a good move coming off the start line.

Zachary Thomas was a tall man, with an open and friendly face—his Air Force background was clear in his bearing. He was closely followed by a man ten years his senior, former President Peter Matthews, now the Secretary of State.

“Hello, hello. Please sit.”

Reese abandoned the chair and moved over to sit on Malcolm’s other side on the sofa that wrapped around the wall. It was a long sofa, so perhaps she shouldn’t have sat so close, but she liked being able to run a hand into Malcolm’s fur. It reminded her of the few quiet moments the three of them had caught together over the last few days: a moment by the candy machine, a long silence as they studied a video while sitting hip to hip. Jim made it easy to treasure those brief moments.

She waited for the President to break the silence, which he did after only a few uncomfortable moments.

“I wanted to thank you both for the roles you played in saving our wives’ lives. If you hadn’t already been assigned to replace McKenna before that, I’d have requested you, Ms. Carver.”

“Thank you, sir. It was a pleasure to serve.”

“Except maybe during the accident?”

Reese felt the jolt and glanced at Jim, who grimaced.

“Told you,” Secretary Matthews said casually.

“Not an accident. What leads you to that conclusion that it was an attack?” The President kept his tone casual, not showing the least bit of surprise.

She and Jim had agreed that they didn’t know who to trust. But if they didn’t trust the President and former President, what was the point?

“Too many coincidences. However, we,” she glanced at Jim, who confirmed with a nod. It took her another breath before she could continue, “We have concluded that it was not an attack.”

That got her both men’s full attention. She wished it hadn’t.

“Please believe that this isn’t an egotistical statement, but we think the whole purpose was to test my reactions as a driver.”

The President narrowed his eyes at her. But he didn’t speak. Both men restrained what must have been a hundred doubts and questions. Instead, they sat on the edges of their seats and listened. Neither man was what she expected.

Damn Jim for his thinning atmosphere comment. She couldn’t seem to get her breath.

“We believe, sir,” Jim thankfully stepped in, “that they used the attack on the First Lady’s Motorcade as an action-response test in preparation for an attack upon your own Motorcade.”

“Why am I only hearing this now?”

“The timing, sir. To place a truck at that moment in that place indicates an inside job. We don’t know who to trust, Mr. President.”

“Reminds me of Emily,” Secretary of State Matthews leaned back in his chair and smiled. “That’s a very high compliment, by the way, Ms. Carver. She did something similar to Frank Adams, the head of my protection detail. That was shortly before my first wife’s death.”

The two men exchanged significant looks.

It had been before her time. All Reese recalled was that the immensely popular Katherine Matthews had died in a tragic helicopter accident. Their looks said there was little love lost there and that the truth was probably a very different story.

“Harvey,” the President shouted.

Harvey Lieber opened the door and stuck his head into the room. “Find Cornelia and both of you get in here.”

While the door was closed, the President continued. “If we don’t count my wife and this guy here,” he waved a negligent hand at Secretary Matthews. “There are no two people I trust more. Actually, I probably trust them more than you, Peter.” It was a clear tease between two men who had been elected together and were now friends.

Secretary Matthews shrugged as if it was no skin off his back.

Reese felt Jim grab her hand for a moment deep in Malcolm’s fur and squeeze it hard.

Trust.

It was a hard concept for her and he knew that. She wished that she understood him better. Or knew him better. Yet she trusted him, like no one else more than Pop. Even in front of the leader of the free world, he did nothing to try and bump her out of the lane. He made it clear that she was the force to be reckoned with, not him or his male ego.

Why she’d pushed him away the last two nights was now a mystery that she couldn’t—

Harvey and White House Chief of Staff Cornelia Day entered and closed the door behind them. She was a slender, tall woman who had a lethal reputation. She ran the White House and the President’s schedule like a metronome. There had never been a more on-schedule administration in history. Everything about her said DC elite: an immaculate dark blue skirt and blazer, perfectly tasteful makeup on a flawless complexion, haircut simple but perfect for her narrow face, and a Cordovan leather case for her tablet computer. Her nickname was “The Shark” and rumor said that even real sharks would never stand a chance against her.

Ms. Day perched on the far end of the sofa.

Harvey stood with his back to the door and his hands crossed in front of him.

“Tell them,” the President ordered.

So they did. Harvey’s scowl went dark, but he didn’t say a word until they finished laying out all of their reasoning.

“Carver, you ever leave me out of the loop again, I’m parking your ass in a kiddie car amusement park. Both of you!”

Reese swallowed hard.

“Second,” he turned to the President. “Reasoning is sound. I don’t like it, but it makes sense. Not a hint from the—” Harvey spun to face her so quickly that she jerked back against the sofa.

He rubbed his forehead.

“What?” Until that moment Cornelia Day had restrained her input to a nod that had her collar-length, dead-straight hair pitching forward and back in a slicing motion as sharp as shark’s teeth (Reese guessed that Jim would appreciate the metaphor). But Harvey’s consternation had finally moved her to speech—a short, sharp command.

“NASCAR to my Motorcade. Draw me a roadmap, Carver.”

“I left racing abruptly.”

“Your father’s death,” Harvey nodded.

Reese had kept her mouth shut and let the press and everyone else believe that. But the President deserved the truth. She was having trouble facing Harvey, so she turned to the Commander-in-Chief.

“Putting my father’s team sponsor in the hospital with a lug wrench after he tried to rape me as part of ‘consoling’ me over my father’s loss. No witnesses. He didn’t press charges, but he blacklisted me with the other team owners and I was left without a ride.”

“Why didn’t you press charges?” Ms. Day leaned forward. Despite her cold-blooded reputation, she appeared genuinely concerned and upset.

“I tried. The police dismissed it. He was an important man in NASCAR racing and the Charlotte business community. I’m a black woman who looks like this.”

Reese wasn’t conceited about her looks, but knew from experience that men were drawn to her for a reason. Even Jim had started that way. But he’d moved on. No mistaking that he liked her body, but he also liked her, which she knew she was being slow in processing.

“The police wouldn’t even investigate. Besides it was a he-said / she-said and there was no evidence other than the beating I gave him. His punch to my gut and his throwing me around the room by my hair when I refused to cooperate didn’t even show. I wear my hair this long as a clear fu… As a clear statement to myself of who is in control of my life.”

“I’ll fucking kill the bastard.” Jim apparently cared less about language in front of the President.

In the telling, she’d forgotten Jim was sitting there beside her. She’d seen him quiet and sometimes frustrated, but mostly he was Mr. Pleasant with that big welcoming smile of his. His face was now dark with fury and his light eyes were as black as death.

She wrapped her hand around his in thanks.

“Don’t,” she told him. “He’s not worth it. Besides, I did tell his wife, who has made it her life’s mission to destroy his career and reputation. I suspect not because of what he did, but because I’m black. She’s very ‘traditional’ Southern in all the worst ways.”

“I could get to like you, Ms. Carver,” the President said lightly to break the mood.

She tried to pull her hand back, but Jim had clenched it tightly, for all to see. Harvey didn’t show any surprise, Ms. Day didn’t show anything at all, and the President traded a smile with Secretary Matthews that was all too easy to read. It said, “Isn’t that sweet?”

Well, maybe it was at that. But now was not the time to think about it.

“From there to my Motorcade,” Harvey demanded through gritted teeth. Fury was clear on his face as well. It made her think better of Harvey as she understood his anger probably had very little to do with her holding hands with another agent in front of the President and a great deal to do with her past.

“I found a flyer stuck under the windshield wiper on my Mustang. I went to see a race…from the cheap seats. Only place I’ve ever called home was Charlotte Motor Speedway and I’d never seen a race from the stands. Now that all of the backfield was closed to me, it was the only way I had to get on track—buy a seat. The flyer was there when I came out. I figured it beat the dead-end future I’d seen myself skidding toward for that entire race.”

“The Protection Force,” Harvey groaned as if he was in pain.

“What’s that?” The President asked while the Secretary chuckled. “What?”

“My doing, I’m afraid.” Then Secretary Matthews must have spotted Reese’s look. “Oh, not me personally. There’s a little outfit called the White House Protection Force. One of my gifts to you, Zack. They’re the ones who saved us all last month with Linda and Thor. In my book, there is no possible higher recommendation of Ms. Carver’s skills than being picked by them.”

Reese had certainly never heard of them.

“Who?” The President and Ms. Day asked in unison.

“Completely anonymous,” Harvey complained. “I’d feel better if they weren’t always right.”

Reese wondered what else this Protection Force knew. She became very self-conscious of Jim’s hand still holding hers. Did they know about how he cared for her? That was ridiculous, even she hadn’t known that. Not until he promised to kill her three-years-past would-be rapist.

Jim was watching Secretary Matthews throughout the exchange. This Protection Force might be anonymous to everyone else, but it was clear that former President Peter Matthews knew exactly who was behind the operation. Clear as mud on a hog, his father would say. Having hauled hogs in his early days, Jim knew that was pretty damn clear.

White House Protection Force. Somehow they’d reached out and plucked Reese Carver out of NASCAR, but she’d won her own way to the driver’s seat of Stagecoach. There’d been no doubting her driving skills in the First Lady’s Motorcade. And no doubting the look on McKenna’s and the trainers’ faces that morning out at RTC as she spun The Beast through paces it had never seen before.

It simply confirmed to him that she was special in so many ways.

“I just drive,” he teased her softly while the others were debating what to do about this new threat.

“I do,” she was paying attention to the other conversation.

“You’re a goddamn miracle, Reese Carver.”

She turned to face him at that. Her brow furrowed as she looked at him.

He could see a succession of emotions slipping over her beautiful features. Denial, the weight of the past, puzzlement, and finally a small flicker of hope as she whispered, “Really?”

“Really.”

She swallowed hard and offered the tiniest nod that said she’d still need a lot of convincing.

“We should cancel this trip, Mr. President,” Harvey was arguing.

“I refuse to huddle in fear, Harvey. That’s the Protection Detail in you: lock me inside Cheyenne Mountain and let me out in four or eight years after I’ve turned into a babbling idiot. I’m not an Air Force captain because I hide from danger.”

“But—”

“You’re not an Air Force captain,” Cornelia Day spoke up. “You’re the Commander-in-Chief.” She sounded as if she was offended at him acknowledging the lower rank.

“Drive straight ahead, sir,” Jim spoke, though he hadn’t meant to.

Everyone turned to look at him. In for ten tons, in for twenty—that was Mom’s saying.

“I drove Karachi-Kandahar-Kabul for three tours, sir. And the answer is to be ready. The answer isn’t to not show up in the first place.”

“Could get to like you too, Mr. Fischer.” The President turned to Harvey. “We’re keeping the trip schedule. It’s up to you and these two to keep me alive. Don’t let me down or I’ll be very disappointed.”

Harvey nodded, but didn’t move from the door.

The look he aimed at Jim made him wish that he still worked for Captain Baxter and was walking the fence line.

“You seriously think it’s someone on my team?”

Reese didn’t appear to want to talk, which left it up to Jim.

“When did you announce that Reese would be the driver for the First Lady’s trip?”

“I told the team within minutes of when you left for site prep, but only our own people.”

“Not the press or a public announcement?”

Harvey shook his head. “Not until the night before departure. And the route was never published, of course.”

Jim nodded. “I had guessed that. We arrived in New York Tuesday noon to scout the locations. We met the First Lady’s party at the heliport on Wednesday morning. We were an easy target anywhere in Manhattan, but it would have been hard to guess our route. The truck was stolen on Wednesday morning at four a.m. before the First Lady’s party had even left DC.”

“Thirty-six hours later,” Harvey finished for him, “at 1600 hours on Thursday, the attack occurred. It was the one place they could be sure of our arrival route and time based on our public departure from the UN building.”

Jim nodded. “Who knew about the trip in time for that truck to be stolen? Who knew our exact departure time from the UN and was poised to have that truck in the right place at the right time?”

“There’s never been a traitor in the Secret Service. I’m going to find his ass and I’m going to grind him so far into the ground so hard that they’d need an oil drill to find his body.” Harvey’s snarl was one of the most dangerous sounds Jim had ever heard. No one faking it could make that sound.

Cornelia rose to her feet. “Thank you, Mr. President.” Showing no fear, Cornelia eased Harvey Lieber aside as if he was an errant puppy and opened the door. She waved for them to leave, and Jim would have run except it took him a moment to understand that he couldn’t disentangle himself from Reese’s grip.

It had changed as they sat there. At first it had been comfort, no surprise to him at all that she’d successfully defended herself against some bastard rapist—he was just sick that’s how she’d lost something she’d so loved. But now they were holding hands as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

And it was.

Jim had never been much of a hand holder. Margarite hadn’t been either, which maybe should have told him something. So what did it say that he wanted to hold Reese’s? Not to keep her close and safe—okay, not only that. But because he liked the connection there. Liked the way their fingers laced together as if they were the same hands despite the different colors of their skin.

As they rose to their feet, it was so hard to let go of her. And the President’s knowing smile wasn’t helping at all. He’d seen the President and his wife on TV—it seemed they were always holding hands. Holding on as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

When Reese finally noticed and went to extract her hand, he held on, earning him a puzzled look from her and a “good man” nod from the President. So he kept her hand in his as he led her out of the President’s office.

Cornelia Day led them into the medical suite directly aft of the President’s office. She shooed out the doctor and nurse. There were two chairs and a tiny couch. The operating table was folded up against the wall.

Ms. Day and Harvey took the two chairs; he and Reese were pressed hip-to-hip on the little couch, which he wasn’t complaining about. Malcolm got the floor.

“Now. We’re going to go through the entire trip step-by-step until it is second nature to all of us.”

That’s what they did for the entire hour-and-a-quarter-long flight to Nashville. And when nothing untoward occurred, Harvey and the two of them spent the next two hours to Colorado Springs doing the same thing.

They arrived at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, at 2300 local time.

The President would sleep in his suite in the nose of Air Force One. Most of the Protection Detail would stay aboard as well, but the Motorcade personnel had no reason to remain aboard through the night.

Colorado Springs was at six thousand feet, almost a thousand feet higher than Denver, and was bitterly cold. A several-inch dusting of snow lay on the semi-arid desert.

All the vehicles of a second Motorcade were already pre-positioned inside the hangar, ready for tomorrow’s events. Not being on duty until shortly before the Motorcade would have to roll, they grabbed a base car and headed for the nearest hotel.