Jim glared at the tires in frustration. The night had brought a fresh dusting of snow that was slick to walk on. Which meant it would be slick to drive on. Not what he wanted on his first real mission with the Motorcade.

Colorado Springs road crews had already sanded the primary Motorcade routes and were reportedly working on the alternates…drawing massive “shoot me here” targets to his way of thinking.

“At least they’ve put on studded snow tires,” he tried to find the bright side of it all, but wasn’t having much luck. Apparently chains would be a major problem if someone shot out the tires and they had to get away on the run-flat tires. Each one had an inner core of hard rubber, but if the outer tire deflated, then chains would become loose and could create a snarl. That had meant a change of tires. At the moment he wasn’t feeling very happy about anything changing.

“It will alter my spin rate, if I need to do one,” Reese seemed to be taking everything about the morning in that easy stride of hers.

He could only glare at the car as Reese headed off to consult with the other drivers. No question that his mood was foul this morning. And no question that he was doing a crappy job of hiding it from Reese. Even Malcolm had picked up on it, moping about his feet.

“I should have stayed on the goddamn fence line.” He understood that. He knew what to expect there.

Everything was confusing now. He’d spent two days trying to inhale Motorcade logistics but it was such a massive task that an entire vehicle was dedicated to just that. The ID car might run well back in the pack. Its sole task was route logistics and identifying any problems and changes on the fly.

So, he needed to let that go.

Even identifying his own role here was a challenge. He wasn’t on the drop-in ahead team, patrolling a route, building, or crowd. He deployed twenty to thirty seconds ahead of the President as if that was enough time to find anything that all of the other dogs had missed. It made no sense.

Yet Harvey Lieber had asked him to join the Motorcade itself. Because a single time he’d been faster thinking on the ground in New York than most others? That had nothing to do with Malcolm. It had nothing to do with the last three years of his life as a White House dog handler.

“What’s gonna become of us, buddy?” Malcolm looked up at him, clearly bored out of his skull. They were usually never bored. Not when they had the whole fence line to patrol. No tourists here inside the Peterson AFB hangar. No veterans in need of a little cheering up. No bad guys thinking they could directly breach the White House and live to tell the tale.

“C’mon, let’s check out the cars. Such!”

And at the simple seek command, the life surged back into Malcolm. He jumped to his feet, glanced up at Jim until he pointed toward the front of the parked Motorcade, and headed off with the same joy he walked the fence. The vehicles were lined up in three parallel rows so that they all fit in the hangar.

“You’ve got it way too easy.” Malcolm only had one thing in life to worry about. For himself, he couldn’t seem to stop finding new things to add to the worry list. It was already longer than an elephant’s leash and it just kept growing.

They circled both of the Spares and Stagecoach itself. Then they went over the Lead Car that they’d be riding in. The police escort was already in place, so he checked out their motorcycles and Sweep Cars. He even went over the Pilot and Route Cars, though they’d be well ahead of the Motorcade to provide early warning of any problems.

Reese joined him as he circled back down the far side of the line.

And the anger surged back in so hard that he almost choked.

“What?”

He could only shake his head. He didn’t know! It wasn’t at Reese, he knew that much, but he couldn’t seem to put a good face on it—not even for her sake. It wasn’t her past. The assholes in her past were obviously losers who’d never understood what she was. She’d survived them and come out shining.

There was no real way for Malcolm to inspect Halfback. It was in line directly behind Stagecoach and the Spares and was armed to the teeth. It was filled with weapons that were fired frequently and with the men who fired them. They even had explosives, just in case they needed to cut the President out of a wreck quickly. Still, he gave Malcolm a treat each time he triggered on the vehicle. It wasn’t his fault that they lived in a crazy world that needed such things.

“Did I do something wrong last night?” Reese kept her voice low as they moved on to inspect Watchtower—the electronic countermeasures Suburban. It could block signals to IEDs, detect incoming aircraft or missiles, and a wide variety of other attacks. If anyone fired on the Motorcade, they’d discover to their dismay just how fast Watchtower could pinpoint their location and transmit it to Hawkeye Renegade—the counter-assault team vehicle farther back in the lineup.

“How could you possibly think that you did anything wrong last night, Reese?” He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her. That was okay. He had to pay attention to what Malcolm was doing, didn’t he?

“Because you’re being very weird this morning.”

“Well it’s not you. Okay? I couldn’t imagine you being more incredible. You’re a goddamn fantasy brought to life.”

“I don’t want to be someone’s fantasy. I’ve had enough of that shit!” The anger shot to life in her voice.

“Doesn’t keep you from being one.” Reese Carver was certainly his fantasy. Gorgeous, amazing in the bedroom, skilled, intelligent, thoughtful… The best companion a man and his dog could ever ask for.

“Eat hot shit, Fischer!” And Reese spun on her heel and walked away.

“Well, that went well, didn’t it?” he asked Malcolm. Two of the agents managing the senior staffer vehicles looked at him in surprise, then turned to watch Reese. Even pissed as hell, she had an amazing walk from behind. Only by gritting his teeth did he manage to avoid beating the crap out of them for staring at her so blatantly.

Thankfully Malcolm was busy working and didn’t know enough to roll his eyes at Jim.

“Yeah. Total washout.” He guided Malcolm down the line: Control, counter assault (which gave Malcolm just as much trouble as Halfback had), intel division, hazmat, Roadrunner (that could connect them to a satellite feed, into the Situation Room, or provide a local cell tower when there wasn’t one), ambulance, and the rear guard vehicles.

About the time he reached the end of the last line, the two press vans rolled in, bringing the press corps back from their hotel. They tucked into the back of the middle row of vehicles so that they’d be in the right place for departure. The reporters moved clear, winding their way past the inner row of vehicles. They gathered around the base of the steps of Air Force One (there was a scheduled ten-minute press conference before they moved out, not as if anything had happened overnight). He and Malcolm moved in to check the vans.

Clean. Clean. Clean.

If he found one more thing that was clean and safe and secure he was gonna scream.

That was the problem.

They knew there was an attack coming. It was coming and there wasn’t anything he and Malcolm could do about it. How was he supposed to protect the President? How was he supposed to protect Reese, when any threat was so far out of his league? How was he supposed to find explosives from inside the Lead Car?

He squatted down to give Malcolm a good rub. At least his dog would know that whatever happened, it wasn’t his fault.

He squatted there, in front of the lead press van. There were two of the Chevy Express twelve-seaters. They were big enough, barely, to carry the press corps and their gear. It was the last of the all-American boxy vans. Even Ford had taken on the slick Euro-Japanese exterior profiling. He’d driven the delivery version of the Express plenty before he’d gotten old enough to pick up his commercial license and move into the big rigs.

There was a small box under the steel bumper that he didn’t recognize. He leaned in to inspect it. A Brickhouse Security micro camera, smaller than a pack of cards. It could shoot eight hours of HD video without a recharge. As far as he knew, they only saved to an SD card, but could one be modified to transmit? That hadn’t been included in his briefings about the Motorcade, but he’d come aboard so recently that it could be just one of a thousand things that there hadn’t been time to learn.

He leaned out and saw that there was a matching one under the second van’s bumper. On the next row of vehicles over he could see that neither the intel car nor the hazmat truck had them.

Turning the other way, he could see one under the bumper of Stagecoach. He was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be there.

He pointed out the small camera to Malcolm, “Verloren.” Lost. Maybe whoever had put them there had left the same scent on each of the cameras, just as Jurgen had left his scent on the explosives out at RTC. If they were all the same, that would be very suspicious. After Malcolm had a good sniff of it, Jim gave him the seek command and they began circling the vehicles once more.

Reese tried to think of the last time she’d felt this angry. All she could come up with was her pop’s former team owner. Jim had made her feel so…violated!

Last night had been such an incredible experience. And this morning she was just another hot fantasy calendar girl only fit to be a pin-up on some testosterone-laden grimy garage wall—her butt and breasts eventually coated in oily fingerprints from every mechanic who slapped it as they walked by.

One thing was certain, Jim Fischer was never going to touch her again.

Rather than feeling righteous, she felt impossibly sad.

“What the hell happened to you?” Harvey Lieber was suddenly at her elbow as she stood under Air Force One’s wing with nowhere to go. She should be waiting by her car, but Jim was there, circling around them once more. Her interest in joining the press conference at the base of the plane’s stairs was less than zero.

“I’m fine.”

Harvey looked over her shoulder toward the Motorcade. “God damn it. I warned him.”

“Warned him what?”

“That if he messed up my best driver, I was going to kill him.”

“Don’t!”

That earned her a Harvey Lieber scowl.

“I want the option to do that myself.”

At that he smiled.

“Now I know you’re okay. Get in your vehicle. We’re almost ready to roll.” Harvey walked over to join the President as he took last questions.

Okay? She was anything but okay. Though from Harvey’s perspective, maybe she was. If she was head of the Presidential Protection Detail, she’d want her drivers to be in a foul, run-over-anything-in-my-way mood. And she was definitely that.

She stalked over to Stagecoach as Jim rose from looking under the front bumper.

He froze and looked at her. She could see there was some question written across his features.

To hell with him.

She opened the driver’s door, slipped inside, and hauled it shut.

He came around to her window, the only one in the car that rolled down (though just three inches), so that she could talk to an agent or pay a toll if necessary.

Reese had no interest in talking to him and liked having the eight inches of armored steel and five inches of armored glass between them. Instead she placed both hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead. Please, oh please. Let Jim Fischer get in her way. She would run him down in a heartbeat!

Suddenly everyone was on the move.

Jim had never seen the full Motorcade load up all at once and it was a daunting sight. Thirty-five vehicles including the police escort. Except for the motorcycles, most vehicles had four or five people. The press vans and the assault team Suburbans had even more. Two hundred people on the move in a highly coordinated flow.

One side of the hangar doors slid open and the Route and the Pilot Car shot out into the morning brightness. Now that the door was open, even though they were still inside the hangar, a phalanx of four agents surrounded the President as they escorted him into Stagecoach.

Once Harvey Lieber had the Beast’s door closed, he came sprinting around the nose of the vehicle. He shoved Jim hard enough to send him stumbling forward.

“You aren’t in your seat in the next five seconds, we’re leaving you behind.”

Even as he turned, Jim saw the momentary flash of the Lead Car’s backup lights as the driver shifted from Park to Drive. He sprinted over and opened the back door.

Malcolm leapt aboard and the car was moving while Jim still had one foot on the ground. He dove in, landing partly on top of Malcolm who thankfully had gone to the far side of the back seat. By the time he had the door closed and his seatbelt buckled, they were already well away from the hangar and racing for the airport’s nearest exit gate.

Mack and Mark—the two agents in the front seat—were laughing at him.

But Jim wasn’t in a laughing mood.

For twenty-seven minutes all he could do was stare out the window and worry as they roared across Colorado Springs, up I-25, and finally, at long last, onto the supposedly safe grounds of the Air Force Academy.

He’d sworn he wouldn’t look back at the three Beasts following on the Lead Car’s tail. They were busy doing their dance, playing a game of Three-card Monte at sixty miles an hour to hide which vehicle carried the President.

But Jim always knew when Stagecoach was in the lead of the two Spares—he could feel Reese glaring at the back of his head.

Reese knew that she should have stayed in her car, but the President was giving a thirty-minute speech to the student body of the Air Force Academy north of Colorado Springs and then having an hour-long meet-and-greet with top class members and the school’s commanders. Dry. Scattered trees. Snow dusted thinly among the brown grass. Freaking freezing beneath a brilliant blue sky.

The instant she was out of the car, Jim Fischer came over from his patrol. He’d been fast and efficient, in exactly the priority order that they had worked out over two days of planning. It was impressive how much ground he and Malcolm were able to cover between the moment of their arrival and when Harvey approved the site as clean and opened the President’s door.

Somehow sensing her desire to duck back into the driver’s seat, he signaled Malcolm to slip into the narrow space between her and the door, then waved him to sit and stay.

Traitor! I thought you liked me.

Malcolm lolled out his tongue in a doggie grin.

Trapped in the open, Reese forced herself to face Jim.

“I’ve got a problem.”

“More than one,” she shot back.

Jim chewed on that for several moments before discarding whatever he was thinking. “I’ve got a problem because I don’t know what is and isn’t protocol on the Motorcade.”

Reese bit back her unexpected disappointment. He wanted to be strictly business and she wanted… She wasn’t sure, but running him over with Stagecoach was still an attractive option. She waited him out.

“Are spycams standard on the vehicles?”

“What are you talking about?”

He took her by the forearm and it was all she could do to not yank it away in front of the other drivers and agents who had remained with the vehicles.

Fischer—that’s all she’d think of him as now, except maybe Asshole—tugged her forward until he was standing well to the side of her car. The Motorcade was lined up in the parking lot alongside Fieldhouse Drive that they’d blocked off in front of the six-thousand-seat Clune Arena. Then he squatted and pointed under Stagecoach’s bumper.

She squinted, but didn’t see anything. Then she pulled off her sunglasses.

There, in the shadows under her car, was a small black box.

“It’s a miniature HD spycam. I know the model. Fully self-contained: camera, battery, and storage card. It’s set to activate in motion-detection mode. I brought you over here to the side because it and the others are all aimed straight ahead.”

“Others?” Reese could feel her skin go even colder than she could account for in the chilly morning air.

“Press vans, all three Beasts, back of the Lead Car, front of the Halfback and Watchtower, front and back of the ambulance.”

“Of the ambulance?” She turned to look. That didn’t make much sense, nor did the press vans. There were a lot of vehicles between the Protection Detail riding in Watchtower and the press vans. “How did you find them?”

“Pure chance on the first one. After that, I had Malcolm sniff them out. Same person touched every one. And they weren’t wearing gloves, so they left behind a clear scent mark.”

Reese actually looked Jim in the eyes for the first time since this morning. And all she saw was the professional. Fine with her, that’s all she should be seeing at the moment. Besides, the professional was someone she completely respected. She looked back at the camera attached to her car.

“I can tell you one thing. They aren’t ours.”

The electronic countermeasures from Watchtower said they couldn’t pick up any signal from the spycams, concurring with Jim’s own assessment that they were set to record only, not to transmit.

That calmed everyone’s nerves down.

A thorough visual inspection of all vehicles showed that Malcolm had uncovered every one of them, which had earned him high praise from everyone except Harvey Lieber—who was still too pissed at someone having messed with his Motorcade—and Reese—who was still pissed at Jim himself, but he couldn’t take the time now to figure out why.

They’d been on the verge of pulling them, but Jim intervened.

“Look. Whoever placed these is getting set to record some event. Maybe it’s just more intel on Motorcade operations. Maybe not. I say that we leave them in place so that whoever it is doesn’t get suspicious.”

Reese was nodding, “I’d rather face an attack today than if we spook them and they do it at some unknown time in the future.” She glared at Jim as if he was the one doing the attacking.

“We just make damn sure to take down anyone who tries to recover them,” Harvey snarled with all the danger signals of an ERT—emergency response team—attack dog.

Jim hauled Harvey and Reese aside.

“We still don’t know who to trust. Now the entire Motorcade knows about the cameras.”

“Shit!” Harvey wasn’t happy.

“Not all of them,” Reese put in. “Only the drivers and assault teams. The press, senior staff, and the protection details still don’t know we found them. They’re all in with the President. Nothing’s gone out over the radio except my request for you to leave the detail and come join us.”

“Well, that’s something.”

Jim scanned the area, but the Academy had made a point of emptying out the broad parking lot prior to the Motorcade’s arrival. Beyond its broad expanse, the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies kicked up the land into rough slopes with sparse trees. A glance at the gymnasium and Jim could see a line of Delta snipers along the roofline—each studying a different section of the surrounding hills through their scopes. Nothing moving out there except maybe some deer.

He, Reese, and Harvey went down the line, verbally spreading the order that the cameras’ existence was strictly need-to-know, compartmentalized information. Also that they were to keep their eyes out for anyone who went near one.

They met up once more alongside Stagecoach.

“Record only. Video only. What use is that?” Harvey sounded even grumpier.

Jim let his gaze drift down the long line of vehicles. They were in a double line outside the south entrance to the Cadet Field House. The first half of the Motorcade was closer to the building, with Stagecoach exactly aligned with the entrance doorway. The second half of the Motorcade formed a layer of shield from the wide empty parking lot.

An attack here on the Air Force Academy grounds would be very unlikely. That meant that if it was going to happen, it was still in this mission’s future. There were four more pending sorties: Academy to Olympic Training HQ, Olympic Training to Air Force One, then, after a short flight to Buckley Air Force Base at Denver, out and return to the political fundraiser.

It would be an external attack again, otherwise there’d been no point in testing Reese’s driving in New York.

“Someone wants images of the attack.”

Reese and Harvey looked at him, but he didn’t want to be distracted.

The spycams had been placed so that they would be focused on Stagecoach and the Spares. Rear end of the Lead Car. Front of all three Beasts. Front of the two vehicles immediately behind the Beasts. Then a long gap all the way back to the press vans and then another skip to the ambulance.

“They want to record the attack and the aftermath.” Which explained the ambulance. But it didn’t explain the press corps’ two Chevy vans.

He looked back at Reese.

“Those images of the New York attack. The ones that you had that I hadn’t seen before, where did they come from?”

“Some news agency. I’d have to call Doogan to find out.”

“Need to know?” Harvey cut in before Jim could.

Reese was already shaking her head because she figured it out just as fast as they had.

“But who put them there?” Harvey was starting to get back to focusing on the problem.

Jim shrugged. “A traitor inside the Service working with the Press would have plenty of access or…” He thought about the layout of the Motorcade in the hangar this morning and the Press Vans pulling up to the rear of the middle row. “That’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“This morning, when the Press Vans pulled into the Motorcade. The reports flowed out of the vans and wandered through the Motorcade to get to the steps of Air Force One for the President’s interview. Each camera is a self-contained unit. It would take less than a second a piece to slap each one in place if it was prepped with a magnetic strip.”

“The press.” By the sound of it, Harvey just might kill the whole lot of them. Jim would bet that the President wouldn’t complain. “At least we know where the cameraman is now.”

Reese was nodding. “One of the press corps. Oh shit!”

“What?”

“I saw…” she squeezed her eyes shut. “Where was I? I saw a stack of small black boxes… Just this size. On a desk.”

Her eyes shot open and she grabbed his jacket.

“The basement offices underneath the White House Briefing Room.” Reese could half see the image.

“What the hell were you doing in there?” They both ignored Harvey.

“Someone working on his camera. I only had a glimpse. I don’t know if I even turned in time to see the man’s back. Can’t even swear it was a man. But I remembered the boxes because I didn’t know what they were.” Once again she’d missed seeing a person of importance. It was like a gut punch.

“Fine. I’m losing the press vans from the Motorcade. They can scream all they want.” Harvey raised his arm to swing his wrist microphone into position, but Jim clamped his hand over Harvey’s arm before he could complete the gesture. They looked ready to come to blows.

“Never spook the enemy when you know where they are,” Reese had learned that lesson a long time ago. The most misogynistic racers, she always kept them clear in her sights so she’d know the instant they moved in to attack.

“She’s right.” Again Jim Fischer supporting her, even after dismissing her as a mere fantasy. They really needed to talk.

“Besides,” Reese agreed, “even if we remove the cameraman, they won’t stop the attack.”

Harvey glared. “Have you two been drinking the same Kool-Aid?”

Reese looked over at Jim. Their thoughts traveled the same paths so easily. Their bodies had too. How could he…

“Don’t you dare get all gooey-eyed on me, Carver,” Harvey snapped.

“I wasn’t.” She definitely wasn’t. She’d sworn to hate Jim Fischer forever, hadn’t she? Then why was she still clutching onto his jacket? She let go—so abruptly that both men noticed it of course.

“We need to just do what we do,” Jim spoke fast enough to show that he too was uneasy. “We trust Reese’s abilities to save the President.”

“No pressure, huh?”

“Not a bit for a lady like you,” and he offered one of his cheery smiles.

She punched him as hard as she could in the solar plexus.

He wasn’t the least bit ready for it. Jim gave a long, gasping wheeze, then slowly folded down onto his knees making little hee-hik sounds. Malcolm licked his face as a reward.

She turned to Harvey. “I’m not getting gooey-eyed over some guy.” And she was no man’s goddamn fantasy.

Harvey held up both hands and backed up a step, but his smile said that he knew otherwise.