Back in DC, things fell quickly into routine—Jim’s old routine.

With the intensity and intimacy of New York behind them, there was a distance in the present. Reese was the “golden one” from the moment they’d reentered Secret Service headquarters in DC. Lauded by everyone, he could see it eating at her. She disappeared in more ways than one.

She hadn’t answered her cell phone when he tried it.

His text asking if she wanted to catch dinner—which he’d thought was fairly harmless—had received a two-word reply: Need time.

Now, a week later, Jim couldn’t decide if he was as feeble as a glue horse for not pursuing her when she’d first tried to shut him out. What guy on the planet wanted to face the definitive “no” from a woman? “No” sucked. He had certainly received his share of “so long,” “thanks,” or that lamest of all “whatever” over the years. But not from the most incredible woman he’d ever been with.

He should have known something was wrong when he’d woken up that next morning. She’d already been up and dressed. No friendly teasing her back into bed. No quick snuggle to mark the start of a new day. It was still the old day—they’d gone to sleep about dawn after the long debriefing and it was just after lunchtime when they woke—so he figured that was fair, if regrettable.

“It’s two o’clock and I’d like to get on the move before rush hour,” Reese had told him as she finished fastening her shoulder harness.

Which he supposed was reasonable enough. The Suburban had only suffered cosmetic damage, so the two of them drove it back to DC for repairs.

No fresh news when they’d checked in, so the drive south had been mostly quiet, just watching the changes of the day as it rolled through evening and into night. He’d asked her a bit about racing, he’d told her some exotic stories of driving big rigs across the Afghan countryside, but for the most part they’d just fallen into the driver’s rhythm of letting the road roll by.

Or so he’d thought. Until Reese Carver had evaporated.

He tried switching to a morning workout, but Malcolm didn’t like the change-up in routine. After three days of not spotting her, he slid back into an after-shift workout.

Training Day came up on his duty roster.

It had been eight weeks and it was time for a refresher course for him and Malcolm out at RTC.

“Time to expose his nose to the stuff that explodes,” as the course master Lieutenant Jurgen liked to say.

RTC was short for the James J. Rowley Training Center, the Secret Services’ training grounds. Here they could attack helicopters and aircraft, drive militarized ATVs in the dirt, spin cars through twisted courses, and raid storefronts or skyscrapers. Almost every essential skill could be worked on here. The K-9 Training Center was a small corner of the complex. It contained an agility course and a mocked-up office building interior. For area work, there was a two-street town set up in a different section of RTC.

Tommy Jurgen was a tough sumbitch retired Marine and fellow Okie, so they got along just fine.

“So tell me,” Jurgen didn’t even let him get through the door of his office. No question what he wanted to know—Jim had been asked to tell the story all week.

So, he cracked a cold orange juice, tossed Malcolm a treat, and sat down to tell the tale of the most threatening attack on a Secret Service protectee in recent history. The newspapers had had a heyday of it, arguing both sides against the middle without the USSS saying a word: US Secret Service saves the day, and First Lady nearly killed due to Secret Service negligence to detect the threat.

The problem was that after a full week, there were still no leads on the truck’s driver. Street cam footage had been pieced together over the entire thirty-six hours between the theft of the truck and the attack—and not one usable image of his face had been caught. They weren’t even sure it was a he until the DNA analysis of the few teeth and bones that had been recovered. Beyond that, he was melting-pot American with no clear genetic history. Missing persons reports were being chased, but so far without any luck.

“Seems pretty unlikely for him to remain a John Doe for a full week,” Jurgen scowled down at his boots. “Less’n he was tryin’.”

“Yep,” that had been everyone’s conclusion. Jim told him the general consensus. “Deliberate attack by party or parties unknown. Assume significantly increased threat levels.”

Jurgen scowled at the ceiling now as if searching for a different answer, but finally concluded, “Yep.”

“Got another question for you.” Jim knew he was fishing, but couldn’t help himself.

“Fire away.”

“You ever meet a Special Agent Reese Carver? Driver?”

Jurgen’s smile grew quickly, in a way that had earned him the nickname Jerk Jurgen from all of the female officers. “Oh yeah. Majorly hot chick on the Presidential Detail. What about her?” Then he narrowed his eyes at Jim for a long moment. “No way! You?”

“I shouldn’t have asked.” Jim should have guessed at Jurgen’s reaction. And it wasn’t like Jim wanted that fact out in public, but he was absolutely desperate for any clues.

“Not a man in the Service hasn’t looked at that piece of ass and wanted it,” Jurgen was on a roll.

For the first time, Tommy Jurgen’s attitude toward women rankled.

Jurgen finally caught a clue and harrumphed himself back into being human. “Word is that no one, and I mean no one, gets much more than a hello out before she shoots them down outta the sky. Looked her up once. All set to be the top chick NASCAR driver, better than Danica Patrick, until her daddy and brother ate it in the same week. Had to be tough. Made her hard.”

No, Jim decided. Not hard exactly. There’d been nothing hard about the woman in his bed. Cautious. Which meant…what? He didn’t really know.

But Jurgen was expecting some reaction. Jim shouldn’t have said anything in the first place, but he had. Now all he could do was try to make sure there was no reason for Jurgen to spread the story. So he offered his best nonchalant shrug and a “Huh,” of defeat.

“So, she put another guy in the dust. Just another in a long list, buddy,” Jurgen took the bait. “Time to stop thinking about women. You and Malcolm ready? I’ve got the course set.”

“We were born ready. Right, Malcolm?”

The springer spaniel wagged his tail, clearly tired of all the talk.

An entire office complex had been built above the dog kennels within an innocuous-looking barn at the edge of the RTC campus. It would be spiked with dozens of different explosive compounds to be found by the team and keep them sharp.

As to not thinking about women, at least one woman, Jim didn’t see that happening any more than him becoming a Nebraska Cornhuskers’ fan after being bred-and-buttered on the Oklahoma Sooners. Nope, this trucker boy wasn’t ready to give up on Reese one little bit.

“Let’s do it.” He slapped his knees as he rose and Malcolm jumped up ready to catch the bad guys, even if they were just pretend ones…today.

“Something eating at you?” Harvey Lieber had walked up to the desk Reese was using without her even noticing. When she’d glanced back during the attack, Reese had the best angle on the truck driver, but all she remembered was the truck’s grill. She was flipping through the mug shot books on the chance that something would jog her memory, but so far no joy.

“No, sir. Just wishing I’d looked more carefully.”

“Looked carefully enough to save your protectees. We’re giving you the Director’s Award of Valor for that.”

“Don’t want it, sir. I wasn’t brave. Or not brave. I just drove. The two guys in the Lead Car—that was bravery.”

“Yeah well, all three of you are getting one, so deal with it. Distinguished Service Award to your pal Fischer for fast thinking, too. Thinking of pulling him off Baxter’s fence line detail and adding him to the Presidential team. What’s your assessment?”

Reese wanted to say no, but knew that wasn’t right. She remembered him racing to clear her way to the helos. On the camera footage, she’d seen him reacting several seconds ahead of any other agent—she’d still been bouncing off the wall and he’d already seen that she’d need a clear path. In NASCAR, races sometimes came down to thousandths of a second, making Jim’s reaction time really stand out.

“He’s a good man,” was the very least he deserved.

Harvey Lieber narrowed his eyes at her for several long seconds, but she wasn’t going to reveal anything else. He finally nodded to himself and turned away, making some inscrutable decision that she’d only find out about later.

“Are you two up to the Meryton Hall dance, or the Netherfield ball?”

Reese twisted around the other way to discover that Dilya and Zackie the First Dog had come up on her other side. She had the distinct impression that they’d somehow come to be there without Harvey even noticing. Dilya was dressed in form-fitting black—t-shirt, leggings, tennis shoes as dark as her hair—except for the bright rainbow-colored shoelaces woven between the eyelets in some strange and intricate pattern. Maybe this was her stealth mode.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know Pride and Prejudice,” Dilya shook her head with sadness. “I’m reading her other books now. I like Fanny in Mansfield Park, but that’s because she’s sort of like me, not like you.”

“Whereas I’m like…”

“Elizabeth Bennet.”

Reese wondered if all conversations with Dilya were like this. “You’d have to ask Jim about the story, I don’t know it.”

“Oh, I can tell you, if you’d like, but it might spoil the fun.”

“The fun.” What part of any of this was being fun?

Dilya nodded happily, then thought for a moment. “I know what you need. You need to go for a walk. Too bad there aren’t any rain-muddied meadows. C’mon.” And she turned for the Ready Room’s door without waiting to see if Reese followed.

At the moment, anything was better than staring at thousands of pictures in hopes of spotting someone she’d never actually seen.

Dilya had turned right out of the Secret Service Ready Room, but she didn’t go up the stairs—which was a huge relief. Up those stairs was the First Floor of the West Wing, including the Oval Office. If Reese never went up those stairs, it would be fine with her.

Instead, Dilya lead her back through a warren of offices and through a small door that she needed her security badge to unlock.

“Where—”

“Shh!” Dilya held a finger to her lips, then whispered, “There’s a press conference going on, I don’t want them to hear us. But this way is shorter.”

The low-ceilinged area was filled with racks of equipment. Stacks and stacks of computers, high-speed modems, and video processors stood in long rows. Despite the soft roar of fans, the area was warm with radiated heat. She saw labels on the racks: ABC, NBC, CNN… She looked up at the ceiling when a sudden roar of voices sounded above. They were directly under the Press Briefing Room and the gaggle was shouting out questions for the Press Secretary.

They were in FDR’s old swimming pool—in the deep end. She looked at a small section of exposed wall and spotted the old tile that had originally walled in the pool. It was now covered with signatures of the press corps. FDR had swum here. JFK and Marilyn Monroe had probably frolicked together in this very spot. What were they…

Dilya had moved down to the far end of the pool. Zackie’s nails clicked on the bare concrete floor that had replaced the old pool bottom.

Reese hurried along the cramped aisle to join her.

“This door leads into the Press Corps basement offices, but they should be empty right now.” Dilya opened the door and led the way.

Down one side was a long line of tiny booths set up like the announcer’s broadcast studios at NASCAR races. The door plaques showed that’s exactly what they were: Voice of America, American Forces Network, Reuters, and more. On the left was a cubicle row, crowded aisles of small desks with cameras and notepads scattered about. There was a small rail with dozens and dozens of overlapping neckties dangling from it. Reese had no time for anything more than impressions as Dilya hurried along.

At one of the cubicle desks, a reporter hunched over a camera. Perhaps because the camera was broken there was no point in being upstairs at the briefing. All she could really see as they hurried by was the reporter’s hands working on it. Close by lay a stack of several black boxes, each smaller than a pack of playing cards that must be some form of storage or battery she wasn’t familiar with.

They passed a stairwell leading upward from which she could hear the clear voices of the press briefing breaking up. She raced ahead.

Past a tiny kitchen with two vending machines, a microwave, and an espresso machine with a picture of Tom Hanks above it, they came to another door. Again, Dilya slotted her ID and a flat panel at the end of the hall swung aside. Zackie pushed through first.

They rushed through after her as steps sounded on the stairs from the offices above. Dilya leaned on the panel and it snicked shut with seconds to spare. The sudden silence was echoing.

They were in a utilitarian hallway that Reese’s sense of direction said was a basement beneath the White House Residence itself. There was the rattle of dishes and the hum of a dishwasher off to her left. To the right was a long wall with two doors, both labeled Storage.

Directly in front of them, in the middle of a long white hallway lit fluorescent white, stood a gray-haired woman. Her hair was back in a bun. She wore an unremarkable dress and a knit red cardigan. She looked like someone’s grandmother, if not for her brilliant blue eyes that were watching the two of them closely.

“Miss Stevenson,” the woman nodded to Dilya. “We meet at long last. And Miss Carver. This is indeed a treat. And where are the two of you headed in such a hurry?”

Reese opened her mouth, then closed it again. She didn’t know. Now that she thought about it, she was simply glad that no one was about to shoot her for trespassing where mere Motorcade drivers were not meant to go. Yet she had the distinct impression that this woman had been standing here waiting just for them.

“Uh…” It was nice to see the supremely confident Dilya flummoxed by something. The young know-it-all had clearly been having fun messing with her. Turnabout was such sweet revenge.

“You may call me Miss Watson. Where were you off to, child?” The woman didn’t offer to shake hands, instead keeping them clasped on the carved white handle of her stout wooden cane. It looked as ancient as she did.

“I was taking Ms. Carver to go and see Clive.” Dilya’s tone said that she was distinctly unhappy about the “child” comment, but wasn’t comfortable arguing with an elder—at least not one as imposing as Miss Watson.

Their destination was news to Reese. Clive who?

“Of course you were, dear. And I know for exactly what reason. How convenient that he has just made me a small delivery this morning. Please, come to my office.” Again without waiting for any acknowledgement, she turned toward the sound of the dishwashing.

A few steps along the hallway, Miss Watson opened a door onto a narrow spiral stairway. Firmly grasping the handrail, the woman navigated the spiral downward with surprising agility. When Dilya followed, Reese was left with no choice but to do the same. They emerged into an even more utilitarian hallway of the subbasement. Excess chairs, perhaps from the State Dining room, were stacked along one side of the hall. Fold-up tables could be seen further along. Doors were labeled Air Conditioning, Storage, Dentist—with no dentist at present—Elevator Machinery, and finally Mechanical Room 043.

Miss Watson unlocked the door to that last and slipped inside.

At first impression, it looked like a dark hole. The kind that people entered, then were never seen again. A dim desk lamp was turned on, revealing a battered steel desk and shelves of books.

“If you’d give an old lady a hand, my dear,” Miss Watson waved at the joint of two bookcases—after the brightness of the hall it was too dim to read any of the titles.

In for a penny. Reese took in a breath and, hoping that she would still be alive to take in another, pushed. The two bookcases swung inward and apart, sliding easily out of the way.

A parlor, brightly lit with Tiffany lamps, was revealed. It had a white oriental rug, delicate armchairs, and walnut fixtures. Miss Watson shuffled past, and at the touch of a switch, a gas fireplace flickered to life beneath a large marble mantel that might have dated all the way back to George Washington. There were pictures of women’s faces everywhere. The room was elegant. And easily the most unexpected place she’d ever been.

Dilya’s wide-eyed expression said this was new to her as well.

Miss Watson crossed to a bright red ceramic Snoopy doghouse. Lifting the dog as a handle, she removed the roof and revealed a cookie jar filled with dog biscuits. She selected one and bent down far enough to hand it to Zackie, then pat her on the head.

“Please,” she waved them to chairs while she busied herself with a white porcelain teapot covered in sweet peas.

Reese looked once more at the photos about the walls. They came from every era of the nation’s history, some were hand-painted portraits, but most were photographs. She identified Spanish, Russian, German, and Vietnamese women as well as a wide variety of ones in American military attire.

“Yes,” Miss Watson spoke without turning. “Many of the finest spies throughout history have been women.” As if she already knew what question Reese was thinking.

She delivered teacups and small plates of delicate chocolates before sitting in a flowered chair across from them. Perhaps this Clive was the White House chocolatier. She knew he worked somewhere in the lower reaches of the Residence, though she hadn’t been aware that the building went this far down.

“Tell me what you know but haven’t spoken aloud, Miss Carver.” She propped her antique cane beside her chair and picked up her teacup.

There was something odd about the cane. It had tarnished metal on the tip and rose in a long taper, wider at the top than the tip by at least an inch. The carved handle looked like old deer horn, handled so often that it had been burnished smooth. Rather than having a flat top to rest one’s palm on, as an invalid’s cane might, it curved slightly. More like a handle if one were to hold it horizontally.

“Yes, an elegant piece,” Miss Watson didn’t even glance toward it.

She had a disconcerting way of never looking at what she was discussing.

“Jim Bowie was nearly killed by this sword cane during a duel on a sandbar in the Mississippi. Instead, he killed the man who stabbed him in the chest with it. It was because of that fight that he purchased a large knife from a blacksmith—a knife that was popularized as the Bowie knife. The knife came after the fight, despite the popular story. He also was a spy for the Americans against the Mexicans before he was ultimately killed at the Alamo.”

“Can I see?” Dilya set down her cup.

“May I see. And yes.” At Miss Watson’s nod, Dilya stepped forward and picked up the cane.

“Just tug sharply, dear.”

Dilya yanked on the handle and a foot and a half of bright steel slid out of the scabbard. It caught the red light off the Tiffany lamps until it looked as if it dripped with blood.

Miss Watson offered her pointers on how to hold and wield a sword. As Dilya practiced them, Reese noticed that Miss Watson’s attention was on her, not Dilya.

Tell me what you know but haven’t spoken aloud, Miss Carver.

Reese swallowed hard. Now it felt as if Miss Watson was a telepath placing her words directly into Reese’s head.

She knew that she missed Jim Fischer and Malcolm. She shouldn’t—not for how briefly they’d been together—yet she did. It was impossible that this unknown woman would be discussing that.

Therefore the topic, as it had tediously been all week, was the attack on the First Lady’s Motorcade. Others were still debating between accident and attack, but she knew it was the latter. She also knew…but that was ridiculous.

Miss Watson smiled. “Yes, we know things even though there is no way for us to know them. That is the power of being a woman. You must learn to trust your instincts in life just as you did on the track. Tell me about the attack.”

“I don’t know your clearance.”

“I should think that these walls speak for themselves,” Miss Watson waved her teacup in a small circular motion that included far more than the unusual parlor in the deep subbasement that she occupied, perhaps even more than the White House itself. “But I don’t care for such trivial items as what occurred. I already know all of that. I’m far more interested in what you know, but that others have not yet been willing to confront.”

“It was a test.” Reese hadn’t known that for a fact until she said it aloud. But now that she’d given it a voice, she knew it was true.

“Oh my,” Miss Watson stared down at her tea with pursed lips. “I had feared as much.”

“A test of what?” Dilya paused halfway through a lunge with the blade.

“Of…” Reese didn’t like the answer on the tip of her tongue. “Of Motorcade security. I have to tell Harvey. We have to lock it down harder.” The realization slammed into her like a physical blow. She was halfway to her feet when Miss Watson held up a restraining hand. “What?”

“There is a question that you haven’t asked yet, but which any of these women now hanging as memories on my wall would think of immediately.”

Reese sat back and thought hard about what that might be. She even gave herself some time by eating the first chocolate. The deep flavors of strawberry and mint on a dark chocolate substrate almost served to distract her.

Almost.

“There is a hard-learned lesson by women of…” Miss Watson looked momentarily uncomfortable, “…my profession. Sometimes, an enemy’s action is done to better understand our reaction.”

Reese thought of racing, and it made perfect sense. There were times when you teased at a move, perhaps a couple times without executing it, to set up an opponent to be too slow to react when you finally did drop a gear to jump down to the inside of the track and take the lead from them. She’d done just that several times, but with a stock car. To do it with a Presidential Motorcade…

“But what did they learn?” Dilya slid the sword back into its cane scabbard and scooped up her third chocolate.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Miss Watson looked directly at Reese as if she knew the answer.

Dilya also looked at her for a long moment, then her eyes widened as if she too knew the answer.

Well she certainly didn’t know it herself. The only thing they would have learned was…about Reese’s driving. She was the latest unknown factor to be added to the Presidential Motorcade. Had they been trying to test her…or remove her?

She’d suddenly lost her taste for chocolate.

Malcolm had done his typical stellar job on the training course. His sniffing score was at the top of the charts, and for a medium-sized dog, he’d done incredibly well on the agility course. For an hour he’d jumped over barriers, ducked and run through winding tunnels of plastic pipe, slalomed through stick gates like legs of fifty people in a crowd—all around proving that at four years old he was still a young dog in top form. Another half hour of attack training. Just because he was a “friendly” dog meant to be working among the public didn’t mean he couldn’t be dangerous when needed. Then a second run at an altered explosives course while they were both tired.

“I sometimes suspect your dog of cheating,” Jurgen grumped as he signed off on the score sheet.

Jim looked down at his springer spaniel.

Malcolm gave back his best innocent look as if he knew exactly what they were talking about.

“Did you place all the explosives yourself?” Jim took a guess.

“Damn straight!”

“Wearing gloves?” Jim smiled.

Jurgen scowled down at Malcolm for a long couple seconds, then cursed when he figured out the drift of Jim’s question.

“You little, four-legged sneak.”

Jim burst out laughing. “Malcolm did a double find. He went after the explosives. And for the ones that were hardest to find, he went after the scent that the earlier ones had in common: you.”

“That’ll teach me.” Jurgen offered a hard laugh, then thumped Malcolm on the ribs a few times to show that there were no hard feelings.

With his high scores, Malcolm had earned them an afternoon off.

Jim thought about hanging around until he saw what was next on Jurgen’s agenda when a truck rolled up with a fresh load of ten dogs from Vonn Liche Kennels. Ten dogs tagged as candidates for the Secret Service’s intense standards. He’d thought it could be fun, until he saw that they were all for the ERT.

The Emergency Response Team dogs were the toughest animals in the service: Dobermans, German shepherds, and Belgian Malinois. Driven, dangerous, and, after the long drive from Indiana, they would be a particular handful.

With thinly veiled excuses, which Jurgen saw right through but let him get away with, Jim and Malcolm made good their escape and climbed back into his pickup to head out.

The kennels and the bulk of the dog training area were in the farthest corner of RTC. Then there was the mock town, an area of tightly convoluted back roads for driver training, and then the main driving area for skid and turn training. The last was an open area of pavement a quarter mile long and a football field wide. If no one else was running, maybe they’d let him sign out a vehicle. Watching Reese on the videos, he’d learned more than a few tricks and wanted to give them a try. His job was no longer behind the wheel, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to do it on occasion.

He pulled up beside the long line of battered Suburbans, Chevy Impalas, and Ford Tauruses that were used for agent’s driver training. Once they were retired from the field, they were used and abused here. After they were truly worn out, they were repurposed once more for demolition derby training. That was a skill he was fine without learning—how to use another vehicle to bounce off for a change of direction or to shove into an assailant’s path. Jim just wanted to try that high-speed drift.

Even as he opened his truck’s door, he could hear the hard squeal of tires as someone worked the pavement on the other side of the garage. He rolled down the windows halfway and left Malcolm asleep on the front passenger seat. He’d earned his rest and the cool February day wouldn’t bother him any. Jim tossed a light blanket over him anyway so that just his nose was sticking out.

After shrugging on his sheepskin jacket against the cool day, he walked around the end of the garage. Three guys were standing on the swatch of brown grass that separated the back of the main garage from the open stretch of pavement. They weren’t doing anything, just watching.

Focusing downfield, he saw only one car on the big open area. It was one of the Beast limousines. The Presidential Motorcade only used three limos at a time: the President’s and the two Spares. But the Secret Service actually owned twelve. Some were for backups when one or another was rotated into service. Others were for this.

The lone driver raced the car straight at them from the far end. With less than two hundred feet to go, the car slammed sideways into a four-wheel drift.

Before it even came to a stop, the rear tires smoked in reverse. With a hard cut, the driver was headed back the way they’d come, back end first. He could hear the engine clawing up against redline before the driver threw in the inevitable J-turn. A hard crank of the wheel. Rather than holding the sideways skid, they let the car drift around until it was headed nose-first down the field and the engine was gunning ahead in drive with almost no loss of speed despite the flip.

Jim strode up beside the guys watching. He’d expected to see Ralph McKenna out there taking one last set of spins before retirement, but instead he was standing here with the two head trainers. They all stood with their arms folded over their chests, just watching.

“Hey, guys.”

“Hey, Jim,” Ralph was the only one who glanced away from the driver long enough to identify him.

“Thought that’d be you out there.”

“Technique’s wrong,” Arturo, the head trainer observed. “Ralph always hit the turn at five thousand RPM.”

“That was fifty-five if it was a day,” George, his assistant, added in.

“It was six flat. Hard against the redline,” McKenna finished the conversation.

“Who…” But then he saw it. He’d watched the video a hundred times of Reese sliding the Suburban sideways at high speed to make it through the gate of the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. She’d judged it with such nicety that she’d barely scraped the driver’s door, fitting the big vehicle through an opening only a few feet wider than the Suburban itself.

He got it now. She was slamming the monstrous limousine through the same maneuvers. There was a reason they called it “The Beast.” With all of its armor and defense system, it was eighteen feet long, six feet high, and weighed in at eight tons—over twice his pickup with a full load. And she was making it spin and dance like it was a turbo-charged hotrod.

On the next run, she slammed it through a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin, a full time around.

“Now why would she do that?” George mused aloud.

Jim glanced at Ralph and saw the small smile there, so he kept his mouth shut.

Reese did it three more times until she could nail the final direction every time.

On the next spin, when she was halfway through and facing away from them, he saw a pair of canisters shoot out of the front and blast out a cloud of smoke as she continued her turn.

“Is that tear gas?” The wind was drifting their way.

“Normally,” Arturo growled. “Just smoke canisters for training here.”

“She laid them down as a blind to anyone following rather than to clear a crowd blocking the way,” McKenna said almost reverently. It was clear he’d never thought to do it himself.

Jim felt an itch. That was Reese Carver at the wheel. And it was clear that she was angry at something. She was slamming The Beast around like it was part NASCAR racer and part demolition derby.

“Anyone willing to bet a twenty she has another trick up her sleeve?”

They all turned to look at him for a long moment, then looked away.

“Aw, c’mon guys. Easy money.” Even making clucking chicken noises didn’t get him a taker.

As if Reese could overhear their conversation, she started her next—and he’d bet final—run from the far edge of the pavement.

What if instead of going into a drift to turn ninety degrees as she had at the heliport gate, she first wanted to blind those following her?

She gunned toward them from the far end of the field. For a quarter mile, she let the lumbering Beast gather as much speed as it could.

Then just as the guys were starting to get nervous, wondering which way they’d need to dodge and run, Reese slammed into a spin.

When her car was turned exactly one-eighty—with its rear end facing them—she launched another pair of smoke canisters out the front. Because they were standing on her side of the smoke screen, they could see the car continue to spin until it was headed off to the left at speed—a three-quarters turn nailed perfectly on dry pavement.

If it was a T-intersection, the attackers might barrel straight through the smoke screen and crash into the end of the road. If it was a through-intersection, they might race straight through and across the intersection in hot pursuit.

Either way, the Beast wouldn’t be there. Masked by the smoke screen of the tear gas canisters, she’d be gone in an unexpected direction. Sideways.

There was an awed silence among the observers as Reese continued down the narrow side road she’d entered. Then with one more hard thrum of the engine, she came racing toward them backwards before flipping the car through a final J-turn and coming to a stop close beside them.

Reese sat there holding the wheel and staring at him as he started applauding.

Reese would rather Jim wasn’t here. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be at the White House, walking his precious fence line with his precious dog doing their precious sniffing. He—

She wanted to pound on something. Or someone. Jim was fast becoming a candidate as he led the applause.

How the hell had she gotten in this trap?

Miss Watson was right—it all somehow fit. Reese had been the target in New York. And for that to happen, it had to be an inside job. Which meant that she could trust no one! Once again she was out on the track all alone and no one to turn to.

She eased off the brake and, letting the idling of the big diesel engine put the car back into motion, drove along the small access road to the garage. She parked it by the other vehicles and turned off the engine.

A figure came up on the other side of the five-inch ballistic glass to open her door. She waited for Jim to fail. The Beast’s doors didn’t open by merely pulling on a handle—then any fool could run up and do it. One of the closely held secrets of The Beast was how to open its heavy doors from the outside.

But the door swung open anyway.

Ralph McKenna was standing there. He’d driven this car for a decade so of course he knew its tricks; he’d probably helped design them. The others were standing back a bit.

She popped her belt and clambered out, taking the hand that Ralph offered because she didn’t trust her knees with how they were shaking. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t stress. She didn’t know what it was, but it was there and she didn’t like it. She was such a mess that she should tell them here and now that she couldn’t be the President’s driver. Stagecoach—as the Beast was known whenever the President was aboard—was one rung of the ladder too high.

Ralph was no longer holding her hand, he was shaking it.

“When it comes time to put me in the ground, Carver, I want you driving the hearse. That way I know that I’ll get to where I’m going.”

“Not for a long time, McKenna.” If the best driver in the Service told her that, it meant that she couldn’t walk away. Damn it!

“Not a chance. I’ve got a cottage and a sailboat waiting for me in the San Juan Islands up in the other Washington. Time for me to go home. I know The Beast and his passengers are in the best of hands.”

A double dare. Definitely no way out of it.

Arturo and George came up and shook her hand as well. “I can’t see putting that in the standard training. I don’t know if either of us could even do that move, never mind teach it to the poor hombres who come through here. Nice, Carver. Seriously nice.”

Triple dare. Crap! All she’d done was drive. It was all she wanted to do. She didn’t like whatever was messing with her knees.

Then they moved off and there was only Jim.

“Where’s Malcolm?” She still wasn’t ready to talk to him. She’d treated him like crap since New York and she wasn’t ready to deal with that either.

“In the truck, sleeping off a hard morning of training,” he hooked a thumb toward a big Dodge pickup with a crew cab and a short bed. Meant the thing was all for show because the bed wasn’t big enough to haul anything. And it looked that way too, immaculately clean as if he spent the weekends polishing its glossy black surface.

On cue, Malcolm stuck his head up over the window sill and gave her a welcoming woof before disappearing out of sight once more.

“Can I buy you lunch? Know a good spot about ten minutes away. Great roast beef sandwiches. Beer if you’re done for the day.”

She was so done. Somehow he knew that she didn’t want to talk about her driving. In the last five days she’d forgotten how easy it was to be around Jim Fischer. He never pushed her when she didn’t want to talk.

“Fine.” Her Pop would slap her butt a hard one for that kind of manners. “Thanks, that’d be great.” A little better.

“Need a lift? Malcolm might insist that you sit in back…” he trailed off with a smile that appeared genuine.

She pointed at her ride, parked beneath a shade tree on the far side of the lot.

Jim glanced over his shoulder, then did a double take, which made her feel better.

“How did I miss that?” And he was on the move for a closer look.

At a loss for what else to do, she followed in his wake.

Pop had given her the rusting hulk for her fourteenth birthday, had it towed into the back corner of his racing team garage at the Motor Speedway. “You get it fixed up, honeychile, and you can drive it when you get to sixteen.”

The 1969 Mustang Mach 1 had taught her not only how to fix a car, but why they worked the way they did. She’d torn the engine block of the Ramair Super Cobra Jet V8 down to bare metal and rebuilt it all the way up. The 4-barrel R-Code Holley carb had taken her a week to refurbish, and another three days before she figured out she’d put a float valve in upside down. Piece by painstaking piece, she’d put that car together with Pop’s and his chief mechanic’s training, but none of their help. It was all hers.

After a lot of soul searching, she’d decided to make everything as cherry original as she could until you lifted the hood. The engine, transmission, and suspension were all rebuilt with only one purpose in mind—speed. From the factory it would have run 0-to-60 in eight seconds. By the time she was done installing the nitro, it was well below five. Tuning the suspension had taken some work, but she could drag a quarter mile in the sub-ten-second range.

It had taken until she was eighteen to finish it, but by the time it was done, it was perfect. The jet black finish accented by a single, thin, red racing stripe down the side made it look fast standing still. The ram scoop in the middle of the hood, the rear louvers over the back window, and the rear spoiler made it look even more like a race car.

It was also the most fun ride she’d ever taken. A NASCAR stock car was a faster, tougher machine, but it was pure race car. Her Black Beauty looked classic, but flew like pure joy.

“Damn, woman. Is this thing street legal?”

“Depends on the street.” It was nice that Jim could see past the pretty car down to the fact that it was a performance machine.

“Bet that’s faster than Road Runner being chased by Wile E. Coyote. What do you call her, Jackrabbit?”

“Black Beauty.”

At that he went suddenly quiet and looked right at her, “Of course you do.”

She was glad that her complexion would hide the heat rocketing to her cheeks.

“Okay,” he didn’t push it. “Can you go slow enough to follow me in my truck? Or should I give you the coordinates of the nearest airport for you to fly into?”

“I’ll keep it in first and we’ll see how we do.”

Jim nodded and headed for his truck.

She liked that he kept it simple. Though she’d definitely have to razz him about going exactly the speed limit as he led the way.