DUTCH AND GINA: AFTER THE FALL (22 page)

“When did you decide this?” he asked her.

“It’s been on my mind for a long time.”

“But now that you’re the president’s daughter, what had been on your mind so long suddenly couldn’t even wait until after dinner.”

Jade wasn’t even going to dignify that with a response. “It’s my decision,” was all she was going to say about it.

Henry, however, didn’t believe her. “Sure it is.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. Then Sam, fuming, leaned toward her daughter. “What’s wrong with you? After all Henry has done for us and this is how you repay him?”

“What has he done for me?”

Sam could hardly believe it. “Why you li le ungrateful---”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Henry interjected. “Let’s not behave like the hicks Jade take us for.” Jade wanted to roll her eyes. But she didn’t. “It’s my decision,” she said again.

“You must take me for a fool,” Henry said with a look of pure hatred in his eyes. Then he smiled, became his charming self again, and that look was gone. “But you know what, fine,” he said, “it’s over.

No big deal. It’s over. You aren’t hur ng me. You’re hur ng yourself. Because when Harber and that high and mighty wife of his gets red of your ignorant behind and want to sail you back to North Carolina, you’ll want me back.”

“But it’ll be too late,” Sam said.

“Far too late,” Henry echoed. “And besides, I don’t want you, either. I’ve always enjoyed your mother’s company more than yours, anyway. Now let’s eat.” Sam smiled that ght smile of hers that let Jade know she was totally displeased. Henry was harder to read, as he actually ini ated new conversa ons and seemed to have forgo en all about any talk of breakups. He was hurt, she could tell he was disappointed by the turn of events, but it didn’t seem to throw him as badly as she had expected.

He gave her every reason, then, to believe that their conversa on was the end of it. It didn’t come up again during dinner, nor again when they returned to the hotel suite, the Secret Service inauspiciously away from, but very near the room. She thought he had accepted it, or at least accepted what she said about it, and that was that.

It wasn’t un ll later, when her mother decided to head back to North Carolina, and Henry asked Jade to head back to North Carolina, and Henry asked Jade to stay a li le longer so that they could talk privately, did she realize her error.

“Come on, Jade,” Henry had said when she seemed to balk. “You owe me that much.”

And although everything within her was telling her that maybe she should go, she stayed. He had been her boyfriend for all of her adult life. She felt it was right for her to at least hear him out. So she saw her mother off, a mother who was s ll fuming at her, and went back up to the suite with Henry. She stayed.

But as soon as the door was closed and locked behind them, she knew she had made a horrible mistake.

“You don’t think we should see each other?” Henry asked snidely as he grabbed her by the hair and began dragging her to the bedroom.

“What are you doing, Henry?” she yelled. “Let me go!”

“Talking to me like that,” he was saying in an almost mumble.

“Henry, what are you doing?”

“D umping
me
?” he kept saying. “You’re dumping
me
?”

As they neared the bedroom, she pulled back, a emp ng to break free of his grasp, and, at first, she was winning the ba le. But then his herculean strength took over and he clawed her fingers away from the bedroom’s doorjamb and slung her into the room, slamming the door behind him. She stopped trying to reason with him and a empted to scream from the top of her lungs. But his hand muffled her and as she struggled with him he grabbed a pillow, slung off the pillowcase, and ed it around her mouth, effec vely silencing her.

“Breaking up with me?” he said again as he slung her onto the bed so hard that her small body bounced.

“Who do you think you are? Come to Washington for two minutes and now you want to tell me where I can go? You? A nothing piece of shit! Breaking up with
me
?”

He got on the bed and slapped her hard across her face. And then he socked her even harder. Her big green eyes stretched in amazement. What was he doing, her brain kept asking. Didn’t this fool realize that the Secret Service was right outside his suite? Didn’t he realize what he was doing?

But he did realize it. He just didn’t care. She was the one who had forgo en. This was the same Henry who never valued her opinions, or her passions, or even her. She thought she had snagged the top of the line, Dr. Henry Osgood, only to realize, watching him now as he removed every s tch of her clothing, and then removed his own, that the only thing she snagged was an illusion. He was always this selfish, always this heartless, always this quick to feel en tled. She just had never given him a reason to show it. Until now.

“I’ll show you what happens to li le bitches who get ahead of themselves,” he said, grabbing her legs and spreading them so wide that she screamed a muffled scream.

He grabbed his belt and ed her hands to the headboard, and then slung out pillows and grabbed pillowcases, tying her feet to the backboard.

And then he sat in a chair, watching her center as she con nued to scream in pain, and began what Jade knew as “the routine.”

The rou ne. That long, drawn out period where he had to jack on his penis un ll his hand was almost numb. But that was what it always took to get his ny, limp dick to eventually, and always only marginally, show some life.

show some life.

The Marine One helicopter landed at the FB I Academy at Quan co and the president and First Lady, surrounded by ght security, walked briskly across the helipad and entered their loca on through a side entrance. It was one of many undisclosed loca ons in the na onal security arsenal when so-called high valued individuals, be they famous or infamous, needed to be temporarily held.

They walked down a long corridor in what was the basement of the building, Dutch s ll in his Armani suit and Gina s ll in her Versace pantsuit. The press was told that the First Couple was going to meet privately with some new recruits at the FB I training academy, something they had done in the past, and that it would be without cameras or media access. The press didn’t like it, they never did, but they didn’t exactly have a vote in the matter.

They turned a corner, walked another long corridor, and then entered a side door. The room was not unlike those interroga on rooms they’d seen on television with one lone chair, one hanging light, and a roomful of agents. Only the agents were cleared out, with only the Director of the FB I s ll present, by the me the president arrived. And the high value target, seated in the lone chair, looking as if she had already been subjected to waterboarding or some torture technique, was Caroline Parker.

Or Caro as Dutch used to call her.

She looked up and, to Gina’s shock, had the nerve to smile.

“Hello, Dutch,” she said. “I told this crazy man here you wouldn’t let them torture me. I told him! You don’t believe in torture, do you, Dutch? But that’s what they do here. They tell you, and tell the Congress that they don’t, but they do. They torture people.” Tears were suddenly her eyes. “You should have seen what they did to me. Treating me like I’m some criminal!”

“Are you, Caroline?” Dutch asked her, and he was as calm as she was unhinged. He was standing against the wall, staring at her, while Gina remained near the door. The stench in the room made her keep her distance.

“Am I what? A criminal? You know I’m nothing like that. They’re just trying to play with my mind, Dutch, they’re trying to get me to say things that aren’t true.” She looked so different, Gina thought, so unlike the bombshell from Nantucket she used to be. All of her beauty, her charisma, gone.

Years ago, before Gina even knew Dutch, she was his fiancée. Then she was reported to have died in a plane crash in the French Alps, which, years later, turned out not to be true. And she’d been giving them hell ever since.

But this last stunt of hers, Gina thought, was a bridge too far.

“Why did you do it?” Dutch asked her a er she stopped her ranting on about her treatment.

“I didn’t do it,” she pleaded. “I told them just like I’m telling you that I didn’t do it. Max is lying if he told you I did it!”

“Tell me the truth, Caroline, or I’ll give the order.” This stopped her cold. “What order?”

“ The Director is busy,” Dutch went on, “and so are my wife and I. We don’t have me for your bullshit.

Now either you come clean, tell us exactly what happened, or whatever it was you already endured would be a stroll in the park compared to what you will endure.”

Caroline stared at her former lover. Dutch wasn’t a man who prac ced in the art of hyperbole, she knew man who prac ced in the art of hyperbole, she knew that from experience, and she also knew that he was a ruthless s.o.b. when he wanted to be.

“Just for the sake of argument,” she said, “and I’m making no statements, so fatso here can watch it.” She was looking directly at the FB I Director. Then she looked at Dutch. “But I’m just saying. If I was to tell you what you want to hear, if I just come out and confess to everything, what’s in it for me? Will you allow me to go back to France, since they kidnapped me from there and brought me back here illegally anyway?” Again she cut a glance at the Director. Then she looked again at Dutch. “But if I give you the information you want, what’s in it for me?” Dutch stared at her, his heart enraged. “Less pain,” he said to her.

Chris an yawned and stretched at his desk in the Roosevelt Room of the White House as he, along with a handful of other aides, had been working feverishly on the inventory protocols for the First Lady’s upcoming conference on children’s health. He stood up, determined to take a break, and went in search of Jade.

When he couldn’t find her, and when her cell phone went to voice mail, he went to the Nursery.

LaLa and Crader were talking, with Crader, he was certain, s ll trying to get back with LaLa. Christian even suggested to her once that maybe she was being too hard on the man, since he seemed genuinely sorry, but LaLa shook her head at the time.

“He’ll need constant supervision,” she said, “and I’m too old and have too much of my own life to live to be supervising some grown-ass man.”

Chris an laughed, and never broached the subject with her again.

“You’re enjoying this gig en rely too much,” he said to her as she laid the baby down in his crib.

“I told her the same thing,” Crader said. “She loves it.”

“It’s certainly taking up much more of my me than I thought it would. Every me somebody wants me now they come here first. But the president and First Lady went over to Virginia tonight to surprise some new FB I recruits, and they asked and of course I wasn’t going to turn them down.”

“They’re still too afraid to hire a new nanny?” LaLa looked at him. “Wouldn’t you be?” Christian couldn’t disagree with that.

“I still say I’m right, La,” Crader said.

“Right about what?” Christian asked.

“She wants to tell me that Michael Jordan isn’t the greatest athlete in the history of athle cs, but that Ali is. He was a great boxer, I’ll give her that, but the greatest athlete? She’s mad!”

Christian smiled. “Where’s Jade, La?” he asked her.

“She’s not back yet,” LaLa said. “An athlete doesn’t have to be somebody who can simply run fast and jump high,” she said to Crader.

“She’s not back?” Chris an asked her. “Are you sure?” He was certain she’d be back by now.

“I haven’t seen her anyway, okay? Goodness, Chris, this is a big place. I’ve had my hands full dealing these two babies in this room.”

When Chris an realized she was referring to Li le Walt and Crader, and Crader was objec ng to the characteriza on vociferously, he smiled and le . But it didn’t make sense. She knew they had a date tonight to play more table tennis. Besides, he thought, she would have phoned him if she was going to get back this late.

He tried her cell phone again. Again it went to voice mail. He peeped back into the Nursery.

mail. He peeped back into the Nursery.

“She’s at the Berkshire, right?” he asked her.

“The Berkshire-Ritz, yes,” she said.

And he nodded, thought about it again, and then headed for the White House exit.

Caroline’s throat constricted when Dutch gave her such a blunt response. She either talk, he had said, or she would experience more pain. “I want to see my lawyer,” she finally said, knowing where that request would get her.

“See him in your dreams, Caro,” Dutch said. “That’s the only place you’ll see him here.”

“You aren’t supposed to do that. I have a right to remain silent and consult with my a orney. You’re supposed to stop the interview right now--”

“This isn’t an interview,” Dutch made clear. “And I’ll be glad to stop right now and leave you in the trusted hands of my director if you don’t tell me what happened and why.”

“You have to promise me immunity from prosecu on, Dutch, you have to promise that they’ll let me go back to France. I’ll tell you everything, but you have to promise me that.”

It was dealing with the devil, but Dutch made it with her. She would be free to return to France, in return for her tes mony against Penelope Riley. Especially since, she con nually pointed out, she had actually boarded a plane and was on her way to France when the kidnapping occurred.

But she talked. For nearly half an hour she spelled out exactly what happened, where, when, and how.

She admi ed that the kidnapping ploy was her idea to begin with, and that she was the one who suggested how it all could go down, but she stopped short of admi ng to giving the order to commit the deed. She, in fact, insisted that the more she talked about the kidnapping, the more Riley wanted to do it and do it now. As to the why, it was as simple, and as complicated, as love and hate.

She looked at Dutch, surprised he didn’t already know why. “To get back at you, of course,” she said.

Gina looked at Dutch, knowing that he would blame himself for ever allowing her back into their lives last year. He just stared at Caroline, stared at her with nothing but disgust in his eyes, and then he turned to leave.