Long May She Reign (98 page)

Garth laughed without any humor whatsoever. “You
should
have been scared. We didn't—well, I'm really sorry.”

If he was already second-guessing himself to such a degree, she could only imagine what the formal debriefing meetings were going to be like. But something about the way Dave was stolidly looking straight ahead made her suspicious. “Are all of you really okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” Garth said.

Somehow, she didn't believe him.

“Paula took a few stitches,” he said. “But she's fine. She'll be on light duty for a few days.”

Stitches? Realizing what that meant, she felt even more exhausted. “She grabbed the knife, then.”

Garth and David nodded.

“But, she's okay,” Meg said.

They nodded.

God, she hoped so. She didn't really want to hear the answer to this, but— “How big was it?”

It was obvious that Dave wasn't going to answer, and Garth looked reluctant, too.

“About ten inches,” he said finally. “It was a hunting knife.”

Jesus. A knife that big would have gone—well—pretty far inside her body. Could easily have
killed
her. Ripped her organs apart. She touched her stomach and lower rib cage, wondering what it would have felt like to have someone—Jesus. Time to think about something else. “Was she lying about the granddaughter?” she asked.

“No. It was even the right name. That's why we—” Garth shook his head. “I'm sorry. We thought we'd checked her out sufficiently.”

But they were stuck with a protectee who was dumb enough to respond whenever anyone so much as waved or said hello. “She didn't exactly fit the assassin profile,” Meg said.

“No,” Garth conceded.

Because nice grandmother ladies weren't supposed to have any interest in doing things like murdering people.

“That damn raincoat,” he said. “I should have—I'm sorry.”

A raincoat, on a sunny day. “I'm not supposed to stop in transit,” Meg said. As her mother had so pointedly reminded her.

Garth turned around to look at her. “You're eighteen years old, Meg. What you're not supposed to have to do is
think
about things like that.”

It would be nice, yeah. “Who shot her?” she asked.

“Kyle,” he said.

Which made sense, since he probably had the quickest reactions of anyone on her detail. Meg brought her left hand up to her ear, which was still ringing faintly. “Is she going to be all right?”

Garth nodded.

“Is
Kyle
all right?” she asked.

Again, he nodded.

She really had no choice right now, but to believe him, so she nodded, too. For the time being, that was more than enough specific details, and she closed her eyes.

She had anticipated that the police presence—and press contingent—near her dorm would both be very large, and she was correct. Although it was highly unlikely that any of them were even aware that the President herself would be appearing within a matter of hours.

“Please don't talk to them,” Garth said. “Okay?”

Would that it were that easy. She used her good hand to straighten her hair, wishing that she were the kind of person who routinely thought to carry around a brush and comb.

“Meg?” Garth said, more insistently.

She shook her head, taking off her new sling and tucking it into the pocket of her sweatpants. With luck, no one would notice that she now had a cast, instead of her splint. “She needs to know that she accomplished absolutely
nothing
. I'll be quick, though.”

He didn't like it, but started transmitting an efficient set of instructions about where he wanted people to deploy, as Jose came over and opened the door.

Knowing that the cameras would be on her from the first second she stepped out of the car, she reminded herself to be as controlled as possible, and mentally tried to prepare her eyes for the barrage of flashes which were about to hit them.

There was more than enough security to keep the press from getting any close physical access, but she walked over in their general direction, noticing that her knee was even more swollen and painful than it had been earlier.

“Did someone in the dorm do something notable?” she asked, and a few of the people laughed.

A lot of questions came at her at once, but she would be okay as long as she remembered that she could hear what she wanted to hear, and answer what she wanted to answer. Mostly, of course, they all wanted to know how she felt about someone trying, and failing, to kill her. Again.

“Well,” she said, with enough of a drawl to give them all time to shut up and listen. “All I have to say, is that performance art just isn't what it used to be.”

There were more laughs, but most of them sounded uneasy.

“Anyway,” she said. “I have a paper due tomorrow—” which was, alas, true— “so I'd better hustle inside and get to work. Have a good night, everyone, okay?”

They were still asking questions, but she nodded at them in a friendly way and headed for the entry door, giving herself an A for striking the right, lighthearted tone, and a C+ for the quality of the humor.

Once she was inside, she put her sling back on, and leaned against the wall, trying to gather enough energy to go upstairs. The main checkpoint was very crowded, with a mix of Secret Service and FBI agents, and she assumed that Mr. Gabler was already on his way up from Washington, and they were all trying to get ready for him.

And, of course, the President.

“Are Paula and Kyle here?” she asked Garth.

He shook his head. “I don't think they'll be back for a few more hours.”

Meaning that she wasn't going to be able to thank them personally any time soon, then.

When she got off the elevator, Mary Elizabeth, who was just coming out of the bathroom, saw her first.

“Of all the dorms, in all the towns, in all the world,” she said.

Well, that was
sort
of like saying hello. Meg nodded. “Hi.”

“Look who's back,” Mary Elizabeth said, more loudly.

Juliana rushed out to the hall, looking very tense, and some of the guys from the second floor came up to see what was going on.

“I guess you heard what happened,” Meg said.

They all looked at her as though she was an absolute idiot.

“Has it been on the news?” she asked.

“This really small local access station maybe kind of
mentioned
it,” Andy said, and most of the guys laughed.

More people were coming out, including Tammy, Debbie, Natalie, and Jesslyn. She could also see Dirk, and Susan, and three more guys on their way up. The sound of all the cars outside when she and her small army got back, and the sudden flashing of cameras and television lights, would have to have been pretty obvious to anyone in the dorm, especially people whose windows faced the street.

“I'm really sorry about all of the commotion,” she said. And now, just to be
sure
they were all upset about having the campus being taken over— “But, it's going to be worse tomorrow, because, um, my mother's coming up here.”

There was such a mix of expressions that she couldn't interpret the general reaction to that.

“She won't be staying all that long,” Meg said. “She just—” Hmmm.

“Wants to see you,” Mary Elizabeth said.

Yes. That was a good description, of a rather conventional situation, so Meg nodded.

Everyone hung around in the stairwell for a while, asking her “so, you're okay, right?” kinds of questions, and it was a relief when they gradually started drifting off to go back to whatever they had been doing, leaving her alone with Juliana, Mary Elizabeth, and—nominally—Susan, who was leaning against the banister, about half a flight below them.

“Have you seen Jack yet?” Juliana asked. “He's been by here about three times.”

Oh, damn.
Jack
. She hadn't thought to call him, or Beth, or—oops. Christ, she hadn't even talked to her brothers yet.

“What happened to your hand?” Mary Elizabeth asked.

Right. The cast. Meg shrugged. “I kind of broke it in one place, and cracked it in another.” News her parents had not been thrilled to hear. “Or the metacarpal was maybe
already
broken, and I've been walking around with it.” News which had displeased her parents all the more.

“Already broken,” Susan said.

“I don't know,” Meg said defensively. “It always hurts, so it's hard to—I don't know.” Not that it mattered, since broken was broken, regardless of when it had taken place.

Susan nodded. “Just a detail, right?”

Well—yeah. If she wanted to put it that way.

“Do you need anything?” Susan asked, retreating down a few more steps, away from them.

With body language like
that
? Meg shook her head.

“Well, if you do,” Susan said, and went down to the second floor.

Meg frowned. “What's wrong with her? Is she worried about the reporters? Because, after tomorrow, they won't be sticking around.”

“God, you're a cretin, Meg,” Juliana said.

Probably, but that didn't explain why Susan had seemed so—cold. Distant. Unfriendly. “Is she okay?” Meg asked. “I mean, is she sick or something?”

Juliana and Mary Elizabeth exchanged glances.

“You called it right,” Mary Elizabeth said. “Complete cretin.”

Juliana nodded.

Yeah, fine, whatever. She was incredibly stiff and achy and wanted to go lie down, but sat on the steps and took out her phone to call Jack and let him know that she was back now.

Juliana sat next to her. “Nobody likes it when their friends almost get killed,” she said, “but maybe it bothers Susan more than other people.”

Oh. Meg paused, not hitting the automatic-dial button.

Mary Elizabeth took a seat on her other side. “The films are really bad. It looked—well, they're upsetting.”

“Films, as in plural?” Meg asked.

Juliana and Mary Elizabeth nodded.

She had no recollection of any reporters being there, not even a stringer or a paparazzo. “I didn't see anyone taking pictures.”

“I guess there were people with cell phones or digital cameras or something,” Juliana said. “One of them got pretty good video, and the sounds were really clear on the other one.”

So, if she had behaved like a coward—which she suspected was what had happened—it was going to be very hard to erase the image from people's minds.

“Did she think you were there for an abortion?” Juliana asked.

Maybe. But, three times a week,
every
week? Meg shrugged. “I don't know. Was that what she was saying?”

“It was hard to hear, with all of the other noise,” Mary Elizabeth said. “But she seemed to be going on about dead babies.”

And what better way to demonstrate one's reverence for life than to try and stab someone? She stared down at the cast, which was still only partially dry. She was supposed to be very careful of it, and keep her hand elevated as much as possible, although mainly, she just wanted to lie down and take another Valium—they had sent her home with five more pills. “I must have looked like I was in hysterics,” she said, dreading having them agree.

“A lot of it was all jumpy and out of focus, but as far as I could tell, you looked pissed off,” Juliana said. “And you definitely
sounded
pissed.”

Oh, no. Meg glanced at her. “I didn't swear, did I?”

Juliana thought. “Maybe ‘god-damn it.' Mostly, it seemed like you were yelling for people to get down.”

She remembered telling the woman in her office to stay down, but that was all. “I was probably trying to get my agents to
put
me down.”

Mary Elizabeth shook her head. “No, you were pointing at all of the people who were standing in the parking lot watching.” Then, she grinned. “And you
did
look pissed.”

It continued to make no sense whatsoever that despite having been there, right in the middle of it, people who were miles away had a better sense of what had gone on. Of course, maybe they were only being nice, and she had looked terrified and addled. “What about my agents?” she asked.

“It was really hard to see,” Juliana said, “but, wow, Paula got in there so fast that it looked like Kyle almost shot
her
.”

Which would have to have scared the hell out of both of them—and probably explained why, despite being at such close range, he had only hit the crazy lady in the leg.

When he had fired the gun
right next to her damn head
.

God, she was tired.

“I should probably go down there, hunh?” she asked, using her chin to indicate the second floor.

Juliana and Mary Elizabeth nodded.

Right.

So she got up—let Mary Elizabeth give her a hand up, actually—and limped very slowly down the stairs. Dirk was in the Common Room with Bruce, Debbie, and Gerard, all of them focused on the television screen, playing some video game.

They asked her again if she was okay, and she nodded, then looked into Susan's room to see her on the floor, doing abdominal crunches.

“Too dark to go running,” Meg said, as the others returned to their game.

Susan nodded, holding her upper body off the floor for about ten seconds, and then slowly lowering it.

“You could probably burn off more energy if you did push-ups, instead,” Meg said.

Susan nodded, lifting herself up again. “I tried that, but I could only manage thirty-four before my arms got tired.”

Thirty-four was a pretty decent number. “Modified, or full-out?” Meg asked.

“Full ones,” Susan said, not even out of breath as she maintained the abdominal hold.

But, of course.