President's Girlfriend 06 - The Sins of the Fathers (30 page)

Marcus hit
the steering wheel as he turned another corner and made his getaway, laughing
all the way.
 
It felt exhilarating.
 
It felt freeing.
 
It felt as if he was stealing Da Vinci’s Mona
Lisa, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, and Michelangelo’s David, all in broad daylight.

Crader
McKenzie stood to his feet as soon as the door to his office opened.
 
His secretary had said that his wife was
there to see him, and he had urged her to send her through.
 
He had wanted to scream at that secretary for
not sending her through without asking permission, but he didn’t want more
negative energy surrounding him and LaLa than there already was.

LaLa entered
the office unsure why she was even there.
 
Especially after what she did with Christian.
 

“Hey,”
Crader said, attempting to smile, although his heart was hammering.
 
“I was just trying to sign more
documents.
 
Sometimes I think that’s the
only job Dutch wants me doing: signing the papers he doesn’t want to
sign.”
 
He chuckled at his own joke.
 
But then he realized LaLa was just standing
there, tears appearing in her eyes.

“What’s
wrong?” he asked nervously as he hurried from around his desk and made his way
to her side.
 
She shook her head, but
could not speak.

“Oh, babe,”
he said, rubbing her arm, tears in his own eyes.
 
“I’m so sorry.
 
I never meant to hurt
you,
you’ve got to believe that.
 
I wasn’t
thinking.
 
I was just doing.
 
I never meant to hurt you!
 
Please believe that,
La
.”

La looked at
him.
 
“I believe it,” she said.
 
“After what I did, I believe you.”

Crader
didn’t know what she meant, but he pulled her into his arms.
 
After
what she did
, he thought as he held her.
 
What was that supposed to mean?
 
What
had she done?
 
Was another man
involved?
 
Had his stupid actions sent
his wife into the arms of another man?
 

He closed
his eyes, terrified.
 

Dear Lord
, he thought.
 
What
have I done
?

Dutch stood
in Statuary Hall on the southern end of the Capitol Rotunda and listened
intensely.
 
The introduction was long and
drawn out, he hadn’t expected any less from the verbose Speaker of the
House.
 
It was no secret that the Speaker
loved the limelight.
 
He loved it so much
that he had taken what should have been a simple introduction of the president
and turned it into a soliloquy on bipartisanship and committee
assignments.
 
Allison Shearer, who stood
beside the president, leaned over to him.

“This is
going to be a long day,” she whispered.

“It already
is,” Dutch whispered back, prompting Allison to smile.

The
audience, which largely consisted of House committee chairmen, seemed
fascinated by their leader’s speech.
 
But
the last thing on Dutch’s mind was any of these people or their political
ambitions.
 
He was still antsy, for some
reason, he still hadn’t been able to shake that feeling of dread he felt
earlier.
 
He leaned toward Allison.

“Ally,” he
said, and she moved closer.
 
“Do me a
favor and call the Nursery.
 
Make sure
Little Walt’s okay.”

“Yes, sir,”
she replied.

“And also
phone my wife’s cell,” he continued.
 
“Tell her I was just thinking about her.”

Allison
looked at Dutch.
 
He wasn’t a hovering
kind of husband.
 
He knew Gina wouldn’t
like that.
 
But he was the boss.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said, and stepped outside of
the room to do as he ordered.

The dark
SUV, windows tinted, drove into the garage at Jade and Christian’s home not
unlike the numerous other times this same vehicle had done so before.
 
Only this time the president and First Lady
wasn’t in the backseat, but the First Lady alone.

The driver
was her usual bodyguard, a Secret Service agent, and the female on the front
passenger side was also a member of the Secret Service.
 
They both got out of the vehicle as soon as
it stopped, with one, the male, moved to open the truck’s back door, while the
female agent headed for the door of the home.
 

Gina, in an
attractive puce-colored pantsuit, stepped out of the SUV and made her way
toward the home’s entrance.
 
The female
agent opened the door and allowed her passage in.
 
It was always the routine, as worked out when
Dutch purchased the home for his daughter and son-in-law.

“Thanks,
Carla,” Gina said as she entered the home’s mud room just off from the
garage.
 
The door was closed, leaving
Gina inside, the agents outside.
 
That
was the protocol.
 
They never entered the
personal space of the First Family unless specifically asked, or if they
suspected distress.

Gina’s cell
phone chirped as soon as she entered the mud room.
 
She looked at the screen.
 
It was Allison.
 
She stopped walking and immediately answered.

“Ally, hi,”
she said with a smile.
 
She and Allison
were becoming very good friends.
 
“What’s
up, doc?”

“The
president told me to phone you and let you know that he was thinking
about
 
you
.”

“Oh, that’s so
sweet,” Gina said with a smile.
 
But it
wasn’t exactly like Dutch to ask somebody else to phone her with such a
personal message.
 
“Is he okay?”

“He’s
fine.
 
He’s stuck listening to the
Speaker give one of his long-behind speeches.”

Gina
laughed.
 
“Well tell the president that
I’m thinking about him, too.”

“Where are
you,” Allison asked, “because I’m sure he’s going to want to know?”

“I just
arrived at Jade’s.
 
Tell him I’m fine.”

“Good
enough,” Allison said.
 
“I’ll let him
know.”

Then Gina
said her goodbyes and killed the call.

Earlier,
just as Gina was entering the mud room, Jade was freeing herself.
 
Marcus had taped her mouth and bound her
wrists and ankles, as she had done with Sam, and tossed Jade in the room with
her mother and closed the door.
 
Jade had
managed to wiggle her way from the bottom of the bed to the top, where her
mother was able to work feverishly to free her hands.
 

And now it
was finally working.
 
Jade’s rope began
to loosen just enough for her to squeeze her small hands through.
 
She then untied the rope from her ankles and
removed the tape from her mouth, the pain of the removal excruciating.
 
And although Sam was motioning for Jade to
loosen her ropes, too, Jade was up and running.

“I’ve got to
warn Daddy!” she yelled as she
ran,
horror in her
voice. “I’ve got to warn Daddy!”

She slung
open the bedroom door, ran up the basement stairs, flung open the basement
door, and was about to scream for help when she heard Gina’s voice, in the mud
room, telling someone that she had just arrived.
 
Jade then looked to her side and saw the
assault rifle.
 
She saw that it was
rigged.
 
She saw how it was facing the
entrance in the mud room that led into the living room.
 
Then she heard Gina say goodbye to whomever
she was talking to, and then she heard footsteps.
 
Gina was heading toward the living area.

Jade could
have warned her.
 
Jade could have told
her to wait and to not take another step.
 
She could have told her that danger was just around that corner!
 

But she
froze.

She didn’t
say a word.

And Regina
Harber, the First Lady of the United States, rounded that corner and entered
that living room the way she had rounded that corner and entered that living
room so many times before, as nothing at all was different about this time.
 
She even smiled when she saw
Jade
standing there.

“Hello
there,” she said as soon as she crossed the threshold.

But as soon
as she crossed that threshold, the assault rifle fired in rapid succession,
fired all five shots as it was rigged to do.
 
Only five shots proved to be overkill.
 
Because Gina was already going down, the blood already gushing out, by
the time the third bullet sailed toward her like a bolt of lightning, and
ripped through her body.

Jade’s body
tensed up during the firing.
 
And relaxed
beyond measure when it was all over, and the Secret Service had arrived.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Dutch was
now at the podium, answering questions from a member of the Republican
leadership.
 
Why, this leader wanted to
know, was the White House dragging its feet on the debt ceiling amendment?
 
Dutch was about to answer, although everybody
in the room knew the guy was trying to put the blame for congressional gridlock
on the president.
 
But just as Dutch was
about to place blame where it truly belonged, the Secret Service agent in
charge burst into the room in a dead run, a team of agents running behind him.

“You need to
come with us, sir,” the agent said as he grabbed the president by the arm, not
waiting for an answer, and began running him out of the room.

“What’s happened?”
Dutch was asking as they ran, with Allison right behind him, but nobody was
answering.
 
The agents were too busy
talking in their earpieces, securing the Rotunda, getting POTUS safely away.
 
There was a shooting and the shooters, for
all they knew, could be gunning for the president next.

The Speaker
and his committee chairmen were running out of Statuary Hall, behind the
agents, wondering what in the world was going on.
 

It wasn’t
until Dutch and Allison were shoved into the back of the waiting limousine, and
Ralph Shaheen, the head of the Secret Service, was getting in with them, did
the president himself find out anything at all.

“What the fuck’s going on here, Shaheen?!”
Dutch roared angrily as the limo
sped off in a blur of burned rubber.
 
Congressmen
and staffers alike were running out of the Rotunda to see what was going
on.
 
They had never seen the president
whisked away anything like that.
 
It was
obvious to them that something had
happened,
and
something big.

Ralph
Shaheen exhaled first, and then spoke haltingly.
 
“It’s the First Lady, sir,” he said.

Dutch’s
heart stalled.
 
He couldn’t will himself
to feel, to think, to dread anything.
 
Or to breathe.
 
Until he spoke her name.
 

“Gina?” he
asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“What about
Gina?” His voice sounded distant, almost faint.

Even Ralph,
Allison realized, looked devastated.
 
“She’s been shot, sir,” he said, and Dutch’s heart took in a harsh
inhale.
 
And then a
harsher release.

“Shot?” he
said, his face a mask of anguish.
 
“Gina’s been shot?”

“Yes, sir.
 
They’re airlifting her to Bethesda right
now.”

 
“But . . .” Dutch couldn’t wrap his brain
around this.
 
His face was a mask of
anguish.
 
“You’re telling me that Gina,
that my wife. . . That Gina’s been shot?”
 
This sounded untrue to Dutch.
 
Unreal.
 

“Yes, sir,”
Ralph replied.
 
“The First Lady has been
shot.”