Running Blind (44 page)

If you have any biscuits left over from the meal, put them in a Ziploc bag. To reheat, wrap them in a damp paper towel and microwave 15 to 30 seconds, depending on how hot you want them. The damp paper towel restores the tenderness.

I’ve made it my mission to teach as many people as possible to make biscuits, because it’s a dying art. The most important things to remember about biscuit-making are: don’t mess with the dough, and make sure the biscuits are touching each other in the pan. If you feel an awful urge to knead the dough, then use it to make something else, because the biscuits will be heavy and tough. —Linda Howard

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Mix all the ingredients together, pour into an 11 × 15-inch pan, and bake for 45 minutes, until good and browned.

This makes a HUGE amount. I’m sure it can be cut down by half, or even a third, but I don’t have those measurements. I can’t figure out how to come up with ⅓ or ⅔ of 4 eggs. Go ahead and make the whole batch, and forget the math. This is as good as any cake. —Linda Jones

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Cream first six ingredients in a large bowl, about 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Beat egg whites until frothy. Add baking powder and beat until stiff. Fold the vanilla and beaten egg whites into flour mixture. Pour into greased and floured pans—two 9-inch pans or three 8-inch pans, depending on whether you want thin layers or thick. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

I made this cake when I was seventeen and living at home. My sister broke a plastic fork in it, trying to cut a bite-sized piece. It failed miserably. I never figured out why. This gives a whole new meaning to “write what you know.” Proceed at your own risk. —Linda Jones

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Mix together the rice, vegetables, mushroom soup, tuna, milk, half of the cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. Bake for 35 minutes, then sprinkle remaining cheese on top and return to oven until slightly browned.

When Linda H. said I needed to provide a recipe for the tuna casserole, I was momentarily dumbfounded. A recipe? For tuna casserole? You put together what’s in the cupboard, cover it with cheese, cross your fingers, and bake. We had tuna casserole so often growing up, our mealtime prayer began “Give us this day our daily tuna.” You can use noodles instead of rice, cream of celery soup instead of mushroom, and if you have any other leftover veggies, throw them in. It doesn’t ever have to be the same meal twice! —Linda Jones

S
AN
F
RANCISCO, FOUR YEARS EARLIER

E
LEVEN P.M
. T
HE
president and first lady, Eli and Natalie Thorndike, had retired to their hotel suite for the evening. It had been a long day, beginning with the president’s cross-country flight, then going straight into a flurry of campaign speeches—supposedly
not
campaign speeches, but all of them really were—then culminating in a huge fund-raiser dinner where each plate was ten thousand dollars. The first lady had been by his side the entire time, so she had not only logged the same number of hours, she’d done it wearing three-inch heels.

Laurel Rose, an eleven-year veteran currently assigned to the first lady’s detail, was so tired she could barely see straight, but at last her shift was over. She hadn’t been wearing heels, but her feet were killing her anyway. She tried her best not to limp as she made her way to the room assigned to her, down the hall but on the same floor as the president’s suite so she would be swiftly available if needed. The on-duty agents were in a room directly across from the suite. She didn’t envy them the graveyard shift, but at least now, with POTUS and FLOTUS in for the night, they could relax somewhat.

Three entire floors of the hotel had been secured, with the president and first lady in the middle floor. Guests who lived in the hotel had been relocated to other rooms, the stairways and elevators were secured, the hotel staff had been investigated and cleared, the buildings across the street had been secured, all known risks in the area had been contacted to let them know the Secret Service knew about them and was watching, though most of them had been judged incapable of carrying through on their threats. The first couple was as safe as the Service could make them.

That didn’t mean nothing could go wrong. It just meant they had made it as difficult as possible for anything to happen. There was always an uneasy feeling deep inside Laurel’s gut that reminded her anything
could
happen, keeping some small part of herself perpetually on edge.

“You’re limping,” observed her fellow agent, Tyrone Ebert, as he fell in beside her on his way to his own room. So much for hiding how much her feet hurt, she thought wryly. She didn’t bother denying it, because he’d just look down at her with one of those see-through-you-like-glass looks of his. Tyrone had been with the Service for seven years; there was something a bit spooky about him, his dark eyes seeing everything while he himself revealed nothing, but Laurel trusted his razor-sharp instincts. So far he wasn’t showing any signs of burnout, something she deeply appreciated, because she herself was hanging on by a thread.

“Yeah, it’s been a long day.”

Nothing was new about that. The days were all long. Since the Service had been moved from Treasury to Homeland Security, in her opinion things had pretty much gone to shit. They hadn’t been great, anyway—Secret Service management was an oxymoron;
mis
management was more like it. But now the long hours were
longer, morale was in the crapper, their equipment was shit, and on another subject entirely, her mother, who lived in Indianapolis, was getting older and less able to do things for herself. Laurel had put in for a transfer to the Indianapolis area, but in the perversion that passed for the norm in managing such things, she had little hope in getting transferred even though there was a position open. That wasn’t the way things worked; unless you had some juice and knew someone who could pull strings, you weren’t likely to get the transfer.

Laurel didn’t have the needed juice. She hated office politics, so she’d never played the games, and now she was seeing far too clearly that her career with the Secret Service was nearing an end. That was another big problem with the Secret Service: they couldn’t keep good people because of their asinine policies. And, damn it, Laurel knew she was a good agent, despite the under-funding, understaffing, outdated weaponry, and increasingly long hours. She just couldn’t take it any longer. Well, for not much longer, anyway. She hadn’t quite brought herself to the quitting point.

It was such a cool job, in some ways. Not great pay, but cool. She loved what they did, and was able to compartmentalize her emotions so it didn’t matter who sat in the Oval Office: the job was what mattered. She didn’t have to like the first lady; she just had to protect her. The job would have been easier if the Thorndikes had been more personable, but they weren’t; at least they weren’t as horrendous as some of the previous presidents she’d heard tales about. Natalie Thorndike wasn’t rude, or a lush, or hateful. It was more as if she didn’t see the agents protecting her as people; she was proud and cool and remote. Sometimes Laurel wished Mrs. Thorndike
was
a lush, which would at least have made for more interesting detail work.

The president was pretty much the same way, cool
and remote, disconnected from everything except politics. On camera, or in campaign mode, he exuded warmth and likability, but he was a superb actor. In private, he was calculating and manipulative—not that Mrs. Thorndike seemed to care. Occasionally they were on the outs with each other; the agents could always tell because the typical coolness would become downright glacial, but other than that there was no outward sign of discord, no loud arguments, no verbal sniping, no slamming doors. For the most part, though, the political power couple marched in lockstep. Their unity had already gotten them to the White House, where they planned on spending another term. With the president’s ruthless instincts and the first lady’s powerful family behind them, they would be part of the nation’s inner political circle for years to come, amassing wealth and power, even after he was no longer in office.

On the other hand, the detail charged with protecting the couple’s son, thirty-one-year-old Carter Eli Thorndike, had their hands full. The spoiled only child of capitol elite, on his mother’s side, and the down-and-dirty politician that was his father, had supposedly never heard the word “no.” He drank, he partied, he hired prostitutes, he did drugs—hell, he
sold
drugs—he tried his best to ditch his detail, and he whined to his parents every time the Secret Service tried to keep him out of trouble. He’d gotten his way every time, until he roughed up one of his prostitutes and wound up in the back of a squad car, his sneering expression captured by ever-present cellphones. Purportedly it had taken the president’s damage-control team a lot of effort and cost a lot of money to make those photos and videos forever disappear, and since then Carter had been buttoned down tight, his detail practically sitting on him to prevent a recurrence of a potentially explosive scandal that might cost the president a second term.

Laurel would take protecting a cold fish like Natalie Thorndike, instead of her son, any day of the week.

“See you in the morning,” Tyrone said as they reached his room.

“Good night,” she said automatically, a little surprised he’d said as much as he had. He wasn’t much on small talk, or on socializing. She actually knew very little about him, other than that he performed his duties impeccably. She’d worked beside him for two years now, since he’d come on the first lady’s detail, and—come to think of it—she still didn’t even know if he was married or not. He didn’t wear a ring, but that wasn’t necessarily indicative of anything. If he
was
married, or involved with anyone, he never mentioned it. On the other hand, he never hit on her either, or on any of the other female agents. Tyrone was … solitary.

As Laurel continued to her room, two down from his and on the opposite side of the hall, she realized for the first time that something about him gave her a little thrill in her stomach. She’d blocked it out because of the job, but now that she’d admitted to herself that she probably wouldn’t be here much longer, it was as if she’d given her subconscious permission to bring the attraction to her attention.

She liked him. He wasn’t a pretty boy, but he was damn striking, in a take-no-prisoners, dangerous kind of way. Tyrone would never blend into a crowd. He was tall and muscled, and moved with the kind of graceful power one saw in professional athletes or trained special forces soldiers. Physically, he did it for her. She liked being around him, even though he wasn’t much of a talker. And she trusted him, which was big.

She slid her key card into the slot and turned the handle when the green light came on, stepping into the coolness of her room. The bedside lamp and the bathroom light were on, just the way she’d left them. She still took
a moment to check her room, because double-checking was what she did. Everything was normal.