The Scarlet Pepper (2 page)

At her direction every office in the West Wing had at least one potted plant. A grand idea, in my opinion, even if it did increase the gardening staff’s responsibilities.

Twice a week, a gardener traveled from office to office watering, feeding, pinching off old flowers, and replacing any plant that lacked the green perfection expected at the White House. We carried out our work with pride. This was the People’s House, a beacon of hope, a symbol of freedom.

No one on the gardening staff would willingly deliver a begonia with missing leaves and broken stems, but today wasn’t a normal day at the White House. As I rounded a corner, I passed the President’s Chief of Staff, Bruce Dearing. He leaned his rotund body toward Frank Lispon, the White House press secretary. The tall African American man looked as if he was trying to become one with the wall’s Sheetrock to avoid Bruce’s protruding belly.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone slipped poison into the nasty gingerroot tea he’s always drinking. The man writes wild rumors. Speculations,” Bruce said in his low, growly voice. He poked Frank in the chest with his pudgy finger. “And he calls them
investigative reports
?” His finger poked Frank again. “Can’t you ban him from the White House?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Frank murmured with an embarrassed glance in my direction.

A sudden commotion rose in the hallway near the Press Briefing Room. Startled, I almost dropped the poor begonia.

President Bradley, surrounded by a bevy of staffers and a detail of Secret Service agents, passed through the double
glass doors from the West Colonnade and breezed into the West Wing. Surrounded by his entourage, he hurried down the narrow hallway—which suddenly seemed to shrink—apparently on his way to the Oval Office.

Remembering the Secret Service’s admonishments to keep out of the way, I flattened myself against the cream-colored wall as he passed without even a nod in my direction.

Once he was out of sight, I balanced the large pot between my hip and the entranceway to the Press Briefing Room and reached out to grab the handle.

I’d just started to pull the door open when someone in the direction of the Oval Office shouted, “Bomb!”

Bomb?

Before I could move, breathe, or even think, the Secret Service, with the President at the center of their detail, backtracked through the hallway toward me. They moved as a single unit like an angry bull.

With the President’s safety foremost in my mind, I knew I needed to stay out of their way. If I blocked them, or even slowed them down, the bomb might go off and the President could end up injured or even killed. I couldn’t outrun them to escape out the double glass door, but I needed to get out of the hallway and to safety.

My heart started to pound. Despite the Secret Service’s explicit instructions to hurry toward the nearest exit at the first sign of trouble, I tossed open the Press Briefing Room’s door instead.

And thudded against the muscular chest of a large man clad all in black.

A black knit balaclava covered his face, leaving only his cold eyes exposed. He clutched a rifle in his hands, which he used to shove me back into the West Wing corridor.

“Gun! Gun!” I shouted. My legs got tangled with the legs of one of the Secret Service agents desperately trying to rush the President to safety. We crashed to the ground.

The President!

I’d given the gunman an opening.

Using all my strength, I tossed the potted plant at the shooter as he took aim. The large ceramic pot slammed into his chest with enough force that he fell on his backside.

A Secret Service agent leapt over me to get to the gunman. The sharp pop, pop, pop of gunfire had me instinctively covering my head. But the gunfire hadn’t been aimed at me.

The agent who’d charged fell.

Three more masked gunmen, dressed exactly like the first, stepped over the fallen agent and their masked buddy as they poured into the corridor.

One gunman grabbed the President. Another grabbed my arm and pressed the barrel of his rifle against my temple with enough force that it pinned me to the floor.

“Bang!” he shouted. He ripped off his balaclava. “You’re dead. The President’s dead.”

I glared up at the man snarling down at me and pushed the barrel of his rifle away from my face. The man had distinctive streaks of silver running through his brown hair and an unfriendly gleam in his eyes.

Mike Thatch, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s elite military Counter Assault Team, or CAT, as its members liked to call themselves, had designed and directed these training sessions. Apparently he also took an active role in carrying them out.

Thatch reached out a hand to help me up. I refused it and sat in the corridor, cradling my head in my hands.

“You have to take this seriously, Casey. You have to follow our directions. Think about it. The bomb was obviously a diversion. The gunmen were the real threat in this one. What should you have done?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

We weren’t at the White House, but at the Secret Service’s James J. Rowley Training Center in Laurel, Maryland. Although the West Wing corridors looked like the real thing, there weren’t actually any offices behind the doors. And an agent had played the part of the President.

Training sessions such as these were commonplace for Secret Service agents and members of the President’s staff who worked within what they’d termed the “kill zone,” a small but potentially deadly area that surrounded the President at all times. If bullets were to fly, these were the people who would be in the direct line of fire. They needed to know how to react.

As White House assistant gardener, I rarely worked anywhere near the kill zone. But in response to growing political unrest throughout the world and an increase in credible threats to the President—not to mention the unpleasantness we’d encountered this past spring—the Secret Service had decided to expand its training sessions to include all members of the White House staff, no matter how lowly or removed from the seat of power.

The nine other members of the White House and West Wing staff attending today’s training session, including the press secretary and the Chief of Staff, had reacted with swift resolve to the threats thrown at them. With the aid of the Secret Service agents, all had saved the President.

I’d been the only one who’d failed the test. And not just once, but three times now. What was wrong with me?

“Get up and do it again,” Thatch barked.

When I raised my head, I caught sight of CAT special agent Jack Turner watching me. Like the other CAT agents, he projected the hard-nosed image that he was a warrior from hell. Stoic, humorless, and all about the mission. With a vicious tug he tore the already pushed-up balaclava from his head and plucked a begonia leaf from his short black hair.

He’d been the unlucky rifleman to get knocked down by my flowerpot?

“Sorry,” I mouthed as he brushed off the potting soil covering his chest.

This past spring Jack had played Watson to my Sherlock. There was something about him that had gotten under my skin, something that made me feel safe. It might have been his expressive green eyes or his steady calm voice.
Whatever it was, I’d shared with him intimate secrets from my past that I hadn’t even told the grandmother or two aunts who’d loved and raised me. He’d stuck by me even when doing so became hazardous to his health. I considered him a close friend.

The grim set of his mouth didn’t look too friendly now. He exchanged a look with his SAIC, Mike Thatch, which only seemed to deepen his frown.

“I’m sure I’ll get it next time,” I said to Jack, braving a smile.

“I doubt it,” he grumbled and exchanged another heated look with Thatch. He then offered me a hand up.

My muscles, tired and bruised from having been tackled from every angle imaginable, screamed as he hauled me to my feet. A sharp pain stabbed me in the ribs when I bent down to scoop up the potted begonia. I bit back a yelp.

“Okay”—I hugged the cracked ceramic pot to my sore chest. Several more leaves dropped from the hopelessly battered begonia onto the tan carpet—“I’m ready.”

But no matter what I tried that day, I couldn’t puzzle out how to save myself or the President.

One month later

“
I
can’t imagine a more painful way to die,” the elderly Pearle Stone, lioness of the District of Columbia’s influential social circle, commented as she ambled her way across the White House’s lush green South Lawn.

“The poor dear,” her silver-haired friend, Mable Bowls, whispered back while dabbing at the sweat on her forehead with a lacy handkerchief. She sounded a trifle more excited than upset. “Do you know the cause?”

“One can only speculate,” Pearle replied gravely.

“A mystery to be solved then?”

“I believe so, my dear.”

Their conversation was none of my business. And yet I found myself matching their stride as I walked behind the two older ladies dressed in matching light blue stretch polyester pants and flowered tops. My ears were so alert the backs of them prickled.

Who were they talking about?

Mercy goodness, Casey, the church made a grave mistake
when it overlooked curiosity as a deadly sin
. Aunt Willow’s oft-spouted warning slapped me back to my senses.
I vow your curiosity has caused more trouble in your life than all the sloth, gluttony, greed, and envy heaped together
.

On the dawning of my fortieth birthday, I believe I had to finally agree with my pearl-wearing, mint julep–sipping Southern belle relative who’d helped raise me. Considering the danger I’d stumbled into this past spring, it was becoming too dangerous
not
to agree.

Curiosity could prove deadly.

I’d promised to change my ways. No more sticking my nose into other people’s business.

These past several months I’d been excruciatingly careful. Not that it’d been easy. Temptation seemed to lurk around every corner. It came with the job.

Since the beginning of the year, I’d tended lush lawns, nurtured luxurious flowerbeds, and cultivated the newly planted vegetable garden at the President’s Park, which included the White House and its gardens. Although I held quite an impressive security clearance as assistant gardener, I swear the only murder I wished to become involved with these days was the kind found within the pages of a book.

Truly, I’m simply a gardener, which by definition means I should lead a quiet, unassuming life. I had no intention of squandering this great opportunity to serve my country and teach others about my passion for organic gardening.

That morning I’d followed my normal routine. Well, as normal as could be expected when tasked with herding a group of volunteers more interested in gossiping than gardening through the Secret Service security clearance checkpoint at the southeast gate and toward the First Lady’s vegetable garden.

That was when I’d happened to overhear the ladies’ rather interesting conversation.

“Do you think we should warn her or just go ahead and start planning her funeral?” the elderly Mable Bowls continued with a titter.

“It’s not our place to gossip. She’ll learn about it soon enough.” Pearle Stone had the grace not to sound too happy about the budding scandal.

I had no business listening to them. But, let’s be honest, unless I planned on sticking my fingers in my ears and singing “la, la, la,” it really was impossible to ignore the society matrons’ conversation. The pair suffered from hearing loss so acute that stage whispers carried shorter distances.

I tried to focus on the fragrant sweetgrass basket I was lugging down to the fifteen-hundred-square-foot vegetable garden at the base of the hill, nearly as far away from the White House as it could get without leaving the South Lawn. I’d wanted the garden right beside the back door—that’s where gardens belong—but the Secret Service had vetoed that idea, citing security concerns.

So every morning I loaded my basket to the rim with an assortment of tools and gardening gloves and made the trek across the lawn. It was so large and heavy that it took two hands to manage. Even without distractions, I struggled to make my way down the hill without leaving a trail of white gardening gloves like a modern-day version of Hansel and Gretel.

“I imagine Griffon Parker will publish the story soon,” Mable said, her voice growing even louder. “And it had better be spectacular. I’ve heard he’s about to lose his seat in the press pool.”

Dread tiptoed down my back at the mention of Parker’s name. I picked up my pace, listening intently again.

This past spring I’d run afoul of
Media Today
’s star White House correspondent when he’d attacked my organic gardening proposals. I doubted the weasel could get a grocery list right even if it were written out and handed to him.