Julie Hyzy - Hail to the Chef

These were the same two outlets the fountain had been plugged into before. Two outlets. Just like the two sockets that Stanley had shown me.

Blood rushed from my face to my feet. Bucky sidled closer. “Hang in there.”

I caught sight of Gav, watching everything from a far corner of the room, and thought about the real bomb that only he and I knew about. He gave me a funny look and I remembered, suddenly, Tom’s one-on-one lesson. He’d told me that explosives could take almost any shape. He’d shown me pictures. I thought about Gav’s training session with the simulated bomb in the presidential seal. I’d screwed that up because I hadn’t noticed the wires. If only I’d seen…

The wires.

I twisted my head. The Blanchard gingerbread men.

“My God,” I said, finally piecing everything together.

Mrs. Campbell started toward me-toward the switch.

Frozen by wild terror, I couldn’t move. Bucky tugged at my elbow, urging me to step away.

“No,” I said to him. “I think…”

It couldn’t be. Could it? I stared at the gingerbread men again.

Bucky’s teeth were clenched. “Ollie, come on.”

Mrs. Campbell gave me an uncomfortable smile as she shoehorned her way between me and the house.

“And our theme this year wouldn’t be complete without Marcel’s masterpiece, an absolutely magnificent reproduction of the White House.” Mrs. Campbell smiled, shooting me a look of confusion. I still hadn’t moved. “I give you our holiday theme and invite you all to enjoy… ‘Together we celebrate-Welcome Home.’ ” Her finger skimmed the switch.

“No!” I shouted, pushing her away from the table. I dove beneath the skirting and grabbed at the cords-one in each hand. They pulled free from the outlet with more ease than I expected, which sent me tumbling backward, dragging the tabletop with me.

Its base upset, the gingerbread house tilted for a crazed, breathless moment, then slid away, crashing onto the floor behind me, into a million tiny crumbles.

“ Sacre bleu !” Marcel screamed. “Olivia, what have you done?” I peered out from under the skirting, flipping the fabric up to see him holding his head in his hands, a disbelieving, furious expression on his face.

I sat on the floor, looking up at Mrs. Campbell, who stared down at me for a long moment, her hands over her mouth.

I was vaguely aware of incessant clicking, of hundreds of flashes, as the photographers captured my moment of shame for all posterity.

Gav had moved in, as had a crew of Secret Service personnel. “That’s enough. Everyone out.”

As reporters and others plied them with questions, I heard the repeated refrain: “We will issue a statement later. No questions now.”

I hung my head and sat under the table, with Marcel sobbing behind me, and Bucky shuffling through the broken pieces of house that littered the floor. “You sure did it this time, Ace,” he said.

I looked up. “Thanks.”

Mrs. Campbell had been whisked away by her protection detail, and I was surrounded by Secret Service who didn’t wear happy-to-see-me looks.

Gav broke through their perimeter. “What happened?”

Now that I needed to put it into words, I hesitated. What if I was wrong?

I pointed to the gingerbread men that had tumbled to the ground along with the house. Not one of them had broken. “I think there might be plastic explosives in those,” I said.

One of the agents behind Gav rolled his eyes, but Gav picked one up.

I bit my bottom lip. “And I think those two outlets have a floating neutral.”

“A what?”

I explained, realizing how ridiculous everything sounded when spoken aloud. “If there is a floating neutral, then the gingerbread house would have gotten too much voltage,” I said. “There are sparklers-little pyrotechnic things that Marcel added-but I think his assistant added more.” I licked my lips, my voice cracking under the pressure. “If the voltage would have hit… Well, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Before I’d finished my explanation, Gav had picked up one of the three Blanchard gingerbread men. His brow furrowed as he examined the back of the decoration. “I don’t see anything-”

My heart dropped. I’d be sacked for sure this time.

“Wait,” he said, turning the design around to the front. To one of the other agents, he said, “Get Morton up here.”

“What is it?” I asked.

The agents around me had relaxed their positions a little. They’d taken the weeping Marcel away. Bucky had asked to stay but had been sent back downstairs.

Gav shook his head. Within moments a burly man wearing body armor arrived. Morton. Gav handed him all three gingerbread men to examine.

“Don’t feel like standing up yet, do you?” Gav asked me.

I knew my legs wouldn’t handle it. “No.”

He sat on the floor next to me, and released the collection of agents whose very presence crowded the room more than all the reporters, visitors, and photographers had, combined.

“You’re going to get crumbs all over your suit pants,” I said.

“Hazard of the job.”

“What did I do?” I asked.

“One of two things,” he said. “You either gave the media a whopper of a story to ruin you with…”

I moaned and put my head down.

“Or you saved a lot of lives, including the First Lady’s.”

Morton spoke. “Special Agent-in-Charge?”

Gavin looked up. “Yes?”

“Clear the building.”

“WHERE’S THE FIRST LADY?” I ASKED AS GAV rushed me from the room.

Two Secret Service agents accompanied us, Patricia Berland and Kevin Martin. Agent Martin shook his head, refusing to answer.

I’d expected to be led outside, as we had when I’d shouted the alarm Saturday, but to my surprise, I was herded into the East Wing and down the now-familiar set of stairs. “The bunker?” I asked.

Gav kept his lips tight and never broke stride. When the agents ushered us into the first door on the right, I was visited with a peculiar sense of déjà vu. This is where it all had begun, just days ago, when the fake bomb had been found… when Sean was still alive.

My sense of repeating past events was heightened when I walked in to see the First Lady sitting at the table where the three of us had shared our lunch.

She stood. “Ollie, I just heard what you did.”

The enormity of the experience was making my legs heavy, my head tight. I made it to one of the chairs and didn’t even think twice about etiquette. I sat down and blew out a shaky breath.

Gav and the two agents sat with us while we went over details. I explained again why I suspected an explosive, and a misfire in the electrical system that would trigger it. When I told them that this unusual phenomena could be purposely engineered, Agent Martin said, “Then they had to have had help from the inside.”

“Curly!” I sat up, startled by my own realization. “The electrician who took over when Gene was killed. He’s been fighting me the whole way. I tried to get him to look at the problem, but he refused.” I spoke very quickly, gauging the three agents watching me, trying hard not to be stalled by their solemn expressions. “I think he might have set all this up. He was impossible to deal with. And…” I was grasping at straws, but I couldn’t stop myself. “He might have even been the one who had me attacked.”

Mrs. Campbell had been silent for most of this. When she spoke, she did so very quietly. “I can’t believe that anyone would want to harm me,” she said. “I know the gingerbread men were contributed by the Blanchard family. But how can you be sure that Treyton Blanchard is behind this? Couldn’t it have been someone else?”