Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"One thing I will guarantee you," Nina said, breaking in on his thoughts, "that kind of argument won't fly with Garner."

That was when Jack handed her the metal vial. "I found it hidden in the bottom of Alli's box spring. There's cocaine inside."

Nina laughed. "So you found it."

"What?"

"Hugh owes me twenty bucks." She pocketed the vial. "He said you wouldn't find it."

Jack felt like an idiot. "It was a test."

Nina nodded. "He's got it in for you." Abruptly detaching herself from the wall, she threw down her cigarette butt. "Forget that sonovabitch." She moved off to the west, Jack keeping pace beside her.

"Back there," he said slowly, "when you read sections of that report…"

"I knew you were having trouble."

"But how?"

"You'll see soon enough."

They went along, paralleling the dorm. Just beyond it was a utility shed. At first it appeared that they were going to skirt the shed. Then, with a look over her shoulder, Nina opened the door.

"Inside," she said. "Quickly."

The moment Jack stepped through the narrow doorway, Nina closed the door behind them. The interior contained a plain wood table, several utilitarian chairs, a brass floor lamp. It was as sparsely furnished as a police interrogation cubicle. The small square window afforded a view down over the end of the rolling lawn to a tree-line beyond which was the wall that bordered the property.

Two people occupied the room. A cone of light from the floorlamp illuminated the sides of their faces. Jack recognized them: Edward Carson and his wife, Lyn. The soon-to-be First Lady, dressed in a dark, rather severely cut tweed suit, a ruffled white silk blouse held closed at the neck with a cameo the color of ripe apricots, stood at the window, arms wrapped tightly around herself, staring blindly at clouds shredded by the wind. Fear and anxiety drew her features inward as if every atom of her being were psychically engaged in protecting her missing daughter.

Jack glanced at Nina. She had learned about his secret from Edward Carson.

Though the president-elect looked similarly haggard, the moment Jack and Nina entered, his sense of moment forced his political facade back on. Back straight, shoulders squared, he smiled his professional smile, the sides of his mouth crinkling along with the corners of his eyes. Those eyes, so much a part of his extraordinary telegenic image, possessed, in person, a glint of steel that did not come through on the TV screen. Or, mused Jack, maybe he was in war mode, all the knives at his disposal being out.

He was sitting at the table, a Bible open to the New Testament. His forefinger hooked at a section of the text, he began to recite from Matthew chapter seven. " 'For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?'»

Edward Carson stood up, came around the side of the table. "Jack." He pumped Jack's hand. "Good of you to come. I have best wishes and Godspeed for you from Reverend Taske." He kept a firm grip on Jack's hand. "We've all come a long way, haven't we?"

"Yes, sir, we have, indeed."

"Jack, I never got a chance to thank you properly for your help when we needed to evacuate my office during the anthrax attack in 2001."

"I was just doing my job, sir."

Carson's eyes rested on him warmly. "You and I know that isn't true. Don't be modest, Jack. Those were dark days, indeed, marked by an unknown American terrorist who we never found. Frankly, I don't know how we would have gotten through it without the ATF's help."

"Thank you, sir."

Now the president-elect's other hand closed over Jack's and the familiar voice lowered a notch. "You'll bring her back to us, Jack, won't you?"

The president-elect stared into Jack's eyes with the intensity of a convert. Despite his big-city upbringing, there was something of the rural preacher in him, a magnetic flux that made you want to reach out and touch him, a call to arms that made your pulse race, rushed at you like a freight train. Above all, you longed to believe what he told you-like a father communicating with his son, or at any rate what in Jack's mind was how a father ought to communicate with his son. But that was all idealistic claptrap, a pasteboard cutout, a larger-than-life image from the silver screen, where happy endings were manufactured for captive audiences. Unlike reality, which had never been happy for Jack and, he suspected, never would be.

"I'll do my best," Jack said. "I'm honored you asked for me, sir."

"In all honesty, who better, Jack?"

"I appreciate that. Sir, in my opinion the first order of business is to create a plausible cover story." Jack's gaze swung to the woman by the window, who was holding herself together by a supreme force of will. He recalled Sharon in a similar pose, as Emma's coffin was slowly lowered into the ground. He'd heard a whispering then, just as he'd heard in the main building. Sharon said it was the wind in the treetops. He'd believed her, then.

He inclined his head slightly. "Mrs. Carson."

Hearing her name, she started, summoned back into this time, this place. She seemed thin, as if she'd lost her taste for food. For a moment she stared bleakly into Jack's face; then she came away from the window, stood in front of him.

"Ma'am, do your parents still have that olive farm in Umbria?"

"Why, yes, they do."

He looked at Edward Carson. "It seems to me that would be a good place for Alli to be 'spending the holidays,' don't you think?"

"Why, yes, I do." The president-elect put his cell phone to his ear. "I'll have my press secretary get right on it."

Lyn Carson moved toward Jack. "Now I know what you must have gone through, Mr. McClure. Your daughter…" She faltered, tears gleaming at the corners of her eyes. She bit her lip, seemed to be mentally counting to ten. When she had herself under control, she said, "You must miss Emma terribly."

"Yes, ma'am, I do."

Finished with his call, the president-elect signaled to his wife and she stepped away, turned her back on them to once again contemplate the world outside, forever changed.

"Jack, I have something to tell you. You've been briefed, no doubt, given the theories, the evidence, et cetera."

"About E-Two. Yes, sir."

"What do you think?"

"I think there's a hidden agenda. E-Two may be a prime suspect, but I don't think it should be the only suspect."

Lyn Carson turned back into the room. Her lips were half-parted, as if she was about to add something, but at a curt shake of her husband's head, she kept her own counsel.

When he spoke again, it was in the same tone, Jack imagined, with which he held sway over backroom caucuses-hushed and conspiratorial. "What's important, Jack, is that you not leap to judgment like these political hacks. I want you to follow your own instinct, develop your own leads. That's why I expended a great deal of political capital to have you reassigned."

Lyn Carson held out her hand. It was very light, very cold, no more than the hollow-boned wing of a bird, but through it pulsed the iron determination of a parent. The terrible agony in her eyes he recognized as his own.

"I'm so awfully sorry."

Her words had a double meaning, and he knew it. She was talking about both Emma and Alli.

"Bring our daughter back to us."

"I'll return her to you." When he squeezed her hand, the bones felt as if they truly were hollow. "I promise."

Tears overflowed from Lyn Carson's eyes, fell one by one at her feet.

YOU SHOULDN'T have promised," Nina said. "You can't guarantee you'll find Alli, let alone bring her back."

Jack found it interesting and enlightening that Nina Miller had been privy to his conversation with the Carsons. Garner's deliberate exclusion was an all-too-graphic example of the schism within the task force, behind which, of course, was the disagreement between the fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party currently in power and the moderate wing about to take that power away from them. It was no surprise that a political agenda governed the task force. This was precisely what Bennett had warned him about, and he knew there was no good news to be had here.