Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"Jack," Carson said, "Lyn and I don't know how to thank you. Can we speak with her?"

"I wouldn't advise it, sir. We need to extract her fully and assess her health."

"When can we see her?"

"The ambulance is on its way," Jack said. "You can meet us at Bethesda."

"We're on our way," the president-elect said. "Jack, you made good on your promise. Neither Lyn nor I will forget it."

At the same moment Jack put away his cell, Nina opened the cupboard over the small sink. Nina recoiled when she saw the horned viper slither down onto the countertop. The evil-looking wedge-shaped head with its demon's horns quested upward. The viper was hungry, and she was annoyed. Her tongue flicked out, vibrating, scenting living creatures.

Jack dug the pliers out of the drawer. The head moved forward, far faster than he could follow, but midway toward him a shadow fell across it, slowing it. Jack felt a breath of cool air brush the nape of his neck. With a well-aimed swipe of the pliers, he stunned the snake. Gripping the viper's head between the ends of the pliers, he squeezed as hard as he could. Though its brain was pulped, the viper's body continued to thrash, slamming itself this way and that in a random fury for a long time.

Nina struggled to regain her equilibrium. "Jack, are you all right?"

Unable to find his voice, he nodded.

"It was coming straight at you; I was sure it would bite you."

"It would have," Jack said, a little dazed himself, "but something slowed it down."

"That's impossible."

"Nevertheless, something did. A shadow came between the snake and me."

Nina looked around. "What shadow, Jack?" She passed her hand through the space Jack indicated. "There's no shadow here, Jack. None at all."

Alli twisted in his arms, taking her face out of his shoulder. "What happened?" she whispered.

Jack kicked the snake's body away. "Nothing, Alli. Everything's fine."

"No, it isn't, something happened," she insisted.

"I'm taking you out of here, Alli," he whispered as he took her back out through the kitchen and down the hall. "Your folks are coming to meet us."

The Marmoset's house was crawling with the heavily armed detail Nina requested. Along with them came two EMS attendants with a rolling stretcher, a nurse, and the Carson family doctor. But Alli refused to be parted from Jack, so he and Alli, with Nina at their side, strode out of the house with the escort.

Alli put her lips to his ear. "I felt something, Jack, like someone standing beside us."

"You must have blacked out for a minute," Jack said.

"No, I felt someone breathe-one cool breath on my cheek."

Jack felt his heart lurch. Could it be that Alli had felt the shadow, just as he had? His mind lit up with possibilities.

He climbed into the ambulance with her clinging to him. Even when he managed to get her onto the stretcher so that the doctor could examine her, she wouldn't let him go entirely. She was clearly terrified he'd leave her alone with her living nightmare.

He gripped her hand, talking of the good times when she and Emma were best friends, and gradually she relaxed enough for the doctor to take her vitals and administer a light sedative.

"Jack…" Alli's lids were heavy, but the abject horror was sliding off her face like a mask. "Jack…"

"I'm here, honey," he said with tears in his eyes. "I won't leave you."

His voice was hoarse, his breathing constricted. He was all too aware that this is what he should have said to Emma a long time ago.

THE EARLY January sunset was painting narrow bands of gold and crimson across the low western sky when Jack met with Dr. Irene Saunderson on the wide, Southern-style veranda of Emily House.

"I've tried every way I can think of-and any number of new ones-to get through to Alli," Dr. Saunderson said. She was a tall, stick-thin woman with dark hair pulled severely back into a ponytail, accentuating a high forehead and cheekbones, bright, intelligent eyes. She looked like a failed model. "She either can't or won't tell us what happened to her."

"Which is it?" Jack said. "Can't you at least tell that much?"

Dr. Saunderson shook her head. "That's part of what's so frustrating about the human mind. I have little doubt that she's suffering from a form of posttraumatic stress syndrome, but at the end of the day, that tells us next to nothing. What's indisputable is that she suffered a traumatic episode. But what form the trauma took or what the actual effect on her is, we can't determine."

She sighed deeply. "Frankly, I'm at a dead end."

"You're the third shrink to say that." Jack unbuttoned his coat. A thaw had set in with a vengeance. "What about physical damage?"

"The exhaustive medical workup shows that she wasn't raped or physically harmed in any way. There wasn't even a superficial scratch on her."

"Is there a possibility of Stockholm syndrome?"

"You're thinking of Patty Hearst, of course, among many others." Dr. Saunderson shrugged. "Of course it's possible that she's come to identify with her captor, but she's shown no indication of hostility toward us, and given the relatively short amount of time she was with her abductor, it seems unlikely. Unless, of course, he used drugs to accelerate the process, but there was no sign of chemical markers in her blood workup. As you know, the president's own medical team at Bethesda took charge of her when you brought her in."

"It's been three days since I asked to see her," Jack said.

"You can see her right now, if you like," Dr. Saunderson said, brushing aside his complaint with a shrink's easy aplomb.

They always know what to say , Jack thought, even when they're wrong .

"Shall I take you to her room?"

"Actually, I'd rather see her out here."

Dr. Saunderson frowned. "I'm not so sure that's such a good idea."

"Why not? She's been cooped up for the better part of ten days. This is a pretty place, but it's still a prison." Jack smiled his most charming smile. "C'mon, Doc. You and I both know the fresh air will do her good."

"All right. I'll be right back." She was about to turn away when she hesitated. "Don't be surprised if Alli exhibits some erratic behavior, extreme mood swings, things like that."

Jack nodded.

Alone on the veranda, he had a chance to take in the antebellum atmosphere of Emily House, a large, rather overornate confection whose exterior might easily have been used for a remake of Gone with the Wind . Save for knowing its true purpose, Jack would not have been surprised to find himself mingling with couples drinking mint juleps and speaking in deep Southern drawls.

Emily House, named after a former president's dog, of all things, was a government safe house in the midst of fifty acres of Virginia countryside as heavily guarded as it was forested. Over the years, a good many heads of state, defectors, double agents, and the like had called it home, at least temporarily. It was painted white, with dove-gray shutters and a blue-gray slate roof. A bit of fluff on the outside, belying the armor-plated walls and doors, the bullet- and bombproof windows, and more cutting-edge security paraphernalia than Q's lab. For instance, there was a little number called ADS. ADS stood for active denial system, which sounded like something Dr. Saunderson might claim Alli was suffering from. However, there was nothing nonsensical about the ADS, which was to all intents and purposes a ray gun that shot out a beam of invisible energy that made its victims feel as if their skin were burning off. It wasn't handheld; it wasn't even small. In fact, it looked rather like a TV satellite dish perched on a flatbed truck or a Humvee. But it worked, which was all that mattered.