Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"I don't know why you bothered," Jack said. "Aren't you too busy fucking Jeff?"

Color rose to her cheeks. "Your best friend is still in the hospital."

Jack felt the muck that had lain on the streambed of his mind being stirred up once again, and his heart began to shrivel. He could end this fight now, before it escalated out of control, but some part of him that was not finished punishing himself goaded him on. "He stopped being my best friend when he took you to bed."

"Neither of us meant it to-"

"Bullshit! Those things don't just happen. You both wanted it."

Her gray eyes stared placidly into his. "I wanted a shot at happiness, Jack. Something I came to realize you know nothing about. After Emma died, I spent six months in mourning. I went on Prozac so I wouldn't tear my heart out."

He stood, stunned, rooted to the cold linoleum. "What? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you needed Prozac even more than I did. The difference is, you didn't get help. You wallowed in your pain, the self-flagellation became your reason to live. You became a black hole. I had to get out before you sucked me into it with you.

"I was so tired of you chasing criminals, of never knowing when you'd come home, if you'd come home." She took a step toward him. "Without you, our bed grew cold."

In the next makeshift cubicle, the doctors' voices rose. They were losing the patient. A spray of blood hit the other side of the curtain, which ballooned out briefly.

"Dear God," she started, "what's happening over there?"

"Forget it," Jack said. "There's nothing to be done."

Sharon's eyes turned back to him. All the fierceness had gone out of her. Like a tire running flat, she seemed suddenly wobbly, unsure of herself. "Anyway, I'm no longer seeing him."

"Found someone better already?" Jack snapped.

To her credit, she ignored his dig. "He's intent on pressing battery charges against you. I tried to persuade him he was making a mistake, but he wouldn't listen."

Jack felt his heart skip a beat. Is that why she'd broken up with Jeff? Had she sided with him? He stared at her, too many emotions flitting through him for him to recognize even one. After all that had happened, all that had come between them, she still had the uncanny ability to draw him like a flame. And yet he felt the gulf that lay between them: the broken promises, the lies, the guilt-the unforgiven. It had substance, the form of life. It felt like the holding of one's breath just before the onrush of a storm.

Beyond the stained curtain, there was silence, the activity had ceased, the doctors had gone on to the next urgent case. The patient was lost.

In a clumsy attempt to counteract the gulf, he moved closer to her. "Do you think I stopped loving you?"

Her lips parted, and her breath fanned his cheek. "No, I think you loved me. I know I loved you." Putting her hand on his biceps, she pushed herself away from him so gently, he didn't-couldn't-resist.

Despite his best intentions, he couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. She had kept so many things from him, even before they'd split up: the depths of her grief, her depression, taking Prozac. He lashed out in twisted fashion. "So you show it by spreading your legs for-"

She slapped him then.

He noticed that her lipstick was the same bloody color as her nails, which meant that she wasn't biting her nails anymore.

"Why did you make me do that?" Her voice was filled with sadness. "I didn't come here to rehash the past. I wanted… I want to offer you a bedroom, a good home-cooked meal, if you like."

He had no idea how to respond.

She gave him a nervous smile. "I went back to church, Jack."

He looked at her in bewilderment. He felt disoriented, as if he were in a forest of mirrors. Who was this woman standing in front of him? Not his ex-wife, surely.

"I suppose you think I'm either crazy or a hypocrite after the tongue-lashing I gave Father Larrigan." With a long finger, she swept a wisp of hair off her face. "The truth is, the Prozac didn't work. Nothing did. My heart was too damaged. The Prozac masked the pain, but it didn't take it away. In desperation, I turned to the Church."

He shook his head mutely.

"I've found a measure of peace there."

"Don't you see that all you're doing is running away from the world, Shar?"

She shook her head sadly. "You have a perverse way of turning something beautiful to ashes."

"So you've found religion," Jack said. "Great. Another secret revealed."

Sharon pulled open the curtain, said, not unkindly, "You need to get it into your head, Jack. We all have a secret life, not just you."

AFTER RETURNING with Bennett to HQ, Jack took a long-overdue shower. In the locker room, he found a set of fresh clothes on hangers waiting for him, but was surprised they included a rather expensive suit of midnight-blue worsted wool, a pair of English brogues, a similarly expensive Sea Island cotton shirt, and a fashionable though decidedly conservative tie. He'd never worn such extravagant clothes; nor could he imagine his chief having an allowance for them in his budget.

He had just finished knotting his tie when Bennett returned.

Jack closed his locker door. "So tell me, what am I doing in this monkey outfit?" He tried and failed to straighten the knot in his tie. "Who am I going undercover as? A Secret Service agent?"

"Actually, you're not far off the mark." Bennett gestured with his head. "Come on."

He led Jack out the rear door, where a smoke-windowed limo idled. Bennett opened the rear door and they climbed in.

Jack settled into the backseat. The moment the chief sat down beside him, the limo took off at an almost reckless speed.

Jack stared at his boss. "Where are we going?"

Bennett was looking straight ahead, as if at a future only he could see. "To your new assignment."

Bennett, elbows on his bony knees, laced his fingers together. Jack felt his own muscles tense, because he knew that tell: Bennett's hands got busy when he was agitated, so he laced his fingers to keep an outward semblance of calm. But Jack wasn't fooled. During the time he'd been in the hospital, something very big and very nasty had landed in the chief's lap.

"Okay, give. What the hell's happened?"

At last, the chief turned to face him. There was something in his gray eyes Jack hadn't seen before, something that clouded them, darkening them in a way Jack hadn't thought possible. The chief's voice was dry and thin, as if the words gathered in his throat were choking him. "Alli Carson, the president-elect's daughter, has been abducted."

"Abducted?" Jack's stomach felt a drop, as if he were in a suddenly plunging elevator. "From where, by whom?"

"From school, from under the noses of the Secret Service," Bennett said dully. "As far as who took her, no one's been contacted, so we have absolutely no idea."

And then, with a shock like a splash of cold water, Jack understood. For the first time since he'd known the man, Rodney Bennett was frightened to death.

Truth to tell, so was he.

LANGLEY FIELDS was a private, closeted all-girl's college, very chichi, very difficult to get into. It was situated more or less adjacent to Langley Fork Park, which was just under seven and a half miles due north from the Falls Church location where the ATF had its regional headquarters.

The sun had broken through the overcast, throwing the passing buildings and trees into sharp relief. Telephone lines, black against the sky, marched into the vanishing point ahead.

"In just a few weeks from now, Edward Carson is going to be sworn in as President of the United States, so there is an absolute, airtight media blackout," Bennett said. "You can just imagine the intense feeding frenzy that would attach itself to the news. All the talking heads and bloggers in Medialand would speculate-wildly, perhaps recklessly, but in the end uselessly-about the identity of the perpetrators, from Al-Qaeda and Iran to the Russian Mafia and North Korea to god alone knows who else. These days, everyone has a reason to hate our guts."