Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

In life, like often cleaves to like. He and Alli had bonded because they were both Outsiders. He wondered whether he could make a dent in Annika’s armor, and thought it worth a try. “With me, it was my father,” he said slowly and deliberately, putting equal weight on each word so that she would pay attention, so that she would understand the gravity of what he was saying. “He beat me because he said I was stupid, because he came home drunk every night, and I suppose because he hated himself and his life. One night, I’d had enough and left.”

“Yes, of course, you’re male.” Annika’s tone was resigned rather than bitter, as if she had contemplated this inequity so often it had become banal. “Males can move about at will, can’t they, while women, well, where can they go? Even when a situation is atrocious, intolerable, there are only home and family, even though both are toxic, because slavery and death wait out on the street.”

She shivered, as if from an intimate memory. Then she turned her head again, abruptly nervous once more. “Shouldn’t we have taken off by now?”

At that moment, an aide came down the aisle toward them.

“I’m sorry for the delay, Mr. McClure,” he said, “but there’s someone who requires a word with you.”

These aides of Carson’s were always so proper, so formal, Jack thought, or perhaps that was just the way things were with any presidential staff, where deference and protocol were a way of life.

Annika looked alarmed. “Who—?”

“Relax,” Jack said as he rose. “Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it.”

He was heading forward toward the door when Naomi Wilde, the head of Lyn Carson’s Secret Service detail, stepped smartly into the cabin.

Damnit , Jack thought, what the hell is she doing here? Has something happened to the First Lady?

Wilde was smiling, though in an embarrassed fashion, as if she’d screwed the pooch in some way she couldn’t mend. This was odd, because Naomi Wilde was a take-charge agent, a woman who was superbly trained. She had confidence enough for her entire team, but now she had the look of a fish on a riverbank, a woman who finds herself in a situation for which she has no answer or, rather, only one answer, which is not to her liking. She was breathing air when she should be breathing water.

“Sorry about holding you up, Mr. McClure,” she said, “but as you’ll see I had no choice.” She stepped fully into the cabin as if impelled, and someone brushed by her as if she didn’t exist or was of no further use.

At once, Jack understood Wilde’s state of extreme discomfort. He thought, Oh, Christ, no , because he was staring into the grinning face of Alli Carson, the First Daughter.

FIVE

“HI, JACK, surprised to see me?” Alli said as soon as she stepped into the cabin.

Jack was staring at Naomi Wilde, who winced at the look, then resignedly shrugged her shoulders. It was astonishing how Alli could reduce people like Wilde—professional, superbly trained, loyal, and brave—to Silly Putty. This was her particular genius; in the interval after the inauguration and its immediate aftermath, she had learned to use her fragile mental state to get whatever she wanted. Take me out of school to go to Russia? Okay. Let me hang out with Jack instead of you and Mom? All right, honey. Jack could only imagine the conversation between Lyn and her daughter this time. Had she threatened to run away, a mental fugue state, a bout of depression so serious she might spiral down into suicide? All these possible symptoms of what she had been through had been meticulously explained to her by the doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists at Bethesda, the medical facility where presidents and their families were treated. Obviously, she had absorbed the details, so that she could wield them like weapons on the field of her family battle. Edward had said that she had begun acting out again. God only knew what her real mental state was.

Regaining his composure, Jack stepped in front of Wilde so as to block her view of Annika. The last thing he needed was to answer awkward questions about who she was and why she was here and the fact that she hadn’t been vetted.

“What the hell is she doing here?”

Wilde again winced visibly as she said, “She’s going with you.”

“What? She can’t. It’s not secure.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, Mr. McClure.”

Just then, Jack’s cell phone rang.

“You’d better take the call,” Naomi Wilde said. “It’s the FLOTUS.” She meant the First Lady of the United States.

Jack put his cell to his ear with some trepidation. Alli’s expressed preference to be with Jack had caused some friction between him and Lyn Carson. What he expected now was a severe dressing down, culminating in a stern order to send her daughter back with Wilde.

“Hello, Jack.” Lyn’s voice was cool in his ear.

“Ma’am, if I may, Alli can’t come with me,” he said. “It’s out of the question.”

“Good luck with that.” Wilde gave a brief nod toward Alli. “I’ll wait outside, Mr. McClure. I won’t leave until you escort her to the limo or you take off.”

“I’m afraid neither of us have a choice, Jack,” Lyn Carson said. “Much as I hate to admit it, she’s better off with you.”

“Edward would never allow—”

“Edward’s not here,” the First Lady’s curt voice cut in. “He’s in the air on the way back to the States, he doesn’t have to deal with his daughter or her threats to slip her guards and lose herself in the Moscow streets. Can you imagine what a nightmare that would be? And you know better than most why I don’t dare keep her under lock and key.”

“But Mrs. Carson, you can’t expect me to take her now.”

“I can and I do. Listen to me, Jack. I know we’ve had our differences, and maybe I’ve never told you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done—and are doing—for my daughter. But tonight I’m asking you to keep her safe. I have important state functions I need to attend over the next week. I don’t want to be at any of them, but I have no choice, it’s my job now and I have to do it. The same goes for you.

“Need I repeat that Alli has threatened to ‘go off the reservation,’ as she colorfully puts it. You know her, Jack, she doesn’t make idle threats. The American press has been on her like flies ever since the . . . incident at the inauguration; they’ll ask too many awkward questions and when she doesn’t appear at the functions with me the Internet blogosphere will go ballistic.”

Jack turned to see Alli walking down the aisle toward where Annika sat, swiveled around to face her.

“Jack is married. He told you that, didn’t he?” she said to Annika.

“The subject never came up,” Annika said. “Not that it matters.”

“No?” Alli eyed her with one eyebrow arched. “I’d have thought otherwise. You look like you’re ready to jump into the sack with the man who’s standing closest.”

Jack, feeling desperate, said, “Lyn, this is a very bad idea.”

“If you have a better one, let’s hear it,” she said.

“Jump into the sack?” Annika repeated in confusion.

“Fuck,” Alli said. “You understand the word ‘fuck,’ don’t you?”

“Okay, okay.” Jack felt boxed in by both Alli’s impetuosity and her mother’s inability to control her. “She stays with me.”

“Thank you, Jack. I won’t forget this kindness.”

“It’s hardly a kindness when—” But he was already talking to dead air. Snapping shut the phone he hurried back down the aisle.

Annika smiled placidly into Alli’s scowling face and said, “Jack McClure, who is this delightful imp?”