seconds away from landing on the South Lawn, and CANARY is—
“Hey, Scotty,” I call out, just as he’s picking up the phone. “Mind telling me why CANARY is at a horse farm in Virginia? Her Plan of the Day this morning didn’t indicate that.”
He says, “Last-minute change of plans, boss. After the news this morning … well, who can blame her? Not me, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I say, as I head back to my desk. I don’t like last-minute changes. You don’t have the time to prep the visiting area, check out the neighborhood, track down those nuts on the class three list who have made threats against the First Family in the past. The only upside is that with something as sudden as this horse farm visit, you can surprise any bad guys out there hovering around.
And the downside, of course, is that any bad guys out there— especially the patient and tough ones—can react quickly to an opportunity and kill your protectee.
Not a good way to get promoted.
I call over to my assistant. “Hey, Scotty. When you’re done there, contact CANARY’s detail.”
“Sure, boss. What do you want?”
A little whisper of concern seems to be on my shoulder. “Make sure everything’s fine.”
“If it weren’t fine, you’d be the first to know.”
“Scotty,” I say. “Make the damn call.”
And I try to get back to work.
CHAPTER 9
MY DESK IS shoved in a corner of the White House basement office called Room W-17, which is the command center for the Secret Service at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Since I’ve been assigned here, one of the few jokes I’ve told about the place to friends and family is that my staff and I are closer than anyone else to the Oval Office, only seven feet away.
That usually brings ooohs and aaahs of appreciation, until I tell them the punch line: I and the others working in Room W-17—also known as Horsepower—are seven feet below the Oval Office.
Not exactly within spitting distance.
My desk has a wooden nameplate my eleven-year-old daughter, Amelia, made for me two years ago with wood and a burning tool that says, in clumsy letters, SALLY GRISSOM, AWESOME AGENT. The only agent who ever laughed at the nameplate is now with Homeland Security, inspecting cargo containers in Anchorage. What the nameplate should say is SALLY GRISSOM, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, PRESIDENTIAL PROTECTIVE DIVISION, but as much as Amelia enjoys making me gifts, I think if I asked her to make me a new one with my correct title, she just might cry.
A closed-circuit feed from one of the scores of surveillance cameras shows Marine One landing on the South Lawn. Hoo-boy, I think, I bet the President wishes he was still up in the air, circling around, high up from his angry wife and the very hungry news media.
Then I get back to work.
No doubt the rest of the nation is going to be shocked by what’s been uncovered about the President, but not me. Unlike 99 percent of the rest of the Secret Service detail, I’m a DC girl, through and through, and know all about the rumors and scandals that always bubble below the surface here among the pretty old buildings. Politics is politics, and human nature will always be human nature, so why pretend to be stunned?
Mom worked at the Department of Education, while Dad worked for the Capitol Police, and they’re both now in Florida, enjoying sunshine, practicing Tai Chi, and fighting with each other. I have two sisters, one who works for the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the other for the NSA, and let me tell you, family functions are lots of laughs, with one sister going on and on about budgets and spreadsheets and the other not able to say anything about what she does.
On my crowded desk are two framed photographs: one of Amelia, with her sweet smile and long blond hair—unlike the frizzy brown mop I wrestle with each morning—and another of the both of us, grinning with red, sweaty faces as we finished last year’s Marine Corps 10K, both of us wearing Secret Service T-shirts: “You elect ’em, we’ll guard ’em.”
There’s also an empty space that once held a photo of my soon-to-be—God willing—ex-husband, Ben, one of the faceless, nameless bureaucrats in the Department of the Interior who helps keep our national parks and other treasures running.
That photo’s been gone for almost a year, and since he and his rat bastard—excuse me, overzealous—attorney have come to their senses, our