Night Is Mine by M. L. Buchman Read Free Book Online Page B

shoulders began to itch.
    “A dud.” She turned to the two men. “It was a dud. Explosive charge that failed to detonate. Let me guess. M80s.”
    “An even dozen,” he clicked to a screen showing the parts all laid out on a white cloth.
    “Equivalent to nearly two sticks of dynamite bought over the counter at an untraceable illegal fireworks stand.”
    “Exactly. Machine-rolled like most mass-produced fireworks with no traceable fingerprints or other matter. Production lot stamped on the paper, but that tells us nothing. It was a large batch of several thousand. Enough force to blow the window and punch a fair-sized hole in the wall. The lab estimates a better than three-in-four chance of a kill if it had worked, the First Lady’s desk chair is normally less than three feet from that window. The plane itself has proven untraceable, probably bought for cash at some toy store.”
    “Is there more?”
    When the admiral shook his head, she collapsed back into her chair and the captain sat back against his desk.
    “Katherine wants a bodyguard. She wants someone low profile, that’s when she spotted you as a chef. That would provide you with ready access to her and the East Wing. I don’t need to tell you the number of women trained in counter-terrorism who could pull this off without alerting the Secret Service.”
    None. No, not quite. There was one. It made sense. It made awful sense, and her head ached with every word of common sense he spoke.
    She didn’t like Katherine Matthews, never had. She didn’t want to become a nursemaid. And most of all she didn’t want to face—
    “That’s why they have the blasted Secret Service.” Captain Tully’s curse cut into the room.
    “That’s not what she’s asking for. Because of the air-gun incident, she isn’t feeling very safe in their hands. She’s asking for Captain Emily Beale of the 160th Air Regiment.”
    “Request permission to refuse, sir?” Damn. That wasn’t supposed to have turned into a question.
    Rear Admiral James Parker had the decency to look uncomfortable as he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. He handed her an envelope with her name on the front.
    She didn’t need to see the single sheet of paper within, or the letterhead seal it bore, to identify the author.
    She’d know the handwriting anywhere.
    Since before she could walk, she’d had a crush on one man, the older boy next door. How mundane was that? Her family part of the Washington power-elite inner circle, his father the Senate majority leader for fifteen years, his mother a Federal judge. She’d spent how many hours watching Mr. Junior Letterman, Mr. High School Running Back, Mr. Most Likely to Succeed?
    At six, she could imitate his walk. At eight, could predict thirty seconds ahead when he’d brush his dark hair back out of his eyes, it depended less on the hair and more on how intrigued he became. By nine, she could imitate his handwriting so well that even he couldn’t tell it from his own. Once for Valentine’s Day she’d written love letters to thirty-two popular girls using his lumpy script, including the entire cheerleading squad. Months later he still hadn’t straightened out the mess. They’d been good letters, even if she did say so herself.
    But she’d been just a precocious, flat-chested twelve when he left for college and a still flat-chested sixteen when he went to Oxford for his doctorate. She hadn’t graduated from flat to slender until eighteen, and he was long gone. She’d barely seen him since. Eight years younger than JFK when he took office, the youngest president in history, within five days of the youngest allowed by the Constitution. And by a landslide vote.
    President Peter Matthews, her commander-in-chief, had asked her please, as a personal favor, to humor his wife’s request.
    She’d been right the first time, no choice at all.

Chapter 9
     
    Emily stepped back onto the scorching deck of the aircraft carrier but ground to a halt in