The President's Shadow by Brad Meltzer Read Free Book Online Page A

now that he was out, he could be the Fifth. The one to put a bullet in the President of the United States.
    Stopping at the half-open bedroom door, Nico once again dropped to his knees in prayer. The dead First Lady stayed quiet. She knew what was waiting inside. Nico had earned this one.
    “Amen,” he whispered, climbing to his feet and slowly elbowing the door open.
    Across the roo m , an elderly man was tied to the headboard of the bed, arms spread wide, knotted in place by the cords that Nico had ripped from the vertical blinds. Nothing was stuffed in his mouth. This far out in Tennessee, Nico didn’t care if he screamed.
    “ Nico…please…I’m not your enemy! ” the seventy-year-old pleaded, his voice starting to fracture. He was young for his age, still stout in the chest, though his round Santa face had thinned over time.
    “Colonel Doggett, I know what you look like when you’re lying,” Nico told the man who had first brought him into the Plankholders all those years ago. There were four of them back then too. Always four. “That is the last lie you’ll ever tell me.”
    A decade ago, Nic o had tried to kill the President. A different President. Now he’d been given a second chance. A chance to finish the mission.
    But not until he finished this mission.
    Holding up the needle-nose pliers with the red rubber grips, Nico headed for the old man’s left hand.
    “Nico, no…! What’re you doing!?” Colonel Doggett begged.
    “I told you,” Nico said, his voice a dull monotone. “I’m going to ask you about Devil’s Island. If I don’t like your answer, I’m going to puncture your finger with a pencil and use these pliers to peel away your skin, finger by finger.”
    “That’s not — ! Son, be smart — ! You’re a good person!”
    “I know that, Colonel. That’s why I need you to help me find a cure for my daughter.”

10
    Today
Washington, D.C.
    A severed arm? A hidden penny with his old unit logo? Plus burying it in the Rose Garden?” I ask. “That doesn’t sound like Nico at all.”
    “Suddenly you’re the expert on him?” A.J. challenges.
    “Let him speak,” Francy warns.
    “Remember the last time Nico attacked a President? He walked right up to him at a NASCAR race and pulled the trigger. When he broke out of St. Elizabeths, he put a pen through the orderly’s arm and calmly waltzed out a nearby door. He’s not the Riddler. He doesn’t leave clues.”
    “We didn’t say it was a clue ,” A.J. shoots back from the table on my left. He’s hunched in front of the TV with the rotating security feeds. For a second, h e turns away from the TV, pointing to the photo of the flattened penny. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not a message.”
    “Are you hearing me? Nico doesn’t do messages . There’s no subtleness to him. He sees himself as a knight on a holy mission. If he wants you dead, he’ll step into your personal space and put a knife in your eye.”
    “This is a knife in our eye,” A.J. says. “For him to come onto the White House grounds—”
    “So you have video of him? I see those security cameras. Was Nico the one you saw in the Rose Garden?”
    A.J. looks at Francy, who again is focused on her earpiece. No question, the President’s listening, which means there’s still something they’re not saying. Eventually, Franc y nods the okay.
    “There are no security cameras in that part of the Rose Garden,” A.J. finally offers.
    “ What? Why not? Isn’t it right next to the Oval?”
    “It is—which tells you why there’re no cameras,” A.J. explains. “After Nixon…and honestly, post–Monica Lewinsky…no President wants a video camera recording who’s coming and going into his office.”
    “So whoever buried that arm…” I say.
    “Knew our line of sight,” A.J. says. “Or maybe got a look at our camera placement last time he was here.” He keeps his eyes on me.
    “Do you realize how untactful you are?” I ask. “You think last time I was