Lester had guarded his words closely when they first spoke. If he was actual FBI, would she be giving him up by asking him to come forward and speak to Fuller? Using an FBI operative to trap a Secret Service agent wasn't going to sit well no matter what. Was there any way around doing that?

At the moment, the inhaler was wedged beneath the seat of her car. Was there any lab outside of the government with sophisticated analytical capabilities that she could trust for both reliability and discretion? The answer was most certainly yes, but she had no idea how to locate such a lab or how to approach the people working there.

The Internet? she wondered.

Possibly. She could probably get some idea of the reliability of a place from a phone call to whoever was in charge, but with so much at stake and only one sample, she wanted to know that whatever place she chose was the best.

A better idea would be Gabe.

It was time she trusted someone, and he was the obvious choice. She had already blown her cover to him. Sharing her concerns about Griswold would probably be safe, and with luck Gabe would have had experience in his practice with just the sort of blood chemistry lab she needed.

She took an envelope and a sheet of Gabe's stationery from the desk.

Important stuff to talk about, big fella. Please call me. Anytime, day or night.

A.

She added her home and cell numbers, sealed it, wrote his name and title on the envelope, and set it carefully on the corner of his desk blotter. At that moment, she heard the door to the reception area softly open and close.

"Gabe?" she called out.

Nothing.

Alison checked the placement of the envelope one more time and took several steps toward the outer room. Through the doorway, the room looked empty. Had she really heard something? She felt her pulse accelerate.

"Gabe?… Is somebody out there?"

She stepped through the office doorway into the reception area. Directly across from her, the door to the outside corridor was closed. At that instant she sensed movement from her right. She started to turn, but far too late. A thick, powerful arm locked across her throat, tightening with dizzying force, cutting off her breathing and making it impossible to scream. A cloth saturated with some sort of liquid was pressed over her mouth. The arm across her neck loosened just enough for her to inhale.

"Griswold!" she tried to say, thrashing against his cinder-block body and ineffectually pounding backward at him with her fists and feet. "Griswold, no!"

"What do you think of this stuff, Cromartie, huh?" Griswold asked in a coarse whisper. "State-of-the-art liquid inhaled anesthesia-tasteless, odorless, rapid onset, long acting. Invented by our own people just for us field operatives. If you could get it over a water buffalo's mouth and nose, he'd be on the ground in half a minute. You don't know about it? Oh, sorry. I guess they don't tell snitch nurses, just the real agents. We're kept up on every new drug. As you'll see."

Quickly Alison's terror gave way to impotence and then to a strange detachment. She tried to hold her breath, to continue kicking backward against Griswold's shin. She drove her elbows against his barrel chest. She attempted to bite the hand that was forcing the cloth even tighter against her mouth, crushing her lips against her teeth.

Waves of dizziness and nausea made it impossible to continue struggling. She was going to throw up… throw up and aspirate and choke to death. She was…

The fear, helplessness, and intense nausea gave way to a giddy light-headedness and ennui, then, moments later, to blackness. The last things she heard, from the lips beside her ear, were Griswold's grunting breathing and guttural speech.

"They gave you up, Alison… All I had to do was make one phone call and they gave you up. How's that for respect?"

CHAPTER 43

So, enter the hero."

The President of the United States, wearing a white terry-cloth robe and matching flip-flops, greeted Gabe in the living room of the White House residence. Even though it was only ten in the evening, two or three hours before Stoddard's bedtime, the weariness enveloping his eyes seemed even more pronounced than usual.

"Hero?" Gabe asked.

"Evon Mayo, Lily Sexton's assistant, called and told us what happened. She said the doctors told her your treatment in the woods might well have saved Lily's life. Apparently, in addition to her broken shoulder, she punctured a lung and was in danger of bleeding to death."

"There really wasn't that much I could do out there, but I make it a policy never to dissuade people from thinking I'm a hero."

"For some reason, I don't think I believe either part of that statement," Stoddard said.

"I stayed at Fauquier Hospital in Warrenton with her until they had inserted a chest tube, given her a unit of blood, and she was stabilized. For a small place-or even a big place for that matter-that hospital's really quite terrific. Reminds me of ours back home. If you could send out a presidential something or other to them, I know they'd appreciate it."

"Done," the president said without even writing a memo.

And Gabe had no doubt it would be.

"Good hospital or not," he said, "Lily wants university people to take care of her shoulder, and they have a helipad right next to the ER, so tomorrow morning if she's ready to travel, she'll be flown to Georgetown."

"So, what happened out there? Lily's a hell of an experienced rider. I've been out on those trails with her myself, and she's come riding with me and Carol from the stables near Camp David a couple of times as well. Makes me look like a tenderfoot."

Gabe had been preparing for this moment throughout the drive from Warrenton back to the capital. It was time Drew learned some of what was swirling around him. Not all yet, but some.

"A man shot at us from the woods. A rifle. Black ski mask, black clothes. Wasn't much of a marksman-certainly not by Wyoming standards. From the distance separating us and him, he should have at least hit one of the horses, but he hit nothing except a tree trunk eight or so feet from us. Lily's horse reared and threw her. I suppose mine was already worn-out from lugging me up the trail. He just stayed put."

"Black ski mask, black clothes, out there in the woods where you two just happened to be… doesn't sound like a whacko to me."

"I don't think he was."

"So, was he trying to kill Lily?"

"Me," Gabe said simply.

Stoddard's look of surprise was fleeting.

"You sounded sure it was a he," he said. "I had the feeling you had more to tell me."

Gabe paused as he prepared to pull his finger from the dike. To say his onetime roommate had more than enough on his plate was a gross understatement, but now it was time to pour on a little more.

"This is the second time since I arrived here that someone has tried to kill me," Gabe said finally. "I think they were the same guy."

Eyes narrowed, Stoddard listened impassively as Gabe reviewed the botched shooting on G Street. He saved his questions until Gabe was done.

"You said this man would have killed you if you hadn't been rear-ended at that exact moment?"

"That's correct. Assuming it's the same man, after watching him with a rifle I don't think he's any kind of a professional hit man. But even he couldn't have missed me from five feet."

"And the collision was a fortuitous accident?"

Stoddard, as usual, was right on top of things. Gabe was prepared for the question. First Alison, then the call from Ferendelli, and finally the bizarre finding off the lower level of Lily Sexton's home. He was beginning to buckle under the weight of the secrets he was keeping from the man who had brought him to Washington. During the ride back from the hospital in Warrenton, he had worked out what he was going to share with the president and where he was going to draw the line-at least until he had more information.