“It’s a curse, all right.”

“I disagree. We hire people with your talents every day.”

I realized he was giving me a compliment. Fear, adrenaline, and now self-consciousness combined to render me speechless. I cleared my throat. “Thanks.”

Back to staring away, he said, “With that in mind, I’m going to tell you something that isn’t for public knowledge. But I want you to know so that we have another set of eyes out there.” Gavin worked his tongue around the inside of his mouth. “The bomb was on a timer.”

“When was it supposed to go off?”

Squinting, he said, “Sunday, during the White House opening ceremony.”

My stomach lurched as I tried to digest that. At the same time, I was thinking how odd it was to be sitting here on the floor with Special Agent-in-Charge Gavin discussing bombs.

“If there’s any consolation,” Gavin went on, “and it isn’t much, the IED was small. Personal size, if you want to call it that.” He was so calm, it gave me a measure of comfort. “We get the impression this was meant to target one person.”

“Me?”

He shrugged. “I doubt it, but after your altercation on the street, we’re not overlooking the possibility.”

“If it wasn’t intended for me,” I said, glancing around the storeroom, and hoping to God it hadn’t been meant for me, “why put it here? If the intention is to do damage, there are much better places. This area is usually empty.”

Gavin smiled. “You’re right. We suspect the would-be terrorist wanted to get the IED inside first. He probably intended to move it later, to somewhere closer to the action.”

“Makes sense,” I said, still thrown by the relaxed attitude of our conversation. “I take it you’re looking at everyone, right? Staff included.”

“Every single person who’s been inside the White House over the past twenty-four hours, cross-checked against everyone who was here the day the original prank bomb was found.”

“I can’t imagine anyone on staff being guilty.”

“Remember what I told you at the introductory safety meeting,” he said, looking at me again. “Don’t see safety around you. Don’t trust anyone.”

“Aren’t you trusting me by telling me all this?”

“I told you, I’ve been on the job for a long time.” He stood and offered me a hand up. “I can see and sense things, too. You’re okay, Ollie. You did the right thing.”

“HE’S GOT THE HOTS FOR YOU,” TOM SAID that night, back at my apartment.

“Give me a break,” I said, “Gav is probably fifteen years older than I am…”

“Gav?”

Putting dinner leftovers away in the refrigerator while Tom rinsed the dishes, I gave a half shrug and turned away. “Yeah, he told me to call him that when we weren’t around other staff members.” All of a sudden I realized how that sounded. I spun. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“He definitely has the hots for you.”

Laughing now, I shut the fridge door. “Hardly. But I did catch something today that I didn’t ever see before. I think he’s actually beginning to respect me.”

Tom wiped his hands on a dish towel. “He should. You single-handedly saved his backside.”

“How so?”

“Gavin’s the agent-in-charge, right?”

I nodded.

“You prevented a bombing. How would it look if it had gone off under his watch? If it weren’t for you-”

“Just dumb luck,” I said, waving away the accolades.

“Not just luck, Ollie. Gavin was right when he said you’re one of those observant ones. Which is why I decided on the subject for tonight’s lesson.”

Over the past year and a half, Tom had taught me much-self-defense, gun handling, and target shooting, to name a few things. Many of these lessons had come in handy in the past and I was always eager for him to let me in on things that most people neither ever learn nor care about.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Explosives?”

“Right.”

I interrupted him before he could begin. “You do know that we’ve all had to take a class on this already, right?”

“Gavin taught it?”

“Yeah.”

He made an unpleasant noise. “How is it that the executive chef can uncover an explosive device that the security forces missed?”

“Like I said, just dumb luck.”

“No, Ollie. They should have found this one. And I hope to God they kept searching.”

“They said they swept the place.”

The look on Tom’s face let me know what he thought of the team’s competence. “Now they’re pulling out all the stops. Now they’re interviewing staff members. They should have done that when the prank bomb was found. They should have found the guy who planted that and found out why. The fact that they’re taking so long to move on this is ludicrous.”

“But how could anyone have known? Gav said-”

Tom silenced me with a look, and I realized I’d risen to Gavin’s defense. “I’m not going to feel comfortable with the president-or you-in the White House until we get to the bottom of this bombing threat.”

“Where is the president now?”

He frowned. “With family,” he said. “I’ll be headed to meet him in the morning. Then he’s heading to Berlin. This is my only night off until Wednesday.”

“Gotcha.”

For the next hour, Tom walked me through Explosives 101. He was certainly more detailed than Gavin had been in class, but Tom suffered from not having examples on hand to share. He’d printed photos from declassified files and diagrams from Internet searches. By the time he finished, my head was chock-full of device strategies and configurations, all for methods of mass demolition. Fun stuff.

“The one thing you have to remember is this,” he said, as he wound up. “There is almost always a secondary device.”

“I’d heard that.”

“It bears repeating. People in the business of destruction don’t want to fall short. They set up fail-safes to ensure their plans move forward. To ensure their target is destroyed. Do you understand?”

A prickly feeling had come over me. “I do.”

CHAPTER 16

SUNDAY MORNING, I RETURNED TO THE White House kitchen, knowing I wouldn’t hear from Tom again until Wednesday at the earliest. My mind was still reeling from all the bomb stuff he’d tried to teach me last night. I worked hard to assimilate information I hoped to never actually need.

To say I was jittery was an understatement. We’d gotten word that today’s decorator tour at the White House was still on. Although Mrs. Campbell would forgo the Kennedy celebration, she would be here to greet guests afterward. With President Campbell out of the residence until Wednesday, the First Lady would be required to handle the event solo.

I still wore the splint on my right hand, which kept me relegated to working at the computer rather than putting meals together. Angry at the two men who’d put me in this position, I knew I needed to push through my harsh disappointment. Working on food was so much more fun than tapping away on a keyboard. Still, I forced myself to focus. While not as much fun as creating an entrée, updating files was a necessary chore, and I’d fallen way behind.

I took my seat in front of the monitor and glanced around the kitchen. My crew was preparing hors d’oeuvres for the afternoon’s event-and they were doing so with terrific efficiency. Although I’d designed today’s menu months ago-prepared samples and overseen the First Lady’s tasting tests-today I felt utterly left out. My body still ached from the assault two nights ago, and my ego smarted from having to keep the bomb information secret. Not only could I not tell anyone else that yesterday’s bomb had been real, I couldn’t warn them that it had been scheduled to go off this very afternoon.

Bucky opened one of the cabinets. “Oh, my God!” We all turned to see him staring into the shelves with exaggerated, wide-eyed panic. He reached in and pulled out a bottle of cooking sherry. “Call security,” he said, lifting the bottle over his head. “It might be a bomb.”