CHAPTER 66

JANE COX RODE in the limo coming back from Mail Boxes Etc. Unbeknownst to her, the FBI had run a trace on the post office box she'd been visiting every day. They had come up empty. Phony name, paid in cash for six months, and no paper trail. They'd given the store manager hell for not following the rules.

"This is how 9/11s start, you clueless moron," Agent Chuck Waters had snapped at the middle-aged man behind the counter. "You let a terrorist cell get a mailbox here with no background info, you're helping the enemies of this country attack us. Is that what the hell you want to be remembered for? Aiding and abetting Osama bin Laden?"

The man had been so distressed by this tongue-lashing that his eyes had actually started to tear up. But Waters had never seen this. He was already gone.

Jane reached the White House and climbed slowly out of the car. She had not been seen much in public as of late, which was a good thing, actually, because she looked older and haggard. The HD cameras deployed now would not have been too flattering. Even the president had noticed it.

"You okay, hon?" he'd asked during a brief stopover on the campaign trail where he would give an address to a group of veterans followed by a belated visit from the women's college basketball national championship team. She had gone straight from the limo up to their private quarters to find him sitting there going over some briefing papers.

"I'm fine, Danny. I wish people would stop asking me that. I'll start to think there's something actually wrong."

"The FBI has briefed me about these visits to the post office box."

"And not the Secret Service?" she'd said quickly. "The spies among us?"

He sighed. "They're just doing their job, Jane. We're national property now. National treasure, at least you are," he'd added with a quick smile that usually did the trick in boosting her spirits.

Usually, but not today. "You're the treasure, Danny. I'm just the baggage."

"Jane, that's not-"

"I don't really have time to waste on this and neither do you. The kidnappers communicated with me through a letter. It gave me the post office box and a key to that box. They said I would receive a letter at some point and to check that box every day. I have. And so far, no letter."

"But why work through you at all. Why not Tuck?"

"Yes, why not Tuck? I don't know, Danny, because I apparently cannot think like a kidnapper."

"Sure, sure, I didn't mean that. So maybe we were right. They're going to ask me to do something in order to get Willa back. It can't be money because your brother has more of that than I do. Hell, we can barely cover our personal grocery bills at this place. It must be tied to the presidency."

"And then it becomes problematic, like you said. Emasculate the office, I believe were your words."

"Jane, I will do all that I can do, but there are limits."

"I thought the power of the Oval Office was unlimited. I guess I was wrong about that."

"We will do all we can to get her back."

"And if all we can do isn't enough?" she said angrily.

He stared at her, a slightly hopeless look in his eyes.

The most powerful man in the world, she thought. Emasculated.

Her anger cooled as suddenly as it had risen. "Just hold me, Danny. Just hold me."

He rushed to do this, pressing her tightly against him.

"You're shivering. Are you coming down with something? You've lost weight too."

She stepped away from him. "Look, you need to go. You have your speech in the East Room."

He automatically checked his watch. "They'll call up when it's time."

He went to hold her again, but she moved away, sat down, and stared off.

"Jane, I am the president of the United States. I am not without influence. I can probably help."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?"

The phone rang. He picked it up. "Yes, I know, I'll be down in a minute."

He bent down and kissed his wife on the cheek. "I'll come back up and check on you later."

"After the women's basketball team."

"Just what I've always wanted to be around," he quipped. "A bunch of leggy women far taller than I am."

"I've got some events too."

"I'm going to have Cindy cancel them. You need to rest."

"But-"

"Just rest."

As he started to walk away she said, "Danny, I will need you at some point. Will you be there for me?"

He knelt beside her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I will always be there for you, just like you have with me. Get some rest. I'll have them send up some coffee and something to eat. I don't like how thin you're getting. We need some more meat on those curves." He gave her a kiss and left.

I have always been there for you, Danny. Always.

CHAPTER 67

MICHELLE PUT THE SUV in park and climbed out. Her shoes touched hardened dirt and she looked up at the old house with the dying tree, the rotting tire swing, the skeleton truck up on blocks in the back.

She glanced across the street. At the house where an old lady named Hazel Rose had once lived. Her house had been meticulous, the yard the same. Now the structure was beyond saving; a bare few inches from giving one last heave and falling down for good. Yet someone was living there. Toys were strewn across the front yard. She could see laundry flapping in the breeze on the line in the side yard. It was still a depressing scene. Her past was eroding away before her eyes, like sludge off a mountaintop.

Hazel Rose had always been kind to Michelle. Even when the little girl stopped going over there for the tea parties she gave for neighborhood kids. Why that memory had slipped into her mind just now, Michelle didn't know. She turned back to the house, knowing what she had to do, even if she didn't want to do it.

Michelle's hunch had been right. Her father's car was parked in front of hers. The front door to the farmhouse was open. She walked past his car and then by the stunted remains of the rose hedge.

That's what it was, she now recalled. A rose hedge. Why had that popped into her head? And then she remembered the lilies on her mother's coffin and telling Sean that her mom preferred roses. And she had felt a pain in her hand, like a thorn had pricked her. But there was no thorn, because there were no roses. Just like now. No roses.

She walked on, wondering what she would say to him.

She didn't have long to think.

"I'm up here," his voice called out to her. She gazed up, using her hand to shield her eyes against the sun. He was standing at an open window on the second floor.

She stepped over the fallen screen door and walked inside a house she had called home for a brief time when she was a child. In a way she felt like she was traveling back in time. With each step she was growing younger, less confident, and less competent. All her years of living, her experiences in college, in the Secret Service, as Sean's partner, were dissolving away. She was six years old again, dragging a battered plastic baseball bat around, looking for someone to play with.

She eyed the old stairs. She had slid down them on flattened cardboard when she was a kid. Something her mother didn't really like, but she remembered her father laughing and catching her as she hurtled down.

"My youngest son," he sometimes called her because she had been such a fearless tomboy.

She headed up. Her father met her on the landing.

"I thought you might come here," he said.

"Why?"

"Unfinished business, maybe."

She opened the door to her old room, walked over to the window, and sat on the edge of the sill, her back to the filthy glass panes.

Her father leaned up against the wall and put his hands in his pockets, idly stabbing the scuffed wooden floor with his shoe. "Do you remember much about this place?" he asked, his gaze fixed on his shoe.