In the millisecond it took her to register all that, several faces in the room registered her identity, as well. Gabe’s eyes lit in pleased surprise followed by alarm. He knew full well what her bursting into the room like this meant.
Owen Haas leaped to the same conclusion as Gabe did when he saw her and Tilman come bursting through the door. She watched, as in slow motion, his elbow came up and he shoved aside the new Secretary of State to take a step forward toward Gabe. His face creased into lines of grim determination. He didn’t know where the threat was going to come from, but he was as certain in that endless instant as she was that it was going to come. Please, God, let Owen be in time to get his body in front of Gabe.
And then she registered the only two other faces in the room whose expressions shifted away from surprise to something else. They both darkened in displeased recognition of her. Thomas Wolfe. And General Eric Pace, the Army Chief of Staff.
And both of them reached into their coats.
Which one of them was it? Which one was Freedom One? She couldn’t take out both men. There wasn’t time and they stood too far apart, Wolfe on Gabe’s right and Pace to Gabe’s left. Like Owen Haas, she took a slow- motion step forward, preparatory to leaping for one of the men.
Eric Pace’s name had only shown up once, on a list of frequent attendees to defense conferences along with some of the known S.A.F.E. members. Wolfe’s writings, on the other hand, were the foundation of S.A.F.E.’s work. He’d opposed Gabe in a bitter primary campaign, much of it centered around their wildly differing views on dealing with terrorism. He’d tried to unseat Gabe after the election on the grounds of mental unfitness for the job-to steal the Presidency. He’d waylaid her this morning and attempted not to let her see Gabe, as if he already knew who she was and what she’d been there to warn Gabe about.
She leaped for Eric Pace.
The leader of S.A.F.E. would never make himself as obvious a target as Wolfe had.
She flew through the air, tackling the barrel-chested general, slamming him into the ground and landing squarely on top of him. He fought beneath her, twisting and turning in an effort to throw her off. She hung on to him grimly. It was like wrestling a bear. A big, strong, angry one.
Without warning, a deafening sound echoed in her ears, so loud it took her a moment to identify it as a gunshot. A huge jolt of force exploded between her and Pace.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gabe stagger as something or someone struck him.
And then all hell broke loose, people shouting and Secret Service agents diving all over the place. Gabe went down under a pile of agents, and she was abruptly crushed by several men, herself.
“Gun!” one of them shouted practically in her ear.
“Blood!” another one of the men on top of her yelled.
“Someone’s hit! Medic!”
Good Lord willing, the bastard had shot himself in the gut. The other people in the room were shoved back, and the chaos resolved itself into two piles.
A voice bellowed beside her, “I’ve got the weapon.” That was Agent Tilman. “Hold him down!”
The pile around her squirmed and heaved as Pace fought like a madman beneath her. It felt like the time she rode a wild bronc and nearly broke her neck. Her lungs started to burn, and she was having trouble breathing. With all these two-hundred-twenty-pound jokers on top of her, it was no wonder.
She turned her head, searching for a pocket of air in the smothering pile of wool suits and brawn. And came face-to-face with Eric Pace. At a range of about two inches. His eyes blazed with insane fury.
“Freedom One, I presume?” she managed to gasp.
His eyes glazed with manic intensity. “You bitch,” he snarled. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”
“I believe I’ve prevented you from assassinating the President of the United States.”
“You’ve weakened our nation. You’ve made us vulnerable to terrorism. I was going to win the war against it, going to protect this nation the way it ought to be protected. But you’ve ruined it all.”
“I think…that’s a decision…for the people…of this nation…to make at…the polls.” She forced the words out of her flattened lungs.
Dang, she was having a hard time breathing.
“I’ve got his arms,” someone shouted.
Pace gave a violent heave beneath her and she felt his legs kicking out beneath hers. Spittle flecked the corner of his mouth.
“Give it up, Pace,” she ground out. “It’s over.” She dragged air into her protesting lungs. She blinked a couple times to clear the pinpoints of light dancing in front of her eyes. She was starting to feel light-headed. “S.A.F.E. is finished.”
Pace froze for an instant, staring at her in shock. Didn’t think anyone knew about his secret little conspiracy, did he? Surprise, surprise.
Apparently, that brief moment of advantage was all the Secret Service needed to finally subdue him. Someone bellowed that they had his legs immobilized. The guy on top of her blessedly rolled away from her. Hands lifted her roughly to her feet as she was yanked away from Pace. She took a staggering step back as a phalanx of Secret Service agents rolled Pace over, jerked his hands behind his back and slapped handcuffs on his wrists. They dragged him none too gently to his feet.
Gabe and Thomas Wolfe stood shoulder-to-shoulder, and Wolfe mopped at his forehead with the handkerchief he’d pulled out of his coat. Gabe snarled, “Why, Pace? Why me?”
The general growled back, “You’re weak. This country needs a man like Thomas Wolfe at the helm. This was all about putting him into power, where he belongs.”
Gabe’s gaze snapped to his vice president.
The look of stunned disbelief on Wolfe’s face had to be legitimate. He stared in shock at the Army general and then turned to face Gabe. “I had no idea. No idea whatsoever that he was planning something like this. Of course, I’ll step down. I’ll tender my letter of resignation first thing in the morning.”
The guy sounded completely shell-shocked, as if he could be knocked over by a feather right about now.
Gabe said shortly, “Don’t send me any letters, yet. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
Wolfe nodded, his gaze bewildered.
Agent Tilman, who still held her elbow, jolted beside her. And looked down. “Jesus, Miss Lockworth. You’re bleeding.”
She looked down and saw a large bloodstain spreading down the right side of her sweater.
Gabe leaped past Owen Haas. “Where’s that medic?” he shouted.
His arms went around her, and he picked her up, carrying her over to the conference table. He laid her down on it gently.
She looked up at him in blank surprise. “I’m shot,” she said rather obviously. But it was the only thing that came to her mind.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he murmured reassuringly. “Don’t worry.”
Hands raised her sweater and eased her slacks down to her hips. Something wet and cold that burned like acid was pressed against her side. “Ouch!” she exclaimed, lurching with unpleasant surprise.
A gray-haired man that eyed her side like a doctor commented, “Well, we know her lung isn’t collapsed if she can yelp like that.”
He swabbed at her side, tossing away several bloodied gauze pads. She lifted her head, twisting her neck to look down at her injury, but the doctor ordered her to lie back down and stay still.
The doctor fussed around for another minute or so, smearing a cream of some kind on her skin. It numbed the growing burning sensation a fair bit, and she sighed in relief. The sound of tape tearing accompanied the doctor pressing a thick wad of gauze against her side. After he’d finished bandaging the wound tightly, the doctor pronounced, “It’s just a graze. She’s going to be fine.”
Gabe leaned down over her and his palms came to rest on her cheeks. “Thank God,” he said fervently.
She gazed up into his worried eyes. She reached up and smoothed away the lines of worry from his brow. And smiled. He smiled back.
Owen Haas cleared his throat from over Gabe’s shoulder, breaking the spell of the moment. It probably wasn’t proper Presidential protocol to sprawl all over the Situation Room briefing table making goo-goo eyes at the commander-in-chief.
