“Why do you think that would happen?”
“I’m not convinced that history is done being changed. I say that because I’m still here but a part of me feels uneasy. I should feel grounded but I do not. I feel as though I’m not entirely living out my own life.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve felt it also. So what can we do?”
“If time is not done changing, then that means everything that has happened is not final. If that’s the case, we can still change everything back to the way it was.”
Wilson looked at Jack. Jack’s story was good. Very convincing. He wasn’t sure he wanted to trust Jack. Not after last time.
“You don’t have a good reason to trust me,” Jack pointed out, reading Wilson’s thoughts.
“Do you blame me?” Wilson asked.
“I do not,” Jack said smiling. “But whether you trust me or not, I need you and you need me. That should provide enough even ground for us to move forward.”
Wilson considered Jack’s rationale a moment longer and then nodded his head. “Okay. What do we need to do?”
After the meeting, Jack sat alone in his room. Wilson and he had laid everything out. They had compared ideas and created the best solution for returning history to its rightful path.
But then a small thought entered Jack’s mind. The thought excited him but terrified him at the same time. Once a thought such as that entered his mind, he knew the thought would not rest until it was carried out.
His subconscious was very strong. For the most part he could control it but there were times when deep, dark thoughts that were rooted there boiled up and consumed his mind like raging fire. The thought was small, only a splinter at this point but it was there; and it had only just begun to fester.
Vincent was not the only one who had killed someone famous. Jack had done it several times. Now, he was about to add another to his list. His nagging thought was that he wanted to kill President Libby Williams.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Washington, D.C. – November 1921
“Welcome home, dear,” Vincent said to Libby, taking her coat.
She embraced him and looked in his eyes. “Did you miss me?” she asked with a playful smile.
“I did,” he answered, smiling back.
“Why don’t you show me how much you missed me?”
“Why Madam President, are you suggesting we keep your cabinet waiting?”
“My cabinet meeting doesn’t start for another hour. Why don’t you take me to the Lincoln Bedroom?”
Vincent raised his eyebrows. “Very well. You are Commander in Chief. You order and I follow.”
Afterwards, Libby lay with her head on Vincent’s chest. Vincent looked down at her. “I really did miss you.”
“I could tell,” she smiled returning his gaze. They lay in silence for a few moments, enjoying each other’s company; then Libby asked, “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”
“Yesterday, Woodrow Wilson came by.”
“He did? What did he want? Was his wife with him?”
“No, he mentioned that his wife was off visiting family. He’s staying at their home here in town. He just came by to talk about some policies he felt we should look at that might affect secondary education.”
“He came all the way here for that? That’s strange. I would think a meeting with some of the guys on Capitol Hill would have served him better. Unless it’s major legislation, I don’t generally get personally involved in early negotiations. Higher education is important but that’s why I have a Secretary of Education.”
Vincent thought briefly on the battle over public education a few years prior. The Department of Education had originally been created in 1867 but was demoted to a minor Office in the Department of Interior. The Department of Education under the direction of the cabinet-level position of Education Secretary would not have become a law until Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act in 1979. Libby pushed for the law and it passed sixty years early.
“Did anything else happen?” Libby asked, interrupting Vincent’s thoughts.
“Yes. While Wilson was here, he saw a man on the South Lawn. The agents investigated but they didn’t find anyone. They did an entire sweep.”
Libby looked alarmed. “You’re sure they did a full sweep? The last thing we need is some guy hiding in the White House.”
Vincent reassured her. “They did a full sweep. They used portable heat sensors to sweep every room for someone hiding. Plus, they checked the identification of everyone on the grounds. I don’t know, maybe there was someone standing outside of the gate and Wilson just thought they were inside.”
“Does anyone else know about this?”
“You mean any of the cabinet? No.”
“Good. I’d really like to spend the meeting talking about items that matter rather than hashing out a possible security breach. Speaking of the meeting, I’d better get going.”
Libby kissed Vincent and then left the room to brush up before her meeting. The meeting was scheduled to start in twenty minutes and Vincent knew her aides would be getting nervous that she was not yet present.
After Libby left, Vincent straightened the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom and finished dressing himself. He walked to the private kitchen area of the White House residence. He could have ordered anything he wanted from the staff but sometimes it was just nice to cook his own food.
Libby had arrived before he had a chance to eat
