white hair had been replaced with soft dark strands. She was beautiful. Flawless, except for the torn dress, the terrified expression, the man in Army fatigues standing over her.
'Get away from her. Stop hurting her!' Michelle screamed in a voice she had only used for arresting someone.
'Baby, please, it's all right,' said her mother. 'Go back downstairs.'
Michelle's finger slipped to the trigger. 'Stop it. Stop it!'
The man turned and looked at her. He would have probably smiled, like he had all the other nights. Except she was pointing his own gun at him, the one she'd pulled from the holster he'd carelessly tossed on the chair. You didn't smile when a gun was pointed at you. Even by a six-year-old child.
He made a move toward her.
Just as she had that night, Michelle now fired a single shot. It passed through the air and slammed into the wall opposite.
A big hand clamped down on her pistol, took it from her. She let it go. It was so heavy, she couldn't hold it anymore. She looked into the room. Saw her mother screaming. Screaming at what Michelle had done. At the dead man on the floor.
A hand was on her shoulder. Michelle turned to look.
'Dad?' she said in an odd voice.
'It's all right, baby,' her father said. 'I'm here.'
Michelle pointed into the room. 'I did that.'
'I know. Protecting your mom, that's all.'
She gripped his shoulder. 'We have to take him away, but don't leave me in the car, Dad. Not this time. I can see his face. You have to remember to cover up his face.'
'Michelle!'
'You have to cover his face. If I see his face-' Her breaths were coming in short swells. She was barely able to draw one breath before she needed another.
Her father put the gun down and squeezed her tight, until her breathing slowed. Until Michelle looked into that room and saw what was really there.
Nothing.
'I shot him, Dad. I killed a man.'
He drew back a bit, studied her. She looked back at him, her eyes clear, focused. 'You did nothing wrong. You were just a kid. Just a scared little child. Protecting your mother.'
'But she-he came before. He was with her, Dad.'
'If you want to blame anyone, you blame me. It was my fault. Only my fault.' Tears were staining his cheeks and Michelle felt her own tears start to fall.
'I'll never do that. I'll never blame you for that.'
He gripped her hand and steered her down the stairs.
'We need to leave here, Michelle. We need to leave here and not come back. This is the past, and we can't relive it anymore. We have to keep going, Michelle, it's the only way life works. Otherwise, it'll just destroy us both.'
Outside, he held the SUV door open for her and she climbed in. Before he closed it, he said, 'Are you sure you're okay?'
She drew a deep breath and then nodded. 'I don't know exactly what happened in there.'
'I think you know all you ever need to know. Now it's time to forget.'
She glanced over his shoulder. 'You cut down the rose hedge, didn't you?'
He followed her gaze and then looked back at Michelle. 'Your mother loved those roses. I never should have taken those from her.'
'You probably had good reason.'
'Fathers aren't perfect, Michelle. And I never had a good enough reason to do a lot of things.'
She stared up at the old house. 'I'm never coming back here.'
'No reason for you to.'
Her eyes drifted back down to him. 'We need to do things differently, Dad. I need to do things differently.'
He squeezed her hand and closed the SUV door.
As he walked back to his car, Michelle stole one more glance up at the house, her gaze counting the windows until it got to that room.
'I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry that you're gone. I never wanted to have any regrets, and now it's all I seem to have.' The tears poured out so hard, she just rested her forehead on the steering wheel and sobbed, her chest rising and striking the wheel with the regularity of a clapper against a bell.
She looked up ahead in time to see her father wipe his face free of his own tears and climb in his car.
Right before she fired up the SUV, Michelle said, 'Goodbye, Mom. I… don't care what you did. I'll always love you.'
CHAPTER 68
AS HE WAS GOING through the binders, Sean's cell phone rang. It was Aaron Betack.
'You didn't hear any of this from me,' the Secret Service agent said.
'You found the letter?'
'It was a good call on your part, Sean. Yeah, it was in her desk. Found it a while back, actually. Sorry it took me so long to tell you. Anybody found out I did this, my career is over. I'll probably go to jail.'
'Nobody will find out from me, I can guarantee you that.'
'I haven't even told the FBI. Don't really see how I could without explaining how I got it.'
'I can see that. Was it typewritten like the first one?'
'Yep.'
'What did it say?'
'Not all that much. The writer was pretty economical, but there was enough in those words.'
'Like what?'
'Some things we already know. That she had to keep checking the post office box. She's been going there every day. Waters has run a trace on the box. Dead end. The plan is when the letter does come that the FBI will take it from her.'
'Forcibly take it from the First Lady?'
'I know. I sort of envision a standoff between the FBI and the Service. Not pretty. But the truth is it'll get worked out behind the scenes. Wolfman isn't going to let the election get blown up over this, niece or not.'
'What else did the letter say?'
'That was the most troubling part.'
'Troubling how?' Sean said warily.
'I'm not sure this whole thing is related to the Duttons. I think it might have something to do with the First Lady.'
'You mean the kidnappers want something from the president?'
'No. The letter said that the next communication she got would reveal all. And that if she let anyone else read it, that it would all be over for her and everyone she cared about. That there would be no way out then for her. Her only chance to survive would be to keep the letter away from everyone else.'
'It actually said that?'
'Not word for word, but that's the clear intent. Sean, you obviously knew her way back when. I've only been around her during this term. What could the person be referring to? Something in Mrs. Cox's past?'
Sean thought back to the first time he'd met Jane Cox, while awkwardly carrying her newly minted U.S. senator and drunken husband into their modest house. Yet nothing had come of that.
'Sean?'
'Yeah, I was just thinking. I'm coming up with zip, Aaron.'
