Dark Protocol

Chapter 7

Genevieve

The congressional hearing was exactly like a modern gladiator fight.

Only here, blood wasn’t spilled onto sand. It was spilled across polished marble floors, and instead of weapons, they used precise, lethal words.

I stood near the rear door of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s vast oak-paneled chamber, my hands clasped loosely behind my back, relaxed but ready. My posture was the same motionless pillar it always was. My gaze swept mechanically over the gallery, the tense body language of the senators, the suspiciously restless assistants clutching folders. But one small, suppressed fragment of my attention, the part training had never managed to kill completely, remained fixed on the man seated at the center of the room.

Roman Crawford was a predator among politicians.

When the committee chairman, a gray-haired, arrogant senator from Texas, tried to corner him with a delicate question about national security funding, Roman didn’t even raise his voice. He leaned back in the leather chair with careless elegance, fixed his cold blue eyes on the senator, and with a single mercilessly constructed sentence packed with data, destroyed weeks of the man’s argument.

He didn’t just win the debate.

He visibly enjoyed the intellectual slaughter.

The air in the room froze. The same people who had whispered behind his back that morning about whether the President had become unfit to lead since his wife’s death now sat pale and silent, staring down at their papers.

I watched his face.

That perfect, unmoving mask behind which he hid his own destructive grief.

He was a born leader.

And that was exactly what made him so frustrating.

If he had only been a drunken wreck, it would have been easier to keep my distance. But seeing that brilliant mind at work made it much harder to remind myself that he was still only a target.

An hour and a half later, the committee chairman gaveled the hearing closed.

Roman stood, buttoned his jacket in one smooth motion, and started toward the exit. I immediately moved into position, exactly one step behind and to his right, as my earpiece came softly to life.

“Eagle is moving. Secure the Rotunda. Press presence is higher than expected,” Director Vance crackled in my ear.

As we left the closed chamber and headed toward the Capitol’s vast domed hall, chaos reached its peak. Dozens of reporters waited behind the barricades, camera flashes bursting so rapidly they were almost blinding. Security personnel strained to hold back the shouting crowd as questions flew from every direction. The air was thick with body heat and tension.

“Mr. President! Mr. President, one question about the Middle East strategy!”

“President Crawford!”

Roman didn’t so much as twitch. He walked through the crowd as if they weren’t there, his gaze fixed straight on the exit. His steps were measured, his aura impenetrable. I moved tightly beside him, using my body to create an invisible but unbreakable shield around his right side.

Then it happened.

In the vast, echoing space of the Rotunda, a sharp, deafening crack tore through the air.

CRACK.

It sounded like a high-caliber rifle shot.

The sound bounced off the marble walls and came crashing back at us in multiplied echoes.

Hell broke loose instantly.

Screams erupted. Raw panic surged through the crowd. People began trampling one another as they tried to run or threw themselves to the floor. Barricades toppled.

In a fraction of a second, the protocol I had rehearsed a thousand times took over my mind.

No thinking.

No hesitation.

Only muscle memory and clean action.

“SHOT FIRED! Everyone down!” an agent shouted over the radio.

I didn’t wait for the order.

Before the echo of the crack had even died beneath the dome, I moved.

Roman had stopped, his head turning toward the sound, the worst possible reaction during an assassination attempt. I slammed my smaller but relentlessly trained body into his with full force. I didn’t ask him to move. I grabbed the lapel of his jacket and used my weight, along with his momentum, to drag his center of gravity down.

“Cover!” I shouted.

My voice was sharp.

Commanding.

Stripped of every trace of restraint.

Roman’s body tensed in surprise. He stumbled, but I didn’t let him hit the floor where the panicked crowd could trample him. My right hand drew my weapon from behind my back while my left arm locked almost around his neck, shoving him with brutal force toward the nearest secure point: a heavy, windowless staff door made of solid oak.

The door gave way beneath our combined weight.

We crashed into a narrow, windowless supply closet.

The impact drove Roman into the wall with a low grunt.

I immediately pressed myself against him without hesitation, covering him completely from the direction of the door while kicking the heavy wood panel shut behind us. The door closed with a sharp metallic click, muffling the panic outside. I turned the bolt.

Darkness swallowed us.

“Eagle secured,” I breathed into my microphone, aiming my weapon directly at the door in the dark. “We’re in a locked room off the east corridor of the Rotunda, near Exit Four. Request confirmation of threat.”

Only static and the chaotic voices of panicked agents answered.

We stood in total darkness inside the cramped room.

The air vanished instantly.

The harsh smell of mop water, ammonia, and stale dust burned my throat.

Then the darkness began to shrink.

The familiar, dreaded pressure appeared in my chest at once. Claustrophobia wrapped its icy claw around my throat. The walls, though I couldn’t see them, seemed to lurch toward me. My lungs screamed for oxygen, but I knew that if I surrendered to the panic, I would lose control.

Control your body.

I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached and drove the fingernails of my left hand into my own palm, using physical pain to anchor my mind to the present.

I couldn’t show weakness.

Especially not in front of him.

My back pressed against the cold door.

Roman Crawford’s body was only an arm’s length away from me in the dark. I could hear his breathing, heavy and fast, but not with fear.

With rage.

“What the hell are you doing?” His voice snapped from the darkness, low and threatening enough to shake the cramped space. He wasn’t used to being touched. Dragged. Forced into anything by sheer strength.

Especially not by a woman.

“Negative, Mr. President. Stay against the wall,” I answered into the dark, forcing my voice to remain cold and even while I suffocated inside my own body. “There may be an active shooter on site. We don’t move until the area is declared clear.”

Roman shifted in the darkness.

I heard the brush of his clothes.

“I’m not some helpless package you get to shove around, Shaw. Take the damn bolt off this door.”

He took one step toward me, his body rising over me like a massive, threatening shadow in the blackness. He grabbed my arm, the one holding my weapon, and tried to pull me away from the door. His grip closed around my biceps like a vise.

“Don’t touch me,” I hissed.

Using my training, I twisted my arm free in one fast movement while my other hand shoved him hard in the chest, forcing him back.

“I’m the shield. I face the door. That’s protocol.”

Roman’s back hit the wall, but instead of calming down, his fury only sharpened.

I could feel the heat rolling from his body.

“I don’t give a damn about your protocol,” he snarled, his voice low and full of venom. “I’m not letting a woman die for me in a filthy supply closet. Move.”

The sentence came from raw, aggressive male pride.

No matter how much he hated his own life, the thought that someone else, especially me, would sacrifice herself for him was unbearable.

“That’s what I’m paid to do. And as long as I’m responsible for your life, you do what I say.”

Adrenaline was fighting between us now.

The confined space was stretched to the breaking point by the collision of two dominant wills, both desperate for control. Roman’s heavy breathing stirred the hair near my face, he was standing that close, but he didn’t try to physically move me again. He must have realized I wouldn’t yield, and if we started wrestling, my weapon could discharge.

He only stood there, hostile and tense in the thick darkness.

And I leaned against the door, fighting my own demons.

Breathing became harder.

Sweat broke across my temples. My grip on the weapon grew slippery.

I closed my eyes, as if it mattered in the pitch-black room, and forced myself to focus only on the sounds outside.

I am not in the box.

I am not in the dark.

There is only the mission.

Roman noticed nothing.

His own anger, the tension of the possible assassination attempt, and his withdrawal symptoms consumed too much of his attention. The rigidity caused by terror, he likely mistook for professional vigilance and stubbornness.

Long, agonizing minutes passed.

The silence inside the supply closet grew heavier than lead.

Then my radio crackled sharply.

“All units, this is Command. Code Green. Repeat, Code Green. Area is clear. Metal scaffolding collapsed during renovation work in the east wing. No shooter. Repeat, false alarm.”

The words sliced through the rope tightening around my throat.

I moved mechanically before my body fully registered relief. I stepped back, turned the bolt, and pressed down the handle in one smooth motion. The door flew open, and the sharp, blinding light of the Rotunda rushed into the narrow room, along with the remaining noise of shouting voices.

I stepped into the light and drew a deep, greedy breath of cold, dusty air as my face rearranged itself within a fraction of a second into its perfect, icy mask.

In one fluid movement, I concealed my weapon back into the holster behind my waist.

Roman stepped out of the closet after me.

Slowly.

He adjusted his rumpled pinstripe jacket, his face once again the carved stone mask of the exhausted, untouchable President. But his jaw remained clenched hard.

When Director Vance and the other agents rushed toward us with weapons drawn and worry carved across their faces, Roman dismissed them with a single careless, condescending gesture.

“I’m fine, David. Agent Shaw… over-secured the situation.”

His voice was cold.

Offended.

Vance turned to me. His face was pale, but respect flashed in his eyes.

“Good work, Shaw. You acted exactly according to procedure. Perfect reaction time.”

“Yes,” Roman said.

His blue eyes moved to me slowly and mercilessly.

There was no warmth in them.

Only a cold, furious understanding that I truly would be willing to sacrifice myself for him.

And that disturbed him most of all.

“A perfect machine. As always.”

Then he turned and walked toward the exit at the center of the security formation.

I moved back into position at his right shoulder.

My chest still ached from the panic I’d forced down, and my fingertips were numb, but my gaze remained steady.

It had been a false alarm.

No real shot had been fired.

But the war between us had just escalated.