The Night Is Mine

Chapter 25

25

“I knew you could save me.”

Emily struggled to collect her thoughts.

They must have pried her out of the bird. She wasn’t in her seat now.

Horizontal…

A world of wonderful.

And the First Lady was saying something.

“I knew you could.”

It was nice that someone knew she could do anything. She felt all wrapped in wool and unable to weave any of it into a meaningful fabric.

Moments or hours later, someone wrapped their hand around her wrist as if looking for a pulse. Pretty old-fashioned thing to do when she could hear a machine beeping lethargically away in the background. They must have drugged her on something serious to get a pulse that slow.

“If you think that lying there faking it is going to get you a medal, forget about it.” The voice was the first clear thing she heard. The grip on her wrist tightened for a moment, then released.

“Already have a couple.” At least that’s what she’d tried to say. And it wasn’t worth the trouble of being shot or broken to get any one of them. She tried to open her eyes, but there was padding pressing lightly on them. And total darkness. Emily couldn’t say that surprise or fear was rocketing through her. Whatever they had pumped into her veins didn’t let her think anything much at all.

And there was a thrum on the left side of her face that made her bet she’d be in real pain if they didn’t have her drugged up beyond caring.

Her eyes… The thought drifted away.

“Where am I?” It didn’t sound right, not to her own ears and probably to no one else’s.

“Walter Reed Hospital.”

A part of what she’d said must have come out clearly. Right where she’d been told to land. There was someone she wanted to tell that, but she couldn’t remember who or why.

“What? How?” Waaa. Huuuoooowwaaa?

“The shooter evaporated. We found the launch tube sitting in the middle of the street. Not a print, mark, bit of hair. Nothing on it. No trace. The weapon itself went missing two months ago in Nevada. Specialty piece from a research test. We’ve been looking for it ever since.”

“Hunhuoash?” She couldn’t translate that one herself, but the voice continued telling her what she needed to know.

“You got the bird down, though they’re taking it back out with a crane. Both you and Daniel Darlington have concussions. You knocked my wife out cold though she’s hard-headed enough to be fine. You also bloodied her nose and dislocated her shoulder, but that was okay as soon as they reset it. She’s up and gone back to the Residence about an hour ago. You always were a hazard, Squirt.”

“Reter.”

“Yup.” She felt the right side of the bed sag as the President sat beside her.

“My seyes.” Her voice felt a smidgen clearer.

“You weren’t kidding when you said a ‘flashbang.’ Lit up the whole area. Inside the Oval Office it shone like a lightning strike, and you were a couple thousand feet closer. Worse than July Fourth, which can be pretty bright in this city. Based on radar and photographic reconstruction and the few comments you made on the radio, we think a proximity fuse tripped about twenty feet away from you. Based on your sunburn, you were looking at it to your left. I’ve seen pictures of your eyes. Now that’s a shade of red I haven’t seen since the last time I got plastered at Oxford. You gotta stay out of the sun, Em.”

She could hear his voice clearly now. Hear it well enough to know; to know how much it was costing him to stay light and easy. So, though another woman married him, they were still close. Hell, he was sitting on her bed. It was nice. And the drugs weren’t letting her worry about anything as trivial as blindness or sunburned eyes.

“A rane?” Why did they need a crane to remove her helicopter? The landing hadn’t been that bad. Had it? It had.

“Big crane. You landed in the Reflecting Pool. Exact same spot as you soaked my sneakers. How did you do that?”

“Did it wit’ my seyes closhed.”

That got a laugh. Not a good one. Kind of a choke and gasp.

“Do it allsh the time.” At least that explained why her feet had been cold. They’d been in the water.

He shifted, took her hand. Not to hold, but more playing with it to see how it worked. Their old joke. She’d always said that if she was ever bored and Peter was around, she could give him a piece of string or a sheet of paper and be entertained for hours. He wasn’t hyperactive or jittery. But there was a restlessness about him that expressed itself in stacking pennies or folding and unfolding multiple paper airplane designs across the same sheet until the paper dissolved along the folds into shreds which he’d then rearrange into different shapes. It was what he did to keep a part of his mind occupied while his thoughts worked.

“Squirt. Why do you do this? I mean how many times have you nearly killed yourself since I last saw you?”

She wanted to sit up, but didn’t want him to stop playing with her fingers. It felt good. Her fingers were cold, his warm.

“You saw me yesterday, in New Shork.”

“Two days ago. It’s morning now.”

“Shorry, couldn’t see the sky.”

That killed the conversation. She tried again.

“I’ve only had one near-death experience since New Shork.” Pretty droll answer for being so drugged. She’d have to pat herself on the back when he stopped fooling with her fingers.

“I mean…” He dropped her hand and the bed shifted as he moved away.

She considered reaching for him. Captain Emily Beale and the President of the United States of America. The married President of the United States. They’d clearly given her good drugs for that childhood fantasy to climb partway to the horizon. She kept her hand where it lay, soothed and warm, resting on her abdomen. She’d pat herself on the back for making it out alive some other time.

His pacing across the room and back sounded clearly. Fast. As if something were worrying him.

“I mean since I saw you at the reception.”

And she thought she could kill a conversation? Twenty years old, passed out drunk on champagne in her father’s office. He’d been the FBI Assistant Director at the time and she must have been a sad sight.

“You were fresh out of West Point. Highest honors and all that, I kept track. And you did it the hard way. You volunteered—Army, Airborne, Special Operations Forces—I can’t believe you actually qualified for Special Operations Forces, then SOAR. First woman ever to make the grade. What makes you do that?”

She did sit up. Well, slouched higher on the stack of pillows. Her head only swam a bit; the drugs must be clearing out of her system. She wished she could see him. Here. At her bedside. Alone. Well, except for the flock of blacksuits he must have silently in tow somewhere about the room.

“Is the Commander in Chief asking me? Or Sneaker Boy?” She thought she heard a muffled laugh beyond the foot of the bed. A blacksuit with a sense of humor? Adams. Had to be. She felt safer for having him there, despite his despising her.

The pacing stopped. Was he close or far? Was he staring out a window in contemplation or a step away studying her intently?

She reached for the bandages over her eyes but then thought better of it. There were things she didn’t want to know any sooner than she had to.

“Can’t I be both?” His voice barely a whisper.

He was close.