CHAPTER FORTY TWO
12:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Oval Office
The White House, Washington, DC
“Susan, I’m feeling hung out to dry right now.”
Susan sat in one of the high-backed chairs in the sitting area. Across the way from her, Stephen Lief’s concerned, bespectacled face took up the vast majority of the large flat-screen monitor on the wall. He wore a tan windbreaker jacket over a shirt and tie. He was in a borrowed office at the Texas State House in Austin. Early this morning, he had met whatever remained of Jack Butterfield’s body when it arrived from Egypt.
The part of the monitor that didn’t have Lief’s face was a box in the upper right-hand corner. That showed CNN footage of the mass exodus of people trying to leave New York City in particular, but also the East Coast in
