Fonduing Fathers (33 page)

Eight days after surgery, Gav was released. Yablonski accompanied us to Gav’s apartment, where he helped me get him settled. Taking a long look around the space, Yablonski said, “Big enough for one, Leonard. Not two.” He surprised me by adding, “You’re going to need a bigger place if you and Olivia intend to do this right.”

I looked up at the big man. He’d been there when we’d needed him. Through his efforts, Gav had been saved. I owed that man everything. He could be as cranky with me as he wanted for the rest of his life, and I’d still respect him until the day I died.

After we’d gotten Gav seated at his table, Yablonski added, “Will you be all right here without supervision? Seems like whenever the two of you are left alone for more than five minutes, one of you gets into trouble.”

Gav laughed, which came out like a wheeze, one that made him wince. “Thanks, Joe. Remind me to crack jokes next time you’ve got stitches.”

Yablonski stood. “My days of action are over. They should have been, at least. Thanks to you, I was able to enjoy
one last hurrah. I’m just glad it turned out as well as it did.” He gripped Gav’s shoulder on his way out. I watched his fingers tighten momentarily. “You take care of yourself.”

“I’ll be okay. Ollie will look out for me.”

He flashed me a smile. “I know she will.” He held onto Gav’s shoulder a moment longer than necessary. “I can’t imagine…” He blinked and blew out a long breath. “I mean, if you…” His mouth twisted and he didn’t finish.

Gav patted his mentor’s hand. “I know, Joe.”

The raw emotion on both their faces was too much to handle. I looked away.

A moment later, Yablonski was gone. I locked the door after him and returned to the table. “Can I get you anything?” I asked.

“Sit with me awhile,” Gav said, looking at me with an intensity that made my face warm. “I’ve wanted to talk with you alone for days. This is our first chance.”

“I have so many questions,” I said, “but I don’t want to start in until you have time to acclimate yourself. They can wait.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fine because I’m here with you.”

“I think it would be better if you rested.”

“Ollie.” His voice was a warning. “Do not baby me.”

I smiled. My Gav was back. “Okay, fine. No coddling.”

“Good.”

I started in with the question that had me puzzled the most. “I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to figure how you knew to come to Eugene Vaughn’s house. You couldn’t have gotten that bogus text. Not during training. And even if you did get it, what happened? How did you know I was in trouble?”

He leaned back gingerly, working a smug look onto his face. “Can’t figure this one out, can you, Paras?” For a man who had suffered a near-fatal injury, he was certainly in a playful mood. “Remember when Yablonski told you that you have friends in high places?”

“Yeah…”

“He wasn’t kidding.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you didn’t show up for your appointment with Josh on Friday, he got worried.”

More puzzled than ever, I said, “There’s no way he would have known to call you.”

“No,” Gav agreed slowly, “but he started a chain reaction. He told his mother. When she suggested that you might have simply been delayed, he insisted that you would have called. The kid wouldn’t be talked down. He was so insistent, in fact, that he and his mother came down to the kitchen to look for you. According to the agents on duty, Josh pitched a vigorous fit when no one in charge would listen to him. He said he knew you were in trouble. Otherwise you would have come through.”

“Josh said that?” My hand flew to my chest.

“You and I both know that Josh and Abby aren’t the kind of kids who normally throw tantrums. His mother felt his behavior was off—way off—so she asked the staff to help find you. Imagine her surprise when it turned out that nobody knew where you’d gone.”

I sucked in a breath of understanding. “But then how…?”

“They talked to Sargeant.”

“What?” I exclaimed.

Gav tried to glare. “You didn’t tell me he knew about us.”

“I meant to,” I said. “He figured it out himself. I just didn’t deny.”

“Good thing you didn’t,” he said. “Sargeant suggested they try to find me. Mrs. Hyden couldn’t get through, but discovered I was in training. This all took about, oh, thirty minutes. On the high side. At Josh’s insistence, Mrs. Hyden called her husband and asked him to get me out of training so they could find out where you were.”

“The president of the United States pulled you out of
training because they were looking for
me?
” My mind couldn’t wrap itself around that. “Are you kidding me?”

“Not at all. Friends don’t get much higher.”

“Oh my gosh. It boggles the mind.”

“Thank goodness for Josh. Otherwise…” He didn’t finish the thought.

I reached over and grabbed his hands.

He rubbed my fingers. “You know, I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while. Whenever I woke up, you were there, holding my hand.”

“I wasn’t going to leave your side. Not until you woke up.”

“I know. And that’s exactly why I did.”

DAYS LATER, WE STILL HADN’T GOTTEN ANY answers as to why Linka had felt the need to have me followed after we’d met with him. We hadn’t gotten any word on what happened to him or his henchmen after the federal agents had stormed in and taken them all into custody. Not a word of the story hit the newspapers, the television, or even the Internet.

“Crazy quiet,” I said. “Too quiet. There’s way more to this story.”

Gav concurred. “I’m starting to believe we’ll never know what this was all about.”

When I finally returned to the White House, my first stop was to see Josh. Doing so required some touchy negotiation on my part with Doug, who seemed inexplicably angry at my request. I didn’t understand, but I didn’t give it much thought. Probably still holding a grudge because I wouldn’t write that letter of recommendation for him.

When I managed my visit upstairs to the First Family’s residence, I was shown to the second floor Center Hall, where Josh and Mrs. Hyden waited for me.

I started out with an apology for missing our meeting, but quickly moved to thank Josh, and praise him for his tenacity.

“I cannot tell you how much it means that you had faith in me,” I said. “Because of you, I’m okay. Because of you, a lot of other people are okay. We owe you.”

“My mom said something happened that we can’t talk about. Is that right?”

I admitted it was.

“I had a feeling you were in trouble again. You were, weren’t you?”

“Big trouble,” I said. “But now, because of what you did for me—for all of us—we’re safe. I am so sorry about missing your party, though. How did it go?”

He shrugged. “When you weren’t here, I was too worried to think about any party. I asked my mom to postpone it for another time. And it all turned out all right. The twins came down with a sore throat the next day.”

Mrs. Hyden nodded. “Strep,” she said. “Looks like everything worked out for the best.”

“I promise we’ll plan another party very soon,” I said. “I owe you.”

“No, you don’t,” he said solemnly. “You saved my life once, remember?”

My eyes grew hot. I ruffled his hair. “Yeah, I remember.”

BUCKY AND CYAN GREETED ME WITH WIDE-eyed concern when I finally made it to the kitchen. “What in the world happened to you? You’ve been out for days,” Cyan said in a hushed whisper. “Can you tell us?”

I was about to answer when Virgil tossed a comment over his shoulder. “We all had to give up our days off because of
you. Next time you want to extend your vacation, how about you give the rest of us a little notice?”

“What’s up with him?” I asked.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Foul mood. There’s a rumor going around that Virgil’s not particularly happy about.”

“What’s that?”

Bucky made a face. I looked over at Cyan, who wrinkled her nose. “You’re not going to like it, either,” she said.

At that moment, Sargeant strolled into the kitchen. “Ah, Ms. Paras, I heard you were back. May I have a word?”

“Of course,” I said, eager to talk with Sargeant, too. I cast a wary glance at my teammates as I followed the sensitivity director out of the room. If they’d seemed anxious already, they looked positively alarmed now that Sargeant had interrupted. What had they been about to tell me?

He led me through the long hallway around the kitchen into the ground-floor central hallway. There were tours going on, so we stayed behind the grouping of temporary screens that the uniformed division of the Secret Service erected every tour morning to keep this end off-limits to visitors.

“I’m glad you stopped by,” I began. “I wanted to thank you, Peter. I heard you were instrumental in helping locate my whereabouts the other day.”

“Hmm, yes,” he said. “That’s not what I wanted to speak with you about, but I must say that I’m glad they thought to approach me.” His brow furrowed. “No one has told me the outcome of your latest adventure, nor do I believe any explanation is forthcoming. I understand this one is a hush-hush operation. I trust everything turned out well enough?”

“It did,” I said. “Again, my deepest thanks.”

He nodded acknowledgment. The look in his eyes told me I was missing something.

“What else is up?” I asked.

“You haven’t heard, have you?”

“Apparently not. Care to fill me in?”

Undisguised amusement flooded his features. He was enjoying this, a situation that immediately put me on edge. “Two things,” he said. “The first of which is I wish to extend my thanks to you.”

I waited. “For?”

“For informing me about Thora’s…interest.” His cheeks went pink. “Interest in me, that is. Thanks to your intercession, she and I have had the opportunity to share several enjoyable outings together.”

Genuinely happy to hear this, I found myself grinning. “That’s great. I’m so glad.”

“I thought you might be.” He waited, eyes narrowing. “The second item may not render you quite so gleeful.”

Uh-oh.

“But,” he continued, “I must confess to being pleased to discover that I am to be the one to share the news with you.”

This wasn’t sounding good. “Go on.”

“Do you recall when I mentioned that I’d considered consulting you on an unexpected matter?”

“Yes, but you said you couldn’t talk about it.”

He rubbed his hands together. “Now I can. Through no fault of my own, the secret has been leaked.”

“I’m not following you.”

“A new chief usher has been chosen.”

Oh no.
“Please don’t tell me it’s Doug,” I said.

“Worse.” With a smile as wide as I’d ever seen on Sargeant, he said, “An official announcement will be issued tomorrow.”

“Who is it?”

He held his hands out. “Me.”

I felt my jaw drop, knowing instantly that he wasn’t kidding. Even as I extended my hand and said, “Congratulations,” I put the pieces together: Mrs. Hyden giving Sargeant more responsibility, Virgil’s stories about the “insider” having the best shot at the job, and Sargeant’s own unsurpassed attention to detail.

“I’m delighted for you,” I said, warming to the idea. I shook his hand with gusto. “I really am.”

“We’ve had our differences,” he said, shaking with equal fervor, “but I believe we have much to offer the White House. Individually, as well as together.”

“I couldn’t have said it better.”

When I returned to the kitchen, Bucky and Cyan looked ready to bombard me with questions, but just as they started in, Quinn appeared at the opposite doorway. “Ms. Paras, you’ve been summoned,” he said, jerking a thumb. “I’m here to take you to a meeting.”

“Where?” I asked.

Quinn was mum. “This way.”

“I’ll be back, I guess,” I said to Bucky and Cyan. The looks on their faces were resigned. “Busy morning. I’m sorry.”

Quinn led me into the West Wing, past the Cabinet Room into a narrow hallway that led to the president’s secretary’s office. Gav was there, leaning on the cane the doctors insisted he use until his muscles healed sufficiently. Instinctively, I rushed to him. “What are you doing here?” I laid my hand on his shirt, just below his rib cage. “You aren’t supposed to be out on your own yet.”

“I was summoned.”

“So was I. What’s going on?”

He shrugged. “No idea.”

The president’s secretary was unruffled by our appearance and appeared to take our quick, bewildered conversation in stride. Quinn said something to her and she nodded. “Go right in.”

An aide opened the door. Gav and I looked at each other. “The Oval Office?” I mouthed.

He gave another slight shrug and held a hand out, confused as I was.

“Go on.” Quinn opened the door and gestured us forward. “They’re expecting you. I’ll be out here.”

They?

President Hyden was behind his desk. He stood up as I stepped into the room, Gav limping behind me. “Welcome,” the president said as Quinn closed the door. Hyden came around the front of his desk to greet us. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve asked you both to be here today.”

I didn’t know what to say. I turned to Gav, who had drawn himself to attention and was saluting the president. The Commander in Chief returned the salute. “At ease, Agent Gavin.”