C.J. DROVE the Beast, the first car in a motorcade consisting of four big black vehicles, decorated with American flags and flanked by several motorcycles with white-helmeted agents. She wended her way through streets of brick-front buildings at a slow speed, so people could catch a glimpse of the president of the United States of America.
A loud boom exploded behind her. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a ball of fire ready to bite the car in the ass. Jerking the wheel to the right, she said to the female next to her, “Evasive maneuvers,” and began darting in and out of the traffic. The motorcycle cops cleared the path, and as fast as she could go, given the traffic, she dipped around the other vehicles and swerved into a side street between two buildings. Gunning the motor, she sped off. When she hit the open paved lot, she gunned the car up to seventy miles per hour. Another quick jerk of the wheel and the car spun around 180 degrees. She drove a few yards, then came to a screeching halt. The tires screamed and rubber burned at the tight stop. She’d executed the J-turn without a flaw.
“Wow,” the trainee said, “that was great. I couldn’t do it.”
C.J. peered over at her. God, the girl was green. It was hard to believe little Ella Thomas would ever be able to drive a protectee’s limo or any hard car. “Thomas, do you or do you not want to be in the Secret Service?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
After completing the initial round of training in North Carolina, required for all Secret Service personnel, Thomas was at Beltsville for her second—the advanced eleven-week course designed for special agents. All the rookies called C.J. ma’am, even though she was here for training herself and was only thirty-two years old. But any agents at the compound, and especially those on the PPD or VPPD, were treated like instructors. C.J. had been asked to take trainees along with her on some maneuvers she herself was required to practice, like this one today, conducted on the streets of a town that resembled a Hollywood back lot. Adding to her aura of authority was the fact that the facility administrators had snagged her as soon as she arrived and asked her to give a seminar later in the week for the entire population on how her team foiled Rory’s kidnapping and the intelligence that went on behind finding the perpetrators.
“If you do want to be one of us,” she said to the girl, you’ll have to be able to execute maneuvers like this without even thinking about it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The door to the Camaro, the model of car used in training, opened. The special agent in charge of Beltsville instruction, Finn Flannigan, had a clipboard in his hand. As she got out, he said, “Good job, C.J. Your reflexes are still top-notch in the motorcade.” He gave her a half grin. “Then again, you’ve been driving around the cream of the crop. Congrats, by the way, on saving the day.”
“Thanks, Finn. I was just doing the job I was trained here to do.”
The teacher beamed at the compliment. “Appreciate that.” He checked his chart. She’d been in Maryland three days and had completed about a quarter of her qualifications. “What do you want to do next?”
“Water rescue.”
In the event of protectees’ cars going into a lake or their planes going down in the ocean, protectives were trained for underwater rescue and getting the subjects safely to land.
“Water rescue recertification isn’t until tomorrow.” He checked his watch. “You could do your quals in fitness now. Should be a piece of cake. You’re in great shape.”
A memory hit her, like an uppercut to the chin...
You’re in such good shape. Perfect shape.
At the time, she and Aidan were both naked and he was testing every muscle in her body for strength, flexibility and suppleness. His hands were magic and she’d basked in his touch.
“You scowled. Don’t you want to do the fitness thing now?”
“No, I do. Something just crossed my mind.”
C.J. bade good-bye to Finn and the trainee, who was still looking at her with stars in her eyes. When she first trained here, C.J. had felt like that way about the experienced agents she came in contact with. All she’d wanted out of life was to be one of them.
What do you want in life? Aidan had asked, as they drove from Queens to the lake. I mean, you know, in the future. A husband to love you to pieces, and kids?
She’d said yes, eventually she wanted that.
Not now though. What she wanted now was to protect the vice president’s wife, and in order to forget Bailey’s brother, C.J. was going to lose herself in the training she needed to do the job. By the time she left Beltsville, she planned on being over Aidan O’Neil completely.
Kocham Ciebie.
All right, maybe not completely, but enough to stop dreaming about the way he laughed, and how his face looked when he was taking pictures, the color of his hair when the sun hit it.
And the raw intimacy of making love with him.
“Arrgh...” she growled as she headed off to change her clothes.
Once she was dressed in black sweats and sneakers, she checked in with the agent in charge of the fitness group, and began her endurance qualification. Breathing hard as she ran, she remembered that Aidan ran, and how sexy he looked sweaty and spent from the exercise. Then she remembered how other activity made him sweaty and spent...
Oh, baby, you blew the top of my head off.
She was straddling him, and brushed damp hair from his forehead. I want to do that, and more.
“Stop!” she said aloud to herself. “Don’t do this.”
With a blank mind, she finished the rest of the run in record time. Then she headed to the obstacle course. She climbed the ropes, swung out over the pond, and shimmied up to the other side. There she scaled a wall painted with the Secret Service star and the agency motto, With trust and confidence, on it.
You can trust me, Caterina. I’ll always have your best interest at heart.
Aidan, there’s no future to trust you in.
Don’t bet on it, baby.
Well, she’d won the wager. And she was breaking records with her fitness and skills qualifications. So why did she feel like such a loser?
o0o
“PA, I GOTTA talk to you.” Since it was still warm in early September, Aidan’s father was seated outside the pub, on the small back porch, some kind of book on his lap. He looked healthy and...at peace. Aidan figured this was a good time to talk to him. He was done coasting in his life. The fight with Liam had brought everything into focus.
“Sit,” Pa said.
Instead, Aidan stood by the post and leaned against it. “Since your heart attack, I’ve been walking on eggshells around you.”
His pa gave a snort.
“I felt guilty that our fight caused your heart attack.” He blew out a heavy, disgusted breath. “Then I took you out on the lake and you cracked your head on the bottom of the boat.”
“Christ the Lord, boy, how many times do I have to tell you none of it was your fault?”
“I know that now. It just took me a while to come around.”
“Seems like everything does.”
“What do you mean?”
“I been wondering why you waited so long to talk to me about the photography in the first place.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was afraid you’d be mad.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. At least not all of it. I think it boiled down to me not having enough confidence in my work. Maybe I was using you as an excuse.” He straightened and took a bead on his father. “But I’m gonna do it now, Pa. I’m gonna pursue photography full-time.”
“Okay.”
“If the guys need me, I’ll work at the pub part-time.”
“Okay.”
“And I might be moving—”
“I said okay, son.”
“You did?” Aidan scowled at him. “Why is it okay? You’ve been against this.”
He gripped the book he held. “I know. I had a lot of time to think about things since I got sick. I’ve been selfish. I wanted my boys with me, you especially. And I had a feeling that your interest in takin’ pictures would make you leave us.”
“You didn’t mean that stuff about it not being a real job, just a hobby?”
“No, I meant it. Then.”
“Now?”
“I can see it’s not just a hobby.”
“What changed your mind?”
“This.” He held up the book and Aidan noted it was a leather photo album. “Is that one of Bailey’s?”
Pa shook his head.
“Where’d you get it?”
“It’s a birthday present for me. And for you in a way.”
“From who?”
“See for yourself.” He handed Aidan the book.
Immediately Aidan recognized the photos he’d taken of his family. He turned the pages, smiling at each one. This was a nice gift for his father. “I gave Bailey these pictures, Pa.”
“Didn’t give them to me.” He sighed. “Can understand why, I guess.” He shook his head. “Wish I’d seen them sooner.”
“Why?”
“Because when I looked at them, I could hear little Angel laugh, see the sadness on Mikey’s face even when he’s asleep. They show how you love your brothers, your Ma...me. You have a gift, son, and you should pursue it.”
Aidan swallowed back the emotion. He hadn’t realized, even though he would have gone ahead with this career now, how much his pa’s blessing meant. More so, how important his acknowledgment of Aidan’s talent was to him. “I...I don’t know what to say.”
“I’d say thank you to that little secret agent of yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the letter in the end.”
Aidan flipped to the back of the album. The note was from C.J. In her no-nonsense handwriting. Carefully he read each word.
But he also read in between the lines.
When he looked up at his father, he couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. “Hot damn,” he said to Pa.
“That’s my boy.”
o0o
“SO ONCE we received the threat we started isolating factors about the call.” C.J. stared out at the nearly one hundred members of her seminar on intelligence gathering and how it unraveled with the attempted kidnapping of Rory O’Neil. “This is the fun part.”
A male recruit gave her a wave. “It was a voice threat right? Not a written threat.”
“Yes.”
“It’s impossible to conceal your identity in a written letter, isn’t it?”
Show-off. The kid was cute, though, and had eyes almost the color of Aidan’s. “Yes, we can hone in on specific things with written threats.” Quickly she recounted the ink and paper analysis used, the FISH section of the department and the database that held the past input with which they’d compare the current threat.
“After zeroing in on the restaurant noise, and the Asian accent, we were pretty sure Annie-O had been the culprit.” She winked at them. “Just goes to show you how you shouldn’t jump to conclusions.” She explained that Annie-O had been cleared and Quinn Pnu was being indicted. Sasha Sanders, at fourteen, was being handled by juvie, but her cooperation in nailing Pnu would go a long way in keeping her out of the system.
Another hand from one of the recruits. “Did you really jump off a Ferris wheel to save Rory O’Neil?”
“I really did. And I don’t recommend it.”
“How long was your recovery?” a woman asked.
Just long enough to fall in love.
“About a week. Then the vice president was taken hostage and I went back to New York to be with Ms. O’Neil.”
They peppered her with questions, and even the instructors had some queries...
“What’s the most difficult thing about the VPPD?”
“Do you go into the classroom with Rory?”
“What’s it like to guard a baby?”
“Is Ms. O’Neil nice? She’s so mag in what she’s done as the Second Lady.”
“She’s very nice.” For some reason C.J. added, “Her whole family is.”
You went to the other side of the lake, to avoid hurting Sonia...
I’m worried about Liam. He needs help.
And rocking Angel, keeping Bailey company when Clay was away, playing endlessly with Rory and Mike.
“Agent Ludzecky? Which do you like better, intelligence work or protective work?” This from Ella Thomas, who had been in her car earlier in the week.
“Stupid question,” Mr. Blue Eyes said. “Of course it’s the protection.”
“No,” C.J. answered. “It’s not that cut and dry. I like the protective division. It’s exciting, interesting and you’re really standing next to history being made.”
“What’s the downside?”
“Not so much a downside, but more an upside to Intelligence. The work I did in the New York office was challenging, and rewarding, in a different way. My mind was active, as opposed to hours of watching other people and doing nothing. That can be excruciatingly boring, by the way. And in Intelligence, I liked figuring out the puzzle. Solving the crime. To break it up, and get the adrenaline rush we seem to need, we supply the protection for dignitaries visiting the UN.”
There was a lot of buzz back and forth from the rookies about which kind of jobs they wanted in the service. C.J. sat back and let them talk. Her own mind was busy with one thought: She’d had a position that she loved, in the same city where Aidan lived, and had only left it because she’d been forced out by her boss.
Who was leaving the field office in New York City.
o0o
THE COMPUTER KEYS clicked under Aidan’s fingers. Since his talk with his dad, and admitting some things to himself about his own insecurities, he’d gone online daily researching opportunities in Washington, D.C., for photographers with his credentials. He investigated employment in magazine work and photojournalism.
And because of his fight with Liam, and the suggestion his brothers had made about Liam getting himself and Mikey counseling, Aidan realized he needed help, too. So he’d begun scouring the Internet for information on the significant others of men and women who worked in dangerous jobs. First, he looked for specific articles on government personnel: Secret Service, FBI and CIA agents. There had been a few things written by the wives of agents, but nothing, of course, from men whose women were in the business.
He had, however, found a chat room where people gathered to talk about this very issue. He clicked into the site.
WifeforYou was online. She was married to an FBI agent. She talked about raising kids virtually alone, but when hubby came back, they got another kid on the way. Furlough babies, she called them.
NotforMe was divorced from a police officer. She had nothing good to say about people who endangered their lives when they had families to consider.
Smitten was one of his favorite contributors, for obvious reasons. He was living with a female firefighter and had solid advice about dealing with her job. He and Aidan had exchanged several private e-mails.
There were sad stories from women whose military husbands had left them, CIA agents who’d turned alcoholic and one man’s lover who’d been killed in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
As Aidan watched the comments scroll by, someone brought up the idea of support groups for those people trying to make a life with today’s heroes. Aidan typed in with: I don’t suppose there’s any kind of group like this for the federal government, is there?
The agent’s wife with the kids typed, Hey, yeah, there is. One’s starting in Washington, D.C., this fall for the CIA, FBI, the Secret Service. After Tim Jenkins died, there was a rush of concern from spouses.
This was kismet, Aidan thought after she e-mailed him the information. The person running the group was Joe Stonehouse. Luke’s old boss. He’d been at Jenkins’s funeral and talked to C.J. Because he felt strongly about this topic, he was flying from his home in upstate New York to D.C. once a week for a trial eight-week seminar.
Aidan got off-line and took out his cell phone. For some reason, he’d saved the number he needed in his phone book.
In a few minutes, the call was answered. “Hello.” A beautiful feminine voice. “This is the Ludzecky residence.”
“Mrs. Ludzecky?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“Aidan O’Neil. I’m—”
A throaty feminine laugh. “Oh, I know who you are. Luke’s told me about you. We were hoping to hear from you.”
“You were?”
“Yeah, let me go get Luke.”
As Aidan waited, he thought about life, and how, when you really wanted something, someone—God maybe?— kept throwing ways to get it in your path.
o0o
TWO DAYS before Pa O’Neil’s birthday, when the vice president’s family and their agents were headed to New York, C.J. stayed at the gun range long after she qualified for Rapid Accurate Firing.
Bang, bang! The bullets from her .357 semiautomatic hit the target’s heart. She was used to the ricochet and held her ground. The acrid smell of smoke assaulted her.
More shots. Ouch! Right in the target’s groin. Served the villain right.
Kneeling down, goggles and earplugs in place, she set up with the M16, then MP5 and fired.
By the time she finished, she’d been off the charts with her scores in shooting. Somehow, the pleasure she took in that was minimal, just like when she aced her written tests. Her success in this training had felt so-so.
She left the gear behind and headed out to get some dinner. Twenty feet from the range, she was approached from the left. Ella Thomas again.
“Agent Ludzecky, I was wondering if I could ask you something.”
“Yeah, sure. And you can call me C.J.”
“The other women trainees and I were talking last night about how great it was watching you work. You do everything right. You held your own with the guys in the workshop. And you made it to the top. We wondered if you’d wanna come and talk to us about what it’s like to be a female in the agency.”
C.J. was about to brush Thomas off with a comment that life in the Secret Service for a woman was just like it was for a man, but she felt like a hypocrite, because in so many ways, it wasn’t. And she’d been e-mailing her sisters a lot since she got here, which made her miss contact with them even more, so an all-girl evening might be fun. “I guess I could. When?”
“We’re getting together for pizza right now.”
“Now’s fine,” she said, and followed Ella over to the housing complex and up the steps to her suite.
They walked inside her quarters and C.J. found ten women seated on the floor, couches and chairs. They were chatting, flipping through magazines, sipping drinks. Dressed in a variety of jeans, sweats and shorts, they could have been any group of college coeds.
But they weren’t. They were training to take a bullet for someone else.
They greeted her warmly.
C.J. accepted a soft drink and a slice of pizza with everything on it and sat on a chair somebody vacated for her. After she ate the spicy pie, she asked, “So what do you want to know, ladies?”
A short-haired woman took the lead. “There’s got to be prejudice against women on the job. Most of the PPD and VPPD are men, right?”
Shrugging, C.J. said, “Most Secret Service agents are men. But women get the same opportunities. I got on the VPPD, which is a plum position.” She told them how she’d substituted for Bailey’s guards when an agent from the field office was needed. And what the heck, she added, “However, there were rumors I’d slept my way to the top. I wouldn’t guess a man would be accused of that.” Then she blasted David Anderson—nameless—and confessed to leaving a job she loved under duress. She quickly explained why she went along with it, though, so these young women wouldn’t think it was the right thing to do, or that they should take that crap from anybody. After discussing the whole situation with Luke and Aidan, C.J. was pretty sure she would handle it differently if it happened to her today.
“It must work the other way, too,” a pretty brunette stated. “Do you think you got to guard the vice president’s wife because you’re a woman?”
“No. Marilyn Quayle had male agents, and Jackie Kennedy has a special affinity to Clint Hill. Granted, Ms. O’Neil asked for me, but I don’t think it’s because I’m female. We clicked, personality-wise, when I subbed on her detail several times.” She smiled thinking of Rory and Angel. “And I’m sure the fact that I adore the kids came through. Not everyone can guard children.”
Other questions surfaced: physical fitness of a man compared to that of a woman, spending all day as one of the guys, then going home and turning back into a woman, the rigor and loneliness of consistent travel.
Finally, little Ella said, “I want to know some personal things. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“I won’t.” She smiled. “Shoot.”
“Isn’t it hard on your love life being an agent?”
She thought of Aidan’s beautiful blue eyes darkening with desire. And filled with hurt when she left him.
“Yes, it is. You must have heard the stories that agents have difficulty sustaining personal relationships.”
“Is it worse for a woman?”
“I’m not sure, but I would think so. If their significant others are men, guys tends to be more protective.” She pictured the look on Aidan’s face when he saw the tape of Tim McCarthy getting shot. “It’s hard to imagine a husband watching his wife put herself in the line of fire. Those kinds of things get televised live.”
“No harder than a wife watching her husband,” someone else put in.
Maybe she was right. The women batted that around for a while.
The brunette asked again, “I heard that the service unofficially recommends women not change their names when they get married because chances are the union won’t last.”
Another added, “Divorce rates are among the highest for Secret Service agents. I read where a good percentage turn to booze because of the loneliness.”
Which was exactly why C.J. had made the decision she had about trying to sustain a relationship with Aidan.
Though the conversation was making her sad. And a bit angry. Was this really what life had to be like for women in the Secret Service?
“Have you had any serious relationships since you’ve been an agent, C.J.?” Ella asked.
She told them about the string of guys who couldn’t accept her job.
“So there’s really no hope of falling in love and making it work.”
She fingered the medal around her neck, the one she hadn’t yet been able to take off since the disastrous date with a man other than Aidan. “Well, I fell in love. Once.”
“How did it end?” another asked.
It hasn’t. No, no, that wasn’t right. It had. “Same old, same old. He recognized the fact that he couldn’t handle the danger I put myself in.” She shook her head. “Of course, I helped him down that path.” Maybe too much.
A cute little redhead that Aidan would like the looks of lifted her chin. “I refuse to believe it has to be that way. If two people love each other, they should be able to compromise.”
C.J. felt defensive—and embarrassed by being such an emotional coward. “It’s not that easy.”
“It’s doable, though, isn’t it?”
She thought long and hard about what kind of advice she should give these girls. Don’t count on it. Be a robot and be prepared to give up everything, especially a man. That message was so cynical. And if women in the ranks kept preaching that mantra, how would things ever change? Yet, should she mislead them? Or was it just her limitations that caused her own situation?
In the end, she said, “You know what, maybe you’re right. At the very least, if you think you can have both, you should go for it.” She recalled one of her favorite quotes. “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
Like she had. She’d missed her chance with Aidan because she’d been afraid to take the risk.
The redhead looked at her. “If you believe that now, is it too late for you and the guy you fell in love with?”
That question haunted her as she left the young women to finish their pizza party. It was humbling to witness another generation of female rookies who were braver, in some ways stronger, than she was.