Ellie stepped around a woolly mammoth fossil, keeping Princess in her view. The Smithsonian was crowded today, with the usual school kids, a Japanese tour group, and sandal-wearing tourists.
The teacher in charge had her hands full, but a couple of parent volunteers had finally offered to come along as chaperones. Margery, the library volunteer, was there, looking like she’d just left a casting call for a remake of the Stepford Wives.
Ellie had her pegged as a bored housewife, volunteering with D.C.’s underprivileged kids instead of helping out with the Junior League’s Christmas bazaar.
Today the kids all had hand-held video cameras, supplied by the multimedia department at the school. They were supposed to be creating presentations on what they observed.
Princess had brought her own camera. She randomly pointed it at various objects, speaking into the microphone. “This bird skeleton is a million years old, almost as old as my teacher.”
Ellie had practiced keeping her facial expressions neutral when guarding protectees, so she stifled her laugh, but only barely. Then she heard Chris through her earpiece. “Code 22. Urgent.”
He had to pee. She stepped to the doorway, where she could see the visitors in the adjoining room, and motioned Chris to take his break. She’d have a word with him about the triple espressos he consumed every morning on the way in.
In the corner of her vision, she saw Princess point the camera at her, or maybe the display she was standing next to. She moved to the other side of the doorway. The camera followed.
She gave it a mock glare, then returned her attention to the room’s occupants, which included several threatening-looking fossils.
Chris returned, and Ellie switched places with him. He could star in Princess’s movie for a while.
In the next room, Ellie noticed Margery, the volunteer. She was helping a student with a notepad, whose reading skills were apparently below that required to read the labels on the exhibits. “It says this clutch of dinosaur eggs was found in China.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s in Asia—across the Pacific.”
“Not, like, Chinatown?”
“No, it’s quite a ways from Chinatown.”
Ellie kept the impeccably dressed woman in her view, watching as she talked to the 14-year-old kid who Ellie knew had a gunshot wound on his left thigh.
Impeccably dressed except for a hair on her sweater—a cat hair?
Margery moved toward Katie. “What are you filming?”
“A reality show about a bunch of kids who live in a museum.”
“Sounds inventive.”
Katie’s scowl rivaled that of the dinosaur next to her. Ellie again hid a smile. Her protectee knew fake interest when she saw it; she was the daughter of a politician, after all.
Katie flicked the “on” button, but Margery noticed and turned away. Katie continued to watch through the viewfinder as the woman slipped out of the room.
Ellie lifted a brow. A do-gooder who was afraid of a camera? What was that about?
She decided to check Margery’s background one more time when she got back to headquarters. She was more likely to be a cat hoarder than a terrorist, but it wouldn’t hurt to find out why she avoided Katie’s camera as if it were a semi-automatic pistol.
Princess turned the camera toward her teacher and zoomed in. “Some of the dinosaurs here are called teachers, and their prey are teenagers who forgot to do their homework.”
Ellie covered her laugh with a cough. She was actually starting to like Princess.
“That Tyrannosaurus rex looks hungry.”
“It’s not a Tyrannosaurus.” In front of her computer monitor, Katie sighed with exasperation at Adam’s comment. “Don’t you know anything?”
“Of course not. I’m your dad. I’m not supposed to know anything until you’re thirty. You’ll recognize my genius around the time you find your first gray hair.”
Katie rolled her eyes.
Adam settled back in the ruffled pink armchair he’d pulled up beside Katie’s desk. He was determined to engage his daughter in some form of interaction, even if he took the brunt of her adolescent scorn. And so he persisted, despite the fact he felt like he was the one poised under the dinosaur’s gaping jaws.
“If it’s not a Tyrannosaurus, what is it?”
“It’s an Allosaurus. If you’d read the caption you’d know that.”
The captions Katie had provided for the video footage she was editing were hardly informative. “Allosaurus prepares to eat unsuspecting ninth grader for lunch,” Adam read aloud. “You think this is what your teacher had in mind for this project?”
“I think she just wanted to justify the school spending money on a field trip. We weren’t actually supposed to learn anything. Besides, I learned all about dinosaurs when I was four. Remember?”
Adam did remember. He remembered taking his young daughter to the Field Museum in Chicago and leaving in a hurry when the assistant prosecutor had called about an urgent court appearance.
Adam moved to stretch his arm across the back of her chair but then noticed Chloe sitting on her shoulder, eyeing him with murderous intent.
“I remember reading a book about some kid with a pet dinosaur—what was it? Stu? Harvey? Wasn’t that an Allosaurus?”
“His name was Davy. And it wasn’t a meat eater,” Katie explained patiently. “Or else Davy would’ve been lunch.”
“Oh. Guess it was a Brontosaurus.”
She sighed. “There’s no such thing. Scientists reclassified it. They’re called Apatosaurus now.”
“Ah, that’s right. Brontosaurus got the Pluto treatment.” At Katie’s quizzical glance, Adam replied, “I’m old enough to remember when Pluto was a planet.”
“Dad. You’re old enough to remember when Pluto was formed.”
There. There it was! An almost imperceptible smile on Katie’s face. A rare sight, but Adam had managed to flush it out, simply by letting her score a hit in the nightly sparring contest he insisted on conducting with her, under the guise of helping with her homework.
He leaned back in his chair, keeping a safe distance from Chloe the Guard Rat, and watched Katie tap out more captions on the keyboard.
He glanced at the video playing on the computer screen, the latest version Katie had edited. His gaze froze. That woman there—for a second, the woman in the corner of the Smithsonian’s Dinosaur Hall had reminded him of Bonnie. But no, Bonnie was dead, or as good as. No one had heard from her since her reclusive father had died on an island in Greece. He’d left Bonnie enough funds hidden away in international bank accounts to effectively escape from whatever demons chased her—demons named Jack Daniels and Jim Beam, Adam recalled, clenching his jaw at the memory of finding his wife drunk while Katie played in her crib with toy dinosaurs.
The video image scanned the hall, landing on Ellie. She stood at the doorway, glanced back into the neighboring room, then turned a sharp gaze toward Katie, who was zeroing in with her camera. He watched Ellie smile, turn away, and speak into her wrist mic.
He swallowed. It had been a long time since he’d felt—what? Attraction? Is that what this feeling was called? Lust? He wanted to have mad sex with her, sure, but he also wanted to have a normal, adult conversation with her.
The video ended. Katie made a few more edits—it really wasn’t a bad job, but he wouldn’t tell her that: she’d immediately re-edit it if she thought it worthy of praise from her father.
“What’s the soundtrack?” he asked instead, as she fiddled with the volume and a song came on, overlapping the image of the Allosaurus’s gaping mouth.
“It’s the Killers’ ‘Smile Like You Mean It.’”
Adam laughed. Katie scowled at the screen, but Adam thought he’d seen a hint of satisfaction in her eyes as she’d gotten a laugh from him. It almost reminded him of the old days, when Katie and he had laughed and chided and complimented each other with ease.
Ellie reappeared in the video, talking to one of the other agents on the detail. She smiled up at the tall man beside her. He was young, closer to her age. Closer to her, period.
For a second Adam felt something that felt like jealousy. But jealousy was a juvenile emotion, and Adam was supposed to be the adult in the room.
Katie paused again on the image of Ellie, who was lifting one inquisitive eyebrow at the videographer. She and Katie seemed to have come to an agreement after the nightmare at Camp David. At least he hadn’t heard any more from Katie about how much she hated having a team of armed and dangerous babysitters with her 24/7.
Adam was due to attend the G20 meeting in London next month. Their housekeeper from Chicago would stay with Katie, providing nominal supervision. Mrs. Torres, or, as Katie referred to her, her “domestic handler,” was capable of overseeing homework and making sure Katie didn’t break the budget when it came to ordering pizza.
Not for the first time, Adam wished he had a wife, someone to see to Katie’s upbringing when he couldn’t. If only Katie’s mother hadn’t had the mothering instincts of an Allosaurus.
He was meeting with Ellie again tomorrow, to discuss how things were going at her school. He’d invited her to lunch, in the White House residence instead of the too-formal Oval Office. And hopefully out of earshot of Lyndon’s running commentary.
He had enough on his plate without the spirits of dead presidents giving him stage directions.