“Like I said, just dumb luck.”
“No, Ollie. They should have found this one. And I hope to God they kept searching.”
“They said they swept the place.”
The look on Tom’s face let me know what he thought of the team’s competence. “Now they’re pulling out all the stops. Now they’re interviewing staff members. They should have done that when the prank bomb was found. They should have found the guy who planted that and found out why. The fact that they’re taking so long to move on this is ludicrous.”
“But how could anyone have known? Gav said-”
Tom silenced me with a look, and I realized I’d risen to Gavin’s defense. “I’m not going to feel comfortable with the president-or you-in the White House until we get to the bottom of this bombing threat.”
“Where is the president now?”
He frowned. “With family,” he said. “I’ll be headed to meet him in the morning. Then he’s heading to Berlin. This is my only night off until Wednesday.”
“Gotcha.”
For the next hour, Tom walked me through Explosives 101. He was certainly more detailed than Gavin had been in class, but Tom suffered from not having examples on hand to share. He’d printed photos from declassified files and diagrams from Internet searches. By the time he finished, my head was chock-full of device strategies and configurations, all for methods of mass demolition. Fun stuff.
“The one thing you have to remember is this,” he said, as he wound up. “There is almost always a secondary device.”
“I’d heard that.”
“It bears repeating. People in the business of destruction don’t want to fall short. They set up fail-safes to ensure their plans move forward. To ensure their target is destroyed. Do you understand?”
A prickly feeling had come over me. “I do.”
CHAPTER 16
SUNDAY MORNING, I RETURNED TO THE White House kitchen, knowing I wouldn’t hear from Tom again until Wednesday at the earliest. My mind was still reeling from all the bomb stuff he’d tried to teach me last night. I worked hard to assimilate information I hoped to never actually need.
To say I was jittery was an understatement. We’d gotten word that today’s decorator tour at the White House was still on. Although Mrs. Campbell would forgo the Kennedy celebration, she would be here to greet guests afterward. With President Campbell out of the residence until Wednesday, the First Lady would be required to handle the event solo.
I still wore the splint on my right hand, which kept me relegated to working at the computer rather than putting meals together. Angry at the two men who’d put me in this position, I knew I needed to push through my harsh disappointment. Working on food was so much more fun than tapping away on a keyboard. Still, I forced myself to focus. While not as much fun as creating an entrée, updating files was a necessary chore, and I’d fallen way behind.
I took my seat in front of the monitor and glanced around the kitchen. My crew was preparing hors d’oeuvres for the afternoon’s event-and they were doing so with terrific efficiency. Although I’d designed today’s menu months ago-prepared samples and overseen the First Lady’s tasting tests-today I felt utterly left out. My body still ached from the assault two nights ago, and my ego smarted from having to keep the bomb information secret. Not only could I not tell anyone else that yesterday’s bomb had been real, I couldn’t warn them that it had been scheduled to go off this very afternoon.
Bucky opened one of the cabinets. “Oh, my God!” We all turned to see him staring into the shelves with exaggerated, wide-eyed panic. He reached in and pulled out a bottle of cooking sherry. “Call security,” he said, lifting the bottle over his head. “It might be a bomb.”
I couldn’t blame the kitchen crew for laughing. I pretended to, but I felt the heated rush of embarrassment fly from my chest to my face. Pointedly, I turned away to study the file open on my monitor. Nothing about it looked familiar, and yet it had been listed as one of my recent documents-which is why I’d opened it in the first place.
Bucky was now pretending the bottle of sherry was a machine gun. I ignored him for a long moment because we’d always bantered among ourselves and I didn’t want to shut down our team’s lighthearted teasing. But this time, mortification pounded in my ears. Suddenly too warm, I wiped the back of my hand across my brow. At least the rest of the kitchen staff was no longer laughing.
Changing tactics again, Bucky pranced around the center island, saying, “Get out before the cooking sherry explodes!”
I turned. “Enough.”
“Can’t take a little ribbing?” he asked.
If he only knew. “What I can’t take is being behind schedule.” I directed a look at the clock on the wall, then pointed to the eyesore Senator Blanchard had given us. “We’ve had plenty of interruptions this past week. Don’t you think it’s time we focused on our work instead of goofing around?”
Total silence in the kitchen while Cyan, Rafe, and Agda waited, wide-eyed, to see what would happen next.
Bucky strode over to the cabinet where he put the cooking sherry back and slammed the door.
I stifled an impatient response. Escalating the incident would only make things worse. I’d gotten what I wanted-what decorum demanded-but in doing so had I just quashed the easygoing cheer that characterized our kitchen? I bit my lip. Was it too much to ask that he comport himself like a professional rather than a troublesome fifth-grader? But that was Bucky, and such was the nature of temperamental geniuses. The man could nuance a dish in surprising and delightful ways, but put him in a social setting and all subtlety vanished like powdered sugar on hot pastry.
A voice behind me. “Ms. Paras. What are you doing here?”
I’d recognize Peter Everett Sargeant III’s precise elocution anywhere. “Good morning,” I said, turning. “What brings you to my kitchen today?”
He was perfectly pressed, as always. But today his characteristic etiquette was augmented by a nasty gleam in his eye. “I was under the impression you were scheduled for another emergency training session,” he said. “After all, considering yesterday’s… er… confusion it appears you’re in need of remedial attention regarding proper protocols where security is concerned.”
Did everyone intend to take a shot at me today? I wanted to scream the truth. But, to what end? To allow me to save face and possibly set up a panic situation? Yesterday, as we walked back to the kitchen, Gav had instructed me to keep quiet about what I knew. The Secret Service believed that the president’s absence from the residence would prevent any future explosive attempts on the White House. At least until President Campbell returned. But by then, he assured me, they’d be ready.
“Thanks for checking with me, Peter,” I said, minimizing the peculiar document I’d been studying. I slid off the seat. “But I think I’ll be okay now. I was fortunate to be able to confer with Special Agent-in-Charge Gavin. He told me I did the right thing.”
Sargeant had a squirrel-like way about him. He held his hands in front of his chest and tilted his head. “Wasn’t that kind of him.”
He looked ready to say more, but I interrupted. “Was there anything else?”
Nonplussed, he gave the kitchen a once-over. “Will everything be ready on time for today’s reception?”
“Of course.”
He sniffed. “I will return later.”
As he left, I caught Cyan mouthing, “Much later.”
I was beginning to think the entire place had turned negative. We were all stressed-this time of the year had that effect on us all-but Bucky and Sargeant were pushing it. If it hadn’t been for Gav’s pep talk and Tom’s tutorial yesterday, I’d wonder if I were turning negative, too.