The old man shivered again.
Naomi said, “What do you say we get you inside, Dad?”
She stood at the nurses’ station in the assisted-living facility, looking over the latest medical report. The facility’s name, Sunrise Villa, always struck her as optimistic and perversely cruel. Assessing her father’s lab work, she felt a not-unfamiliar coldness wash through her gut.
She sensed Amanaki’s eyes lift from behind the counter. The nurse, with her empathic gaze and lilting Tongan accent, seemed preternaturally aware of subtle emotional shifts, a human tuning fork. “Everything okay, honey?”
“Yeah, thanks. It’s just … The labs … I have to call my brother.”
Amanaki’s eyes took on a knowing gleam, and she busied herself again at the computer.
Naomi stepped away from the desk and dialed. Jason picked up on the third ring. “What up, Nay-Nay?”
“I’m at Dad’s place. They took him off Exelon—”
“Off what?”
“One of his meds. They took him off it for nausea and dizziness, but he’s dizzy without it, too. They tried the patch form, but that doesn’t work either.” She ran her fingers through her bluntly cut blond hair. “His complex-motor stuff’s getting worse, and I guess he threw his pills at a nurse this morning.”
“Did they hit her?”
“Jason.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. Look, that’s what the nurses are there for.”
“To have pills thrown at them?”
“You know what I mean. We pay good money for the care. It’s a nice place.”
“I know. I’ve actually seen it.” She realized she was making a fist around her hair at the back of her head. “I’m just saying, you should probably get out here and see him. Soon, I mean. And Robbie. Hell, Robbie I can’t even get on the phone.”
“But he sends a check. It’s been fair all the way through.”
“This isn’t about fair. We’re not eight years old, Jason. I’m here every other day—”
“That’s because you live in D.C. And look, it’s your choice, N.”
“No shit it’s my choice. I’m talking about your choices. It would mean a lot to Dad if you got your ass on a plane once in a while. You know how he feels about you and Robbie. It’s different.”
“It’s not different.”
The lie was half-hearted; Jason barely bothered to disguise the nicety with a tone shift. She could hear voices in the background, someone shouting out a ticker update.
“Look,” Jason said, “with Tammy and the kids, you know, four schedules, four directions. You don’t appreciate how hard it is when you have a family.”
“Jason, I’ve met your family. I appreciate how hard it is.”
He laughed. “You know what I mean. And come on, the old man wouldn’t recognize me anyway. He’s lucky to have you there.”
She resisted the urge to fill the silence.
Jason finally said, “I’ll send you more money next month so he can get … I don’t know, more time with the staff or whatever.”
“I don’t need more money. I need—he needs — someone else here who loves him. He still likes listening to music and looking at his and Mom’s wedding album—”
The workplace noise grew louder in the background. “I gotta hop, N. News just hit the tape, and I’ve gotta whack some bids. Talk later.”
The call severed with a click.
Naomi pocketed the phone, walked back to the nurses’ station, and looked down at her father’s file.
Amanaki clacked away at her keyboard. “I been here a lotta years, and I can tell you, women are better at this.”
“At not being selfish dicks?”
Amanaki’s smile felt, as always, like the clouds had parted to let through a blast of soul-warming beauty. “Yeah, I’d say we are. Men talk a lot. Women stay and take care of what needs to be taken care of.”
Naomi’s phone vibrated in the zip pocket of her tights — Jason calling back? The flare of hopefulness she felt was accompanied quickly with a pang of self-recrimination. When it came to her brothers, she knew better than to allow naïve optimism to worm its way to the surface.
As she dug in her pocket, she realized that it wasn’t her personal phone that was vibrating but her secure Boeing Black smartphone.
She thumbed the ANSWER icon. “This is Templeton.”
“Special Agent in Charge Templeton?”
“The very one.”
“We need you here immediately.”
6
X Marks the Spot
Arms crossed, Naomi regarded the scene in Apartment 705 as agents from Forensic Services worked up the room all around her. She’d been recently promoted within Protective Intelligence and Assessment, and though she’d worked a file drawer’s worth of cases since, the other agents still seemed to be adjusting to her. More precisely, they were still adjusting to the last name that came attached to her.
For three administrations her father had run the “big show”—the Presidential Protective Detail. In that time he had pioneered enough security and safeguard innovations that his name had literally become synonymous with perfection within the Service. Did you Templeton the rope line? We need Templeton coverage from the hotel advance team. The motorcade route has been Templetoned.
It’s not that anyone believed that Naomi hadn’t earned her promotion. At thirty-one she was young but not too young, and there was no arguing her work ethic or performance. But most everyone came at her armed with a quiver full of assumptions. Was she a guru with a genetic gift for security matters? A haughty prima donna? If they shook her hand, would some of the old man’s magic rub off?
Few circumstances were as emotionally confusing as growing up in the shadow of a not-known-to-the-public celebrity. Her father’s fame — if it could be called that — was a spark that threw no light beyond a circle of cohorts. The problem was, she happened to share those cohorts now.
She was Hank Templeton’s kid first, Naomi Templeton second. Despite the complexities that presented, she did not deceive herself into believing that this was not without its advantages.
After getting the call at the assisted-living facility, she’d changed hastily in the car and raced to the scene. Door-to-door through rush-hour traffic in twenty-three minutes, a reaction time even her father would have found acceptable.
She returned her focus to the bolt-action sniper rifle sitting atop its tripod at the front window.
A Russian piece of gear, a Mosin-Nagant with a PSO-1 scope.
Given its placement, there was no way the motorcade’s advance team could have missed it. It was positioned to be seen.
The weapon was common enough, millions of them were scattered around the globe. Yet the choice of rifle struck her as odd.
Given the high-rent real estate of the apartment and the high-value target the assassin hoped to capture in the scope, the rifle was decidedly second-rate. Mosin-Nagants were like AK-47s. You couldn’t throw a rock in a war-torn country without hitting one. They were cheap, durable, and easy to use. But they had their problems. Sticky bolts, worn-out ejectors, screws falling out of the stocks. This one looked beat-up and dusty.
She would have expected something professional and top-tier, maybe a Remington M700 with a Leupold Variable-Power Scout Scope.
One of the forensics men, a towering guy with a drippy nose, announced his presence behind her with a sniffle. “Serial number’s been scoured off, probably with a bench grinder.”
“How deep?” she asked.
“Deep enough that there’s no way we can recover it with an etching reagent. But that’s not what’s noteworthy. The rifle? It’s not usable. The barrel’s warped, and there’s no firing pin. It’s totally sterile.”