“Where?”
She could almost see the idiot turn around to look. “I hear someone.”
“Oh, I am listening to my messages.”
TQ rolled her eyes as Dratshev let the recording drone on. She was about to tell him to turn it off when she realized she recognized the voice, or thought she did. No. It couldn’t be. She sat up in her chair and listened more intently. “Who was that?” she asked when the recording ended.
“Old friend. She works for me sometimes,” Dratshev replied.
“When did she call?”
“It is an old message. I’m not regular.”
TQ would have corrected him, but she was too undone by the voice to even get aggravated at his lack of proficiency in basic English. “Play it back and get me closer to the speaker.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so!” She didn’t routinely shout, but then again, her reactions in general had been atypical since her brother’s death. So much so, in fact, she wondered whether she’d actually felt something for the inadequate fool.
A few seconds later, Dratshev said, “Here it goes.”
“I got your message,” the woman’s recorded voice said. “FYI, I stopped taking jobs, but curiosity got the best of me when I saw you were trying to reach me. Anyway, assuming I still care in a few days, I’ll try again.”
That’s her. TQ was certain it had to be the woman she’d vowed to find. “What’s her name?”
“Who knows?” Dratshev said. “No one uses a real name. This woman is mysterious but…very good. The best in the hit business.”
“What name does she go by?”
“With me?”
“No, with my grandmother. Of course with you.”
“In the business, they call her Jack, or Silent Death.”
TQ almost gasped at the confirmation of her suspicion. “Where can I find her?”
“You want to find her?” Dratshev laughed. “No one finds her.” He laughed again. “She finds you, if she feels like it.”
“Are you too stupid to realize I could have you extinguished like a bug for laughing at me?” How dare he make her feel naïve or stupid for thinking she could find this arrogant bitch? TQ could find or buy whomever she wanted.
Dratshev’s laughter ceased abruptly and his voice was appropriately apologetic. “I don’t want to offhand you.”
“It’s offend, and you have, and this is how you are going to make up for it. You are going to find this Jack and bring her to me.”
“But—”
“Do it!” she shouted, and hung up. She walked to the bar and poured a glass of whiskey, downing a good measure of it in one long swallow. Returning to her desk, she idly tapped the glass with her finger. The mere voice of that woman had brought back feelings of helplessness and anger. The first was a feeling long foreign to her and one she’d promised she’d never allow anyone to make her feel. The second was what sustained her.
She was going to find Jack, no matter what or whom it took, and she was going to make sure the bitch knew just how badly she reacted to being made to feel vulnerable.
She snatched the letter opener off her desk. She was going to personally torture that— Someone knocked on the door. “What?”
One of the two maids entered. “Your bath is ready, madam.”
“You’re two minutes early.”
The maid’s eyes widened in horror as she checked her watch. “My mistake, madam. My watch is running fast.”
“Come here.”
The young woman approached cautiously and stopped in front of her desk. Without hesitation TQ stabbed her in the eye with the letter opener. “And that’s nothing compared to what I’m going to do with you, Jack,” she whispered as the maid fell to her knees and screamed in pain.
Chapter Eight
Shield waited outside the Cabinet Room while Elizabeth Thomas and Special Advisor Kenneth Moore met privately for a half hour after her introduction to the president. When the two came out and went in different directions, she fell into place a couple of steps behind Thomas. Even here, she was on high alert to any hint of danger. During the journey to D.C., she had studied blueprints of the White House, so she knew they were headed to the second-floor private quarters, where the president’s bedroom occupied the southwest corner.
Shield had been given the so-called Living Room, an adjacent suite with its own bathroom. Used by several presidents and first ladies as a separate bedroom, in recent years most chief executives employed it as a private study or family living space, but Thomas hadn’t yet designated a function for it.
Shield stopped in front of the president’s door. “Madam President, should you need to leave your room for any reason, please knock on the paneled door that joins our bedrooms or call my room.”
Thomas brushed off the request. “That won’t be necessary. Besides, I have two men on guard at my disposal.”
“Those men have been replaced by me. I am your primary.” Shield had already stated that a little while ago. Maybe the president was too preoccupied to recall everything that happened to her, but surely she’d remember an important mention that concerned her well-being. Perhaps she was just still too new at this to know what primary implied.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were hired to protect me during public appearances.”
“As well,” Shield said. “Maybe you haven’t been informed, but the job of a primary involves constant security.”
The president hesitated. She sounded strangely reluctant when she replied, “I…I am aware. I simply don’t want you to intrude on my privacy.”
Shield observed her a few more seconds before she said, “Very well then, Madam President.”
Only after Thomas had entered her bedroom did Shield go to hers. The room was everything she expected a presidential suite would be: luxuriously appointed and well equipped with all modern comforts, but she missed her earthy, wood-beamed bedroom. Others might have been impressed with the canopied four-poster bed, wondering which presidents or influential guests had slept in it, but she gave little thought to such matters. As a matter of fact, she found the massive thing so suffocating she felt as though she were being buried alive.
Fifteen minutes later, she lay in bed wearing navy pajamas, which she’d purchased to wear during guard duty just in case someone barged in or she had to move fast and didn’t have time to change. At home she slept in nothing but boxers. She could only hope the ongoing investigation into the assassination attempt would lead somewhere so she could soon return to her home in Tuscany. Sitting POTUS was admittedly more interesting than most jobs she’d gotten recently, but at least with the others she was always back home within days or weeks. If nothing ever came of this investigation, she could be stuck here for Thomas’s entire term.
And what was up with the president, anyway? Thomas didn’t appear at all happy to have a permanent private guard. If anything, she seemed irritable and distracted. Sure, the attempt on her life and five dead guards were enough to throw anyone off their game, but she didn’t even acknowledge having seen Shield in Greece. Despite her get-more-women-into-male-dominated-fields rhetoric, maybe Thomas would have preferred a male guard like most VIPs did. People were under the general misconception that men were better qualified to protect and defend. What they didn’t know was that it took a lot more than dumb muscle to prevent, predict, and secure. If an offender found opportunity for even an unsuccessful attempt, security had usually failed. It didn’t matter how big or strong you were, a bullet killed indiscriminately.
She leafed through the stamped bundle of sheets she’d been given concerning the president’s upcoming appearances. Tomorrow’s Find Your Sport event on the South Lawn featured dozens of Olympic champions and was expected to draw twenty-five thousand people, most of them kids. Thomas would be stretched thin trying to appear at all the activities scheduled for the daylong extravaganza. Shield only hoped the president would be a bit more concerned about her safety than her privacy.