Her Secret Service Agent

“Second message.”

At first there was nothing. Possibly a hang-up or a wrong number. Then the buzz of a conversation played as if on speaker and Vivian could hear people in the background.

“Why did he do it? Can you tell us that?”

“No. I don’t know why he did it. He said he wanted to make me clean. He said he loved me.”

“Do you think he loved you?”

“I think he was crazy.”

For a moment Vivian didn’t understand what she was hearing. It was her voice on the phone. Her voice and Katy Thurman’s, the CBS correspondent.

This was the interview. The only interview she’d done after the kidnapping. The one her father had insisted she do, to give the country closure. She’d considered it torture having to share publicly everything she had lived through, because it meant living through it again. Only this time with people watching. As if they could actually see her naked and tied to a chair. Bloody and bruised. No one ever wanted to be that vulnerable. Certainly not her.

But she hadn’t been able to say no to her father when he was telling her it was something the American people needed from her.

“How do I ask this without sounding like a monster? Is there a part of you that is relieved he was killed? That you don’t have to suffer through a trial where you would have to confront him every day?”

“I’m just glad I’ll never have to hear his voice again.”

There was a pause. Long enough that Vivian might have thought to delete the message if she hadn’t been focused on trying to breathe past the panic that had gripped her chest. Then she heard it. It was faint and distant, not as loud as the replay of the interview had been. But she definitely heard it.

“Sugarplum. I love you.”

This time the surge of fear propelled her into action. She pulled the phone off the counter. The plug flew out of the socket and the light on the handset dimmed. She stood there with it in her hands as if it were a snake ready to bite her. She considered tossing it in the trash but realized it didn’t make a difference what she did with it.

She’d gotten the message.

McGraw was still alive. He had to be. It was the only explanation—that was his voice. Maybe Joe only thought he had killed him. Maybe McGraw had been in a coma all this time and had just woken up.

Vivian giggled in a near-hysterical state. She was starting to sound like a writer for a soap opera. McGraw was dead. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember that night. It wasn’t a place she often went back to. Her memories were hazy and disjointed. Like clips of a movie she’d never seen from beginning to end.

She was cold. So cold. McGraw was screaming. At her and at Joe.

Shots. Then the sound of Joe’s voice.

“You’re going to be okay.”

“Joe?”

“I’m here, baby. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I’m so cold.”

Vaguely, she recalled Joe carrying her outside the room where she’d been held. He’d set her down on a chair and kneeled in front of her.

“I’m naked.”

“Shh. Shh.”

“I don’t want you to see me this way.”

“It’s okay, baby. You’re safe with me. Will someone get me a damn blanket!”

“I don’t want you to see me this way. Please, Joe. Help me.”

At her plea, he’d taken off his Secret Service–issued windbreaker and pulled it over her head. She remembered thinking she wanted to crawl inside it and never come out.

There had been agents all around her barking orders. Everything so loud and chaotic it was hard to focus. Until she understood that if she was sitting with Joe, it meant The Hand was dead. She’d wanted to see the body. She remembered needing to be sure.

She’d gotten up and run back into the room before Joe could stop her. FBI agents were standing over the body, and she shoved one from behind to move him out of way.

Then she saw him. Harold McGraw. On the floor at her feet. The knife he’d pricked her with for days an inch or two from his hands. Blood pooled out from underneath him and he didn’t move. He never moved. Then Joe was lifting her again, and carrying her out of the room, his arms secured tightly around her.

“Don’t look.”

“I need to see. I need to know.”

“It’s over. Everything is going to be okay now. I promise.”

“He’s really dead?”

“He’s dead.”

Over his shoulder she’d watched McGraw the whole time as Joe carried her back out of the cabin, waiting to see if he would get up, waiting to see if he would come after her.

He never moved. Not an inch.

He was dead.

Vivian blinked away the memories. Because now she had to question all of it. Her memories, the sound of the gunshots. What if McGraw wasn’t dead? The only person she knew to tell was the person who was supposed to have killed him.

Vivian bolted into action. She ran back to her room and pulled on an old pair of jeans, a sweater and some boots. Dashing toward her front door, she noticed the clock in the kitchen and remembered it was the middle of the night.

It didn’t matter. She had proof. She had a message with his voice on it. She couldn’t have made that up. Joe needed to hear it. He needed to tell her she was wrong and it wasn’t McGraw’s voice because he was dead. Because Joe had killed him.

Grabbing her coat and purse, she opened the door and sprinted out into the hallway. Only she didn’t get very far. Someone was sitting outside her door, waiting for her.

The feel of a hand wrapping around her ankle paralyzed her at first. Then she began to scream.

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