Long May She Reign (96 page)

For a second or two, Meg couldn't quite process that, but just as she realized that there was something very wrong, the woman was already reaching into her raincoat pocket, yanking out something metal, and lunging towards her.

She tried to leap back out of the way, but her knee buckled, and as she fell, she was aware of movement and noise all around her. She heard a strange hissing sound and then, a lot of shouting and swearing—followed by a gunshot somewhere close to her head. Or, maybe, more than one. There seemed to be a red mist in the air, and—Jesus Christ, it was happening again. How could this be happening again?

Oh, God.

Oh, no.

Oh, help.

52

THE GREY-HAIRED
woman seemed to be screaming louder than anyone—hatred and anger and blood and death—and Meg tried to get up, or at least scramble away from her, but then, suddenly, hands were grabbing and lifting her off the ground—except that she god-damned well wasn't going to go without a fight this time. No fucking way were they going to get her twice, not a single chance in—and Christ, there were people
everywhere
, standing and staring and—

“Get down!” she yelled. “They have guns!”

More hands were grabbing her now, and she was being propelled backwards—to another van? A truck? Maybe just a car, this time? Oh, God, there was no way she could do this again. Not a single chance in hell.

“Don't fight with your bad hand, Meg,” a voice said harshly in her ear. “
Protect
it.”

Garth. Christ almighty, they had managed to buy off
Garth
? And Kyle, and Jose, and
Paula
? At first, the concept of that was so terrifying and overwhelming, that she couldn't move at all, but then she started fighting twice as hard, swearing and struggling and trying to punch her way free.

Doors. Glass. Bright lights. A hallway. A room. A desk, with a woman ducking down behind it, her eyes terrified.

They were going to bring an innocent civilian into it, too?
Bastards
. They were unbelievable, cowardly, bastards. She fumbled around on the desktop, trying to find something—anything—she might be able to use as a weapon. She was going to do some
damage
this time, serious damage, even if—Garth still had his gun in one hand, and was speaking into his wrist receiver, as he did a full visual sweep of the room, and there seemed to be lots of people out in the hall and just inside the door, also holding guns.

“Get her pants off!” someone was yelling. “
Fast
.”

“That's a lot of blood,” someone else said, sounding scared, while a third voice shouted, “Is it
hers
? Where's she hit?”

There were hands on her legs, pulling at her sweatpants, and she heard a jumble of urgent conversation with scattered words like “acid” and “corrosive” and “butyric,” and a male voice was saying, “No, no, it doesn't smell right,” while another man said, “Jesus, we've got to stop the bleeding, someone get some pressure on her.” There were too many people speaking for her to focus on what the hell they were talking about, and her ears were ringing for some reason, which made it hard for her to hear clearly, but when she felt her sweatpants being ripped down past her hips, and someone else tugging at her shirt, she twisted away from them, kicking out with her good leg, hearing a grunt when she connected.

The door to the hall was blocked, but maybe there was another door, or a window, or—

“It's
not
blood!” someone yelled. “Okay? Get on the damn perimeter!”

Was that Garth? It sounded like Garth.

A male hand ran across her bare thigh, and she kicked at whoever the person was, yanked her sweatpants back up, then stumbled over to the desk, still looking for a weapon.

“I said, back off!” the same man ordered. “I want this whole place contained!”

She grabbed the sharpest object she saw, then spun around on her good leg, ready to defend herself. But, the room seemed to be clearing out, although the hallway was crowded, and there was still a lot of shouting. Dave and Jose were posted on either side of the door, with their guns, and the only other man in the room was Garth.

Meg stared at him. “Are you kidnapping me?”

Garth looked startled, then shook his head, spitting sharp orders into his wrist receiver.

But she still seemed to be trapped in an unfamiliar place. Isolated. In danger. “Am I a hostage?” she asked.

“
No
,” he said.

Christ, did that mean they were just going to kill her? Some sort of savage, public execution, and—except he was still giving a long string of commands, and—what the hell was happening here? She shook her head to try and make the ringing in her ears stop. “Don't!” she said, as the woman behind the desk started to stand up. “It's not safe!”

The woman looked at her uncertainly, then crouched down again.

“Put that back, Meg, okay?” Garth said. “You're not going to need it. I promise.”

Meg looked, stupidly, at her good hand and saw a stainless steel letter opener clenched in her fist.

“Meg,” he said, and reached out to take it from her.

She gripped the handle more tightly. “What are you going to do to me?”

For the first time, he really
looked
at her. “Nothing, sweetie,” he said, and reholstered his weapon, his voice very gentle. “Take it easy, okay? You're going to be fine.”

Out in the hall, she could still hear a lot of commotion, and words like “secure” and “police” and her code name and such. Normal Secret Service stuff.

The desk. She was in an office. A
stranger's
office. A very frightened and confused middle-aged stranger. She stared down at the letter opener, trying to remember where she had gotten it.

“You aren't kidnapping me?” she asked again, just to be sure.

Garth shook his head.

Oh. She tried to stick the letter opener into a mug full of pens and pencils, but her hand must have been shaking, because instead, she knocked the whole thing over, which was loud enough to hurt her ears, and the woman behind the desk cringed away from the sound. Garth might have ducked, too. She tried to pick the pens up, but couldn't seem to control her good hand well enough to keep from dropping them again.

Her heart was beating crazily, and she thought she might be having an attack, but then she saw that her legs and torso seemed to be covered with bright red sticky liquid, and the room went grey for a minute.

“
Yes
, I want a doctor,” Garth said to someone in the hall. “How many damn times do I have to tell you I want a doctor in here?”

The blood had a strong, familiar smell—a sickening smell—and she realized that she must have been shot, that—

“It's only paint, Meg,” Garth said. “You're okay.”

Paint?
But she smelled chemicals. She was sure she smelled chemicals. Jesus, were they burning her skin? She felt her stomach, and then her legs, but everything seemed to be—maybe she was—

“I'd like to check you over, if that's okay, Miss Powers,” a man said.

A man she had never seen before. Dark, thinning hair, a neatly-trimmed mustache, maybe in his forties. She shook her head, taking a couple of backwards hops on her good leg, moving to keep the desk in-between them.

“I'm Doctor—” he started.

“Nope,” she said abruptly. “Sorry.”

He looked confused.

“I don't know you,” she said. “Please leave, sir.”

He glanced over at Garth for guidance.

“Please leave
right now
, sir,” Meg said. Which was maybe the only good idea she'd had all afternoon. “Garth, I need some privacy, okay?”

“Well,” he said, “I'd feel better if a doctor—”

She shook her head. “It wasn't really a request, Garth.”

He frowned at her for a minute, and then nodded.

She indicated the telephone on the desk. “Is this secure?”

“More so than most,” he said.

If this was a predesignated fallback room, then that's the sort of detail which would have been handled long ago. She hoped. At least it was a land-line, not a cell. “Okay, thank you.” Jesus, if they didn't all leave her alone
very soon
, she might scream. Or hit someone. She turned to the still-unidentified woman who was standing nearby. “Would it be all right if I borrowed your office for just a few more minutes? I need to make a phone call.”

When the woman nodded, Meg looked around for her cane—which seemed to be long gone, and so, had to use the desk to support herself as she moved to sit down in the office chair.

Her heart was pounding away, and she wasn't sure she was going to be able to stand it if they all didn't just
go
already.

When she was finally alone, with the door closed, Garth and God only knew who else posted out in the still-frantic corridor, she picked up the phone and tried to dial, but it didn't work for some reason. She set down the receiver, stared at it, and then felt around for her satellite phone, which also seemed to be missing.

Swell. Just fucking swell.

She wasn't about to ask anyone to come back in and help her, so she slouched forward with her head on her good arm, trying to think. Trying
not
to cry.

The way her heart was beating was genuinely alarming, and she felt her chest, worried that maybe she had been shot, after all. But, as far as she could tell, there were no open wounds, although there
did
seem to be something wrong with her heart. Something bad.

Fuck. And double-fuck.

She looked at the phone again, and then remembered the concept of dialing nine to get an outside line. So she tried that, and this time, the call went through. It only took a minute or so for her to get connected to the communications director, although her heart did more crazy jumping around the entire time.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” she said, when he came on.

“No bother,” Preston said, although she could hear a buzz of people in his office, and the sound of more than one television newscast in the background.

“Is it okay if I talk to you for a minute?” she asked, and checked to make sure that the door was still shut and no one could hear her. “I'm scared.”

There was a barest of pauses on the other end.

“Absolutely,” he said, and then raised his voice. “We'll have to finish this up later, okay, everyone? And—no calls for a while, Janice. Thanks.”

Meg waited, aware that she was holding her breath—and probably shouldn't be.

“Are you all right?” he asked, when he came back on. “Are you hurt?”

Two tough questions.
Christ
, impossible questions.

“Meg?” he asked, sounding tense.

“Are Mom and Dad back yet?” she asked. It had been Kansas City today, or St. Louis, or Houston, maybe. She couldn't remember.

“About twenty minutes ago,” Preston said. “What's going on?”

She took a deep breath. “I'm not really hurt, but Mr. Gabler's either already in there, or on his way over to talk to her.”

There was another short pause on the other end. “Tell me again that you're all right,” he said, “and then tell me what happened.”

She should be calm. Cool.
Succinct
. “I don't know what happened,” she said. “I don't—nothing makes sense.”

“Okay,” he said, his voice very soothing. “Tell me where you are.”

Jesus, where was she? She looked around the office. “I don't know.”

“Okay,” he said, although she could hear a strong edge of anxiety in his voice now. “That's okay. Is anyone else there with you?”

“No,” she said. Only, that wasn't quite right. “I mean, they're all out in the hall. We're at the hospital.”

“Are you
hurt
?” he asked.

Oh, Christ, the poor guy. She laughed weakly. “Am I going to make you crazy if I say ‘I don't know?'”

“Yes,” he said. “You are.”

Right.

“Why don't we get your father on here,” he said. “Okay?”

Yeah, God forbid anyone ask the
President
to pick up the phone in the middle of the day. “What, you don't think my mother would want to talk to me?” Meg asked.

“I think she may need a couple of minutes to calm down, first,” Preston said, and then laughed a laugh even more shaky than hers had been. “Might take thirty seconds myself, too.”

Now she felt guilty for upsetting him, but relieved that it
mattered
to him.

“I'm all right,” she said, when her father came on, and heard him let out a very long breath.

“They told me you were, but—” He stopped. “Okay. Thank God.” He stopped again, presumably taking thirty seconds of his own. “What's happening? The only thing I've gotten so far is a ‘Shots fired' report.”

The Secret Service wasn't exactly quick off of the starting blocks, then, were they? She remembered that it had been just past four-thirty after she had finished letting that man take her picture with his son, and she glanced at a clock on the wall, shocked to see that it wasn't quite quarter to five yet. She would have said that a couple of hours had gone by. “I don't know,” she said aloud. “I was signing a ‘Get Well' card for this lady, but then she came after me, and—I don't know.” She had heard at least one gunshot, though; she was
sure
of that.

They had barely started talking when her mother clicked on.

“Are you hurt, Meg?” she asked, sounding as though Preston either hadn't gotten down there in time—or that nothing he'd told her had had any effect whatsoever. “You didn't get cut, did you?”

Cut? What the hell kind of information sources did the President have? “She threw
paint
at me, Mom,” Meg said, more than moderately annoyed.