The Housewife Assassin's Killer App (3 page)

“You mean ‘our children,’ remember?”

I nod. He’s right, of course. For the past two years, he’s proven it, time and time again.
 

Right now, I’m doing everything I can to stop their biological father, Carl Stone, from coming back into their lives. So far, so good, but it hasn’t been easy. I’ve been dodging summonses that are delivered now almost on a weekly basis. To that extent, it helps to have friends in low places. The gate guards for our private community, Hilldale, appreciate my homemade pies enough to warn me when yet another server is coming my way.
 

“Maybe it’s time for you to play hard to get,” Jack continues. “My God, Donna, it’s been almost seven months since you made your deal with Lee to backchannel Acme intel before it goes directly to the intelligence agencies controlled by Carl! Since then, Acme—and more to the point, you—have jumped through every hoop Lee has tossed in front of us. And yet, Chiffray still hasn’t made any changes where it counts most—Carl’s removal from power. In fact, things have only gotten worse.”

He’s talking about the fact that my ex, Carl, is still Director of Intelligence for our country.

This is quite a feat for someone who was once considered a known terrorist.
 

His name was cleared, thanks to Lee.

At the time, Lee felt he had no choice. He’s regretted it ever since.
 

Time for Plan C: appeal to Jack’s sense of duty. “Jack, in all seriousness, you know the protocol.”
 

“Is that what you call it, ‘protocol’?”

I grit my teeth. “What would you call it?”

He shrugs. “You don’t want to know.”

“Yes, actually, I do. Because I care about your feelings.” This is my way of saying,
What you say next may hurt mine and forever ruin what we’ve built together these past two years—so think before you speak
.

Any notion I may have had that Jack can read minds is put to rest when he declares, “I call it a liaison. A rendezvous.”

I glare at him. “Next, you’ll be calling it a booty call.”

He’s silent, but his shrug says it all.

The fact that he’s put me in this position angers me to no end. “Jack…really? You doubt my love for you, after all we’ve been through together?”

“No, never.” He hunches down in his seat. “If our profession has taught us one thing, it’s to separate love from sex. But, Donna, I know you well enough to realize you’ll do anything—use any skill at your disposal—to take down the Quorum, once and for all.”

He’s not coming out and saying it, but he means sex.
 

For us, it’s an occupational hazard.

“You sound like a jealous schoolboy,” I chide him. “Lee is not ‘my boyfriend.’ You are, or have your forgotten?”

“Prove it.” He looks me in the eye. “Don’t go.”

I sigh. Then I reach for his hand and hold it tight. “For the record, Jack, he and I don’t have sex.”

“I’ll take you at your word,” he smirks. “Of course, that doesn’t mean Lee doesn’t want to have sex with you.”
 

In my heart, I know Jack is right. All it would take is one signal from me.

Jack and I are too close, physically, for him to miss my blush.

And we are too close, emotionally, for him to ignore this unspoken truth.

“Ah, I see.” His eyes are angry, but he keeps his voice deadly nonchalant.
 

“Jack, I swear he’s been a perfect gentleman! You have to trust me when I say that I’ll never betray the love we share…with my body, or my soul.”

His way of showing that he believes me is to pull me in close.
 

His lips are warm. They part naturally at the touch of my own. Their taste leaves me tingling. I lose all sense of time and place.

I ache, mind and heart, when he pulls away.

“This is my stop,” Jack mutters. “Last call.”

I sigh and shake my head. I have four more stops to my exit—Grand Central Station—where I’ll flag down a taxi, then exit it a few blocks from my real destination.

Without another word, Jack rises and heads toward the door. But before strolling out, he tosses the homeless guy playing the sax one of the dollars crammed in his coat pocket.

With a grateful smile, the man tips his hat at Jack.
 

The rest of the trip, he serenades me with
Blues in the Night
.

How appropriate.

When it’s my turn to hop off, I also bend down and put a buck in his hat.
 

He winks at me. “Your man—he’s a good one. Now, don’t you go two-timing him.”

I nod stoically.

Then I run off, so that he can’t see my tears.

Jack is right about one thing. When Lee and I meet, it’s always off the books—that is to say, never in the Oval Office or the West Wing, and certainly never in the presence of his staff.

And certainly his wife, Babette, knows nothing about it. Her suspicions of me are worse than Jack’s.

That’s okay. The feeling is mutual.

Today’s meeting is to take place in the private penthouse apartment on Riverside Boulevard, overlooking the west side’s Hudson River. I don’t know if it is owned by Lee, or one of his many companies that are now held in a blind trust until he leaves office, or if it’s a second or third home of a loyal constituent who honors POTUS’s ask-no-questions criteria.

I honor it too.
 

According to the protocol that Lee and I have set up, I’m to arrive before him and his entourage. Despite any protestations of his advance team, he insists on entering the residence alone. That way, his security detail never sees me.
 

Thank goodness, too, because the way I’m dressed now, they’d worry they have another Slick Willy on their hands.

Not to mention, Lee would jump to the wrong conclusion too—

And try to prove Jack right.

I’ve got to find some different duds, and fast.

By the time I emerge onto Forty-Second Street, I’ve only got half an hour to do something about it, which means I don’t have time to run over to Saks. Besides, it’s already closed, as are most of the decent clothing stores between here and my destination.
 

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a couple of streetwalkers giving me the high sign. One lets loose with a lowdown whistle before exclaiming, “Whoooeeee! You are
swanky
, girl! Where’d you get them hot pants?”
 

I hold up a twenty. “Hey, doll, I’ll give you this for your coat.”

She strips it off in a flash.
 

When you’re meeting the leader of the free world, you’ve got to have some coverage, even if it’s hooded, hot pink, fake and furry—and barely grazes your thighs.

Desperate times call for a desperate wardrobe. If her micro-mini wasn’t so short, and lime green to boot, I’d have her throw that in as well.

By the time a taxi gets me to my destination—forty blocks north and on the west side of Manhattan—I’ve got less than five minutes to spare.
 

It’s not my first time here. I’ve long memorized the security code that gets me inside the building. As in past rendezvous, I lift the coat’s hood over my head so that the security camera can’t pick up my face, or the color and cut of my hair. Yet another code gets me inside the express elevator to the penthouse, and another opens the front door to one of Manhattan’s most exclusive residences.

The floors are marble. The walls, gold in tone, are at least fifteen feet high. The top eight inches are adorned with intricate moulding designed with a baroque flair of deep swirls.

Completing the fantasy of being transported to a wing in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum are the sumptuous rooms’ high-backed, deep-seated furnishings in white silk brocade.

So that none of Lee’s security detail spots me when he opens the door, I head for the penthouse’s terrace. When I open the large glass sliding door, a tuft of hot-pink faux fur floats back inside, alighting on one of the settees.

I’m tempted to leave it there, but I know better. The last thing Lee or I need is to leave behind even a trace of evidence that can be analyzed by the best forensic labs in the world—a most likely scenario if Carl should ever find out about this place.

The building is tall enough that the penthouse’s four-sided terrace has a three-hundred-degree view. I look east and south, so that I can gaze upon the most iconic landmarks in New York’s midtown skyline: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the GE Building; and further to the south, the spire of the new Freedom Tower.

I don’t hear Lee walk up behind me, but I feel his presence, which is usually the case.
 

He likes watching me without my knowledge.

Like all guilty pleasures, his fleeting voyeurism has a price. Time to pay up.

I turn to him. Every time I see him, his hair is a little grayer around the edges, the circles around his eyes are a shade darker, and his worries are etched even deeper on his brow.
 

Dealing with the world’s most challenging issues is already taking its toll.

Despite this, he’s smiling, and I’m sure he hoped I’d be too. But no, this time I must disappoint him. “Mr. President, to what do I owe the honor of your summons?”

Noting my curtness, his smile wavers ever so slightly. “Ryan mentioned you were in town. Since your trip coincided with my own—one of the party’s many fundraisers—I thought you might catch me up on how it went.”

I nod. “Mission accomplished. Jack and I were able to intercept a thumb drive containing cell phone metadata stolen by one of New York’s mob syndicates, something both the NSA and the FBI will appreciate.”

“I appreciate it too.” He holds out his hand.

I hesitate, but yes, I take it.
 

His palm is large and warm, but dry. My eyes lock onto his as I grasp it firmly. I’ve been out here long enough that my own hands are cold. There is a chill in my voice, too, as I counter, “Duly noted. Perhaps you can show it with a little quid pro quo—specifically, catching me up on Carl’s status within your administration.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” His sarcastic tone indicates otherwise. “Since we last met, Carl has been busy doing end-runs on my handpicked IC directors.”

This is serious. If my allegiance with Lee is to pay off, he needs the intelligence community directors who must report to Carl to be POTUS’s eyes and ears on our mutual enemy. They’ll be in charge of agencies within the DOD, like the heads of the NSA, Military Intelligence, and Defense Intelligence; or those under the auspices of the DOJ, such as the FBI and DEA; not to mention stand-alone agencies such as Homeland Security.

“He can’t get away with that, can he?” I ask.

“Thus far, he’s been successful in two out of four attempts. In one, the vetting caught something that later turned out to be a false accusation. Still, the Congressional subcommittee approving the appointment—not to mention the press—had a field day with it.” Lee frowns. “The second didn’t even get that far. While waiting for his acceptance, my appointee candidate arranged a private meeting to let me know he was passing on the honor. He was scared off by what he called a blunt threat to, quote-unquote, look so far up his rectum with a microscope that something was sure to be found.”

“Did he name Carl, specifically?”

“He did better than that. When I asked him who said it to him, he wrote Carl’s name on a sheet of paper and handed it to me.”

“Did you confront Carl?”

Lee smirks. “His response was that he had the obligation to conduct his own due diligence on the candidates, to assure that my choices aren’t an embarrassment to my presidency, a legacy he cherishes as if it were his own.”

“I guess that’s his way of saying you’re his bitch.”

“How kind of you to point it out, Mrs. Stone.”
 

I wince at the name.
 

He shrugs. “Yes, well, neither he nor I was happy with how the conversation ended.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“I told Carl that a new mandate is in effect. First of all, he’s to leave the vetting of my candidates for any and all agencies to the DOJ, under the supervision of my chief of staff, Lavinia Stanhope. And second, the acting heads of the agencies under his auspices now copy me on all correspondence to him.”
 

“Let me guess. He didn’t take it well.”

“That’s putting it mildly. But it doesn’t matter, not after a recent cyber threat on his watch.”

Finally, there’s something to make me smile. “Don’t leave me in suspense, Mr. President.”

“It’s one of the reasons I wanted to meet with you. The U.S. Intelligence Community’s data servers have been hacked. Files throughout the IC were compromised. I presume it’s only a matter of time before the hacker releases them to the press. Worse yet, it could have been a successful cyberoperation from an unfriendly nation.”

Well, that certainly wipes the grin off my face. “Wow! Was it an inside job?” Even today, the fallout from the Snowden affair is the first thing that comes to mind.
 

“Carl claims it wasn’t, based on the fact that the perpetrator left a calling card. He calls himself ‘The Mad Hacker,’ and went so far as to leave the icon of Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter from
Alice in Wonderland
with three clues. FBI cryptographers don’t know what it means yet, but they’re leaning toward the theory that the message refers to a Doomsday Clock of some sort. You’ll soon be getting a dossier on the incident.” Lee smiles despite the gravity of this news. “Acme will be conducting the IC’s database audit. As you can imagine, Carl hit the roof when I told him.”