Page 110 of Enemy of My Enemy
“You never worked for him. You can’t understand.” Leslie shook her head. “Madigan makes the whole world revolve around him. He is his own god. When you work for him, you’re just thankful for the opportunity to breathe the same air as him. I wasalivebecause of him. But I couldn’t walk. I was a corpse on a bed and he had my life in his hands. How could I ask for more than what he was giving me?”
Jack’s eyes fluttered open. More tears spilled over his cheeks.
Irwin’s frown deepened.
Leslie took a deep, steadying breath. “I still had some of my skills. Was still fluent in a couple of Arabic dialects. Still knew more than was probably reasonable about interrogations. I was useful to him, and I was happy to be useful. I was so happy.” She looked away, into the middle distance. “For years, I provided translations of secret records. Bitten-off conversations. Things obtained without any legal grounding. I learned to walk again. Watched interrogations at black sites on video. Started offering advice on how to do better. How to break terrorists and jihadis faster.” She shrugged. “I’m not a hero. But it was how I survived.”
Tears rained down Jack’s cheeks, tiny drops that crashed to the deck.
“When I realized that some of his plans were targeting Americans…” She trailed off. “I had my suspicions. I tried to investigate. And what I found—” She shook her head. “I tried to fight back. Tried to argue. I was punished.” She almost smiled, but it fractured and she bit her lip. “He was done with me. I thought I was dead. I thought I was being taken out to be killed. I’d seen it before.”
She smiled, a happy, dazzling smile, as she gazed at Jack. Her teeth were aged and one was cracked, but joy radiated from her, illuminating her. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you,” she whispered. “I still can’t. And,” she laughed breathlessly, her eyes wide. “Thepresident? Jack…” Pride shone bright from her gaze. “I knew you were made for greatness.”
Jack heaved a ragged breath between his steepled fingers as he squeezed his eyes shut again. Tears raced down his eyelashes, pooled at the corners of his eyes, and dripped from his fingers.
“You didn’t know he was the president?” Irwin’s frown had turned into a scowl.
“I was kept insulated from any media. I lived in tin cans, isolated with others. We were our own world. And, I was okay with that.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t ever rejoin the world, so I didn’t want to know what I was missing.”
“Others?” Irwin stood, his gaze flicking to Ethan. “There were others like you?”
“Yes. He had others he saved from the grave. Others he kept around for his dirty work.”
Ethan closed his eyes. Noah Williams and the others they’d tried to track across Europe and into Russia. They truly were ghosts, echoes of a twisted path born from Madigan’s deranged mind.
The silence lingered in the air, heavy and rancid.
“Mr. President.” Irwin reached out and gently touched Jack’s shoulder. “We need to speak privately.”
Jack didn’t move. Ethan watched him inhale, exhale, and inhale again, his shoulders shuddering. Mud clung to his elbow, to the curve of his bicep, flaking to dust with every tiny shake of his body. He stared at Leslie.
Stared at his wife.
Ethan’s stomach curdled. He looked down, looked away. He didn’t want to watch this. Didn’t want to see their eyes lock and hold, didn’t want to see the brutalized agony lancing through Jack. Didn’t want to see the hero worship bleeding from Leslie, awestruck as she watched her husband, the president of the United States.
Slowly, Jack stood, his bones seeming to creak and break at the joints as he unfolded from his perch on the stool. He stared at Leslie. “I’ll be back,” he whispered. “I promise.”
“I’ll be here,” she said, grinning lopsidedly before her smile vanished and a shadow of fear fell over her bright eyes again. Her arms crossed, her deformed limb still hidden under the sheet, and she sucked a chapped, cracked lip into her mouth.
He couldn’t watch this. Couldn’t be there for this. Ethan pushed out of the medical suite first, holding his breath until he hit the hallway. His lungs heaved, gasping the recycled, dry air of the plane. The medical suite smelled like death and dust, like history and anguish and aching regret.
Two agents stood guard outside the suite. Ethan could feel their eyes boring holes into his back, curiosity mixed with horror. The sick fascination of watching a disaster unfold before them.
What now?hung in the air.
Ethan headed for Jack’s office without waiting for him. He heard Irwin’s low voice and two pairs of tired feet shuffling down the hallway, but he stayed out of sight, slipping into the office and sitting on the edge of the couch opposite Jack’s desk.
The couch where they had made out so many times. He’d cradled Jack close, kissed his neck above his collar. Pushed him down and pressed their bodies together. Stared at Jack’s laughing face in wonder, basking in his love.
The door slid open. Jack shuffled in. He headed straight for his desk, his red-rimmed eyes downcast. His nose was rubbed raw on the edges and a line of wetness on his arm betrayed the snot he’d wiped away.
Irwin glanced at Ethan and sighed. He stood in front of Jack as Jack collapsed in his desk chair.
They were like points of a terrible triangle, opposing values in lines that would take them all apart. The gulf between him and Jack suddenly felt chasms wide, far wider than the five feet that truly separated them. He wanted to stand, wanted to go to Jack. Run his hands through Jack’s hair, wrap his arms around his waist, bury his face in the back of Jack’s neck, and just know—know—that everything was going to be all right.
He didn’t know, though. Uncertainty tasted like terror.
He gripped his hands into fists. His nails bit into his skin. He stayed right where he was.
