Page 39 of The Night Of
“Aw, you should see the other guy.” I brushed his questions off, pasting on a no-fucks expression. “What’s up? Why d’you look like you’re moving out?”
He scowled. “Because I am. I’m gone. I’m never setting foot in that building again.”
“Why? What happened?” I couldn’t conceive of the possibility of Wayne getting fired, which meant he had to have quit. But I couldn’t imagine that, either.
Wayne shook his head. He stared past me, his eyes narrowing, focused on nothing. “Something ain’t right in there. Something’s very, very wrong, and I’m not sticking around and waiting to find out what that is.”
“What makes you say that?” I shifted from curious to concerned, from questioning to interrogating, in less than a breath. “What’s going on?”
“Look, I shouldn’t even be talking to you—”
“If you can’t talk to me, who can you talk to? It’s my job to protect this place, and now you’re saying it’s not safe? C’mon. Talk to me. What’s going on?”
He shook his head again. Pursed his lips. “Things aren’t right, not since what happened to President Baker.”
“How so?”
“The First Lady, she’s all alone in there.’
“She’s grieving.” The force of her sorrow still clung to me, like a memory of darkness or of drowning. “She’s having a hard time.”
“No, man, she’s all alone in there, all the time. None of us can get close to her.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just what I said. It’s like she’s trapped in there. Like there’s something else going on.”
“Like she’s a hostage? Who would do that? Whocoulddo that?”
Wayne shrugged. “The night it happened? At Camp David? I saw two guys sneak into the Oval Office. They kept the lights out in the Oval and the West Wing. They were using tactical lights with red lenses. They were in there maybe thirty seconds? Maybe less. They took documents with them, Avery. Folders. They went down to the basement and disappeared. I followed them here, but they were gone.”
“Did you see what kind of car they were driving or where they went?”
Wayne looked at the rows and rows of blacked-out SUVs parked in the garage.
“What time was this?”
“About fifteen minutes after midnight.”
I frowned. That was within minutes of when Baker had been shot at Camp David. “You recognize these guys at all?”
Wayne shook his head. “I never got a look at their faces. And I wasn’t going to confront them.”
“What were they wearing? Were they all geared up?”
“No, they weren’t wearing the gear. Not like you guys do when you get all supersoldiered. They were wearing suits, same as everyone else around here.”
Perfect to blend in. “Why didn’t you report this?”
He backed away, shaking his head. “Why do you think? Who has access to the White House like that? Who can get in and out and move around without calling the whole damn army down on themselves?” He looked me up and down. Arched his eyebrows. “Maybe I’ve already said too much. Like I told you, I don’t want to be here anymore. Count me out of this. I don’t want to be anywhere close to this place when the shit goes down. Nuh-uh. Not me.”
“Wayne—”
“Look, Avery, you always seemed like one of the good guys. I hope to God you still are, cause something’s going on in there and people are going to get killed. I can feel it. I got a family to take care of. I’m telling you: shit’s not right. Shit is not right in that house.”
I tried to follow him, but I couldn’t even open the car door without a wave of pain nearly blacking out my vision. “Wayne,” I choked out. “What do you think happened to President Baker?”
Wayne shoved his box of belongings into the back seat of his car. He was one of the tiny handful of employees that got to park in the underground, when most everyone else jockeyed for space in the lot between the West Wing and Eisenhower Executive. He pulled open his driver’s door and glared at the ground. “What do you think happened, Avery? You were there, weren’t you?”
