Page 15 of The Night Of
Jonathan reached for the end table and pressed one of the service buttons. A moment later, a steward walked in, and Jonathan gave him a quick nod. “Can you please send up the order I placed for dinner?”
“Of course, Mr. President.”
Jonathan flinched. “Thank you, Patrick.” The steward left, making an aborted move toward the door as if to close it. The Oval doors so rarely stood open, and never for hours on end.
We sat as Jonathan went back to his report, seeming to ignore me and my existence. My investigation, and anything I may or may not have found, would best be shared in private. As such, I was now his minder and chauffeur, on hand until he decided to call it a day and head back to the Naval Observatory. I probably didn’t need to be so up close and personal with him, especially if he was keeping the doors open, but my brain wasn’t operating on those higher-functioning frequencies anymore. I was almost reptilian, moving from need to need. Coffee. Jonathan. His safety.
Exhaustion was beating on my brain from the inside, and my blinks grew longer, my eyelids heavier, as I listened to Jonathan turning the pages in his binder. Paper on paper, his fingers sliding over the sheets. His steady, slow breaths. I smelled him, too: the aftershave he wore, nearly gone at the end of the day. Its scent, like everything else about him, was a worm digging through my memories. I tried to block the deluge of images that came at me, but it was useless. I was powerless against the tide, and as I tipped over into unconsciousness, the last thing I remembered was the first time he’d smiled at me.
* * *
I jerkedawake I don’t fucking know how long later. I was out cold, and then my hand was going for my gun as I leaped to my feet, dropping and sweeping in a full 360 as I took in the Oval Office, dark now, the overhead lights off. The doors were closed—goddamn it—and the only light came from behind me. I blinked—
Jonathan was still sitting on the couch, his suit jacket now off, shirtsleeves rolled up. He was leaning back, one leg crossed over the other. He had a tablet in his hands, and a plate sat on the cushion beside him, a partially eaten sandwich next to a pile of chips. The light on the end table was on, casting a soft glow over half of his face. Enough to see the bemused look he turned on me.
I shoved my pistol back in its holster and tried to stand. My feet were tangled in something, and I stumbled to one knee. “Fucking hell,” I grumbled. “Goddamn it.”
“Language, Sergeant.”
“Sorry, sir,” I said reflexively, working to untangle myself. What the hell was I caught on? That wasn’t my jacket. I’d left it in the car. I tugged, and a navy blue fleece blanket jerked free from under my feet. The presidential seal was stitched into the corner in gold thread. I stared at it, blinking.
“You fell asleep,” Jonathan said. “You had a long night last night, and a long day today.”
As if that was an explanation for how I’d ended up tucked into the Oval Office couch, snoring away while he worked three feet from me. What fucking time was it, even? How long had we been there? It was pitch black outside, darker than midnight.
“I ordered you a sandwich, but you were asleep before it arrived.” He pointed to a plastic clamshell on the table holding a matching sandwich to his, complete with a side of fresh-baked chips. A bottle of water sat beside the food. “Eat, if you’re hungry.”
I hadn’t been until he said so, but my stomach growled at his words, embarrassingly loud in the silence of the Oval Office. He ignored me and my stomach and turned back to his tablet. The container made a shit ton of noise when I tried to wrestle it open. Finally, I grabbed the sandwich and took a huge bite, not caring what it was.
It was my favorite: a BLT on toasted sourdough.
Jonathan and I had eaten them together once in the motorcade, hiding out after he’d given a speech at a black-tie dinner. We’d escaped the crowd while the rest of the detail stayed with the president and First Lady inside the ballroom in the Whatever Hotel in whatever city we were in. I didn’t remember anything about the night except how fucking perfect Jonathan Sharp looked in a tuxedo and how he’d licked his fingers clean after finishing his BLT. I’d never been so jealous of a man’s fingers. We spent three hours in the back seat of the limo, talking and trading stories, sharing memories. I’d heard his laugh for the first time, and he nearly made me spray Coke across the seats with his Sahara-dry humor. The twinkle in his eyes told me he’d been trying to make me do a spit take.
I choked down the bite, forcing myself to swallow. I ate half, inhaling the protein and carbs and trying not to taste anything. As soon as I wiped my hands, Jonathan turned off his tablet and stood. “Are you ready?”
“Mm-hmm.” I knocked back the bottle of water, crumpled it in my palms, and followed him out of the Oval. I caught up with him in the hall, sliding past him and taking the lead. We passed a few uniformed officers at their posts, lazily scrolling through their cell phones as they sat at desks staffing the night shift. Clearly, they hadn’t realized the president was still there—which made me give Jonathan a long, steely side-eye—and they tried to hide their phones as soon as they saw me marching Jonathan toward the underground garage. I hadn’t called out over the radio—I wasn’t even wearing a radio—and we were breaking all kinds of protocols and procedures. What else was new?
“Agent Avery, would you like me to call for a driver?” one of the uniformed Secret Service officers asked, jumping to his feet.
“No, I’ve got Shadow.” Shadow was Jonathan’s code name. Sunbeam had been Baker’s. Starlight was the First Lady’s.
The uniformed officer escorted us into the garage and watched as we walked across the cold pavement, theclick-clackof Jonathan’s shoe heels echoing in the reinforced bunker. The lot was nearly empty, but I had my hand on my pistol and kept myself inside his bubble, one palm hovering at the small of his back. I stopped at the rear door of my SUV. He stopped at the front passenger one.
“The windows up front aren’t blacked out.”
“No one will be expecting the vice president to be driving through DC at two in the morning. I told the staff to pretend I had left hours ago.”
That answered why the uniforms thought Elvis had already left the building. But, hell, two in the fucking morning? I’d been out for hours. Had he been up the whole time, watching me snore? Fuck. “You’re not the vice president anymore,” I pointed out. “There are different rules now.”
He grabbed the passenger door handle and tugged it open, then climbed into the front seat and slammed the door shut.
Different rules indeed. It was another of our private jokes, back before. Jonathan was “just” the VP. He was a heartbeat away from the presidency, yet the protections around him were noticeably lighter, partly by his choice and partly because, well, he was the VP. He used to joke that he was the expendable one, the superfluous one, the extra baggage. We’d had a shared dark humor, and with his dry wit, we could go for hours, trying to make the other one laugh the hardest. He always won, always made me cramp up and give in.
I took my time getting into the driver’s seat. He waited, staring at nothing, his gaze unfocused and his jaw clenched as we pulled out and merged onto East Executive and then took Seventeenth to Connecticut, all the way to Dupont Circle. From there, it was a straight shot up Massachusetts Ave, and we arrived at the Naval Observatory less than five minutes after we left the White House. Not a soul had seen us—or, more importantly, had seen Jonathan.
This was the part I was least looking forward to. I parked in the garage at the back of the old house and followed him out of the SUV. He eyeballed me as I went to the door and badged through the electronic locks, leading him into his own home. I cleared each room before he entered.
The Secret Service had been there all day, but if there was a murderer on the loose, inside the inner ring, we couldn’t take anything for granted. I’d never risk Jonathan’s life, no matter what fucking jokes we’d shared in the past.
