Page 31 of The Night Of
If Rose had been looking into the Hardacre disappearance, and then he died the same night as President Baker, that was one coincidence too many for me. Coincidence was a four-letter word. An ugly lie, a convenient cover for fucked-up happenings.
Nothing was evercoincidence.
I had to know more about Carl Rose.
Silence. Fernandez sat on his couch, staring into the beyond. I didn’t know where his staff was or why he was all alone. Malaise saturated the medical office, hanging in the air like a virus. It was the same everywhere in the White House. Grief was a physical weight, a backbreaking burden the survivors carried.
“Have I answered your questions, Agent Avery?” Fernandez asked. “Have I satisfied my obligations under your orders?”
“You have, for now. I’ll be back if I need anything else.”
* * *
My burner buzzedas I walked out, and I ducked into the storage room across the hall from the medical suite, facing the wall and huddling over the phone. There was a text from Jonathan—fromMe—on the screen.I found Steven’s private schedule for the past week.
I’ll be right there,I texted back.
I hurried down the hall, bypassing a gaggle of agents who were obviously waiting for me, wanting to ask why I’d disappeared the morning after, why I was running all over creation, why the fuck I was at Jonathan’s side. They called out, but I waved over my shoulder, the universalI’m too busygesture, as I strode through the Palm Room and out to the Rose Garden, back to the Oval.
My heartbeat sped up. I almost expected to see Jonathan step out of the open Oval Office door again. But no, he stayed inside, and the only one who greeted me was the stoic marine guard. I nodded to him.
Jonathan stilled behind the Resolute desk. His eyes flicked to the other two open doors: one to the West Wing hallway opposite the Roosevelt Room and one to the outer Oval. I nodded and strode across the office, closing both doors.
We were alone.
I stopped in front of the desk, facing him, and waited.
I would wait forever for Jonathan if I needed to.
He didn’t speak right away. Instead, he shuffled papers, slid a folder across the desktop. Looked from the classified pouch to his cell phone, and then to the panic button on the presidential seal that rested on his desk. He cleared his throat. “I was going through Steven’s papers. I can’t find his notes. His briefs are here, the schedules from Mrs. Reilly. The cables. But none of his personal notes. They’re gone.”
“Could they be upstairs? Maybe in the study in the Residence?”
Jonathan shook his head. “Steven kept everything here, always in the bottom desk drawer. He said if I ever needed anything, that was where to go. But there’s nothing.”
I frowned.
“I did find his private schedule, the unpublished one that Mrs. Reilly made for him.” He grabbed a folder from the bottom of the stack and passed it to me.
I took it and scanned the pages. I went right to the forty-eight hours before Camp David, searching for Baker’s appointment with Dr. Fernandez. There it was, listed only as the room number for the White House Medical Unit and the time. Even in his private schedule, he’d been circumspect.
What came after that? Policy meetings, calls with congressional leaders, calls with his cabinet secretaries and the State Department. A meeting with the social secretary, arranging the final details of Prime Minister Rees’s visit. The First Lady had sat in on that meeting.
“What happened here?” I asked, pointing to a series of letters and numbers listed at ten a.m. the day before he died. There was a room number attached to that entry, too, one I knew very well: the Situation Room.
Jonathan leaned across the desk. I caught his scent, clean soap and warm skin. I could still taste him on my lips.
“That’s the CIA’s briefing on the Hardacre case.”
I blinked. “What did they say?”
“They had nothing. Same as before. It’s like he was abducted by aliens. He just disappeared.”
“Was Rose at that briefing?”
“He was. He was kept off the official attendee list. Your guys in the Secret Service walked him in and out.”
The same bad pennies, turning up again and again. “Do you know which agents?”
