Her Secret Service (Jane Roe 1), Jason Letts [story reading .txt] 📗

to study her carefully as if she were a subject of one of his investigations.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you up here before,” he said, which struck Jane as a little invasive. She glanced at him coolly.

“That must be because we don’t cross paths very often. I’ve heard things are very busy with the Investigative Division,” she said, and he raised his eyebrows.

“They are. The White House is a magnet for the mentally unstable, people who feel resentful about positions of power. They show up at the gate, sometimes crashing into it with their cars, when making calls or writing letters isn’t enough. I thought I’d have a good grip on what I was facing when I came here, but the volume and the frequency are more than anything I could’ve imagined. No wonder they needed more people,” he said, shaking his head.

“I know,” Jane replied.

He scratched his neatly trimmed beard, perhaps realizing that he hadn’t gotten the conversation off on the right foot to engage her.

“But I heard you’re going to be riding with the president. No wonder I haven’t seen you if you’ve been spending all your time on a bike,” he said.

Jane smiled, finding it hard not to revel in the prospect of being by the president’s side to personally protect him for a little while, possibly a very little while depending on how quickly he gapped her.

“We’ll see how long I can keep up with him. I did run Cross Country in college and have done a few half marathons, but even with this training I’ve been doing I doubt it’ll be enough. At least he’ll be on a loop we can secure all the way around,” she said, but Nathan scoffed and shrugged his broad shoulders.

“But he hasn’t been out all winter, right? I think you’ll do better than you think. It’s not like Morrin was a pro. Late thirties after a winter full of sitting through meetings…he’s going to be out of shape.”

Tilting her head to the side, Jane wasn’t so sure.

“I don’t know about that. He does keep a treadmill and stationary bike in the residence, and we can tell you exactly how many minutes he uses them. He spends quite a bit of time working out,” she said.

“So do I,” Nathan said, and Jane narrowed her eyes at him a little, wondering what he was really getting at. She decided she didn’t want to find out.

“But it hasn’t taken up all of my time. Not long ago I’d met with the First Lady. She’s already left town, but before she did she told me she wants to decline all protection as soon as possible,” Jane said, quickly adding, “I made it plain as day she is taking a serious risk. Chief Vale and I are trying to figure out what to do for her. I refuse to allow her to be completely unwatched.”

Nathan curled his lip as he breathed deeply through his nose.

“I’ll talk to my team about it. Even if she wants to avoid the personal protective detail, I bet we can still handle the perimeter work and even keep an eye on her without her really being aware of it.”

Jane blinked, actually delighted by the sound of it.

“Thank you,” she said, surprised by how much of a relief it felt that Bethany Morrin wouldn’t be fully exposed. If they could keep tabs on nearby threat profiles and be ready to respond, that could go a long way for her. The offer made Jane regret giving Nathan the cold shoulder. “But it’s not just the mentally sick who go after our protectees. There are all kinds of motivation. A lot of it is attention-seeking, glory, misguided beliefs, or a sense of opportunism.”

Nathan nodded.

“Oh, you’re right. No doubt about it. Every once in a while you get someone who thinks they’ve figured out how to change the world, and somehow only the president’s life is standing in the way. Those are the really dangerous ones, the ones who keep at it and make meticulous plans. That’s why the Investigative Division and the Uniformed Division are two sides of the same coin. Without the total package, assassination attempts would happen more frequently and succeed more often,” he said.

And even then sometimes it felt like they could never do enough, and keeping a few people alive only happened by pure luck, she thought.

“This is why I keep thinking back to that one Facebook threat. Even though it wasn’t long and caused a little stir in the media, too much went into it for it to just fade away into nothing,” she said. “Did you ever find out any more about that?”

Nathan sighed.

“That folder is still only a few pages thick. Olly Ip at the Post gave me the details on the tip, and the referrer said she sends things she sees on Facebook to him about ten times a day. Constantly on Facebook. I went to the ends of the Earth and back and there was just nothing there. That Kevin Neilson doesn’t exist. I’ve got to conclude that, yeah, someone created a throwaway account to say something crazy and then just ditched it all.”

Jane’s eyes drifted to the floor, where their feet were a short distance apart. She’d learned well enough that nice and neat conclusions were often more than they could get, but there was still something about this that irked her.

“I’m sure I’ll let it go soon enough,” she mumbled. Nathan cleared his throat to draw her attention back up.

“Look, I know it’s not optimal that someone might be out there but it’s something we have to be able to live with, especially when the president is holed up tight in the White House with no reason to go anywhere,” he said with a comforting smile.

Jane was about to reluctantly agree when her radio buzzed in her pocket.

“This is Evans. I’d better take this,” she said, getting a nod from Nathan. When she got on the line and received the report,