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

Twenty-nine years old. Jane had to hand it to President Morrin. As best she could tell he had managed to score himself quite a tryst.

Watch Commander Winger, however, wasn’t at all ready to congratulate anyone on setting up a hot date. When he turned to them, his dark glowering was very nearly terrifying. Thank goodness he had his eyes on Nathan.

“Someone from the Investigative Division standing around like he has nothing to do? You have five minutes to tell me everything about her.”

Without squandering his time by uttering a response, Nathan turned on the spot and dashed out of the room. Meanwhile Leslie Hodge was being escorted to the president’s limo and shown inside. For all they knew she could be an enemy spy, but at least she was unarmed and would share the vehicle’s cab with a pair of Secret Service agents.

Jane imagined with a note of trepidation what it would be like to meet a man in his car and have his two federally appointed security guards there staring a hole in her every second through their dark sunglasses. How could she manage to relax and enjoy herself for even a second, let alone be the kind of fun and flirty companion would take to get close to someone? She’d need to ask Evans what happened the next time she saw him…for research purposes, professionally.

“The driver’s being directed back into town,” the agent said. Winger wiped his brow back over his receding hairline.

“Alright, enough is enough. We need to know what the plan is before this goes any further. Have Evans put the question to him.”

“Yes, sir,” the agent at her desk said.

They waited and watched the dot on the map move along the streets. Throughout the room, the air felt thick with tension. The president had already put himself out on a limb, but how far was he going to go? Maybe he had a restaurant in mind for a nice first date that they could clear out and secure. That sounded pleasant.

“They intend to grab a quite bite to eat downtown and then go out for drinks and dancing.”

When Winger heard that, his head twisted around on his neck so fast it seemed like it would break. A nightclub. The president wanted to go out drinking in public at the kind of place where fights and attacks happened all the time anyway. An ulcer seemed to form in the pit of her stomach.

Before anyone could say anything, Nathan came rushing back into the room. His chest expanding with each deep breath, he also looked like he wasn’t ready to put fifty miles in on a bike. Jane and the Watch Commander turned to him, and she caught sight of a warm grin on his face.

“Leslie Hodge, originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Went to Arizona State and works in D.C. as a public relations assistant for a nonprofit focusing on environmental advocacy. No priors or criminal record of any kind. No evident connections to any foreign governments. No legal history. Let’s see, what else? She apparently dabbled in modeling at one point. I didn’t find anything suggesting she had any kind of combat or weapons training. Risk assessment is extremely low,” he said, catching his breath and standing a little straighter.

Just a regular girl…who’d done some modeling, Jane thought.

The Watch Commander still appeared torn.

“It’s not her I’m worried about. It’s everyone else,” he said, looking bitterly at the screen as the Beast inched closer to downtown. He again cast his eyes in Jane’s direction, seemingly searching for thoughts or ideas. As it so happened, she had some.

“Sir, we’ve trained to protect the president even in live combat situations. Are we really going to be able to look him in the eye and tell him that we can’t handle downtown a few blocks away from the White House? I’d trust the agents on the evening shift to walk him through the courtyard of a maximum-security prison without anyone being able to lay a finger on him,” she said.

Winger peered at her for a moment, causing her to wonder if she’d been too bold, but then a sly smirk appeared on his face before he turned to the agents throughout the Joint Operations Command.

“You heard Agent Roe. We’re going to do this. Let’s show the president a good time tonight. That’ll start with getting some plainclothes agents into the area. We order the food and have it ready before anyone knows who it’s for,” he said.

In a way it wasn’t too different from how they were involved in what the president normally ate. White House chefs still got their food from grocery stores in the area like anybody else, although the Secret Service had a systematic way of constantly changing the stores they went to. The idea was that no one would be able to ever predict what particular item on a shelf somewhere the president might eat and have a chance to tamper with it.

“Let’s reach out to a club owner and let them know they’re going to be having a special customer shortly. Their bouncers can take the night off, because the security is going to be getting an upgrade. Every person in the building gets searched. We’ll have an agent in there for every other person present. Make sure one of them can mix a decent cocktail, because we’ll be manning the bar.”

Winger’s booming voice echoed across the floor, and Jane smiled as everyone around them sprung into action. Maybe this wasn’t the typical mission the Secret Service undertook, but it was a nice change of pace from the dire and grave situations they normally had to deal with…so long as everything went smoothly.

“Makes me wish I had hundreds of people backing me up every time I took a girl out,” Nathan said as they watched the scene in action.

“You don’t seem like you need the help,” Jane said, smirking.

“Neither does the president. There are a lot of people who think the First Lady is bonkers