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

Travis returned with a thumbs up, and Nora flicked on a monitor to give them a glimpse into a cam that one of the agents riding in a car was wearing. Jane wasn’t familiar with the roads through Capitol Heights, but judging from the area it didn’t seem any better than where she was living.

They watched the car come to a halt in front of a four-story apartment building of plaster and concrete in a densely developed area. A group of agents went inside, climbed the steps, and arrived at a door on the third floor that was notable only for its chipped paint, like it’d been scratched by a tiger or something.

While the cam had no audio, they were in radio contact with the agents and could hear the sound come through as one pounded on the door. There was no answer, and they pounded again, this time calling for Oliver Ip to open up.

“They’re going to have to bust through,” Travis said to Nora.

“Don’t you need a search warrant for that?” Jane asked as it occurred to her. Nora looked at her with a comforting smile.

“We had all the paper we need on everyone in the plane short of the president the day the bombing took place,” she said. “If need be, we could show up to your place and kick the door right down.”

That was less comforting, but Jane could’ve imagined harsher responses her question could’ve gotten.

The agents on the scene had obviously considered the possibility that they wouldn’t receive a warm welcome. One of them had a handheld battering ram that swiftly collided with the door near the locking mechanism, busting the door in after five loud thuds.

Once inside, they stormed the dark living space, going from room to room with Glocks raised as they searched for occupants. Jane was holding her breath with anticipation that they would discover Oliver Ip hiding in a closet or bathroom, but it wasn’t to be.

“He’s not here,” Nathan said even before word came over the radio from the agents that the place was vacant. Empty desk space and some items strewn about the bedroom suggested that he may have left in a hurry.

Jane felt like she had a little less wind in her sails. After putting them in position to be confident about who did it, being able to nab him right then and there would’ve been icing on the cake. Even if it didn’t immediately lead to them scoring a suspect in custody, Jane found it invigorating to have been part of such an important discovery.

“Our contact at the Post is saying that Ip hadn’t shown up for work today,” Nora said, glancing at her husband, who set his jaw and sighed.

“Probably started running for it as soon as we took Heath Bastion in,” Travis added.

“What’s going to happen now? He can’t really be missing. Ip has to be held responsible for all this,” Jane said, and she was surprised when Nora reached out to take her hand. Maybe it wasn’t surprising that she’d been around this block a few times.

“This happens. If someone knows we’re closing in on them, they resist. That’s where the work begins. We’ll be going through everything he has now, every possible place he could be hiding. We’ll look everywhere. He’s going to get caught and he’s going to pay for what he’s done, but it’ll take time. On the bright side though, Heath Bastion will be going home to his family tonight because of you.”

Jane took comfort in the difference she’d made, even if they had more left to do. The investigation was headed in the right direction. The wrong person was on a path to being cleared. And most important, the president was safe and alive, with the entire weight of the government’s investigative machinery coming down on the one responsible for putting it at risk.

With the search for Ip being handled by people at the FBI who obviously knew way more than she did and had access to much better tools, Jane had to be content with letting it go so she could focus on her own job. After saying goodbye to Nora and Travis, who were anxious to leave work themselves to pick up their daughter while other agents continued the search, Jane and Nathan rode back to Secret Service Headquarters.

“They’ll get him,” Nathan said. Jane rested her head against her palm and stared out the window, her elbow propped against the car door as other questions sprung to mind.

“But what is he going to do in the meantime?” she wondered.

As the week went by, Jane’s satisfaction and enthusiasm for what she’d done only grew. Chief Harold Vale had commended her personally. Others at both the Secret Service and the FBI had reached out to her to say they were impressed. It felt like her stock was rising higher than it had ever been. Even though the report from the investigation into her responsibility for the bombing still hadn’t been issued, Jane couldn’t imagine that it would come down hard on her now.

After what she’d done, if Agent Trice and the Office of the Inspector General wanted to criticize peripheral aspects of her work, they were barking up the wrong tree.

That made it so much easier to show up at Camp David on Saturday ready to ride like the wind and have a blast doing it. She’d even purchased a new black bodysuit to ride in that would make the gun she had to have strapped to her hip a little less conspicuous. And if Alex liked it, there was no harm in that.

When the Beast showed up at the park and the president got out, he gave her a curt nod and smile as he went to get his bike out of the shed. It was much more of a professional greeting than she would’ve wanted, making her think that her impromptu visit to the Oval Office