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

was never going to actually hurt anyone, and these insignificant acts were a small price to pay for knowledge the public deserved to know.

Leaving the warmth of the hearth, Oliver flicked on the light and turned on the computer, a Hewlett Packard that had to be a decade old and came to life at an agonizingly slow pace. There were still gaps that he needed to solve, mainly where to locate Bethany Morrin and the best way to apprehend her so that they could record their performance. Surely she’d beg Alex Morrin to do what he asked. Once she knew what it was about, what her ex-husband was doing, she’d probably be a willing participant.

The computer took nearly ten minutes to fully boot up, and the slow Internet service, NetZero, made loading every single page its own kind of torture. The only benefit was that it gave him time to figure out exactly what he needed to do. It took forever to get to the city of Dayton’s website to find public tax documents related to their home, which was listed under A. Morrin and B. Morrin.

With her address obtained, things were falling into place in a way Oliver never could’ve imagined. Too excited to sleep, he knew that hitting the road and driving through the night was the optimum use of his time anyway. But before he could drive for seven hours to Dayton, he had to cover his tracks and prepare as he always did.

That meant burying the license plates to his car in case he had to come back. His clothes ended up in the dirt too once he’d found something of Hanlahan’s to wear, dark brown work overalls and a ragged flannel jacket. A wide-brimmed hat would make him less recognizable. Antsy to go, everything seemed to take longer than necessary. The truck’s keys weren’t in plain sight, requiring an extensive search, but eventually he opened the truck door and stowed the pistol in the glove box. The search had turned up a little bit of cash as well. The last thing he did before climbing in and taking off was filling a bag with canned food as another precaution.

The truck didn’t do much better on the bumpy dirt road than his Fiesta did, but once he made it out onto the highways he felt like there was nothing else standing in his way. Interstate 68 was a breeze, and I-70 West would take him clear through Columbus all the way to his destination. Other than being forced to stop for gas halfway there, he did nothing for seven hours besides hold the wheel and listen to the wind whip through the slightly opened window.

The sun was coming up by the time he pulled into town, following directions to a section of the city called Huber Heights that looked regal in a way he found offensive. After cruising around the neighborhood a few times, he made it onto Moorfield Drive and noticed a car pulling out halfway down the street. He scanned the building numbers and had a hunch that it might be Bethany Morrin leaving for work, another lucky stroke.

When he rolled by the home the car had just left, he could scarcely notice the house number for the grandeur of the place. It was like the mansion in Home Alone, a two-story brick building with light posts at the end of the drive and little dog statues at the edge of the front walk.

But he couldn’t gawk for long, deciding instead to try to catch up to the car, which had turned onto Rosebury St. and was heading toward the city’s center. It took some heavy acceleration, but Oliver managed to catch up enough to be able to keep his eye on it. Once the car parked by the side of the road, he pulled over a few spaces behind, getting himself into perfect position to watch Bethany Morrin in a purple jacket walk across the street all alone and enter a building.

The sign on the building wasn’t legible from where he was, but it was some kind of office. Taking a deep breath, Oliver realized he’d made it. He took the pistol from the glove box and began to consider his plans. Go into the building and see if he could find her? Wait for her to leave for lunch? Follow her home?

Any of the above seemed perfectly suitable, and it began to feel like no matter what he did there was no way he could fail. All he had to do was find a good way to put the gun to her head and start giving the president orders.

He had it in his lap, loaded, and now he even knew where the safety was.

14

Secret Service Headquarters

950 H St. NW

Washington, DC

Boxes and boxes. Her certificates from the training academy were in a box. Her middle school racing trophies that she’d kept on a shelf were in a box. The pictures of her parents and her extended family were deep at the bottom of a box so that they couldn’t see her packing the rest of her things up and leaving her job in shame.

Chief Vale poked his head in. He had a somber look on his face and was stooping a little as he did when he had something weighing on his mind.

“I got wind that the OIG is putting the finishing touches on their report. We should have it soon,” he said.

Jane put her hand on her desk and sighed.

“I figured. It’s funny how quickly that can get churned out now that the writing is on the wall,” she said.

“I’m still hoping for the best,” he said, though not even he could say it with any real conviction. Vale took one look at the boxes, didn’t say anything, and then slipped away. When his wispy blond hair was gone, Jane hung her head. She’d promised herself she would make it easy on him, saving him from having to fire her