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

by resigning. He’d taken a chance on her, and she wouldn’t kick up a fuss or cause problems when it was time to go.

Her apartment looked about the same as her office. In fact, pretty much all she’d done since the crash was pack up her belongings, even though she still didn’t know where she would go or what she would do. Flopping back home in Colorado with her parents was an unpalatable but likely result. Maybe she was destined for trucking logistics after all.

As for kissing Alex Morrin, Jane wasn’t sure what kind of consolation prize that was, but it wouldn’t pay her rent or keep her fridge full. She hadn’t heard anything from him since the incident, maybe because he was the president and had better things to do than chase the Secret Service’s most glaring embarrassment.

When she heard footsteps in the hall outside her door, she figured it was Vale coming back to tell her he’d gotten the Inspector General’s report and that it was everything they expected, but instead it was Nathan Carr with a funny look on his face.

“Hey, come on upstairs. There’s something you should see,” he said.

It was nice to hear him speaking to her without pity in his voice, like it was just another day at the office doing the work they always do. He didn’t even seem to notice the boxes.

“What is it?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, instead slipping away and starting down the hall. Jane dropped one of her books into the box on her desk and moved to catch up to him. Considering she’d already dumped her entire workload on Diwecki and the other logistics & staffing agents, she had nothing else to do. It was impossible not to be intrigued by something going on at the Live Monitoring Station, and setting foot in it one last time would be a treat she’d need to find a way to relish.

“It’s looking like a busy day. We had another threat come through that seems very concerning, but there’s no way I could miss this,” he said with his hands in his pockets.

“What’s going on?” she asked, but he seemed content to leave her in the dark. “What’s the new threat?”

Nathan didn’t answer that question either, and they got into the elevator and hit the button for the top floor. Jane spent the ride wondering if he wasn’t telling her because he was already mentally coming to terms with how she wouldn’t be privileged enough to have access to any of this information very soon. But the smug look on his bearded face made her think he may well have had something up his sleeve instead.

People were coming and going from the Joint Operations Command Center frequently enough that the doors never stayed still. When the activity here picked up, that meant something was going on and quite often one of their protectees was in trouble. Did Nathan bring her up here so she could see someone trying to get to President Morrin? As best she knew it was another quiet day in the White House for him.

They made it inside and found a perch near the back of the room, where they could see Watch Commander Winger and the other agents inside busily handle another situation. From the looks of their faces, this was serious and not at all with the hint of frivolity the evening at the nightclub carried.

Jane peered at the maps and images on the big screens against the wall, trying to get a sense of what the streetscapes were showing her. Everything looked calm as best she could tell, but they clearly weren’t looking at the White House.

“Where is this? What are we looking at?” she asked, finally glancing over the shoulder of an agent at one of the computer terminals who was in contact with the Dayton, Ohio police department. “Dayton? Is somebody visiting there? I thought the only protectee in Dayton was…Bethany Morrin.”

“Yup,” Nathan said, rolling from his heels to his toes with his hands still in his pockets.

“But who would ever want to want to give her a problem?” Jane wondered aloud. Bethany hadn’t gotten so much as a dirty look since she returned home. Nathan was tight-lipped again, and Jane had had enough of his withholding, but fortunately Winger called out to the floor in a way that put the issue to rest.

“Can we match the on-the-ground photos with the I.D.?” he asked, and a moment later the screen changed from the map to a pair of images, one a man in a pickup truck wearing a flannel woodman jacket and the other the driver’s license picture of Oliver Ip. Jane gasped so exuberantly that she had to cover her mouth before she distracted the people working around them.

“You’re kidding me. What is he doing there?” she asked, turning fully to Nathan. He was wise to take her focus as a sign that further obfuscation would not be tolerated.

“Looks like he ran for it but could only keep a low profile for so long. Best we can tell he’s switched targets, perhaps to someone who seems like an easier victim. I believe I recall someone around here saying a jackal might do that. Oh, yeah, it was you.”

Jane turned to the screen, her eyes widening. Had she actually predicted this would happen? Bethany’s detail had its own management team out of the Columbus office, and as Jane watched a live feed of the parked red pickup truck she hoped they had done an adequate job protecting the ex-First Lady.

“How did they find him?” Jane asked. Nathan’s grin was a mile wide.

“For all of his computer tricks, he doesn’t seem to have much experience tailing a mark. It was pretty obvious when he started following her to work and just sat in his truck without getting out right behind where she parked. She’s been alerted to the threat and has an agent on her inside her workplace. Now we’re just getting our pieces