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

“Did you always know you were going to grow up to watch the president?” she asked, and Jane had to laugh.

“The quick answer is that no, I didn’t. The better answer is that we don’t actually watch the president. We watch everything but the president. We watch all of the people he meets with. We watch people in the crowds. We watch the chefs make every bite of food that goes between his teeth. We watch his doctor and his staff. We are the lens through which the president experiences the world.”

Eyes widening, the girl stepped a little bit closer. Jane didn’t know the girl was so chatty, making her wonder how long it would be until another member of the family came to find her.

“Then what did you want to do when you were a kid?” she asked, and Jane grinned as she surmised the girl may have really only caught the quick answer, and everything she said in her better answer may have gone in one ear and out the other.

Jane swept her shoulder-length brown hair behind her ear.

“I always thought I’d be doing pretty much the same thing for my dad’s trucking business back outside of Denver. But instead of sorting out how many men and trucks it would take to carry product from one place to another, I need to figure out the number of agents and where they need to go to keep the president safe. It all started when I was volunteering for the police department in high school. By the end of the year I was doing their scheduling, and after that life brought me here.”

The girl nodded, though her attention had drifted about the room. When she finally circled around to Jane again, she had a bright smile on.

“I want to be a pop star,” she said, and Jane chuckled. Maybe she had been talking to herself this entire time.

“You’re going to be a great one. Now run along to your next audition…or rehearsal…or whatever it is they have to do during the day,” she said, breathing deeply when she was once again alone. Jane couldn’t blame the girl too much though. At ten years old for her life revolved around riding horses and running the trails behind her house.

The Secret Service Headquarters on H Street always reminded Jane of the Ghostbusters headquarters, with a two-story gray base nestled under several floors of brighter orange brick. The metaphor seemed apt as well, because often their targets were just as ephemeral.

Thankfully the president didn’t have any appearances or departures planned for the day, allowing Jane to quickly certify the detail’s protocols while they waited for more information. A meeting was scheduled late in the afternoon to review the findings, and Jane walked into the top floor conference room with the tinted glass and large monitors hoping for the best possible result: an unthreatening idiot who thought he was making a joke and could be easily dissuaded.

But something in her heart told her that this one wouldn’t be so easy. That cryptic public comment buried among hundreds wasn’t at all an attempt to posture for friends.

Setting a folder down on the jet black table, Jane looked up at her boss, the Uniformed Division’s Chief Harold Vale, who was joined by the even-more-senior Deputy Director Rodney Salidas. Having the deputy director in the room was another sign that the concern over what was happening stretched to the very top of the organization.

Behind her three suits came in from the investigative division, led by a chiseled man with a neatly trimmed beard who could’ve passed for a Navy SEAL. Jane was sure she’d met everyone in that wing before, but he was someone she certainly wouldn’t have forgotten. Either way, once again she’d be the only woman in the room.

“Have you all had a chance to meet Nathan Carr? He’s recently transferred in from the Atlanta office to join our local investigative team and will be taking charge on this one,” Salidas said, eliciting a bemused smirk from the man whose thick arms were resting on the table in front of him as though he’d been here for years.

“You could’ve helped me get my feet wet with something a little easier,” he said, relaxed yet reserved. “But let’s take a look at what we’ve come up with so far.”

Carr doled out packets to everyone, the papers sliding across the table like he was dealing cards. Jane took a look at the printouts of the threatening comment, the president’s post it was made on, the profile behind the comment, some metadata, the news article…

“Doesn’t look like much,” Jane couldn’t help but say. This was more or less everything she’d already seen. The burly man across the table narrowed his eyes at her momentarily before shrugging to the others in the room.

“You’re not wrong, Ms…”

“Roe,” Jane said with an easy half-smile. She loved what she was doing, and if this new guy Nathan Carr hadn’t gotten to the heart of it that just meant more of an opportunity for her to see what she could find.

“Although we’ve recovered everything we can from Facebook about the comment, posted under the name Kevin Neilson, it’s immediately apparent how inadequate their system is for identifying its users. This user joined Facebook yesterday, has no friends, and has made no other comments other than this one. The photo associated with the account comes from a stock photo site. The email address is a dummy that has already been self-deleted. All of the metadata and the ISP address point to South America through a known virtual private network portal, obscuring the user’s true location. Absolutely nothing about this gives us a firm lead on any aspect of the poster.”

Another ghost.

The deputy director and the chief exchanged grim glances. Jane was sure neither of them wanted to be the one who had to tell the president how mysterious the threat against his life was to them. Chief Vale wiped