The Housewife Assassin's Ghost Protocol (19 page)

Whereas the first two examples are metaphorical, the last one could be literal. Word to the wise: If it’s you who pulls the trigger, don’t miss.
 

And if you succeed, don’t get caught. Lethal injection is far worse than Botox.

We come home to a full house.
 

Jack is in the backyard, grilling burgers in an apron that proclaims MR. GOOD LOOKING IS COOKING, while Abu butters buns and lays them on the warming rack. Ryan and Arnie nurse beers on two of our outdoor chaise lounges. Emma sits with them on a third chaise, but she’s sipping bottled water.
 

Out on our grassy lawn, Evan and Mary each hold a chubby little palm of Emma and Arnie’s toddler son, Nicky, as he attempts a few unsteady steps.

This doesn’t look like any traditional family gathering, but I have to ask anyway: “Where are Aunt Phyllis and Jeff?”

“Aunt Phyllis is at her meditation class,” Jack informs us. “And Jeff is upstairs, in his bedroom.”

“Oh…I forgot! He may need me for our ’speriment!” Trisha bounds into the house.

I open my purse in order to toss the iPad on Arnie’s lap. “Do you think you can break the password on this?”

Smiling, he lifts it up. “Is that a dare?”

“Yes. And the sooner the better. It once belonged to Eileen Woodley.”

Arnie’s smile fades. “I’m on it.” He leaps up and heads to the kitchen.

I take his chaise.

“Where did you get it?” Ryan asks.

“Eve found it within a book in Eileen’s old quarters at Lion’s Lair. POTUS doesn’t even know about it yet.”

Ryan sits up.
 

Emma, “Oh, my god!”

Hearing her, Nicky squeals too, before plopping down on the grass.
 

“Phew!” Evan mutters. “I think he sat in his…you know…”

Jack’s reaction to the news is to freeze. But the burger he flips in mid-air is still subject to gravitational pull. It falls on the ground.
 

One of our dogs, Rin Tin Tin, scarfs it up. The other, Lassie, chases after him, whining all the way.

“Get in here—
now!
” Arnie yells. “
You’ve got to see this!
”

He doesn’t have to ask twice. Ryan, Jack, Abu, Emma, and I run into the house.

“Wait!” Mary shouts. “What about Nicky’s, er, poo?”

Emma runs back to her chaise. Underneath it is a diaper bag. She tosses it at Evan. “It’s never too early to learn! Remember, after you use a baby wipe, powder him!”

The teens stand there in shock.

I brace myself for a similar reaction to what my Acme team is about to see.

“They used drones.” Arnie stabs a stubby finger at the far left third of his laptop’s triple-split screen.

He has zoomed in as close as possible so that we can see them: three, perhaps the size of gnats, and possibly made of a clear plastic so that they are all but invisible to the naked eye.

“I don’t get it,” I murmur.

“You will,” he assures us. “Just watch. The portion of the screen on the far left is the feed from the White House’s hallway security cameras.”

I recognize the location: it’s the anteroom next to the Roosevelt Room.

“I’m going to back it up, so that you see where this little critter comes from.” He reverses the feed just a few seconds—

So that we see them fly out from under the catering cart being wheeled into the Roosevelt room.

Well, what do you know?
 

“Now, watch the middle section of the screen. It’s from one of several feeds I just pulled off Eileen’s iPad. Somehow, she rigged a camera in the ceiling of the Roosevelt Room, and another in the Oval Office. Both must still be live. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have captured last week’s meeting, or what happened when everyone broke for lunch.”

“Holy shit,” Ryan mutters.

In the feed, the caterers set up the coffee and tea service, while the drones, which are never within peripheral vision, move very quickly toward a far corner of the ceiling.

Arnie freezes the feed. “The drones wait there, even after the meeting starts. Here we go.”

He runs the feed without sound so that we can’t hear the discussion that is for the attendees only.
 

“Now, I’ll fast-forward, so that you see what happened during the lunch break. Just watch the middle feed and you’ll see how the white papers were compromised,” he adds.

Suddenly, the attendees leave the room at warp speed. When the doors shut behind them, the drones swoop down over the table, scanning it for what they need: white paper left on the table.

They find one: in front of the chair where Rudy Brooks sat.
 

One of the drones hovers for a moment, possibly taking a photo of the cover sheet. Next, another drone works as a paperweight while another flips to the next page. This goes on until all the pages have been photographed.
 

The drones freeze when the door opens and someone enters: Shelley. She goes to her seat in order to take her pocketbook off the table, where she left it: on top of a white paper.

After she leaves, the drones move toward it. The same covert ballet occurs: scanning, shooting, and moving papers.

When finished, the drones look for the final paper, but all the rest are in briefcases, or covered by dossier folders.
 

Finally, a door opens: Rudy enters.
 

He doesn’t notice the drones leaving in his wake while he picks up his cell phone. A second later, he startles the caterers, who return with fresh coffee urns.

Whereas Rudy goes back to the dining room, the drones hover in a corner of the Oval Office reception room’s ceiling.
 

Babette’s entrance into the Oval Office itself gives them their chance to enter with her.
 

Arnie switches the feed in Eileen’s iPad to the Oval Office. The drones have already taken their positions in a ceiling corner, waiting for the perfect time to scan the last white paper. They get it after Lee enters, has an agitated discussion with Babette, and then escorts her out the door.

When he comes back to grab his copies of the white papers, they head out the door with him—

Only they head down the hall, flying high over the heads of unsuspecting
 
staffers.

“Where did they go?” Jack asks.

Arnie shrugs. “Great question. I’ll know after further examination of the footage. But I do have one last gem.”

The screen now goes to a single still shot: it’s the cover of one of the white papers. In quick succession, we see each page.

“The drone’s feed was also sent to the iPad,” Arnie explains.

“Does its IP address match up to the device that sent the email to Salem?”

“No. It came from elsewhere. I’m tracing it now, but it’s been masked. I should have it in a couple of hours, though.” He smiles encouragingly. “Maybe after we eat? Speaking of which, I’m getting sort of hungry.”

“Oh, hell! I left the burgers on the grill!” Jack runs out the kitchen door.
 

From here, his cursing is unintelligible. Finally, we hear him slam a platter onto the kitchen counter. He comes into the great room, followed by Mary and Evan, who holds Nicky as if he’s a keg of dynamite.
 

“Okay, who’s up for pizza?” Jack growls.

“Only if you order from the artisan pizzeria on Hilldale Avenue. The cornmeal crust is divine! Can we get at least one with sun-dried tomatoes on it? And perhaps broccolini? I’m willing to share, of course—especially if it’s an Acme expense…”
 

As if the pronunciation to-
mah
-toes wasn’t already a dead giveaway, we look up to find Dominic standing in the front door.
 

He’s brought a guest with him: Jean-Pierre.

The handsome young man waves tentatively at me. He looks paler, and thinner. Despite his grin, there is a deep sadness in his eyes. His smile broadens, however, when he sees Mary.

Evan frowns when she smiles back.

I run over to Jean-Pierre for a hug. “It’s so good to see you up and about, Jean-Pierre!”
 

“Thank you, Madame Craig. It is an honor to be in your home. I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“By the time I got to Biarritz, this young chap was already hot on the trail of our old friend, Pinky Ring.” Dominic slaps him on the back.

Embarrassed, Jean-Pierre shrugs. “I was lucky. The bullet was a flesh wound. No need to nurse my pain. It is much more important that I find Gigi before she suffers the same fate as Nicolette and Suzette. I have a few clues to share, but I told Monsieur Fleming only if I am allowed to keep searching as well.”

“You’re in,” Ryan assures him. “What do you have?”

“When I was released from the hospital, I went to Gigi’s home, to inquire of her parents anything that they may know of her. They say she called them the day after the yacht incident, claiming she’d found work abroad, as an
au pair
, here in the United States. I asked to access their phone bill online. The call came from Chicago. I then sought out others who may have had contact with Monsieur Pinky Ring. The limo driver who helped load the man’s bags into a private jet says Pinky Ring had two women with him. One was not feeling so well. Her face was wrapped in a scarf. It could have been Gigi, and she could have been drugged.” He frowns. “The driver took them to the airport, and on to the tarmac. He also remembered the plane’s identifying number. Monsieur Fleming suggests its route can be traced from that.”

“I’m on it,” Emma assures him.
 

“Dad, when are we going to eat something?” Jeff yells from upstairs, just as Ryan’s phone buzzes with an incoming call.

Noting the Caller ID, Ryan’s eyes grow big. He walks quickly toward the dining room, closing the door behind him.

By the time he returns, he has the pizzas we ordered in hand: three extra large, with sausage and extra cheese, regular crust; and one mini-pizza with sun-dried to-
mah
-toes and broccolini, on a cornmeal crust.
 

“I tipped the delivery kid a buck. From the look on his face, I guess he thought I was stiffing him.” He shrugs as he plops the boxes down on the center of the kitchen island.

The way the boxes are torn open, it looks like a fumble on the five-yard line.

Ryan lets loose with a taxi whistle. Everyone freezes. “The rest of you can chow down, but Donna and Jack, you’re coming with me. You too, Arnie.”

Arnie’s mouth, which was already open wide for his first bite, sags into a frown. “But…can we at least take one of these with us?”

Ryan shakes his head. “I don’t think POTUS would appreciate it. I know for a fact that he’s lactose-intolerant.” He’s out the door.

Of course, Jack and I follow.

Arnie sighs, tosses down the pizza, then lumbers out after us.

Eve meets us at Lion’s Lair front door and ushers us into the conference room.
 

It’s practically a full house already. Lee sits at one end of the table, Vice President Drucker at the other. On one side of the table, Todd Courtland, Blake Reynolds, and Intelligence Director Branham face us.

This does not bode well.