The Housewife Assassin's Ghost Protocol (27 page)

“Yeah, you think?” I lean my head back on the headrest of my seat and close my eyes.

Jack pats my hand. “Donna, are you okay?”

“Am I…okay? No, Jack!
I’m dead
. Remember? And I’m a terrorist! I blew up innocent people—”

He shakes his head. “You did nothing of the sort! A brainwashed young woman whose features were altered to look like you did it. And she fought the urge to do it up until the very last second of her life. Her DNA will prove it.”

“It doesn’t stop the world from thinking otherwise,” I reason. “The act was captured on the mall’s security cameras, and quite a few cell phones too. I’m sure it’s all over social media. If they aren’t already, any moment now the FBI will be storming the house again, but this time they’ll be looking for you—who now looks like Number Fourteen on their Most Wanted list. We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” My eyes open wide at my next thought: “Oh, my God! How do you think our children will react when their friends show them replays of me, blowing myself up?”
 

“Some friends,” Emma grumbles.

“This may cheer you up,” Arnie declares. “I had a chance to look at Gordon’s webcam footage. Müller is the one who slit his throat.”

“So you hacked the feed? Great!” Jack exclaims. “I’m in the clear.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” I mutter.

Emma hushes me with a warning: “Ryan has briefed POTUS on the mission by phone! He wants me to patch you in, too.”

“’Bout damn time,” I grumble. “A pardon can’t come soon enough.”

We hear a couple of clicks on the line, then: “Donna, and Jack? It’s Ryan, with President Chiffray.”

“Hello, Mr. President,” Jack and I say in unison. Guess which one of us is rolling his eyes? Oops, did I just give it away? So sorry.

“I want to thank you for alerting the FBI in the surveillance of these known terrorists, and the discovery of the missing covert operatives,” Lee says. “It was truly an awesome assist.”

“
Awesome assist
?” Jack hisses. “The nerve of this guy!”

I pinch him so that he shuts his yap.

“Needless to say, I’ve commanded Assistant Attorney Reynolds to drop all allegations,” Lee continues. “However, we still have the issue of finding a mole in the West Wing. I hope you’ll agree to help us do so.”

“I thought we’d proven it was Vice President Drucker,” I reply. “I assume
 
Ryan shared with you the video of the conversation he had with Gordon Soames. It occurred at least a year prior to when the researchers’ results were breached.”

“Ryan did. And although this recently discovered intel proves Vice President Drucker knew of Operation Hercules, it doesn’t make the case that he caused the breach with the drones, and then turned around and gave information to the Quorum. Remember, he was ambushed only after Arnie revealed the breach two days ago, and the vice president’s wife was killed in the attempt on his life. In any event, we won’t be able to interrogate him until he comes out of his coma.”

Lee has a good point.

“What about Soames?” Jack asks. “He could have easily released the drones.”

“We don’t have the proof we need to verify it,” Lee replies.

“Okay, then, what is it that you’re asking of us now?” Jack’s wary growl is meant to warn Lee to tread lightly.

“The mission is more Donna’s call than yours,” Lee responds blithely. “It will put her in deep cover.” He pauses. Finally: “Donna, will you agree to stay ‘dead’?”

“What?” I can’t believe my ears. “For God’s sake, why?”

“Because Carl thinks he’s just ruined your reputation—and Jack’s too, unless Jack agrees to stay under house arrest for Gordon’s murder,” Lee explains. “Carl thinks you’re now on the run, alone, and that you’re less likely to track him down. Of course, you’ll do the opposite—with Jack and the rest of the Acme team as back-up.”

“Emma, are the GPS trackers Donna planted on Carl and Dr. Welles live yet?” Ryan asks.

“Yes, sir. Live and well. It looks as if the men are together—and, unfortunately, over the border, in Mexico.”
 

Hasta la vista, baby
.

“It’s our chance, Donna,” Lee pleads, “to put him behind bars permanently.”

Somehow my worst nightmare was resurrected. He’s got a point: time to put it to rest once and for all.

“Under one condition: Jack has to be allowed to tell my children the truth–that I’m alive, and that it wasn’t me who was killed.”

Lee thinks for an eternity. “Even one little slip up on their parts puts your safety at risk. Do you trust them?”

“With my life.” Always, and forever. Just as they trust me with theirs.

“I’ll honor your condition,” Lee promises.

“Okay, then—I’ll do it.”

Jack smacks his forehead as if I’m crazy.

Maybe I am.
 

But the way I see it, I’ve got nothing to lose and a lot to gain—another chance to kill Carl.

Bring. It. On.

Trisha shakes her head adamantly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
 

I haven’t asked my children for their permission, or even their approval. It is not their place to give it. Instead, I’m living up to my promise to them: that I will always be as honest as my job allows.

I’ve explained why I need to keep playing possum. I’ve asked that they play along too.

Without saying a word, Jeff agreed immediately. His own personal experience with terrorism gives him a perspective on trust and self-sacrifice that makes him far wiser than most.
 

Mary’s acknowledgement was just as stoic. She’ll ignore the snickers. She’s learned the hard way that peer approval isn’t always right, or just. Jack and I may not always be forthcoming about our missions, but she realizes everything we do has our family’s best interests at heart.

I nod at Trisha, but then I ask, “Explain why.”

My youngest wrinkles her nose in thought. “God may take it wrong. He may think you’d rather be with Him than with us.”

“He knows that’s not true,” I explain. “He knows I’m doing this so that the bad men don’t win.”

She crosses her arms at her chest. “You mean, like…Carl Stone?”
 

It’s the first time she’s called her biological father by his given name. Why? I wonder. “Yes, Trisha, like him. What brought him to mind?”

“He wants me to hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” I ask. “How?”

“He told me to put the cleansing powder from under the kitchen sink in your coffee.” Disgusted, she wrinkles her nose. “He thinks I’m just a little kid, but I know that’s wrong! My real father would never want that.”
 

She’s right. Carl’s mind games are bad enough, but I never thought he’d stoop so low as to ask one of our children to physically hurt me. He’s gotten meaner in the next life.

Finally, Trisha nods. “I won’t like it, but I can pretend.”

“Thank you.” I hug her tightly before turning to Evan. “Think you can carry this off?”

Evan is tall enough that he can put both hands on my shoulders. Gazing into my eyes, he declares, “Whatever you need, Mom.”

I’m so relieved that I burst into tears—of joy.

Sheesh. I am
such
a sap.

“Group hug?” Jack suggests.

My God, he’s a bigger sap than me.

Yet another of the many reasons I love him.

My funeral is a glorious affair.
 

It has something to do with the
joie de vivre
of its planner: the first lady, Babette Chiffray—who revels at the chance to put her enemies in the ground, this time literally as opposed to figuratively.

Trust me, if it were up to her, she’d have let me rot in a hole in the backyard. But since Janie insisted on supporting her best friend and threatened to run away if she couldn’t, Babette had no recourse but to join her—with one condition: that her posse was allowed to control the event.

Even Babette realizes that the funeral of a terrorist isn’t the best photo op for a first lady. Still, she was determined to make the most of it. Narcissa and Lucretia rallied every news network to show up.
 

Besides, Babette always looks fabulous in black.

Despite his daughter’s insistence that she attend and his wife’s hunger for any spotlight, Ryan back-channeled my request to Lee that the president stay away. No need to suffer the political backlash that an appearance will garner, especially since DNA testing on one of Gigi’s body parts found at the scene—a foot—proves that she was me.

How the hell can that be?

I’m relieved to see Lee honored my wish. When my pardon comes through, we’ll celebrate a better kind of homecoming: Carl’s, to a maximum security jail cell.

As distraught as Aunt Phyllis is, maybe it’s a good thing Babette talked my aunt into letting her make the arrangements. I guess my aunt will jump for joy when she discovers I’m really alive. Or else she’ll brain me with a frying pan for playing such a mean trick on her.

Many were injured, but to everyone’s relief, only one person died: the bomber herself. The Quorum’s planning didn’t account for the fact that Haute Hipster was closed for inventory. The clerks doing it were in the back storeroom. Still, the sensationalism of yet another major domestic terrorist attack—this one involving a suicide bomber—has taken its psychological toll on America.
 

My service is taking place the day after the event. Our feeling about it: the sooner, the better, we reason, so that the world can forget my supposed culpability and we can get all get on with our lives.

I have to give credit to Babette’s posse, Narcissa and Lucretia. They took care of every niggling detail at warp speed—including the most important one: getting every major network to cover it live.

As always, Babette has at least one ulterior motive: making sure she is front and center when the cameras and microphones are pointed her way.

I watch it via satellite feed on Arnie’s computer, from the privacy of my great room. The drapes are drawn to guard against the NSA agents’ prying eyes. Although Jack is supposedly still under house arrest, he has special dispensation to go to my funeral with my children; so as far as the Feds know, the house is empty. I entered through the basement tunnel.

At the cemetery, the paparazzi jockey around each other at curbside, but they know better than to trample those who are pushing up daisies. The wall-to-wall Secret Service detail has no other problems with crowd control because the only ones to show up besides Babette, Janie, and my family are my Acme co-workers.
 

Most of our neighbors chose not to pay their respects. They prefer to make their feelings known via the picket signs in front of our lawn that proclaim:
 

TERRORISTS AREN’T WELCOME IN HILLDALE!

Cheever Bing’s mother, Penelope, is leading the lynch mob. According to what I can catch via her bullhorn, owning a home in the same neighborhood as a known terrorist—even a dead one—is killing their property values.

To that extent, they’re probably right.
 

Still, when the facts are finally released, will they show up at my doorstep with Bundt cakes? I hope not. Because no matter how delicious they look, I’ll still put them through a metal detector—

As I requested, Ryan gives my eulogy. His insights on me are spot on. So is his obvious love for me. When he calls me “the daughter I never had,” I tear up.
 

Jack stands on the other side of Babette. Her slim hand tucked into the arm of the bereaved widower. He pats it so often and looks so soulfully into her eyes that you’d think it were him consoling her, and not the other way around.

Bravo
, Jack,
Bravo!
The Oscar for “Best Performance by a Covert Operative” is yours hands down.

My children should also be up for Academy Awards. Jeff looks stoically straight ahead, never down at the casket. He’s not just pretending that he is burdened by the horror of terrorism.
 

On the other hand, Mary uses it as performance art. She sheds enough crocodile tears to rival Babette. And while Evan gives Aunt Phyllis a broad shoulder to lean on, to his dismay Mary uses Jean-Pierre’s to comfort her.