girl woke screaming and soaked in sweat,” Lightning related. “The first night, the physician accompanying the presidential party thought she’d simply overdone it while touring schools and special events. He gave her a mild sedative to help her sleep. The second night, the visions were evidently so real, so terrifying, that the president decided to bring her home. He’s worried sick about her.”
“Understandable. She’s his only child.”
His only immediate family, in fact. John Jefferson Andrews had lost his wife to cancer when he was a charismatic young governor. Since then he’d balanced the demands of his political career against the needs of his daughter.
That much was well-known. What hadn’t been made quite so public was that Andrews’s party put enormous pressure on him to run for president. He’d turned them down repeatedly, and only threw his hat in the ring after his supporters convinced him Washington needed an infusion of fresh blood.
It did. Desperately.
Andrews’s determination to clean house hadn’t made him popular with certain career bureaucrats and Beltway bandits, however. He’d taken office in January. Now, just four months later, noisy grumbling could be heard in the halls of congress and various federal departments.
“The president asked for you personally,” Lightning said as he pulled up to the first White House security checkpoint. “You impressed both him and his daughter when you briefed them on the emotional and psychological stresses unique to the Washington environment.”
“I’ll certainly do whatever I can to help, although I haven’t had a great deal of experience in adolescent psychology.”
The whap-whap-whap of a helicopter passing low overhead almost drowned her out. By the time Claire and Lightning cleared the subsequent checkpoints and walked out to the heliport, Marine One was touching down.
The steps lowered and the president emerged first. Lean and fit and boyishly handsome, John Andrews had captured the public’s imagination with his energy and obvious devotion to his daughter. Both showed as he turned to help the teenager descend.
Claire studied the dark-haired young woman as she crossed the lawn with her father. Her body language spoke volumes. Shoulders hunched, she kept her head down and avoided looking at the group who’d turned out to welcome home the presidential party. The only sign of a normal fourteen-year-old was the iPod poking out of the pocket of her bright red jacket and the white earbuds looped around her neck.
The president gave Lightning’s hand a quick shake before turning to Claire. “Thanks for rearranging your schedule for us, Dr. Cantwell.”
“You’re welcome, sir.” She returned his firm handshake before shifting her gaze to the teenager. “It’s good to see you again, Stacy.”
The girl nodded and murmured a greeting.
“Your father thought it might help you to talk about what happened during the trip. I’ll be happy to chat, if that’s okay with you.”
The teen lifted her head then, and shocked Claire with the dark circles under her eyes. In a few short days, the smiling, happy young girl who’d waved to photographers before boarding Air Force One had acquired a haunted look.
“I guess.”
The president laid an arm across his daughter’s shoulders. “Why don’t you take Dr. Cantwell up to the living quarters, Stace? I need to go to the office and make a few calls.”
“Okay.”
Claire started to follow the teen, but caught sight of a familiar figure descending the steps of Marine One. Her pulse gave a sudden kick and a wry smile tipped her lip.
Colonel Luis Esteban made Antonio Banderas look like something the cat dug up.
She should be conditioned to the impact of his curling black hair, bronzed skin, silky mustache and come-hither smile, all wrapped up in six foot two inches of solid male. She and Luis had worked several missions together. More to the point, they’d been lovers for almost a year now. Between her practice and periodic missions for OMEGA, and his frequent trips back to his own country, they saw each other often enough to maintain the sizzle, but not so often that the mere sight of him should send heat racing through her veins and clench the muscles low in her belly.
They’d first met years ago, when he served as chief of security for the Central American nation of Cartoza. In that capacity, he’d worked an op with Maggie Sinclair, another now-retired OMEGA agent. The drop-dead-gorgeous Esteban had turned up in Washington some months later, fully intending to follow up on the attraction that had sparked between him and Maggie.
When he found her involved with the man she later married, Luis claimed she’d broken his heart. Maggie knew better, as she laughingly informed Claire when Luis’s roving eye descended on the quiet, self-contained psychologist. The colonel’s blatant attempts to get Claire into his bed had amused her at first. Then slowly, inevitably, they’d reawakened the sexual appetites that had gone into hibernation after her husband’s murder. The man was as skilled a lover as he was persistent.
Esteban now served as Cartoza’s ambassador to the U.S. As such, he’d done most of the advance work for President Andrews’s now canceled goodwill trip. Claire knew how many hours he’d put into preparing for it, and guessed he would shoulder a heavy dose of responsibility over its abrupt termination.
“Would you wait just a moment, Stacy? I’d like to talk to Ambassador Esteban.”
She’d taken only a few steps across the lawn before Luis drew aside with another disembarking passenger. Claire recognized sandy-haired Tom Fogerty, the president’s chief of staff. Whipcord lean and intense, he was one of the few Washington insiders retained by President Andrews to facilitate his administration’s transition. And by the sound of it, Fogarty was not at all happy with the cancellation of the Central American trip.
“I don’t know when we’ll reschedule,” he told Luis, impatiently shifting his briefcase from hand to hand. “To tell the truth, Mr.Ambassador, Cartoza isn’t real high on my list of priorities right now.”
“It should be,” Luis shot back. “We are the United States’s strongest ally in that region.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if you’d managed security a little better in your country, we wouldn’t have had to cut our visit short.”
Luis’s jaw locked. Even from several yards away, Claire recognized the warning signs.
“I will tell you one more time, my friend,” he said slowly, dangerously. “Stacy Andrews did not eat or drink anything that wasn’t first tested by both your people and mine.”
“Something caused those nightmares. I still think we’ll find they were drug-induced.”
“The blood test showed no evidence of hallucinogens. The president informed me of that himself.”
“I’m sure he’ll want the tests rerun, now that we’re back in the States.”
The implication was as insulting as Fogerty’s sneer.
When Luis narrowed his eyes and gave a low hiss, the politician took a quick step back. Hastily, Claire intervened.
“I’d
