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Gina finally drags herself out of bed at quarter to three in the afternoon, and stumbles into the shower almost without
opening her eyes. She still misses Washington for the oddest reasons, and right now it’s Zoey’s friends who didn’t
smoke, her hair smelling of smoke even after she washed it when she fell in the front door at four in the morning.
She
should have claimed she was allergic, she thinks as she tosses her bathrobe on the floor and steps into the shower, but that’s
not fair because the Governor’s not that bad, and if she knew him a little better, she’d probably just slap Nicotinell
patches on his arms.
She massages the shampoo into her scalp hard and wishes it smelt of something that might mask
the smell. Although the combination of cigarette smoke and chemical lemon might actually be worse.
“Get a grip,”
she tells herself firmly. It’s bad enough that she can’t think of anything to do with her day off other than sleep,
there’s no need to slide into pathetic, and feeling sorry for herself because it’s going to take a couple of extra
doses of shampoo before she stops smelling like a seedy nightclub is well past pathetic.
She’s got plenty of
real things to feel sorry for herself over anyway.
And, seriously, if she can’t mope on her day off when it’s
– she shoves the blind aside to confirm it – yep, raining, again, when can she?
She wraps her hair in a
towel and pulls her robe back on, leaving wet footprints on the wooden floor as she pads back to her bedroom. Her cell phone
is flashing a missed call, but it’s only Alex, probably trying to persuade her to go out, again. Alex is of the opinion
that Gina’s been a hermit – her word, not Gina’s, who prefers loner – for long enough, and that if
Alex nags long enough, she’ll crack. Gina reminds her, frequently, that she worked for the President’s youngest
daughter, and if she can withstand nagging from Zoey, Alex has no hope.
Alex usually rolls her eyes and says that’s
exactly what she means. Gina’s learnt to ignore her.
She dresses in old, soft jeans, and a Georgetown University
sweatshirt, and goes poking through her kitchen. She really needs to go shopping, but she’s not going out in the rain
for vegetables that’ll probably turn to mush before she actually thinks about cooking them; she’s got half a block
of Fruit and Nut that Graham sent three weeks ago, and a fridge full of stuff to drink. She contemplates a bottle of wine
with a couple of glasses missing, but she can’t remember opening it, which probably isn’t a good sign, and anyway,
she’s not reduced to drinking alone at four in the afternoon – not yet, anyway.
She grabs a can of Coke
instead, and curls up on the sofa with the remote. There’s got to be some suitably weepy black and white film on, something
that she can pretend not to cry over.
The TV’s still on CNN from two nights ago, when she was watching to see
if the governor’s speech would make the headlines (it didn’t), and it comes up in the middle of a news broadcast.
Gina’s about to flick over when she catches what the anchor is saying.
“… no further news, although
sources close to the President say that he is confident she will be returned safely to them. We cross now to our correspondent
in Washington for more on the President’s recent actions.”
Gina catches herself leaning so far forward
that she’s almost dripping Coke on her carpet and forces herself to lean back. There’s no way they can be talking
about what she thinks, just no way.
“Thank you.” The reporter smiles into the camera, the kind of faux-concerned
smile Gina’s used to seeing on briefing room TVs during snatched breaks in the middle of crises. It’s weird to
be watching it from her living room. “CJ Cregg, speaking moments ago from in front of the White House, announced that
the President has stood down for the duration of this crisis. As no Vice-President has yet been appointed in the wake of the
departure of Vice-President Hoynes -.”
Gina flicks the channel urgently. She doesn’t care who’s standing
in for the President, but he’s never done this, not even after the Newseum when *he* was shot. Her heart pounds with
fear.
The next five channels are all talking about the President standing down, and how there’s going to be a
Republican in the Oval Office for the duration of the crisis, but none of them have anything to say on what the crisis is.
Surely the temporary replacement of the President can’t really be more interesting than whatever prompted it.
She’s
just contemplating going for her phone to ring into work and find out exactly what’s going on when she flicks back to
CNN, where the studio anchor is just picking up the end of the field reporter’s comments.
“Our main headline
once more: it was announced this morning that the President’s youngest daughter, Zoey Bartlett, is missing, presumed
kidnapped, from a nightclub in Washington. A Secret Service agent was also killed…”
Gina can’t help
it – her first reaction is a gasp of relief. Not Ellie, thank God, not Ellie.
Then her throat tightens in fear
because it’s Zoey, and Zoey was her responsibility for over a year, as close to being her friend as she’s ever
allowed someone she was protecting to get and now she’s missing and someone’s dead, someone she probably knew
and worked with.
She can’t stop the voice in the back of her head *it could have been you, should have been you.
If you’d been there, maybe it wouldn’t have happened like this.* It’s unfair to think this, because God
knows, the President’s family get the best the Service has to protect them, but she went *everywhere* with Zoey, never
even let her out of her sight to go to the bathroom in public.
She flicks the TV off again and downs the rest of her
Coke fast enough for it to hurt. Back in her bedroom, her phone is flashing again, another voicemail from Alex. Probably not
trying to persuade her to go out. She ignores it, pulling her suit and a dark green shirt from her wardrobe, reaching for
a hair tie and her boots. She smoothes on a little make-up with even less care than usual, and dials Alex’s number as
she goes through the apartment, picking up keys and ID, unlocking her gun from the wall safe.
Alex finally picks up
as she’s shoving her wallet into her pocket and grabbing a bottle of water to drink in the car.
“Where’ve
you been?” Alex demands. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day.”
“Sorry, I was
sleeping, I didn’t… What happened?”
“Where are you?” Alex asks, instead of answering,
and Gina wishes, just for a second, that she had the kind of job where every conversation didn’t have to be conducted
over a secure phone line.
“On my cell, heading out.”
“OK. I’m at the office, we’ll
talk when you get here.” Alex hangs up on her, and Gina concentrates on not breaking any speed limits as she cuts through
the start of the rush hour and the pouring rain.
Their offices, when she gets there, are almost an anti-climax. The
air buzzes with tension, and there’s way more agents there than normal, but nothing’s *happening*, just a lot
of standing around staring at the TV in the corner, and exchanging worried looks. Someone reaches for the remote when they
see her walk in.
Alex grabs her arm before she’s taken more than a few steps into the room and leads her right
out again, into the empty briefing room. “What’s going on?” she asks.
Alex’s face is grave,
her eyes dark with something oddly like pity that only grows as she tells Gina everything the news wasn’t saying, that
they think Zoey was drugged, that they’ve had demands for ransom, that agents are being mobilised in the hunt…
that a member of her detail was killed at the club.
“Who?” Gina asks, her voice scratchy. She clears her
throat, but suspects it won’t help.
Alex frowns. “Molly O’Connor. She was new, they found her body
in the alley behind the club.”
The name’s vaguely familiar, but Gina can’t put a face to it. She
knows she’ll be able to by the end of the day, a face she won’t ever forget. “OK. I should…”
“Should
what?” Alex asks. She moves closer to Gina. “There’s nothing for us to do. They’re investigating in
Washington, they don’t need us.”
She says us, but she means Gina. They’re investigating on the other
side of the country and there’s nothing she can do. “Sure. Of course.” She takes a deep breath and tries
a smile. She’s a United States Secret Service Agent, her hands shouldn’t be shaking like this.
Alex gives
her a tiny smile in return, her eyes far too knowing. She hasn’t told anyone why she’s here now, and not in Washington,
but the Service isn’t so big that gossip doesn’t spread. “Listen, I’ve got about an hour more to do
here, why don’t you hang around and we’ll go for a drink?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Alex
goes back into the office, and Gina flicks on the TV, turning it to CNN. She’s kind of got used to their anchors by
now, though they’re not saying anything new.
When they go back for a political update, she mutes the sound and
pulls her phone out, scrolling through the phonebook for familiar names. She hasn’t kept up with most of her old colleagues,
but they understand what it’s like to leave behind someone you worked with closely; if they know anything they’ll
tell her.
She stops, though, when she gets to Ellie’s name. She never deleted it, even though she should have
done, and Ellie’s probably got a new cell since then. It probably won’t even work.
She calls the number
onto the screen and stares at it. She could just call and… And what? Console her, after two years without any kind of
contact? She’ll be lucky if Ellie doesn’t hang up on her, and really, the middle of her sister’s kidnap
is hardly an ideal time to be getting in touch with her. She’ll be with her family, she won’t want to talk anyway.
For
a moment, her heart pounds in remembered fear, and she’d give anything to hear Ellie’s voice, even if it’s
just saying hello before she hangs up.
The door to the briefing room swings open and Jack steps in. “Gina? You
got a minute, there’s a call from the governor’s office for you.”
Gina flips her phone closed and
shoves it back into her pocket. “Sure.”
Maybe when Zoey’s back.
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