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6
As a metallic blueToyota Camry was still embedded in the armor of her SUV’s passenger door, Clarissa was unsure how she’d come to be standing in the middle of the intersection of North Capitol and E Streets Northwest.
But she was.
The pale blue rayon of her Victoria Beckham dress was wilting in the heat, DC was headed for a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend. And the heat of the fire reached her a half block away with all the timidity of a sledgehammer.
She stood like any other gawker, staring up at the fiery wreckage of the George. A few laggard guests stumbled out the front door. People who had crawled out of wrecked cars stood or sat on the pavement looking upward at the burning brick building. Other cars, ones that had been too close to the falling debris, no one would ever crawl out of again.
Clarissa could see people screaming, but a strange deafness had come over her and she didn’t hear them.
Police, then fire trucks, began racing onto the scene. Each flash of their strobe lights were an affront against her senses, but their sirens were no louder than a neighbor’s television.
Yet it seemed she could hear every snap and crackle of the fire tearing through the remains of the eighth floor. The roof collapsed with more of a sigh than a crash, disappearing into the flames. It did so with enough force to drive parts of the eighth floor into the seventh, which began to burn in its turn.
Between one eyeblink and the next, she was standing in a sea of emergency vehicles. Ambulances, fire trucks, and police had filled the street and the intersection.
Barriers were being raised.
When an overenthusiastic cop tried to move her along, she flashed her ID. Apparently being the Director of the CIA still had power, no matter what the House Intelligence Committee thought. She was left to stand where she was.
Another eyeblink and she stood alone in a small island of relative calm among a nest of gray-white firehoses snaking across the pavement like a badly woven basket.
Her driver moved in to help evacuate the dazed and injured. When a fresh explosion blew out a section of the sixth floor, he was under the debris fall. She managed a step, but even at this distance, she could see it was too late for him and stopped.
Beyond the new collapse, the fire had spread. The Hilton had caught fire as well. Flames now towered ten, now twenty stories over the entire city block.
Due to a slight rise in the street, it was impossible to see the White House, which lay a mile and a half farther along 2nd Street. Had they sent the jet?
Or…
Clarissa turned to face the Capitol Building to the south.
…them?
The fire was now so bright that it lit the night-darkened dome a blood red that the normal nighttime floodlights couldn’t wash away.
Had this attack been ordered from within those hallowed halls?
It was ludicrous that they would do any such thing, but she rubbed at her forehead to try and remove the feeling of a sniper targeting her there.
Who else had known of her monthly meetings at the George? Were they trying to takeherout? It wasn’t President Roy Cole’s style, but she wouldn’t put it past the members of the House Intelligence Committee who squatted beneath their cherished dome. No matter how irrational, itfeltpossible.
If she was dead, their secrets would be safe—or so they thought. She’d made a go-public-on-my-death package that would perpetrate a devastating postmortem judgment upon the committee and several others. If she went down, it wouldn’t be alone.
It had taken all of her willpower in today’s meetings not to mention that. But it was a threat of last resort and she hadn’t yet been pushed to the edge of survival. Or so she’d thought at the time.
But…no, it wasn’t their style either. It would require initiative, a realm none of those partisan saps could muster in their mistresses’ beds, never mind the political arena.
No, it wasn’t them.
A shout went up and she turned back in time to see the collapse as the interior floors of the historic George folded in and down. The brick shell wavered, but mostly held. No one else would ever be exiting the building except in a body bag. The neighboring Phoenix Park Hotel was now also engulfed, repeating the scenario along the block as more firetrucks arrived.
Maybe it was merely coincidence that Senator Hunter Ramson’s suite had been taken out by the crash.
And…she was blowing smoke up her own ass if she was thinking that.
Being the D/CIA meant she had a far greater sense of paranoia than most. However, it also meant that her deep knowledge of domestic and international politics provided significant credence to that paranoia. Perhaps it didn’t classify as paranoia—she knew for afactthat much of it was based in reality.
With Clark dead and the White House slipped from her grasp, was she actually a major threat to anyone who would care? There was a depressing thought.
Her remaining power was…the great unknown. She had needed—
“Clarissa?”
The ghost of Rose Ramson stood in front of her, speaking her name.
