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ChapterSeven
Brennan
Then
I’ve kept my secret for over twenty years, but after six weeks at the White House, I might be about to blow everything. Tear my carefully constructed image apart and burn it to the ground.
I’m the president, but the White House doesn’t feel like home. The West Wing belongs to the staff who bring my administration to life, and to the people who keep our government churning, and to—
Reese is everywhere. He’s in the hallways checking on his agents. He’s striding across the West Wing basement, badging me into the Situation Room. He’s grabbing coffee from the mess, or checking in with Matt about my schedule, or we’re crossing through the hallways at the same time, always frustratingly out of reach.
He’s in the Oval Office once a week. Every Wednesday, he delivers a Secret Service brief to start off my day. Fifteen minutes with Reese, one-on-one. Just him and me in that huge, empty office, the ticktock of the grandfather clock pressing in on us.
There’s a charge in the air when we’re together, a crackling expectancy, almost an urgency. Unspoken words clutter my mind. At the same time, there’s distance that wasn’t there when we joked on the elevator down to the bunker. We’d shared smiles that night, and he’d welcomed me home. He was the first to say that to me about the White House.
Now, something is coiling between us.
Every time Reese crosses my path, I’m a little more on edge. My mind is a churning ocean, my thoughts the roar of the surf, pounding on the beach that holds my buried secrets.
Why him? Why, after all these years of discipline, is this the man who makes me dream, and ache, and hunger again?
I barely know him. Certainly not well enough to risk everything.
But something is pressurizing those moments where we come together, where our worlds brush and merge and then part. We’re like gases ready to combust, waiting for a spark.
This is the last, the absolute last thing I should be thinking about. The desolate reality of my love life is inconsequential, and my wonderings about the occasional hitch in Reese’s breath, the slide of his eyes to mine when he thinks I don’t notice, are going nowhere.
Nothing is going to happen.
My fingers tap the edge of my desk on board Air Force One. We’re twenty minutes out of DC, a little over an hour from landing in Ottawa. It’s my first international trip since the inauguration. I’m strengthening a long-standing alliance and starting down the path I promised during the election.
The fires of war are threatening to engulf the world again. Several years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine, seizing it in a brutal stranglehold. Their military razed entire cities, wiped towns and villages from the earth, destroyed Ukraine’s fields and factories. Millions of refugees poured out of the country, and millions more continue to struggle under Russian occupation.
We don’t have a full count of how many lives have been lost. Famine, disease, and unending war now rock Ukraine in a humanitarian catastrophe that’s only growing worse.
Now, Russia is making new threats. A conflagration could break out at any moment. The world is on edge and turns to America.
What is foreign policy if not a series of promises? We combine hope and action and believe we can make a difference by showing up, by being there, by holding out a helping hand.
We don’t always get it right. My own life has been scarred by American overreach, and there’s a hole in my existence where a person should be but isn’t.
If America is better, though, what we can achieve in the world will be better. Good works start close to home and grow from there. Strength is best measured against kindness.
What good are American principles if we abandon them? Do democracies stand together, or do we fall separately? Can a single dictator intimidate the world into allowing tragedy to continue?
What is the best response, when every action ratchets this crisis tighter and tighter?
I pace and debate myself, arguing in circles.
Between pondering a looming world war and an attraction that is bringing my psyche to its knees, I’m stranded in a bleak mental moonscape.
My thoughts slide back to Reese.
He’s on board. Right now.
He was part of the welcoming committee when I came up the steps. Reese, Henry, the pilots and copilot, my chief steward, and my chief of staff. I’d held his handshake longer than I should have.
“Agent Theriot, always a pleasure to see you.”
