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He nods. I give a silent count and then burst into Henry’s living room, bellowing, “Secret Service!” as I move to the right and hug the wall. My flashlight darts from corner to corner, floor to ceiling.
Henry’s bookshelves are toppled, and his coffee table and two couches have been thrown into a corner. His dining table, a six-foot-long plate of glass, is shattered. The art he had—a mishmash of sultry women and dogs playing poker—lies in a pile, canvases torn, the frames snapped. His flat-screen has been ripped from the wall, and giant cracks spider-web the front.
“Clear on this level.” I pull open the curtains to let in the light.
Henry’s place is absolutely destroyed.
Sheridan’s eyes are as big as dinner plates. He still has his weapon drawn as he turns and tears up the stairs to the second floor.
“Sheridan!”
I run after him, but he’s got too much of a head start. He’s shoving open bedroom doors, running from room to room. It’s not clearing procedure. He’s panicked.
“Sheridan, merde, stop!”
When I catch up to him, he’s punching the doorframe of one of Henry’s guest bedrooms.
The room has been completely tossed. The single mattress has been torn from the bed frame, suits and ties ripped from the closet, and a laptop snapped in half and thrown on the carpet. Boxers, undershirts, and loose ammunition litter the floor.
“This your room?”
“Yes.” Sheridan kicks a pillow. It slams into the wall with a puff.
“Get out of here. You know better than this. Go downstairs. Clear the garage, and then take an inventory of what’s missing. Don’t touch anything. This is a crime scene.”
He curses and storms out, thunders down the stairs, and then stomps through the lower level. The garage door slams.
I peer at the remnants of Sheridan’s life. Who did this to Henry’s home and Sheridan’s bedroom? These are the actions of someone who was searching for something. What were they looking for?
Is there anything to find?
Bullets slide beneath my shoes. There’s practically nowhere I can step that isn’t covered. I turn in a circle, searching the corners and beneath the dresser and Sheridan’s broken bed frame. His room is almost sterile, like a dorm or a hotel room. There’s nothing that reveals Sheridan’s inner world. No books, no movies. No condoms, no porn mag he left open. Nothing. It’s too clean. Too bare. Almost artificial.
I strip his sheet, run my hands around his mattress—
The slit is on the far corner, near the bottom seam. It’s barely wide enough to poke my fingers in, but when I dig around, I run into a small square of plastic. And when I pull it out, I recognize it immediately.
It’s a memory card, the kind of portable storage device everyone uses in their phones, cameras, and laptops.
It’s also the kind of storage that has been explicitly banned by the White House. Memory cards have been the number one culprit behind America’s most devastating national security breaches.
Sheridan is not one of the five people authorized to carry one at the White House.
Maybe this is just personal. Maybe he keeps his porn on it and slides it into his tablet or laptop for his late-night entertainment. Maybe this is nothing.
Maybe it is something.
Sheridan has always been a Rubik’s Cube to me, and even when I think I’m lining up the colors on one side, I’m nowhere near solving the puzzle.
I close my fist around the memory card and slide it into my pocket.
There are more bullets beneath Sheridan’s bed. I have a lot of spare ammunition in my apartment, but this is like an armory’s warehouse has been upended onto his bedroom floor. I grab six like I’m playing jacks. Different weights, different types. Different sizes: 9 mm, .357 Magnum, .40…
Andthree .45 copper hollow-points.
All six bullets go into my pocket with the memory card.
Henry’s other guest bedroom is a home gym, and I search the spilled free weights and broken workout bench before moving on to Henry’s bedroom.
