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The flames of his attraction brush over me across our table.
Realization happens in a moment and passes just as quickly.
Sheridan heads to the bar for another round. I watch him go, seemingly alone in a sea of people, and after he orders, he drops his head. His shoulders slump. His eyes slide closed for three heartbeats before the bartender returns with our beers.
He’s back to smiles and irrepressible good humor by the time he’s returned to the table.
If I hadn’t spent the past few months waging my own war against my subconscious, battling my own attraction to Brennan, I wouldn’t understand.
But I do, now.
We down another round, talking about sports and traffic and the best places to grab a burger or a cheesesteak around the White House. Safe topics, neutral topics.
An hour later, I pay our tab, and we head back to the hotel. He’s tipsy and quiet, and I catch his eyes sliding sideways toward me in the reflections of taxicab windows and Duane Reade storefronts.
We’re back at our rooms before he speaks again. “Sir?”
Merde. “Yes, Sheridan?”
Nervousness rolls off him. “For a while now, I’ve wanted to tell you…” He swallows. Hesitates. “Thank you,” he blurts. “I never thought I’d be here, like this. I’d heard so much about you before we met at RTC, and getting to work with you now, and learn from you, is…” He laughs like he can’t believe he’s standing here with me, saying these words. “I have you to thank for everything. You gave me a chance. So… thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. You got yourself noticed by being damn good. You put in that work.”
“But—”
“Wait until we’re back in Washington before you tell me this is your dream come true. We’ve got a year’s worth of work and six days to do it. Sleep well tonight, because it’s the last time you’re going to get more than three hours horizontal until this is all over.”
There’s still heat in his eyes, and his gaze burns me as we stand in the hallway staring at each other. His pupils are obsidian pools.
Finally, he nods, says, “Goodnight, sir,” and slides his keycard into his door.
“Goodnight, Sheridan.”
* * *
Six days fly by.
Sheridan and I work our asses off. There are no more nights out, no more shared beers, and no more ignited stares and accidentally revealed attractions.
When Air Force One lands, I send Sheridan to join Henry as they bring Brennan to the hotel.
Getting the president in and out of Manhattan is a Faustian bargain with physics. It doesn’t matter how well you control the streets and intersections, there’s always going to be a diversion, or a crash, or a detour. Helipads have fallen out of favor in the past three decades, and where it used to be easy to fly the president from LaGuardia to any place in Midtown, now we’re stuck with our mile-long motorcade and an aneurysm whenever we move the president around the city.
The presidential party descends in a frenzy, groups of twenty spitting out of the hotel’s elevators on each floor, clutching their cell phones and garment bags and arguing about what restaurant to go to. They have the pick of the city, but Brennan will be heading to the UN’s rooftop bar for the welcome reception.
I’m rooted in the command center, one of the hotel rooms we’ve taken over. All the room’s furniture is gone, and rows of folding tables covered with laptops fill the space. Agents monitor a hundred intercept feeds across the spectrums. The lighting is dim, a blue glow that gives all of us a pasty hue.
Front and center on our surveillance monitors is Brennan.
His arrival is organized chaos, a thousand moving pieces with no room for error, but my people move Brennan from the motorcade to the elevator and into his suite in under a minute.
He’s usually a perfect blend of Left Coast casual and presidential authority. Running leggings and a T-shirt. Jeans and a Henley. Effortlessly sensual suits neatly molded around his body. He carries the office of the presidency and the power he holds with a serene strength that comes from a stoic confidence built into his being. He’s as sure of his principles as he is of breathing, and it’s so damn attractive.
That is not the man I see on the monitors.
He slumps in the elevator, leaning against the back wall and crossing his arms as he stares at the floor. The line of his shoulders is broken, and the steel in his spine seems to have vanished. He sighs, scrubbing his hands over his face. Dark circles smudge the skin beneath his eyes, and there are hollows under his cheekbones.
I escape to the motorcade. We’ve pulled up the secondary fleet while the primary refuels and resets after making the airport run. Fifteen SUVs idle in front of the hotel, with thirty NYPD motorcycle cops loitering on either end of our vehicles to push back traffic and the flood of humanity. The whole street is blocked off. There are supporters and protesters beyond the barricades with signs both for and against Brennan.
