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“And Hillary Clinton said words to the same effect when I called her yesterday from that gas station.”
“You called Hillary—”
“You may not understand why I’m doing this, but they certainly do.”
“Did you—did you call them for a reason?”
“I’m not irresponsible, despite what you think. I’ve called someone nearly every day so the White House knows I’m still alive. Now if you think you know more about national security than I do, maybe you’d better tell me about it.”
He had a long list of questions he wanted to ask about that very topic, starting with how she’d managed to escape the White House, but they’d have to wait until he’d straightened her out. “I’m not saying that you’re irresponsible. I’m just saying that I don’t want you going anywhere without me. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
“Maybe I’ll leave it. Don’t forget I have money, and I can go off on my own anytime I want.”
He gritted his teeth. “You’re not going any-damn-where by yourself!”
She smiled again, which nearly drove him wild. He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to reconcile this bratty lady in the khaki shorts and buttercup-yellow top with the cool, sophisticated First Lady.
He tried to regain lost ground. “Who sent you the money?”
At first he didn’t think she’d answer, but she shrugged. “Terry Ackerman.”
Ackerman had been the President’s chief advisor as well as Dennis Case’s oldest friend. No time to examine that relationship at the moment, so he filed the information away. “How do you know he hasn’t told the White House where he sent it?”
“Because I asked him not to.”
“And you trust him?”
“As much as I trust anybody.” He suspected that she meant her words to come off as flippant, but they sounded sad.
He could fight her when she was being haughty and unreasonable, but it was hard to fight sadness. His frustration boiled to the surface. “I don’t even know what to call you!”
“You’d better keep calling me Nell. Or maybe you’d rather call me Mrs. Case, and tip off all those extremists lurking in that cornfield over there?”
“This isn’t anything to joke about.”
“Just worry about yourself, all right? I’ll take care of me.”
As she bent over to pick up the groceries, he heard the squeal of brakes, the blast of a radio, and what sounded like an explosion.
He didn’t even think about it. He just threw himself at her.
They both flew through the air, away from the sidewalk, into the weeds. He heard a small “Oof” as the air rushed from her body.
“Don’t move!” He wanted a gun. He needed a gun!
A long silence, followed by a croaky gasp for air . . . “Mat?”
His heart was pounding so hard he knew she had to feel it.
And then he got an uneasy prickling along his spine. That explosion he’d heard . . . now that he could think again he realized it hadn’t sounded all that much like a gunshot.
It had sounded like a car backfiring.
14
RAIN PUMMELED THE Winnebago as they crawled across the flat Illinois landscape toward the Iowa border. Nealy gazed out at the fields of corn and soybeans, gray and lonesome under the dreary afternoon sky, and smiled to herself. It really had been valiant of Mat to try to protect her from that vicious backfire, and with the exception of a scrape on her shin, she wasn’t any the worse for wear.
A passing car tossed a rooster tail of water at the windshield. Mat flicked to another radio station for an update on her disappearance. Although he barely spoke to her, when he did, the awful formality had disappeared. And he hadn’t made any move to turn her in. This morning she’d believed her adventure was over, but now she wondered.
