Long May She Reign

  Susan started to say something, but then nodded.

  Preaching to the converted, possibly.

  Meg looked at her bulletproof—but definitely not, say, RPG-proof—window shade. “I’m trying to decide whether my going back home early negates the threat, or just means that I’m—” relatively— “safe, and the rest of you are still in the thick of it.”

  Susan frowned. “What do you think?”

  She had no god-damn idea what she thought. “I don’t know,” Meg said. “But no matter what they say to try and make me leave, if I’m up here, security precautions are going to be a lot higher than if I’m not.”

  “But, if you’re here, anyone who wants to pull something is going to be that much more motivated to try,” Susan said.

  Yep. Conundrum. So, which one was the lesser evil? Meg shrugged. “Better email my philosophy professor, see where he comes down on this.”

  “It’s a strategy,” Susan said, after a moment.

  A weak one, as strategies went. Meg resisted the urge to duck back against the wall—and as far away from the window as possible. “The bomb threats could be misdirection. You know, talk about explosives, and then, when they’re focused on that, climb up in a tree somewhere, or on top of a building, with a sniper’s scope and shoot me.”

  “More than one damn plane,” Susan said.

  Yeah. Words it would be nice not to live by.

  Be nice, also, if someone could explain to her why people she had never met would have any interest whatsoever in harming her.

  The coffee was just too lousy to drink, even by her very low standards, and Meg set it aside. “If I take off today, as though I’m in a panic, and there’s an intentional media splash about it to get the word out that I’m back in Washington and not limping around here, to try and prevent anything from happening, it’s a major capitulation.”

  Susan moved her jaw. “Sounds better than a dorm full of dead and maimed freshmen.”

  Oh, and she wanted that to happen? Meg scowled at her. “Susan, I’m always dangerous to be around—this time, they just happened to get some potential warning, first.”

  Susan nodded, and looked unsure of herself again. “What do your, um, parents want you to do?”

  Drop everything, grab a few valuables, and be whisked off to the airport. “They’re trying to balance competing interests,” Meg said. At least, one of them was.

  “What’s that mean?” Susan asked.

  “They don’t want me to get killed, but they don’t want to flip out prematurely, either, in case it’s only another hoax,” Meg said.

  Susan nodded, then folded her arms and slouched over them.

  “Care for a specialty coffee?” Meg asked.

  Susan shook her head.

  Right.

  “Do you have any midterms today?” Meg asked.

  Susan didn’t answer, but did maybe sneak a peek at her watch.

  “So, don’t be dumb, go to your midterm,” Meg said. “I’m just going to be sitting around, waiting for Mr. Gabler.”

  Susan made no move whatsoever to get up. “No, I think I’d rather hang out here.”

  How very predictable. Duty, first. “That’s really nice of you,” Meg said, “but I’m fine. I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Susan shrugged. “I’ll still stay and keep you company for a while.”

  She had learned the hard way that trying to argue with Susan McAllister was generally nothing more than a waste of breath. So, Meg motioned towards the hall, and the unseen, but extensive, swarm of agents and police officers beyond. “Do you think people will figure it out?”

  Susan sighed, running her hand across her forehead and then back through her hair, indicating that Meg wasn’t the only one who currently had a terrible headache. “We’re on a campus full of a statistically improbable percentage of former valedictorians. Odds are, there are a number of people around who are capable of making intuitive leaps.”

  “‘Yes’ would have been an okay answer, too,” Meg said.

  Susan’s smile was minuscule, but it was there.

  Meg couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Susan seemed to be deep in thought, so they spent the next few minutes in complete silence, Meg wishing that she could employ her usual tension-relieving trick of turning on CNN or C-Span.

  “Leaving today would be a capitulation,” Susan said, out of nowhere. “I mean, it would pretty much make a mockery out of—” She gestured towards Meg’s hand.

  Yeah.

  It was quiet.

  “Sucks to be you, doesn’t it,” Susan said.

  That one caught her off-guard, and Meg laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes, it does.”

  * * *

  MR. GABLER APPEARED ABOUT twenty minutes later, and Susan seemed to stay around just long enough to decide that everything was under competent control before she glanced at her watch, and hurried off without another word.

  Mr. Gabler watched her go, looking a trifle anxious.

  “You know she’s not going to tell anyone, sir,” Meg said, finding it rather irritating to have to point out the obvious.

  “Of course not,” Mr. Gabler said, although he looked less certain than he sounded.

  Her phone rang, but it wasn’t the drop-line, or even the medium-secure line, which meant that there was no pressing need to answer it. She could see from the caller ID that it was an unfamiliar cell phone number, anyway, so there was a good chance that it was a reporter, or some other unwelcome stranger.

  On the other hand, it could also be a direct terrorist threat, and maybe shouldn’t be ignored.

  “Should I pick that up?” she asked.

  Mr. Gabler shook his head firmly. “They’re monitoring that line downstairs, for the time being. For now, we’re prefer that you didn’t take any calls at all, except on the drop-line.”

  That made sense—except it also raised a troubling question. “Do they listen in on my calls?” Meg asked. “Routinely?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “We keep a log of the numbers on your incoming calls, but, no, of course we don’t, Meg.”

  Maybe. “Do you read my emails?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  Maybe. But she was sure as hell going to check with her mother, and find out for sure.

  And be even more careful than usual about trying never to say, or put in writing, anything which could come back to haunt her.

  She had already missed psychology—and handing in her lab report, but she could still make it to the last half hour or so of her Shakespeare class, if she left right away. They were having their review for the midterm, and not being there was likely to have a significant, and negative, effect on her grade. Mr. Gabler nodded carefully when she asked if she could go, and while Garth and the other agents who accompanied her were hyperalert, she noticed that they seemed less tense than they had earlier—possibly because if anything went wrong, the buck now stopped with Mr. Gabler, not any of them.

  Instead of their normal room, the class had been moved over to a different room, in another building entirely. When she opened the door, everyone stared at her, and she apologized for being late, then limped over to a seat in the corner, away from the windows.

  When the class was over, and everyone was filing out, someone touched her on the arm, and—to her great embarrassment—she jumped about a foot and a half.

  “Uh, sorry,” the person said. Jill Something-or-other. A sophomore from Minnesota or someplace like that who seemed friendly enough, although they had never really spoken before.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Meg said quickly. “I just—” Panicked.

  Anyway.

  “Want the notes from the first half of class?” Jill asked. “We can stop by the library and Xerox them.”

  Was she allowed to go to the library? She glanced at Garth, who nodded. “Okay,” Meg said. “Thanks.” But, should she let this perfectly nice stranger walk right next to her? “Maybe, um, I should meet you over there.”
/>
  Jill looked at her agents, too. “They let you leave the dorm, so how much worse can the library be than Griffin?”

  So much for trying to keep everything quiet. “Did Professor Heidler tell everyone?” Meg asked. Since, she assumed, her professor would have been briefed, given the need to switch buildings at the last minute.

  Jill shook her head. “The campus is crawling with security, and we got moved, and you didn’t show up for the review. That’s not really hard to put together.”

  Probably not. But, still. “Were you valedictorian at your high school?” Meg asked, out of genuine curiosity.

  Jill looked surprised—and suspicious. “Yeah. Why?”

  Score one for Susan. Meg grinned. “My JA said there were too many valedictorians around here for people not to be able to make intuitive leaps.”

  Jill grinned, too. “Susan, not Dirk, right?”

  Now, it was Meg’s turn to be suspicious. “You know who my JAs are?”

  “It’s a pretty small school,” Jill said, frowning at her. “And that sounds like something Susan would say.”

  Hmmm. Maybe the two of them were friends, then. “Did she call ahead and tell you to keep an eye on me?” Meg asked.

  “No,” Jill said, and laughed. “But, I bet she would have, if she’d thought of it.”

  No doubt.

  They were already halfway over to the library, and nothing seemed to be amiss, except that too many of the undercover people in jeans and sweatshirts looked much too old to be college students. She was able to copy the notes, without any violent incidents, during the approximately two minutes this process took. Then, she headed back to the dorm alone.

  Jack was sitting on one of the picnic tables in the quad, and he got up when he saw her. “You blew off psych.”

  Perhaps not a valedictorian.

  “You’re not mad at me or anything,” he said, “are you?”

  Absolutely not a valedictorian. “Did psych meet somewhere else today?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah, didn’t you see the sign on the door? They put us over in the dining hall at Greylock, because I guess they found what they thought might be asbestos, or something at Bronfman.”

  Not a bad cover story. “Did they keep you from going into the dorm?” she asked, motioning over her shoulder with her cane.

  Jack nodded, looking hurt. “Yeah. Like, I don’t know, you left orders, maybe.”

  As far as she could remember, the day really had started off well. Seemed like months ago. “So, our class got moved, I didn’t show up, even though it was important for me to be there and I also probably wanted to see you, and now, it seems like my dorm is pretty much locked down.” She paused. “Wouldn’t it be weird if all of that was—connected?”

  He processed that, then winced.

  And, on further reflection, she felt like wincing, too, since he really hadn’t done anything at all to deserve her being quite that bitchy.

  “You all right?” he asked finally.

  She shrugged. “So far.” Other than maybe being a little more scared than she felt like telling anyone.

  Or maybe a lot more.

  “We allowed to go up to your room?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You want to?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  32

  THERE WERE TOO many people around—and too strong a likelihood that one or both of her parents might call at any moment—for them to relax enough to do anything more than some low-key fooling around and curling up together on the bed, but it was good to have him there, regardless.

  After a while, there was a knock on the door.

  “We’re studying very hard,” she said.

  Jack nodded, rolled to his feet, sat down at her desk, and opened a book. An utterly non-academic mystery, actually, but what the hell.

  She opened the door to see Mr. Gabler.

  “I wanted to let you know that the FBI has just made three arrests,” he said.

  She was so relieved that, for a second, her good leg felt as though it might collapse underneath her, and she had to lean as much weight as possible on her cane to keep herself steady.

  At the desk, Jack turned to listen.

  “Do you think you got them all?” she asked.

  Mr. Gabler nodded.

  It was going to be scary if he told her they had been captured right downstairs, attempting to storm the building. “Who are they?” she asked.

  Mr. Gabler let out his breath. “Three tenth graders in Nebraska.”

  What? Meg stared at him.

  Mr. Gabler nodded. “I know. That’s almost exactly the way I feel about it, Meg.”

  Tenth graders. Jesus. Meg leaned back against the bureau, closing her eyes for a second. Then, she opened them. “Were they a genuine threat?”

  He shook his head. “I gather they thought it would be funny.”

  They were mistaken. “Are they just little creeps, or are they incipient monsters?” she asked.

  “I suspect they are primarily the former, but we fully intend to treat them like the latter,” he said.

  Good. “How’s the First Gentleman taking it?” she asked.

  Mr. Gabler paused. “I am very pleased to be spending the day in Massachusetts, Meg.”

  If that was the case, maybe she was, too.

  After telling her that her security was going to remain somewhat elevated until she got back to Washington, but that she was otherwise free to go about her usual business, Mr. Gabler gave Jack a nod and left.

  As she closed the door, Jack dropped the mystery and came over to rest his hands on either side of her waist.

  “I’m glad they got them,” he said.

  She nodded, feeling unaccountably tired. “When you were in tenth grade, would you have thought that chemical bombs were funny?”

  Jack shook his head. “I was a jerk, but not that much of a jerk.”

  She would have guessed as much, but it was still the right answer. She looked at his hands, and then up at his face. “I kind of have the feeling that your reputation for being a jerk is a little inflated.”

  He shrugged. “Got me on a good day, that’s all.”

  Maybe.

  He pulled her towards him. “If they’re not going to come back up here anytime soon, maybe we should—”

  She shook her head. “No, because the phone’s about to—”

  The drop-line rang.

  It was, of course, her parents, on conference call, and they said encouraging, reassuring things to her, while she said confident, lighthearted things in return—and as far as she was concerned, all of their performances were unconvincing. Her father did suggest that she consider coming home early, anyway, a request which she deflected without giving him an answer.

  Jack kept his distance during the conversation, glancing at the door every so often as though he thought he should probably leave.

  “They’re my parents,” she said, when she hung up. “We, you know, talk to each other. It’s not that big a deal.”

  Jack nodded, not meeting her eyes.

  She had been convinced that who she was didn’t matter to him—but, it wouldn’t be the first time she had been wrong. “You know, technically, if you’re in a room when the President is speaking to someone, you’re supposed to stand at attention,” she said.

  His eyes widened, and he actually straightened up.

  Christ. “Too late,” she said, picked up the drop-line, and asked to be connected to Mr. Fielding, to try and get a feel for what was really going on, as far as her parents were concerned.

  The new director of communications told her that he was currently hiding under his desk with a blanket over his head, waiting for the wrath that was Hurricane Russell either to pass, or to burn itself out. He also said that, to the best of his knowledge, the President was hiding underneath her desk, too, although in lieu of a blanket, she had brought a briefing book along with her.

  Which gave her a very clear picture of the sce
ne at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With luck, Steven was off at baseball practice, and Neal, being Neal, would probably just shrug and go play on his computer for the rest of the afternoon.

  “You’re all right, though?” Preston asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “But, god-damn tenth graders.”

  He sighed. “I know. Not too many things out there nastier than teenaged boys, unfortunately.”

  “Speaking from personal experience?” she asked.

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “Beatrice Fielding insisted upon utter sweetness at all times.”

  Right.

  “Our friend Ms. Goldman has been sniffing around all day,” he said.

  Well, no one had ever accused her of not being an aggressive reporter.

  “Promise me you won’t give her anything,” he said, “okay?”

  “No, Hannah, I can neither confirm nor deny,” she said.

  “How about you just refer her to me, or to Maureen and Anthony,” he suggested.

  That might be a serviceable plan, too. Anthony was her father’s new press secretary—in his mid-twenties, openly and happily gay, and known to be terribly witty and blasé under stress, two character traits which were likely to come in handy in his line of work.

  Today, for instance.

  When she’d hung up, she and Jack stood there.

  “It’s weird, Meg,” he said finally. “I’m not going to get used to it overnight.”

  She wanted to snap at him, but that wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “What, the other people you’ve dated weren’t the targets of chemical bomb hoaxes here and there?”

  “When they were, they were smart enough to be a little shook up by it,” he said quietly.

  Oh, so now he was mad at her, for not running around screaming? But, she shrugged.

  “Well,” he said, and looked at her clock radio. “I should probably take off.”

  Probably.

  She let him get as far as the door before she relented. “Jack.”

  He stopped.

  “This is a stupid reason to have a fight,” she said.

  He nodded.

  But, they were going to have one, anyway?