Her Secret Service (Jane Roe 1) by Jason Letts (sites to read books for free TXT) 📗

Pausing briefly, she noticed that the journalists in attendance were acting with particular fervor today, most likely because of the salacious nature of the news.

The press secretary was going to have a tough day on her hands. Time would tell whether Jane’s would be better or worse.

From there she strolled along the hallways toward the West Wing, relishing that she was a few minutes early and could take her time. The Cabinet Room and the Roosevelt Room appeared vacant for the time being. Jane passed a member of the military, a surly general, who must’ve just departed from a meeting with the president, as she approached her destination.

The president’s personal secretary, Ally Wilde, was an older lady with glasses and white hair. She appeared deep in thought as she was seated at her desk next to her glowing computer screen. This was the person who Jane had the most contact with in the president’s office, as they reviewed additions to the president’s personal and public schedules on a daily basis.

But one of the latest new additions had thrown her for a loop and was going to require a more thorough examination of the details.

As Jane stepped into the secretary’s room, her eyes drifted to the door a short distance away from the desk leading to the Oval Office, where no doubt the president was this very moment. The cream-painted wall between them seemed so present. While working at her job, Jane grew to learn that this side of the wall was where she belonged. Behind the scenes, out of sight, invisibly working as hard as she could so that she would never need to be noticed, because if she were that would mean that something had gone wrong.

“Hi Ally, thanks so much for meeting with me,” Jane said, snapping the secretary out of her thoughts.

“Of course.”

“I just have a few questions for you that I thought better to handle in person. I need to make sure I have the details right and the entry was pretty sparse,” Jane said, taking a seat that was by the side of the desk out of the walking lane and pulling a notepad and pen out of her pocket.

Right around when she started speaking, the president’s Chief of Staff, Arundhati Singh, stepped in and began looking through a binder she pulled from a shelf. Jane smiled faintly as she noticed her in the room. Singh was more on the heavyset side with hair dark as night flowing down her back.

“Alright,” Ally said, sounding a little miffed. She had moments when she could be touchy. “Which one are you talking about?”

Jane produced a grin that she hoped would put the secretary at ease. This wasn’t meant as any kind of criticism of her data entry skills.

“It looks like the president intends to take two hours of personal time on Saturday mornings, and the reason you put is bike riding. What kind of bike riding are we talking about here? Where does he intend to do this?” Jane asked as Ally blinked rapidly.

“I’m afraid I’m not sure. He just said he wants to start getting out on his bike in the mornings on the weekend when the weather warms up,” she said.

Jane giggled as though they were playing a game of cat and mouse with the information she needed.

“That’s great, but two hours suggests a substantial amount of time to be on a bike. If he wants to joyride through the streets of D.C. every weekend, that’s going to present some fairly significant security challenges, not to mention a lot of disruption for people in the city. Here, let me try a more basic question. How fast does he go?”

The distasteful look on Ally’s face grew. She was a professional and nothing was personal between them, but Jane had learned in the two months that she’d been on the job that being asked questions she didn’t know the answer to was something she didn’t like. Jane didn’t suppose she could blame her too much. As for herself, Jane despised not knowing things. It would mean she wasn’t doing her job well enough, and Ally very well could’ve felt the same way.

The secretary grimaced and leaned to the side.

“Arundhati, do you have any idea about the plan for this biking?” she asked the chief of staff, who was still looming on the other side of the room. She jerked back at them as though she’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. And for all intents and purposes, she should’ve been. Bothering someone in the administration’s senior staff wasn’t necessary, Jane thought.

“Oh, I’m sure I can find out from someone else,” Jane said, her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “We’ve had to deal with our share of joggers and runners, but cycling is different. Higher speed, greater risk of injury, you know.”

Although Singh was gazing at Jane with a funny smirk on her face, she seemed to completely ignore her attempts to deflect the issue from taking up her attention.

“No, I’m not sure. All I know is he’s big into it. We’d better ask him directly,” she said, setting the binder back on the shelf and walking to that ominous door leading to the Oval Office. “Come on.”

Jane’s eyes widened and her heart started beating like she’d been on a bike for two hours.

“No, I really don’t think…” she said, but her legs lifted her out of her seat of their own accord, and Singh nudged her toward the door.

Jane clasped the knob and pushed open the door, and suddenly a gap appeared in the wall separating those who were behind the scene and those in the scene. The chief of staff had to literally push her through it, her hand firm on the back of her suit jacket as she resisted entering the glowing, dazzling space.

She’d managed to spend an entire two years of her job without entering this room, long enough to almost take pride in it, but this new administration obviously had a different policy when it came