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

be receiving their Judgment of Divorce. No one made comments to the press as originally planned, and Jane cleared out of the area to ensure she didn’t draw the ire of the new divorcée with her presence again if she happened to leave the way she came. Evidently Alex had given away everything to ensure that the fighting didn’t spill over into public view or last another day, and Bethany was now in possession of a prized baseball card collection worth over a million dollars.

Jane didn’t see the president depart either, but she felt a little stranded when he did and she was left staring out the window of a nearby cafe from the corner table with Dedan and Royer, both of whom were absorbed in their phones.

While she was sure countless people were working tirelessly to untangle the mystery of what happened on Air Force One, there were no big revelations that afternoon, and to get back to Washington Jane had no choice but to suck up the discomfort and board another plane, this one hopefully devoid of any explosive devices that could send it crashing into the countryside.

Despite how late it was, Jane had to go back to the office for her car, but getting her keys from her office turned into a bigger deal than it should’ve been when Chief Vale stepped into the room while she was shutting off her computer. The grim look in his eyes amid the shadows of the darkened hall chilled Jane. He had a habit of working late and working himself to the bone, but the way he was out of sorts was something else entirely.

“I’m glad you’re alright, Jane,” he said, and she forced a smile.

“We had a scare. No doubt about it. But the FBI will find out who did it,” she said.

Vale tipped his head down at the floor.

“They will, but the FBI aren’t the only ones who are taking an interest in this,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Vale gave a solemn sigh and stepped farther inside the office in order to close the door, not that anyone would be jaunting down the halls at this time of night to overhear them anyway. She noticed he had a letter folded up in his hand.

“I’m sorry to break the news to you, but you’re now under investigation by the Office of the Inspector General, who’ll be conducting a full audit of the Presidential Protective Division. Tomorrow morning you’ll be meeting with someone from that office to begin reviewing the procedures in place for the president’s detail to determine if they are sufficient or if they contributed to the near-miss that occurred earlier today.”

Jane stared with mouth agape. He didn’t need to spell it out for her that if the investigation didn’t go well she’d be tossed out on the street in disgrace. It had been a chaotic, long day, and she wasn’t thinking clearly. All that came to mind was what was already on her calendar.

“Tomorrow morning I’ve got a training ride…”

“Not anymore,” Vale said, doing her a favor by cutting her off. “This is going to take precedence over everything. Diwecki will be involved too, but I think we all understand that you’ve taken charge of the president’s detail and bear the responsibility for its performance.”

Gritting her teeth, Jane found more potent arguments coming to mind.

“But what happened today wasn’t a fault of the president’s detail, and certainly not a flaw in our staffing or management. The terminal at Joint Base Andrews is manned by the Transportation Security Administration. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s theirs!”

Vale had a dejected look on his face, his eyes straying to the side where Jane had a vintage Secret Service poster on the wall from the sixties.

“You can tell them all about that, and I hope they believe it, but the fact of the matter is a bomb made it within fifty feet of the president on the same aircraft. And we didn’t catch it. I don’t know what they’re going to say or do, but the Inspector General’s Office will make a determination about where lapses occurred and then there will be consequences based on that.”

Jane looked at him, reading between the lines, and for once he looked right back at her.

“You’re saying that if they say I made a mistake you’re going to fire me,” she said. Her chest rose and fell with each breath like she was running a race. Vale pursed his lips but no longer shied away.

“The mission isn’t about any of us individually. If they think you’re responsible and we let you stay on, that would appear like an invitation for something worse to happen. I hired you because I believe in you, and I still do, but sometimes our time can be up just because of which way the wind blows. We’ll already never trust TSA again to handle screening for Air Force One, and making that change suggests that something was done incorrectly before.”

Nodding, Jane tried to stay strong, but for once she was looking down the barrel of a challenge that no amount of pluck or perseverance might overcome.

9

Catocin Mountain Park

Hauvers, MD

By the time Saturday morning rolled around and Jane was at the end of the loop road with her bike waiting for the president to arrive, she’d been through two of the most arduous days of her life. The agents from the Inspector General’s office were going through everything she’d ever done, every email she’d written, and even things in her personal life that seemed to have no relevance at all to the bomb brought onto Air Force One.

It was almost like she was under suspicion for making the bomb in the first place. The worst part was that it seemed like they wanted to find something she did that they could call a mistake so that they could place the blame on her and move on. If the way the Secret Service always did things turned out to be incorrect,