Page 56 of Enemy Within

And then:

“Irwin. Lawrence. Okay. So… he’s probably on a mission, then. Black bag. Compartmentalized.” He squinted at Scott. “Right?”

“I guessed the same.”

Lawrence Irwin. President Spiers’s deceased chief of staff. The same man who had called Welby that night and ordered him to arrest Leslie Spiers and bring the president down to the basement, to him. Irwin had been the one to discover her true identity. He’d investigated, tracked down her claims. He used a source, he’d said. Boots on the ground that had found the lab she’d been grown in. The base from which Madigan had trained her.

Boots on the ground. Ethan disappearing with Irwin, days before the truth about what she was came out.

It would be just like Ethan to throw himself into a mission, after heartbreak. He’d do anything for the president, absolutely anything. Even go to the ends of the earth, trying to find out if Spiers’s back-from-the-dead wife was telling the truth.

If he could just talk to Irwin, he’d get everything. Where Ethan had gone, where Madigan’s base had been. What happened, after finding the lab. But Irwin was six feet underground, buried days ago after giving his life to protect the president in the blast at Langley.

His sacrifice had been for nothing, in the end. President Spiers was still never waking up again. As good as dead. Already, people spoke about him in the past tense. Used phrases likesuccessful assassination attemptandformer president.

Levi’s words came back to him, a vicious slap that smacked up the back of his head:Scott’s with Ethan.

But, if Ethan wasn’t secluded in mourning, and if he’d been on a black mission for Irwin somewhere in the world, then where,actually, was he? And where was Scott?

He watched the last moments of the video play again: Scott handing the president Ethan’s cell phone in grainy slow motion.

PETE EXPECTED IT WHEN Jennifer and Jason showed up at his office later that morning.

News of his scuffle with Levi had made the rounds. Never underestimate the White House gossip factory. If you neededeveryoneto know something, fucking lightning fast, just drop word in the West Wing. Even with the reduced staff that they had, the ultra-tight security after Leslie, and after Jack—

No. Don’t say it. Don’t think it.

Damn it, in this den of loose lips, how could he not find what he was looking for?

What if there was nothing to find? What if Jack really was…gone? Ethan, too?

Pete sat slumped at his desk, his head buried in his hands, when soft knocks sounded on his door.

“Go away,” he groaned into his palms.

“No. Not this time.” Jennifer slipped into his office, her sundress swishing around her knees. “Pete…Please. Let us in. Let us help you.”

He sat back, scowling. He wouldn’t meet her gaze.

Jason hovered at the door, biting his lip. “Pete. What’s going on? You’re fighting with the Secret Service?”

He threw himself back in his chair, huffing, and gripped the armrests. His hands shook. “They’re hiding something!”

“They’re not hiding anything!” Jennifer perched on the edge of his desk and reached for his hands. “Pete, they’renot. At least, not what you think. It’s just the attack. Everyone’s locking down. This is the White House. You know how it is. This is a crazy time.”

He stared at her.

“Pete, everyone’s on edge. We’re practically at war. And you’re running around throwing Secret Service agents into the wall?” She bit her lip and shook her head. “You’re going to lose your job. Or worse. Do youwantto be thrown in jail?”

“They need you in the press room. Dillon, he’s being eaten alive.” Jason sighed, slouching against the doorframe and crossing his arms. Dillon was Pete’s deputy, a young Ph.D. student working his first job out of grad school. He was supposed to cut his teeth beneath Pete, but instead, he was stammering through updates as the world waited to see when war would break out over the North Pole and when the Russians would knock down their northern border. When missiles would fall on American cities. “We need you, Pete. We need you back.”

Jennifer reached for him, resting one hand on his cheek. She turned his head until he had no choice but to look up at her. “We all miss them. Both of them. We’re all in mourning.” A tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. “But we have to keep going. For them.”

He closed his eyes. Leaned into her hand, her touch. Swallowed. “Thiscan’tbe real,” he breathed. “It can’t be happening. Theycan’tbe gone.”

She tried to smile, tried to give him some kind of comfort, but it was tight and strained, and her cheeks were wet with tears. “I wish it weren’t.”

What if there was nothing to find because there was nothing to hide? Was he one of those conspiracy theorists ranting and raving about the government always keeping secrets? Had he turned into one of those shaggy-haired guys, always muttering about secrets and subterfuge and glaring at shadows? Waiting for black helicopters to hover over his house?