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CHAPTER ONE

THE ROOSEVELTS

Blane basks in the morning sun, his skateboard clack-clack-clack ing on the campus sidewalk. He marvels at the palm trees and pretty classmates stretched out on towels in the grass, wearing bikinis and pretending to study. He’s attended Santa Clara University for only a few months and already decided that he’s never leaving California. His hometown, Washington, D.C., with its swampy weather, its status and power infatuation, its boring old marble buildings, has nothing on Cali.

He juts his cruiser to a stop and kicks the back so it flies up and into his grip, a move he’s been working on since drop-off day. There’s a crowd outside Campisi Hall, a spectacle of some sort. He sees his buddy Mark Wong.

“What’s up? Fire drill?”

Mark shakes his head. “I don’t know. They cleared everyone out of the dorm. It’s like a Secret Service sweep or something.” Blane follows Mark’s gaze to the four SUVs parked in the lot out front. At the men in dark suits standing erect.

Ugh. How could Blane have forgotten? Parents Weekend starts tonight.

“It’s just my mom’s advance team.” Blane rolls his eyes.

Mark digests this, then his eyes flash. “That’s cool as shit, bro. What, is she, like, important or something?”

Blane shrugs. He watches as two stoic men with earpieces glower in their sunglasses. They love the attention.

Blane turns to his friend, offers a lopsided grin. “Watch this.” He takes out his lanyard, finds the small device attached to the key chain, then directs the laser pointer at one of the agents. A tiny red dot appears on the man’s chest. It takes only a moment before more agents fly out of an SUV.

The din of the crowd rises as the drama unfolds. Then comes the recognition from the detail that this isn’t a sniper’s laser sight. The lead Diplomatic Security Service agent’s glare snags on Blane from the distance, and the guy marches over.

“Oh shit,” Mark says, already stepping back as the massive agent stands before Blane, a scowl on his face.

The giant looks like he’d love to take a swing at an entitled college kid, but instead holds out his palm. “This isn’t a game,” is all he says.

When Blane doesn’t hand over the laser pointer, the agent rips the lanyard from his hand. Shaking his head, the agent says, “Your mother’s waiting in your dorm room.”

Might as well get this over with. “I’ll catch you at Benson for lunch,” Blane says to Mark.

On the walk into Campisi, one of the kids from the dorm gives Blane a high five like this was the most epic thing that’s ever happened.

Inside it’s a ghost town. The senior girl who normally works the front desk isn’t there doomscrolling, looking exasperated. The foosball table sits to the side, no crowd cheering on a game. The lounge chairs are empty. Blane shuttles down the hallway. Another member of his mom’s detail is stationed outside his room.

The agent gives a nearly indiscernible nod, allowing Blane entry. His mom is out of sight, down the narrow hall and in the tiny box Blane calls home. Blane can hear she’s on the phone with someone, like always.

He lingers in the corridor a moment, listening.

“I don’t know why we’re having this conversation,” his mother says into the phone. Someone’s in deep shit with her, like always.

“Bullshit, Hank. That’s bullshit.”

Blane realizes it’s his father on the line.

“It’s spelled out in our agreement. I get Parents Weekend.”

A heavy silence follows. The temperature is rising, like always. The usual garbage between them.

“Really, Hank? Really? Well I hope they fucking kill me too so I never have to hear your goddamned voice again.”

Blane gives it a moment, backtracks, and rests his skateboard loudly against the wall so she’ll hear.

“Hi, Mom,” he says.

Her back is to him, like she’s collecting herself. Then she turns. She’s wearing one of her usual power suits, which somehow makes her look even taller than six feet. Her chin-length dark hair is immaculate, like always.

“Honey, how are you?” Her tone reveals none of the tension from seconds ago. “And all I get is ‘Hi, Mom’? Get over here and give me a hug.”

They exchange a stiff embrace.

Blane catches the faint scent of her jasmine perfume, which transports him briefly to when he was little. Back when Mom sang pop songs, inserting her own silly lyrics, as they drove home from Little League. When she would dance and gyrate as Blane pounded on his toy bongo drums. When she would even watch SpongeBob with him, declaring Squidward was her favorite character. Then came her new, powerful job. Then the bounty on her head because of that new, powerful job. Then Blane’s terrifying four-day disappearance. Then the divorce. It was as if every stress layered a coat of varnish over her, encasing her in a hard, humorless shell.

He wonders how long it will take for her to critique his hair, his clothes. The mustache the fraternity he’s pledging insisted he grow since they say he looks like Goose from Top Gun .

Surprisingly, she just says, “I’m excited.”

“About what?”

She gives him a hard look. “To spend time with you. To meet your friends. Meet the other parents.”

Blane nods, says nothing.

“Is there an agenda for the parents?” She pauses. “Never mind, Paul will know.”

Paul is her chief of staff. As smarmy a Washingtonian as you’ll ever meet.

“There’s a dinner thing tonight with my capstone group,” Blane says.

Each freshman dorm breaks the residents into small groups of five to six students. They have to complete a project together by the end of the year, but spend most of the time partying.

“Have you gotten lunch?” his mom asks.

“I’m supposed to meet some friends at the dining hall,” he says, hoping she won’t gripe.

“That’s great. I actually have a few calls this afternoon. So, I’ll see you tonight?”

He nods.

“Maybe you can shave that peach fuzz over your lip before dinner.”

There she is.

“Can’t, it’s a frat thing.”

She frowns. “At least put on a clean shirt.”

Another stiff hug, and he’s off.

Alone in the room, Cynthia releases a cleansing breath. Blane’s father is such a complete and utter asshole . The only reason Hank wanted to come to Parents Weekend in her place was to punish her.

Mitch, the lead on her detail, comes into the dorm room.

“Everything okay?” he says, examining her. He’s a trained observer and little gets by him.

She’s learned in this job, among these men—even her subordinates or those she trusts, like Mitch—to never show weakness. “Just Hank being Hank,” she says.

Her phone pings, she scans the screen. It’s a text alert from the university. One thing she’s noticed in Blane’s few months at Santa Clara: The administration overuses its alert system.

Cynthia reads the text aloud. “It says, ‘Bronco Alert: An unhoused man is wielding a knife at the Seven-Eleven on Benton Street.’”

Mitch checks his own phone, presumably the tracker on Blane’s device. “Beavis is still on campus, he’s nowhere near there.” They made the mistake of letting Blane choose his own code name. Blane picked “Beavis” from some idiotic cartoon he and his father think is hilarious.

“Unhoused man?” Mitch says, repeating the alert’s message as if he’s unfamiliar with the term.

“I forgot, you aren’t versed in liberal-speak.” She allows herself a smile. “Calling them ‘homeless’ apparently carries a negative connotation that they’re criminals. And we wouldn’t want anyone to think the unhoused man wielding a knife is a criminal.”

Mitch shakes his head.

Cynthia examines the room. For security reasons, Blane’s is a single, one of the few in the dormitory. The bed is elevated. Next to it, a miniature fridge, which she decides not to open. On the small desk, there’s a box of protein bars, a flyer with Greek letters advertising a “Parents Weekend Blowout.” The flyer has a photo of what must be a fraternity house with a giant sign—a sheet hanging from the second-floor window: OUR PARENTS CAN DRINK MORE THAN YOURS.

“Remember the days when you could take a nap whenever you wanted? When you had no responsibilities? When you could bring someone back to your room in the middle of the afternoon…?” Cynthia puts a hand on the bed, pushes down on the thin mattress, testing it.

Mitch holds the hint of a smile. Oh, he remembers.

“Did you see that ridiculous mustache his fraternity’s making him grow?”

“It’s better than what they had pledges do in my day,” the agent says.

Mitch was a frat boy. That tracks.

“Are you the only one manning the hallway?” She holds his gaze.

He checks his phone again, nods.

“Well, if we’re going to fuck like coeds, we’d better be fast,” she says, turning her back to him, lifting her skirt, and yanking down her panties.

At the dining hall, Blane stabs a plastic fork into his burrito bowl. Mark sits across from him at the long table, a tiny mountain of food on his plate. Mark’s a big dude—the pledge master gave him the nickname Tommy Boy from the old movie. It fits, not only because Mark resembles the actor Chris Farley—albeit an Asian Chris Farley—but also because he’s a jokester. It’s why he and Blane became fast friends. To survive pledging, you need a friend.

Mark takes a big bite of pizza and, with a mouthful, says, “So these dudes, like, have to go everywhere with your mom?”

“Yeah. They’ve basically lived with us since I was in fifth grade.”

“Why? What’s the—”

“My mom’s high up at the State Department. We dropped a bomb on some official from a hostile government and they put a bounty on her head.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. She wanted me to have a team here and I said, ‘No way.’ My dad backed me up.”

“It’d be kinda cool, though. Girls would think you’re, like, mysterious, dangerous.”

“It sucks, bro, trust me. DS rotates agents and you have strangers up in your shit constantly. And my mom is always pressed with what we say or do around them. The agents gossip. They tell my mom all kind of stories about the other assholes they protect.”

Mark doesn’t seem convinced.

Blane doesn’t reveal what precipitated the around-the-clock security detail—his abduction when he was ten. The two men didn’t hurt him. They bought him Happy Meals and let him watch TV as their bumbling plan to lure his mom into peril came to an abrupt end when burly men in night vision goggles riddled them with bullets. Blane doesn’t think about it that much these days. Doesn’t feel traumatized or haunted by what happened. It seems more like a dream. But it was pure gold for his college essay.

“The only good thing I ever got out of a security detail,” Blane adds, “was at Disneyland when I was a kid: We got to cut to the front of the line on every ride.”

Mark is distracted. He’s looking over Blane’s shoulder at something.

Blane twists around and sees Stella walking toward them, her long auburn hair tangled, like she just woke up. She wears a shirt that reads, DON’T TELL ME TO SMILE .

She fast-walks over, takes a seat next to them.

“Sup?” Blane asks.

Stella’s expression is just short of panic. She leans in, says, “It’s Natasha. She still hasn’t come home. And Libby… she’s freaking out.”

Blane looks at Mark, who puts down his slice of pizza.

Blane keeps his voice steady. “You just need to be cool.”

“But Libby, she says she’s gonna… I think we need to—”

Blane puts his hands out, palms down: “Stick to the story like we agreed.”

His gut clenches, but he makes sure to smile reassuringly. He warned Stella—warned them all—that Natasha Belov was bad news. Bad, bad news.