Summary:
A rogue Black Ops unit with the president in their crosshairs.
A Secret Service agent who will break every rule.
A president falling for the one person he shouldn’t—a man.
Newly elected President Jack Spiers’s presidency is rocked from the very beginning, and he’s working furiously to keep the world from falling apart. Between terrorism attacks ripping apart Europe, Russia’s constant posturing and aggression, and the quagmire of the Middle East, Jack is struggling to keep his campaign promise—to work toward a better, safer world.
For Special Agent Ethan Reichenbach, Jack is just another president, the third in twelve years. With Jack’s election, he’s been promoted, and now he’s running the presidential detail, which puts him side by side with Jack daily. He’s expecting another stuffed suit and an arrogant DC politician, but Jack shocks him with his humor and humanity.
There are rules against a Secret Service agent and one of their protectees developing a friendship—big rules. Besides, Jack is a widower, and Ethan has always avoided falling for straight men. Ethan keeps his distance, but Jack draws him in, like gas to a naked flame, and it’s a lure he isn’t strong enough to turn away from.
As the two men collide, rules are shattered and the world teeters on the verge of war, and a rogue Black Ops unit bent on destruction sets Jack in their deadly crosshairs. Ethan must put everything on the line in order to save the man he’s come to love, Jack’s presidency, and the world.
*** Expanded second special edition, with 15,000+ additional words, expanded scenes, and character artwork.
Summary:
Fifteen years from now, an affair rocks the world.
Two men commit to their impossible love.
One general is determined to destroy them both.
President Jack Spiers and former Secret Service Agent Ethan Reichenbach throw caution to the wind, committing themselves publicly as the first out male lovers and partners to occupy the White House. Jack moves Ethan into the Residence, but as Ethan settles into his new role as first gentleman of the United States, not everyone is thrilled with their choices. When it seems like the world turns against them, Jack and Ethan must turn to each other, finding the strength together to press on.
In the chaos, Jack’s relationship with the Russian president, Sergey Puchkov, grows closer, and the two nations find themselves working almost as allies. But President Puchkov has secrets of his own, secrets that could rip everything apart. And Ethan steps back into the action with Lieutenant Adam Cooper, taking charge of a covert kill team tasked with hunting down General Madigan once and for all.
But Madigan is elusive, and his dangerous reach is long. He strikes at Jack and Ethan from the shadowy corners of the globe, unraveling their entire world. As the mad general draws new allies together, he is single-minded in his quest to destroy the only two men who ever beat him.
He will stop at nothing until Jack and Ethan are shattered men, worlds apart, and struggling to get back to one another.
And after that, Madigan’s true revenge begins …
Summary:
The White House, infiltrated.
The president, running for his life.
A traitorous general, intent on burning the world to the ground.
When everything falls apart, who do you trust?
President Jack Spiers fled Washington DC on the heels of a devastating attack on CIA headquarters, masterminded by one of America’s own, former General Porter Madigan. While the world believes Jack was killed in the bombing, he embarks on a wild infiltration mission, smuggling himself into occupied Russia to rescue the love of his life: former Secret Service Agent and First Gentleman Ethan Reichenbach.
Reunited, Jack, Ethan, and deposed Russian president Sergey Puchkov, along with President Elizabeth Wall—the only person left in Washington DC who Jack trusts—must work together. They piece together a desperate plan, hunting Madigan to the ends of the earth and the bitter frigidity of the Arctic, where Madigan’s world-shattering doomsday plan comes together.
Outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and outgunned, Jack, Ethan, Sergey, and the rest of the team struggle to put a stop to Madigan and his army. In the desolate extremes of the Arctic, their resolve, their strength, and even their love is tested, pushed to the absolute limits as choices must be made: choices that pit the fate of the world against the love in their hearts, and the loves of their life.
As the world crumbles around them, Jack and Ethan find themselves waging a war on two fronts—against an enemy they can see, and another, hiding within their ranks.
Who can be trusted when the enemy is within you?
Before Ethan returns to DC…
Before he becomes Jack’s first gentleman…
Jack and Ethan share their first Christmas together.
Step back to Jack and Ethan’s first Christmas season and the tentative early months of their relationship under the world’s spotlight.
Three months into Ethan’s transfer-in-exile in Des Moines, Iowa, the pressures of dating Jack, the president of the United States, start to wear Ethan down. His weeks are measured by the days he works in Iowa, chasing counterfeiters and financial crimes, and the weekends he manages to steal with Jack back in DC. The media stalks his every move, he’s isolated by his coworkers, and loneliness hammers at his heart.
In DC, Jack tries to piece together a global alliance to take down the Caliphate, while the world seems focused on tearing apart his personal life. Hostility surrounds him from all corners of the globe, but a surprise offer from President Sergey Puchkov may pave the way for a tentative alliance…and perhaps the beginning of a friendship.
As Ethan finds himself in the middle of an investigation that rubs too deeply against his soul and Jack tries to balance leading the free world and keeping his and Ethan’s relationship going, the two men must face what their love has become…and where they are heading together.
Enemies of the State #1
Prologue
The Near Future
Washington DC
Early morning in Washington DC was the time for ghosts, especially in winter.
Fog shrouded the city, encasing the capital in a fragile stillness. Darkness clung like damp silk. Bare branches littered with icicles jutted across roadways, skeletal and scratching against the night. Few cars moved through the city, drivers staying away from the slick streets.
One lone SUV crunched across the snow, briefly skidded out, and came to a stop outside the National Mall.
General Porter Madigan, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, waited behind the Lincoln Memorial. Across the Potomac, Arlington National Cemetery seemed to gleam, white headstones catching and holding on to the fractional light filtering through the fog-drenched city. Faint, the glow was just enough to touch the general’s soul.
So many fallen. So many who had sacrificed to bring the world along to this place. He could feel the ghosts of the dead hovering in the mist, pressing in on him.
He wouldn’t end up in the frozen earth, forgotten by everyone. He wouldn’t go out like that.
Snow crunching beneath boots, coming up on the right from the Korean War Memorial, had him walking to the shadows of the Lincoln Memorial. He could still feel the heavy weight of Arlington’s gaze lingering on his spine.
“General.” His visitor nodded, striding across the memorial's plaza until he was standing behind one of the massive colonnades, hidden from view. His visitor tucked his face into the upturned collar of his parka and shoved his hands in his pockets.
Smirking, Madigan joined him. “Cold?”
A hard glare. “You know I spent too much time in the sandbox. Anything below eighty and I freeze.”
Madigan shifted back to his stern professionalism. “Did you make contact with Al-Karim?”
“Yeah.” His visitor nodded into his parka. “This morning, Karim’s local time.” The middle of the night in DC.
“And is he back on track with the plan?” Madigan’s voice ground over his syllables, almost growling.
“Yes, sir.”
“Does he need to be reminded again of his place in the universe? My universe?”
A shake of his visitor’s head, though it could have been a shiver. “I don’t believe so, sir. Our last drone strike took out one of the refineries he and his forces controlled. He wasn’t pleased.”
“I’m not pleased when he thinks he’s got free rein to do as he pleases in my Middle East. I didn’t raise this goat-fucker up out of Abu Gharib to be his own man. I pulled him out of that shit so he could be my man.”
Al-Karim left Abu Gharib one sunny day in Baghdad, thrown from the back of a pickup truck into the desert. A year later, he emerged in Libya, recruiting fighters for his jihadist rebellion against Libya’s government. When Libya fell, Al-Karim reemerged in Syria, recruiting Syrian rebel factions into his jihadist movement. The years rolled on, and Al-Karim moved up in the ranks, commanding a wing of the surging Islamic Caliphate. Al-Karim had personally led the Caliphate’s attack on Tikrit, capturing the former home of Saddam Hussein. He’d dispatched Caliphate soldiers on other global operations.
And all of it, every single thing, had been done under the general’s explicit orders.
Occasionally, though, Al-Karim had to be reminded who kept him alive. “His orders come from me.”
“He understands, sir.”
“Good.” Madigan studied his visitor. “We’re ready to begin the final phase. Are you good to go?”
“Yes, sir.” No hesitation. No wavering. If there was anyone who could have been the weak link, Madigan had always suspected it would be him. The kid had nurtured a level of hero worship toward Madigan over the years, but he’d worried that could cool, or transfer to someone else. Apparently, his worry hadn’t been necessary.
He really should have had more faith in the kid. He’d personally recruited him, after all, plucking him out of his original assignment in Iraq and dropping him into his command. Twenty years, and even though the kid now wore civilian clothes and didn’t officially work for the Army anymore, he still reported directly to General Madigan.
“Excellent. Deliver the orders for our weapons shipment. Target the delivery for six months from today.”
“Yes, sir.” The kid was shivering again, wrapped in his parka. It almost made him want to ruffle his hair. It wasn’t quite fair to call him a kid, not when he was pushing his forties. He was still a kid to the general’s mid-sixties, though.
To Madigan, he always would be that baby-faced soldier lost and scared in the backwater of Baghdad, filled with unrecognized potential.
“Get out of here.” Madigan waved him away. “Go home. Get some rest. You’re going to need it.” He tried to grin, but barely managed a sly curve of his mouth, toothy and lined, lips chapped from the cold. “The biggest job of your career starts in three weeks.”
Chapter 1
Texas
Austin wasn’t as frigid as Washington DC at Christmastime, but it still had a bite to the night air. Cold wind snaked around Special Agent Ethan Reichenbach as he stood on President-elect Jack Spiers’s balcony overlooking Austin’s downtown at the intersection of Sixth and Congress. Sixth Street, Austin: a vibrant, garish strip of neon bars, thrumming music lounges, country pool halls, and late night tattoo parlors pulsing with the laughs and shouts of college students, locals getting down, and hustlers. Christmas Day, and the parties still raged.
Ethan shook his head, eyeing long lines of smooth legs stretching down from miniskirts and sequined cocktail dresses. The girls shivered, huddling close together.
He’d never understand women. Instead, his gaze drifted to a group of men, college age by the looks of their clothes and lack of fashion sense. Faded jeans, T-shirts and flannel overcoats, and loose beanies crammed on their heads. He could just make out the cut of their jaws, the curve of some of the guys’ biceps. Some smoked, and others stood with their hands in their pockets, bouncing from foot to foot to try to stay warm.
Ethan smiled. He’d been young like that once. What was it, almost twenty years ago? His twenty-first birthday, he’d gone out to downtown Fayetteville to get ripped, and—for the first time—didn’t have to hide in the trunk when he and the rest of the guys drove back onto base. Fort Bragg’s military police loved to bust underage drinkers, and he’d spent countless weekends crammed in the trunk, hugging the spare tire and Corporal Lawson’s crap as he was ferried in and out of the base.
Ancient history. Ethan sucked in a deep breath, letting the cold fill his lungs. Texas’s capitol dome caught his eye, gleaming over downtown. The Texas flag proudly flapped in the night breeze, beneath the American flag.
Here we go again. Another president, another four—or eight, if Spiers could crack the steely wariness of the American electorate—years.
After twelve years in, he was a veteran of the Secret Service. He’d started his career in the Army, still with baby fat on his cheeks, enlisting straight out of high school. Ten years into the Army, and he’d needed a change. It had been too stifling, hiding who he was or changing pronouns when he met up with a guy. He got tired of making up excuses for why he didn’t want the guys to hang out with him when he needed to go out and find some guy to screw all night long.
The federal government was much more lenient than the military, and he’d applied to every agency he could, all of the alphabet soup agencies and administrations there were, and a few he hadn’t known existed. The United States Secret Service called him back first.
Twelve years and three presidents later, Ethan was the new Senior Special Agent in Charge of President-elect Spiers’s protection detail, and had been handpicked to lead the president’s Secret Service detail back in Washington. Headquarters put him with Spiers’s campaign when it became more and more obvious that the senator from Texas was set to win the general election.
Another one-term president, the third in a row, was bumped from office in another display of the American public’s disgust of Washington. Spiers was in, the easy-going pretty-boy sent to clean up DC. Unease hung in the air in the nation’s capital, as if everyone in office had a timer on their back ready to pop, or a hook just out of sight waiting to pull them off stage.
Presidents came and went. To Ethan, Spiers was just another protectee. Just another job. Spiers was a promotion, a new face, and new routines. A new boss to get used to.
The Secret Service didn’t get involved with their assignments. They never got attached, or friendly with their protectees. They were invisible, silent sentinels standing their watch.
Behind Ethan, the glass door to the balcony slid open. President-elect Jack Spiers poked his head out.
Frowning, Ethan turned around. Why was the president-elect zipped up in his jacket, and why were his shoes on? He was supposed to be reading briefs in front of the fireplace, where Ethan had left him, feet up and a beer in his hand. “Sir?”
“Hey, I’m going to pop on down to Sixth Street and mingle a bit.” Spiers nodded, as if that was that, and tried to close the door.
Ethan grabbed the frame, stopping him. “Sir, no, you’re not.”
The president-elect pulled a face. “Look, this is my home state. This is my home, in fact. I’ve gone down to Sixth Street every Christmas. It’s a tradition. I mingle with the people, we share stories, I listen to them, and we all have a great time. I can’t stop now.”
“Sir, it’s not possible for you to go down into the crowds. No one has been vetted. The crowd hasn’t been monitored. We haven’t secured any of the locations on the street. It isn’t safe for you to mingle, Mr. President-elect.”
“It’s fine. Really.” Spiers tried to force the sliding door closed, against Ethan’s hand.
Ethan pushed back, opening the door and striding forward, making President-elect Spiers step back. Jack Spiers wasn’t a short man; no president ever was. He was just under six feet, but he was nerdier looking than the other presidents. Younger, too. Mid-forties, with blond hair streaked with gray from a lifetime of politics. He had a taut face, a slim jaw, and a lean swimmer’s build. Black-rimmed reading glasses framed cornsilk-blue eyes—eyes that had turned hard and were glaring at Ethan.
“Sir.” Ethan paused, breathing deep. It wouldn’t do to piss off his new boss before Inauguration Day. That would be a new record, even for him. “It isn’t safe for you to go out and ‘mingle’ like you used to do. Things are different now. You can’t move around without a protective detail, and you can’t wander unprotected into crowds.” He exhaled. “Sir, all presidents go through this. It’s tough, getting used to these changes. Constant protection, security, and surveillance.”
President-elect Spiers turned away, his back to Ethan. His hands landed on his hips. “It’s like being a rat in a cage.” Spiers glared over his shoulder. “Don’t you have agents here who can provide crowd protection? Where’s the rest of my detail? Aren’t they supposed to be on-call?”
Ethan’s stomach sank. His promotion, and the warm smile Director Peter Stahl had given him, flashed in his mind. He swallowed. “Sir, I confirmed with your chief of staff that your plans this holiday evening were to stay in your home and have a quiet night in.”
“What’s Jeff got to do with this?”
Jeff Gottschalk, the president-elect’s chief of staff, was a quiet man, serious and dedicated to his service to the president. He was a man normally too busy for anyone else’s questions, but he’d given that much of the president-elect’s plans to Ethan. Perhaps he shouldn’t have trusted Gottschalk’s information. “Sir, based on your chief of staff’s information, I decided to give the rest of your personal detail the holiday evening off.” Ethan held President-elect Spiers’s gaze. “This is the last Christmas they’ll spend with their families for the next four years. Maybe even the next eight years.”
Ethan watched the president-elect take a deep breath in, holding it in his lungs. Those blue eyes, so hard and frigid moments before, softened. He pulled his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose as he spoke. “My personal detail. Those are the guys who have been on the campaign, right? With you? I mean, they’re all coming to Washington with me? With us?”
“Yes, sir. Agents Levi Daniels, Harry Inada, and Scott Collard. We’ve all been by your side since the Republican nomination.” Agent Scott Collard was like an older brother to him, and they’d propped each other up with bullshit and good-natured harassment through the bitter end of the presidential campaign. When Spiers had won, they’d toasted to the loss of their social lives for the next four years with gas station vodka downed from chipped motel coffee mugs.
President-elect Spiers unzipped his jacket and shrugged it off his shoulders. He tossed it on the back of his couch. A spread of binders and spiral-bound reports, all covered in official red seals with “CONFIDENTIAL” or “TOP SECRET CLEARANCE” borders and stamps littered the couch cushions. “Well,” Spiers sighed. “Looks like I am staying in tonight.”
Relief swept through Ethan, unclenching his stomach. “Yes, sir.”
Chuckling, the president-elect collapsed into the corner of his couch and reached for one of the binders. He sighed, long and loud, and pushed his glasses back on his face.
That would be his cue to leave. Ethan turned away. He wasn’t going far—maybe to the kitchen to scrounge up some food—but he didn’t need to be hovering in the same room as the president-elect. Jesus, he was going to see enough of the guy over the next four years. He was going to be closer than Spiers’s own shadow.
President-elect Spiers’s voice made him pause. “Agent Reichenbach, that was a good thing you did tonight for your men. They’ve done a fine job on the campaign, and I know they’ll be excellent in Washington, too. They deserve a night off.” He tossed a glance over the back of the couch. “And so do you.”
Ethan managed a tiny smirk. “The cat stays and works while the mice play, sir.”
“I think that goes a little differently.” Now President-elect Spiers was smiling. Some of his stiffness leached away.
“I’m the loner of the bunch, sir. They’ve got families and loved ones. I don’t.” No partner, no lover, no long-term relationship. A few guys had tried, but he’d put an end to that quickly. He wasn’t the man for long-term relationships. He didn’t have that kind of life. He didn’t have that kind of heart.
President-elect Spiers’s smile turned sad. Ethan kicked himself inside, forcing himself not to grimace. But his eyes darted to the folded flag encased in a memorial box on the mantle, right beside a picture of the president-elect’s deceased wife, Army Captain Leslie Spiers.
The year of her death was printed on the memorial case. Fifteen years prior, in the height of the Iraq War.
Ethan had been lucky. He’d lived through the war. The president-elect’s wife hadn’t.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Ethan said quietly.
“Would you like a drink?” Standing, President-elect Spiers gestured for Ethan to join him on the couch, and then to the small drybar in the corner of the room. The sadness was gone from his eyes, replaced by a hard kind of pleading. A wish to not be alone.
Disappointment crawled over Ethan’s skin, sliding uncomfortably close to unease. “I can’t, sir. I can’t drink on duty.” Not to mention he wasn’t supposed to socialize with the president-elect, or any protectee. Nothing personal. No friendships. He’s just a job.
But he was also a human being, a lonely human being, and Ethan understood that better than most. “I… have some reports to do. I could bring my laptop in here?” God, he hated how his voice rose at the end, uncertainty dripping from his words.
President-elect Spiers grinned. “Sure. Plenty of room.” He pushed three binders from the DOD and one from the CIA onto the carpet, opening up the end of the couch and coffee table for Ethan.
Ethan grabbed his laptop and fumbled plugging in the power cord—first unplugging the Christmas tree lights—but then they were both sitting down, almost side by side and absorbed in their own work. Quiet descended over the pair.
Restlessness clung to Ethan, but it slowly dissipated as he buried himself in his reports. Still, with every turn of the page President-elect Spiers made, and with every shift on the couch, Ethan was uncomfortably aware that there was a line here that he was very seriously bending.
Not the best way to begin his new position.
Enemy of My Enemy #2
Prologue
United States Disciplinary Barracks
Leavenworth, Kansas
Maximum Security Z Unit
Boots struck the metal grate, forty-two footfalls each minute.
A young military policeman—no more than a kid—strode along the catwalk overhanging Z Unit, the strictest supermax cellblock within the maximum security military prison at Leavenworth.
One half circuit completed.
In one of the cells beneath the catwalk, former Captain Ryan Cook sat in total darkness, listening to the fading clang, clang, clang of the MP’s steps.
Z Unit’s prisoners were housed in total isolation and complete darkness. No outside privileges. No windows. No lights. Just a four-by-twelve concrete cell and an endless, impenetrable black.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Another half circuit completed. Cook started counting again, starting over at one.
Three more minutes—one hundred and twenty-six footsteps.
Stripped out of his orange prisoner’s jumpsuit, Cook squatted in the center of his cell, his eyes fixed to the ceiling. Fabric torn from his uniform stretched over his eyes, tied tight behind his head. He kept a silent count as his fingers spread along the cool concrete floor.
Once, he’d been a decorated Army captain. Once, he’d led men in the crucible of combat, and then after the invasion, when he was supposed to lead them in rebuilding a country ripped to shreds with nothing more than bullets and baling wire, he’d found a new purpose instead.
His men had loved him. Iraqis had feared him. No, not just feared him. Were in terrible awe of him. Cowered from him. The Butcher, they’d said, muttering in Arabic just barely out of earshot. Iblis Shaytan. The Devil himself.
Clang. Clang. Clang. Forty-two footsteps more. One half circuit. The MP would be on the far side of the catwalk, just past the single entry to Z Unit, an electrified sliding steel door over a foot thick.
Cook inhaled. Closed his eyes.
Forty. Forty-One. Forty-Two.
A whisper of sound, the slide of metal against metal as the locks disengaged on his cell door. Above Cook’s head, a circular cover of solid steel slid aside, the door to his cell not on the wall, but above him. Like a cage.
Light filtered through, halogens overhead meant to blind the prisoners when the cell holes opened for feedings or for hose showers. Through his blindfold, all Cook saw was a wash of orange and shadow.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Cook leaped, grasping the edge of the cell’s opening before pulling himself up and out. Muscles rippled along his back as he moved silently and landed in a crouch.
No alarms and no wailing klaxon for this. No alert to the slow-striding guard, pacing away from Cook.
Clang. Clang.
Cook sprinted toward the sound, following the pattern of footfalls he’d memorized in his sleep, heard day in and day out for years, an endless drone of rubber on metal, clang after clang.
The kid saw him at the last second—a blur of muscles and rage, naked and scowling, teeth bared like the feral creature they thought they’d caged. Spit flew from his lips as he snarled and leaped, throwing his full body weight onto the soldier.
“What the fu—” The guard reached for his weapon and his radio at the same time, grabbing neither. Cook grasped his neck, squeezing tight, and took him to the ground, focusing all of his impact, and all of his weight, onto the kid’s throat.
They hit the catwalk with a crash, the guard’s flak vest, rifle, and helmet clattering against metal. Beneath them, prisoners in the other Z Unit cell holes started to grunt, animal growls and shouts into the darkness. Then pounding, as they banged on their concrete walls and stomped on their steel toilets. A cacophony of rage, of violent men contained in blackness.
The guard’s hands grasped at Cook’s, fingernails digging into his knuckles. His legs pinwheeled, unable to throw him off. Cook perched like a gargoyle on the guard’s chest, a vulture of death. His other hand rose, grasping the kid’s scrabbling hands.
He squeezed. Bones crunched, ground together.
Sputtering, the kid wheezed. “Please…” he grunted. “Please…”
Cook grinned, more a baring of teeth than anything else. He leaned forward, until he could feel the kid’s panicked pants against his cheek, and closed his fist tighter around his throat. “Shhh.”
A gurgle, as the kid struggled to breathe.
There. There it was.
With a bellow, Cook clenched his fist, crunching through cartilage and hyoid bone as his fingers closed around the bony extensions of the kid’s spinal cord. Blood burst from the kid’s mouth in a shocked cough, an explosion of agony that coated Cook’s face and hands. He squeezed again and yanked, feeling the satisfying crack and splinter of bones, decapitating his skull from his spine within his neck.
Cook let go and dropped the lifeless body to the catwalk, leaving him as a limp sack of blood and broken bones.
“Captain.”
He turned toward the voice, coming from the direction of the single door to Z Unit. Blood dripped down his cheek, catching on the scraggly hairs of a beard he’d never been allowed to trim.
“Captain. Phone call for you.”
Through the orange cloth, Cook could just make out the dark outline of a man in full battle rattle holding a sat phone. His eyes were adjusting to the sudden light after so long in the black. He walked forward, measured steps until he reached the phone.
Beneath him, the prisoners of Z Unit were howling, banging on their cells, throwing themselves against the walls. Some banged their heads against their toilets, even after their skulls split open. Intense solitary broke even the most hardened of men.
But not Cook.
“Captain Cook,” a voice on the sat phone said. “I promised I would come for you.”
Cook slid his blindfold back, dropping the bloodied strip of fabric on the catwalk. He blinked and met the eyes of the soldier who had handed him the phone. Six foot four, a bruiser easily over two hundred and sixty pounds, and kitted out in full battle rattle, the near giant of a man averted his eyes from Cook, looking down with a blink.
“General Madigan,” Cook said, his voice catching on the syllables. How long had it been since he’d spoken? “I never lost faith.”
“Saddle up, Captain,” Madigan said over the phone. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Shockwaves Grip Nation as President Moves Gay Lover into White House
Shockwaves gripped the nation as the announcement that Ethan Reichenbach, former United States Secret Service Agent and gay lover to President Jack Spiers, has moved into the White House, taking the role of first gentleman of the United States following his resignation from the Secret Service. The stunning announcement came late Friday afternoon, with the White House appearing to minimize the impact, and Press Secretary Pete Reyes refusing to comment further.
The move comes on the heels of a tumultuous six months at the White House. From the attempted coup in autumn to the revelation of the president’s clandestine gay love affair, President Spiers has been continuously rocked through autumn and winter.
Leadership from the Republican Party rushed to distance themselves from the president and Reichenbach. Polls indicate President Spiers’s popularity surged briefly following the attempted coup and again after the United States and Russia led a joint UN force against the Caliphate-held lands in the Middle East, but plummeted shortly after.
One possible source of the plummeting poll numbers might be the increasingly negative attacks coming from the Republican Party, led by Senator Stephen Allen. Allen has repeatedly blasted the president as a betrayer of the party’s platform, a liar to the American people, and an opportunist who is putting his own interests before the nation. “When will we do something about this president?” Senator Allen said recently in an interview with TNN’s Full Court Press. “And when will the president listen to the people saying ‘Enough is enough. We don’t want this kind of person leading us.’?”
Enemy Within #3
1
Kara Sea
IN THE FROZEN ARCTIC, one mile seemed as vast as a thousand.
Circling around former General Porter Madigan, as far as the eye could see, was a haunted, whitewashed wasteland. A howling storm had blitzed the RusFuel station they’d taken over, and after the storm, the ghostly sky seemed to fuse with the endless expanse of desolation and ice. Fog and a swirling snow haze hovered, wisping through the distance. The mist was so thick that the lights on the snow tractor, parked feet away from the station, were only faint flickers amidst the gloomy, endless miasma.
Somewhere out there, the midnight sun shone, spiraling in an endless circle over the horizon. The Arctic summer had arrived, just barely, just enough to keep a gloomy light hovering through the frozen fog.
Thousands of miles of ice surrounded him, and beneath him, under the ice pack, a frigid ocean quaked and roared.
Madigan smiled, his ruddy cheeks pulling against the bitter cold beneath his fur-lined hood. The Arctic suited him. The rawness, the violence, the brutality of the place. As peaceful and serene as people might imagine it to be, the Arctic was everything but. A truly harsh place, with vicious realities. Smooth ice and gentle snow hid the raging, turbulent ocean. Ice ridges thrown up by the crash of glaciers shared space with ragged fractures, bisecting the ice and opening up leads where waters carved and splintered into the ice cap. Scars marred the expanse, the wreckage and rubble of a thousand violent collisions throughout the centuries, spread across a wild emptiness.
“General.”
Madigan turned and faced former Captain Ryan Cook. Cook’s dark eyes fixed on his, deep set in his angular face. Like Madigan, he wore a thick snow parka with the hood pulled up to cover his head. Beneath the fur-trimmed rim, Cook’s eyes glittered, like black diamonds lit by firelight.
“Status, Captain?”
“The storm didn’t delay our progress. Our men were able to shelter on the ships. Some of the hired help suffered exposure. Frostbite on their hands, feet, and face. The main teams are back at work.”
“Exposure? They were supposed to be sheltering away from the storm.”
“Their failure, and their condition, is a personal problem, General. Not ours.”
Madigan grinned and turned back to the unforgiving landscape. Their hired help was generally good, but not perfect. His criminal army, they were men who had been sprung from the worst prisons in the world and banded together under Madigan’s banner with a promise for a better life—or at least, a life more suited to them than the present world offered. They worked for a debauched and bloody future that they could practically taste. They were brutal men, hardened by their captivity and hardened further by Madigan’s mission and Cook’s relentless training.
“Cut them loose. They can deal with their personal problems on their own.”
Cook stepped to Madigan’s side, and Madigan caught the curve of his smile from the corner of his eye. “Already done, sir. They were last seen walking away from our ships under the watchful gaze of my team.”
He grinned again, his chapped lips catching beads of ice blown up by the polar winds. Naturally, Cook had already implemented his orders. Never had Madigan found a more ruthlessly efficient man than Cook. He was singular in his focus, exacting in his execution. Mission first. Mission always. All else was secondary. Any tactics were on the table. He was a force of nature.
Madigan was glad Cook was on his side.
And Cook’s team. A group of men as close to Madigan as Cook was. True believers, in every sense of the word. They’d come to his side over the years, the most loyal officers and military men he’d encountered. Men who believed as Cook did, and as Madigan did. That the world had gone astray, and it was up to them to set it to rights. To put the strong back on top. To put the rightful, and the powerful—truly powerful—in charge again.
Millennia ago in ancient Sparta, a secret unit of warriors was kept buried amid the ranks of the legendary Spartans. The Krypteia, a unit hand-selected from the best, the most trustworthy, and most bloodthirsty, and charged with keeping order in the kingdom. A security arm of sorts, they terrorized and murdered their fellow citizens to keep order and control.
It was time for the Krypteia to rise again. For the strongest to dictate that order and control in a world gone awry. “All operations are proceeding on schedule. Ventilations of the methane hydrate are in the redline.” Cook spoke again, and as he did, Madigan pictured the cannibalized chemical indicators they had ripped out of the destroyed oil derricks and RusFuel stations they’d taken over in the Kara Sea. A few adjustments, some carefully placed explosions in the ice, and the indicators redlined, signaling massive ventilations of the dangerous gas into the air. Once it ignited, waves of fire would roll across the skies, a cleansing burn that would raze the old world to cinder and ash.
“And our other team?” Turning, Madigan raised one eyebrow.
Cook nodded back to the base behind them, a bare-bones, prefabricated structure formerly used by RusFuel scientists on their polar oil explorations. “Sonar has pinpointed the location. The divers are surveying the site now. We’ve salvaged enough equipment from the RusFuel station, and after the dive teams complete their survey and draw up the plans, we’ll begin placing pistons underwater and beneath the wreck.”
“How long until we’re able to raise it?”
“Days, General. We won’t know for sure until the dive team returns. And after—”
Madigan held up his hand. “We must get our nuclear tech here before we speak of anything else. We’ve come this far by being practical. Measured. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Captain. Stick to the plan. Have you heard from our man?”
Cook hesitated, for just a moment. “Not yet. He’s on the move. He hasn’t made contact since his team mobilized.”
“One step at a time. We maneuver him here. His utility is best served with us now. His undercover mission is over. Have him cut loose. You know the drill.”
“When he makes contact again, I’ll give the order.”
Madigan took a deep breath. Ice crystals melted in his throat, and frigid air filled his lungs. The cold reached deep inside him and curled around his fast-beating heart. So close. They were so close.
So close he could taste it.
“Excellent, Captain.” Madigan clapped Cook on the shoulder. “And our last little problem?”
Days before, a rogue MiG had overflown their base camp in the Kara Sea and the Russian destroyer Veduschiy, which General Moroshkin had so graciously gifted them. Madigan’s men had fired on the pilot, and Veduschiy got off two missiles. One burst apart in the pilot’s flares, but the other had chased the MiG down, destroying the jet over the empty taiga, the seemingly endless boreal forest that stretched across northern Siberia. Somehow, the pilot had managed to eject just before the missile’s impact. Veduschiy picked up his distress signal after his ejection.
Whoever the pilot was, and whoever he was working with, he had to be eliminated. While Madigan would have preferred the pilot to be killed in the shoot down of his MiG, his ejection wouldn’t save him. Thousands of miles of snow-packed forest stretched around him, a prison of ice and snow and unforgiving wilderness.
Frowning, Cook glared into the snow haze and the flickering light that might have been the sun. “The Spetsnaz unit you dispatched after the downed pilot hasn’t found him yet, just his landing site. His rig and parachute. He ditched the radio and made off on foot. They’re tracking him.”
“Give them time. Siberia is a large place.”
“You trust these men, General?” Cook’s eyes narrowed as he turned back to Madigan. “They’re Russians. We’re supposed to be using the Russians. Not trusting them.”
“Trust? No. But these ones are useful. They’re hunters. Predators. They’ll find this pilot and they’ll kill him. Of this, I have no doubt.”
The unit loaned to him by General Moroshkin was a Siberian Spetsnaz unit, made up of men forged in the dark heart of the frozen taiga. Hardened warriors, already fierce due to the land of their making, and refined by their training into something even darker. Moroshkin had handpicked the men and gifted them to Madigan. A thank you present, of sorts, for his assistance in Moroshkin’s coup against President Sergey Puchkov.
To a man, the Siberian Spetsnaz troops were cut from the same black depths as Cook. In place of a heart, they had been born instead with bottomless wells of emptiness and rage, wells from which brutality and viciousness could be honed and sharpened. They were weapons as much as men, and utterly lacking in compassion or the trifles of morality.
No surprise that Cook’s hackles rose around them. Like recognized like, and fought back.
Cook’s glower pierced Madigan.
Circling around former General Porter Madigan, as far as the eye could see, was a haunted, whitewashed wasteland. A howling storm had blitzed the RusFuel station they’d taken over, and after the storm, the ghostly sky seemed to fuse with the endless expanse of desolation and ice. Fog and a swirling snow haze hovered, wisping through the distance. The mist was so thick that the lights on the snow tractor, parked feet away from the station, were only faint flickers amidst the gloomy, endless miasma.
Somewhere out there, the midnight sun shone, spiraling in an endless circle over the horizon. The Arctic summer had arrived, just barely, just enough to keep a gloomy light hovering through the frozen fog.
Thousands of miles of ice surrounded him, and beneath him, under the ice pack, a frigid ocean quaked and roared.
Madigan smiled, his ruddy cheeks pulling against the bitter cold beneath his fur-lined hood. The Arctic suited him. The rawness, the violence, the brutality of the place. As peaceful and serene as people might imagine it to be, the Arctic was everything but. A truly harsh place, with vicious realities. Smooth ice and gentle snow hid the raging, turbulent ocean. Ice ridges thrown up by the crash of glaciers shared space with ragged fractures, bisecting the ice and opening up leads where waters carved and splintered into the ice cap. Scars marred the expanse, the wreckage and rubble of a thousand violent collisions throughout the centuries, spread across a wild emptiness.
“General.”
Madigan turned and faced former Captain Ryan Cook. Cook’s dark eyes fixed on his, deep set in his angular face. Like Madigan, he wore a thick snow parka with the hood pulled up to cover his head. Beneath the fur-trimmed rim, Cook’s eyes glittered, like black diamonds lit by firelight.
“Status, Captain?”
“The storm didn’t delay our progress. Our men were able to shelter on the ships. Some of the hired help suffered exposure. Frostbite on their hands, feet, and face. The main teams are back at work.”
“Exposure? They were supposed to be sheltering away from the storm.”
“Their failure, and their condition, is a personal problem, General. Not ours.”
Madigan grinned and turned back to the unforgiving landscape. Their hired help was generally good, but not perfect. His criminal army, they were men who had been sprung from the worst prisons in the world and banded together under Madigan’s banner with a promise for a better life—or at least, a life more suited to them than the present world offered. They worked for a debauched and bloody future that they could practically taste. They were brutal men, hardened by their captivity and hardened further by Madigan’s mission and Cook’s relentless training.
“Cut them loose. They can deal with their personal problems on their own.”
Cook stepped to Madigan’s side, and Madigan caught the curve of his smile from the corner of his eye. “Already done, sir. They were last seen walking away from our ships under the watchful gaze of my team.”
He grinned again, his chapped lips catching beads of ice blown up by the polar winds. Naturally, Cook had already implemented his orders. Never had Madigan found a more ruthlessly efficient man than Cook. He was singular in his focus, exacting in his execution. Mission first. Mission always. All else was secondary. Any tactics were on the table. He was a force of nature.
Madigan was glad Cook was on his side.
And Cook’s team. A group of men as close to Madigan as Cook was. True believers, in every sense of the word. They’d come to his side over the years, the most loyal officers and military men he’d encountered. Men who believed as Cook did, and as Madigan did. That the world had gone astray, and it was up to them to set it to rights. To put the strong back on top. To put the rightful, and the powerful—truly powerful—in charge again.
Millennia ago in ancient Sparta, a secret unit of warriors was kept buried amid the ranks of the legendary Spartans. The Krypteia, a unit hand-selected from the best, the most trustworthy, and most bloodthirsty, and charged with keeping order in the kingdom. A security arm of sorts, they terrorized and murdered their fellow citizens to keep order and control.
It was time for the Krypteia to rise again. For the strongest to dictate that order and control in a world gone awry. “All operations are proceeding on schedule. Ventilations of the methane hydrate are in the redline.” Cook spoke again, and as he did, Madigan pictured the cannibalized chemical indicators they had ripped out of the destroyed oil derricks and RusFuel stations they’d taken over in the Kara Sea. A few adjustments, some carefully placed explosions in the ice, and the indicators redlined, signaling massive ventilations of the dangerous gas into the air. Once it ignited, waves of fire would roll across the skies, a cleansing burn that would raze the old world to cinder and ash.
“And our other team?” Turning, Madigan raised one eyebrow.
Cook nodded back to the base behind them, a bare-bones, prefabricated structure formerly used by RusFuel scientists on their polar oil explorations. “Sonar has pinpointed the location. The divers are surveying the site now. We’ve salvaged enough equipment from the RusFuel station, and after the dive teams complete their survey and draw up the plans, we’ll begin placing pistons underwater and beneath the wreck.”
“How long until we’re able to raise it?”
“Days, General. We won’t know for sure until the dive team returns. And after—”
Madigan held up his hand. “We must get our nuclear tech here before we speak of anything else. We’ve come this far by being practical. Measured. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Captain. Stick to the plan. Have you heard from our man?”
Cook hesitated, for just a moment. “Not yet. He’s on the move. He hasn’t made contact since his team mobilized.”
“One step at a time. We maneuver him here. His utility is best served with us now. His undercover mission is over. Have him cut loose. You know the drill.”
“When he makes contact again, I’ll give the order.”
Madigan took a deep breath. Ice crystals melted in his throat, and frigid air filled his lungs. The cold reached deep inside him and curled around his fast-beating heart. So close. They were so close.
So close he could taste it.
“Excellent, Captain.” Madigan clapped Cook on the shoulder. “And our last little problem?”
Days before, a rogue MiG had overflown their base camp in the Kara Sea and the Russian destroyer Veduschiy, which General Moroshkin had so graciously gifted them. Madigan’s men had fired on the pilot, and Veduschiy got off two missiles. One burst apart in the pilot’s flares, but the other had chased the MiG down, destroying the jet over the empty taiga, the seemingly endless boreal forest that stretched across northern Siberia. Somehow, the pilot had managed to eject just before the missile’s impact. Veduschiy picked up his distress signal after his ejection.
Whoever the pilot was, and whoever he was working with, he had to be eliminated. While Madigan would have preferred the pilot to be killed in the shoot down of his MiG, his ejection wouldn’t save him. Thousands of miles of snow-packed forest stretched around him, a prison of ice and snow and unforgiving wilderness.
Frowning, Cook glared into the snow haze and the flickering light that might have been the sun. “The Spetsnaz unit you dispatched after the downed pilot hasn’t found him yet, just his landing site. His rig and parachute. He ditched the radio and made off on foot. They’re tracking him.”
“Give them time. Siberia is a large place.”
“You trust these men, General?” Cook’s eyes narrowed as he turned back to Madigan. “They’re Russians. We’re supposed to be using the Russians. Not trusting them.”
“Trust? No. But these ones are useful. They’re hunters. Predators. They’ll find this pilot and they’ll kill him. Of this, I have no doubt.”
The unit loaned to him by General Moroshkin was a Siberian Spetsnaz unit, made up of men forged in the dark heart of the frozen taiga. Hardened warriors, already fierce due to the land of their making, and refined by their training into something even darker. Moroshkin had handpicked the men and gifted them to Madigan. A thank you present, of sorts, for his assistance in Moroshkin’s coup against President Sergey Puchkov.
To a man, the Siberian Spetsnaz troops were cut from the same black depths as Cook. In place of a heart, they had been born instead with bottomless wells of emptiness and rage, wells from which brutality and viciousness could be honed and sharpened. They were weapons as much as men, and utterly lacking in compassion or the trifles of morality.
No surprise that Cook’s hackles rose around them. Like recognized like, and fought back.
Cook’s glower pierced Madigan.
He smiled at the younger man, squeezing both his shoulders as he faced him. “Focus on our mission, Captain. This pilot is already dead. He simply doesn’t know it.” Madigan hesitated, and his grin turned wry. “I promise, you will have plenty of opportunities to hunt on your own when we are through. You are not missing anything. And—” With another squeeze, he let go. “I need you here. At my side. You are my right hand.”
Cook visibly relaxed, the tension snaking out of his spine and his shoulders. He nodded once.
“Excellent. Now, show me the updates from our dive team. I want to see their progress.”
Together, Madigan and Cook headed into the base, leaving behind the Arctic wasteland and the frozen, howling wind.
Nation Rocked By Revelation of Langley Bomber’s Identity
The nation continues to reel following revelations from the White House regarding the identity of the Langley Bomber being a clone of Captain Leslie Spiers. Captain Leslie Spiers, President Jack Spiers’s deceased wife, was supposedly rescued in Russia in the midst of the coup against former Russian President Sergey Puchkov. She had reportedly been held captive for sixteen years by former General Porter Madigan.
However, the White House now says that the woman recovered in Russia was not Leslie Spiers, but was a clone of Mrs. Spiers, created by Madigan as a Trojan Horse against President Spiers and the United States government. The White House credits swift, decisive, “on the ground” intelligence collection for the discovery of the clone’s true identity.
The night of the bombing, the clone had been arrested in the White House Residence and taken to Langley for interrogation. President Spiers was observing his cloned wife’s interrogation when she detonated her bomb, concealed within her disfigured limb in an “extremely advanced manner”, preventing security personnel from discovering its existence.
Senator Stephen Allen, famously hostile to the Spiers’s administration, has called for an investigation into the bombing, and the events that led to the clone’s arrest. “What transpired between Sochi and the Russian coup and the night of the blast?” he asked, speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill. “How did President Spiers allow such a dangerous lapse in security to occur?”
President Spiers remains on life support at Bethesda Naval Hospital and is not expected to recover.
Tributes, flowers, candles, and pride flags have blanketed Pennsylvania Avenue, and a crowd of mourners continues to grow, even days after the attack.
First Gentleman Ethan Reichenbach, who did not return to the White House following Mrs. Spiers’s seeming return from Russia, has not been seen since the Langley blast.
Interlude: The First Noel #4
1
Des Moines, Iowa
“Twenty-seven credit cards, thirty thousand in hundreds―all with the exact same serial number―a credit card reader, and a laptop.” United States Secret Service Special Agent Blake Becker whistled, shook his head, and glared at the two suspects in handcuffs sitting in the back of the Des Moines police cruiser. “We bagged another couple counterfeiters, huh?” He squinted at Ethan, snowflakes clinging to the ends of his eyelashes. Becker was twelve years younger than Ethan, and two years out of training at Rowley.
He was an infant.
Ethan said nothing. Becker’s use of “we” was disingenuous. Ethan had put together the case after pulling files from three different states. He’d worked long, lonely hours in his cubicle, reading arrest records and statements until his eyeballs felt like they were bleeding. He’d tracked the washed bills, the counterfeit currency used in stores and banks across Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Built a timeline along one wall of his cube, tracking the rise of counterfeit bills in the tri-state area. Connected the dots, leading them to bust this run-down motel room and this raggedy team of counterfeiters.
And when he’d presented his case to Shepherd, the Special Agent in Charge of the small Des Moines Secret Service field office, Shepherd had assigned Blake Becker as the lead agent, putting him over Ethan. Days later, after Becker filed the affidavit in his own name, he and Ethan, along with the Des Moines police, broke down the door of the motel room and arrested two men in boxers and stained tank tops. One of the men had a mullet. The other, a greasy mustache and not much hair on the top of his head.
Two white news vans sloshed through the motel’s parking lot. Muddy snowmelt splattered their sides, arching away from salt-crusted tires. On top of both, satellite dishes and transmission poles collected fat snowflakes beneath the leaden sky. Red-and-blue police lights swirled, giving a splash of color to the Midwestern gloom.
Becker jerked his head toward the new arrivals. “Media is here. Shepherd wants you to book it. Doesn’t want you anywhere near the press.”
Ethan kept his head down and headed for his Secret Service car, a nondescript Secret Service-issue sedan. He tucked his face into his scarf and his hands into the pockets of his trench coat.
If there was one thing Shepherd hated more than Ethan, it was the media attention he received. “Secret Service Seduction turns to Presidential Regret?” “Ethan Reichenbach―Presidential Boyfriend or Dangerous Distraction?” “Boyfriend in Exile―Can Their Relationship Survive?” “Secret Service Hiding One of Their Own?”
He slid into his car, slamming the door shut. He watched as the news crews set up around the motel parking lot and peered at the Special Agents and police processing the scene.
Ethan grabbed a pair of sunglasses and a ball cap from the passenger seat before he started his car. The sunglasses turned the drab gray sky almost black, but he kept them on as he backed up, maneuvering out of the crowd of police vehicles.
One of the reporters spotted his car leaving. She waved to her cameraman as she tore across the snowmelt, her brown boots sticky with slush. He tried to speed up, but she made it to his driver’s side as he waited to turn onto the street.
“Mr. Reichenbach?” She knocked on the glass, and her cameraman scraped his lens over his window. “Mr. Reichenbach, can you talk about your involvement with the Des Moines Secret Service? What are your official duties?”
Ethan’s jaw clenched. His fingers gripped the steering wheel. A few more seconds, a few passing cars, and he could peel out of there.
“How does it feel to be separated from the president? Are you and President Spiers still together? It’s been a while since you were seen togeth―”
Finally, a break in the traffic. Ethan wanted to slam down on the accelerator, spin his wheels, and spray the reporter with mud and snow. But he couldn’t. Everything―every single thing―he did was a reflection on Jack. A reflection on the president of the United States.
He revved his engine once, a warning, and then rolled forward. The camera squealed across his window. The reporter pounded on the glass, repeating her questions, almost shouting.
And then, he was out of the parking lot, back on the main road. He floored it, speeding off as the camera tracked him. A few blocks away, he ditched the sunglasses, throwing them onto the passenger seat.
Three months in exile. Three months of living in Des Moines, Iowa―away from Washington, DC, his friends, and the love of his life: Jack Spiers, president of the United States.
He thunked his head back against the headrest as his fingers kneaded the steering wheel. Three months of counting the days―and sometimes the hours―until he could see Jack again. He lived for the weekends, for Friday evening through Sunday night when he flew to DC, and the forty-eight hours that were just him and Jack. If he squinted while he was there, it was almost like it had been before everything came out, when they were hiding what they’d become together, and when Ethan had been Jack’s Secret Service lead agent, at his side, always just a handbreadth away.
Day in and day out, they’d been at each other’s side. Inseparable.
But every weekend ended, and Sunday night came, and with it, another flight back to Des Moines.
Ethan glared at the clock in his dash. It was too early to go back to his apartment and do anything but bang around within the empty walls and sulk, and too late to go back to work and expect to get anything done. Still, he turned for the office, heading back downtown. At the least, he could work out in the private gym for agents assigned to the Federal Building. FBI, DEA, ATF, Secret Service, and Customs all shared one building.
All the agents also seemed to share in their wide-eyed, horrified distance from Ethan. He moved like a pariah, as though he’d been branded with a scarlet letter and anyone who came near him would suffer the same catastrophic fall from grace: from the most prestigious posting in the Secret Service―leading the presidential detail and personally protecting the president―to puzzling through small-time counterfeiting investigations out of a tiny field office in the Midwest.
And giving those investigations up to another agent, a junior agent, and running from the media.
He waited at the stoplight downtown just before the turn into the Federal Building’s garage, listening to his wipers scrape snow off the windshield. The red traffic light blurred through the slush on his glass, tinting the inside of his sedan a dark crimson. Christmas lights stretched overhead, arching over streets and between buildings. Evergreen garlands clung to streetlights, and LED wreaths hung at every intersection. Over the weekend, Christmas had descended, just days after Thanksgiving.
If he’d known then what he knew now, would he do it all again? Make the same choices? Take the same risks? Kiss Jack―the president, his sworn duty, his job―and throw caution to the wind, going against his very bones, his dedication to his career, and the Secret Service?
The wipers slid against the glass again, squeaking, and the light turned green. His tires slipped on the snow, skidding out, but he slogged across the intersection and turned into the underground parking garage.
Of course he would. Those forty-eight hours each week with Jack made everything else worth it. Made bearable the isolation, the intrusive media, the sidelong glares and bitten-off conversations.
How his toes would curl as they kissed. Jack’s smile, and the way his eyes lit up for Ethan alone. How Jack had looked at him when he’d burst into the Oval Office, gunfire cracking the air, taking out Jeff Gottschalk and Black Fox’s operatives. Like Ethan was his whole world, the sun rising in the sky just for him.
Ethan had never loved anyone like he loved Jack. And he’d never been loved by anyone the way Jack loved him. It was still new, just six months old, but that love had remade Ethan’s entire world. So far, he’d put up with anything. Everything. As long as Jack kept looking at him like that. Kept loving him like that.
But it had been over two weeks since he’d last been with Jack. “Every weekend” had turned into something else. Loneliness scratched at the base of his heart, and whispers of fear snaked down his bones.
Ethan wound through the underground garage and pulled into his assigned space, in the corner beneath the leaking air compressor, next to the dumpster that always smelled like stale piss.
Shepherd’s car was still in his space. Great. Shepherd had probably already seen the footage of him running from the reporter, playing over and over on the local stations before being picked up by the national news for prime-time replay.
Shepherd would be pissed. More than pissed.
Sighing, Ethan badged into the building and onto the elevator, punching the button for the Secret Service’s floor. When the elevator spat him out, he gave Agent Gibson a tight smile as he passed.
Gibson didn’t smile back.
Ethan badged into the back door of the office, heading for his cube and his gym bag. On the way, he passed Shepherd’s open office door.
The TV hanging on the wall in his office was on, images of Ethan driving out of the motel parking lot playing on repeat as the news anchor droned on about how evasive he’d been, how he hadn’t answered any questions. About what his presence at the crime scene might mean. And, of course, wondering why he hadn’t been seen with the president, or in DC, in weeks.
They were America’s most scandalous couple, perhaps the world’s. One question had been blaring from every radio, every gossip magazine, every late-night talk show host, almost from the moment they’d been photographed kissing on the North Lawn: were they still together?
Of course, the questioning had gotten louder these past few weeks.
Shepherd’s glare fixed on Ethan. He pursed his lips as he perched on the edge of his desk, arms crossed over his slight pudge, a beer gut in the making. His tie was loose, the first few buttons at his neck undone.
Ethan grabbed his gym bag, slung it over his shoulder, and trudged to Shepherd’s door. “Sir, I left as soon as they arrived. She chased me down. I wasn’t trying to get in front of the cameras.”
Shepherd pinched the bridge of his nose. “What did I do to deserve you?”
Ethan stayed silent.
“Thanks to this―” Shepherd gestured to the TV. “―the US Attorney is going to have to answer a million questions about you from whatever defense these guys cobble together. What you were doing there. Why you were involved.”
“I put the case together―”
“And then it was given to Becker. All of it. The entire thing. Your fingerprints were stripped from it.” Shepherd sighed again. “I don’t want some criminal defense attorney trying to drag the president into one of our cases. Asking about what kind of special favors you get, or what the president is interested in, or how you don’t play by the rules. We have to prove that everything you do is one hundred and ten percent aboveboard.”
“Everything I’ve done here has been completely legal―”
“It’s what you did before you got here.” Shepherd fixed Ethan with another hard glare. “It’s your character. The kinds of rules you break. A good defense attorney would rip you to shreds on the stand.”
Ethan’s chest felt like it had caved in. “I have never compromised an investigation for any reason.”
“No.” Shepherd snorted. “You just compromised the president.”
Silence.
“Get out of here.” Shepherd waved Ethan away, dismissing him as he stood. “I don’t know what’s going on with you and the president, and I don’t want to know.” His hand cut through the air, before Ethan spoke. He jerked his chin to the TV and the reporter musing about Ethan and Jack’s relationship being on the rocks, or worse. “But you’ve gotten grumpier these past few weeks. And that’s saying something.” Shepherd squinted at him. “Go do something about that. If the media is going to hound you everywhere, you don’t want them thinking you’re a half breath away from snapping. Don’t add fuel to the fire.”
Clearing his throat, Ethan nodded once while Shepherd shuffled papers on his desk, dropping a stack of manila folders into his drawer. “Sir, I have a question.”
Shepherd grunted.
“I submitted my vacation request for the holidays, but you haven’t approved it yet. Is there a problem?” Ethan had lost vacation time in his demotion and had used up what was left flying back and forth to DC. He was scraping the last days he had to put together a trip back east over Christmas. It wasn’t as long as he wanted, but it was what he had.
Shepherd barked out a harsh laugh, slamming a stack of papers down on his desk. “Why do you do this?”
“Sir?”
“Why do you pretend like you follow the rules? Like they even matter to you? You can break every rule we have, and nothing will happen to you.”
“That’s not who I am,” Ethan growled. “I don’t act that way.”
“That’s exactly who you are. And exactly how you acted.”
“Sir, I don’t get any special treatment―”
“Of course you do!” Shepherd cried. His hands rose as he shouted, his face turning red. “Why do you even bother coming in? Why do you put up the pretense of being an agent? You’d make it easier for everyone if you just stopped pretending!”
“I’m not pretending!” Ethan roared. “I’m doing my job!”
Shepherd laughed, long and loud. “You stopped doing your job the moment you compromised yourself and the president!”
“I am still an agent―”
“You’re a Goddamn pain in my ass.” Shepherd cut him off. “And I have no clue why you’re still an agent. You shouldn’t be. You should have been forced to turn in your badge and gun and been kicked out of the Service.”
Ethan’s jaw snapped shut, his teeth clicking together.
“Let me be perfectly clear. I don’t give a shit what you do. Come to work. Don’t come to work. Go on vacation for the entire month of December. Run away with the president and get drunk on some beach. I don’t give a shit. Just stop wasting my time, okay?”
“Yes. Sir.”
“Get out of my office.”
His hand clenched around the strap of his duffel and his teeth ground together, but he strode out of Shepherd’s office with his head held high. Rage thundered through him, deep in his veins.
There had better not be anyone in the gym downstairs. He had to get this out, pound it out into a punching bag until his knuckles split and he vomited in the corner. He had to get this out, because in three hours, Jack was going to call him on his computer, and he couldn’t face Jack like this. Not about to fly apart, quaking with too much fury and raw shame. It hurt, God, it hurt.
But Jack couldn’t see that. He couldn’t ever see it.
Tal Bauer is an author of gay romantic suspense/thriller novels.
The world needs more gay heroes, gay love stories, and powerful women kicking ass. I try to write those stories. With a background ranging from law enforcement to humanitarian aid, my stories are global in scope and with diverse characters in all roles. My goal is to help normalize gay characters as action heroes and to bring to life strong, dynamic, holistic women in all of my novels.
EMAIL: tal@talbauerwrites.com
Enemies of the State #1
Enemy of My Enemy #2
Enemy Within #3
Interlude: The First Noel #4
Series
