First Family (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 4)

Sam Quarry knew that he couldn’t.

Late that night he took the truck to see Tippi. This time he went alone. He read to her. He played the tape of mother talking to her daughter.

He looked around the ten-by-twelve-foot confines of Tippi’s world for all these years. He’d memorized every piece of equipment needed to keep her alive here, and had pelted the staff here with questions about each one of them. They had no idea why he was being so inquisitive, but that didn’t matter. He knew why.

When he finally gazed down at his daughter’s withered face, her atrophied limbs, her skeleton of a torso, he felt his own big frame start to droop as though gravity had decided to exert more force on him. Perhaps as punishment.

Quarry had no problem with punishment, so long as it was dealt out fairly, evenly. Only it never was.

He left the room and ventured to the nurses’ station. He had to make some arrangements. It was time for Tippi to finally leave this place.

It was time to bring his little girl home.

CHAPTER 49

LOOK, KING, we have orders to keep them all here,” said the agent to Sean and Michelle.

They were at the entrance to Blair House. The decision had been made to allow Tuck and his kids to remain at the residence where they would have the full protection of the Secret Service, at least temporarily.

“All I’m asking you to do is to let Tuck Dutton know that we’re out here. If he wants to see us, there’s really nothing you can do about it, is there? He’s not a criminal. He’s not in protective custody. He’s here voluntarily. And if wants to leave, you have to let him leave.”

Michelle added, “We’ll keep a close eye on him.”

“Right, and it’s my ass on the line to the president if anything happens to his brother-in-law.”

“I’d actually be more afraid of the First Lady,” advised Sean.

“I’m not going to get Dutton. Now I suggest that—”

“Sean?”

They all looked up at the front door. Tuck was standing there holding Colleen in one arm and a cup of coffee in the other.

“Mr. Dutton, please get away from the door,” warned the agent.

Tuck put Colleen down and told her to go join her brother. Then he set down the coffee cup and came outside.

“Mr. Dutton!” The agent took a step toward him as two other agents moved forward from their outside posts.

Tuck held up his hand. “I know, I know. You’re here to protect me. But why don’t you go protect my kids? I’ll be fine.”

“Mr. Dutton,” the agent began again.

“Look, buddy. I’m only here because my sister said it was okay. Great, I appreciate it. But the fact is this is America and I can leave here with my kids any damn time I want, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. So go hang out with my kids or go smoke a cigarette while I talk to these folks. Okay?”

“I’ll have to let the First Lady know about this,” the agent snapped.

“You do that. And she might be the First Lady to you, but to me she’s just the older sister whose panties I used to let my friends see for a buck a peek.”

The agent’s face flushed. He glanced angrily at Sean and Michelle, then turned on his heel and went inside the house.

“Tuck, that’s a side of you I’ve never seen,” said Sean as they walked down the street across from the White House.

Tuck flicked a cigarette out of a pack, cupped his hands, and lit up. He exhaled a small cloud of smoke. “It gets to you, you know? I don’t know how Jane and Dan do it. Talk about a freaking fishbowl. It’s actually more like living your life under the damn Hubble Telescope.”

“Every flaw revealed,” said Michelle, as her gaze swept, like radar, grid by grid, in front, to the side, and also behind them. They might be in one of the safest spots on earth, but, as she well knew, that could change in a single explosive moment.

“How are the kids?”