At the Pleasure of the President (The Perfect Gentlemen 5)

“This is not the time, babe.” Sara was with him. “Zack just lost his father.”

He stood, turned. And they were here, all his friends.

They had saved him, just like he’d believed they would.

Roman moved in, reaching for Zack’s shoulder. “You okay? Connor was already on his way back when Gus called him. Connor stealthed into the garage before the Russians could secure it, and he sent Dax to check on us. There are some bodies down there, too.”

“You didn’t answer Roman. Say something.” Elizabeth wrapped her arms around him. “Are you okay?”

Suddenly, a smile broke across his face. The danger was past. Elizabeth was in his arms. He was surrounded by his brothers. “I’m not okay. I’m great.”

Chapter Twenty

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Lara asked several hours later, just before she stumbled into the Red Room.

At the sound of her voice, Zack glanced up and motioned her inside. Connor followed. Now, they were all gathered here, his family.

He was still dressed in the suit Elizabeth had selected for him to wear after he’d had a couple of stitches in his arm to close the bullet wound and before he spoke to the American people. He’d given a brief but reassuring press conference, promising the people that he was well and that he would give a full prime-time address the following evening with more complete details about the assassination attempt. As he’d stood behind the podium and done his best to both soothe Americans while projecting strength, he’d unashamedly held Elizabeth’s hand.

He’d heard Twitter was abuzz about their public display of affection and he didn’t care.

Now it was almost midnight, and the White House was finally quiet again.

Connor and Thomas had taken over the grisly scene in the residence and worked miracles. Not thirty minutes after the bullets had flown, a grim-looking man and a silent woman with her pale-hair twisted in a severe bun had shown up, dressed in all black. CIA agents, ones Connor trusted. The man he’d introduced as Josiah Grant. The blonde woman Connor had merely referred to as Kim. Neither had been big on talk. Instead, they’d gotten to work right away and soon cleared the scene until he would have sworn it had never been the epicenter of a multiple-death event.

He didn’t even know where they’d taken the bodies. He probably didn’t want to.

Connor cupped his wife’s shoulders as he kissed the top of her head. “You made the right call, Zack. I know you would far rather have given a press conference where you told the American people about this whole Russian conspiracy. But it’s best for everyone that you didn’t.”

Roman nodded, tossing his arm around Gus. “If the truth got out, it could shake financial markets across the globe.”

Dax looked reluctant to agree…but he did. “I’m a truth, justice, and American way type of guy, too. So I know concealing this bothers you. But the idea that the Russians were nearly able to compromise our president and our government would shake up all our alliances and embolden our enemies.”

“Sadly, he’s right,” Holland put in as she dropped her hand to her husband’s thigh.

“Then how do we explain all the other details?” Everly leaned against Gabe. “All the other deaths? It’s not like people aren’t going to notice…”

Gabe had a glass of Scotch in his hands. “You want to let us in on the plan, Freddy?”

Once again, the former intelligence officer, while whacko, had proven invaluable. Now his eyes lit up like he’d been given the greatest gift in the world—the green light to build a conspiracy from the ground up.

Freddy stood with a bounce in his step. “Well, the president’s father had a heart attack when he learned his son had been shot. It’s very sad, but not terribly shocking since he was in poor health. Zack will mourn appropriately, at least for the cameras. His long-term nurse will give a statement, explaining the situation.”

Sara cocked her head. “But his nurse is dead.”

“Totally and rotting in hell, but no one knows that. So we’ve chosen a CIA agent who has lots of practice covering things up. He’ll play nice for the cameras, and his part of the story won’t even end up being a footnote in history. We’ve already got Frank Hayes’s death certificate signed. His body will be cremated within the hour, along with his Russian nurse.”

Connor led his wife to a chair where he sat and pulled her down on his lap. “And since the nurse apparently had no real ties to anyone except the conspirators, no one will make pesky inquiries later.”

“What about Vanessa? Washington insiders knew who she was, even if her reputation was more twatwaffle than press secretary in training,” Mad put in.

“She’s more difficult,” Connor acknowledged. “But Freddy has a solution for her, too.”

“We trace everything back to our amazing assassin,” Freddy explained. “He’s got well-known ties to Krylov. Magically, he’s going to disappear from custody this evening. He’s a badass, after all. And”—he gasped—“we’ll learn that he’d been using Vanessa to gain access to the president’s schedule. They had to have some pillow talk, right? But after he escaped, he decided to clean up his loose ends and sadly, Vanessa’s usefulness was at an end. We’ll stage her murder at her apartment. It’s really exciting. I’m looking forward to being in on the action.”

“Won’t forensics prove she died while the assassin was in police custody?” Gus asked.

Connor waved that off. “Trust me. We have ways around that.”

“So you’re saying we’re simply going to let the assassin go?” Elizabeth said as she stood beside him.

Zack tugged on her hand, and like Connor had with Lara, pulled her onto his lap. He didn’t want an inch of space between them. “He’s a paid contractor with no loyalty to anyone. And he was never actually going to kill me. He was only on the scene to cause sufficient chaos so that two things could happen. First, to close off the entire White House so their agents could take over and second, to allow Vanessa to nab you so they could force me to do their bidding. They just didn’t count on Thomas being a super-cautious badass.”

Thomas, who stood in the corner of the room, almost smiled. “I might never take this vest off, sir. And I probably won’t let you out of my sight again.”

The man had been a six-and-a-half-foot mother hen all evening

long.

“Have we figured out who our bad agents are and what we’ll do with them?” Zack asked.

“Connor and Freddy helped me identify three,” Thomas explained. “I’m certain we’ve cleaned house now.”

“One died tragically saving Zack’s life,” Freddy explained. “The other two are already in holding pens. Connor will take them to an undisclosed location, debrief them, get all the intel we can, then…permanently relocate them. Later, we’ll find proof they were in on the plans to assassinate the president. They were also on Krylov’s payroll. We’ll play the Russian mobster’s motive as having a vested interest in killing the pipeline deal. A kernel of truth is always best.”

“And bonus, we’ll be taking Krylov himself down since our assassin was more than happy to admit he’d been hired by the man and we caught the bastard at the airport, trying to flee the country.” Connor looked awfully pleased with himself. “Even if Krylov mentions the president’s father or that past crap, no one will care. At this point, the Russian government will deny all knowledge of him or his activities and let us do whatever we please with him. And soon, look for a new head of that syndicate. They know they can’t reach you now. Too many of the assets they had in place are dead or compromised, so we fully believe they’ll cut their losses.”

Elizabeth shifted so she could look into his eyes. “Then it’s really over?”

Zack nodded. “It’s over. I trust my friends on this. I know now that we’ll have no constitutional crisis about where I was born. I’m exactly who I say I am. No one can blackmail me again, and I can get on with protecting and growing our country. You know, I’ve thought a lot about whether I should really run for reelection.”

“Bowing out, especially with the election less than a year away, would be a bad idea,” Gabe argued.

“The country needs you.” Dax stood. “If you step down, Shorn might make a run at the White House. Having been the VP of a popular president, he’ll likely do well. We know he’s compromised, and it will embolden the Russians to try this again.”