Empire (Empire 1)

“Please just call me Cole. Or Captain Cole, if you have to.”

“DeeNee is a superb secretary. My husband trusts her implicitly. In part because she not only never tells anybody anything, she manages to not tell them in such a way as to make them think she doesn’t know.”

“She’s very good at that.”

“But you, I take it, are not pretending when you say that my husband has not been in to the office in three days.”

He nodded.

“That worries me.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s because he’s busy on something—”

“Captain Cole, I know he’s busy on something. I know from the way he tells me almost nothing. Normally he gives me enough information that I won’t worry. Like when he worked on counterterrorism in the District for a few months. He didn’t tell me anything at all about it, specifically, but he did let me know that he was supposed to imagine ways that terrorists might go after key targets in DC, and I gathered that he was not just looking at high-profile psychological targets like monuments and such, but also at infrastructure targets and political targets.”

Cole felt a surge of relief. So his new boss did do something that mattered.

“But you don’t know which ones.”

“I have a brain. I assumed he looked at bridges and other choke points for transportation. And opportunities to attempt assassinations. That sort of thing.”

“I thought the Secret Service worked on protecting the President and Vice President.”

“And there are plenty of people working on protecting Congress and the Supreme Court and other key personnel. You have to understand, I’m only guessing here, but I know my husband and I know what he’s good at. I’m sure his assignment wasn’t to protect the President, it was to figure out how to kill him despite the protections that are in place. Just as his assignment was probably to figure out ways a terrorist might bring Washington to its knees without having a nuke or poison gas.”

“And he completed that assignment.”

“From his sudden air of relief and cheerfulness back in February, yes, I believe he did.”

“And now?”

“And now he doesn’t even go to the office, but doesn’t tell me that he hasn’t gone to the office, but he’s still coming home every night at the regular time, and he has a haunted air about him, so whatever he’s doing, he hates it.”

Cole finally realized what was happening here. “You didn’t invite me to the house just to chat.”

“No, Captain Cole,” she said. “I’m worried about my husband.”

“But I can’t help you. I’ve never even met him.”

“But you will,” she said. “And when you do, you’ll form your own conclusions about what he’s involved with.”

“I can’t tell you anything that’s classified.”

“You can tell me whether I should worry, and how much.”

“About his safety? Here in Washington?”

“No,” she said. “I deal with my fears for his safety in my own way. That’s not what worries me right now.”

“It’s that haunted look?”

“My husband is a patriot. And a born officer. He is not troubled by the things he does to defend his country. He has killed people, even though he’s a gentle man by nature, and yet he does not wake up screaming in the night from combat flashbacks, and he doesn’t lash out at the children, and he shows no sign of traumatic stress disorder. I know what he looks like when he’s worried about his own safety, or when he’s intense about fulfilling an assignment, or when he’s annoyed at the stupidity of superior officers. I know what those things do to him, how it shows up in his behavior at home.”

“And this is new.”

“Captain Cole, what I want to know is why my husband feels guilty.”

Cole didn’t know what to say, except the obvious. “Why do husbands ever feel guilty?”