She remembered Charlie Dankins giving her the signal, ushering her into the President’s suite.
She’d gone straight to the First Lady’s bedroom, to the elegant handbag that had been tossed on the bed. She had a small hand-held computer that could read the thumb drive, then copy the data to another thumb drive. She had just inserted the second thumb drive in the USB port when the bedroom door opened.
For a second they’d simply stared at each other, the President, the First Lady, and herself. Then the First Lady had lifted her hand, and Lizzy had seen the gun.
She lunged toward the First Lady, coming in low, catching her gun hand and shoving it upward.
The First Lady shoved her, surprising strength behind the move. The President leaped at her, trying to wrap her up and take her down, but Lizzy had rolled into the First Lady’s feet and sent her staggering in an effort to keep her balance.
The First Lady rounded on her again with the weapon. Lizzy surged again, got her hand on the pistol, trying to jerk it away. Her finger slipped inside the trigger guard. The First Lady slung her hard against a table, and the impact made her hand jerk. Both of them had their fingers on the trigger when they staggered hard against a table, and the impact made her pull the trigger. Three shots. They all hit the President.
She saw the First Lady freeze, staring in horror at her husband.
Moving swiftly, Lizzy pounced. She grabbed the First Lady by the hair and slammed her head into the wall. The woman staggered, her eyes half-rolling back in her head.
“Here,” Lizzy said, and gave her the pistol. Then she turned her so she was facing the President, and Lizzy herself grabbed up the dead-giveaway little hand-held computer, as well as the thumb drive lying beside it, and bolted for the closet. It was the only place she could think to go.
It was stupid. It was inevitable that she’d be found there, but she had no other place to go. Already the door was being kicked down. There was a connecting room, but it would be locked.
There, in the dark closet, she listened to the uproar outside. She heard more shots. She stood frozen, her stomach knotted in panic, trying to fight through the horror of what had just happened. They were caught. There was no way out. All of them would be executed. And she’d killed the President.
She had very little clear memory of being gotten out of the suite. She knew it was through the connecting room, that the door had been unlocked. She remembered Xavier, everyone, moving fast, someone all but dressing her … dear God, that had been Felice.
After that … grief. Pain. Tears. The feeling that she didn’t deserve to get away with what she’d done. Nothing they’d said had made much of an impact on her, not the proof of the President’s guilt; all she felt was the rawness of her emotions that she didn’t think would ever heal.
Except now … standing in the hot Texas sun … she suddenly realized that she had healed. The memory wipe had given her three peaceful years in which she had recovered. That hadn’t been the purpose, but nevertheless that was the result.
And now she’d remembered the act itself.
She heard Xavier coming up behind her. She turned a little to watch him, because she couldn’t not watch him. Black boots, jeans, olive-drab tee shirt. A thigh holster was strapped to his right leg.
He eyed the target. The shots were all grouped in the tattered center. “You killed the fuck out of that one,” he said.
She flinched a little, tried to hide the movement, but nothing concerning her escaped him. He frowned, gripped her shoulders, and turned her to face him. His dark gaze bored into her blue one, and his grip tightened.
“You remember.” It was a statement.
“Yeah.” She got the one word out, but it was a struggle; her throat felt thick, clogged with the tears she refused to cry. The time for crying was long past. She’d done what had to be done, and the knowledge was a burden she’d always carry. She would always grieve at what had been necessary.
Xavier wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him, lending her the support of his big body. The added heat was one more level of hell, and yet having him there was all she needed.
“I’m okay,” she said a few minutes later, because if it wasn’t quite true now, one day it would be.
“You sure?”
“Sure enough,” she said, and slipped her arm around her husband’s waist. A small fuzzy dog began racing through the red dust toward them, yapping like crazy. She leaned down and scooped him up, held him the way Maggie had with her arm under his belly. “Roosevelt,” she said, “stop that infernal yapping.” Even though she knew the answer she asked again, “Exactly when is Maggie coming back?”
“Another two weeks, maybe.” Xavier looked around at the facility they’d designed and constructed. Security people already came from all over the nation for advanced training. It was challenging enough that he didn’t miss black-ops work much at all. Besides, he had Lizzy. That made up for losing the excitement of getting shot at.
Together they walked back to their offices, and the life they’d built together.