Daniel's Christmas Read online

  As their small party shifted and regrouped into different conversations, first in the living room and later around the dining table, he never managed to remove her from his awareness. That this breathtaking woman had been thinking about a lot more than kissing him had now rooted his thoughts there as well. He tried to imagine helping her out of that dress.

  It was a thought he definitely enjoyed. But he couldn’t quite picture it. Whereas making love to her dressed only in that well-worn cardigan sweater, that he could picture just fine. As if that were the real Alice, and last night’s stunning and brilliant beauty in the perfect evening gown who had radiated as the center of the evening, she was someone he’d never deserve.

  Suddenly his desk phone rang from somewhere under the latest Mexico currency crisis. The drug cartels had hinted that they were going to wholly abandon the peso in favor of the more stable U.S. dollar. The news had crashed the peso’s valuation badly. Again.

  “Daniel.”

  “You aren’t opening today’s Advent calendar window are you?”

  “Good morning, Dr. Thompson.” He pulled the calendar into his lap and opened to the first picture.

  “Did you? No cheating or mama would know.”

  “No cheating. As a matter of fact, thoughts of you so distracted me last night that I haven’t even opened December 2nd’s window and today is the third. You distract me, Dr. Thompson.”

  “Bad luck.”

  “Your distracting me?”

  “Not opening the window. Do it now, I’ll wait.”

  He pulled on the “2” ribbon, attached to a little flap door in the snow at the base of a tree. He pulled out the butterscotch drop and admired a pair of squirrels sleeping curled up inside. The sides of the little space had been painted with tiny cupboards. One open cabinet revealed a bountiful stock of acorns.

  He described it to her.

  “Hmm,” she hummed in his ear. “Butterscotch. I’ll bet you taste good with butterscotch.”

  “I really didn’t need that image stuck in my head all day.”

  “Tough,” her laugh sparkled even over the phone line.

  “When can I see you again? I have to see if you taste as luscious in normal clothes as you did in that amazing dress.” Their full-body goodnight kiss had almost led him to throw her over his shoulder and drag her upstairs to his bedroom.

  “Hmm,” she hummed at him again. “I’ll pick you up this time. Eight o’clock. Eat first, dress warm.”

  “Hmm,” he hummed back at her. Sounded stupid when he did it. He glanced up to see Janet standing across his desk holding a couple of files.

  Clearly she made a similar assessment about the inefficacy his hmm-ing ability.

  “Tonight at eight.” He tried to sound business-like.

  “Janet just walked in, didn’t she?” That merry giggle sounded in his ear. “Tell her I said hi.”

  “Will do.” Not a chance. He hung up the phone.

  Chapter 13

  “I considered sending an agent to pick you up, but came myself instead.”

  Alice always seemed to start conversations without any preamble. Daniel didn’t even have both feet inside her fire-engine red Prius yet. It had flames painted on the front like a 1960s GTO muscle car instead of a mundane hybrid. A cheery little garland of tiny red-and-green lights glowed softly around the rear view mirror.

  She headed them back out the White House gates.

  Maybe it was his Tennessee background, but conversations had a normal flow, a way they were supposed to work. A greeting, a checking in, those pleasant little inanities that served no purpose he could put his finger on at the moment, but he liked them nonetheless. It wasn’t as if she was in a hurry, she was simply always in forward motion and he always lagged a step behind.

  “I did apologize for sending an agent to pick you up.”

  “Sent me home with one, too.”

  “I…” He had. Hadn’t even thought about it. He was so used to the building, it seemed that he never left it except for meetings up on the Hill.

  He’d moved into the White House Residence when Peter Matthews had made him the Chief of Staff. “Every time you leave for your apartment, you’re going to lose another half-hour of sleep between walking to your car, driving, parking.” So, he’d kept the apartment for a while, but finally moved fully into the third floor of the Residence. With Katherine Matthews dead in the helicopter crash, that had left President Matthews living alone in the entire Residence. Daniel had felt sorry for him and did really appreciate the man’s company when they could stop moving long enough to enjoy a gathering like last night.

  Daniel had never given a thought to delivering her home himself. In hindsight, it would have been a very dangerous choice, vastly increasing the likelihood of his ending up in her bed. But last night, he’d been too dazed by her goodnight kiss to form any coherent thoughts.

  “What did Janet put in the calendar for tonight?”

  Apparently his silence had lasted too long. She cleared the gate and turned south.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t look.”

  “Don’t you get the rules at all, Dr. Darlington? It’s after dark. There are rules to these things.”

  “Rules like not pulling over so that I can drag you into the tall grass and neck wildly like two teenagers?”

  The car actually wavered on the road and he reached out a steadying hand to the wheel for a moment.

  “Well,” she cleared her throat and tried again. “Well, being early December, the tall grass has long since been mown by the Parks Department and died back for the winter. Otherwise that sounds like a great idea.”

  Now it was his turn to try and speak. It took him several tries.

  “I’m new to Advent calendar rules, but I’m learning. I brought it with me.”

  “Well, that’s better. So open it already!” She turned onto the Frederick Douglass bridge and crossed south over the river. Still no word where she was taking him and he wasn’t going to ask.

  He pulled the calendar out of his bag that also included a hat and mittens. By the light of the street lights strobing by overhead, he found the “3” ribbon, a small, gift-wrapped present that an owl had dropped in the snow and was in the process of retrieving.

  “Black licorice. A Scotty dog.”

  “Ooo. They’re the best.”

  He plucked it out and another lay behind it. Two Scotty dogs. Had Janet originally given him two? Or had she somehow discerned he had a date and slipped in the second one while the calendar lay on his desk? He’d rather think the former, but suspected the latter.

  “Here, there’s two.” He held one out so she could take it with her teeth. She did so, nibbling on the ends of his fingers in the process. He was suddenly glad he wasn’t driving or they’d be weaving all over the road.

  He popped in his own and started chewing.

  “That’s so good,” she mumbled. “I need to stop and see how you taste.” And she did. Turned into a side road, parked, and leaned over.

  He met her halfway. Winter and summer and sweet licorice. Unable to stop himself, he reached for her, and to the limits of the seatbelts, pulled their bodies together, one hand running down over her coat, tracing the many-layered curve of her breast making Alice moan against his teeth.

  A sharp knock on the window made him open his eyes. A Marine in full uniform was leaning down to inspect them through the driver’s window. Where had he come from?

  Chapter 14

  “Anacostia?” Daniel had waited until the Marine cleared them through the gate. Obviously they’d been expected. “What the hell are we doing at Anacostia? The only thing here are Marine helicopters used to transport the President.”

  “Not the only thing.” Alice was clearly enjoying whatever little secret she had. What else could possibly be here?

  “Hey, who
are these guys who keep following us?” Alice was checking the rearview mirror.

  Daniel didn’t even bother to glance back. “Secret Service. They’re my protection detail.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since the day Katherine Matthews’ helicopter was shot down and I became Chief of Staff.”

  “No, I mean when tonight? It was shot down?”

  “Yes.” Daniel had heard enough to know gunfire had been involved in the final, fatal crash. He still wondered what had truly happened on that final flight. No one was telling him and he’d decided that discretion was the better part of curiosity and never tried to pull the file for study. If there even was a file. It had been a very strange three weeks while Emily Beale was working undercover in the White House.

  “Emily Beale,” he finally connected the pieces. “She’s here at Anacostia. With her helicopter.” He groaned. “Please tell me we’re not going flying.”

  “Absolutely! She called to invite me this morning and I can’t wait. It’s gonna be great!” Her excitement was contagious, or would be under other circumstances. He’d seen Emily fly only five or six times in those three weeks and she’d crashed during two of them. Not odds that he liked even if he knew the reasons for the first one. He’d been there and survived only because of her amazing skills. But still, they’d crashed.

  “So how long have they been following us tonight?”

  Funny, Alice might start in the middle of conversations, but she never lost their thread once begun.

  “Since the White House gates.”

  She went silent at that as she pulled up into the parking spot by a hangar door.

  “You live like that?”

  “Part of the job.”

  She went quiet again.

  Daniel had to acknowledge, it could be a shocking price to pay. The loss of personal privacy in trade for a measure of security against being murdered by some nutcase.

  If this attraction between them built into something more, would it be a price Alice could stand to pay?

  Chapter 15

  “We have two flights tonight.” Major Beale indicated the two helicopters parked inside the hangar. Alice tried to get her clothes to settle properly. They’d given her a flight suit that covered her from collar to boots. The vest added another layer. Daniel wore a similar rig and managed to make it look enticing; like you’d want to strip it off to see what lay beneath. She felt like a balloon animal.

  The black-painted Black Hawk bristled with armament and radar domes. It had to be the DAP version. She’d never actually seen one of SOAR’s notorious Direct Action Penetrator modifications. No one else flew these. There were perhaps twenty of them in existence and it was the nastiest and most effective piece of airborne weaponry ever launched into the night sky.

  It looked modern, cruel, and impossibly deadly.

  The other helicopter was almost a joke beside it. She’d seen a thousand pictures of the Mil’s Mi-4 “Hound.” The first true workhorse Russian helicopter by Mikhail Mil. Over three thousand had been built. So ubiquitous and stubbornly tough that a number of countries still flew them, though the last new one had come off the line in 1964. Based on the American 1950s-era Sikorsky S-55, it looked completely out of place besides its cousin, the Sikorsky Black Hawk MH-60M.

  Alice didn’t have to ask what it was doing here; the idea had a brilliance in its simplicity. Emily nodded to her, acknowledging Alice’s quick understanding.

  Beale and Henderson could enter North Korea in one of two different ways. On board the DAP Hawk they would have speed, night-vision, and nap-of-earth flying capabilities making them as nearly invisible as any weapon of war could become.

  If they flew into the country with the Mi-4, they’d also be near enough invisible for a different reason. North Korea still used them as military trainers and agricultural birds. One of the last dozen countries to do so. No one would think twice about seeing one. But the mission would give up speed, maneuverability, and any chance of taking drastic action if called for.

  “A tough choice,” Alice acknowledged.

  “Mark and I have been back and forth on it.” Emily scowled at the two birds as if it were their fault. “We’re doing simulated missions in each tonight, hoping that will help answer the question. They’re the same weight, but the Hawk has half again the speed, twice the range, and four times the power. Should be interesting.”

  Alice had already learned that in Emily Beale’s world, “interesting” was a word indicating a complete and all-consuming fascination. The mistress of understatement, nothing was more important to the Major than helicopters and especially the task at hand.

  “Let’s start with the Hawk,” Alice suggested. “That’s your familiar ground, your baseline. Set your calibration point and then reference variations from there.”

  Emily nodded agreement and waved a hand toward the Black Hawk.

  Several things happened from that simple gesture. A couple of men Alice hadn’t previously noticed back in the shadows moved forward and began working over the DAP Hawk. These would be her crew chiefs, a mismatched pair.

  One no taller than Alice but exceptionally broad-shouldered and slim-waisted, a six-pack ab kind of guy. The other was a huge man. Not an ounce that wasn’t muscle, but tall and wide. If he played a hockey goalie, no one would ever see the net past his bulk. They moved over the bird with the ease of long practice and the silence of long familiarity. A good team.

  “We dropped in a couple of observer seats for you.” Emily indicated the back of the cargo bay. Two seats had been added, just like the ones for the gunners, low because of the four-foot height of the cargo bay. A circle of red-and-green Christmas lights had been arranged around the back of the pilots’ seats lending a cheery glow to the cabin.

  “That’s great. I love it. Thanks.” Alice wondered if she could tease the woman, always worth a try. “Daniel says you like to crash a lot.”

  Emily offered the slightest smile. “Well, we’ll see if we can keep tonight’s mishaps limited to just the simulated ones.”

  Alice nodded, just as upright and forthright as she’d expected.

  Then Emily offered her a beatific smile. “But don’t tell Daniel it’s only practice.”

  Alice laughed.

  Chapter 16

  The Black Hawk ride had been everything Alice had imagined. They took off low and fast and roared down the Potomac as if they were racing over the Sea of Japan. A winter storm on the Atlantic had kicked up wind and whitecaps on the Chesapeake Bay. The helicopter bumped and dropped in the wind while they flew so low it looked as if the waves were going to claw them from out of the sky.

  With a hard slam, they tilted nearly sideways and turned overland. They flew so low that they actually had to bounce upward to clear fences. The silence on the radio was absolute. The heavy helmets they wore offering only the slightest hiss over the built-in headphones to indicate they were latched into the radio and intercom system at all.

  Alice could see the infrared projection of the FLIR across the inside of her visor, passed to her by the nose-mounted forward-looking-infrared camera. It revealed trees with alarming suddenness as they traveled over the Virginia countryside at just under two hundred miles an hour.

  “Pending engine failure,” Mark Henderson announced from the left seat with a calmness that was startling, even in a practice scenario.

  “Oh no!” Daniel’s whisper. “Not again.”

  Alice had heard Emily tell the rest of the crew that they wouldn’t say the word “simulated” on this flight. Everyone was in the know but Daniel.

  He convulsively clutched Alice’s hand.

  “Silence on the intercom,” Beale snapped out. “Roger failure on one and two. Restart check.”

  “Restart failure on one and two.”

  “Roger. Initiating auto-rotate emergency landing.”
r />   Alice’s could feel the adrenaline pounding her heart against her rib cage as the bird backed hard in a nose-high position to shed their forward speed. The ground was so close.

  Alice bit the inside of her cheek hard enough that for a moment she’d thought she’d drawn blood. If she felt this stressed, even knowing it was a test, she now felt awful for pulling the trick on Daniel. But she didn’t dare speak while the pilots were so busy “saving” them. So instead she did her best to calmly pat his arm.

  At the last moment, with the ground barely a dozen feet away, but still moving forward quickly, Emily did something and the rotor blades dropped into silence. The helicopter fell, causing Alice to float out of her seat, her body only held in place by the safety harness. They hit tail first. Then the front wheels slammed down hard enough that twenty-thousand pounds of helicopter actually bounced back up by several feet, then they hit again and remained earthbound this time. The helicopter rolled forward neatly across a handy ballpark’s outfield.

  “End simulation.” Henderson remarked dryly.

  “Roger end simulation.” Emily acknowledged and in moments the rotors were biting air and they were once again aloft.

  “Simulation?” Daniel shouted into the headset.

  Emily Beale actually laughed. “Didn’t want you to be able to say you’d ever flown with me without crashing.”

  “Crap!” was all Daniel offered.

  Alice could feel him shaking with the post-adrenal fear-reaction. Okay, not one of her better jokes.

  # # #

  Daniel tried to beg off the repeat flight on the Mil Hound, but somehow Alice talked him into it. He’d been angry when he found out she was in on the joke, but Dr. Thompson proved to be a very difficult person to remain angry at.