he left, then he asked the same question of the
President's secretary in a hurt tone.
She gave him a roll of her eyes and said, "Think about it, dummy. She wants
something or she wouldn't be here at all. This was just a grand entrance to let
POTUS know she's nobody to take lightly or mess with in the slightest way."
Stiffening at her words, the guy stalked away muttering, "She's not even a
U.S. citizen. I'll bet she doesn't even have a goddamned green card."
Perhaps two minutes passed before the electronic locks built into the doors
of the Oval Office snapped off and the President opened the doors to greet Mandi
with a handshake.
"Sorry about all the fuss," he said. "Come on in, ma'am."
Yes, he'd put on a show of being pleasant enough, but his calm had been an
act right up until their very last moment together, and his gaze had too often
been focused on her upper anatomy instead of her eyes during their conversation.
Mandi landed on the hotel roof and changed, then slipped into the hotel and
went to her room, where she ordered a triple steak dinner to feed Cade's
conversion before she checked in with John about the look-alike contest.
As she waited for John to finish a conversation, she heard three of the
other agents discussing the previous day's events and Ed Cade's name came up.
"That cop Avery was stunned," said one guy. "He actually used the word
'stunned'. He said Cade popped that guy twice before he could get his gun out.
Said he only barely had his own gun out when the guy went through the window."
The woman snickered and said, "I'll bet he was gonna yell 'freeze!' or
something like that. He'd have been dead meat."
"Yeah, but some hindsight-quarterbacks with the PD are asking if Cade shot
before he'd validated his target."
"No-fucking-way," said the woman. "Cade's never called it bad yet and he had
over twenty kills on the books before he retired. If he'd screwed up even once,
some political buttmonkey would have been all over it in a flash."
'Twenty kills?' thought Mandi. She turned to face the woman and asked,
"Twenty kills? How many arrests?"
The three agents blinked at her for a moment, then the woman looked at one
of the guys and asked, "Two, is it? The kids he busted for car theft in Miami
six years ago?"
Nodding, the guy said, "Yeah. Sounds right. I've never heard of any others."
"Car theft?" asked Mandi, "Was he working with th