Free Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command by Gary Grossman Page B

electronics department. Without comparison pricing, he picked up what he was looking for and went directly to the check out in under four minutes.
    His purchase was $29.95. He paid cash and left. Soon, he’d be home, but not before Curtis Lawson did two more things that night. First he made a quick call with his new pay-as-you-go mobile phone which included ten minutes of preloaded airtime. When he was finished he trashed the cell.
    Scott Roarke’s apartment
    That night
    Roarke slid into bed next to Katie. It was late and he had no intention of waking her. Roarke just wanted to feel her warmth. They could create great heat together. But there was far too much on his mind tonight.
    He snuggled up to her back, perfectly spooning with the beautiful brunette, the love of his life.
    She stirred and automatically reached around with her right hand and found him. Roarke gently kissed the back of her neck, but failed to respond to her touch.
    Katie then rolled onto her back. “Rough day?” she whispered.
    “Pretty well sucked.”
    “Anything you can talk about?” She snuggled up under his arm, resting her head against him. Katie expressly used the word can , which was quite different from want to.
    “No,” he sighed pulling her closer.
    “Same old, same old?” she asked referring to his frustrating investigation.
    “That and more.”
    “What did you think of the president’s speech?” Katie was working so hard at the conversation she was really waking up.
    “Hardly caught it.”
    “Well, you’ll be hearing about it for a long time.” Katie Kessler’s new job at the White House was probably going to become hell because of it, too.
    “CNN was already blasting it as ‘The Ex-Patriot Act’.”
    After a minute of silence, Katie raised herself up on her arm. The softness of her breast lay against Roarke’s muscular chest. It felt good to both of them.
    “Anything you want to share?”
    Roarke did. But without assurance that her one-bedroom, second-floor apartment at Seventeenth NW and Willard, not far from Dupont Circle, was clear of listening devices, he wouldn’t. Also, there was the law. He wasn’t allowed to share details of his job with anyone, including Katie. He’d violated U.S. secrecy code in the past, revealing details of his work to her. The president could have fired him, but didn’t. If Congress had learned about the conversation, he would have been arrested, tried, and convicted.
    “Anything?” she asked again.
    “How much I love you.”
    “You better,” she murmured. “I moved to this political hornet’s nest to be near you. I’ve never done that for anyone.” With her free hand, Katie reached under the covers for him again—hoping.
    “I do. And I’m sorry. It’s just work. I’ve been kind of absorbed.”
    Overwhelmed would have been Katie’s frustrated word.
    The White House
    The same time
    “Coming up next,” the local TV anchor read, “The president’s declaration on pre-emptive strikes. Will Capitol Hill be the first battlefront? Speaker of the House Duke Patrick fights back. And ahead, taking stock of the soft drink wars. Who’s bubbling up to the top this week? And in sports tonight, you’ve got to see what led up to this shot!” The video went from the thirty-three-year-old anchor to a clip of a miraculous half-court basket at the buzzer by the Washington Wizards.
    “Well?” the president asked from his side of the bed.
    “Well, what?” Eleanor Taylor was reading and had successfully ignored the tease and most of the late news. But it didn’t mean she didn’t know what he was really asking.
    To the public, the first lady was a quiet, nonpolitical player. But in her fourteen years in Washington, she had been active in a number of key charities, particularly those that dealt with the arts.
    In executive sessions, and the privacy of their bedroom, she often complained about the people right down the street—the narrow-minded representatives, the high-paid