Chapter 7
The White House, Washington, D.C.
Lura Dougherty sat at her desk, reading over the speech the president was due to give to the United Steelworkers later in the week. Being raised by a mother who went to debutante school meant Lura’s posture was ramrod straight.
Well, that and her post in the West Wing, where slouching garnered a side-eye from the Marine who stood guard outside her door.
The AirPod in her right ear hummed with Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun.” Her left ear remained empty because she had to be ready to hop to when her boss barked orders like a drill sergeant with a headache.
Leonard Meadows, the White House chief of staff, refused to use the intercom on his desk, preferring to shout from the adjoining room.
And preferring to see me scamper in with tablet in hand, she thought with annoyance.
The whole shouting thing was just one of her boss’s many quirks.
She’d learned to tolerate almost all of them.
The only one that still made her want to take a sledgehammer to his head was when he acted like he was doing her a favor every year when she actually took the two weeks of vacation she was due.
She put in for the leave months in advance, made sure her temporary replacement was up to speed on the chief of staff’s calendar of events, and left him a three-ring binder chock-full of anything and everything she could think of regarding potential questions he might have.
And still, the day before her vacation started, he would look at her over the top of his reading glasses, sigh heavily, and say, “I suppose I can do without you for a fortnight.”
Fortnight? Seriously?
Who was he? Some British colonel in a BBC miniseries or—
Clunk. Snick.
The sounds caused her to lift her head and pull the AirPod from her ear. Sheryl’s voice shrank to a tinny murmur in her hand.
She knew that little clunk-snick by heart, even though the door connecting the chief of staff’s office to the Oval Office was rarely used.
Her boss preferred to enter the Oval through the main entrance, insisting it was the proper way to meet with the president of the United States.
But, occasionally, when Madam President wanted to pay a visit to her right-hand man and not have it clocked by her secretaries, her body man, or the three Marines posted outside the Oval’s windows, she used the connecting door.
And every time she did, Lura’s ears perked up.
She couldn’t help it.
She was nosy by nature.
Blame it on being Southern. Blame it on growing up in a small town where everyone was into everyone else’s business. Or, hell, blame it on reading too many Judy Moody books in elementary school.
She set aside the printed speech and her AirPod, wondering, What sort of international intrigue is afoot now?
She knew she shouldn’t eavesdrop. It was probably illegal to eavesdrop on the president. Treasonous even?
But, like always, her boss had left the connecting door ajar. Just enough to tempt. And through that tiny crack, quiet murmurs reached her ready ears.
“They say they want ten million dollars.”
Eliza Meadows. Leonard’s daughter. Her cool, crisp voice was unmistakable. Even coming through the speakerphone, it reminded Lura of freshly washed linen and expensive pearls.
Lura had worked hard to ditch her north Georgia drawl, but she’d never mastered the elegant, East Coast intonations that came naturally to Leonard and Eliza Meadows.
Not that Eliza was haughty or stuck-up. Quite the contrary, she was warm and surprisingly funny. But she had so much innate poise, so much Jackie O grace, that Lura couldn’t help feeling like a buttered biscuit compared to Eliza’s champagne brunch.
“And they’ve only given us until midnight to come up with it,” Eliza continued. “We were hoping—”
“Let me stop you right there,” Leonard Meadows’s voice cut across his daughter’s words like a sharpened letter opener. “If you’re calling to ask for money, we can’t help you.”
Why do Eliza and the Black Knights need ten million dollars? Lura wondered. And then her mother’s favorite phrase ran through her head. Curiosity killed the cat.
Lura reached for her AirPods. Fiddled them between her fingers. But she didn’t plug them in.
She should plug them in. A good assistant would plug them in.
Shooting a quick glance toward the hallway door, she half-expected the uniformed Marine to burst in and accuse her of subversion or spying or…
whatever. Just last year, a junior aide had been reassigned to the Department of Agriculture because she’d had a bad habit of listening in on meetings she wasn’t part of.
Alas, Lura’s inner Nancy Drew won out. Per usual. And Lura held her breath to make sure she didn’t miss a word that was said in the next room.
“We thought it might come from the same pot you pull the men’s salaries from,” Eliza said.
Leonard Meadows’s response was immediate. “That line item in the president’s budget is fixed. We can’t take out an additional ten million without drawing attention to ourselves.”
Lura bit the inside of her cheek. Her boss didn’t bend. Not for governors. Not for Congress. Not even for his own daughter.
Lura had never really understood the relationship between Leonard and Eliza Meadows.
Lura’s own dear daddy still called her pumpkin and kissed her forehead as they said their tearful goodbyes whenever she had to fly back to D.C.
after a trip home. In contrast, Leonard Meadows spoke to Eliza as if she were another subordinate, keeping her at a professional arm’s length.
“Dad…” Eliza tried again, her voice softening. “Please.”
“This has nothing to do with our side of the equation.” Again, the answer was clipped and concise, leaving no room for argument.
“It sounds like maybe all this recent social media coverage has caught the attention of someone trying to make a quick score. Or maybe the Charleston cartel played the long game and finally made their move on Miss Greenlee. Either way, the motorcycle shop’s responsible for figuring things out, not me or the president. I’m sorry, Eliza, but—”
Click.
Lura flinched. Eliza had cut the call.
Without saying goodbye.
Not that Lura blamed the poor woman. What was the point of wasting time on a farewell when Leonard Meadows wasn’t going to help, and when the clock was ticking?
Lura loved her job in the West Wing. She loved the fast pace and the importance of everyone’s efforts. She loved how she sometimes got to add her two cents to the president’s speeches since she came from “common folk” and knew how to talk to the masses.
But her boss was a hard man to work for, a hard man to like. And that was just god’s honest truth.
There was a beat of silence from inside the chief of staff’s office. Then, “Is there really no way we can help them?”
Lura liked President Sandra J. Stevens. More than that, she admired the woman.
Madam President was as brilliant as all get-out but still humble enough to know she didn’t have all the answers.
Most importantly, though, Sandra Stevens had the gumption to stand up to the nation’s enemies, both foreign and domestic.
And that was why she’d been reelected for a second term in a landslide.
“It’s too risky,” Meadows said flatly. “The oversight committee would flag that cash transfer in a matter of days, if not hours. We can’t hazard that kind of exposure.”
“I have personal funds,” the president insisted. “I could—”
“No.” The word came fast, sharp. “You know your personal banking is scrutinized as closely as your professional banking. And before you ask, because I recognize the look on your face, my personal banking as your chief of staff is scrutinized, too. I can’t dip into my personal wealth to help them.
They’re going to have to figure this one out for themselves. ”
Lura’s throat went dry even as her palms began to sweat.
She knew where the Black Knights could get their hands on ten million dollars without attracting the attention of the oversight committee.
But you should take a page from the book titled: Stay In Your Lane, A White House Survival Guide and keep sitting right where you are, she told herself. You know anything else is beyond dangerous.
She hadn’t meant to read the memo from the president that had been sandwiched between policy files and speech drafts. She hadn’t meant to point to it on her boss’s desk and ask, “What’s this about a mission gone wrong and an unofficial extraction team?”
Lord, remembering the look on the chief of staff’s face that day nearly made her toss her morning coffee, even now, three whole-ass years later. After explaining what she’d seen, Leonard Meadows had sworn her to secrecy with an icy promise of dire consequences should she not keep her trap shut.
And they hadn’t spoken of it since. She had tried not to even think about it since. But now…
It’s my patriotic duty to help if I can. Right?
Or maybe her patriotic duty was to pretend she was deaf and dumb. Maybe a good assistant would mind her own damn P’s and Q’s and—
Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.
That was one of her father’s favorite sayings. And it was enough to have her shoving to a stand.
Her knees were Jell-O, her throat was dry. But she managed to work up enough spit to swallow stickily as she crossed the short distance to the thick oak door that separated her office from the chief of staff’s.
She was fully aware that by doing what she was poised to do, she could be placing the last nail in the coffin of her career. But she’d been raised never to turn a blind eye to those in need. And it sounded like the Black Knights were in need indeed.
They only have until midnight.
Before she could second-guess herself, she rapped her knuckles against the wood.
“Come in, Lura,” her boss called at once, sounding impatient. He always sounded impatient.
Her heart chugged like a freight train inside her chest as she pushed on the heavy wooden panel. After stepping fully into the room, she closed the door behind her with a soft thunk…a sound different from the Oval’s door. But it still felt portentous. Final.
Leonard Meadows’s office was everything anyone would imagine it to be.
Leatherbound books lined mahogany bookshelves.
The lemony scent of furniture polish lingered in the air.
And the chief of staff’s desk was piled high with files and paperwork, one desktop, one laptop, and a cluster of coffee mugs because the man consumed caffeine like water.
Meadows sat at his desk in one of his bespoke three-piece suits, his arms crossed over his chest. President Stevens stood beside him, looking powerful in a gray pantsuit with an American flag pin stuck through her lapel.
Lura opened her mouth, but the words dried up in the back of her Sahara Desert throat. She licked her lips with a tongue so dehydrated she could feel her individual taste buds rasping against her skin.
“Well?” her boss prompted. He didn’t abide hem-hawing or hesitation. “What is it?”
Lura took a steadying breath and met the gazes of the two most powerful people in the country—maybe even in the world.
She might be the lowly daughter of a small-town mayor in Rabun County, Georgia, but she had an idea. A brilliant, inspired idea.
“I know where the Black Knights can get ten million dollars.”