CHAPTER 69
Rowan Anderson’s apartment
Washington, DC
“You look like hell,” Elise Courville said as she walked into Rowan Anderson’s apartment and handed her a large cup of coffee from a local café.
“Nice of you to say. You look like shit today too, lady. Thanks for the coffee.” Anderson took a long sip of the hot brew, and seemed immediately energized by the caffeine boost.
After an awkward moment, Courville closed her eyes as if holding back tears. “Please tell me you’ve got something? The stress feels lethal.”
Anderson put her coffee down. Then she walked to Courville and gently grabbed both her arms around the biceps, squaring her body so they stood face-to-face. “Look at me, Elise, and listen carefully. I need you to get in touch with the man in Paris.”
“Are you insane? Reaching out to him means signing a death warrant—certainly for me, but probably for both of us.” She slipped out of Anderson’s grasp and started pacing the apartment. “We are dead women.”
“Listen for a minute, Elise. Yes, we are dead women. But not yet. If he had wanted us planted in the dirt, we’d be there already.
He knows how scared we are. He also knows that fear keeps us quiet.
I am sure—somehow, somewhere—that his people have eyes on us.
Maybe not twenty-four-seven, but he has to know we’ve both been brought to DC, and under what circumstances.
So forget that for a moment. What he isn’t expecting is for us to fight back. ”
Elise Courville was trying to follow Anderson’s logic, but the dots weren’t connecting. “So you’re saying we have some kind of play here?”
“He doesn’t negotiate. Trust me—I figured that out a while ago.
But he also doesn’t do anything half-assed, or by the seat of his pants.
Right now he’s trying to resurrect some sort of plan, but he’s running short on time—and short on human assets.
He can’t afford to construct a whole new infrastructure of players to do this thing.
The two of us, we’re all he has. And that’s why we are going to give him the solution he so desperately needs.
Even if it’s coming from two walking-dead women. ”
Courville made no attempt to conceal her astonishment as Anderson kept spinning what sounded like the longest of long shots.
“I do have a plan, and it’s a plan he will like. A big bang for his buck, if you will. But Elise, you’re the one who’s going to have to sell it to him. The Secret Service is all over me, so my maneuverability is limited. But nobody’s looking at the grieving widow Harrison.”
“Except him, of course.”
“Except him, of course—yes,” Anderson conceded. She paused for what seemed like an extra beat before asking, “Now, do you want to hear the plan or not?”
Elise Courville closed her eyes again. It was the only way to make the world stop spinning, make the haze go away so she could think straight.
She reopened her eyes to the sight of Rowan Anderson, standing tall and sipping her coffee. She looked confident and totally in control.
Control was a quality that Elise Courville had never possessed. One that she needed now more than ever.
“Okay, Rowan. Tell me how we’re going to get out of this.”
“Trust me, Elise—it’s going to work.”
There in her Georgetown apartment, Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Rowan Anderson briefed Senator Coleman Harrison’s bereaved widow on exactly how they would kill the President of the United States.