CHAPTER 1 #2
He shifted his duffel bag higher on his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before the dogs decide they want to search my bag too. I’ve got protein bars that might trigger an international incident.”
Britta followed him, not sure why this felt like a good idea.
It broke rule one of every security briefing she’d ever endured—no rides with strangers.
But this particular stranger had just been face-planted into the terminal floor on her account, and after eighteen hours of paranoia, one friendly face felt like oxygen.
A shared Uber was the least she could do.
The automatic doors slid open. Key West humidity slammed into her, soaked her through with the salty ocean air and the scent of tropical flowers. The golden hour spread orange and pink along the horizon.
Oh, it was going to be a perfect getaway. Exactly what she needed after so many hours cooped up at the Edward Bennett Williams Law Library.
The taxi stand was busy—a line of cabs, travelers claiming them one by one. The rideshare pickup area was less crowded.
West pulled out his phone and tapped at the screen. “Calling us a Lyft. Two minutes out.”
“Oh—you don’t have to—”
“She’ll be coming with us.”
The voice came from behind her. Male. Professional. Carrying that particular tone she’d spent ten years learning to recognize.
Oh, no.
Three people in business casual. Khakis and polos and expressions that said they’d been expecting this exact moment.
Agent Rafe Martinez. Agent Luis Chávez. Agent Tori Patterson.
Her detail.
Here.
In Key West.
“Guys—”
They’d found her.
“How—” Her voice cracked.
“Facial recognition,” Patterson said quietly. “Airport cameras. Anything off your approved itinerary pings us.”
They’d known the entire time.
Heat flooded her face, then drained just as quickly, leaving her cold despite the Florida humidity.
“You let me think I’d escaped.”
“Your father wanted you to feel free for a few hours. That doesn’t mean we ever lost you.” Chávez’s voice was softer than usual.
“But you followed me anyway.”
“We kept you safe, Starlight. There’s a difference.” Martinez reached out for her.
But surfer-dude-turned-bodyguard West stepped forward, his body angling slightly between her and Martinez. “Okay, I’m clearly missing context here, but she doesn’t look like someone who wants to go with you.”
“Sir, this doesn’t concern you.” Martinez said in a tone that ended the fear.
“Well, I’m making it concern me.” West’s voice stayed easy, but something underneath it shifted. Hardened. “Because thirty seconds ago I was sharing a ride with Sarah and now three people are surrounding her like she’s a national security threat.”
He looked at her. “Are you a national security threat?”
She opened her mouth, didn’t know what to say. Yes? No?
“Ms. White,” Patterson said, looking past West, “that’s enough. It’s time to come with us.”
Britta couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe past the crushing weight of eighteen hours of hope collapsing into nothing.
“Wait.” West looked between them, his expression shifting from concerned to confused to something else entirely. “White? As in—”
“We need to leave.” Patterson moved closer. “Your father would like to speak with you.”
“My father—” Britta’s voice came out strangled. “You’ve been reporting to my father this entire time?”
“We report to him always. You know that.”
She did know that. Of course she knew that.
“Britta White.” West said it slowly, testing the name. Recognition dawning across his face. “Aw, I can’t believe I didn’t see that.”
“We really need to go.” Patterson took her elbow. Gently. But unmistakably a restraint.
“Wait.” West’s hand closed on her other arm. “She doesn’t want to go.”
“Sir, remove your hand.” Martinez moved in. “Now.”
“Not until she tells me she wants to leave.”
“She doesn’t get a choice.”
“Everyone gets a choice.”
Things happened too fast after that.
Martinez grabbed West’s wrist. West twisted, and he seemed to possess some training because he jerked out of Martinez’s hold.
But Chávez, six foot four, a giant of a man, grabbed him, tripped him, His mouth tightened, and poof, surfer-man West ended up face down on the pavement, Chávez’s knee in his back, his duffel bag six feet away where it had landed during the struggle.
“Stop!” Britta yanked her arm free from Patterson’s grip and dropped to her knees beside West. “Stop, he didn’t do anything. He was helping me. Let him go.”
“Ms. White—”
“I said let him go.” She looked up at Martinez.
At Patterson. At Chávez, who’d known her since she was sixteen —first on her family’s private detail, then with the Service once her father took office—and had never once failed to be professional and distant and absolutely committed to keeping her safe even when she didn’t want to be kept. “Please.”
Martinez looked at Patterson. Patterson looked at Chávez. All three of them clearly doing some kind of silent agent communication.
“He’s clear,” Patterson said finally. “No threat.”
Martinez released West and stepped back, offering a hand up that was pointedly ignored.
West stood, brushing off his shorts, his T-shirt torn at the shoulder, a scrape blooming red on his elbow. He looked at Britta, then at the three agents, then back at Britta.
“So,” he said. “Britta White. President’s daughter.”
“I’m sorry.” The words felt hollow. Useless. “I didn’t think they’d—”
“Tackle me? Yeah. That makes two of us.” He picked up his duffel bag. “Just so we’re clear, I wasn’t trying to interfere with anything official. I genuinely thought Sarah needed help.”
“She doesn’t exist,” Patterson said. “The woman you met doesn’t exist.”
“Right.” West’s mouth flattened into a line. “Got it.”
He turned to walk away.
“Wait,” Britta called after him. “I’m sorry. Really. I just wanted—”
“What? To be normal?” He stopped. Turned back. “News flash: You don’t get normal when you’re the daughter of the most powerful man on earth.” He glanced at the agents. “Frankly, I’m with them. You don’t get to put the world in danger just because you don’t like your life.”
“I just wanted to go to a wedding, without an entourage.”
He shook his head, his expression something between sympathy and frustration. “This isn’t how you get freedom.”
Then he was gone, disappearing into the silver sedan he’d called, right on time.
Britta watched him leave, something sharp and painful lodging in her throat.
Patterson’s hand closed gently on her elbow. “Ms. White. Time to go.”
“Where?”
“We’ve arranged accommodations. Your father would like to speak with you.”
Of course he would.
Britta let herself be guided toward a black SUV that had appeared from nowhere—because black SUVs always appeared from nowhere when you were the President’s daughter and your security detail had been tracking you the entire time.
She climbed in. Buckled her seat belt. Pulled off the sunglasses and the wig because what was the point anymore.
Her phone buzzed.
Imani
STATUS REPORT. Are you alive? In jail? Please respond.
Britta
Alive. Not in jail. Operation Wedding Getaway was a bust.
Madeline
Oh no. What happened?
Britta looked out the window at the Key West sunset, at the palm trees and the paradise she’d tried so hard to reach, at the terminal where West had disappeared and her eighteen hours of hope had lasted approximately eleven minutes after landing.
Britta
Met a guy. Lied about my name. Got him tackled by my security detail.
Imani
WHAT?
Madeline
Please tell me you’re joking.
Britta
I wish.
The SUV pulled away from the curb. Martinez was driving. Patterson was in the passenger seat, already on her phone. Chávez sat beside Britta, his expression carefully neutral.
“For what it’s worth,” he said quietly, “your father really did want you to feel like you’d succeeded. He thought you deserved that.”
“He gave me fake freedom. That’s not the same thing.”
“No. It’s not.” He was quiet for a moment. “But letting you run a route we controlled? That he could stomach. Turning you loose with no eyes on you—he couldn’t.”
The airport faded behind them. Ahead, Key West waited.
And somewhere out there, a guy named West who’d stood up for her and gotten flattened for his trouble and probably thought she was either a liar or a fraud or both.
He wasn’t wrong.
So much for a relaxing weekend.
West pulled at the torn shoulder seam of his T-shirt—threads dangling, fabric gaping, the whole thing a walking advertisement for his spectacularly bad decision-making.
The Uber driver kept glancing at him in the rearview mirror.
Probably wondering if he should ask questions or just drive faster and hope for a good tip.
Key West traffic crawled. Bikes everywhere. Tourists in flip-flops and sunburns crossing against lights. A group of tourists on scooters.
He couldn’t stop replaying it. The moment she’d looked up at him—Sarah Miller who wasn’t Sarah Miller—and he’d seen that flash of something raw under the disguise. Desperation. Fear.
“I just wanted to go to a wedding.”
Eight words he couldn’t stop hearing.
His phone buzzed.
Ham
I saw what happened.
West stared at the screen. Of course Ham saw. Ham saw everything. Occupational hazard of running a private security firm and spending twenty years in Spec Ops before that.
Ham
What was that about?
West
Nothing. Mistaken identity.
His phone rang.
West let it go to voicemail.
It rang again immediately.
Ham
I’m three cars behind you. Stop avoiding me.
West twisted around to look out the back window. Sure enough, three cars back, another Uber carried an unmistakable silhouette—Hamilton Jones, phone to his ear, no doubt already formulating the exact questions West didn’t want to answer.
He picked up the phone when it rang again. “You’re relentless,” West said by way of greeting.
“You’re evasive.” Ham’s voice carried part authority and part amusement. “Want to tell me why you got flattened by Secret Service in an airport arrival area?”
“I was helping someone.”
“The President’s daughter.”
A pause, then, “You recognized her?”
“You didn’t?”
“She was wearing a wig!”