One felony was all it took to convince Andrea Lin she was better suited to committing crime on paper than in person. As renowned mystery author Lynn Andrews, she understood conflict equaled good drama. Like her readers, she should have expected the hiccups, even relished them. What she hadn’t counted on was the accompanying agita, especially while sitting in her Bergen County kitchen, far from the action at the Bitcoin Teller Machine.

Her one job had been to place a single phone call when the money hit and tell the hacker to lift the encryption on Grace’s computer. Trouble was, her dozen calls remained unanswered until a few minutes ago, throwing their meticulous plan off schedule.

Andrea stroked the blue-gray Nebulung purring on her lap and tried to ignore the churning in her stomach. “Denver, the next time I consider helping a sibling with some crazy scheme, you have my permission to use my leg as a scratching post until I come to my senses. Agreed?”

Denver looked up, his green eyes filled with innocence, and answered with a single meow before leaping onto the table toward her plate of shortbread cookies.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She sipped her tea, willing the sugar to sweeten the acrid taste in her mouth. The phone interrupted her meditation. No doubt a check-in from her brother, the extorter-in-chief.

“I figured you’d have called by now. Everything on track?” Joe’s strained voice conveyed his own jangled nerves. They’d agreed to be vague when communicating. In these days of Siri and Alexa, anyone could be listening.

“Finally. Took forever to get through to our friend, but she said she’d take care of ‘our project’ as soon as her meetings wrapped up. From here on out though, I’m sticking to fiction. Real-life intrigue is too stressful.”

Andrea missed Joe’s response, instead perplexed by her cats’ sudden change of behavior. Denver had tilted his head and leapt from the table; Vail and Aspen sat frozen, ears perked, staring toward the foyer. Then she heard it too, the sound of papers shuffling in the living room. She leaned forward, muscles taut, hackles raised, ready to pounce. “Joe, hold on a sec. I think someone’s in the house. I’ll call you back later.”

***

“Wait, what? Andrea??” Silence. The connection was dead.

After twenty minutes of weaving in and out of rush-hour traffic to travel one mile, Joe “Hack” Hackford pulled up outside his sister’s Ridgewood home. Adrenaline pumping on overdrive, he jumped from his car and sprinted toward the house. Door wide open—not an encouraging sign. He steeled his nerves and hastened inside. The living room looked like a hurricane’s aftermath, with furniture overturned and papers littering the carpets and floor.

“Andrea? Are you here?” He rushed into the kitchen, which lacked any signs of their celebratory dinner—no spaghetti boiling on the stove, no cake rising in the oven. Only the door to the backyard ajar and a shriek emanating from the next room, piercing the eerie silence. Hair stiffening at the back of his neck, he raced into the dining room where a redheaded woman stood frozen, staring across the room.

“Who the hell are you?” he growled.

The stranger remained wide-eyed and unresponsive. He followed her gaze to the floor, where he witnessed the unthinkable. His beloved sister lay in the corner, surrounded by a pool of blood, a kitchen knife stuck in her chest. Her eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. A trio of feline guards circled her lifeless body.

Hack’s knees turned to jelly, and he grabbed onto a chair for support, forcing back the remains of the snack he’d consumed only minutes earlier. Once the initial shock waned, he reverted his attention back to the intruder. At second glance, she did look somewhat familiar, though the woman he’d met a few weeks back—the missing heiress whose computer they’d just hacked—was brunette. Had she uncovered their con? With a bolt of fury, he reached forward and pulled the wig from her head. A thousand questions zigzagged in his brain, but only one forced its way past his lips:

“Oh my God. Grace. Oh my God. What the hell have you done?”

***

Excerpt from Saving Grace by D.M. Barr. Copyright 2020 by D.M. Barr. Reproduced with permission from D.M. Barr. All rights reserved.

One Race: One World: The Year 2050

It was now 2050 and the world had really changed. There were no more planes or trains. All you needed to do was think about being somewhere and you were there. The government, in order to save money on gas and fuel, had banned cars, buses, and any means of transportation, and implanted chips in everyone’s arms that helped transport them to wherever they wanted to go, including the past.

A huge explosion had occurred, and all that was left in the world were twenty countries, with only twelve hundred people in each country. Most people had not survived the explosion, which had caused most of the countries to just disappear into space forever. No one really knew if anyone was out there or if these people survived somewhere, and no one really cared enough to find out.

One man called The Ruler headed all the countries, and assigned one person as the Chief of Law and Enforcement in each country. Under this person, five people helped to enforce the rules and the laws.

Then, one miserable day, someone decided there were too many wars, too many hate crimes, too many people being killed on the streets, and too much traffic and congestion on the highways. The government hired several scientists to find a solution to the problem, and that was how everyone in the entire world wound up multicolored.

Because of all the wars and fighting and hate that took place in the past, the government created a way to eliminate the many different races in the world and opted for only one. Everyone looked the same. Our faces might have looked a little different, but our skin colors were the same—multicolored. They did this so that no one would insult, mock, or hurt anyone because of their skin color. They eliminated houses of worship so that everyone was nonsectarian, and no one would be discriminated against. However, what they could not eliminate were our thoughts and desires to make changes in our lives, even though they tried.

Everyone that lived here had a job that paid the same amount. No one, no matter what they did or what career they chose, was paid more than anyone else. We never had to worry about being laid off. Unless we decided to move somewhere else our job stayed the same, and there was no room for advancement—ever. Everyone did the same thing every day. Nothing changed. Life was supposed to be anger free, insult free, and most of all, calm and tranquil. HOW DULL AND BORING! (OH! I am not supposed to say that. Opinions are not allowed here.)

One morning I got up and got dressed to go to my boring job as an accountant with the only accounting firm in this city. I went over the books daily, entered my accounts in their daily ledgers, and did taxes for some of the companies in this city. It was grunt work, and nothing exciting ever happened at work or anywhere else.

Walking to work as usual, I began remembering how it was only twenty years ago when there were cars, trains, and people running and yelling for cabs and trains to wait for them at the station. I missed the newspaper people on the street and the vendors selling hot coffee and bagels from their pushcarts. Those were the days. I loved the way people had looked and the different races and nationalities that lived here. Learning from other people was what made life exciting.

Then the unexpected happened. A new family with two children moved in down the street from me. These two kids were not going to conform to our way of thinking, and decided it was time to shake things up—and they did. One morning when going to school they each wore something other than the school’s drab gray uniform. The girl wore a pink and green dress with flowers, and the boy wore something blue, and a shirt that said, “I hate being the same. Different Rules.”

This did not go over well, and they were taken into custody by the guards in their school and promptly suspended. This did not stop them. They started screaming and yelling all sorts of words we had not heard before. “One race is not what we are supposed to be. I hate this planet. I hate all of you.”

I could not believe my ears. This was grounds for banishment into the Devoid Zone. These two children had painted stars all over their faces. Their younger sister decided to paint her face one color. Who in today’s world had a face that was one color? Everyone here looked and dressed the same. It prevented jealousy, arguments, and fashion wars. How dare they go against the laws of this state?

***

Excerpt from What if? by Fran Lewis. Copyright 2020 by Fran Lewis. Reproduced with permission from Fran Lewis. All rights reserved.

Elle weaved her way through the Saturday crowd at the street market, listening to the various conversations flowing around her. Since arriving in Germany three weeks ago, she had looked forward to exploring the local scenery and visiting the cities near her new assignment. If only today she had time to enjoy the environment . . . and the shops.

A brisk wind whipped through Elle’s long, blonde hair. A few autumn leaves drifted onto the sidewalk. She tugged her overcoat tighter around her, then stuffed her hands in her pockets to protect them against the chill, not bothering to put her gloves on.

She passed various customers, picking up on snippets of their conversations.

Two women discussed what kind of fish to buy for dinner, and an older couple looked over a variety of apples at the fruit stand. At the neighboring booth, a handful of tourists chatted in English as they debated whether some glassware would make it safely home to Canada.

Elle wished she could worry about such trivialities, but she doubted that would happen anytime soon.

Something was wrong with the latest reports on the new drone project. She was sure of it.

When her uncle had sent her undercover as an army lieutenant, she had expected to find some evidence of misappropriation of funds or missing supplies, but uncovering a possible unauthorized access to highly sensitive material lifted her investigative senses to a new level. This wasn’t a story to be written. If her suspicions were right, this was espionage.

For three weeks now, she had set aside her true identity of investigative journalist and had acted under her alias of Lieutenant Elaina Martin to send her suspicions up the chain of command. Unfortunately, no one wanted to listen to a lowly lieutenant in a sea of colonels, especially when that lieutenant was a bean counter. She really needed to talk to her uncle about promoting her the next time he sent her undercover as an officer. Of course, no one would believe she was a colonel at twenty-seven, so she supposed her age was going to handicap her for a while longer.

Her assignment to Germany was supposed to be her opportunity to take a break from high-profile cases for a while, a chance to rest and recover from nearly six months of undercover work in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, her first day on the job, she had stumbled across an anomaly that, despite weeks of research, she still couldn’t explain.

When she tried to discuss the problem with her commanding officer, she had been told the program supervisor had everything under control. Colonel Doyle’s assurances didn’t change the facts. Someone without clearance had accessed the developmental software for the new unmanned aircraft prototype, a prototype that could fly undetected by radar. She didn’t need to be an aeronautical engineer to know that the software in the wrong hands could be deadly.

With no one in her unit taking her concerns seriously, she had reached out to the only person she’d known outside her unit whom she could trust with classified information: her sister Abby.

If Abby couldn’t figure out what was going on, Elle didn’t know who could.

The woman had a knack for seeing what other people missed. Elle should know.

Had it not been for Abby, the theft of weapons at Edwards Air Force Base would have put Elle before a court martial instead of the corporal who had tried to frame her.

The incident had opened Elle’s eyes to what she really wanted to do with her life. Abby had spent her years since college protecting their country by keeping secrets, and Elle wanted to protect their freedoms by revealing the secrets that, when kept, could create their own kind of danger, so she’d been working as an investigative journalist ever since.

Elle reached the designated café and stepped inside. Most of the round tables were occupied, the seats positioned so the customers could look out the wide window and watch the world go by. Deeper inside the restaurant, Abby waited for her at a table in the far corner.

Elle weaved her way past several waiters until she reached her sister. When Abby stood, Elle gave her a hug. “Abby, thanks for meeting me.”

“You said it was important. From what you sent me, I think it is.”

Elle sat beside Abby, then reached into her oversized purse to retrieve a file folder. “I brought you documentation.”

Abby took the folder and opened it in front of her. “What am I looking at?”

“The download logs for the new drone software.”

“And?”

Elle scooted her chair closer and pointed at the area of concern. “According to command, this software is still in the final testing stage. The only people who should be accessing the files are the programmers.”

She tapped on a list of the approved personnel. “Kamile Frost, Dennis Cleveland, and Lance Finney are all listed over here.”

“Then who is this?” Abby asked, pointing to the three access codes used during the night shift.

“That’s what I want to know. Whoever it is only downloads the updates after everyone else is gone for the day.”

“Talk about suspicious.”

“I thought so too.”

A waiter approached with a carafe of water, slices of lemon floating inside.

He filled both of their glasses. “Have you had time to look over the menu?”

Elle opened hers, quickly narrowing the options to what she could eat without triggering her allergies to citrus, tomatoes, and pork. After they both gave their orders and the waiter left, Elle pulled a water bottle from her purse and took a sip.

“I see you still come prepared.”

“Yeah. It’s such a pain that so many restaurants serve their water with lemon.”

Elle didn’t know how Abby had escaped all the food allergies in the family, while Elle appeared to have received a double dose.

Abby sipped her water and tapped her finger on the file folder. “I assume you brought your concerns to the attention of your CO.”

“Colonel Doyle didn’t seem the least bit interested in my concerns.”

“Did he have an explanation?”

“No. He just said the program manager would have said something if there were a problem. Apparently, everyone up the chain of command agrees with Colonel Doyle because no one seems concerned that a top-secret program might have been jeopardized,” Elle said.

“And no one told you who else is accessing it?”

“No. I thought with your resources, you could figure it out.”

“That’s easy enough. When I get back to the office, I’ll look up the access code and see who it belongs to.” Abby lifted her glass and took another long swallow. “I can’t guarantee I can tell you the name.”

“I realize you can’t share classified information, but you would at least be able to tell if this person is cleared on the project.”

“I can do that,” Abby said. “I’m not sure I’ll find anything beyond what the project supervisor would have noticed.”

“Maybe not, but after what happened at Edwards, I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“The theft of those weapons wasn’t your fault. Adams created such a good paper trail, no one could have been expected to know it wasn’t real.”

“The auditor did.”

“An auditor who has thirty years of experience and was specifically looking for potential thefts,” Abby countered. “Besides, if it was something you should have caught in your ordinary course of business, he wouldn’t have made a point of clearing you.”

“But I sensed something wasn’t right. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.”

“Which is why we’re sitting here now.”

Elle shrugged. “I’m sorry if I seem paranoid.”

“Not paranoid. Cautious,” Abby corrected. “There’s a difference.”

“Whatever you call it, I appreciate your help.” Elle took another sip from her water bottle.

Abby cleared her throat. “How have you liked being stationed here in Germany?”

“It’s been good. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to practice speaking German much since so many people here speak English, but the language has come back faster than I’d expected.”

“I figured it would. You were speaking like a native when we lived here as kids.” Abby cleared her throat again and tugged at her scarf.

“So were you. I never realized how much we learned while Dad was stationed in Stuttgart.”

Abby opened her mouth to respond but, instead, coughed several times.

She reached for her water glass and took a swallow.

Elle leaned forward in her seat. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I have this tickle in my throat,” Abby said, promptly coughing again. “Must be the change in the weather. I got a cold last fall too.”

“I’ve been wondering how anyone survives the winters here.”

“You’re about to find out . . .” Abby’s words trailed off into another fit of coughs, then her face turned red, a panicked expression dominating her features.

“Abby!” Elle pushed out of her chair and circled to pat her sister on the back.

Even though Abby hadn’t eaten anything, her hands went to her throat as though she were choking.

The waiter was at their side in an instant and pulled Abby out of her chair to start the Heimlich maneuver.

“She hasn’t eaten anything. I think she’s having an allergic reaction.” Elle fumbled through her purse for her EpiPen. She flipped off the safety cap, pressed the tip to Abby’s thigh, and pushed the button to trigger the injection.

Almost immediately, Abby took a gasping breath.

“Here.” The waiter thrust a glass of water toward Abby. “Take a sip.”

“No.” Elle pushed the glass away and knelt beside Abby’s chair. “Are you okay?”

Abby opened her mouth to speak only to begin another coughing fit.

Elle turned to the waiter. “Something’s wrong. Call an ambulance.”

A waitress approached, her phone in hand. “I already called. The ambulance will be here any minute.”

The waiter picked up the carafe from the table and refilled Abby’s glass. As soon as there was a break in the coughing, he offered the glass of water again.

“Are you sure you don’t want to give her something to drink?”

“Not until we figure out what caused this.”

Again, Abby tried to take a deep breath, but this time, her body trembled before being taken over by a seizure.

“Help me move her onto the floor.” Elle gripped Abby under her arms while the waiter helped ease her onto the carpet. Elle moved the closest chairs out of the way and knelt beside Abby.

“I’ll check on the ambulance,” the waiter said.

Elle sensed rather than saw the waiter head for the door. Helpless to do anything but wait, Elle fought for calm. “Hang on, Abby. Help is on the way.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before two ambulance attendants rushed through the door. Elle stood to give them room to work.

“What happened?” the paramedic asked in German.

“I don’t know,” Elle said, automatically responding in his language. “She started coughing and acting like she couldn’t breathe. I injected her with my EpiPen, and she got better for a few seconds. Then it started again. She started her seizure about a minute ago.”

Both paramedics knelt beside Abby, evaluating her.

“Does she have any known allergies?”

“No, and she was fine when I got here,” Elle said. “When she couldn’t breathe, the EpiPen was the only thing I could think of.”

Abby’s face paled, and her body stilled.

“I’ve lost her pulse,” one paramedic said.

Elle stepped back and watched the paramedics begin CPR and start Abby on oxygen. Adrenaline still pumping through her, Elle lowered herself into her chair. Minutes stretched out, the paramedics continuing the CPR, trading places every few minutes. They spoke with someone on the phone, the voices blurring with the background noise of the crowd who had been cleared out of the restaurant.

Tears flowed freely down Elle’s cheeks. She stood with her arms tightly folded, unable to do anything but watch and pray. She didn’t know how much time had passed when one paramedic tapped the other on the shoulder and shook his head. The paramedic not working on Abby sat beside Elle to confirm that the unbelievable had become the inevitable.

The one performing CPR gave one more chest compression and leaned back on his heels. His eyes lifted to meet Elle’s. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” The word escaped in a whisper. It couldn’t be. Elle stared at her sister’s lifeless body, waiting for any sign that she had misunderstood. Her heartbeat echoed in her head as though beating inside a deep tunnel.

“I’m so sorry.” The second paramedic put his hand on Elle’s arm.

Grief crashed over her, new tears forming. Her sister was gone. She was really gone.

“Can I get you something to drink? Maybe a glass of water?”

Elle shook her head, and her gaze swept over the table. Her water glass wasn’t there. Why that detail mattered at such a time, Elle didn’t know. A quick scan of the table revealed her glass wasn’t the only thing missing. Abby’s glass, the water carafe, and the file outlining Elle’s suspicions were also missing.

Elle swiped at her tears. “What happened to the waiter who met you at the door?”

“No one met us when we arrived,” the paramedic said.

Suspicions cut through her grief and bloomed with a sense of panic. Her file was coded in a way that it wouldn’t jeopardize national security, but if the people behind the suspicious activity got ahold of it, they would know exactly where the evidence was that could identify them.

Elle swallowed hard and forced herself to push aside her emotions and look at Abby’s lifeless body. The only thing her sister had ingested since her arrival was the water their waiter had served them, water Elle herself would have drunk had it not contained lemon slices. She stood and took a step toward the door.

“I have to go.”

“But we need more information from you.”

“Her name is Abigail Bender, and I think she was poisoned.”

***

Excerpt from On the Run by Traci Hunter Abramson. Copyright 2020 by Traci Hunter Abramson. Reproduced with permission from Traci Hunter Abramson. All rights reserved.

Friday, March 10

Seattle, Washington

1

Just before 5am, FBI Agent Imogen Trager gave a low growl and reached for the phone, buzzing officiously on the nightstand. She sat on the edge of the bed she shared with Duncan Calder, glowering at it as her eyes focused in the dark. Fixing a strand of red hair behind her ear, she scrolled through texts and posts from colleagues and friends. Her anger turned from dismay to sickening fear.

“Duncan!” She shook him awake and handed him the phone. He sat up and took it, scanning the news, instantly awake.

Imogen rose and picked her way to the living room in the dark where she turned on the television. The piercing glare of the screen stung the murky Northwest morning. Some 3,700 miles away, Vice President Robert Moore approached a phalanx of microphones, manfully fighting back tears:

“My fellow Americans,” he said, “it is my sad duty to confirm that Diane Redmond, the President of the United States, is dead.”

Bob Moore, a towering figure in person, looked small on screen, standing in the rain under a canopy of black umbrellas at the entrance to Walter Reed Medical Center. Duncan joined Imogen in the darkness, and she reached for his hand.

They stared, dumbfounded, as Moore continued: “Her doctors have informed me”—here he paused to clear his throat—“that the cause of death is believed to be a heart attack; that it was sudden and fatal. A full autopsy is underway, and it will give us a clearer picture. Our prayers go out to her family and loved ones.

“The Chief Justice has administered the Oath of Office to me here in the presence of cabinet members and hospital staff. The preservation of our great nation’s interests, its security and the continuity of government are assured.”

Duncan turned to Imogen: “Is it starting again?”

“I don’t think it ever stopped,” she brooded, her green eyes smoldering. “We failed. We didn’t cut the head off the snake.” Fury rose within her, sharp and raw like nausea.

Duncan handed her back the phone. It continued buzzing as reporters swarmed, asking for a quote from her as the public and photogenic face of the Faithless Elector investigation. She’d learned her lesson there and declined each call.

Their texted questions—the ones she bothered to read—were, as usual, off the mark: Would the Faithless Elector task force be revived to look into the President’s death? Would unanswered questions from the investigation strengthen or weaken support for the new President? Regarding the first: the task force was alive, if not well, she thought, and at any rate, she’d be one of the last to know about any official changes or developments. As to the second: Take a fucking a poll.

None of them asked the real questions—the ones she needed answered: Was this the final move of the conspiracy she had chased madly into a blind alley? If so, how had the dark network assassinated a President inside the White House? Who was moving the pieces, and what were the next moves? Most pressing: How would she get herself back in the hunt? From her phone, she deleted the draft email bearing the resignation she had planned to send on Monday morning.

Dawn was still some two hours away as Calder sat down on the couch next to her. “So you won’t be resigning, I take it,” he observed.

“No,” she said, not looking up from her notebook.

“How will you begin?”

She looked up. “We were digging in the wrong place. I’m going to go back over the associates and links we’ve established, see where or how any of them point at Bob Moore.”

“So Moore digging, eh?” he quipped.

Imogen sighed. She loved him, but how was he able to have distance at a moment like this? she wondered. She eyed him wearily. “Duncan, I’m going to get stonewalling from Nettie at the office about this new direction. I’m—”

He held up a hand. “What will you do?” He looked at her notebook. “And who’s Carla?”

“I’m going back to the data.”

“You’ve gotten nowhere with that,” said Calder acidly.

“Because we were looking at it in relation to other actors. Not Moore. And Carla’s not a who, but a what—short for ‘CARLA F BAD’: Character, Associates, Reputation, Loyalty, Ability, Finances, Bias, Alcohol, Drugs. It’s what you look at in a security clearance, among other things. It helps define spheres of influence and interaction. The disclosure dossiers on the men who’ve been working directly under Moore will have looked precisely at these CARLA factors. And I want to look at them, too. And his associates. So I’ll go backward, this time with Moore in mind. I want to look at his campaign finances. Who funded him early on in the race? Who else was involved or associated? Maybe something jumps out at me. Maybe that’ll point me in a direction.”

“It’s a lot of maybes, ’Gen.” He scratched at his iron gray hair.

“It’s where I’ll start. There’s always a gap in the armor somewhere. The really hard part is that I can’t just request materials the regular way through regular channels without telegraphing what I’m trying to do.”

“Or looking like you’re still part of the Faithless Elector case.”

She nodded and looked at him uncertainly. “And…I think I should cut this weekend short, if I can get a flight back to D.C.”

“I’m wondering what you’re still doing here,” he said.

Imogen leaned in and kissed him.

On the East Coast it was early morning, but across much of the country the sun was still not up. In the darkness, the announcement of Redmond’s death in office set off a series of moves seemingly unconnected and largely unremarked, as pawns were sacrificed and battle pieces were moved into place for the final gambit.

Rocky Mountains

Snow lit by headlights split the darkness, blinding the Highway patrolman who waited for the tow truck to pull out a car buried in the snow. Working in the dark about 14 miles west-by-southwest of Aspen, Colorado, the tow truck was having a difficult time dragging the car out. In what must have been whiteout conditions, the car had plunged through a guardrail and into the ravine.

As the patrolman stood at the side of the road waiting for the winch operator to do his work, he took off his right glove to read an alert on his phone. Speechless, he watched the news clip of now-President Moore at the hospital. Bewildered, numb—and not just from the cold—he stared over the still-dark, bleak expanse of mountains.

“Damn,” said the winch operator, breaking the patrolman’s reverie. The contorted steel shell of a car came into view and slowly ascended backwards up the steep hill. “You guys close Route 82 for more than half the year. Maybe you should think about closing this one, too.”

“We serve and protect,” the patrolman countered. “We can’t protect them from their own stupidity.”

Maricopa, California

Ninety-five miles northwest of Los Angeles, near Bakersfield, west of where the lush groves of San Emidio return to desert, police had responded to a call reporting shots fired.

The bodies of four men lay strewn around the living room and kitchen of a battered, double-wide trailer home, victims of an apparent drug deal gone bad. Even before forensics got to work, it was obvious the house had been used as a meth lab. An acrid stench burned the eyes and throats of the responding officers, who quickly backed out and awaited the Kern County forensics team.

As two officers sat in a squad car in the dark guarding the site, news reached them of the death of the president. They watched Moore at Walter Reed on the lieutenant’s phone. The death of these four drug dealers now seemed even less important. Desultorily, they searched the onboard police computer for information about the four corpses. Two of them had arrest records, known agitators and members of a border vigilante group.

“Right,” the lieutenant said to the patrolman. “Illegally funded law and order.”

“For some,” the officer added.

In Seattle, Imogen packed her bags, while fewer than six miles away but as blind to one another as opposite sides of the same coin, a sleek Eclipse 500 jet touched down at Boeing Field. The light jet taxied rapidly in the damp winter darkness, coming to an abrupt stop on a dimly lit portion of the tarmac at the north end of the field.

The hiss of its engines became a plaintive whistle as the doors popped open and two young men, Dan Cardoso and Eric Janssen, ran down the steps. They immediately turned round and helped close the stairs. But for this gesture of help, anyone witnessing their arrival—and no one did—might have mistaken them for two young executives returning from a casual outing.

Its doors sealed once more, the small jet in the tan-on-beige livery of Flintlock Industries, pushed on, the whistle of its engines discordantly climbing the scale as it taxied away. Cardoso and Janssen walked toward their cars parked just outside a chain link fence, fist-bumping as they separated at the gate.

“See you April 20,” Janssen said.

Cardoso gave a thumbs-up as he turned away. Though the tarmac was deserted, the bravado exchange was a crucial performance. They had each been schooled in the need for watchfulness—especially of one another. Any sign of dissent, hint of doubt or fading spirit should be reported.

Alone for the first time in more than 24 hours, each man allowed himself to think about what had just happened. On orders, they’d dispatched the members of a cell near Bakersfield, California, much like their own, though a failing one according to their handler. Although they had kept their misgivings to themselves, each had arrived at the same conclusion: when given a list of people marked for death, the quickest way to get your name added to the list was to refuse or even question the job. Each ruminated on the final step to come, and whether they would receive their just, or their eternal, reward.

Before their cars were started, and as Imogen zipped her suitcase closed, the light jet was in the air, headed east to another rendezvous.

2

Reactions to the death of the President were swift across the nation and the political spectrum. Imogen, now waiting at the airport gate, had inadvertently seated herself between two television monitors, each tuned to a different 24-hour news channel. They faced each other, across her and the political divide. At times, they seemed to be arguing with each other, and she found herself glancing back and forth like someone watching a tennis match. Travelers congregated silently at screens large and small throughout the terminal.

The remarkable unanimity of official emotion on television and across social media made it seem that everyone in Washington had been issued the same talking points memo: Redmond was praised for her “integrity,” her “dignity” and “strength,” each promising to uphold the unity she had embodied and to deliver on her legacy while offering support to Moore. There were, Imogen noted, still a few unfilled cabinet positions left. Snapchat, she mused tartly, seemed like a better venue for all the disposable preening and jockeying.

The news was rife with speculation about what had befallen President Redmond, and what a new Moore administration might look like. Between the two televisions and along the political spectrum, while politicians hewed to their “unity in adversity” tropes, the talking heads seemed to be going through their own peculiar stages of grief: conservative hosts, when not in denial about the larger implications, presented with over-modulated anger; whereas mainstream pundits registered shock and dismay, their interviews with Democratic leaders manifesting pain, and above all bargaining. Only religious leaders seemed to have progressed to acceptance and hope, anointing Moore as one demonstrably chosen by Providence. In all cases, speculation was rampant, and there were no facts in evidence, save the obvious—Redmond was dead and Moore was president.

Bob Moore was taciturn by nature, the pundits opined. He had a reputation for bloodless pronouncements, heavy on procedure and mindful of every political angle, earning him the ironic nickname “ad lib Bob.” But on the campaign trail, and during the contested fight for the Presidency, they noted, he had been a different man. All dispassion spent, he became a man of conviction. It remained to be seen, the pundits agreed, as to which version of Moore would prevail now that he was President.

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Excerpt from Emergency Powers by James McCrone. Copyright 2020 by James McCrone. Reproduced with permission from James McCrone. All rights reserved.