“You guys are making me nervous,” I said. “Can’t you tell me what’s happening?”

The driver stared out his side window. The passenger said, “No, ma’am,” and shifted his attention away.

I watched buses pull up and I could imagine Bucky complaining about the fact that I sat in a warm black sedan while he and the others were relegated to school bus-quality accommodations.

Silence in the car dragged me down. Gavin had gone off with the black-clad man and I attempted to put the time to good use. I began prioritizing tasks, working backward from our next target: the reception after the White House official ceremonies. Although I’d pressed Marguerite for an answer, she still didn’t know whether the Campbells would participate this year or not. Sean’s death had changed everything. The White House would still open on Tuesday to the public; but in the meantime, everything else was up for grabs.

“How much longer, do you think?” I asked my escorts.

The bigger guy replied. “Don’t know, ma’am.”

I watched minutes tick by on the dashboard clock. More than forty-five minutes later, Gavin finally returned. He opened the door and gestured me out. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said to the two men up front. “You may return.”

He didn’t say where they were returning to, and they apparently didn’t need to ask. As soon as I alighted and Gavin closed the door, they took off.

I felt like those little dogs who hustle their tiny paws to keep pace with their masters. Gavin didn’t watch to make sure I was keeping up, he just made his way across the south lawn to the doors we’d exited from. “Special Agent Gavin,” I called to his back.

He didn’t stop moving, but his head tilted.

“What’s going on?” I asked, a bit breathless from the wind and the running.

He didn’t answer, but it looked as though he shook his head.

As we reentered the White House, I stole a look backward to see what was going on with the rest of the staff. The buses were filled, but stationary. I hoped everyone had warmed up. Reporters were everywhere. They surrounded the grounds like a pack of eager hyenas waiting to pounce. News vans, with high-perched satellite dishes and camera crews, were everywhere. Pointing their lenses at us.

Inside, I wiped away tears that had formed from the wind beating against my face. Gavin caught me and something in his expression softened. “Everything will be all right, Ollie. This is just procedure.”

Ollie? That was the first time he called me by my given name.

I was about to explain that I wasn’t crying, but he started off again, expecting me to follow. His shiny black shoes made snappy clicks against the floor and I followed him back into the corridor, past all the now-quiet shops, to the storage area where I’d found the box.

GAVIN MADE ME GO OVER MY STEPS, AS PRECISELY as I could recall them. Very slowly. As I remembered and recited-again-another black-clad man took notes. Wearing body armor, a sniper rifle slung around his back and, a heated expression, he neither spoke nor made eye contact with me. I was sure everyone involved in this fracas was furious with me for having caused a major evacuation over nothing. Agents, snipers, and other assorted military folk were everywhere-the halls were filled with people speaking to one another and into radios.

The press would have a field day with this one, I was sure, and I only hoped I wouldn’t be served up like a holiday turkey for them all to feast on.

After ten minutes of tracing my movements, we were still only about five feet inside the storage room. Gavin was insistent on stopping at each step so that the intense note-taker could get down every detail. Problem was, there was not much to tell. And I couldn’t imagine why anyone cared about any of this. Unless they had reason to doubt my story.

I caught a quiver in my voice. God, I hated that. “This is where I noticed that the Johnson china had been moved.”

Gavin nodded.

I took that as encouragement to continue. “So I pushed the bin aside, and found the”-I hesitated-“the box.” I described it, even though I knew they both must have seen it.

“What then?”

“Well,” I said, trying to be as precise as possible, “I knew it didn’t belong here, so I decided to see what was inside.” Shrugging, I added, “I planned to return it to whatever department had left it here.”

“You said it was sealed.”

Nodding, I remembered the clip from the dolly, still in my pocket. I pulled it out. “I used this to slice through the tape.”

Gavin grimaced.

“Better than using my teeth,” I said, in an effort to lighten the mood. Neither man smiled.

“It opened easily?”

I considered that. “Not really. I had to pull hard a few times in order to rip past the tape.”

This time Gavin winced. “Dear God, Ollie. You ripped it open?”

“Yeah,” I said, a little defensively. “It’s not like I suspected anything when I first saw it. And it was sealed pretty tightly.” I glanced at the two of them. Even the note-taker had looked up, and they were staring at me as though I’d done the stupidest thing in the world. “Geez, I understand we’re supposed to be careful when we see things out of place, but you have to admit it really did look like normal storage stuff. There was no way I knew it was a fake bomb.”

Gavin’s eyes snapped to mine. “Fake bomb?” he asked. “What are you telling me? You found something else?”

“No…” Again I hesitated. “I’m talking about the thing I believed was an IED. The reason I called for help.” My hands spread as though to encompass the entire White House grounds. “The reason I started screaming for everyone to evacuate. It was a fake, right?”

Gavin licked his lips and I could tell it was taking every measure of patience he had to slow himself down. “Ollie,” he began, surprising me again with familiarity, “the thing you found was live.”

My knees trembled. “It was?”

“Yes,” he said, with high-strung tolerance. “You found a bomb. A real one.” He ran a hand over his face. “Let’s get through the rest of this and I’ll tell you what I can.”

We finished the how-I-found-a-bomb-and-learned-to-start-worrying exercise and the tall man with the notepad finally left us. The minute he was gone, I sat on the floor. It was cold.

“You okay?” Gavin asked.

“I suppose it would be a stupid question to ask if the bomb has been safely removed.”

He took a seat on the floor next to me. “It’s been defused and it’s gone. We’ve done a sweep of the area and it looks clean.”

Looks?

I rested my forehead against my upturned knees. “Why me?” I asked. “Why am I always the one who gets involved in this stuff?”

Gavin took a deep breath and I lifted my head to watch him. For the first time since I’d met him, he didn’t seem furious with me. He seemed to be contemplating.

Commotion in the hallways continued, but no one poked a head in. All things considered, it was pretty quiet.

“I’ve been around these sorts of situations a lot, Ollie,” he said, staring away. “Been on the job for over twenty-five years.”

I waited.

“There are people who things happen to. And whether you consider it a blessing or a curse, you appear to be one of them.” He turned to face me. “I read your dossier.”

I winced.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “It’s not that you have a black cloud over your head-it’s that you have the ability to see and to sense things better than most.” He wagged his head from side to side. “I’m not talking about ESP or clairvoyance, although maybe describing it as a sixth sense is apt. You have a great deal of intelligence and an acute awareness-more than most people-which allows you to notice things out of place. And you have the curiosity to find out why.”