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road twice on the ride in, but he was functioning. And he still had a job to do.
    “A minute.”
    Whether it was meant to be or not, Mark chose to take Lowell’s growl as assent. Stepping inside the brightly lit room with its windowless, steel-reinforced walls, gleaming silver banks of monitors, computers bristling with state-of-the-art technology, hanging tapestries that concealed safes holding enough hidden weaponry to fend off a small army, and rows of recharging radios, he shut the door firmly behind him. The scent of coffee from the machine in the corner was strong. It made the gorge rise in his throat.
    “Is it true about Prescott?”
    The question came from the back of the room. Mark looked at the speaker—Susan Wendell, an attractive, thirtysomething blonde who’d had kind of a thing for the single, good-looking Prescott—and nodded curtly. No good beating around the bush. Her face tightened. She swallowed once. Other than that, and a certain whiteness around her mouth, she betrayed no sign of emotion.
    Secret Service agents don’t cry.
    With a gesture, Mark gathered his people around him. Not counting himself, there were seven of them on-site: Wendell, Paul Fielding, Steve Matthews, Michael Varney, Spencer Hagan, Janelle Tandy, and Phil Janke. The first three, along with Prescott, had been on duty when he had signed out for the night. The others had apparently come in as word of the tragedy had spread.
    “Anybody know why FLOTUS and Prescott were in that car?” Mark’s voice was low. No point in airing dirty laundry in front of everybody in the room. There had been a screwup, and he wanted to know the details first. His own ass might be swinging in the wind about now, but he would do what he could to cover his team.
    Lowered eyes. A couple of head shakes. Tense expressions all around.
    “The first we knew that anything went wrong was when Prescott radioed in,” Wendell said. “He said he’d gone with Mrs. Cooper and Folly”—the Coopers’ spaniel—“to the Rose Garden, and Mrs. Cooper had gotten out of his sight and he couldn’t find her. He was panicking because she’d given him the slip, but it wasn’t like she’d been abducted or anything. She hadn’t been gone but a few minutes, and we didn’t want to make it into a big deal if it wasn’t, so we all rushed out and started looking for her. About the time we got the call about the”—her voice faltered—“the crash, we were in the process of setting up a massive search effort.” She winced. “Too late.”
    Mark’s shoulders tightened. There was a lot he wanted to say, but it was too early to start the blame game. Hell, ultimately the blame was his, anyway: These were his people. This was his job.
    “I want to know how this happened.” Mark’s voice was grim. “I want to know every single, solitary detail of what went down. Like, yesterday.” Glancing around, he jerked his head at Paul Fielding. Like all of them, thirty-nine-year-old Fielding was in excellent physical condition. But at six-two, with his chubby cheeks and mild blue eyes, his balding head and easygoing air, he always made Mark think of Buddha. A blond Buddha bobblehead in a Secret Service suit. At the moment, Fielding was sweating slightly although the room was cool. He knew the feeling; he also knew Fielding, considered him a friend as well as a colleague. More to the point, he trusted Fielding. He and Fielding had gone through the Academy together. Mark’s star had risen higher and faster, mainly because he put more into the job. His life, in fact.
    Fielding hadn’t made that mistake. He was still married to his first wife, and he had kids who loved him.
    “When I come back, I want to watch replays of the surveillance tapes from ten p.m. on,” he said to Fielding as the man moved to stand beside him. A sharp rap on the vaultlike door behind him made Mark grit his teeth: Lowell, impatient as always. “Not just Mrs. Cooper but everything. I want to see every