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all you’re doing is running away from the world, Shar?”
    She shook her head sadly. “You have a perverse way of turning something beautiful to ashes.”
    “So you’ve found religion,” Jack said. “Great. Another secret revealed.”
    Sharon pulled open the curtain, said, not unkindly, “You need to get it into your head, Jack. We all have a secret life, not just you.”

4
    After returning with Bennett to HQ, Jack took a long-overdue shower. In the locker room, he found a set of fresh clothes on hangers waiting for him, but was surprised they included a rather expensive suit of midnight-blue worsted wool, a pair of English brogues, a similarly expensive Sea Island cotton shirt, and a fashionable though decidedly conservative tie. He’d never worn such extravagant clothes; nor could he imagine his chief having an allowance for them in his budget.
    He had just finished knotting his tie when Bennett returned.
    Jack closed his locker door. “So tell me, what am I doing in this monkey outfit?” He tried and failed to straighten the knot in his tie. “Who am I going undercover as? A Secret Service agent?”
    “Actually, you’re not far off the mark.” Bennett gestured with his head. “Come on.”
    He led Jack out the rear door, where a smoke-windowed limo idled. Bennett opened the rear door and they climbed in.
    Jack settled into the backseat. The moment the chief sat down beside him, the limo took off at an almost reckless speed.
    Jack stared at his boss. “Where are we going?”
    Bennett was looking straight ahead, as if at a future only he could see. “To your new assignment.”
    Bennett, elbows on his bony knees, laced his fingers together. Jack felt his own muscles tense, because he knew that tell: Bennett’s hands got busy when he was agitated, so he laced his fingers to keep an outward semblance of calm. But Jack wasn’t fooled. During the time he’d been in the hospital, something very big and very nasty had landed in the chief’s lap.
    “Okay, give. What the hell’s happened?”
    At last, the chief turned to face him. There was something in his gray eyes Jack hadn’t seen before, something that clouded them, darkening them in a way Jack hadn’t thought possible. The chief’s voice was dry and thin, as if the words gathered in his throat were choking him. “Alli Carson, the president-elect’s daughter, has been abducted.”
    “Abducted?” Jack’s stomach felt a drop, as if he were in a suddenly plunging elevator. “From where, by whom?”
    “From school, from under the noses of the Secret Service,” Bennett said dully. “As far as who took her, no one’s been contacted, so we have absolutely no idea.”
    And then, with a shock like a splash of cold water, Jack understood. For the first time since he’d known the man, Rodney Bennett was frightened to death.
    Truth to tell, so was he.
    Langley fields was a private, closeted all-girl’s college, very chichi, very difficult to get into. It was situated more or less adjacent to Langley Fork Park, which was just under seven and a half miles due north from the Falls Church location where the ATF had its regional headquarters.
    The sun had broken through the overcast, throwing the passing buildings and trees into sharp relief. Telephone lines, black against the sky, marched into the vanishing point ahead.
    “In just a few weeks from now, Edward Carson is going to be sworn in as President of the United States, so there is an absolute, airtight media blackout,” Bennett said. “You can just imagine the intense feeding frenzy that would attach itself to the news. All the talking heads and bloggers in Medialand would speculate—wildly, perhaps recklessly, but in the end uselessly—about the identity of the perpetrators, from Al-Qaeda and Iran to the Russian Mafia and North Korea to god alone knows who else. These days, everyone has a reason to hate our guts.”
    Bennett, staring out the window as they barreled along the Georgetown Pike,