Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1)(9)

That latter fact helped to explain her style of dress that morning: the leather bike jacket, the faded black jeans with leg warmers, thick leather belt, the red-and-black checkered lumberman’s shirt, and the worn engineering boots.

Two D.C. policemen rushed up on either side of her. “It’s okay, officers,” she said, “here’s my I.D.” After eyeing the identification, they backed away quickly and became solicitous. “You can go right in,” one of them said. “There’s a side door just around those high hedges, Ms. Flanagan.”

Jezzie Flanagan managed a friendly smile for the two harried-looking policemen. “I don’t exactly look the part today, I know. I was on my vacation. I race the bike. I raced it here.”

Jezzie Flanagan took the shortcut across a pristine lawn that was lightly coated with frost. She disappeared inside the school’s administration building.

Neither of the D.C. policemen took his eyes off her until she was gone. Her blond hair blew like streamers in the stiff winter wind. She was definitely stunning to look at, even in dirty jeans and work boots. And she had a very powerful job. They both knew that from her I.D. She was a player.

As she made her way through the front lobby, someone grabbed at her. Someone caught a piece of Jezzie Flanagan, which was typical of her life in D.C.

Victor Schmidt had hooked onto her arm. Once upon a time, and this was difficult for Jezzie to imagine now, Victor had been her partner. Her first, in fact. Now he was assigned to one of the students at the Day School.

Victor was short and balding. A stylish GQ sort of dresser. Confident for no particularly good reason. He’d always struck her as misplaced in the Secret Service, maybe better suited for lower rungs of the diplomatic corps.

“Jezzie, how’s it going?” he half whispered, half spoke. He never seemed to go all the way on anything, she remembered. That had always bugged her.

Jezzie Flanagan blew up. Later, she realized she had really been on edge when Schmidt stopped her. Not that she needed an excuse for the flare-up. Not that morning. Not under the circumstances.

“Vic, do you know that two children have been taken from this school, maybe kidnapped?” she snapped. “One is the secretary of the treasury’s son? The other is Katherine Rose’s little girl? The actress Katherine Rose Dunne. How do you think I’m doing? I’m a little sick to my stomach. I’m angry. I’m also petrified.”

“I just meant hello. Hello, Jezzie? I know what the hell has happened here.”

But Jezzie Flanagan had already walked away, at least partly to keep from saying anything else to Victor. She did feel nervous. And ill. And mostly, wired as hell. She wasn’t so much looking for familiar faces in the crowded school lobby, as the right faces. There were two of them now!

Charlie Chakely and Mike Devine. Her agents. The two men she had assigned to young Michael Goldberg, and also Maggie Rose Dunne, since they traveled back and forth to school together.

“How could this happen?” Her voice was loud. She didn’t care that the talk nearby had stopped and people were staring. A black hole was cut into the noise and chaos of the school lobby. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper as she questioned the agents about what had happened so far. She listened quietly as she let them explain. Apparently, she didn’t like what they had to say.

“Get the hell out of here,” she exploded a second time. “Get out right now. Out of my sight!”

“There was nothing we could have done,” Charlie Chakely tried to protest. “What could we have done? Jesus Christ!” Then he and Devine skulked away.

Those who knew Jezzie Flanagan might have understood her emotional reaction. Two children were missing. It had happened on her watch. She was an immediate supervisor of the Secret Service agents who guarded just about everyone other than the president: key cabinet members and their families, about a half-dozen senators, including Ted Kennedy. She reported to the secretary of the treasury himself.

She had worked unbelievably hard to get all that trust and responsibility, and she was responsible. Hundred-hour weeks; no vacation year after year; no life to speak of.

She could hear the upcoming scuttlebutt before it happened. Two of her agents had royally screwed up. There would be an investigation—an old-fashioned witch-hunt. Jezzie Flanagan was on the hot seat. Since she was the first woman ever to hold her job, the fall, if it came, would be steep and painful, and very public.

She finally spotted the one person she’d been looking for in the crowd—and hoping not to find. Secretary of the Treasury Jerrold Goldberg had already arrived at his son’s school.

Standing with the secretary were Mayor Carl Monroe, an FBI special agent she knew named Roger Graham, and two black men she didn’t recognize right off. Both of the blacks were tall; one of them extremely so, huge.

Jezzie Flanagan took a deep breath and walked quickly over to Secretary Goldberg and the others.

“I’m very sorry, Jerrold,” she said in a whisper as she arrived. “I’m sure the children will be found.”

“A teacher” was all Jerrold Goldberg could manage. He shook his head of close-cropped white curls. His eyes were wet and shiny. “A teacher of children, little babies. How could this happen?”

He was clearly heartbroken. The secretary looked ten years older than his actual age, which was forty-nine. His face was as white as the school’s stucco walls.