Other animals, stuffed and figurines both, started floating around the room. “Charlie, sweetheart, please put your toys back where they belong. Mommy has gotten the hint and I’ll do my best to get us to the Happiest Place on Earth as soon as we can.”
The toys floated away. Charlie shrugged. “It’s not the happiest place right now, Mommy. But you can fix it.”
“I’m sure it’ll be happy the moment we’re there.”
Jamie and Charlie both nodded. “Maybe not the exact moment, Mommy,” Jamie said earnestly. “But soon after. I think.”
Would have asked her just what she was talking about, but Akiko lost patience and shooed Nadine and the kids out of the room so the Prep Team could finish getting me ready to go.
We finished up and, as we did, the intercom went live. “Excuse me Chief First Lady,” Walter Ward, head of White House Security, the dude most dedicated to the job bar none, and the biggest slave to titles ever discovered, said, “but there’s a package for you.”
“Um, hey, Walt. Thanks for the heads-up. Why are you telling me this instead of having someone deliver it to me?”
“Ah . . . because it’s not a normal package.”
CHAPTER 4
LET THAT ONE SIT on the air for a moment. “Um, so, we’re all breathless with anticipation over here now, Walt. How is said package not normal?”
“It’s alive.”
“Am I done here?” I asked the Prep Team.
“Yes,” Pierre said. “Just please don’t do anything to wreck your clothes.”
“Oh, I have spares,” Akiko said cheerfully. “You’re good.”
“Walt, where is the living package and did it arrive via conventional means or like the Peregrines did during Operation Destruction?” Otherwise known as in Special Space Delivery boxes that were not, but definitely should have been, marked Handle With Extreme Caution.
“With me, and via somewhat conventional means. The deliverer is with me, too.”
“The suspense builds. I’ll ask you why you’re being so coy when I get there. Com off.”
Listened. Didn’t hear the low hum indicating the com was still live. Good, Walter had picked up that clue, not that I’d had a doubt. Hoped my telling him to turn off the com indicated that I’d picked up his clues as well.
Considered options. Getting my children to safety and others advised were definitely Jobs One and Two. “Colette, find Nadine and get her and the kids to the Embassy, along with Pierre and Akiko. Francine, I want you to very quietly but very quickly advise everyone with the President that we have a potential invader situation.”
Francine and Colette both nodded and did the hyperspeed disappearing act.
“What will I be doing?” Vance asked.
“You will be coming with me.”
“Oh. Good,” he said in a tone indicating this was the opposite of good. “You’re sure I can’t warn Jeff and the others? Or go protect the kids at the Embassy?”
“I’m sure that I will be yelled at should I go somewhere without someone acting as a bodyguard. I have no idea where Len and Kyle happen to be, my Secret Service detail is likely wherever Len and Kyle are, and the whereabouts of Team Tough Guys is an equal mystery. For all I know, they’re all already with Walter. They could be in the Rose Garden. However, where they are not is here, with me, and that means that you are coming with me so that I can show that I wasn’t totally reckless.”
With that, I grabbed Vance’s hand and used some hyperspeed myself to take us to Walter’s security nest.
Walter had been the Head of Security when we were at the American Centaurion Embassy, and while he did the same job now at the White House, technically he was serving several masters, including his older brother, William, who was Head of Security for all of American Centaurion and who based out of the Dulce Science Center in New Mexico.
Walter’s other main master was Malcolm Buchanan, who’d been assigned to protect me and Jamie by the Head of the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit, aka my mother, when we’d first gotten to D.C. and who was now the head of Team Tough Guys and charged with protecting me, the kids, and, when necessary, Jeff and anyone else we cared about. Jeff had made Buchanan the official Head of White House Security, but since Buchanan worked best in and preferred the shadows, Walter was who was shown to the public as being the Head Security Dude. Meaning that Walter, like so many of us, had a target on him.
We reached Walter’s White House Security Command Center quickly—I still sucked at mazes but we’d been here long enough that I actually knew my way around, at least enough to make do under normal circumstances.
The room was set up like security rooms at every other Centaurion Base—so, nothing like what a normal human would do. Due to the original Head of Security, the late Gladys Gower who’d been a rare dream reader and empath combination, Security A-Cs were expected to sleep on the job, but with one eye open, so to speak—the top dawgs in particular.
This had been great when Gladys was alive, since she’d actually been able to spot threats in her sleep. For everyone else, however, it wasn’t as good. William was an imageer—our third most powerful after Christopher and Serene—but Walter had no talents, other than being the most dedicated follower of titles fashion. And no one in any of our top Security positions was a dream reader, let alone a combination of talents.
So, naturally, I’d suggested that the Security teams stop trying to function 24/7 and actually share responsibilities. And that suggestion had been soundly ignored for the past several years, and I saw no end to its streak.
Dulce’s Security Command Center had several bedrooms connected to the futuristic eye-in-the-sky technology that was an A-C standard. Walter, however, had been a one-man operation at the Embassy, and he continued to be so at the White House as well. He had a large suite with a comfy chair I was certain he slept in at his main controls, and a minicommand set up in the other room next to his bed.
What he also had with him today was a large animal crate and a person. The crate was one of the nicest I’d ever seen, clearly top of the line, and it was filled with what looked like a lot of ferrets, only I knew they weren’t ferrets.
“Are those least weasels?” I’d dragged Chuckie into every animal sciences course offered at ASU and I’d always gotten the top grades, even higher than he did. Animals were my “thing” and, these days, in more ways than one.
The animals all turned at the sound of my voice. They were a family group, mom, dad, and six kits, and they were in winter white coats which, considering what I remembered of the mating habits of least weasels—and it would have shocked everyone other than Chuckie that I remembered quite a lot—these kits had already reached maturity. Meaning they shouldn’t be with mom and dad any longer. And yet, they seemed quite happy to be together.