Grabbing one of the rolling chairs, he noticed that Emily positioned herself directly behind him. “Here goes,” he muttered.
She nodded. When he tilted his head back, he discovered her smile had disappeared. Now that the time had come, she was nervous. Which was why he wasn’t as surprised as he might have been when he felt her tentatively reach for his shoulder. She needed to hold on to something. He was a daft prat to feel such joy that she’d chosen him.
“Christian?” Becky turned back to him. “Do the honors, will you?”
He nodded and switched on the monitor in front of Samantha. After he used the keyboard to type in the needed information, the screen flashed once before crystallizing and revealing one of the world’s most recognizable faces. The president of the United States. The software they used was similar to Skype, only with a bazillion firewalls backed up by having the signal bounced through just about every satellite speeding around the earth.
“Whaaaaa?” Samantha’s eyes were wide and unblinking as the president turned from looking over his shoulder. The windows of the Oval Office glinted behind his back, but they were soon obscured by the imposing presence of General Pete Fuller in full dress uniform.
The general leaned down, his rough face looking huge when he held it too close to the camera. “Oh good. We’re on,” he said before straightening.
Samantha swayed, grabbing hold of the edge of the computer table until her knuckles turned white. “M-Mr. P-President,” she stuttered.
“Samantha Tate.” President Thompson waved. “It’s so nice to meet you. These folks”—he tipped his chin to include those gathered behind her; they could see themselves in a little picture-within-a-picture down on the right-hand side of the screen—“have told me so much about you.”
“Th-they have?” Samantha shook her head. She was white as a ghost.
Christian understood. It wasn’t every day one had a chat with the commander in chief.
“Yes, they have,” Thompson said. “And that’s why we’re having this meeting.”
“Showtime,” Emily whispered, her fingers tightening around Christian’s shoulder.
Chapter 25
Samantha was dreaming…
She had to be. She couldn’t really be sitting inside BKI’s custom bike shop listening to the freaking president of the freaking United States of freaking America tell her that Ozzie and the others weren’t just former SEALs and spies and SAS officers and whatever. They were all currently working for him and the Joint Chiefs as some sort of supersecret government defense firm.
She pinched herself and winced at the pain. Okay, so not dreaming.
The instant reality sank in, she wanted to shout, I knew it! I knew this place was more than it seemed! But she couldn’t, because the freaking president of the freaking United States of freaking America was still talking.
“…not the first president to employ his own fast-reaction force,” Thompson was saying. In a navy suit with a red-and-white-striped tie, he looked very presidential. There was power in his bearing. Wisdom in his salt-and-pepper hair and sharp blue eyes. Even his voice was authoritative. “And I won’t be the last. You can count on that.”
He reached over to snag a bag of Haribo gummy bears, ripping open the packet with his teeth and shaking a few into his mouth. As if watching the leader of the free world have a snack wasn’t enough, General Fuller, the freaking chairman of the freaking Joint Chiefs of Staff, a man who looked like he should be starring in war movies, held out his big scarred hand, and the president poured a few brightly colored bears into his waiting palm.
This is the most surreal moment of my life, Samantha thought. She was tempted to pinch herself again. “I’m sorry, Mr. President. I don’t understand why you’re telling me this unless…” A lightbulb flamed to life inside her head. “Are you hoping I’ll break the story? Maybe spin it a certain way because I know the players involved?”
“No.” Thompson shook his head. “We’re hoping you love Ozzie enough not to write anything about it at all.”
Samantha’s mind blanked. I don’t understand.”
“All these folks lined up behind you…” Thompson explained, and Samantha glanced over her shoulders at the faces of the people he mentioned. They held various expressions of concern and hope. “…feel that Ozzie has a right to happiness. They think you’re the person who can give him that happiness. But only if you know the truth about him and what he does. They’re risking everything on you right now. And they asked me to break the news to you, because they figured it’s harder to say no to your commander in chief.”
Samantha’s voice was a bare whisper when she said, “What do you mean they’re risking everything on me?”
“I mean, the missing members of Black Knights Inc. aren’t at a conference. They’re either in Syria, disrupting the Islamic State’s supply lines, or they’re in Europe hunting down the identity of an international crime lord responsible for everything from human trafficking to piracy to the selling of illegal goods.”
Samantha turned around again, blinking at the people behind her. She’d thought the tension in the shop was due to her presence, to the fact that she’d dogged them for years and then suddenly was foisted upon them as a guest. But that wasn’t it at all.
“I have evac plans in place to pull them out of harm’s way should you decide you can’t keep this secret, should you feel compelled to write it up as fodder for the American public,” Thompson continued, and Samantha once again turned to face him. “And if that’s what you want to do, I won’t try to stop you. I won’t have the Secret Service quietly disappear you.” She could tell by his enigmatic smile that he could do just that.
“You can pen the piece and accept the awards it’ll no doubt win you. And I’ll deal with the fallout on my end. But know this. Every single member of Black Knights Inc., people who came to your rescue and took you in when you needed protection, will spend the rest of their lives looking behind them, waiting for their enemies to make a move on them or their families.”
This was big. Bigger than big. It was huge! The stuff they gave out Pulitzer Prizes for.
And I can never write a word of it.
She struggled with that knowledge. Struggled with the part of her that felt everything was better in the light. But that struggle only lasted a second. Whether or not this was a secret that deserved the light was beside the point. Like the president said, these people, the Black Knights, deserved her silence. They deserved her loyalty. But more importantly, Ozzie deserved it.
“I understand.” She swallowed around the giant lump in her throat, shaking with the enormity of the information that had been handed to her.
President Thompson narrowed his gaze. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning your secret…” She turned to the group. “Meaning all your secrets are safe with me.”