Page 16 of Evolved

The book isn’t on my sofa. I yank the blanket off, the pillow, root around in the crack between the sofa.

Another shout comes, closer now, out in the hallway.

Jesus.

It’s so dark.

Nothing through the windows but the disorienting pelt of rain on glass.

I pat under the sofa, breathing so hard I feel like my heart isgoing to explode. My fingertips hit something hard.

The book.

I grab it, hold it to my chest as I rise from my knees.

The smashing is manic now, the dishes of two and a half centuries of First Ladies probably turning to powder, as deep male laughter echoes off empty walls.

I take off running, I don’t even think.

There’s a shout behind me, and the blue beam of the flashlight wobbles wildly in the hall, making a shadow of me, massive and desperate, as I run.

Just before I duck into the Palm Room, I catch a fleeting glimpse of a tall man, massive, his face lit by the gleam of someone else’s flashlight. He has a handlebar mustache.

“Stop.” He lifts his gun, and a hundred awful reasons he might want to detail a woman have my insides feeling like jelly.

I bolt over squeaky floors toward the open rain-filled doorway.

Knox hisses, “Hurry.”

Shouts behind me.

A gunshot blaring so sharp and loud it freezes my blood, and even if drawing my gun made sense, I wouldn’t be capable of it.

Not now.

Out into the icy rain, the colonnade, the Rose Garden, farther into grass, past the place we buried Gina, around a corner, and into the waiting car, Gran in the back.

I throw myself into the passenger side, the image of that man, huge, the handlebar mustache, keeps flashing across the backs of my eyelids.

Knox slams the door behind me.

My lips and cheeks and hair are soaked as I lean forward to see through the rain-washed windshield as he vaults over the hood, around the car, throwing himself into the driver seat likeit’s all one coordinated motion, sliding the car into gear at the same time he pulls his door shut.

Lights flare at the exit of the White House, blue-white scattering like a swarm of angry fireflies.

The wheels bump over a curb, and we’re driving sheer across the South Lawn. More gunfire sounds behind us, clatteringly loud over the wiperswompwompwomping.

A bullet hits the car. Once, then twice, a smash and a metallic squeal, a spray of orange sparks, but Knox chose this car, and Knox is Secret Service, which means it could probably withstand a ballistic missile.

Maybe.

Even ballistic glass has a breaking point.

I can barely breathe as he revs the engine, and we blast down the drive toward the first of many checkpoints, where staffers had to stop and show credentials, but there are no gates anymore and no guards to guard them.

He makes a hard right turn that has my shoulder bumping against the door.

Behind us, headlights flash on as blinding lighthouse beams in the night.