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  67. 3:46 a.m.

It was nearing 9:00 in the morning. Ingrid hadn’t slept in more than forty hours, but her mind was alert. She’d spent the last few hours at Bonnie’s consoling her sister and Charlotte. Both had been traumatized by the event and Ingrid attempted to prep them for what was to come: that they were witnesses to a horrible crime and they would be interviewed soon by the Feds. She’d also spent twenty minutes on the phone with Billy’s mother, breaking the news and assuring her she would do everything in her power to make sure Billy came back safe. Then she made the call that she’d dreaded, to Linda, her captain’s wife, and told her that James had been shot. Killed. Ingrid was barely able to get the words out.

Linda had been inconsolable. She said she would get the first flight back, but Ingrid told her it would be days until any of the airports reopened.

Now, Ingrid appraised the second-highest-ranking official in the FBI, a man two inches shorter and a hundred pounds heavier than herself, and said, “My husband had become friends with Sullivan over the past year.”

The word husband felt odd on her tongue. It was the first time she’d said the word. After it came out, she decided she quite liked how it tasted.

“Friends?” the deputy barked, his fleshy face flushing. “I’m friends with the President too, but he didn’t come to my kid’s bar mitzvah.”

Ingrid highly doubted FBI Deputy Director Jonathan Beech and President Connor Sullivan were friends. Unless Sullivan was lying when he compared the man to having a splinter in your ass you just couldn’t get out.

“It was a surprise to us when Sullivan and Red showed up,” Ingrid said.

“I bet,” huffed Beech.

Presently, Ingrid and Beech were in one of the FBI’s mobile command centers. It had taken the large customized cargo van four hours to travel the twelve miles from DC to Annandale, shuffling along behind the three snowplows carving out the road.

In front of her father-in-law’s house, snowplows had been running full force since 3:45 a.m. and Ingrid thought it safe to assume that the cul-de-sac where the command center was now parked was the only serviceable street within a fifty-mile radius of DC.

The snow had finally let up an hour earlier, ending its thirty-hour onslaught. The storm, which meteorologists predicted would drop a few inches, punished the mid-Atlantic with upward of three feet. A state of emergency had been declared in DC, as well as multiple counties in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and North Carolina.

According to the mayor of DC, it could be as long as a week until the city dug itself out.

“And how exactly did the President get out of the White House without anyone knowing?” Beech asked.

“I have no idea,” Ingrid said, shrugging. “But it wasn’t the first time they did it.” She explained how on at least three other occasions she knew of, Red and Sullivan had snuck from the White House undetected. “Why don’t you ask the Secret Service about that?”