Ingrid was thankful she would no longer have to deal with Beech. In the last twelve hours, she’d stomached all she could of the pretentious, little, fat man.

“You guys have the helicopter you flew me in on,” continued Welds. “Use that and go get us some real food. Something that used to be alive.”

“Uh,” the staffer stammered. “I don’t think—”

“You tell Beech we can’t work if we don’t eat. Half of us haven’t eaten a lick all day.”

Welds peered around the table for confirmation.

Besides Ingrid, Cooper, Reeves, and Welds, there were three others:

Natalie Cambridge, a forensics expert with the FBI.

Donald Rutledge, with Chesapeake Port Authority.

And Susan Wilhelm, a liaison with the Secret Service.

Three men, four women.

It wasn’t lost on Ingrid that twenty years ago it would have been seven men in the room. Heck, ten years ago, they would have been lucky to have one woman in the mix.

None of the others felt as strongly as Welds on the food issue and many began diving into the platter.

Ingrid, who’d only eaten an energy bar in the last thirty-six hours, grabbed a muffin and a banana and began eating.

“What I want to know,” Cooper said, all eyes turning in his direction, “is how these guys knew the President was going to be there?” He turned to Ingrid and said, “I mean, you guys didn’t even know he was going to be there, right?”

Ingrid swallowed down a bite of muffin, then said, “We sent Sullivan an invitation a couple months earlier, but he never responded. I doubt it even made its way to his desk.”

“But you also said that your husband speaks with him on the phone every once in a while.”

“He does. In fact, they talked just a couple nights before the Super Bowl, but Henry said the wedding never came up.”

“And no one else, no other guests, knew he was coming? Or posted about it on Facebook or Twitter while it was happening?”

Cooper and Reeves had spent a good portion of the afternoon at Bonnie’s interviewing everyone who attended the wedding. Ingrid knew everyone’s social media outlets had already been checked and there were no postings about the President, let alone the wedding itself. Still, Ingrid couldn’t help but notice the air of uncertainty in Cooper’s voice.

She shook her head.

“You never mentioned to your parents or friends that you knew the President?” Cooper asked.

Ingrid blushed. She had told her parents. Told her mom that Henry had the President’s private cell phone number. Her mother had found this terribly amusing.

“Sure, I mentioned it to my parents, but nobody else.”

“What about your husband, how many people do you think he told?”