“Like I’m going to tell you anything! Ha! Wait till my friends at the White House hear you kidnapped me,” Bell blustered. “They’ll be all over you like fleas on a dog. I’m part of the current administration.”

Isabelle dropped to her knees and tweaked Bell’s nose. “That’s not what we heard. You’re about to be banned from the White House on orders from President Connor. You can thank Ms. Fox, the new chief White House counsel. Get used to the idea that no one, and I mean no one, is going to come looking for you.”

“Oh, Isabelle, that’s not true!” Alexis singsonged. “The FBI and the local police are hot on his trail. The Post is set to run an exposé of him and Newsom and those two college girls over there. They’re going to be famous household names!”

“More famous than us?” Yoko pretended to pout.

“Never!” Annie said dramatically.

Nikki tilted her head to the left to indicate that the Sisters should relocate to the kitchen. She turned and called over her shoulder, “Move, and we’ll kill you!”

Newsom started to sob; the surrogates continued to cling to one another as they sniveled and mewed like sick kittens. The Sisters turned a deaf ear to all of them as they entered the kitchen.

“What now?” Nikki asked. “It’s almost ten o’clock. We need to make some plans. We can’t just sit here with those scuzzy people and do nothing. Maybe we should try and make our way to Georgetown. If the snowplow truck is really out front, we could take it and take those creeps with us. It’s better than sitting here doing nothing.” Nikki turned to Kathryn. “Since you drove an eighteen-wheeler, do you think you could drive that kind of truck?”

“Absolutely,” Kathryn said.

“We need to vote,” Yoko said.

“No one wants to leave here more than I do,” Myra said. “If we leave, no one will be able to reach us. At least if the phones come back on, they know they can reach us here. This is where we’re supposed to be.”

“Myra has a point,” Annie remarked.

“We could split up,” Isabelle said. “Three in the truck, four stay behind.”

“Then the four who stay behind have no means of transportation from this location,” Alexis said.

“Another good point,” Annie said, “which means as much as we don’t like it, we have to stay put. At least for now.”

“Well, then, let’s make good use of our time by grilling our guests,” Nikki said.

Myra chewed on her lower lip. “Annie, I have the strangest feeling that Charles is trying to get in touch with me. I don’t mean on the cell phone. I mean,” she said, whispering in Annie’s ear, “the way Barbara gets in touch with me.”