Being guarded required cooperation, and contrary to what people thought, it was possible to get away from the Secret Service. Bill and Hillary Clinton had stolen away in the early days of his administration, only to be reminded that they had given up that kind of freedom. JFK had driven the Secret Service crazy with his disappearances. Yes, slipping away was possible, but there would be no point if she couldn’t move freely. Now all she had to do was find a way.

A month later, she had her plan in place.

At ten o’clock on a July morning, an elderly woman slipped into a White House tour group that was making its way through the rooms on the State floor. She had snowy white hair in tightly curled corkscrews, a green and yellow patterned dress, and a large plastic purse. Her bony shoulders were bowed, her thin legs encased in elastic stockings, and her feet encompassed in a pair of lace-up brown shoes. She peered at a guidebook through a large pair of glasses with pearly gray frames and a bit of swirled goldwork at the stems. Her forehead was patrician, her nose aristocratic, her eyes as blue as an American sky.

Nealy’s throat worked as she swallowed, and she had to resist the urge to tug on the wig she’d ordered through a catalogue. Another catalogue had supplied the polyester dress, shoes, and stockings. To preserve her privacy, she’d always relied on catalogue shopping, using the name and address of her chief of staff, Maureen Watts, plus the phony middle initial C, so Maureen would know it was Nealy’s order. Maureen had no inkling of the contents of the packages she’d recently delivered to the White House.

Nealy stayed with the crowd as it crawled from the Red Room with its American Empire furnishings into the State Dining Room. Video cameras were recording everything, and her fingers felt cold and numb. She tried to steady herself by gazing at the portrait of Lincoln that hung over the fireplace. The mantelpiece beneath was inscribed with the words of John Adams that she’d read so often. I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under its roof.

A female tour guide stood near the fireplace politely answering a question. Nealy might be the only person in the room who knew that all the White House guides were members of the Secret Service. She waited for the woman to spot her and sound the alert, but the agent barely glanced in her direction.

How many Secret Service agents had she gotten to know over the years? They’d accompanied her to high school and then college. They’d been with her on her first date and the first time she’d had too much to drink.