Russ Evans has been framed, she kept thinking. Assuming it was true, countless other questions were in need of answering. First, though, there was the matter of proof, and clearly that proof had to be evaluated by the First Lady.

Kim’s hands trembled as she inserted the bill into the machine’s narrow maw. The song playing at the moment was “Voodoo Child” by Jimi Hendrix—appropriate, she thought, given the sense that she was being manipulated. The bill disappeared into the slot like a snake’s tongue retreating back into its mouth. As soon as it was gone, Kim felt a vibration from inside her purse.

Glancing about once more, she opened her bag and took out her iPhone. A year ago, she’d taken a picture of the White House during an August sunset, and liking it so much, she made it her iPhone’s background image. But superimposed over that image now was a semi-transparent rounded rectangle bordered by a thin white line. In the center of the rectangle was a single-line text message.

I’ll be in touch.

Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

Nearly five hours had passed since the hand team had taken Joey Alderson to the OR. Lou and Millie Neuland regularly checked the empty corridor beyond the picture window wall for any sign of his surgeon. Eisenhower Memorial’s interior designers had made the family room as homelike as possible, given the restrictions of a hospital. A forty-eight-inch flat-screen TV covered much of one wall, and according to the laminated instructions tacked beside it, could even stream Netflix. The bookshelves offered a collection of paperbacks, children’s books, and magazines. There were also two computer workstations with wireless Internet access, and a kitchenette—everything needed to pass the anxious hours.

Whatever doubt Millie harbored regarding bringing Joey to Eisenhower Memorial seemed to have vanished before the sheer magnitude of the place, and the attention to detail and family needs. But it was the quiet confidence of hand surgeon Dr. Rafe Kurdi, speaking to her hours ago in the ER, that sealed the deal—especially when he shared glowingly that he, his wife, and kids had once, a year or so ago, eaten at her restaurant.

“This is going to be a long and complicated operation,” Kurdi explained. “But just as preparing wonderful food is what you do, fixing damaged hands is what I do. Saving Joey’s thumb, while preserving as much function as possible, is our goal. We have been aided in this effort by the exceptional work that Dr. Welcome, here, performed at the scene. He has a well-deserved reputation in this place for knowing what he is doing. Joey is a very lucky young man that he was there.”

“I’m figuring that out,” Millie said. “Dr. Welcome insisted that we come here rather than to our local hospital.”