Oak and Dagger Read Online Free

back toward the rest of his team.
    Gordon sat back on his heels and scratched his mud-splattered head. “I don’t understand it. You checked for irrigation lines on the plans, didn’t you?”
    â€œDouble-checked! Triple-checked!” I splashed through a puddle of water as I paced. “Out of all the things that could have gone wrong, this wasn’t one of them, and this shouldn’t have happened.”
    A few steps later, I tripped into a shallow hole and twisted my ankle. “Milo!” I cried. The President’s overgrown puppy had recently taken to digging up the lawn.
    Jack returned and watched me with a curious expression as I hopped on one foot and shook my throbbing ankle in frustration.
    The rest of the team had joined him. “What’s she doing?” Jack’s buddy asked. “A rain dance?”
    â€œI think so,” Jack answered.
    Jack and the other CAT agents offered to help us cordon off the President’s muddy hole to keep anyone from stumbling into it. While they worked, we returned the tools and the trees to the utility shed that was hidden behind a canopy of trees on the west side of the South Lawn.
    When we’d finished, I caught Jack’s arm as we both shivered in the chilly fall air. Water dripped from my sodden bangs onto my nose. “Thank you for helping with the valve. What a disaster.” I bit my lower lip and fitted my hand in his. “I’m glad you were here. I owe you.”
    An honest-to-God smile creased his lips. “Perhaps we can talk about payment later.”
    â€œTonight?” I blushed like a schoolgirl. “What time?”
    â€œDid I
say
tonight?” Jack’s smile dropped as if it had never existed.
    â€œYou implied it.” Although we saw each other several times a week at the White House, we’d only dated a handful of times since I’d kissed him at the Fourth of July fireworks show. And he’d canceled our last two dates . . . at the last minute . . . and without a good explanation, which probably explained why everything about our relationship still felt new and uncertain and, well, terrifying.
    â€œCasey?” Gordon called. “Are you coming? We need to figure out what happened here.”
    â€œJust a minute,” I said, and then turned back to Jack. “Well, what’s going on between us?”
    â€œGo on.” Jack gave me a little nudge with his shoulder. “We can talk about this later. I promise.”
    Since he always kept his promises, I relented. “Okay. Later.”
    Jack had played Watson to my Sherlock a couple of times this past year when I’d found myself in difficult situations. Although, if you were to ask him, he might say he was Ned Nickerson to my Nancy Drew, and then he’d make a remark about my perkiness just to get my blood boiling.
    I am
not
perky.
    Friendly? I’ll admit I’m that. It’s a Southern thing. My Southern-fried manners should never be mistaken for sugary perkiness, thank you very much.
    Sure, I might have had a perky ringtone on my cell phone for a while this past summer. It was a mistake I had since remedied.
    Kelly Clarkson’s girl-power anthem, “Stronger,” which celebrated Nietzsche’s maxim “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” was my current ringtone of choice. Which reminded me . . . I pulled my phone from my pocket to switch the ringer back on. That’s when I noticed that while the President had been digging his hole, a text message from a restricted number had come to my phone. The message was short and to the point.
    Die
.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    THAT THREATENING TEXT MESSAGE ECHOED IN my mind like a bad special effect in a low-budget horror flick.
    Die.
    Die.
    Die.
    Who could have sent it?
    I hadn’t done anything recently, in several months actually, to merit a death threat. Even so, I rubbed my soggy arms to chase