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nearly all her official engagements, at the constant threat of the lone nut job of whom they lived in fear because it was the hardest to prepare for, and thus defend against. He thought of the bomb-sniffing dogs and bulletproof limos and rooftop snipers and legions of police and military types and, yes, the best personal protection agency in the world, the U.S. Secret Service, deployed for the First Family’s protection everywhere they went.
    There was no other security apparatus to equal it anywhere in the world.
    And yet the First Lady of the United States had just died in a fiery car crash.
    Already, at one-thirty-five a.m. Sunday, a little less than an hour after the crash, the news was starting to reverberate around the world. And all hell was breaking loose.
    As the head of her security team, or, as he was officially known, special agent in charge of detail, he was responsible. The unthinkable had happened on his watch. The knowledge rode like a stone in his gut. His throat felt tight, like someone was gripping it hard. He was sweating buckets even though the temperature had dropped during these predawn hours to the mid-forties.
    How the hell had it happened?
    “Halt! This is a protected area. You’ll have to go back.”
    One of the marines whose unit guarded the site belatedly became aware of Mark’s presence as he slid the few remaining feet to the bottom of the steep, brushy slope, and stepped forward to confront him. About a hundred feet beyond the marines, a circle of klieg lights had been set up to illuminate the crash site in a merciless white glow. To Mark’s left, at the edge of the flat area at the base of the slope, tall pines swaying in the wind blocked much of the star-studded sky. A rain-swollen creek rushed past, gleaming black through the thicket of tree trunks. It was dark and hazy where he came to an obedient stop just outside the reach of the bright blaze of the rescue lights, and the equally bright blaze of the TV crews setting up shop on the roadway and bridge above. Having already penetrated the first level of protection designed to keep reporters and camera crews and everyone else at bay, Mark had his ID in hand.
    “Secret Service.” He flashed his gold shield and was allowed to pass. The final circle of protection, the FBI, swarmed near the car. Over the snap, crackle, and pop of the superheated metal, the hiss of the settling foam, and the thump-thump-thump of the helicopters circling overhead, he could hear them shouting at one another through their transmitters. Closer still, a forensics team in orange coveralls was already setting up shop. Clenching his jaw, he picked his way carefully through the knee-high brush, eyeing the flattened bushes and shorn-in-half trees that marked the car’s death roll from the highway forty feet above. Finally, his gaze settled on the smoking hulk of the car, which rested on its crushed roof.
    Fury, disbelief, shock, all combined to send adrenaline surging through his system. Uselessly. Because it was too late. There was nothing he could do.
    What was she doing outside the White House? What was she doing in that fucking car?
    A stretcher was being carried up the slope toward one of the half-dozen ambulances that waited, silent but with strobe lights flashing, on the highway above. Mark didn’t know the identity of the body-bagged victim, but he knew who it wasn’t: Mrs. Cooper was already gone, having been taken away first in the medevac helicopter that had been rushed to the scene. He’d been en route when the word had come that she was dead, killed in the crash, her body so badly burned that she was almost unrecognizable. But he had continued on, driven by a fierce need to see the site of the impossible for himself.
    What the hell had gone down here?
    When he had left the White House at eleven p.m., just over two and a half hours earlier, the First Lady had only moments before excused herself from a dinner for the president of Chile. Pleading a