Page 53 of An Impossible Love
Chapter Twenty-Three
The ballroom at the Kennedy Center was packed for the president’s speech on Friday night. Emmy, Duke, and a dozen other agents were milling around, checking all the security arrangements which had been in place for weeks.
Backstage, Lucas and a number of other agents were waiting for the president to arrive and when he did, Orin greeted them. “Hey, fellas. How’s it looking, Lucas?”
As they walked through the hallways, Orin caught sight of Emmy at the far end of the corridor. She had on a long, white figure-hugging dress, her long hair down, and Orin’s heart nearly stopped.The woman I love.He wanted to yell it out, scream it out, and take her in his arms in front of the audience, the press, the world. Fuck what they thought.
She turned and caught his eye and smiled. Orin touched his heart, subtle but meaningful, before he was escorted to the stage.
Emmy took up her post at the side of the stage, her eyes raking the audience as Orin began to speak. The feeling that something would happen tonight had returned, and she had been unable to sleep last night because of it. She had gone over every detail of the security plan that night, even checking places that the team had gone over again and again.
Orin’s voice was warm and friendly, and she wanted to listen to what he was saying but something was nagging at her. She kept Kevin McKee in her sights as well as the gathered audience of invited guests. Her eyes swept over every single person—and locked on one man in particular. He was fairly innocuous—white, middle-aged, and bearded, sitting with someone Emmy vaguely recognized from the pages of a magazine. The reason he piqued her interest was because of the way he was looking at McKee and then the president.
Was he waiting for a signal?
The rest of the speech went off without incident, however, and it wasn’t until the audience were standing and applauding that Emmy saw him reach into his pocket. Her senses up, the room began to go into slow motion as she saw the glint of something in his hand.
No. No way.
Emmy threw herself at Orin just as her whole world exploded in pain.
Bedlam. Orin was dragged off the stage by Lucas and Duke just as the gunshots rang out, but all he could see was his love, his Emmy, prone on the floor, eyes closed, her white dress covered in blood. He fought with his detail to get to her, but they dragged him away—a pretty impressive feat—as he screamed Emmy’s name.
As Lucas forced him into the car and they sped away, Orin turned wild eyes to the security chief. “Tell me she’s okay, tell me she’s okay!”
Lucas looked shell shocked and pale. “Mr. President, we have to get you back to the White House.”
Orin exploded, his terror for his lover overwhelming everything. “Turn the fucking car around! Now!”
“No, sir. We cannot do that.”
“That’s an order from your Commander-in-Chief!”
“No, sir. We are going back to the White House.” Lucas’s voice was strong, and he fixed Orin with a stare that said “I know. I know you’re in pain, but this is how it is.”
Orin slumped back into his seat with a moan. “At least get someone on the phone. I want to know how she is, right now.”
Lucas gave a stiff nod, obviously relieved Orin was obeying him. He called Duke. “What’s happening?”
The paramedics were there almost immediately. Duke directed them to Emmy’s prone figure on the dais, his mind whirling. What the hell just happened? The top brass had been secured, the gunman subdued and arrested, the ballroom cleared out, and now Duke, his throat closing, went to his stricken friend.
She was paler than he had ever seen her, lying in a pool of blood. The bullet had smashed into her abdomen and now her white dress was soaked red. The paramedics were trying to get a response out of her.
“Emmy? Emmy, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.” The paramedic waited then shook her head. “Nothing. Unresponsive.”
“No exit wound. We have to get her to the hospital rightnow.”
Duke finally found his voice as his phone rang. Lucas. “They’re rushing her to hospital now, GW. She took a slug in the gut, Lucas… there’s so much blood, and she’s not responding to us.”
He hardly heard Lucas’s reply as he walked with the gurney to the ambulance. “I’ll call you when we get there.”
“I want to go to the hospital right now,” Orin told his staff as the Secret Service gathered them in the Oval. “No arguments.”
He looked at Moxie, who shook her head slightly in warning at him, but Orin was too upset to care.
“The rest of you should know. Agent Sati and myself are in a serious relationship. I love her. And to think that she…” His voice broke down, and Peyton came to put her arm around him.
“Look, let’s sit. If they’re taking Emmy to hospital, she’ll be in surgery a while. Orin, sit, take a breath and we’ll figure out what to do from here.”
