The Apostle

Many believed Elise had followed the distinguished Campbell tradition to please her father and grandfather, but the answer was more simple than that. For Elise, as it had been for the Campbells who had come before her, law enforcement was a calling. She believed in justice and fair play. She believed in protecting those who were too weak to protect themselves, and she also knew that no matter how hard the police worked, they would never rid the world completely of evil. There would always be a need for cops because evil would always need to be kept at bay.

Elise also believed that she would touch more lives, and affect them for the better, than either of her brothers would in their chosen fields. She didn’t see that as a knock on them and what they had chosen to do. Their careers were their callings and she respected them for having the guts to break with what the family had expected them to do.

Though she would never make the kind of money her brothers did, her compensation wasn’t measured by a paycheck. It was measured by the sense of satisfaction and fulfillment she got from performing her job well and from the distinguished men and women she served alongside.

Her decision to switch to the Secret Service hadn’t been easy, but it was one of the smartest career moves she had ever made. While she loved her colleagues and her job with the Virginia Beach PD, she never felt she’d make a good detective like the Campbells before her, and the pressure from her father and grandfather to follow their career track was just too intense.

Though she didn’t see herself as a detective and wanted to get away from the pressure from Dad and “Pop” to be one, she also didn’t want to entirely give up a career in law enforcement. Simply put, she loved being a cop. Oddly enough, it was her chief, Jack Jarett, who had encouraged her to consider a career in federal law enforcement.

Jarett had an unca

As a graduate of the FBI’s NEIA program and a member of the Major City Chiefs organization, Chief Jarett had a lot of contacts in D.C. Though he practically had to threaten to fire Elise Campbell to get her to pursue the leads he had set up for her, she interviewed with the FBI, the DEA, and the Secret Service.

All three organizations invited her back for follow-up interviews and all three subsequently offered her positions, but it was the Secret Service that appealed to her the most.

While Pop had been supportive of her career move, her father couldn’t hide his disappointment. And though he might have considered Elise’s decision abandonment, her brothers congratulated her for following her own desires.

She knew they were full of it. With her gone from the Virginia Beach PD, they could both feel better about having bucked the family tradition as well. It made no difference that she was still in law enforcement. As far as they were concerned, she was on their side now and their father could not use her as a wedge anymore. She became a means for her brothers to magnify their independence from their father, and he blamed her for everything he felt had gone wrong with their family, including its geographical breakdown, with one brother in New York, another in Chicago, and her even in nearby D.C.

Campbell didn’t care for being the family’s emotional football, and even though she loved them, she had grown somewhat estranged over the past couple of years. With all of the travel and long hours in the Service, it was easy to put any semblance of a personal life on hold. It didn’t mean she didn’t want to have one, it just seemed as though there wasn’t time for anything more than casual relationships.

She knew that also bothered her father. Not that he was aware of the kind of casual relationships she was having, but she wasn’t married and neither were her brothers. Her father saw it as yet another example of the unraveling of America and indicative of how the nation was committing cultural suicide.

Elise wanted to have a family. It was just a matter of meeting the right man. But as capable as she was as a law enforcement officer, she was incredibly shy when it came to meeting men. It was an odd juxtaposition that her friends constantly teased her about. Some were fond of saying that if she ever met the right man, it better be while he was in the process of committing a crime, or she was very likely to let him escape.

She doubted that was how it would play out. She was simply old-fashioned. She believed that when she met the right man, they both would know it and that would be it. Plain and simple.

And as far as remaining desirable until that someone special came along, Elise had nothing to worry about, as the Service required that she remain in top physical condition.

To that end, and even though she had been at Carolyn Leonard’s so late the night before and had allowed herself to sleep in because she had several days in a row off, she’d still gone for a five-mile run once she was up.

After returning to her apartment, she took a long, hot shower and continued to think about everything she and Carolyn had discussed.

Leonard was right. The final decision about what to do rested with her. She had also laid out a million different ways that pursuing the president’s alleged involvement in Nikki Hale’s death could blow up in Elise’s face and end her career.

The upside, if there was one, was minimal compared with what the downside very likely would be. That said, Leonard had admitted that if she was in Elise’s shoes, she would have had trouble dropping the matter as well.

Campbell didn’t need the added encouragement, but she appreciated her mentor’s admission. In fact, Elise’s mind had been made up from the begi

While she’d remained neutral on-duty during the primaries and through the general election, off-duty she had been an ardent Alden supporter. Many of her friends had said she was in serious need of a twelve-step program in order to kick the Alden Kool-Aid habit. Those same friends would be stu

Pouring a cup of coffee, Elise grabbed her cordless phone off the counter and headed back into the living room. Scrolling through her BlackBerry, she found the number she was looking for, plugged it into the cordless, and then leaned back onto the couch and took a quick sip from her mug.

The call was answered by a woman with a heavy Bronx accent. “East Hampton Town Police. Detective Klees.”

“Hi, Rita. It’s Elise.”

“Hey there,” responded a voice deepened from years of smoking. “How ya doing?”

“I’m good. I’m good,” said Campbell.

“You been watching the Yankees? They’re off to a good start.”

Elise laughed. You could take the girl out of the Bronx, but you couldn’t take the Bronx out of the girl. Rita Klees was a rabid Yankees fan.

“Are you surprised?” asked Campbell. “Look how well they did in the Grapefruit League this year. They’re going all the way.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” replied Klees. “I’ve still got my reservations about Girardi, but he’s very good-looking, and he’s starting to grow on me.”

“Rita, the man’s married,” Campbell teased.