First Daughter

"Alli," he said softly. "Alli, enough. Where are you?"

The tangle of branches, dense even in the dead of winter, kept the city at bay. The sky, grayish pink like old skin, was intermittently swept away by the wind. Rain seeped down, bouncing off twigs and vines, taking erratic pinball paths. Save for this, all was still. And yet there was the sense of something stirring, as if the wild area itself were alive with a single will, had turned that will to a specific intent.

Jack, his anxiety rising, peered through the rain, through the Medusa's hair of the thicket. It was impossible to know which way she'd gone, or even why she would lead him here. In and out of faint lozenges of city light he went, turning this way and that, searching, until he seemed to be in a maze of mirrors, where he kept coming upon his own reflection.

He was certain he hadn't dreamt that whisper, certain that Alli had been standing in his doorway. After all, who else could it have been? Then, the fine hairs on his forearms stirred, because he heard the voice again.

"Dad…"

DENNIS PAULL, climbing the open stairs of the Starlight Motel in Maryland, was nearing the end of another grueling day. Part of it had been taken up by a meeting with Calla Myers's parents. He could, of course, have had one of his assistants meet them, but he was not one for delegating difficult assignments. Calla Myers had been killed on his watch. There was no excuse for her death; its dark stain would be etched on his soul forever, to take its place alongside many other similar tattoos. But somehow this one seemed darker, deeper, more shameful, because she was a civilian. She hadn't put herself in harm's way as the two Secret Service agents had. That she'd been murdered in precisely the same way as the agents was no longer a mystery to him.

Paull had no illusions about going to heaven, but since he believed in neither heaven nor hell, it didn't really matter. What concerned him was the here and now. He had conjured up all the right phrases of sympathy for the Myerses. He had even sat with them afterwards, while the mother wept and the father held her blindly, even after he'd run out of words of brittle solace. He tried not to think about his own wife, his two sons, tried not to wonder how he would react if someone came to him with unthinkable news. He'd had a brother who'd died in the Horn of Africa in the service of his country. Even Paull hadn't known the details of his mission. Nor had he cared to know the details of his death. He'd simply buried him with full honors and gone on with his work.

Having checked three times for surveillance, Paull walked along the open gangway on the second floor of the motel, inserted a key in the lock of a room at the far end, opened the door, and went in.

Nina Miller was sitting on the bed, her long legs stretched out, crossed at the bare ankles. She'd kicked off her sensible shoes and now looked fetching in a pearl-white silk shirt. Her dove gray wool skirt had ridden partway up her muscular thighs. She was a fine te

Nina put down the book she was reading-Summer Rain, by Marguerite Duras-a first edition Paull had given her last year for her birthday. It was her favorite novel.

"You're looking luscious."

She smiled. "I could have your job for workplace sexual harassment."

"This isn't the workplace." Paull bent, kissed her on the lips. "This isn't harassment."

"Flatterer."

Paull pulled over the desk chair, sat down beside her. "What have you got for me?"

She handed him a thick manila folder. "I back-checked the dossiers of every member of the D.C. Homeland Security office. Everyone's clean, so far as I can tell, except for Garner."

"Hugh's my deputy." Paull shook his head. "No. He's too obvious a choice."

"That's precisely why the National Security Advisor recruited him." She pointed at the open file she'd compiled. "Over the past eight months, Hugh has met five times with a man named Smith." She laughed. "Can you believe it? Anyway, Mr. Smith is Hugh's acupuncturist. He also happens to be in the office adjacent to the National Security Advisor's chiropractor."

Paull, paging through the file, said, "I see their appointments overlapped on those five occasions."

Nina folded her hands in her lap. "What d'you want to do?"

Putting the folder aside, Paull leaned over her. "I know what I want to do."

Nina giggled, took his head between her hands. "I'm serious."

"I couldn't be more serious." His lips brushed the hollow of her throat. "How's your friend Jack McClure?"

"Mmmm."

Paull raised his head. "What does that mean?"

She made a moue. "You're not jealous, are you, De

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

She pushed him away. "Sometimes you can be so starchy."

"I only meant that considering Hugh Garner hates McClure's guts, perhaps between us we can work out a way for him to take care of Hugh for us."

Her mouth twitched. "What a Machiavellian mind you have."

Paull laughed appreciatively as he manipulated the tiny pearl buttons down the front of her shirt.

Tossing the file on the floor beside the bed, she said, "I've gotten as close as I can to Jack. He's carrying a Statue of Liberty-size torch for his ex."

"Poor bastard."

"Nothing you'll have to worry about," she said. "You don't have a heart."

"Birds of a feather." He made a lascivious grab for her. "Anyway, what could be better than an affair with no strings attached?"

"I can't imagine." She gripped his tie, pulled him down to her.

JACK TURNED and saw her, framed between two trees, her skin pale in the ghostly light.

"Dad…"

"Emma?" He took a step toward her. "Is that you?"

The rain, gaining strength, beat down on him, water rolling into his eyes, mixing with his tears. Could Emma have come back to him? Was it possible? Or was he losing his mind?

He moved closer. The image wavered, seemed to break up into a million parts, each reflected in a raindrop spattering black branches, glistening brown bark, pale gold of dead leaves. She was all around him.

Jack stood in wonder as he heard her voice, "Dad, I'm here…"

It wasn't the voice of a person or a ghost. It was the sough of the wind, the scrape of the branches, the rustle of the brittle leaves, even the distant intermittent hiss of traffic on faraway streets, avenues, and parkways.

"I'm here…"

Her voice emanated from everything. Every atom held a part of her, was infused by her spirit, her soul, the electrical spark that had animated her brain, that made her unique, that made her Emma.

"My Emma." He listened for her, to her, heard the wind, the trees, the sky, even the dead leaves call his name, felt her close all around him, as if he were immersed in warm water. "Emma, I'm sorry. I'm sorry…"

"I'm here, Dad… I'm here."

And she was. Though he couldn't hold her, couldn't see her, she was there with him, not a figment of his imagination, but something beyond his ken, beyond a human's ability to comprehend. A physicist might call her a quark. Werner Heisenberg, architect of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, would understand her being here and not here at the same time.

JACK RETURNED to the house dripping wet, feeling at once exceptionally calm and subtly agitated. He couldn't explain the feeling any more than he could the last half hour, nor did he want to. Heavy-limbed, he wanted only to return to his bed and sleep for as many hours as he could until sunlight splintered the oak tree outside his window and roused him with warm and tender fingers.

Before he did so, however, he peeked into Alli's room, saw her sleeping peacefully on her side. Silently closing the door, he tiptoed back to the bathroom to dry off. Then he stumbled into bed and, after pulling the covers up to his chin, passed into a deep and untroubled sleep.