Madam President ✓

25. We're So Close

Alex

   Mumbling obscenities under my breath, I pace back and forth. Tanya Clark is not a stupid woman- I've seen it in the way she carries herself.

So she should have known better than to expect me to give her what I knew right then and there. Right now, I need Leslie Simmons to stay exactly where she is; to continue doing exactly what she's doing. If she does I'll know that Jeremy and I are safe. If I march through the west wing to the Oval Office and pass by her, she'll know something's up and try to run. The secret service would catch her but still. Between when the realization hits her and her capture- she might have the time to send out a text letting whoever helped her with this know we've got them.

  Right now, we can't afford that.

Less than ten feet away from me, the tattooed arm of the FBI director and the guts they're trying to match with it lay. They want to give the families something to bury. Some are lucky enough to get their loved ones heads, while others- like Amber's, will have nothing but guts. No funeral home in the world would agree to give them literal exploded flesh, and the FBI wouldn't agree to release it to them anyways.

I approach the table containing the remains of the man that once ran operations like this. I don't have very many memories, but the ones I do stand out. He's one that you'd never forget, that's for sure.

I don't think I'd have the strength to look into his eyes right now if he were alive- that's how powerful he was. He could get criminal who were behind bars for five years to confess to things; things that hadn't come up in the original investigation. He could sense it in their body language, speak it like it was English or Spanish.

I turn away. One person can only deal with so much and I need to finish this investigation before I have a breakdown.

So I pull out the list again, determined to do my own research so I'm not sitting around waiting on something to happen.

Congressman Fred Rogers

He was the darling of his state for six years, despite being the opposite party of most of them. At first he played the part of bipartisan negotiator between the democrats and his party- but as we all know, something changed in him and an ultra conservative white supremacist was born.

In the beginning, some might have even dared to say he was liberal.

How times change.

On my work phone, I pull up good ole google. There are nearly fifty million results- he's been a part of countless controversies. So I scroll down a bit and only one really sticks out: A breaking news headline from three years ago from the only town hall he ever had.

Congressman Rogers: A rascist or a realist?

I roll my eyes.

I click on the twenty second clip. Apparently, someone asked him what he thought about police officers patrolling black neighborhoods more.

"Well- first of all, thank you for the question. I am always up for more difficult ones. To answer it I do not believe this happens. I grew up in a black neighborhood and-"

No the fuck he didn't. He grew up in multi million dollar properties in Manhattan with butlers and nannies that raised him.

"From my personal experience, I didn't notice an abundance of police as compared to when I was visiting my aunt in Manhattan."

God he's so full of shit. I picture having to physically restrain myself so I don't slap him- and being unsuccessful. The mental image of his bloody, bashed in face is satisfying.