Chapter One
Present Day
Thursday, October 26
It's always odd, meeting someone famous. On television, they never look at you,
unless they're giving a speech or staring at the camera in a commercial, and in
those cases, they are perfectly made up, every hair in place, rouge spread
across their cheeks by artists who make lucrative livings helping people appear
better than they actually are. In newspaper pictures, they are staring down or
straight ahead or off at some distant point, dead still, like a corpse. But in
person, their eyes move as if some mannequin has sprung eerily to life. They
have blemishes, hair is out of place, and your blood races the first few times
they use your name.
It was like that on a perfect autumn dawn amid the rolling hills of
Congressional Country Club, the type of day when the air is as crisp as an apple
and the bright red and orange leaves look as if they were painted by the hand of
God himself. It was just after 6:00 A.M., Thursday, October 26, when I wheeled
my five-year-old Honda Accord into a space between a hunter green Jaguar and a
Lexus. Before I could even pop the key into my trunk, a rather becoming woman
flashed a Secret Service badge at me, spoke my name, and asked apologe ... read full excerpt from The Incumbent ebook
