The Candidate ✓ (Book Two)

Chapter Eight

  There's a sharp, stabbing pain in my head when I wake up. I reach into my bedside table for an ibuprofen- but remember I put it back in the medicine cabinet last night. Fuck me. I get up to dig through it for the bottle, and down two when I find it.

  Today, I will present my official resignation to a room of my staff and witnesses. As Ethan would only be the acting director- for now at least, I'll be administering his oath at the same time I read off my resignation.

  Ordinarily this type of thing would be a smooth process- no confusion involved, but Ethan and I haven't spoken in a few days. For us that's beyond out of the ordinary. He's my second best friend- behind Kyle, but that kiss came out of nowhere. As I get dressed for the day, all I can think about is the twinge of guilt lingering even though I didn't technically do anything wrong.

  I didn't kiss him back. I did walk away looking at him like he was crazy. Kyle still lays- sound asleep on our bed, so I type out a quick text for him to wake up to.

  I decide not to tell him. What would be the point? My office wing's security cameras are heavily protected thanks to Ethan- the audio only being accessible from within. In the past seven years, Ethan's only gotten better at this job, which I didn't think was possible. He's been solely responsible for a lot of the newer security systems in federal buildings- but the identity of the Security Coder( Ethan) has been protected for his own safety.

  The public knows him now as the FBI's chief of staff. They have no idea about the role he played in my retrieval all those years ago- no idea about just how advanced he is with hacking. With the technology he has access to on a daily basis, he's heavily watched to make sure he doesn't try and pull anything even though multiple people have vetted him. How ironic- the individual that built most of our security systems is monitored for security concerns.

He's nice to everybody unless he has a good reason not to be. He wouldn't even kill a spider- but I remember him going to "visit" James and punching him in the face, hard. He got placed on leave for a few weeks after that.

I'm so not looking forward to today. I don't have a choice but to speak to him, and he has no idea his swearing in's going to be today. I smile- like me, he's worked his way up from interning agent to director. Though the circumstances are slightly different, and I cringe thinking about what happened earlier this week- I can't help but be happy for him. Initially, when he started working with the FBI, this wouldn't have been something he wanted. He would've been content just staying behind the scenes and hacking with zero recognition for the rest of his life- but now, he's learned to just sort of accept whatever promotion is thrown at him.

This will likely be the last time I see him for at least two years. When Kyle was on the campaign trail for his governor's and senator's campaigns , he made the time to come back home at least once a week. On the presidential trail, I traveled with him to most campaign stops, as I'd retired shortly before and there were multiple stops almost every day. This has a similar vibe- except I'm the candidate this time, and we have a daughter. We don't even have to have a discussion about it to know that he'll stay with her- she's always both of our biggest priorities now.

She doesn't deserve to be raised by secret service for two years. You can see how that worked out for Marisol's kids- hint, they're assholes. I decide to stop procrastinating, and quickly throw my hair up before I nod at Ella. She starts getting the motorcade together.

  My staff- of course, knows that my resignation is coming, they just don't know exactly when. They'll figure it out pretty damn quickly when all of them are called to the meeting room. Most of them that don't know Ethan as well as I do probably expect him to refuse the position. I imagine the fourth ranking official biting his nails in anticipation this week as he's waited on me to present my official letter.