In Love and Diplomacy

Chapter Five: All I Had to Do Was Stay

"Heart, don't fail me now!
Courage, don't desert me!
Don't turn back now that we're here
People always say
Life is full of choices
No one ever mentions fear!"

- Liz Calloway voicing Anastasia, "Journey to the Past"

Chapter Five

I shoved the phone back into the clutch, my blood pulsing. A pain in my head was starting to throb; the backs of my eyes pounded in rhythm.

Probably from being tackled like you're an NFL player.

My body was starting to ache as my adrenaline peaked; its fall was staggered and slow. It'd reached its limit, and it was safe to say I had, too. Even with Sterling taking most of the hit to the ground, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

Better a truck than a bullet.

The ringing in my ears was slowly starting to abate, and for that, I was grateful.

Sterling's head swiveled back in my direction. His eyes scanned my stiff posture on the edge of the couch, then hovered on my clutch, slightly narrowed in suspicion.

"Sterling, I believe I asked for updates," I said, placing my clutch nonchalantly on the couch beside me.

Sterling suspected me. A little part of me understood, the rational part. Sterling and his team were being paid to be on alert, to look into every possibility. Maybe I couldn't be ruled out yet. The rest of me, the emotional and perhaps wholly irrational part of me, was pissed. I'd just been shot at. I was locked in a safe room inside my former boss's house during what was supposed to be a laidback retirement party.

I am the goddamn victim. I deserve answers and I need them as much as he does. Besides, who's to say he's not involved?

"Updates are as needed. We're working with limited information; I'll relay the necessary information as I have it." Sterling's eyes didn't rise from the computer that time.

We're back to lockout. No emotion, no information, not even the courtesy of eye contact.

"Mr. Sterling, you seem to misunderstand. I have the highest clearance afforded in the Attorney General's office, something shared by only a few people in the entire building. Mr. Cruz is one of them. You don't get to tell me 'it's need to know', or 'as needed'. There's no 'necessary information', or however you want to word it." I huffed breathlessly. "Everything is necessary to me."

Sterling, who'd awarded me his gaze at "Mr. Sterling", seemed to wait for me to finish. It pissed me off even more.

This isn't the time to be a gentleman, it's time to cut me off and tell me what I want to know.

"Miss Woodsen, I've already informed you I'm dealing with limited information and communication from my team. We're in the dark," Sterling ground out. The barest tinge of frustration coated his words.

Back to 'Miss Woodsen'.

His annoyance, however, was not directed at myself, but at the lack of information. His sharp jaw was pulled tight, and his shoulders strained as if he wanted to roll them in frustration. It was unsettling to be in the dark for both him and I: the trained defender and the hysterical political protégé.

What a pair we were.

"Do we know if there were any other shots? Any other... uh, victims?" My voice cracked at the end.

In my panic, Kennedy hadn't crossed my mind. She'd been going to the bathroom when everything went down.

Did she hear the gunshot? Is she hiding in the bathroom? Did she run out? Or even worse, did she not hear it, and she's now wandering around, wondering where everyone went? Completely out in the open?