The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer Page B

help.”
    I take a deep breath and bury it all away. “So assuming there was a threat on Boyle’s life at the time, why not just take him to the hospital?”
    “That’s the nail I keep stepping on. They caught Nico . . . Boyle was injured, but obviously alive . . . why pretend you’re dead and walk away from your life and your entire family? Maybe that’s what they were talking about during those twelve minutes in the ambulance. Maybe that’s when Boyle made his decision to hide.”
    I shake my head. “In twelve minutes? You can’t just shuck your whole life in twelve minutes—especially when you’re bleeding out of your neck. They had to’ve made plans before that.”
    “They?”
Dreidel asks.
    “C’mon, this isn’t like hiding from your little brother in a pillow fort. To pull something this big off, you need the Service, plus the ambulance driver, plus the doctor who took care of his neck.” I pause for a moment to make the point clear. “Plus someone to authorize it.”
    Dreidel lowers his chin, looking at me from just above the rounded rim of his glasses. He knows what I’m getting at. “You really think he’d—? You think he’d do that?”
    It’s the question I’ve been fighting with since the moment I saw Boyle’s fake name back at that hotel. You don’t use that name to hide. You use it so someone can find you. “I just . . . I don’t see how the President
wouldn’t
know. Back then, Manning couldn’t pee in a bush unless someone checked it first. If Boyle was wearing a vest—which he clearly had to’ve been—there had to be a credible threat. And if there was a credible threat . . . and extra blood in the ambulance . . . and contingencies in place to make sure Boyle was safe . . . Manning had to’ve signed off on that.”
    “Unless Albright signed off for him,” Dreidel counters, referring to our old chief of staff and the one other person in the limo with us that day at the speedway.
    It’s a fair point, but it doesn’t bring us any closer to an answer. Albright died of testicular cancer three years ago. “Now you’re blaming it all on a corpse?”
    “Doesn’t make it any less credible,” Dreidel challenges. “Albright used to sign off on security details all the time.”
    “I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “Manning and Boyle had known each other since college. If Boyle was planning on disappearing, that’s a hell of a prank to pull on a friend, much less the President of the United States.”
    “You joking? Boyle walked away from his family, his wife . . . even his own daughter. Look at the full picture, Wes: Nico the nutjob takes a potshot at the President. Instead, he hits Boyle square in the chest. But instead of going to the hospital to get patched up, Boyle takes that exact moment to fake his own death and disappear off the face of the earth. You do something like that, you’ve obviously got a damn good reason.”
    “Like father, like son?” I ask.
    “Yeah, I thought about that. Problem is, Boyle’s dad was just a petty scumbag. This is . . . this is big-league. With a capital
big.
”
    “Maybe Boyle hired Nico. Maybe the shooting was a giant smoke screen to give Boyle a way to get out.”
    “Way too
Mission: Impossible
sequels,” Dreidel says. “If Nico misses, you’re risking a head shot. More important, if the Service was helping, they’re not putting the President, and his staff, and 200,000 spectators in danger while entrusting it all to some whacked looney tune. You’ve seen Nico in the interviews—he’s Stephen King-movie crazy. If Boyle wanted to do this to himself, he’d fake a heart attack at home and be done with it.”
    “So you think when Nico fired those shots, Boyle and the Service just used the instant chaos to sneak him out of there?” I ask, trying hard to keep it to a whisper.
    “I don’t know what to think. All I know is, for Boyle to put on a bulletproof vest, he must’ve been expecting something. I mean, you