The House That Jack Built by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

She and Noah had nearly reached the floor when the inevitable shout came.

“It’s Jenna Caddrick!”

The roar hurt Jenna’s chest. She flinched back from the solid wall of noise, having forgotten during the weeks in London just how terrible it was to face a sea of screaming reporters.

“Steady,” Noah muttered at her elbow. “I don’t see a sniper anywhere.”

Not yet . . .

She glanced back and found Skeeter Jackson right on their heels, his face still a mirror of Noah’s. He gave her a brief, tense smile. “You’ve got that Kevlar vest of mine on, right?” She nodded and Skeeter muttered under his breath, “Good. I know it works.” Then they were down the last of the steel-grid steps and pushing foward between a cordon of security guards.

Questions battered her from every side. Reporters screamed her name, demanding to know where she had been, how she’d escaped the Ansar Majlis death squads, a thousand, million questions that raked up old wounds and inflicted new ones. Then her father was there in front of her, open-mouthed and staring. Shock had dilated Senator John Paul Caddrick’s grey eyes. A white pallor washed across his face as he met her gaze. She wondered how she had ever looked him in the eye without a reptilian loathing.

Then he recovered his composure. Her father presented the cameras with a smile worthy of an Oscar and cried, “Jenna! Oh, thank God, baby, you’re safe . . .” He rushed forward, arms outflung. Jenna had no idea what she intended to do or say. She’d been thinking about this moment for weeks, drenched in sour-smelling terror sweat each time she imagined it. But when he rushed at her like a demon from her worst nightmares, Jenna reacted without a moment’s hesitation.