Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that they should be focusing on the twenty-two people who hadn’t been as lucky as me.
    At first, the media just called it an attack, but within about eight hours it became a terrorist attack. A group calling themselves the Brothers of Freedom claimed responsibility and the media went nuts for a solid week with pundits speculating on where they’d come from and how they’d managed to strike so viciously, so effectively, right in the middle of DC. The group was a homegrown, extremist militia whose idea of freedom seemed to be anarchy: they wanted the end of government and, specifically, the flag and the constitution, the end of taxes, the end of laws and a society based on all-out dog-eat-dog chaos. There was a heartening lack of sympathy for them—the entire nation seemed to be firmly allied against them. But that didn’t make them any less dangerous.
    Neither shooter was apprehended. Helping the FBI to put together a photofit of the second shooter was easy because his face was burned into my memory forever. I went through hundreds of mug shots, too, but couldn’t identify him. Somehow, both men had sneaked out of the city and vanished. The media, always desperate to find someone to blame, raged against both the FBI and the Secret Service, demanding to know how this could happen. The director of the FBI made some defensive comments about needing more funding and better surveillance. The Vice President surprised everyone by turning it into his personal cause. For years, he’d been pushing for more surveillance and tougher laws, but now he brought it all together into a bill. Given the climate, there were no end of co-signers eager to jump on the bandwagon.
    And me? That night I went home to the White House, patched up, medicated and as safe as a person could be. I hugged my mom and dad, went to the most secure bedroom on the planet and waited to heal.
    But I didn’t heal.
    I got worse.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
    Emily
     
    It started the night I got home from the hospital. Maybe I should have expected it. The doctors had expected it: they’d given me details of people I could talk to if I needed to (I nodded and promised I would) and offered me something to help me sleep (I turned it down). But I was focused on my leg and how lucky I was that the bullet hadn’t shattered a bone or shredded a nerve and left me in a wheelchair for life, or just hit me in the chest or head and ended me right there. I thought I was okay.
    And then, at about two a.m., when the residence was quiet and still, a man broke into my room and stabbed me in the chest.
    It wasn’t a nightmare. I’d had nightmares. This was something else. I felt the weight of him on top of me, felt the knife slip between my ribs, When I woke up I could see the dark blood on the sheets and on my hands and it took long seconds before it faded.
    I climbed out of bed: I couldn’t stay in it because I was sure the sheets were blood-soaked, no matter how many times I checked to make sure they weren’t. Three times, I told myself angrily not to be so freaking silly and forced myself to limp back into bed and get under the covers, only to stagger out again a few moments later, physically shaking with fear. I wound up sitting in the doorway between my bedroom and bathroom, hugging my knees and trembling. I stayed like that until the dawn broke through the drapes and then I breathed a little easier because I assumed the fear would disappear with the night.
    I was wrong.
    When I hobbled over to the window, I saw the sun rise on a world filled with threats. Every slow-moving car could contain a gunman, the window whining down to reveal a dark barrel pointed right at my head. Every man—every woman —walking down the street was hiding explosives under their coat, ready to swerve towards me and cover the distance between us in less time than it took to scream.
    I’d always known I was in danger. But it was the first time I really felt it, in all its bone-deep,