She was on her fourth try after deleting the first three. She looked over at Ted. “I can’t seem to get it just right for some reason. For starters, he’s going to go nuclear that I even have his oh-so-very-private-number-that-no-one-else-in-the-world-has. Except . . . drumroll please, Amalie and the President of the United States. And he doesn’t even know that Amalie has the number. Rosalee got it one day when he left his phone behind. I guess because she’s young, she knows how all that stuff works. Both women said the number is seared in their brain because they thought maybe someday they might need it. Guess this is the someday in question.” “Short, curt, and to the point, that’s the best way,” Ted said. “Say what you have to say and move on.” “When he asks where you got his private number, tell him the same thing you did when you called his other semiprivate number, that a reporter never divulges his or her sources. He has to respect that. He’s been around Washington long enough to know how that works, and after all we already had the number from Abner,”
