Of Safety and Security

As soon as Sara exited the car warning bells began ringing loudly in the back of her head. She scanned the area where the press conference would take place as she'd been taught as a teenager. For each of Josh Lyman's children the reality of their father's shooting had affected their lives in different ways. Noah had become a vocal supporter of civil rights. The entire extended family knew Noah was just marking time working for his mother, so it was no real surprise that he took the job working for Toby. For Jodi, the cause had been gun control. When at the age of nine Jodi had organized a gun safety presentation for her class at school, she knew she'd found her life's quest. Sara had always been the different one in the family. Being the youngest, she'd been sheltered by the family. The Rosslyn shooting hadn't really meant anything to her until she was fourteen and her eighth grade U.S. history teacher, knowing who Jodi was, asked her father to come speak about it.

Sara's nightmares had begun that night and continued every night after for months. She didn't feel safe anymore. Josh and Donna didn't know what to do for their youngest until an old family friend has stepped in with an unusual suggestion. Sara had left for camp the next day. It was a different sort of camp run by an older man named Ron Butterfield. Butterfield had left the Secret Service soon after Bartlet had left office. With the help and encouragement of old friends and colleagues, he'd started his own business offering protection to politicians, entertainers, and other celebrities. Two of his first clients were the new senators from Connecticut and South Carolina. Butterfield had set up the camp to train his employees to rival the Secret Service when it came to protecting their charges. He and the other instructors had taught Sara how to protect not only herself but others that summer. By the time she'd returned to school in the fall, she had felt safe again. Confident that she would know what to do in any life-threatening situation. Throughout high school, she had returned to Ron's camp in the summers to learn more. She had even toyed with the idea of going to work for Butterfield Security, but her passion for writing had won that battle. Ron's training had saved her life and the lives of others many times in the last two years as she'd worked overseas in several of the world's hot spots. A fact she had carefully kept from her family.

Now that training was telling her that there was danger here. She quickly scanned the covey of reporters standing near the podium and dismissed them just as quickly. The threat wasn't there, but where was it? Her eyes swept the tourists milling around the entrance to the museum, picking them out. White supremacists. Since the President's shooting the Newseum had been a kind of tourist attraction for hate groups. Like some sort of battle monument they considered this the site of a great victory for them. Sara had been here before several times doing research. For some reason she felt drawn to this place that changed the lives of everyone she loved so much. On the hard drive of her computer and backed up to a server on the internet was a file simply title 'Rosslyn'. It was a book she'd been working on since she'd taken her first writing class in high school. She didn't know if she'd ever finish it, and if she did finish it if she'd ever find the courage to publish it. Through her research she knew that a few 'skinheads' visited each day mixed in with the normal tourist groups. Today there appeared to be more than a few. Sara reached back into the car and pulled out the duffel she'd thrown in the back seat as they left the Post building.

"Jake, I'm going to go talk to my uncle for a minute," she told the younger reporter. "Do me a favor. Find the Newseum curator and find out if there's been an increase in the number of skinheads visiting. Specifically today."

"Why?" Jake asked.

"Just do it....I'll explain why later," she ordered as she walked towards the distinguished middle aged man standing off to the side behind the podium as he spoke to another younger man who appeared to be an aide of some kind.

"Have we heard from Toby Ziegler yet?" Charlie asked his assistant Rick.

"No," he told Charlie.

"Their flight lands at 8 tonight," Sara offered as she walked up behind him. "Hi, Charlie."

"Sara! Come give me a hug," he demanded as he pulled her into his embrace for a gentle hug. "I hear you came back with some broken ribs?"

"It was only three ribs," Sara explained. "I'm fine. Charlie, I've got something for you."

"Bring me back a present from China?" he quipped as he watched her open the duffel bag. Looking inside he was surprised to find a kevlar vest. "Where'd you get that?"

"Ron gave it to me when I turned eighteen," Sara explained as Charlie pulled the vest from the bag.

"Sara, why is there a hole in this vest?" Charlie asked.

"Umm..."

"Which side are those broken ribs on?" he asked with a hard glint in his eye. "Sara," Charlie demanded when it appeared as if she wasn't going to answer.

"The right," Sara finally admitted. "Please can we just keep this between you and I?"

"You were shot!?" Charlie demanded.

"No I wasn't shot," Sara refuted then had to backpedal as Charlie held the vest up for her inspection displaying the hole on the right side. "Well, technically I was shot, but the vest caught the brunt of the impact. I'm fine!"

"Technically!"

"Dad already browbeat the Post's lawyers into keeping me in the DC area. So can we skip the 'your job is too dangerous' and 'you should tell your parents' parts of this conversation and move onto 'wear the damn vest, uncle Charlie!'"

"I don't need a vest," Charlie protested.

"And apparently you didn't need any Butterfields?" Sara asked using the term her mother, the trivia junky, had coined for the protective agents who worked for Butterfield Security. It was a play off of the term 'Pinkertons' used to describe the investigators Allen Pinkerton had trained just after the Civil War. Pinkerton had also helped form the Secret Service making the term even more apropos. The term had caught on among the former Bartlet staffers and among Butterfield's employees themselves. It had become a point of honor to be able to claim status as a Butterfield. "And there are only four cops out there! Jesus, uncle Charlie!"

"I'm hold a press conference, Sara, not walking into a war zone."

"Wear. the. damn. vest," Sara demanded enunciating each word carefully. "This place is crawling with skinheads! Ron trained me, remember? I have a really bad feeling, Uncle Charlie. I'd try to talk you into postponing or changing the location, but you're as stubborn as the rest of us. You wear the vest, or I'm going to call Aunt Zoey, though. And you better have Rick go tell them to get more cops out here."

"You fight dirty," Charlie complained as he shrugged out of his suit coat and began unbuttoning his shirt preparing to put the vest on underneath.

"I'm a Lyman," Sara declared. "You expected anything else?"