Three.

A fleet pair of black shoes landed noiselesly on thick carpet. Softly they tip-toed across the darkened room and arrived in front of a dark piece of furniture. Soft snores issued from an elaborate bed across the patch of moonlight on the floor. The moon was the sole witness to what exactly happened next, for as quickly as the shadow arrived in the room, it left, and the occupant was left sleeping soundlessly.

Four hours later, the secretary of state opened his eyes on a fresh new day and stretched. He was a young man in his early twenties with sparkling white teeth and locks of soft, brown hair. Groggily, he rubbed his eyes and studied his surroundings. Pleased that his maid had remembered to clean the clutter off of his desk, he slid out of bed and over to his workstation.

Nothing out-of-the-ordinary struck him at first. His hazel eyes roamed across the smooth desktop casually and he shuffled papers around. In fact, he didn't notice that anything was different at all until he had been sitting at his desk for twenty minutes and was just about to request tea when a beam of sunlight fell onto something shiny.

Raising a well-groomed eyebrow, the man reached for the glittering object and studied the note it had been perched upon. A thin piece of notepaper clearly read in a handwritting he had almost forgotten, "Take my heart and I'll take yours. - Jenny."

His face flushed at the name. Glancing down, he recognized the golden object as the ring he had given her on their first date. On one side her name was inscribed in fading letters. On the other, his had been scratched out.

The ring slid out of his fingers as he leaned back and sighed. Weary fingers caressed his aching head as his mind re-lived the years between them. Jennifer Stone. The prettiest girl in highschool. The coolest girl in college. The only girl who had ever found out he was a cheater.

A series of images flashed behind his closed lids. Her face as he gave her the ring. The way her hair felt when he stroked it on their first date. The way he snuck out of his house to see another girl. The way Jenny screamed at him as she explained how she knew everything that was going on. The way he didn't care that she was mad at him. The way everyone stopped to stare while she created a scene and he stared stoicly ahead of him. The way her tears flowed down her cheeks.

The secretary of state sighed and opened his eyes, hesitantly caressing the piece of jewelry chiding himself for being so foolish. It was just highschool. None of that mattered now. Still...he smiled slightly to himself and slipped on the ring.

***********************************************
A world of darkness. A neverending sea of black. And then. Oxygen. Gasping, Arnold opened his eyes. Light met him full-force, blinding him for a moment so that a slight headache began to develop. He slowly sat up. Where was he? In a hallway in the White House. He glanced down at himself. The tuxedo he had rented for the occasion was puncured by a bullet hole.

Arnold frowned and took off his jacket, revealing a bullet-proof vest underneath with a fresh, new scar. Looking around, he caught sight of a body next to him. The President. His heart pumped hard in a second of panic as he gripped the shoulder of the body and rolled it over. He quickly took off the president's jacket, revealing a vest identical to his own. It rose up and down. The President was alive.

The agent raised his watch to his lips, pressed a button, and reported, "Suspect A confirmed as a lethal threat. The next target unknown." He released the button. Static. His roaming eyes stumbled across the dead bodies of the butlers as he helped the president to sit up.

The president followed his gaze, slowly regaining the breath that had been taken out of him while holding fast to Arnold for support. "Mr.President, our fears are as suspected. Your daughter, Jennifer Stone, is the murderer o--"

"Agent Arnold?" a staticy voice asked over his watch, interrupting the agent mid-sentence.

"Lighthouse! Suspect A has been confirmed. She tried to take out the president but the target has been contained." Arnold nodded to the president while swallowing. "Next target unknown."

There was a pause over the radio unit. "Not quite."
***********************************************
A hum resonated in Arnold's head as he drove the black, armored vehicle parked outside the White House to Jenny's latest hit. The President sat next to him, eyebrows etched into a frown that matched his lips too perfectly. There was no music in the car, only the hum of the engine and the grating noise of the unpaved road beneath them.

Arnold swallowed, considering what to say to the leader of the country who had just found out that his daughter was on the most wanted list. "Mr.President-" Arnold started.

Before he could say more, the President turned to him with a serious face and said, "Thank you."

Surprised, Arnold asked, "It is our duty to protect--"

"No, I'm not thanking your organization. I'm thanking you." The president's voice was solemn. Pained. Arnold met his eyes for an instant before flickering back to watch the road. "You could have chosen not to let me in on your suspicions. Everyone has been looking for the murderer of my brother. No one would have suspected my Jenny." His voice cracked on the words.

Arnold cleared his throat. Not many people would have. If he hadn't known Jenny's uncle had abused her when she was little, he wouldn't have considered it either. "Sir, we believe many more people to be in danger. She seems to be seeking revenge on anyone who ever treated her badly."

The President sighed and stared absently out of the window. As soon as the words left his left, Arnold regretted them. Surely he hadn't been too terrible of a father. Then again, when Arnold had explained that he would be required to wear a bullet-proof vest as they were setting up for the dinner, the President had seemed genuinely shocked.

"Sir, if it's any comfort, you're safe with us," Arnold said, trying to offer what looked like a smile as he pulled into a driveway full of investigator and police vehicles. "Jenny still thinks you're dead, and she can't know you're alive. That's why you'll be staying with--"

Arnold was interrupted yet again as a woman with dark hair knocked eagerly on the window of the bullet-proof van. Arnold rolled it down and she exclaimed eagerly, "We're sorry, sir, but it's the secretary of state - he's been murdered."

"Good gracious," the president murmured.

Arnold immediately got out of the car. "How did this happen?"

The woman's eyes widened as she led him over to a stretched bearing a corpse of a young, once-attractive man clad in what he had slept in the night before. "Mercury poisoning."

"Mercury poisoning?" Arnold repeated, his eyes scanning over the man's discolored frame. Bits of blood marred his otherwise flawless skin when in his last moments he had gone insane and clawed himself. "How did this happen?" Disgust trickled into his voice. How did Jenny manage this?

The woman shook her head, staring at the disfigured body. "We're not exactly sure." She pointed to the dead man's hand. "But traces of mercury were found on his ring."