by Radclyffe
“What?” Blair asked, softer than she had meant, struggling with a nearly irresistible urge to cross the distance to her. It was so hard to hold on to her anger when she so wanted to hold her.
“Have you told them downstairs that you’re going out?” Cam pushed herself upright.
“No,” Blair answered curtly, irritated again as Cam resumed her official role.
“Is it a personal engagement?” Cam continued, keeping her voice carefully neutral. Now, the team would have to provide much closer coverage than they usually did, even for non-official functions. She had to ask in order to do her job, but she didn’t need or want to know the details if Blair was seeing someone. “Will you need the car?”
She searched her memory for the day’s itinerary, which she had reviewed the night before. Before her day in Washington. Before she knew that Blair wasn’t really safe anywhere. “We didn’t have you scheduled for anything tonight.”
“It was a last-minute thing.” Blair hated discussing her private plans with her security people. She always felt so exposed. This was worse. Reluctantly she added, “It’s a party at Diane’s.”
“I see.” Cam’s expression didn’t change, but she had no difficulty deciphering what Blair wasn’t saying. It wasn’t official, and if it was a date, it was none of her business. “Can you give me a few minutes to get someone for you? Stark and Grant are both off duty, and you’ll want a woman.”
“Fielding and Foster can wait in the car outside Diane’s apartment.” Blair opened the door and stepped into the hallway. “They always have before.”
Following Blair out of the loft, Cam was already activating her radio. “Fielding, bring the car around, and find Ellen Grant or Stark for me. ASAP.” She crossed to the elevator and said flatly, “I need someone inside.”
“It’s Diane’s, for Christ’s sake,” Blair replied with irritation, punching the lobby button. “Do you think he’s going to show up in drag?”
“I don’t know what he’s going to do!” Cam retorted in an uncharacteristically aggravated tone. “Until twelve hours ago, I didn’t even know he was active.”
Blair had no answer for that. She had ignored the first few messages she received by post, hoping they were just random crank mail, unrelated to what had happened before. Crank stuff did arrive from time to time, usually from disgruntled individuals who didn’t like her father’s politics. Sometimes from overenthusiastic supporters. Occasionally from people obsessed with her, asking for photos or dates or even articles of clothing. But never anything quite like these messages. Intimate, suggestive, and—most frightening—knowledgeable. Then when the e-mail started, she had confided in her friend at the Bureau, and that had been a mistake. Friendship has its limits, and her old school chum had decided that this was news she couldn’t keep to herself.
“You didn’t need to know. The FBI knew,” Blair justified as the elevator opened onto the lobby. She was still angry with AJ for reporting it.
Cam didn’t bother to point out that she needed to know for any number of reasons, not all of them professional. Because it was done. Blair had shut her out, and there was nothing to do now but regain control of the situation.
As Blair walked toward the front door, she was acutely aware that Cam had moved slightly ahead of her to go through first. Unexpectedly, she saw it all again in slow-motion replay—the bright sunlight, the screams of frantic men, the spreading blossom of rich red on Cam’s chest as she dropped first to her knees, then collapsed to her back on the sidewalk. By then the other agents had pulled Blair inside, behind the glass doors, and Cam had been beyond her reach. She couldn’t hold her.
“Blair?” Cam asked, concerned by Blair’s sudden pallor.
Blair jerked at the sound of Cam’s voice and hurried to cross the sidewalk, the flashback image of Cam’s ashen face as she lay dying mercifully fading. Cam opened the car door, and Blair brushed her fingers lightly over Cam’s sleeve, reassured by the solid presence of her. She didn’t trust herself to speak but just slid into the rear of the black sedan parked at the curb.
Diane Bleeker kissed Blair lightly on the cheek as she admitted her to a room already filled with people. The lights were conversationally dim; female servers in white shirts, black bow ties, and tailored black trousers moved carefully through the crowd with trays of hors d’oeuvres balanced in front of them. Soft music accompanied the murmur of voices.
“Your choice of escorts is improving,” Diane remarked, a hint of surprise in her voice as she watched Cam move to one side of the spacious living room.
“I’m alone,” Blair responded, slipping past her and heading for the bar that had been set up in one corner.
Diane threaded her way through the crowd in Blair’s wake, reaching for a glass of white wine as Blair waited for the very attractive redheaded bartender in tight black leather pants to mix her a drink. “If you needed a date, I could have easily found you one. Marcy Coleman has been trying to get you to go out with her for weeks. You could do worse than a successful young surgeon, you know.”
Blair took her drink, scarcely noticing the appraising glance that the bartender gave her along with the glass. She surveyed the other women in the room. As always at Diane’s gatherings, there was a mix of aspiring artists—many of whom were Diane’s clients—young professionals, and bar dykes from the Village who were there as escorts or just tagging along with someone they knew, hoping to get lucky. Diane always managed to provide something for everyone.
“I’m not interested in a date,” Blair said acerbically, making an effort not to look in Cam’s direction. She’d had years of practice at ignoring her security detail. Once she’d gotten used to their ubiquitous presence, they had simply become background noise.
When she was a preteen, it hadn’t been as difficult, because her father had only been a governor then. Other than the fact that state troopers often drove her to school and parked nearby while she engaged in after-school activities, she’d been able to pretend she was like everyone else. Then when her father became vice president, the security around her had intensified and she had become very good at convincing herself that she wasn’t being watched almost twenty-four hours a day.
But there was nothing she could do to ignore Cameron Roberts’s presence. She could feel her as strongly as if they stood touching.
Diane smiled knowingly. “I was trying to be polite when I said date. I’m sure the very charming Dr. Coleman would be just as happy to spend the night with you, if that’s what you had in mind.”
Blair turned and met Diane’s eyes, replying caustically, “If and when I decide I want someone to fuck, I’m quite certain I can manage the arrangements on my own.”
If Diane was taken aback by Blair’s sharp rejoinder, she didn’t show it. She knew from long experience that the best way to get Blair to talk about anything substantial was to anger her. Blair had gotten much too proficient at disguising almost all her emotions, but when she was angry, her shields slipped. Diane was one of the few people who could actually goad her into revealing herself, which was probably the reason they were still friends.
“Well, if I had that criminally good-looking number watching me all night—especially with that smoldering expression in her eyes—I probably wouldn’t be looking for anyone else either.”
Blair didn’t even have to look at Cam to know exactly the expression Diane meant. Cam had a way of looking at her that made her feel as if she were the only woman in the room—hell, the only other woman on the planet. She reminded herself that Cam was only doing her job, but no one—not even Paula Stark, for all her competence and despite the night they had shared together—ever looked at her in quite that way.
Blair’s hand trembled as she raised the martini glass to her lips. “Don’t, Diane. Not tonight.”
Diane relented. Blair’s voice was raw, and her eyes were wounded. Touching Blair’s hand fleetingly, she said, “I don’t know what you think is happening between you two, but she cares. She can’t
hide it any more than you can.” She tossed her head in a practiced motion, her pale blond hair sweeping her shoulders. “You may not be in the mood for company tonight, but I am. It’s time for me to prowl.”
As she watched Diane slip sinuously through the crowd, Blair wondered how long it would take her to make her way around the room to Cam. And she wished to God she didn’t care.
When the athletic blond in the navy polo shirt, jeans, and Nikes walked in the door at a little before 0100 hours, more than a few heads turned in appreciation. She looked like an ex-soccer player, which, among other things, she was. It had taken Ellen Grant a little over an hour from the time John Fielding tracked her down at her mother-in-law’s in Westchester to make it to the party at Diane Bleeker’s Upper East Side apartment. She had considered changing her clothes and then decided not to, figuring she’d probably fit in with at least some part of the gathering.
Cam sighed with uncharacteristic relief at the sight of her backup. It wasn’t so much her bone-deep tiredness that was taxing her, but the necessity of watching Blair dance with the same woman for the last half hour while trying to ignore the fact that the woman’s hand rested very subtly on Blair’s left breast.
“Sorry, Commander,” Ellen Grant said when they managed to work their way over to one another. “I was at my husband’s birthday party.”
“No apologies required, Grant. I regret the need to call you away from your family.” Cam gave a thin smile and passed her hand across her eyes, rubbing them briefly. “I’m afraid I got caught short tonight. You’re bailing me out.”
Grant glanced at her in concern, catching the strain in her voice and wondering if she was all right. Cameron Roberts was a legend to every agent in the field because of what she had done that day in front of Blair Powell’s apartment, but to her own team, she was a flesh-and-blood hero. “Not a problem. I can take over now, Commander.”
“Yes,” Cam said. “Thank you.”
Instead of leaving, Cam walked through the room and out onto a small iron-railed balcony with a view of Central Park. She rested both hands on the railing, aware of the ache in her left side along the ten-inch scar between her fourth and fifth ribs. It didn’t usually bother her, or at least most of the time she could ignore it.
“Off duty now, Commander?” Blair asked quietly from beside her.
“Yes. Grant’s taking over.” They both knew that wasn’t strictly true. She was never off duty, through choice as well as convention.
“You look like you could use some sleep.”
Cam, still leaning forward, turned her head and glimpsed the quick flicker of moonlight playing over Blair’s face. The sight caught at her heart. Surrendering for just an instant to the soft undercurrent of warmth in Blair’s voice and the real concern in her gaze, Cam let herself relax.
“Airplane seats are always a little short for me to sleep in very well.”
Blair stood next to her at the rail, close enough to touch her, but she was careful not to. She didn’t trust herself enough to do that. She wasn’t even sure why she had followed her outside, but the night was disappearing, and they were here, almost alone. Tomorrow, people would surround them again, and she had no idea when they would next have even a few moments of privacy. She couldn’t bear to see her go, not yet.
“What’s going to happen now?”
As Cam watched the headlights far below trace patterns of lights through the treetops, she considered the future. It never even occurred to her not to inform Blair of her plans, although it was distinctly non-regulation to do so. By long years of convention, the Secret Service never discussed procedure with a protectee.
But it was Blair’s life that was affected, and she deserved to know.
“We’ll need to go to high-alert status. I’ll talk to Mac and Stark about that tomorrow. Inside, you’ll have at least two agents with you at all times. Outside, four. Extra security at public functions, and we’ll be disseminating far less information about your travel plans to the press.”
“Everything will be closing down around me, won’t it?” Blair sounded nearly as done in as Cam appeared.
“These are the things that will impact you most directly, yes,” Cam allowed. There was much more that needed to be done, and she hoped she could accomplish them without making Blair even more unhappy. “I’m sorry.”
Blair believed her. It had taken more than raw physical attraction to capture her heart. Cam, as no one before her, understood. Cam understood how she felt to be never alone, to be never free, to be never capable of spontaneous action. Cam understood even though she couldn’t change it.
“I know.” Blair did touch her then, a brief brush of her fingers over Cam’s hand.
She caught her breath as Cam captured her fingers and caressed them gently. The light pressure of their palms sliding together was more achingly sweet than another woman’s naked body pressing against her in the heat of lust. She stood there, buffeted by the chill night air, her head light with wanting her, and dared not move. Dared not break the fragile bond.
Finally, Cam sighed and released her. She was so very tired and she couldn’t trust herself with Blair so near. She had just needed to touch her so much. And now she needed to go.
What she had to say next came hardest. It was difficult for her to even think it, but she had to. Everything between them had changed drastically almost overnight. They’d spent five frantic days trying to assuage nearly a yearlong thirst, and nothing had really been settled when they’d parted. Except they both had believed there’d be a next time.
She’d thought then that they’d have time to tackle the issues of Blair’s notoriety and her own professional ethics, but the reappearance of Loverboy had changed all of that. Now whatever personal relationship they might have had was secondary. She knew Blair was hurt and angry, and she’d seen Blair in the arms of too many lovers not to know what she did when she was hurt.
She simply said what she had to say. “If you don’t plan on going home tonight, please tell Grant. Let them protect you.”
Staring straight ahead so that she would not see the good-bye in Cam’s eyes, Blair replied quietly, “As you wish, Commander.”
And then she was alone, the wind whipping at her tears.
Chapter Six
At precisely 0700 the next morning, Cam walked through the command center toward the conference room. “Stark, Mac,” she called as she passed each of them, “with me. The rest of you will be briefed later.”
She closed the conference room door after they took their seats, and she remained standing, leaning forward slightly with her hands on the back of a chair. She was crisply attired in a steel blue suit, a tailored white linen shirt, and imported black loafers that matched the belt at her waist. Had the others been looking, they would have noticed that her knuckles were white where she gripped the leather. It was the only sign that she was distressed.
“This is what I know,” she began, her tone and demeanor completely composed. “Approximately three months ago, Loverboy resumed contact with Egret via the U.S. mail. His messages consisted of short rambling notes professing his undying love for her, his desire to make love to her—put more crudely than that—and his intention to be alone with her so that he could convince her of his passion.”
At her first few words, Stark and Mac sat up straight, clearly shocked.
“Commander! This is the first—” Mac sputtered, his face pale.
Cam held up her hand to silence him. “We’ll get to that. Six weeks ago, he began electronic contact. This time, in addition to his verbal descriptions, he sent short video clips of explicit sexual activities he hoped they might...share.”
“It’s impossible.” Stark couldn’t contain her disbelief. “She would have told us. She’s difficult, but she’s not stupid. She would know that we had to be informed.”
“The FBI knew. They formed a task force to monitor the situation.” At that announcement, Mac swore. Cam continued, preferring to save the considerab
le explanations for later. “They’ve set up their own surveillance system with vehicles and agents tracking her whenever she’s outside this building. They’ve attempted to establish alternate e-mail connections in the hopes of backtracking his messages to their source. So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.”
Her fingers began to cramp and she forced herself to let go of the chair back. Her voice still quiet, she said, “I was called back because about ten days ago his messages changed. He’s becoming more violent; he threatened her.” She was surprised to feel her voice catch and hoped that Mac and Stark hadn’t heard it. Quickly she continued, “The behavioral people at Quantico feel that he may be decompensating, either because he’s been unsuccessful at gaining access to her or just because he’s coming unglued. In any event, we must consider Egret at risk at any time.”
“Oh my God,” Mac breathed, “how could they have kept us out of the loop?”
Struggling now to contain her own anger, she answered, “They were investigating us.” That wasn’t strictly true. The FBI had been investigating everyone on the security team with the exception of Cam. She was exonerated by virtue of the fact that she had been an unintended victim of Loverboy’s presumed attack on Blair.
“That’s insane.” Mac stood up, agitated. “We were all there with Egret—with you—when it happened. None of us could have been the shooter!”
“I agree with you.” Cam shrugged. “But I don’t have to remind you how paranoid our brethren in the FBI can be. They were floating the theory that if it was one of you, you might have had a hired hit man do the shooting. A stand-in to deflect suspicion.”