by Radclyffe
“Why, thank you, Commander.” Her smile was for Cam, not the mayor or the photographers.
When Blair stepped to the podium, Cam was positioned to the right rear, just a few feet behind her. Stark and Savard were at ground level directly in front of her, and several FBI agents on loan from the New York office were interspersed in the crowd near the stage.
Mac, coordinating the various teams from the communications van, was linked by radio to Jeremy Finch, the driver of Blair’s car; to Ellen Grant, in the second backup vehicle; and to the mayor’s security chief, as well as the NYPD crowd-control captain. So far, for that sort of affair, it was proceeding without a hitch. The audiovisual equipment actually functioned; the speakers were keeping to their preplanned schedule; and the hundreds of people scattered about in Sheep Meadow were surprisingly orderly.
Blair had exchanged her running gear for warm-up pants and a dry T-shirt in one of the tents, as had Cam and the others, and she looked casually stylish as she faced the mass of onlookers. When she began to speak, the sound of camera shutters clicking fluttered through the crowd like something alive. Every eye and lens was focused on her.
While part of Cam’s attention was completely preoccupied with the crowd activity in the area within visual range of Blair, another part listened to her speak. She had a beautiful speaking voice—deep, warm, and strong. Cam knew the story, of course. Everyone did. A man could not run for the presidency of the United States and have something as critical as his wife’s valiant battle with breast cancer not be a prominent issue during the campaign. This personal tragedy was part of Andrew Powell’s image, part of his public face, no matter how private the pain.
And because her father’s life was open to intense scrutiny by virtue of his position, Blair’s loss became public knowledge, too. The president’s daughter had secrets she guarded, but this was not one of them. To fight this war, she had willingly exposed her deepest anguish. She spoke eloquently, urging lawmakers to allocate funds for treatment and diagnosis, exhorting women to practice vigilance and to be their own best advocates, and, above all, encouraging every person touched by the disease to never lose hope.
Cam thought she was magnificent.
When she turned away from the podium. Cam stepped immediately to her side, careful not to touch her but walking close beside her toward the rear of the stage and the shelter of some overhead canvas tarps.
“Are you all right?” she asked gently, because she had heard the tears beneath the noble words. Although she had rarely seen Blair shaken, she could sense her fragility now. There were some things that always hurt, no matter how many years had passed. “Can I get you anything? Some water? You were standing in the blazing sun up there for half an hour.”
Blair glanced at her, aware of what Cam wasn’t saying and grateful to her for not remarking on the fact that she was shaking. “So were you,” she pointed out.
“Yes,” Cam murmured, passing her a bottle of water, “but I had sunglasses on.”
That made Blair laugh. “Well, that explains it. I’m all right, but I’d like to get out of here now.”
“Of course.” Cam spoke quickly into her microphone. “Egret is flying.”
Blair smiled wearily. “Egret is actually dragging, but carry on, Commander.”
“Destination?” Cam asked. They moved down the steps and across the field toward the waiting cars parked along the far edge of the grass. The meadow itself was large enough that the vehicles were actually quite a distance away on one of the main roads running north to south through the park. Cam wasn’t happy about the expanse of open ground they had to cross, but it was the terrain she’d been given to deal with. Stark and Savard fell in behind, and Mac, upon hearing Cam’s announcement, radioed the drivers to prepare for departure.
“I’d like to inform the drivers where you need to go.” She said it as casually as she could, and hoped she sounded only professionally interested. She was acutely aware of the fact that Blair had spoken privately to both Diane and Marcy Coleman just before she had joined the other speakers on the stage. Cam assumed that she was making plans for the rest of the day. She had tried hard not to consider the particulars of those plans.
“Home,” Blair responded.
Diane had invited both her and Marcy over to her apartment for dinner and drinks, but she had decided to pass. It had been a long day and a longer week. She didn’t have the energy for conversation or the desire to deal with Marcy’s obvious interest. She might have to deal with it soon, but not when she knew her emotional armor would already be breached. She’d need a little time to rally her defenses again.
As they walked, Cam relayed the information and tried to keep the relief from showing in her voice. “That was quite a speech. They were right to have you give it.”
“Thank you.” Blair smiled, pleased despite her weariness.
Cam merely nodded, anxious to get Blair into the safety of the waiting car. They were thirty feet from the vehicles, Stark and Savard keeping pace to either side, when they heard someone call out.
“Blair!”
Blair looked back over her shoulder, then stopped as Marcy Coleman hurried toward her. This could be awkward, she thought, very conscious of Cam beside her. She didn’t want to have a personal conversation with Marcy in front of her. It shouldn’t have mattered, and she was well used to ignoring her security guards, just as they were well schooled in appearing totally deaf and blind under such circumstances.
In fact, she had no doubt that Cam would behave as if nothing were happening, but Blair would know she could hear. She wasn’t sure what Marcy would say, or precisely how she herself would respond. She was certain that she didn’t want to deal with a request for a date, no matter how delicately worded, in front of Cameron Roberts.
“Sorry,” Marcy said, suddenly flustered as she looked at the cadre of Secret Service agents loosely ringing Blair. For the first time, it was abundantly clear to her just whom she had been trying to seduce. Jesus.
She held out a white envelope, smiling uncertainly when Blair regarded her with a slightly confused expression on her face. “Sorry—Diane told me you weren’t coming by later, so I thought I should give you this now.”
Cam listened with half an ear to the vehicles starting their engines behind them while thinking that the attractive doctor was making a very serious attempt to capture Blair’s attention. She tried to tell herself that her annoyance was merely due to the hiccoughing coming from the motor of one of their cars. She’d have to speak to Mac about the maintenance schedule. She couldn’t have Egret’s vehicle breaking down.
Assuming it was a personal note from Marcy, Blair took the envelope and was about to tuck it into her fanny pack when Marcy added, “He said you’d want to look at it right away. That you’d know who sent it.”
Blair faltered, staring from Marcy to the envelope. “He?”
“Wait,” Cam ordered sharply, reaching for it when the significance of the engine’s stuttering finally registered. Roughly, she grabbed Blair and pushed her to the ground, shouting, “Everybody down!” just as the air exploded with heat and thunder.
Momentarily stunned by the noise, Blair was shaken and disoriented by the force of landing hard with Cam on top of her. As the weight pinning her down eased, she heard Cam’s voice, raw and urgent.
“Extricate! Extricate! GoGoGo!”
Then she was suddenly being dragged away by Stark and Savard, too confused and shocked by the sight of the burning car to resist until she saw Cam running. But Cam was running away from the direction of the evacuation, away from safety—and directly toward the inferno that had been Blair’s vehicle.
“No!” Blair cried, struggling to escape the hands that restrained her. The second vehicle careened to a halt beside them, and the doors flew open. As Stark pushed her into the back of the car, Blair had only a fleeting glimpse of Cam stepping deliberately into the blaze, one arm extended, reaching for what remained of the door on the flaming wreck.
Chapter Eleven
The next thing Blair was clearly aware of was the wild rocking of the car as it careened around curves on the narrow twisting road through the park. She could barely breathe because Stark was practically lying on top of her in an attempt to shield her in the eventuality that projectiles were directed at the windows. Shifting on the seat, Blair pushed Stark none too gently away, then sat up and stared at the two women with her.
“What’s happening?” she asked urgently.
No one answered her. Stark and Savard, their faces grim, both with a hand to their small earpieces, alternately listened to and then answered their respective colleagues. Stark was rapidly switching frequencies on her transmitter, issuing rapid-fire, one-word responses. Blair assumed it was some kind of code concerning their evacuation route or destination, because she couldn’t make any sense of it.
“Where is Cam?” Blair demanded, her voice louder, stronger now that she had caught her breath. “Agent Stark...Paula...are you talking to her? Is she all right?”
Something about her tone caught Savard’s attention. She had been listening with only part of her mind, and when she registered the edge of fear in Blair’s voice, she misinterpreted it. “Ms. Powell...are you injured?”
“Am I injured?” Blair stared at her, barely able to contain her escalating panic and anger. This was an all too familiar nightmare—a déjà vu so horrifyingly real she wanted to grab Savard and shake her. Everyone was focused on protecting her, as if her life were so much more important than everyone else’s. It was insane.
She struggled for control amidst the disorientation of being whisked away to some unknown destination while the threat of danger enveloped her like an oppressive, invisible cloak. Even worse than the infuriating helplessness of having no control over her own safety was the terror of knowing that Cam might be hurt—might be seriously injured—and she was not there. Again.
Knowing these women were only doing their jobs, Blair took a deep breath, and asked once more, “Is there any word from Cameron? Is she all right?”
“I don’t have any information as to specifics,” Stark said, her voice tight with stress but still polite. She hesitated and, against regulations, added, “Emergency medical services are on the scene. I have no word on the extent or nature of casualties.”
Stomach clenching, fighting to quell the choking fear, Blair held Stark’s gaze. “Can you tell me if she’s hurt? Can you just tell me that?”
Stark shook her head, and, unexpectedly assaulted by a sudden wave of nausea, barely managed to say, “Ms. Powell, I can’t. I don’t know.” Then the pain struck, and she gasped at the sudden onset of a near-blinding pounding in her head. “Oh, jeez...”
For the first time since they had piled into the car, Savard actually looked at Stark, who was seated beside her. Then her heart skipped a beat—which, at the rate it was already racing, was no small feat. Still, she managed to state calmly, “You appear to be injured, Agent.”
Through the haze of her own anxiety, Blair, too, finally focused on Stark and saw that she was mopping up a steady stream of blood that ran down her face. Her handkerchief was saturated. A three-inch gash in her forehead was bleeding copiously.
“She’s right,” Blair said. “You need a doctor. Tell whoever’s driving this thing to go to a hospital.”
“I’m fine,” Stark said, although in truth she was having a little trouble clearing her vision and her stomach was heaving. Just the bumpy ride.
At this point, protocol dictated no diversion from the prescribed evacuation route for any reason except a serious injury to Egret. In addition, she was the ranking agent present, and she had much more pressing matters to attend to than a little crack on the head. She wondered where the commander was, but she pushed that worry from her mind.
Concentrating on procedure, she confirmed their position with Grant and radioed it to Mac. “We are en route, on schedule, to checkpoint alpha. Please advise.”
“Continue to that location, blackout procedures in effect until further notice,” Mac’s voice directed. “Terminating transmission now.”
Until such time as the scope of the assault could be determined, Stark knew it was standard operating procedure to assume that their radio transmissions were being monitored. That also meant that she, Ellen Grant, and Renee Savard, an unknown entity in this situation, had full responsibility for Egret’s safety until the commander, or Mac if the commander was unavailable, contacted them on a preset frequency and sent a coded, predetermined all-clear message.
“Your clothes are torn,” Savard remarked to Blair, indicating a long tear in the thin fabric of her pant leg. The material was spotted with blood. “Is it serious?”
“No.”
“Are you otherwise uninjured?”
Blair nodded an affirmative. Her thigh burned with what felt like a scrape from her contact with the gravel on the path when Cam had thrown her down. She wasn’t concerned about her aches and bruises, however. All she could think about was Cam racing toward the burning car.
Nearly sixty minutes later, they stopped. Blair had only a brief glimpse of a moderate-sized colonial structure artfully hidden from the neighboring houses by fences and hedgerows before the car went around the corner and stopped beneath a vine-covered breezeway. She guessed they were in one of the affluent bedroom communities just north of the city limits where the homes had a small amount of land and an impressive amount of privacy, all of which came with an enormous price tag.
“It’ll just be a few more minutes,” Stark advised as she opened the door, slipping her revolver from the quick-release compartment in the fanny pack. “If you’d wait in the car, please, Ms. Powell.”
“Let me check the perimeter,” Savard said quickly, moving to slide out behind her.
“I’ve got it,” Stark replied stubbornly. When she discovered Renee Savard by her side, she relented grumpily. “Fine. You take the back, I’ll go around front.” Leaning down toward the driver’s partially open window, she added, “Keep the motor running, Ellen.”
It seemed like more than a few minutes, but eventually, Blair found herself in the living room of a surprisingly tasteful house that most likely sat unoccupied for months or years at a time, waiting for someone like her to need shelter. She had no idea how many such places there were scattered over the country and probably in other countries as well. She knew that anywhere her father traveled, anywhere she traveled, or, for that matter, anywhere any of the immediate members of the president’s or vice president’s families might be, contingencies were made to secure them in safe houses not only in the case of a threat to their personal safety but also in the event of a national emergency.
She’d always thought that such precautions were unnecessary holdovers from the paranoid days of the Cold War, when everyone feared that a nuclear attack was imminent. But taking in the comfortable accommodations, she grudgingly admitted to herself that in this instance, maybe the paranoia had been a good idea.
“There is a bedroom down the hallway to your left with an adjoining bath,” Paula Stark informed her as she glanced at a floor plan on her handheld unit. “There should be clothes to fit you there as well.”
“Look,” Blair began, about to object to being sent off when what she wanted was information, but then thought better of it. She was cold, but it was a chill she wasn’t certain any amount of clothing could warm. And she also realized that her protectors most likely knew no more than she at this point.
“Thank you, Agent Stark,” Blair said quietly. “You should see to that wound at some point. You’re dripping again.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll do that at the first opportunity.”
Blair thought she saw a faint smile play across Savard’s face at the serious reply, and it occurred to her fleetingly that there was something tender in that smile. “Good,” she responded, and went in search of
something to exchange for her torn and dirty clothes.
When she returned from the bedroom in a pair of gray sweatpants and a long-sleeved, dark blue T-shirt, she found Ellen Grant in the kitchen, making coffee of all things. It seemed like such a mundane, commonplace thing to do that Blair was afraid she would burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. Even worse, she was afraid that if she began to laugh, she would begin to cry. And then she wasn’t sure she would stop.
The aroma of brewing coffee was surprisingly comforting, and she had a feeling she was going to need it. She doubted that she would be sleeping for some time to come. Watching the agent set cups down on the counter, she asked when she could trust herself not to come apart, “Is there anything I can do?”
Grant cast her a startled glance and then a faint smile. “I don’t think so. There’s some food in the freezer—pizza and the like. I’m afraid that will have to do for the time being. Coffee should be ready in just a second.”
It was almost surreal, Blair thought, to be standing in some strange house, talking to a woman she had seen almost daily for the last year, and to realize that they had never had a conversation before. The Secret Service agents did their jobs so well, remaining always in the background, that most of the time Blair did not think of their personal lives. She studied the wedding ring on Ellen Grant’s hand.
“Does he mind your job?” she asked. Under other circumstances she never would have asked. Somehow these extraordinary conditions created a familiarity that might otherwise have never existed.
As if what Blair had asked were the most natural of questions, Grant replied, “If he does, he’s never said. He’s a cop.”
“Does it bother you, what he does?”
Grant smiled, a distant smile, and her eyes were focused somewhere far away. “Yeah, sometimes.”