by Radclyffe
Blair answered by massaging the spot that made Cam’s muscles quiver and quickened her pace, eliciting another sharp gasp. She felt Cam twitch under her tongue and knew she was there. Slipping an arm around Cam’s hips, Blair pulled her close, knowing as she took her with her mouth, her hands, and her heart the clear and simple truth. She loved her.
There was no stopping, no turning back, for either of them. Not now. Not the next day. Not ever.
The day shift had not yet come on duty when Cam left Blair’s room just before dawn. Savard still stood watch at the window.
Cam walked over to her and stood by her side. Their eyes met as she asked, “Anything to report, Agent Savard?”
“No, ma’am. It was a very quiet night.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary, then?” Cam asked again. She had a feeling that if Renee Savard had a problem, she’d deal with it out in the open, face-to-face, and not in some report sent to DC in a sealed folder. And if Renee Savard had a problem with her, Cam wanted it out in the open.
There was too much work to be done in the next few weeks that required her full attention, and she couldn’t be worried about looking over her shoulder. Loverboy was not going to de-escalate. Not now. All of them needed to be sharp and focused if they were going to stop him without losing another of their number.
“Nothing you wish to discuss?”
“No problems that I’m aware of,” Savard affirmed. “In fact, no activity whatsoever, Commander.”
“Very well then. We’ll brief at 0700, if you could inform your relief, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Savard returned her gaze to the first hints of a new day outside. If someone was going to make trouble about Cameron Roberts and Blair Powell caring for one another, it wasn’t going to be her.
Shortly after eight, Blair, carrying her second cup of coffee, crossed to a small patio table on the rear deck of the house and sat down. She’d consumed the first in between showering and pulling on a T-shirt and jeans. Stark came out close on her heels and walked down onto the lawn to take up her post there. The young agent leaned against the corner of the deck, apparently surveying the expanse of lawn and the river beyond.
A few minutes later, the sliding glass doors opened again and Cam walked out. It was the first time Blair had seen her since they’d parted in the dim predawn light. Blair smiled, enjoying the look of her in her fresh white shirt and tailored trousers. Even better, Cam looked rested and pain free, although Blair knew that she hadn’t had much sleep. She also noticed the clean bandage on her hand and wondered fleetingly who had done that for her. It might have bothered her more if Cam hadn’t been looking at her with such intensity that her skin tingled.
“Good morning, Commander,” she called softly, her eyes warm with welcome.
“Ms. Powell.” Cam’s smile was equally intimate as she approached, a cup of coffee in her left hand. She sat down opposite, deposited her coffee cup on the small table, and rested one hand a fraction away from Blair’s fingertips. “Good to see you again.”
The words were as smooth as a caress, and Blair was instantly reminded of the last time they had touched, only hours before. It had been Cam’s lips against her neck that had been smooth then, their arms around one another as they stood together by the door.
“I have to go,” Cam whispered, her hands running lightly up and down Blair’s back. She had pulled on her T-shirt and sweats. Blair was still naked. “I need to get back to work.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Blair murmured, her arms around Cam’s waist, her lips against her neck. She kissed her softly, then a little harder as the stirring began again in the pit of her stomach.
“No fair,” Cam protested, her voice husky.
“I know.” Blair pulled away reluctantly. “Go on. Go. Go before I don’t let you go.”
“Blair, I lo–”
Blair stopped her, gentle fingers against her lips. Cam looked at her, puzzled.
“Don’t make any promises, Commander. Just tell me you will come back.”
“Yes,” Cam had whispered, just as she kissed her.
“I’m sorry?” Blair said, realizing that Cam had been speaking to her.
Cam watched Blair’s eyes swim into focus, just as they did after they made love and she slowly returned to herself. It was the sexiest thing she had ever seen, and she had to concentrate on her words to remember what she had been saying.
“Both the FBI and my team have independently cleared your building for re-occupancy. I’m satisfied.”
Blair nodded. “I’d like to go home, then.”
“I know.”
“When do you think? Today?”
“I trust my team, and I don’t believe that the situation will be any different unless we remain here indefinitely.” Cam shrugged and admitted reluctantly, “I think another day won’t matter. Today is fine.”
“Thank you.” Blair smiled, remembering the last two days and the few moments she had been able to have alone with Cam. Even that might be hard in New York. “There is something to be said for being locked up here with you, however.”
“There is indeed.” Cam’s eyes darkened, and her grin was slow and easy.
Just in response to the husky familiarity in Cam’s voice, Blair’s heart rate doubled. Unfortunately, the rest of her responded, too, and as much as she enjoyed the sensation, she was all too aware that it might be some time before she could satisfy the pressure beginning to build inside. Flushing, she watched Cam’s gaze fall to her breasts. The width of the table separated them, but she felt the glance as if Cam’s hands were on her. Her nipples stiffened under the thin cotton.
“Don’t do that,” she said, her voice oddly breathy.
“What would that be, Ms. Powell?” Cam murmured, her fingers trembling with the desire to skim along the surface of the soft skin visible at the neck of Blair’s shirt. I’m in big trouble.
“Don’t look at me like that in public,” Blair rejoined softly, “because in case you haven’t noticed, self-control has never been my strong suit.”
“Then I promise not to tease you...” Cam lifted eyes hazy with longing to Blair’s. The wanting was a hard ache in her gut. Her chest tight, she whispered, “In public.”
Unable to answer, Blair shivered lightly, like an animal run too hard in the hot sun. Her voice was gone, her blood burning. She had never expected this helplessness in the face of desire. If this was what loving Cameron would mean, she wasn’t sure she would survive it.
“I must go,” Cam said gently, because leaving her was the last thing she wanted at that moment.
“All right. For now,” Blair murmured, following Cam with hungry eyes as the agent walked to the edge of the deck and leaned down toward Stark.
“Tell the team we’ll be leaving for the Aerie at 1300 hours,” Cam instructed.
Paula Stark, who appeared to be engrossed in the feeding habits of two fat robins on the lush green lawn, answered, “Yes, ma’am.”
When Stark heard the patio door open and close, she glanced over her shoulder to ascertain that Blair Powell was still within visual range. Seeing that she was, she returned her gaze to the perimeter and her mind to the previous evening. She had been standing in almost this exact spot an hour after sundown when Renee Savard had walked down the patio stairs to her side.
“Everything quiet?” Savard had asked, leaning one shoulder against the deck support.
“Very,” Stark answered, glad for the company. There was nothing quite so long or quite so lonely as the night shift.
“Agent Ryan leave yet?”
“About an hour ago. She left some files for the commander to review, but she said that she can do more from Quantico where she has better access to the data banks.”
“She seems to know what she’s doing.”
Stark shifted her weight and automatically slid her hands into her pockets in an unconscious gesture similar to Cameron Roberts. “Yeah, she�
�s very sharp. I’m glad the commander brought her up here today, because now I don’t feel as if I’m chasing some phantom. At least I have a picture of him in my mind.”
Savard nodded in agreement. “Well, I’d certainly rather work with her than some of the hotheads from violent crimes we usually get stuck with on something like this.”
Stark laughed. “Boys with guns.”
“Actually, I’ve always been partial to girls with guns.” Savard gave a soft smile.
Stark was grateful for the darkness, because her blush would have been impossible to hide. Suddenly, the night seemed much warmer, and she was acutely aware of the way Renee Savard’s voice sounded in the night—low and smooth and...sexy.
She swallowed and managed to answer steadily, “So am I.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” Savard responded. “When things quiet down a little on this detail, we should see what else we might have in common.”
“Uh, that would be a...good,” Stark mumbled, cursing herself for sounding like a dolt.
Savard smiled. “I don’t think that Secret Service agents are supposed to be quite so sweet, Agent Stark. But on you...it’s very nice.”
Stark had been trying to think of a clever response when Savard brushed her fingers over the back of her hand and walked away. She'd been thinking about that fleeting touch ever since.
“Agent Stark?”
Stark jumped and turned quickly. The first daughter was leaning over the railing, a quizzical expression on her face.
“Ma’am?” Stark blushed again. Damn it.
“Would you let the commander know that I’m ready to go home as soon as she gives the word?”
“Yes, ma’am. I will.” Things should get interesting now.
According to what Lindsey Ryan had told them the day before, once they left the relative sanctuary of this house, any and all of them were targets.
Chapter Eighteen
Mac swiveled in his seat at the comm desk and held out the phone, a perplexed expression on his face. “Commander? Egret wishes to speak to you.”
Cam was bent over one of the nearby desks, replaying a segment of videotape taken in Central Park during Blair’s speech, carefully studying the crowd in the general vicinity of Marcy Coleman. She searched each figure, looking for a slim twenty-five to thirty-year-old white male, approximately five-ten, a hundred and fifty pounds. That was the description Dr. Coleman had given them of the man who had handed her the envelope for Blair.
“I’ll take it over here,” Cam said immediately, surprised and concerned. Blair rarely contacted her for anything official. She reached for the receiver and picked it up the instant it rang, the only indication of her disquiet a faint line between her brows. “Yes?”
“Cameron, can you come up here, please?”
There was a hollowness in her tone that set Cam’s heart racing with anxiety. “Right away. Are you—”
“I’m all right,” Blair said, but there was a faint tremor in her voice.
“I’m on my way.” Cam dropped the receiver into the cradle and headed swiftly toward the door, instructing Mac as she walked. “I want a voice check with every agent ASAP. Verify that all posts are manned and that no one has anything out of the ordinary to report. Anything, Mac.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mac straightened and immediately turned to the monitors, simultaneously activating his transmitter.
Cam didn’t hear his reply because she was already through the door and in the hallway, keying the elevator to Blair’s penthouse. Thirty seconds later, she was at Blair’s door when it door swung open, Blair just inside, waiting, her face pale.
Cam took her shoulders in both her hands and looked intently into her face. “What is it?”
Blair managed a smile, but the smile was faint and her blue eyes were deeply troubled. She extended a white envelope toward Cam. “This came in the mail.”
Grasping only the corner, Cam took it and studied the front. Blair’s name and address were affixed with a common bulk-mailing label. The return address was for a well-known charity organization. It looked perfectly ordinary.
“I thought it was about a fundraiser,” Blair said, barely audible.
Cam looked inside and the muscles in her stomach tightened. “Have you touched it?”
“Yes,” Blair nodded. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Don’t worry.” Cam shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. He’s never left prints before. Still, we have to go through the motions.” She looked around for something with which to tease out the white rectangle.
Blair crossed to her desk and retrieved a large paper clip. “Here, try this.”
Cam hooked it over the corner of the photograph and slid it out. Then, with a sense of fury and dread, she silently regarded the image of Diane Bleeker standing in front of her Upper East Side apartment building. There was a familiar red circle with an X drawn through it centered over her chest. Cam turned over the Polaroid and saw another mailing label affixed to the back. Typed on it were the words: MEET ME OR SHE’S NEXT.
Carefully, Cam placed the photograph back into the envelope and slipped it into her inside jacket pocket. Then she walked directly to the wall phone in Blair’s kitchen and rapidly punched in a series of numbers.
“Give me SAC Doyle immediately, please. This is Commander Cameron Roberts, Secret Service.” She looked at Blair as she waited, smiling faintly as if to say it would be all right. Then, she said brusquely into the receiver, “Doyle, this is Roberts. I need you to send a team to Diane Bleeker’s apartment at 88th and 5th Avenue, ASAP. She’s his next target. I’ll alert NYPD to get dogs and a bomb squad over there... Fine. I’ll fill you in at Command Central.”
“Thank you,” Blair said quietly when Cam hung up after contacting the NYPD liaison. “I know you probably didn’t enjoy making that call to the FBI.”
Cam shrugged dismissively. “The problems between Doyle and me don’t matter. Diane does.”
“Something has to be done, Cam,” Blair said vehemently, pacing in agitation. “I can’t stand this any longer.”
“Blair,” Cam began gently, catching her arm and stilling her frantic motion, “it will be over soon.”
“Not soon enough.” Blair shook her head impatiently. “I don’t care what it takes, Cam. I don’t care what I need to do. I need this to be over.”
“Soon. I promise.” Cam put her arms around her and pulled her close, holding her tightly. “I know how hard this must be for you.”
Although Blair did not resist the embrace, she was still stiff with fear and frustration. She didn’t want sympathy—she wasn’t the one being shot at or blown up. “I’m okay.”
“I know you are,” Cam murmured, resting her cheek against Blair’s hair. “This is for me.”
I need this, too. Blair relented, drawn into the comfort of her. She slipped her arms under Cam’s jacket, sliding her hands up her back, pressing her face to Cam’s shoulder. Her hands met the leather harness of Cam’s shoulder holster, and she shuddered briefly. There had been too much loss, and it was draining her spirit.
Cam ran her hand lightly up and down Blair’s back, caressing her softly. “Doyle’s people and the police are on their way to Diane’s right now. She’ll be safe.”
“Who will be next?” Blair’s voice was muffled against Cam’s body. “Will it be one of you? Will it be Marcy Coleman...or some poor random person who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? I can’t just stand by and watch it happen. I’ve got to do something.”
“It isn’t going to be anyone. We’ll stop him.” Cam’s stomach knotted, but she smoothed her hand gently over Blair’s hair and pressed her lips to her forehead. “I need you to trust me, Blair.”
Blair said nothing, and Cam’s heart pounded with sudden alarm. “Please, promise me that you won’t do anything without discussing it with me. I need you to do that. Please.”
Blair leaned back in the circle of Cam’s arms and studied her face. There
was something close to panic in her gray eyes. Blair had never seen her look that way before. Nothing ever scared her. “Cam,” she whispered, slipping her hand to the back of her neck, stroking her. “Hey.”
“I can’t lose you,” Cam rasped, her throat tight with the anguish, the edges of her mind still raw with old memories.
The unexpected haunted expression on her stoic lover’s face tore at Blair’s heart. She sighed and ran her fingers lightly over Cam’s cheek. She could no more hurt her than she could stop loving her. “I promise. Just do something, please.”
Cam kissed her, a kiss of thanks and tender possession. When she lifted her lips away, she whispered, “I will.”
Cam walked into the conference room at Command Central and nodded to Patrick Doyle. As had become the custom, the FBI personnel were lined up on one side of the table and her team on the other. She and Doyle faced off once again from opposite ends.
“We have to assume an action from Loverboy is imminent,” Doyle said without preamble, his preemptive attempt to take charge glaringly obvious.
Unperturbed by his attitude, Cam nodded her agreement as she sat down. She’d played these interagency power games before. “What’s the status at Diane Bleeker’s apartment building?”
“Our team and the bomb squad are there now,” Doyle informed her. “She’s been moved temporarily to a secure location.”
Cam’s face showed no sign of it, but she relaxed as some of her inner tension dissipated. One disaster averted. “I talked to Lindsey Ryan at Quantico and brought her up to date,” she said. “She believes that this is a real threat, and if he can’t access his primary target—Egret, or his designated substitute—Diane Bleeker—then he may choose someone else out of frustration or anger.”
She looked around the table, knowing that she didn’t need to repeat what Lindsey Ryan had already told them. Any of them could be next. No one voiced that obvious fact.