by Radclyffe
“I already told you,” Sky answered with mock patience. “Things are heating up and I wanted a firsthand look.”
“If Ramsey finds out you’re not Lisa Smith, he’ll kill you. Or worse.”
“He won’t find out. Lisa gave us all the details of her assignment, including when and how she’s supposed to report to Jerome’s man. As long as she checks in on time and provides them with some intel, they’ll be happy.”
“Is the international president really interested in the club’s finances?”
Sky laughed. “The New Year’s run is coming up and he heard about the guns. He wants to make sure he gets his share.”
Loren swore. “So we have a leak.”
“Possibly not on your end—maybe whoever you’re buying from is talking around, looking to leverage your offer into something better.”
“Whoever I’m dealing with?” Loren asked. If the redhead was who she said she was, she’d know.
Sky sighed. “You are a hard sell. The Russians don’t care who they sell their guns to, only who is willing to pay the most.”
“Okay—you pass,” Loren said. And Sky was right—all the guns moving along the West Coast were coming by way of the Russian mob. Two and a half years ago, when she’d first set up shop in Silver Lake and put out the word she was in the business of procurement again, she’d called on contacts she’d made in the Middle East to vouch for her with the mob. Only this time, she was working for the Renegades and not the U.S. Army. “My arrangements with the Russians are solid—they won’t try to outbid me.”
“You know there’s no such thing as loyalty with these guys. And if there’s a struggle going on internally, someone may be trying to build a power base by allying with the Soledads.”
“Stupid, then,” Loren muttered.
“Yes, but no one ever said these guys were geniuses.”
“So we need to move quickly before our guns end up in the Soledads’ armory.” The Soledads were a Salvadoran offshoot and one of the most violent gangs to spring up in the last decade. They were annexing territory all over the country by killing off their rivals. So far, they hadn’t made a move on Renegades territory, but if they got their hands on two hundred assault rifles, they might.
“I’d say the sooner the better.” Sky straddled a demo Harley—one Loren had rebuilt and outfitted herself. Sky leaned forward and gripped the handlebars, her legs hugging the smooth rise of the black tank with red flames dancing along its sultry curves. “Nice bike. Your work?”
“Yeah,” Loren said, her throat unusually dry. She reached into the small fridge under the counter, pulled out a bottle of water, and took a long drink. The cold did little to extinguish the simmering heat that burned hotter the longer she looked at Skylar.
“Where is FALA getting that kind of money?” Sky asked casually.
“I don’t know yet.”
Sky peered at her from beneath a sweep of glossy red. “What are they going to do with them?”
“Don’t know that, either.”
“We can’t afford to have a bunch of fringe lunatics use guns we helped them get in some kind of homegrown terrorist attack.”
Loren’s lust cooled. Her voice hardened. “They won’t. By the time the exchange is set and the guns are moved to an intermediary holding point, we’ll know what we need to know, and we can arrange for a raid by the ATF. The guns will never get into the militia’s hands.”
“Yes,” Sky said, lifting one long leg gracefully over the bike and dismounting. “That’s the plan. And I’m here to be sure it works.”
Loren watched her silently. Sky hadn’t really said very much, and what she hadn’t said was telling—who’d sent her, why now, and what she was really looking for. Of course, that assumed anything she’d said was really true at all. Loren had no choice but to play along, and the game would have been simpler if Sky didn’t have the unusual and unwelcome effect of clouding her mind with a haze of desire. A distraction like that could get her killed.
Chapter Eight
Duggin’s was a corner bar in Adams Morgan that had escaped gentrification, projecting a casual air of disregard for appearances typical of local taprooms that had served DC neighborhoods for generations. The wood-paneled, low-ceilinged bar was lit by dusty, shadeless bulbs in sconces along the wall opposite the long wooden bar whose varnish had long since been scoured away by countless bartenders’ rags and gallons of spilled beer. Behind the bar, liquor bottles stood sentry in rows, from rotgut on the counter within easy reach to top-shelf brands almost as dusty as the light fixtures. The big mirror behind the bottles threw back distorted images of bottles and faces, discolored in smoky patches from years gone by. The bartender was a burly Irishman in a white open-collared shirt and shapeless black pants who’d inherited the place from his father, whose father’s father and those before him had stood behind this bar serving the local police and firemen and, eventually, scores of federal agents.
Duggin’s was a cop bar, and though the bartender didn’t know Cam, he knew her type. Cops were cops, whether local or feds. He tipped a finger to his forehead in acknowledgment as she walked by and then studiously ignored her. Eddie had picked a good place. Their presence would be forgotten before they’d even left. Eddie sat at the far end of the bar nursing a beer in a heavy glass mug. He hadn’t changed in the nearly two years since she’d last seen him. His receding hairline and long, thin face made him look a decade older than late thirties, but his frame was still wiry and trim. In a Redskins sweatshirt and jeans, he could easily pass for one of the local LEOs, stopping off for a quick one after shift. No one sat nearby. Happy hour didn’t start for an hour, and then the place would be wall-to-wall bodies. Now a few men at the bar watched sports on the television monitors angled in the corners of the room or contemplated the liquor in their glasses as if searching for answers that had long eluded them.
Cam slid onto a stool next to Eddie and held out her hand. “Thanks for meeting me.”
He shook her hand. “No problem. How’s it going at the big house?”
“No complaints.”
The bartender approached and Cam said, “A beer—whatever you’ve got on tap that’s dark.”
He nodded and moved away, a silent shadow.
Eddie stared unself-consciously at the ring on her left hand. “Whoever would’ve thought, huh?”
“I know what you mean.” She did know what he meant, although they were undoubtedly thinking of different things. For Eddie, the idea of a president who publicly acknowledged his child’s homosexuality and supported her decision to marry her same-sex partner would have been inconceivable just a few years before. For Cam, the ring symbolized something she had never expected—to love so deeply that all else was secondary, even the duty that had motivated and guided her all her life. She closed her hand, felt the ring tighten on her finger, a tangible link to Blair that steadied her no matter how chaotic the circumstances.
“So,” Eddie said into the silence.
Cam said, “I need some deep intelligence on the militias—more than I can get from reports. I want to talk to someone who’s up close to what’s happening on the ground. I’ve reached out to a few people, but every source I’ve tried has closed me down.”
Eddie pursed his lips and suddenly became very interested in his beer.
“I know how to protect someone’s cover,” Cam said quietly. She waited while the bartender surreptitiously slid a heavy glass mug in front of her and instantly disappeared. Cam took a sip. The brew was dark and tangy. Duggin’s served the best. “And this is top priority.”
“You’re a deputy director of Homeland Security—why ask me? You can pretty much get anything you want, can’t you?” Eddie didn’t sound angry or accusatory, mostly curious.
“You’re right I can make it happen, but if I do, word is going to get out that I’m looking, and that’s not good for anyone.”
“You’ve been in the field, Cam,” Eddie said. “You know something like this can get p
eople killed.”
“That’s why I’m here talking to you and not throwing my weight around through channels.”
Eddie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Cam waited while he considered. She could and would start knocking on doors if she had to, and she’d use her position to force people to give her answers, but the risk increased for everyone that way. No department was leakproof—and her investigation as well as the identities of agents in the field might be jeopardized. All the same, she was putting Eddie in a tight spot. He had to protect his sources, or he’d have none left.
“Where you interested in looking?” Eddie finally said. “It’s a big country with a lot of loonies running around in camo spouting Second Amendment rights. You ran into some of them yourself not long back, as I recall.”
Cam grimaced. Blair had barely escaped being a casualty of a paramilitary group thought to have been secretly aiding the terrorists who’d struck the WTC. The war on terror had suddenly taken on a very personal face, with an enemy much closer than they’d realized. “I’m chasing a lead that dead-ends in Idaho.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” Eddie pushed his beer away. “I can put you in touch with someone who knows someone who’s running an operation out there. He’s several levels above ground zero, though. I don’t know how close you’ll be able to get to the people who might be able to name names.”
“I won’t know what I need until I can get someone to connect a few dots for me—all I need is a thread to pull. These organized militia groups can’t exist without deep pockets backing them up. And following the money is always a smart move.”
Eddie grinned. “Just like in the old days, huh?”
“New game, same strategy.”
“Okay. The guy you want to talk to is Chuck Ferrell. FBI.”
“He won’t know how I got to him,” Cam said. “I’m willing to go out there, meet his people face-to-face. Nothing gets reported. No names will surface.”
“You tell that to Chuck, he might buy it.”
Cam didn’t bother to say Ferrell wouldn’t have a choice. She took out money to pay for the tab. “I appreciate it.”
Eddie swiveled on the stool and leaned close. “Some of these gangs and militias don’t follow any laws we recognize. Some of them don’t have to because they’ve got cops in their pockets.” He grimaced. “Not just the locals, either. You’ll have to be careful that you don’t mistake friends for foes. Or the other way around.”
“I know.” Cam had run enough ops where a little money was traded for drugs in order to track a middleman back to the real power to know that sometimes criminals were protected to keep them as informants or to use them to set up a sting on a more dangerous perp. “But I appreciate the advice. Thanks for the help. I owe you.”
“You know what?” Eddie said. “I’m glad I don’t have your job. I’d rather just chase crooks and drug runners.”
“Some days,” Cam said, rising, “so would I.”
*
Blair’s cell phone danced on the small table next to her easel, its ringtone swallowed by the pounding beat of the rock music from the portable on the window ledge. She checked the big gymnasium-style clock on the wall. Cam had only been gone a few hours, so it probably wasn’t her. For a brief second, she thought about letting it ring over to voice mail—she hadn’t had a chance to really get into a painting in a long time and she was excited by this one—but she checked the Caller ID all the same. Too much had happened lately to ignore a call. When she saw the number, she scooped up her cell phone and swiped Answer. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, honey,” her father said. “Sorry I missed you this morning.”
“No problem. Everything okay?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
Blair dropped her brush in a jar of cleaner and grabbed the faded dish towel she kept by the easel and wiped away stray streaks of paint from her hands. “Sorry?”
“I wanted to be sure Adam wasn’t pressuring you to come along on the campaign kickoff. He’s great at what he does, and I trust his instincts where strategizing is concerned, but he tends to miss the human element in all of this.”
“I’m not following, Dad. I haven’t seen Adam since before the wedding.”
“Oh,” her father said. “He had some sort of meeting a bit ago, and apparently Cam and Stark needed some convincing. Adam said they were on board, and I wanted to be sure you were.”
Blair walked over and pulled her iPod out of the speaker cradle. A whisper of cold trickled through her chest. “Cam and Stark met with Adam—about me going on the trip?”
“Ah—” Andrew said, “I’m not sure of the details. I might have gotten the details—”
“Dad.”
Andrew sighed. “It was some kind of last-minute brainstorming session with Luce—”
“Luce was there?” The cold spread, and beneath it, anger simmered.
“Honey, you know Adam. He’s in total campaign mode now. He’s likely to call at two a.m. with some new plan to win the undecideds.”
Blair would have laughed at the image, knowing it was true, if she hadn’t been struggling to keep her temper. Adam was a handler—he handled everyone in her father’s circle like pieces on a chessboard when it came time to campaign, positioning each one exactly where and how he wanted them for greatest effect, practically scripting their dialogue to play to the sensibilities of particular voter demographics. As much as her father loved politics, she knew he disliked political maneuvering—he had Adam for that. Her father was a charismatic speaker and he genuinely believed the message that he delivered, but he disdained spin of any kind. Sometimes that frankness got him into trouble, and Adam did his best to filter the president’s sound bites before he had a chance to give the evening news something to chew on.
“Okay—what was Adam worried about?”
“Nothing…he just mentioned Cam and Stark weren’t in favor of you coming along at first, at least not for a few weeks. I’m okay if you want to delay. Adam’s against it, but—”
“I see,” Blair said, carefully and quietly. “I’m totally fine, Dad. I’ve been planning on it, and I’m not concerned about anything at all.”
“Good. You know I want you along, but more than anything else, I want you to feel safe.”
“I do. And I’m coming,” Blair said. “If Adam had asked me, I would have saved him some time.”
“Okay, honey. I’ll be glad to have you. Lucinda will keep you informed about the schedule.”
“Great. Thanks, Dad.” Blair threw a drop cloth over the painting with one hand. “Oh, by the way, I’ll be in New York until we leave. Just call me if there’s anything.”
“I’ll do that. See you soon, honey.”
“Bye, Dad.”
Blair disconnected the call, capped the open paint tubes, and washed her hands of any remaining paint in the small adjoining bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and waited for the haze of fury to settle. She’d hated having her life dictated by her father’s staff when she’d been too young to do anything about it—she was way past that point now. And to have Cam take part—
Blair pressed the number for her detail chief and Stark answered immediately.
“Ms. Powell? Can I help you?”
“I’m going to New York.”
“Of course. When would you li—”
“I’m leaving as soon as I’m packed.”
“The car will be waiting,” Stark said. “How long do you plan to be there?”
“I haven’t decided.” Blair disconnected. She hadn’t been quite so angry in a very long time, but venting her anger on Stark wouldn’t help.
She threw a few clothes and other personal items into a suitcase and started for the door. She’d once promised Cam she wouldn’t disappear when she was angry. Technically she wasn’t running out—she had said she was going to New York. She was just going a little early. After all, she still had the right to determine her own schedule, if little else, and if s
he stayed here, she was going to say or do something she would regret.
Chapter Nine
Loren tuned the old transistor radio on the shelf above the workbench to a rhythm-and-blues station, stripped down to her T-shirt, and pulled the carburetor from the 1949 Indian she’d picked up at an auction in the fall. She laid the parts out on sheets of newspaper to clean and inspect them. Mechanical work was her form of meditation—the routine focused her mind and settled her nerves—first in the desert, during the endless hours of tedium interspersed with the few moments of chaos when artillery shells dug craters in the sand and IEDs made twisted sculptures out of vehicles and casualties out of her friends, and now in this battlefield, where a lapse in concentration and a wrong word could buy her a shallow grave in the wilderness.
The gun deal with the Russians was her way into FALA, and the anticipation had her jazzed in a good way. She had her bases covered—as much as was ever possible in an operation with so many volatile players involved. What had her nerves dancing with a rare combination of uneasiness and excitement was Sky. She was an unknown, a piece that didn’t fit in the patchwork landscape of Loren’s shifting reality, and that made Sky dangerous. Loren was an expert at thinking on her feet, changing strategies midgame, adjusting to the violent swings in power among the bikers, gangs, and crime bosses—all because she knew the players and planned for the unexpected. She didn’t know Sky—only who Sky said she was. And that was the most unreliable intel of all. She’d talked to Skylar Dunbar, her handler, every few weeks for almost three years. Their conversations consisted of instructions, reports, and, on very rare occasions, updates on Loren’s family. Dunbar could have been a computer for all Loren knew—nothing personal ever transpired between them. Dunbar asked how she was doing, if she needed anything, if she wanted backup, but when Loren repeatedly declined, Dunbar never pushed.
