by Radclyffe
“What does he say?”
“I’ve never mentioned it. It’s what he does.”
They’re all alike. Relentlessly responsible. No matter what it costs. Blair sighed and helped herself to coffee. “Someone should get Stark to a hospital.”
“One of us will take care of that as soon as she’s free to leave. In the meantime, I’ll look at her. We’ve all had EMS training.”
“I know,” Blair said dryly. “The team is completely self-sufficient.”
“To some extent, yes.” Grant ignored the edge of sarcasm in Blair’s voice. “You’ll be perfectly safe here with us.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Blair said, meaning it. She wasn’t in the least concerned for her own safety. It wasn’t her safety that had ever been her concern. “When it’s possible, I’d like to talk to my father. He’ll be worried.”
At the mention of the president, Grant nearly came to attention. “Of course. I’ll relay the information to Stark. She’s acting chief until the commander returns.”
“Do you know where Cam is?” When the agent didn’t answer, a quick stab of fear knifed through her chest. “What is it? Do you have any information?”
Grant looked uncomfortable. “Agent Stark is in command temporarily, Ms. Powell, and I’m sure she’ll brief you soon.”
Recognizing a stone wall when she ran into one, Blair resisted the urge to push for more. She could hear Stark and Savard’s murmured voices in the adjoining room, and assumed they were still apprising whomever it was they needed to apprise of the situation. It was approaching two hours since they had departed Central Park—two hours that felt like an eternity; two hours that felt like a nightmare from which she could not awake. She went to join them.
She wasn’t planning on waiting much longer for information.
“How’s your headache?” Savard asked calmly.
Stark leaned against the breakfast bar in the dining alcove, a radio transmitter in one hand and a telephone receiver in the other. She glanced across the room to where Savard sat at a small desk, her PDA in her left hand.
“What headache?” Stark grunted, trying to carry on three conversations at once.
“The one you’re pretending you don’t have,” Savard noted absently without looking up, punching information into her handheld.
“Feels like my eyeballs are going to fall out,” Stark responded flatly.
“Thought so,” Savard said, making a note in her daily log. “You’re going to need a CT scan.”
“Yeah, sure. Next month maybe.” Stark listened to Mac relay the status of the investigation in Central Park while juggling equipment and trying to jot notes. She’d gotten the all-clear call just a minute before. At least this location was felt to be secure, and they could stay put for a while. She was glad because she thought she might vomit if she had to ride in the car again. She closed her radio transmission, simultaneously hung up the receiver, and crossed her arms over her chest, trying to stave off another wave of nausea. “Where’s Doyle?”
Savard looked up in surprise, noting immediately that Stark’s color was lousy. “Don’t know. Haven’t heard from him. I’m assuming he’s going to want me to stay with the team, so all I’m trying to do is organize my field notes from today. Once we get the first stats on the crime scene evidence, we’ll have something to work with. We’ll need to review the preliminary psych profile on this guy ASAP, too. I don’t think anyone expected a bomb.”
“That’s an understatement, Agent Savard,” Stark grumbled, her expression grim. And beneath the anger in her tone sounded a hollow note of pain. “At least I hope no one did. Because if anybody had any idea of this and didn’t tell us about it, there’ll be hell to pay. We lost an agent today.”
A sharp gasp from the doorway caused them both to turn quickly in that direction. Blair Powell stood there, white as a sheet, and for a second, Stark thought she might faint.
“Are you all right, Ms. Powell?” Stark asked in genuine concern.
“Who?” Blair steadied herself with one hand on the back of a dining-room chair and waited until she was quite sure her voice was steady. “You said you lost an agent.” She heard herself speak in a surprisingly calm voice that couldn’t possibly be her own, because she was quite certain she was screaming. “Who?”
Stark looked uncomfortable and a little uncertain. “I’m sorry, that information—”
“Jeremy Finch,” Renee Savard interjected immediately. She ignored the quick look of surprise and uncharacteristic anger from Stark, her gaze returning to Blair. “He was driving the lead car.”
“My car,” Blair said softly. She recognized the quick rush of relief that accompanied the sound of his name, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel guilty. This time it wasn’t Cam. It wasn’t Cam.
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s no reason for you to be sorry,” Stark said, gently now, too. “You are not responsible for what this maniac does. It has nothing to do with you.”
Blair shook her head, appreciating Stark’s kindness, but unable to accept it. “It does have something to do with me. Agent Finch was assigned to me. His job was to protect me.”
“It still doesn’t mean that what happened to him was your fault,” Stark persisted.
“That’s a very fine distinction you’re making, Agent Stark.” Blair smiled, a sad smile.
“It’s the fine distinctions that make all the difference,” Savard responded in a firm but compassionate tone.
“I wish I could accept that,” Blair said, almost to herself. She regarded them both and asked one last time, “Have you talked to Commander Roberts?”
“Not yet, ma’am,” Stark answered, and Blair believed her.
“I’ll be in the other room. Could you please let me know when you have more information?” She was more emotionally exhausted than physically tired. There was nothing she could do, and she couldn’t bear the conversation another moment. She assumed that her father had been informed that she was safe and that his security director, the director of the Secret Service, the FBI, and all the other alphabet agencies entrusted with her protection would be doing whatever it was they did. She was the one player in all of this who apparently had no role to play. She knew that she wasn’t a prisoner, but in many ways she felt like one.
I don’t know where I am or how long I’ll be here. I’m not allowed to call out. I can’t get any word on Cam. She could be...No. She’s fine. She has to be.
“Please advise me when I can call my father.” Her tone was harsher than she intended.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stark said crisply.
When Blair left them, Stark looked at Savard in annoyance. “It’s not exactly procedure to discuss classified information with her.”
Savard regarded Stark thoughtfully, and choose her words with care. She didn’t know the compact, dark-haired agent all that well, and she knew the others on the Secret Service team even less. “Can I speak to you off the record here?”
“I’m not going to report anything you say to me, Savard.” Stark glanced over her shoulder and saw that Grant was posted by the front entrance and Blair was curled up on the couch staring blankly into space. They were alone. “I’m not the spy here.”
Renee let that jibe go, appreciating that not only was Stark injured, but she had also lost a colleague. “I just meant that I have no desire to offend you by talking about your commander.”
As she expected, Stark’s shoulders stiffened, and she looked ready to go to battle despite the fact that she also seemed in imminent danger of falling down at any second. It amazed Savard that every one of the Secret Service agents in Egret’s detail was totally dedicated to their reserved, formidable commander. She admired and respected the sentiment.
“What about the commander?” Stark asked.
“Blair Powell is in love with her.”
Stark’s mouth dropped open. It was some seconds before she managed to close it.
She still hadn’t found her voice when
Savard continued, “And I think the feeling is mutual.”
Staring at the floor, Stark was silent, trying to think, but her thoughts were racing in circles. She thought about the five days that Blair had spent in Diane Bleeker’s apartment not quite two months before. While Blair had been inside, she had spent a large part of that time sitting in a car outside that apartment building. And she and everyone else knew that there was no way that Blair Powell was up there alone that entire time. They hadn’t spoken of it, even amongst themselves, but privately, she had wondered.
She was sitting there with a cold cup of coffee in her hand, staring up at the darkened windows in the oddly foreboding building, working hard not to wonder what was happening upstairs. Struggling, too, not to replay the night she had ended up in Blair Powell’s bed as a result of a very ill-advised wave of pure, mindless lust. She had been so damn scared that night, and so damn naïve, and so damn crazy for her...and Blair had been kind, if not tender.
Blushing in the dark and hoping that Fielding couldn’t see it, she recalled that tenderness had not been high on her list of requirements at that point, not when she had been frantic to get Blair’s hands on her burning skin. She had never done anything like that before, and she hoped to God she never would again. She hadn’t expected it, hadn’t even considered it, but then she rarely thought about things like that. No—she thought about passing her firearms recertification, or her next shift assignment, or what she would have done if she had been the one to look up and see the sun glint off a rifle barrel pointed at the president’s daughter.
Sipping the acid dregs in the mushy paper cup, she remembered what it felt like to be touched the way Blair Powell had touched her. Even though she managed to put the memory from her mind most of the time, every now and then she would look at the president’s daughter and remember her kiss. Then her blood would race, and she’d long to feel that way again.
Stark realized that her mind was wandering down very inappropriate avenues and, ignoring her pounding headache and the faint disconcerting stirrings elsewhere, she considered the facts. The commander had been in town during those five days; Stark had seen her briefly in a bar with Blair Powell. The timing certainly fit. It was more than that, though. It was a hundred little things that she had noticed since then but never quite consciously seen. It was the way they looked at each other, and the way they walked together—not touching but connected just the same. Neither of them had been obvious, but when she considered everything as a whole, she thought that Savard might be right.
“How can you say that after only a week of being around them?” It bothered Stark that the FBI agent had seen something she hadn’t.
Savard smiled. “I know what women look like when they’re in love.”
Stark blushed and immediately cursed herself mentally for the reaction. The answer was not quite what she’d expected, and she hated the fact that her heart raced in a highly undisciplined manner. We are in the middle of a crisis situation, and I have responsibility for Egret’s security until such time as Mac or the commander arrive on scene, and here I am discussing something very improper with an FBI agent who might very well be reporting every word back to her dickhead of a superior.
To make matters even worse, she was having decidedly unprofessional thoughts about that agent.
“Well,” she began, then stuttered to a stop when she realized that Savard was softly laughing. “What?” she asked belligerently.
“I apologize if I’ve upset you,” Savard said, the lilt in her voice playful.
“I’m not upset.” Stark was definitely defensive now. She squared her shoulders and reached for the telephone. “I’m just busy, that’s all.”
Savard simply smiled again and returned to her report. She had been right about Stark the first day they’d met. She was cute.
Chapter Twelve
Hours had passed in silence, it seemed, with Stark or Savard or Grant standing guard duty at the front door. Finally, Paula Stark stepped into the living room, where Blair still sat, trying fitfully to read a paperback novel she had found on a small bookcase in the den.
“Ms. Powell, if you would pick up the phone on the table next to you, please.”
For a moment, Blair hesitated, staring at the instrument with a mixture of apprehension and wonder. Such a simple thing—contact with the outside world. Exhilarating, and somehow frightening, because she wasn’t certain she was ready for the news. Then she had to reach for it. “Yes?”
For a moment, all she heard was strange static and then a faintly metallic version of the only voice she wanted to hear. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t get away before, and I just now found a scrambled line. I can only talk a minute. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Suddenly, Blair didn’t care where she was or how long she would have to be there. This was the one thing she needed. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly, and even with the electronic interference, Blair heard that tone in Cam’s voice that she always got when she was being official and avoiding a question. If she hadn’t been so relieved to hear from her, she would have been pissed. There would be time for that later.
“Cam? What’s happening? Where—”
“I’m sorry. I can’t talk now, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Be careful.”
Then there was only silence on the line. Nevertheless, for the first time since the explosion had rocked her world, Blair was able to draw a full breath without feeling a hard ball of pain in her chest. Cam was safe...she was safe...and she had found the time, in the midst of what must be pandemonium, to call.
Replacing the receiver, she glanced toward the front door where Stark stood, gazing out the window. It was already close to ten p.m. “What are Mac and Cam doing back there?”
“I haven’t been informed of that.” Stark turned from the window, satisfied that the two new FBI agents who had arrived an hour earlier were well positioned outside. She welcomed the additional surveillance assistance, because she, Savard, and Grant were tired and stressed. Despite rotating shifts, they couldn’t adequately cover both the grounds and the interior. And even with the Fibbies, they were still undermanned, but that would get better once the commander and the rest of the team arrived.
Blair watched her, waiting for more than a stock answer.
Stark’s response had been an automatic nonresponse, because the Secret Service did not comment on procedure, even to the protectees. But when she looked into Blair’s face, she caught an unguarded glimpse of her worry. And then she remembered what Savard had said about the commander and the first daughter. She needs the truth.
“I imagine they’re meeting with the crime scene techs and the ATF bomb unit. You can often profile a bomber from the specifics of the bomb itself. The first walk-through is always the most important. The commander wouldn’t leave that to anyone else.”
“The walk-through?” Blair had an uneasy feeling she knew what that meant.
For her part, Stark hesitated. It wasn’t exactly a pretty picture, and she was already uncomfortable with the conversation.
“The epicenter of the explosion was the lead vehicle,” Renee Savard said, walking in from the kitchen with yet more coffee. “Depending upon the nature of the accelerant, the amount, and the exact placement of the device on the car, the blast radius could be anywhere from ten feet to a hundred yards. Anything and everything remaining in that area is potential evidence.”
“Aren’t there specialists to take care of that kind of thing?” Blair asked, her throat dry. Everything included human bodies, too, she supposed.
Stark nodded. “Of course. All the agencies—the ATF, the Bureau, and most likely the NYPD and the State Police, too, will be there. It’s probably a real jurisdictional snafu right now.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” Savard snorted. She was quite sure that was why she hadn’t heard from her own commander. Doyle was undoubtedly trying to direct the activi
ties by claiming that federal interests had priority.
“So Cam isn’t really needed there, is she?” Blair persisted. She couldn’t imagine the horror of sifting through the debris of an explosion that had claimed the life of someone she knew. God, why can’t Cam just let someone else do this part?
Stark stared at her, incredulous. “There’s no way she’s going to walk away until there’s nothing else to find. Not when you were the target.”
There was such certainty and unmistakable pride in the young agent’s tone, Blair began to see why it was so hard for Cam to relinquish her position on the team. She was so clearly the leader. “It could be a long time before they’re done, then, couldn’t it?”
Stark regarded her seriously for a moment, then smiled. “If she said she’ll be here, Ms. Powell, then you can count on it.”
Blair wasn’t sleeping, just lying quietly in the dark. The soft tap on the door brought her bolting upright, her heart pounding and her pulse racing. She glanced at the red digits on the bedside clock. Three twenty-two a.m.
“Yes?”
“Ms. Powell, it’s—”
“Come in,” she said urgently, fumbling on the bed for the terrycloth robe someone had considerately thought to stock in the bathroom.
She was standing by the bed, tightening the belt, when the door opened slowly, briefly admitting a shaft of light from the hallway, and then closed again. She hadn’t turned on the bedside lamp, but the glow from the security lights cleverly hidden in the nearby trees outside her window was enough to illuminate Cam’s unmistakable form. “Cam? Are you all right?”
“Just tired,” Cam responded, her voice raspy.
They were six feet apart, both of them leaning forward slightly, and the silence hung heavily between them.
“Are you?” Cam whispered at length. “Stark said you were okay, but—”
“Fine. I’m fine.”
