Cost of Honor

by Radclyffe

  She tensed as another black Uber pulled up in front of the hotel, and the bees suddenly took flight as Ari stepped out. Oakes shouldered through the revolving door and commandeered Ari’s luggage as soon as the driver opened the trunk.

  “I got it,” she said and pulled it out of the back of the vehicle. When she turned, Ari was watching her with a quirky smile.

  “Carrying luggage, Agent,” she murmured too low for the driver to hear.

  “Making an exception,” Oakes said. She’d told Ari about the time the spoiled teen son of a visiting diplomat had cavalierly instructed the agents on the protection detail to get his bag before he swept grandly into the hotel. He’d been very surprised to look outside a few minutes later to see his bags piled on the sidewalk where they’d been deposited by the limo driver. Secret Service agents never carried bags, not when they needed hands free to secure a protectee.

  “Well, thank you very much. I feel special.” Ari’s smile chased away the last of Oakes’s nerves, and a different kind of restlessness settled in the pit of her stomach.

  “Did you have breakfast?” Oakes asked, fervently hoping the answer was yes. No way could she eat. She wasn’t sure how long she could wait to touch her.

  Ari shouldered her briefcase and gave Oakes a long look. “How much time do you have?”

  “Hard to say. If something comes up, and something always does, I’ll have to take care of it. Right now I’ve got time.”

  “Then right now, I’d like to go to my room if we can.”

  “Oh yeah, we can.” Oakes waved off the bellman and pushed Ari’s wheeled suitcase toward the entrance. Ari went ahead to register.

  “I didn’t expect to see you today,” Oakes said when Ari rejoined her and they crossed the lobby toward the bank of elevators the detail had sequestered for the duration. She used the key card that only the Secret Service agents had been issued to call the elevator.

  As they stepped inside, Ari said, “I have several meetings scheduled, but they’re later today.”

  “That was lucky.”

  Ari grinned. “Actually, it was an excuse to come up earlier.”

  Oakes swallowed around the sudden surge of raw lust that mushroomed in her chest. “Was it now.”

  “Mm-hmm. I missed you,” Ari said.

  “I missed you too,” Oakes said. “A lot.”

  Ari smiled as if Oakes had said something particularly eloquent or special. She wished she could think of something like that to say, but her mind was a little fuzzy, so she just confessed the one thing that had been on her mind for days. “I missed touching you.”

  Ari’s bemused expression changed in a heartbeat, her lips curving into a satisfied smile and her eyes sweeping down Oakes’s body like a brush of fire. “You’ll have to show me just how much.”

  “I plan to.”

  The doors opened and Oakes pushed Ari’s suitcase out. “The staffers have rooms here too, but you’re the first to arrive.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Ari said and keyed them into her room.

  As soon as she crossed the threshold, Oakes shoved Ari’s suitcase to one side and tugged Ari in for a kiss. Ari’s arms came around her neck, and that empty place within her immediately filled with light and heat.

  The urgency she’d felt just moments ago transformed into the desperate need to get as close as she could, for as long as she could, to speak the truth of her desire with her hands and her mouth and her lips on Ari’s flesh. “Come to bed with me?”

  “Oh yes.” Ari leaned away, one hand trailing down Oakes’s throat to curl against her chest. “I’ve missed your hands on me. I’ve missed feeling you everywhere.”

  Ari grasped Oakes’s hand and led her to the bed. While Oakes yanked down the covers, Ari turned her back. “Unzip me?”

  Hands shaking, Oakes slowly drew the zipper down the back of Ari’s navy blue dress and brushed the garment off her shoulders. She lifted Ari’s hair and kissed the back of her neck. As Ari drew the sleeves down her arms and pushed it lower, Oakes circled her middle with one arm and pulled her close. She kissed just below her ear, and Ari shuddered against her with a soft moan.

  “Ari,” Oakes said quietly.

  Ari tilted her head back against Oakes’s shoulder, turning so their eyes met.

  “I love you,” Oakes said.

  Ari’s breath quickened, and she turned in Oakes’s arms. Her dress fell to the floor, leaving her in just her bra and panties. She cupped Oakes’s face and kissed her. “Show me.”

  Oakes’s heart nearly hammered out of her chest. She released the clasp on Ari’s bra, drew the straps down her arms, and let it fall as Ari stepped free of her dress. Oakes kissed her and cupped her breast, molding it in her hand. Ari’s purr of satisfaction ignited fireworks in her depths, sweet and sharp. She’d be content to stroke and caress her just to hear that sound again and again.

  Ari wasn’t waiting. She unbuttoned Oakes’s shirt, pulled it from her pants, and pushed Oakes away. “Shed it.”

  Grinning, Oakes pulled off her shirt and the bra underneath while Ari unbuckled her belt and opened her pants. Naked, Oakes gripped Ari’s hips, guided her down onto the bed, and gently drew Ari’s panties off. Ari made a grumbling noise and a hurry-up gesture with a tilt of her hips, but Oakes held back. So sweet and sharp. She settled one thigh between Ari’s, leaned over her on bent elbows, and kissed her. Her gaze fixed on Ari’s, drinking her in, she swept down Ari’s body and stroked between her thighs.

  Ari caught her lower lip between her teeth and lifted her hips to meet her. “You feel so good.”

  “I want to go slow,” Oakes said, “so I can tell you all the things I feel. Things I’ve never felt for anyone else before. Things I never knew I could feel.”

  Ari raked her nails down Oakes’s forearm and covered the hand that caressed between her legs. “Come inside me and tell me. Tell me everything.”

  Oakes’s vision swam, desire slammed through her blood, and she eased inside her.

  “I don’t want slow,” Ari whispered. “I need you now. I need to feel you love me.”

  Guided by the rise and fall of Ari’s hips, Oakes delved into the heat, stroked faster, deeper, as Ari clutched her shoulders. Ari’s need, her unbridled desire, stoked Oakes’s arousal and she rocked against Ari’s thigh. She took Ari higher and higher, harder and faster and deeper. With every stroke, the urgency in the pit of Oakes’s stomach tightened, coiling until she threatened to break.

  Panting, Oakes braced herself on her outstretched arm and held Ari’s gaze. “Feel me? I love you.”

  “Yes, everywhere. Make me come,” Ari gasped in a desperate, wild plea.

  Oakes’s breath stopped in her chest. All she needed, all she would ever need, was that single image of Ari’s pleasure—over and over unending. When Ari came with a sharp, keening cry of pleasure and release, Oakes snapped, her orgasm boiling through her like flame.

  Ari’s strength rekindled quickly, and she edged Oakes over onto her back. “I want mine—I want you.”

  “I’m all yours, always,” Oakes said, drawing Ari down for a kiss. The insistent buzzing of her phone penetrated her foggy brain and she groaned. “Damn it.”

  Ari laughed and dropped her head on Oakes’s shoulder. “Could have been worse.”

  “Not much,” Oakes muttered and checked the message. “And I have to go. I’m sorry.”

  “No, I understand—I wasn’t sure I’d see you at all,” Ari said. “So I’ll see you whenever you’re free next.”

  Oakes said, “That may not be for a few days.”

  “I know.” Ari tangled Oakes’s hair in her fingers and pulled her back for a last kiss. “That’s fine. It won’t always be this way. We’ll probably have a few hours now and then to ourselves.”

  “Are you okay with that?”

  “It’s our life.” Ari sat up, naked, with the sheets around her hips as Oakes pulled on her clothes. The look in her eyes was enough to make Oakes crazy.

  “I love
you,” Ari said. “All the rest is just part of it, who you are, and who we are. I’m sure I’ll complain sometimes, but we’ll figure it out.”

  Oakes clipped her weapon to her belt and kissed her. “We will. I can’t wait.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Oakes called Evyn and handed off the detail to her before leaving the Hyatt and driving ten blocks into Old City to the address Commander Roberts had texted. She parked on a narrow street in a section of downtown Philadelphia that still bore the hallmarks of the city’s history. The waterfront a few blocks away, once fronted by three-story residential row houses, now bristled with high-rise condos, but this area was a maze of narrow streets no wider than most alleys, some of them still cobblestoned, and rows of attached brick and stone buildings, many with the first floors converted into retail shops with the upper floors divided into apartments.

  Her destination was an exception to the cramped and crowded commercial buildings—a brick structure four stories high that encompassed most of the block, with granite crenulations adorning the eaves. The only entrances at street level were a double-wide solid metal roll-down door to what must be a garage and, a distance away, a plain windowless entrance up a set of four granite steps. The place was a fortress.

  Oakes strode up the four stone steps and looked for a bell. A security camera set into a grated recess in the upper right corner of the shallow alcove swiveled and focused on her.

  A distinctly human voice that held the barest hint of AI inquired, “ID?”

  Intrigued with the sophisticated tech that she’d rarely seen outside of Quantico, Oakes faced the camera and held up her commission card and badge. “Special Agent Oakes Weaver, Unites States Secret Service.”

  “Please enter and take the elevator to the third floor, Special Agent Weaver.”

  “Thanks,” Oakes said dryly.

  “You’re welcome.”

  A faint click announced the entry was unlocked, and Oakes walked into a spacious, pristine garage housing several SUVs, a very flashy black Porsche, and a motorcycle. On the far wall, a large freight elevator converted for passenger use with a sliding brass grate and modern mechanics stood waiting. She stepped in, pushed 3, and looked for the other security cameras while the silent hydraulics rapidly activated her ascent. Inner doors slid open on another cavernous workspace, this one lit with recessed LED lights in the loft’s high ceilings. A warren of workspaces filled with equipment that rivaled the control center in DC divided up the floor space.

  “Oakes,” Commander Roberts called as she emerged from an aisle in the depths of the room. “Thanks for getting here so quickly.”

  “Morning, Commander. I was close,” Oakes said as a formality, since she’d hardly had a choice. Roberts hadn’t been scheduled to arrive until the next day, but now she was here and calling for an emergency briefing. Oakes’s trouble meter pinged the red zone and promised to stay there until whatever going on was handled. Tom Turner was coming up on Air Force One the next morning, and until he arrived, she was acting SAIC. Her ball, her call.

  A tall blonde with the glacially cool, precision-carved features of an ice sculpture emerged from a doorway and strode toward them. Her bespoke navy blue suit hardly screamed cop but everything else about her did—the confident carriage, the assessing blue eyes, the smile that could turn lethal in a heartbeat.

  “Commander Roberts, Special Agent Weaver,” the blonde said, holding out her hand, “Detective Lieutenant Rebecca Frye. Thank you for coming in. We’ve turned up some new intelligence I thought you’d want sooner rather than not.”

  Cam shook her hand, as did Oakes.

  “I appreciate you reading us in on this, Lieutenant,” Cam said, offering the standard promise of interagency cooperation they all knew could change if the situation became one that involved the security of the president.

  “Our cyberinvestigators can tell you what they’ve put together,” Frye said as they walked. “We’ve also had a detective undercover with the same group, and we’ve made some connections there. The associations are tenuous, but they’re getting tighter all the time.”

  The conference room held a big table in the center with a dozen chairs around it, plenty to accommodate everyone who filed in. Oakes took an open seat and studied the other people at the table. A heavyset guy in his middle years, sharp eyed, in a rumpled suit and a disinterested gaze that belied the sharp appraisal directed her way. Cop. A preppy-looking young guy in a plaid shirt and unwrinkled khakis, thin, with an intriguing face—masculine and, somehow, seductively female at the same time. The effect was unexpectedly attractive, since guys had never been her thing. Next to him, a dark-haired, remote-looking woman, broad shouldered and fit, maybe a cop, but maybe something else there too. Frye, clearly the leader, and two other women Oakes couldn’t really peg. One, a rangy and dark-haired woman about her age, in a tight black T-shirt and a tattoo on her right forearm that looked like Army, and an even younger blonde in a skimpy top, dangling earrings, makeup, and ice blue fingernails. Oakes wouldn’t have pegged her for cop if she hadn’t looked into her eyes and found them fixed on her with laser intensity. Cop, all right.

  “Sandy,” Frye said to the young blonde, “why don’t you give Commander Roberts and Special Agent Weaver a rundown while Sloan brings up the idents.”

  An image appeared on a screen that lowered at one end of the room. White male, late twenties to early thirties, in a dark T-shirt and jeans, in a crowd of similarly aged people in front of a stage at some kind of gathering.

  “This is Matthew Ford,” Sandy said, her voice a little husky and confident, “who we now believe is the leader of an alt-right cell we’ve been watching for the last few months. He is currently located across the river in Camden.”

  A second image came up and slid into place next to Matthew’s. Another blonde, who on first glance somewhat resembled Sandy, but Oakes instantly saw the difference. This woman’s features were softer, almost smudged, and her eyes lacked the eagle-like focus of the cop across from her. Instead of appearing like a coiled spring ready to burst into action, she seemed deflated. Superficial similarities, and a world of difference.

  “Trish Edwards. Ford’s girlfriend,” Sandy said.

  A group shot came up with half a dozen heads circled.

  “These are some of the individuals in direct contact with Ford recently who were also present at an Identity America rally in Manhattan late last year and again”—another photo, with several more heads circled—“at a local university four months ago. We now believe all of them to be members of different cells, and they’ve all converged here recently.” She glanced at Sloan. “You two want to do your geek thing and explain that?”

  Sloan grinned, and the distant cast of her bold features flashed with lethal brilliance.

  “You have the initial report from when we first tripped over the pattern,” Sloan said, “and we’ve been tracking movements of known associates since that time. As Sandy noted, there’s been a convergence in this area, and we can trace ninety percent of the individuals back to this one group. What we haven’t been able to determine is the next level of the cell. Until last night.”

  Frye interjected, “Sandy was able to get us a phone that Ford had used to communicate with someone else in the organization, probably one of several upper-level individuals controlling the cells. Sloan and Jason pulled us up a name.”

  As another image of a dark-haired, middle-aged Caucasian male with broad, heavy features in a severe black suit and open-collared white shirt exiting a black SUV appeared on-screen, Sloan said, “Vladimir Kharkov.”

  Roberts said, “You’re running him?”

  Sloan said, “We supplied it to all the counterterrorism units as soon as we got it, but”—she glanced at Frye, who subtly nodded—“we decided to do a run ourselves.”

  Oakes glanced at Cam, who regarded Sloan with a faint smile. This unit, whoever they were and whatever their stated mission, was a lot more than appeared on the surface. Just look at
their physical setup. Frye and the others worked outside the usual constraints of an urban police department and clearly had clearance to chase whatever they found worth chasing. She envied them the freedom as much as she appreciated their intel.

  “I’d really like to see that program,” Roberts said evenly.

  Sloan smiled back, and Oakes was reminded of a documentary she’d once seen of two alpha wolves staring each other down. Opposite her at the table, Rebecca Frye looked like she was enjoying herself. She’d seen this little bit of theater before, that was clear.

  “It’s in the development stage,” Sloan said with a shrug, “still a little rough.”

  “I understand,” Roberts said. “Maybe when it’s a little more refined, you’ll share.”

  “Maybe we can trade,” Sloan said. “You know—a show me yours kind of thing.”

  Roberts laughed. “Maybe we can. So…what do you know?”

  Sloan’s features settled back into the sharp planes and angles of a stone warrior statue. “If you dig a little bit into Kharkov’s background, it gets very fuzzy a decade or so back. Whoever he is, he wasn’t born with that name and probably wasn’t born where his ID and traceable history suggests. He’s here in the US as part of an international consortium that ostensibly works on enhanced computer memory hardware. A place called CompuDyne located, conveniently, in Maryland. No overt connections to any of the alt-right activist groups. But he has friends in high places.”

  A new image flashed, revealing Kharkov with a younger slim hipster type with neatly cropped brown hair, smooth WASPish features, and a precisely tailored suit.

  “Frank Plummer,” Roberts said, “aka Farris Palmer.”

  “Exactly,” Sloan said, flicking an appreciative nod in Roberts’s direction. “And he has ties to Identity America that go back a long way.”