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  The she could see nothing, and all she could hear was the wail of sirens and her own silent screams.

  Chapter eighteen

  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 from projectiles directed at the windows.Blair shifted on the seat, pushing Stark none too gently away. She sat up and stared at the two women with her.

  "What's happening?" she said urgently.

  No one answered her. Stark and Savard, their faces grim,each witha 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, 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?"

  Blair stared at her, trying to contain her panic and her escalating anger. This was an all too familiar nightmare - a deja 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.

  Blair took a deep breath, knowing these women were only doing their jobs, and said again, "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."

  Blair's stomach clenched, and she fought to quell her rising fear. She held Stark's gaze. "Can you tell me if she's hurt? Can you just tell me that?"

  Stark shook her head, barely managing to say, "Ms. Powell, I can't. I don't know," before the pain struck. She gasped at the sudden rush of near-blinding pain in her head that was just now becoming noticeable.

  For the first time since they had piled into the car, Savard actually looked at Stark, who was seated beside her, and her heart skipped a beat - which, at the rate it was already racing, was no small feat. Still she managed to state calmly, "Youappear to be injured, Agent."

  Through the haze of her own anxiety, Blair finally focused on Stark and saw that she was mopping up a steady stream of blood that ran down her face with a handkerchief. The 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. At this point they couldn't divert 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. She wondered where the Commander was, but she pushed that worry from her mind. She confirmed their position with Grant and radioed it to Mac, adding, "We are en route, on schedule, to checkpoint alpha. Please advise."

  "Continue that location, black-out procedures in effect until further notice," Mac's voice confirmed. "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 quantity in this situation, had full responsibility for Egret's safety until the Commander, or Mac, if the Commander were 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 rent in the thin material of her pant leg. "Are you otherwise uninjured?"

  Blair nodded her head affirmatively. 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. 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 that came with an enormous price tag.

  Blair found herself in the living room of a surprisingly tasteful house that 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, anywhereany of the immediate members of the President's or Vice-President's family might be, contingencies were made to secure them in safe houses not only in the case of a threat to their personal safety but in the event of a national emergency. She had 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. She looked around the comfortable accommodations and 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 told her as she glanced at a floor plan on her handheld unit. "There should be clothes to fit you there as well."

  Blair was about to object to being sent off when what she wanted was information, and then thought better of it. She was cold, chilled in a way she wasn't certain any amount of clothing could warm.

  "Thank you, Agent Stark. You should see to that wound at some point. You're dripping again," Blair responded quietly.

  "Yes ma'am, I'll do that at the first opportunity," Stark replied seriously, and Blair thought she saw a faint smile play across Savard's face. It occurred to her fleetingly that there was something tender in that smile.

  "Good," Blair answered 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.

  Ellen Grant was just setting cups down on the counter.

  "Is there anything I can do?" Blair asked when she could trust herself not to come apart. 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.

  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 she had never had a conversation with her 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 p
ersonal 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."

  Blair nodded. "Does it bother you, what he does?"

  Grant smiled, a distant smile, and her eyes were focused somewhere far away. "Yeah, sometimes."

  "What does he say?"

  "I've never mentioned it. It's what he does."

  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 mean time, 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 acknowledged, ignoring 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 like to talk to my father. He'll be worried."

  At the mention of her father, Grant nearly came to attention. "Of course. I'll relay the information to Stark. She's acting chief until the Commander returns."

  Blair stared at her, a quick stab of fear knifing through her chest. "Do you know where Cam is? 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."

  Blair resisted the urge to push her for more. She recognized a stone wall when she saw one. She could hear Stark and Savard's murmured voices in the adjoing room, and she assumed they were still apprising whomever it was they needed to apprise of the situation. It was approaching two hours since they had left Central Park: two hours that felt like an eternity; two hours that felt like a nightmare from which she could not awake. She wasn't planning on waiting much longer for information.

  Chapter Nineteen

  "How's your headache?" Savard asked quietly.

  Stark was leaning against the breakfast bar in the dining alcove, a radio transmitter in one hand and the telephone receiver in the other. She glanced across the room to where Savard sat at a small desk, her personal computer 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 off-handedly, making a note in her daily log. "You're going to need a CAT scan."

  "Yeah, sure. Next month maybe." Stark was listening 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. We 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, 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 fall.

  "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 say 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 said immediately. She ignored the quick look of surprise and uncharacteristic anger from Stark, her gaze returning to Blair's face. "He was in the lead car."

  "I'm sorry," 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.

  "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. "Itdoes have something to do with me. Agent Finch was assigned to me. His job was to protect me."

  "It's still doesn't mean that what happened to him was your fault," Stark persisted.

  Blair smiled, a sad smile. "That's a very fine distinction you're making, Agent Stark."

  "It's the fine distinctions that make all the difference," Savard responded in a firm butcompassionate 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 knew that she wasn't a prisoner, but in many ways she felt like one. She didn't know where she was and she didn't know how long she would be there. She had no one to call, or at least no one she would be allowed to call. She assumed that her father had been informed that she was safe, and that his security chief and the director of the Secret Service and the FBI and all the other 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. "And please advise me when I can call my father."

  "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, choosing her words carefully. She didn't know her all that well, and she knew the others on the team even less. "Can I speak to you off the record here?" she said, surprising Stark even more.

  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 going to report anything you say to me, Savard. I'm not the spy here."

  Renee let that jibe go, appreciating that not only was Stark injured, she had 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 the compact, dark-haired agent looked like she was ready to go to battle despite the fact that she seemed in 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. "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."

&n
bsp; Stark was silent, staring at the floor, 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. She had been in the car that sat outside that apartment building for a large part of that week. 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 she had wondered privately.

  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. She struggled 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 nave, and so damn crazy for her - and Blair had been kind, if not tender. She recalled, blushing in the dark and hoping that Fielding couldn't see it, 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 did again. She hadn't expected it, hadn't even considered it, but then she rarely thought about things like that. She thought about passing her firearms recertification, or her next shift assignment, or what she would have done ifshehad been the one to look up and see the sun glint off a rifle barrel pointed at the President's daughter.