Word of Honor fr-7 Read online

  Dana forced her tense muscles to relax as she settled onto a matching sofa with a sleek dark coffee table the same color as the floor between them. “I appreciate you seeing me this morning, Ms. Powell.”

  Blair smiled. “I have a feeling you would have made Stark’s morning unpleasant if I hadn’t.”

  “I make it a point not to misrepresent myself, so I won’t disagree.” Dana fixed on the deputy director. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “I supported Lucinda Washburn’s position on you having exclusive access to Ms. Powell for the next week or so,” Roberts said, “because I feel that it benefits the first daughter. If that should no longer be the case, we’ll sever your contact with her.”

  “Are you trying to offer me a loophole to slip out of this assignment, Deputy Director?”

  “Is that what you want?” Roberts replied.

  Dana thought about the two women sitting across from her. Blair Powell was publicly one of the most important women in the United States by virtue of her position as well as her popularity. Cameron Roberts held a critical position vital to the security of the United States and yet remained a cipher, virtually unrecognizable to the man on the street. They were about to become the focus of intense media scrutiny and much debate. They were news, no question. But they were more than reluctant celebrities—they were the public and not so public faces of power, and she had the opportunity to be closer to them than anyone in her position ever had. “No. I’m not looking for an out.”

  “Why not?” Cam asked. “Twenty-four hours ago you didn’t think this assignment was very important.”

  Dana took a deep breath. “I apologize for that.” She looked at Blair. “Ms. Powell, I hope you forgive my arrogance. I’m honored to be able to take part in what I know must be a very important event in your life.”

  Blair laughed. “What part interests you the most? My trousseau? The menu? The floral arrangements?”

  “Uh.” Dana felt the blood drain from her face and scrambled for an answer. She frowned. “How do you decide what to wear? I mean, for the majority of couples it’s a tux and a dress. So what will it be for you two? Dresses?” As she looked from one to the other, she had the satisfaction of seeing Cameron Roberts’s face blanch.

  “Ignore her, darling,” Blair murmured, loud enough for Dana to hear, “she’s baiting you.”

  “It’s working,” Roberts muttered. She stared at Dana. “Whatever story you think you’re going to get, you will not be allowed to compromise her security.”

  “Agent Stark made that very clear,” Dana said without rancor.

  “We don’t anticipate any trouble.” Roberts clasped the first daughter’s hand as she spoke. “But in the event of an emergency, you’ll be expected to follow orders. If not—”

  “I’m a reporter, Deputy Director, and I’ve been to the front. I understand chain of command, and I understand that in the heat of battle not everyone is created equal.” She didn’t expect anyone to look out for her if something untoward happened. “I have no problem with that.”

  “Well, I do,” Blair said, standing abruptly and walking away.

  Surprised, Dana stared after her, then said to Roberts, “I’m sorry.”

  Roberts nodded, looking as if she wanted go after the president’s daughter, but she didn’t. “Anything you may see or hear regarding her security is strictly classified. If one word about procedure makes its way into your article, I will personally—”

  “It won’t,” Dana said sharply. “I know my job and my responsibility.”

  “Good. Having you around isn’t going to be easy for her. Don’t make it any harder.”

  “What about you? You’re in this too.”

  “I’m not noteworthy.” Roberts actually looked surprised, as if it hadn’t even crossed her mind that her own role in the upcoming nuptials would be of interest to anyone.

  Dana got the picture then, sharp and clear. Cameron Roberts had one single focus, and that was the woman standing across the room, looking out the windows at the rain with her back to them. Roberts didn’t like the idea of Dana covering the proceedings much more than Blair Powell did, but she’d supported Washburn’s idea as the lesser of many evils. One reporter versus twenty, control versus chaos. Nevertheless, Roberts was obviously worried about the cost to Blair Powell’s peace of mind.

  “I’m not going to make her uncomfortable,” Dana said quietly, not wanting the first daughter to overhear. “I think she’s incredibly brave and I think she’s doing something important for the country, not just in acknowledging her relationship with you, but standing up publicly now, when almost everyone else is wondering if they should be finding a place to hide.”

  Roberts relaxed infinitesimally and some of the tension eased from her face. Dana hadn’t realized how tightly she was wound until just that moment.

  “I agree with you.” Roberts stood. “I have a plane to catch. If you would give us a moment, please.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll wait outside.” Dana held out her hand. “I’m good at my job, Deputy Director. She’ll be in good hands.”

  Roberts smiled as she returned the handshake. “Call me Cam.”

  “Thanks. Cam.”

  “Hey,” Cam murmured, smoothing her hands over Blair’s shoulders. She kissed the back of her neck. “You okay?”

  Blair turned from the window, scanning the room. “You got rid of her?”

  Cam kissed her. “Don’t rejoice yet. She still wants to talk to you. I think she’s waiting out in the hall.”

  “Of course she is.” Blair sighed and draped her arms around Cam’s neck. “You have to go, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who are you taking with you?”

  “Renee.”

  Blair frowned. “That’s all?”

  “I don’t need a bodyguard, baby,” Cam said gently. “And it really is just a routine interrogation.”

  “You needed a bodyguard a month ago when someone tried to run you down. Oh, and don’t forget that little attempt to blow you up too.” Blair forced back the memory of just how close Cam had come to dying that night in the cold, black ocean. She wanted to chain her to a desk, even though she knew Cam would hate it. She almost didn’t mind how unhappy being stuck in an office would make Cam, as long as she was safe. And if she thought about that for very long, she would be forced to appreciate why Cam wanted to keep her hidden away somewhere, out of harm’s way. And she did not want to go there. Oh, this two-way street thing definitely took some getting used to. “What about Valerie? Can’t you take Valerie?”

  “Renee is an excellent agent.”

  “I know that. I just thought two would be better—”

  “I can’t take Valerie where we’re going.” Cam brushed the backs of her fingers over Blair’s cheek. “There’s no danger. I swear.”

  “Call me, okay? Whenever.”

  “I will.” Cam kissed her, then let her go. “Are you ready for Dana Barnett?”

  Blair sighed. “Why not.”

  Cam laughed. “I love you. See you soon.”

  “See you soon,” Blair whispered, watching Cam gather her topcoat and briefcase. She might have been any executive on her way to a midday meeting, except for the .357 pistol holstered against her left side. “Hey, Cam?”

  Cam turned with the door half open.

  “I love you.”

  Cam smiled and stepped aside to let Dana Barnett enter. Then the door closed and she was gone. Blair remained where she was, waiting

  for the familiar surge of anxiety to pass. Cam would be fine, and she would be back soon. No one would come to the door with the message there had been a bomb on a plane, or an escaped fugitive with a gun, or a biological warfare attack. Cam would come home. Blair felt Dana watching her from across the room and shrugged off the melancholy. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, thanks,” Dana replied.

  “Make yourself comfortable, I’ll just be a second.” Blair filled mugs from the pot in the kitchen and
sliced a couple of bagels while she was at it. She put everything on a tray along with cream and butter, and carried them into the living area. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.” Dana leaned forward and grabbed a bagel and poured cream into a mug of coffee. “Where’s the deputy director going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dana looked up. “Is that normal?”

  Blair grimaced. “Is anything?”

  “You’ve got a point.” Dana tried the coffee. It was good. “Does it bother you? The secrecy between you?”

  Blair set her coffee aside. “I guess it’s time for ground rules.”

  “Why not. Everyone else has given them to me.”

  “Mine are pretty simple, really. You can ask me anything you want, but there are certain things I won’t answer. I won’t talk about my relationship with Cam. I love her and we’re going to be married. That’s all you really need to know about that.”

  “I’m not very good at pretending.”

  “What do you mean?” Blair asked.

  “Maybe you believe your own press—that other than the fact that you happen to be two women, your relationship with Cameron Roberts is just like any other relationship—but I’m sure not buying it.” Dana leaned back and rested one ankle on her knee. “You know that’s complete and total bullshit.”

  “You really don’t want this assignment, do you?”

  “No, I decided that I do.”

  “And you think antagonizing me is a good idea?”

  “Maybe,” Dana offered, “if it gets you to talk to me.”

  “I don’t talk to people about my personal life.”

  “How about the deputy director? Do you talk to her about how much her job scares you?”

  Blair stood up. “Okay. We’re done.”

  Dana stood. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any talent for interviewing. I’m usually trying to get information in the middle of a gun battle or a typhoon, and social niceties are just too damn inconvenient. Thank you for your time.”

  When Dana started toward the door, Blair called after her. “Why did you ask me that?”

  Dana stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I saw it in your face a few minutes ago.”

  “Assuming it’s true, why would I want anyone around who’s that intuitive?”

  “The story here isn’t two women getting married, Ms. Powell.” Dana pivoted to face Blair. “It’s who the two women are, and every reporter worth her column space in this country—hell, in the world— knows it. They’ll be on you like piranhas.”

  Blair’s temper flared. “And how do you think I feel about that?”

  “I imagine you hate it. But if I don’t write the story, someone else will—whether they actually know anything or not.” Dana slid her hands into her pockets and shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll tell the truth. I’ll respect the special nature of her job, and yours.”

  “Better the devil you know?”

  Dana grinned. “That’s about it.”

  “I’ll have Stark get you the keys to one of the apartments in the building. It will be more convenient.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “I’m going shopping this afternoon. Around two.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Dana said, sounding as if each word were painful.

  Blair smiled. “Oh, it will be.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Who do we have?” Cam settled onto the rear seat of the SUV across from Savard. The regional office in Virginia had sent two FBI field agents to transport them to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Detention Center where detainees from Matheson’s mountain camp were being held.

  “Martin Early,” Savard replied, passing a folder across the space between them. “Arrested at Matheson’s compound. In addition to firing on federal officers, he had recruitment documents in a cardboard box behind the seat of his truck. It looks like he was trying to clear out some of Matheson’s paperwork before we showed up.”

  Cam checked to be sure the mics to the front compartment were off. She didn’t know the agents who had met them at the airfield, but that wasn’t unusual. The fledgling OHS had yet to recruit a full complement of agents and for the time being was forced to commandeer bodies from other security divisions. She suspected the rumors that the OHS would soon become a cabinet department were true, and once that happened, they’d have more funds and more permanent agents. But for now, the occasional inconvenience of being shorthanded was far preferable to the bureaucratic entanglements that were sure to result as the politicians and directors of various agencies struggled for supremacy in the new security structure. “Early is what—Matheson’s third or fourth in command?”

  “From what we’ve been able to put together from duty rosters and memos confiscated during the raid, we can at least put him in the upper echelons. He’s a graduate of Matheson’s military academy, although he wasn’t much of a scholar.” Savard spoke quietly, but her tone suggested she was frustrated. Or angry. “We haven’t exactly had free access to information. We’ve been looking for this guy for a month, and finally tracked him down at the BOP in Virginia. Somehow, no one was quite sure where they’d put him.”

  “That seems to be happening with persons of interest a lot these days,” Cam said grimly. She suspected that the DOD or the CIA, or both, were sequestering potential terrorists away from the other security agencies. The failure to predict 9/11 had not yet been laid at anyone’s door, and it was doubtful there was any single agency to blame. Nevertheless, no one wanted detainees giving up information that would point to their own agency as culpable. It was politics, and politics always derailed justice. “Does the prison director know why we’re coming?”

  Savard gave a predatory smile. “No. We just informed him to expect the deputy director late this afternoon.”

  “No reason for us to share if no one else does.” Cam studied the 4x4 color photograph reproduced on the first page of the file. The man was younger than she had anticipated, perhaps mid twenties, and she wasn’t certain why she was surprised. Most of her team members weren’t a lot older. He looked like a typical all-American boy grown up—blond, blue-eyed, fair complexion. But his mouth was thin and hard and his eyes held nothing but fury and contempt. “What does he do when he’s not playing soldier?”

  “He’s a trucker.”

  “Interstate?”

  “Up and down the East Coast.”

  “That’s convenient,” Cam said. “Is there any evidence that puts him in contact with the hijackers?”

  Savard looked pained. “I wish I could answer that, Commander. But no one is giving us anything and all our requests for files have been ignored. It’s taken us weeks just to pinpoint this guy’s location. It’s like a shell game—find the detainee.”

  “Felicia can’t dig up anything?” If there was information in any computer anywhere, Cam was convinced Felicia could find it, given enough time.

  “She says no.”

  Cam frowned. “Then someone has decided to shut us out.”

  “It looks that way to us. Just the same, we’re working all of Early’s known associates and the truck routes he’s run for the last year. We might be able to put him with one of the hijackers, and if we do, that ties Matheson in as well.”

  “Good,” Cam said neutrally. Building a case against Matheson that would stand up in a court of law was going to be difficult given the lack of access to intelligence, although her team would keep working to do just that. She knew what Matheson had done, and she knew that he would keep coming until he was stopped. Men like Matheson didn’t consider themselves bound by the law, which gave him the kind of freedom his victims didn’t enjoy. Cam valued and respected the need for order and the ascendancy of the common good, but in Matheson’s case those finer points of law were long past.

  Her goal was simple, to find Matheson and stop him. Apprehending a lone fugitive, especially one with an extensive network of supporters and undoubtedly sizable funds, was a difficult undertaking. Matheson could
move around the country easily with very little risk of detection unless he attempted to access bank accounts or return to his known previous locations. So far, he hadn’t done that. He’d had no reason to— his friends and colleagues in the patriot movement were sheltering him. She’d already talked with her FBI counterpart, and the surveillance of known patriot organizations had been stepped up. They might get lucky and catch Matheson meeting with one of the ringleaders. Fugitives had been apprehended more than once by some fluke—a traffic stop, being recognized by someone who’d seen their picture on America’s Most Wanted, an accident that forced them to seek medical care. Somehow, she didn’t think Matheson was going to be careless. Even though she doubted they would find him before he made another move, they would continue the hunt. In the meantime, she wasn’t going to take anything for granted, not even her own intuition.

  Once Dana was alone in the apartment two floors below Blair Powell where she’d be staying for the next few days, she unpacked, which took all of five minutes, and then wandered through the impersonally furnished rooms thinking about the woman sequestered upstairs. Out of the spotlight, when Blair wasn’t performing some official function— and Dana had the sense that performing was exactly what Blair did under those circumstances—she was a fascinating woman. Reviews of the first daughter’s paintings by several well-known art critics indicated that art was not a hobby for her. Blair had real talent. Most artists shunned the spotlight, preferring to pour their energies into their creations. It must be a burden for Blair to be constantly thrust into the public eye. Add to that the fact that she was a lesbian and involved in a controversial relationship with a woman who was once responsible for her protection, and the tapestry became even more intriguing.

  And she’s beautiful, Dana admitted to herself as she stood in front of the windows looking down on Gramercy Park. More than beautiful, really. Blair had that sensual spark that set everyone in the vicinity a little bit on fire. Dana grinned ruefully. She’d felt that pull of attraction the first time they’d met, and Cameron Roberts had picked up on it immediately. Nice, getting caught lusting after the first daughter in front of her lover. Great way to start an assignment.