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 personal 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.'
