Chapter One
Fresh from the shower, Cameron Roberts walked naked across the carpeted living room to the bar. The floor-to-ceiling windows in her top-floor apartment afforded an unencumbered view of the night skyline of Washington, D.C. The view was breathtaking. She poured an inch of single malt scotch into a heavy crystal rock glass and leaned against the bar that edged one side of the room, staring at the city lights mingling with the midnight stars. There had been a time when she'd thought this vision of piercing beauty had lost the power to move her. A time beyond loss when she had been convinced that nothing would ever stir her soul again. She had been wrong.
Drawing a gray silk robe from the back of a barstool, she slipped it on and then reached for the phone. Dialing a number from memory, she waited expectantly for the only voice she had wanted to hear all day.
'Hello?'
Cam smiled. 'How's San Francisco?'
A quick intake of breath, and then a throaty laugh. 'How bad can it be? It's the city of beautiful men and handsome women. And it's August, so the sun shines more than it rains.'
'Sounds pretty perfect.'
'It is.' Blair Powell sat down on the edge of the bed and glanced out the window of the guest room in a multilevel house tucked into a niche in the slope of Russian Hill. Visible over the tops of trees and rooftops, the expanse of San Francisco Bay reflected the colors of the setting sun. It was achingly beautiful and when she continued, her voice was husky with emotions still new enough to be frightening. 'Almost.'
'Almost?' Cam sipped her scotch, imagining deep blue eyes and wild golden curls. She edged a hip onto the arm of the leather sofa and watched the night.
'Mmm. I cant find a date to the reception at the art gallery.
'AhI cant help you there'. Cam sighed. 'Im sorry'.
'Really? Blair asked teasingly, trying to hide her disappointment'. They hadn't made any definite plans, but she'd hoped. 'Whats happening back there?'
'The usually bureaucratic maneuvering-too many opinions, too many Section Chiefs, too many people worried about their political careers.' She drained the scotch and set the glass gently down on a carved stone coaster on the end table. Forcing a lighter note into her voice, she added, 'Like I said, nothing out of the ordinary for the Hill.'
'So it's likely to be a few more days?'
'I think so. Is everything all right there?'
'It's fine,' Blair hastened to assure her.
'Whos at the house?' She'd reviewed the details with Mac between meetings in the early evening, but being separated from her team made her uneasy.
'Stark is in the bedroom across the hall, and Davis is downstairs playing cards with Marcea and an extraordinarily handsome man with a devastating Italian accent.'
'That would be Giancarlo.' Cam laughed, picturing her mother entertaining a houseful of artists, foreign visitors, and Secret Service agents. 'Sounds like it's under control.'
'Mac knows what he's doing, Cam. You don't need to worry.'
'I'm not worried about a thing,' Cam replied, glad that Blair couldn't see her face. The President's daughter seemed to be able to read the truth in her expression, when all anyone else ever saw was her neutral game face.
'You sound tired.'
'I'm fine,' Cam responded automatically. In truth, she still had a ferocious headache left over from the concussion she had sustained in an explosion two nights before, and she hadn't had much sleep since she'd left Blair Powell's bed the previous afternoon. Spending the entire day explaining how two Federal agents under her command had ended up in the intensive care unit hadn't helped the pounding.
U.S. Treasury Assistant Director Stewart Carlisle closed the door behind him and regarded the First Daughter's Secret Service security chief expressionlessly. 'You okay?'
'Bumps and bruises. Nothing serious.' Cam sat in the chair on the right side of the head of the table where she knew Carlisle, her immediate supervisor, would be seated during the upcoming debriefing. They were the only two people in the room, but that would change in fifteen minutes. Representatives from the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the President's personal security adviser would be arriving shortly to discuss the assassination attempt on the President's only child.
'If you're not, Roberts, tell me now.'
'I'm fine, sir.' He didn't need to know about the intermittent double vision or the persistent nausea or the dizziness.
He blew out a breath and took the chair at the end of the table. 'Okay, run it down for me. How did things get so Goddamned fucked up?'
Cam rubbed the bridge of her nose and shook some of the tension out of her shoulders. 'How do things ever get fucked up? The guy was good, a professional-he knew how to anticipate what we would do, where we would deploy. He got by us. He was always a little ahead of us the whole time. On top of that, interdepartmental intelligence broke down-nothing out of the ordinary there, either. Someone should have picked up on his identity months agobefore he ever got close. We were lucky to get away with only the casualties we sustained.'
'I can't put that in a report to the Security Director,' Carlisle snapped.
'You asked me what happened. That's what happened-we got our asses kicked.'
Carlisle stared at the ceiling. 'Give me an assessment of your team.'
'High marks all around.' Cam sat up straight, her eyes suddenly sharp and intense. 'There are no fall guys on my detail. If somebody swings for this, it will be me.'
'Let's hope it doesn't come to that.'
'Cam?' Blair repeated, 'You there?'
Cam jumped. 'What? Yeah. I'm sorry.'
'What aren't you telling me? Are you in trouble back there?' Blair stood up, reaching under the bed for her suitcase. Something was definitely wrong. 'I can get the midnight flight back to DC -'
'No.' Rising abruptly, Cam swayed with a sudden rush of lightheadedness and swore under her breath. She was forced to sit down before she could continue. 'First of all, I shouldn't even be discussing this with you.'
'Don't start quoting protocol to me now, Roberts.' Blair dropped the suitcase, her heart sinking as she heard the distance creep into Cam's voice.Still, after all we've been through. God, why won't she let me help?
'Secondly,' Cam continued, smiling faintly as she imagined the fire leaping in Blair's eyes, 'this is not the sort of thing you can be involved in. You need to stay above this-'
'I'm sorry? Above what-life? Us? The room suddenly felt cold, the sunset no longer seemed quite so welcoming.I thought wed gotten past all this.
'You aren't supposed to know anything about the details of your security.
'Jesus, Cam. How can you say that now after all that's happened?' Blair crossed rapidly to the window, trying to imagine Cam in her apartment, needing more than her voice.I've never even been there. She knows everything about me, and I know practically nothing about her.
'You cant be seen as concerned about itor about me', Cam said gently. 'It will raise flags.'
'Iknow the people lying in the intensive care unit. And in case you hadn't noticed, I have pretty strong feelings about you, too.'
This is not going well.Not for the first time, Cam reminded herself why personal relationships between Secret Service agents and protectees were forbidden. It wasn't exactly illegal, but it was an unwritten law throughout the Agency. And blatantly violating it could get you posted to a backwater embassy pretty fast. She wasnt worried about her career, but she was worried about fallout tarnishing Blair and her father. Her headache suddenly ratcheted up a notch and she spoke sharply without thinking.
'This is Agency business, Blair. Youre the President's daughter, for Christ's sake. It would be partisanship of the worst order for you to get involved. If it came out, it could damage him politicallyeven if catapulting your private
