Radclyffe - Word of Honor

“Is Tanner here?” Blair knew her childhood friend employed a security force that was made up of ex-military people, and after seeing them in action she began to suspect that Whitley Industries had more involvement in what was happening in the Middle East than she had ever realized.

“Not Tanner. She flew Steph down with a couple of men.”

“What if Matheson is there and he’s got a force with him?”

Cam shook her head. “We’ve got satellite images—no cars, no real signs of activity for the last five hours. He knows we know who he is, and I expect he’s doing everything he can to stay under the radar. I doubt he’s going to have direct contact with any of his people, because he’s got to know we’re looking at everyone he’s ever been associated with. A lone man is the hardest to track.”

“When will you know?”

“Our team will arrive around midnight.”

“God, another sleepless night.”

Cam pulled Blair closer, settling her in the curve of her body. “If this operation is still ongoing in the morning, you’ll have to leave without me.”

“That’s not happening.” Blair ran her finger down Cam’s arm. Usually Cam dressed for work in a dress shirt and tailored pants, even when she spent the day in the OHS offices downstairs. Today she’d worn jeans and a faded blue cotton shirt. She looked sexy in either outfit, but Blair realized how rarely Cam was off duty these days. She wasn’t leaving for Colorado without her because she wasn’t entirely certain that Cam wouldn’t become wrapped up in something else that absolutely needed her attention and forget to come. “I’ll wait.”

“I know it’s a bad time—”

“It is what it is, Cam,” Blair said, surprised to find that she wasn’t angry. Oh, she was outraged at the uncertainty and vulnerability they all lived with every day, but she certainly wasn’t upset with her lover for doing what had to be done. “I’m sorry this is so hard for you. The waiting.”

Cam grimaced. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this deputy director job. It doesn’t feel right sending my people out on a mission while I stay here.”

Blair laced her fingers through Cam’s. “I know you’re doing this for me, and I appreciate it. But—”

“I don’t want you to thank me. We’ve already been over that.”

“I wasn’t going to thank you.” Blair gave Cam’s hand a shake. “I was going to point out that my father thinks you’re the right person for this job, and Lucinda agrees, and so do I. And not just because I don’t want you in the field.” She rested her chin against the tip of Cam’s shoulder and circled Cam’s waist with both arms. “One person can’t fix this, darling, you know that. But you have a team that might be able to.”

“That’s right. My team. My people.” Cam sighed. “I should be there to have their backs.”

“You do have their backs, by sending the best to do the job. You’re the team leader. You hold them all together.”

Cam rested her forehead against Blair’s. “It’s a lot easier to do than to stay behind and worry.”

Blair laughed and shook her head. “That’s something you don’t have to tell me, my love.”

“I’m sorry for that.” Cam buried her face in Blair’s hair. “I just hate watching. ”

Blair felt Cam tremble and was instantly alert. This wasn’t fear— Cam never gave in to fear. This was something deeper. “Hey, hey.” She tightened her grip. “What is it?”

After a pause, Cam said so quietly Blair could barely hear her,

“I keep thinking of that night when Janet was undercover and the operation went to hell. All I could do was watch while the trap closed around her. By the time I got to her…”

“Oh, baby.” Blair stroked Cam’s hair. Cam rarely talked about the night Janet, a narcotics detective and Cam’s on-again, off-again lover, was killed, but she knew the story. At least the details Cam had been able to share. Janet had been undercover, and somehow, the federal agents and the local detectives had failed to coordinate a raid on a warehouse where drugs were being exchanged for counterfeit money. Janet had been caught in the crossfire and killed. Cam had been shot trying to get her out. “Is that why you’re always the first to stand in front of the bullets?”

“Believe me, I don’t have a death wish,” Cam said. “I’m just doing my job.”

Cam’s voice was muffled against her neck, but Blair could hear the pain. “I know. But no one wants you to protect them at the cost of your life.” She rubbed Cam’s back and tried not to think about Cam taking the bullet that was meant for her. “Especially not me or any of the members of your team.”

“No one’s going to be doing any dying,” Cam said, straightening up. “I’m sending them in with a satellite link to the command center. I’ll have audio and video, and at the first sign of trouble, I’ll pull them out. If Matheson so much as points a squirt gun in their direction, he’s a dead man.”

Blair smiled as cold, hard fury settled in the pit of her stomach. “That sounds like a perfect plan. Especially the last part.”

“I need to go.” Cam kissed Blair. “Thanks. Thanks for letting me get that out.”

“Anytime. I love you.” Blair squeezed Cam’s shoulder, then gave her a little shove. “So go take care of your people.”

“Explain to me again the part about the…extracellular matrix stuff,” Dana said. Without raising her head, she scribbled in a tattered brown leather notebook with one hand and reached out with her right for her coffee cup.

Emory slid the glass mug closer to Dana’s fingers, noticing again the faint roughness to her fingertips. Several of her knuckles were marked with small healing lacerations. “What happened to your hands?”

“Hmm?” Dana looked up, surprised to see that the Starbucks had filled up sometime during the last hour. She’d been too busy getting down everything Emory explained about tissue engineering and stem cell differentiation to even notice. She hadn’t expected the impromptu interview, and she didn’t want to miss a single sentence. Her research had indicated Emory was considered one of the world’s authorities in tissue engineering, but she was just now beginning to understand how significant that really was. Emory’s work could lead to a means of growing organs in the laboratory for tissue transplantation. “So you could grow a kidney, and someone wouldn’t have to wait for a donor, right?” Dana pushed a thick lock of hair off her forehead and absently sipped her cold coffee. “Or, Jesus, a heart. Right?”

“Theoretically, yes.” Emory smiled at Dana’s intensity. She’d never before experienced the kind of pleasure she had gotten over the last hour describing her work to Dana. She hadn’t thought she’d had an ego, but every time Dana complimented her, she felt a rush of heat.

“That could be big, right?” Dana said. “I mean really big. Like Nobel Prize big, right? It could change the entire face of transplant surgery.”

Emory covered Dana’s hand, which was clenched around her now forgotten coffee cup. “We’re a long ways away from that kind of territory yet.”

Dana frowned. “I don’t get why anyone would object to your research.”

“I understand some of the objections, theoretically at least,” Emory said. “Any scientific tool—any kind of tool at all, really—has a potential for misuse. Look at nuclear power. If appropriately harnessed, the power of the atom could free us from dependency on natural oil and gas. But what’s the first thing we make? Bombs so huge, so devastating, they can destroy entire cities and hundreds of thousands of lives.” Emory shrugged. “There are those who think today a kidney, tomorrow an infant . And then…” She quickly grew serious. “There are some who feel that what we’re doing is an affront against God, or an abomination of nature, or just plain egomaniacal. There are lots of arguments. I’m sure you know them.”