Radclyffe - Honor Reclaimed

"Thank you." Valerie put her hand on Cam's wrist. "You were never an assignment, never work, for me."

Cam turned her hand over and slid her palm into Valerie's, their fingers linked and their eyes held, a silent acknowledgment of what they had once been to one another. Then they separated, settling back into their seats as Cam started the car.

*

"Agents Savard, Davis, Lawrence," Cam said, making rapid introductions as everyone found seats in the small living room of Stark and Savard's apartment. Cam took the end seat on the sofa and reached for the coffee mug that Savard had placed in front of her on the low wooden table. Absently, she noted that the fish tank against the far wall seemed to have a new batch of baby somethings congregated just below the surface in a shimmering silver cloud. Then the apartment receded from her view, and all her focus turned to Savard. "What do we know?"

"It's more what we don't know," Savard said. "We concentrated on the IDs of the four dead commandos, and the short answer is, no one knows who they are. Fingerprints haven't turned up anything in our databases or NCIC."

"Don't tell me these guys aren't ex-military," Cam said sharply. "These guys were professionally trained."

"Interpol?" Valerie asked quietly.

Savard gave her a long look. She 'd recognized her from a previous investigation when a few agents very close to Cam and Blair had learned of Cam's liaison with a woman identified as a Washington call girl. Apparently they had been mistaken. "They're still checking."

"DNA?" Cam asked of Felicia.

Felicia shook her head. "Not yet, but Quantico expects results within twenty-four hours."

Cam didn't ask how Felicia knew that, and she didn't care. All that mattered was that she had access to whatever intelligence was available without delay. Even though she should be able to get any information she needed to run her investigation, if she went through regular channels there would be resistance at every level, and it might take weeks to learn what Felicia could discover in a matter of hours by hacking into the various databases.

"Someone knows who these guys are. Let's get their faces out to every possible source here and abroad." Cam turned to Valerie, who sat slightly apart from the others in an overstuffed chair that had seen better days. "Any place in particular we should be looking?"

"Our best guess," Valerie replied carefully, "is the Middle East or Afghanistan. Second-best guess, Libya, although we don't believe they have the contacts required to orchestrate Tuesday's attack."

"All right," Felicia said. "That's a place to start."

"In the meantime," Cam said, "if we can't get anything on the commandos, then we'll have to concentrate on Foster. I want to know everything about him from the minute he was born. I want the names of the people he roomed with at the Academy, the women or men he dated, the names of the agents he worked with on previous assignments, his previous partners, his travel itinerary for the last ten years. I want to know everywhere he's been, everything he's done, every last thing about him."

"Since the assault team members were all Caucasian," Valerie said, "I'd suggest looking at all the paramilitary organizations nationwide. That fits their profile." She looked at Savard. "The FBI should have a considerable file internally, but there has been some counterintelligence activity by.. .other organizations, as well."

Felicia smiled. "I'll have a look around."

"Good. Let's start putting together organizational profiles on every known paramilitary group," Cam instructed. "Personnel, geographic location, financial resources, political affiliations, publications, propaganda.. .anything that might hint at armed retaliation."

"Do we have anything that ties these guys to the World Trade Center?" Savard asked, directing her attention pointedly toward Valerie.

"No," Valerie replied, her expression completely composed. "From what we know now, the hijackers appear to have been foreign terrorists. The men who attacked Ms. Powell were not." She sighed. "And neither event was anticipated. Certainly not in the present time frame."

"We need access to your people's intelligence files," Cam said, deciding it was time to find out whose side Valerie was really on. "Can you get us in?"

Valerie hesitated. "As far as I have access, yes."

"If you open the door," Felicia said, "I'll—"

Cam's cell phone emitted a series of sharp, staccato beeps and she yanked it off her belt as she jumped to her feet. "Roberts."

"Cameron," Lucinda Washburn said with an urgency that Cam had never heard in her voice before. "There's been an incident at the Aerie. They've called for a HAZMAT team and quarantined the building."

Cam didn't hear the rest of the message because she was already running for the door.

Chapter Fifteen

T he NYPD had worked fast. Cam ran into the first barricade two blocks from Gramercy Park. Patrol cars angled across the intersection and a bevy of uniformed cops milled in the street. Three helicopters swooped low over the tops of nearby buildings. She slammed her car to a halt nose-in against the curb, yanked the keys from the ignition, and jumped out. She was vaguely aware of shouts aimed in her direction as she ran, her badge extended in her left hand. Dodging and weaving around the bodies that interposed themselves between her and her destination, she just kept screaming, "Secret Service. Secret Service," and shouldering aside anyone who didn't get out of her path quickly enough.

When she rounded the corner of the gated square diagonally across from Blair's building, the congestion in the streets was magnified a hundredfold. Squad cars, ambulances, bomb squad armored vehicles, and official personnel from the police, fire, and emergency rescue departments clogged the sidewalks and streets. She rapidly scanned the building's facade, half expecting to see the top floors gone. The only thing she could imagine was that a bomb had detonated or was about to.

Her stomach cramped, her legs screamed with acid build up, and her chest burned with air hunger, and none of it was from her race through the crowds. It was from a terror that had gripped her the moment Lucinda's words had registered. Someone had gotten to Blair. Despite everything she had done, everything she had anticipated, everything she was— -someone had gotten to her lover. Christ. God Blair!

"Secret Service, get out of the way. Get out of the way," she barked as she pushed and shoved her way toward the double glass doors to the lobby of Blair's apartment building. "Secret Serv—"

Several pairs of hands grabbed her jacket and dragged her away from the door as a wall of blue closed around her. Blindly, she reacted with an elbow strike that found a target, as evidenced by a grunt and a muffled curse. Then her back was slammed into the wall, followed by her head, and the world spun in a dizzying circle, trees and sky and sidewalk flashing by in an off-kilter parade before her eyes.

"Commander. Commander!" A woman's voice shouted somewhere very close to her ear. "Ease up!"

Cam struggled to find her balance, her head still reeling. She knew that voice. She blinked, tried to focus. Hara. Hara and Wozinski. Wozinski had her pinned up against the building with a beefy forearm across her chest. Hara, one hand restraining Cam's right wrist in a viselike grip, was waving off an angry trio of NYPD officers with her other arm.

"Secret Service. We've got this," Hara yelled. "Back off. We've got this."

"Let me go," Cam said in a flat, hard voice.

Wozinski looked at Hara for direction, but she just shook her head and angled her body so that her back was to the cops who still stood muttering nearby. With her face very close to Cam's, she said, "If we let you go and you make a move for the front door again, those cops are going to haul you away, and we won't be able to stop them this time. We could use your help here, Commander. It's your call."