Radclyffe - Oath of Honor

“I doubt that—not her job description. All the same, we can’t really be sure what we haven’t been told.” He grimaced, clearly not happy. “Given the threat level, Masters has to be aware of the situation.”

“Well, we better be sure she’s ready to carry the ball,” Evyn said.

“That’s your job. In the meantime, we need to button down everything on our end. I want you to watch communications carefully. Make sure our analysts are looking for anything, no matter how small, that gets picked up from sources under surveillance.”

She nodded sharply. “You got it.”

“She’s due for a polygraph. Pick her up and take her over. Sit in on it.”

“I’m not certified—”

“I know—Preston will run it. You can play backup.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And for now, all of this is just between us.”

“Yes, sir,” Evyn said softly. She didn’t want to believe that anyone inside the White House could be compromising the president by inadvertently mishandling information. But to do it willfully? To her, there was no greater sin. Wes couldn’t think her capable of that, could she?

*

Wes left Lucinda’s office and walked out into the waiting area. Evyn Daniels stood with a stone-faced man in a dark suit who regarded her with unsmiling eyes. Wes looked at Evyn. “Good morning, Agent Daniels.”

“Captain,” Evyn said politely, nothing but professional friendliness in her eyes. “This is Agent Preston.”

Wes quickly squelched a wave of disappointment at the formal tone. Business as usual. Last night was a thing of the past, and after what Lucinda had just told her, business as usual was all there could be for her with anyone on the job. She wasn’t here to make friends. She nodded to Preston. “You’ll be doing the testing?”

“That’s right,” Preston said. “If you come this way, we’ll tell you about it once we get settled.”

Wes followed them down the hall and into a small room with several windows that looked out over another expanse of lawn studded with rose bushes. The room was crowded with a conference table, eight chairs, and a row of bookshelves underneath the window. A file cabinet stood in one corner and a polygraph machine rested in the center of the table. She sat down across from it. Evyn and Preston sat facing the machine.

“The way this works,” Preston said, “is that the test is given in two parts—part one will cover some basic informational questions. Then we’ll move on to part two with more focused questions. Have you ever had a polygraph?”

“No.”

“Is there anything you want us to know now before we start the test?”

“I assume you’re referring to anything which I feel would disqualify me for this position?”

Preston answered before Evyn. “We find it’s best not to try to outthink or rationalize whether or not there is a right or wrong answer.”

Evyn added, “Just answer each question to the best of your ability. If there’s something in the past you think may hamper or confuse your answers, you should tell us. That will actually help us interpret the test to your benefit.”

“There isn’t.” Wes hadn’t expected to see Evyn until later, and this wasn’t the way she had hoped their next encounter would come about, but Evyn was here to do her job and so was she. In a way, she was relieved. There could be no ambiguity about what was happening between them. Nothing. Only business.

“All right,” Preston said. “We’re going to go through some basic questions first.”

Wes knew the basics of the polygraph. She understood that some questions were designed to elicit a yes-or-no answer, and those responses formed the baseline comparators for other answers. She also knew it was best not to try to figure out which questions were the critical comparators. “I’m ready.”

Preston made some notes while Evyn connected the galvanic skin recorder to Wes’s right arm. Wes was aware of sweating slightly. Unusual for her. Even under the tensest conditions, she rarely perspired. She wasn’t concerned about the test, but she couldn’t shake the lingering connection she felt to Evyn Daniels, and the disorienting effect of her presence.

“All right, Dr. Masters,” Preston said, making a mark on a scrolling roll of paper. “We’re going to begin. Is your name Captain Wesley Masters?”

“Yes.”

Preston alternated asking her routine questions—her term of service, her duty stations, her field experience—interspersed with pointed questions.

“Have you ever been arrested?”

“No.”

“Have you ever used illegal drugs, recreationally or in conjunction with an assignment?”

“No.”

“Have you ever met with foreign nationals hostile to the U.S.?”

“No.”

“Have you ever met with known terrorists?”

“No.”

“The Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, the American Christian Army?”

“No. No. No.”

She answered no so many times she began to feel as if she was revealing she had no life outside her job. But then, she didn’t.

Finally, Preston turned off the machine and Evyn sat back. She gave Wes the slightest smile, and for some reason, Wes’s uneasiness disappeared.

“We’ll let you know the results as soon as they’ve been analyzed,” Preston said.

Wes rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck. “Good, thank you. I wonder if you could tell me how to get to the medical offices from here.”

“I’ll take you,” Evyn said.

“And someplace to eat?”

Evyn glanced at her watch. “It’s almost sixteen hundred. I’ll show you a good place to get a late lunch.”

“I don’t have much time,” Wes said, not wanting a repeat of the intimacy of the night before. She needed a buffer between them if the disappointment she’d experienced earlier was any indication of how strongly Evyn affected her.

“I’m sure your team can wait another forty-five minutes. POTUS isn’t scheduled to leave the House today. Whatever activity there is in the clinic is already being handled by your staff. Lunch first. Then I’ll take you over to meet your staff.”

“Thank you,” Wes said, realizing when she had been given an order in the form of a suggestion. She’d have to get used to that, since Evyn was in charge. And since part of Lucinda Washburn’s unspoken message had been to assess those on the list, she’d best get on with her job. “Lunch it is.”

Chapter Nine

Cam leaned against the doorway to Blair’s studio in the house they’d purchased not far from Tanner and Adrienne’s on Whitley Point. In the middle of winter this far north, sunset came early, and the late-day sun slanted low on the horizon. Diffuse golden light cast a halo around Blair’s face as she concentrated on the canvas propped up on the easel in front of her. Her paint-spattered jeans rode low on her hips, and her faded black T-shirt with a silk-screened Andy Warhol slid up and down over the hollow of her spine as she captured the colors of the sea in gray, and green, and blue. A strip of skin two inches wide just above the waistband of her Luckys winked into view and disappeared to the rhythm of her brushstrokes in a hypnotic cadence that captured Cam’s attention and made her throat go dry. She knew that spot—the sweet softness of the skin, the delicate ripple of bone beneath supple muscle, the breathy moans when her fingers dipped and stroked. She’d rested her hand in just that spot while they’d danced at their wedding.

She smiled. They hadn’t really celebrated privately yet. By the time they’d said good-bye to the last of their guests, thanked Tanner and Adrienne for opening their home and putting up with the weeks of heightened security, and made it back to their place down island, they’d fallen into bed exhausted. After sleeping far later than usual, they’d both needed to unwind. Blair wanted to paint. Cam needed to move. Now she wanted nothing more than to be right where she was, looking at her wife.