Radclyffe - Oath of Honor

“Now.” Wes groaned at the pleasure flooding through her. “Now, please…With me.”

Evyn cried out and buried her face in Wes’s neck, losing herself for the first time ever.

When Evyn’s fingers dug into her back, Wes let go. She stepped off the cliff not knowing where she would land, only knowing she had to let go or lose something more precious than safety. Soaring, tumbling, exploding, she pulled Evyn to her.

“Fall with me.”

“Yes,” Evyn cried. “Yes.”

Chapter Twenty-two

At five a.m. Blair poured two cups of coffee from the urn the valet had wheeled into Lucinda’s office in the West Wing. A minute later Lucinda walked in. Wordlessly, Lucinda hung her snow-dusted black wool coat on the coat tree just inside the door, draped her scarf over the collar so it hung down along the lapels, and placed one glove into each front pocket. She crossed to her desk and put her overstuffed briefcase on the floor beside her chair. In deference to the blizzard, she wore stylish brown boots beneath her chestnut pants instead of her usual low heels. The hems of her tailored pants were damp—she’d walked a ways in the snow.

Blair placed a coffee cup along with utensils and a small crystal bowl of sugar cubes in the center of the desk. Balancing her own cup and saucer—no mugs in sight—she turned one of the centuries-old stuffed chairs to face Lucinda, sat down, and took a sip of coffee. She closed her eyes for a moment of thanks. The White House kitchen made great coffee. She waited until Lucinda stirred in one sugar cube and took her first swallow. “Morning.”

“When did you get in?” Lucinda set a teaspoon onto the napkin Blair had provided along with her morning coffee. “Airports are a mess, I hear.”

“We caught the red-eye last night. Beat the front.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Cameron’s condo.” Blair smiled. “I’d forgotten how much I like that place. We had some of our best fights there.”

Lucinda leaned back, holding the bone china cup between the fingertips of both hands as if the small fluted handle were too delicate to use. “I can imagine.”

“Oh yeah? I never would have guessed.”

Laughing, Lucinda shook her head. “So. What’s on your mind?”

“You have to ask?”

“I can think of half a dozen things—but you might as well start with what’s at the top of your list.”

“Who do you think has betrayed my father?”

Lucinda nodded slowly, her gaze turning inward. “That’s the question at the top of my list too, and I wish I had an answer for you. We don’t know. We really don’t.”

“How bad is it?”

“We’re not sure of that either—the whole picture is still coming together.”

“Come on, Luce. Don’t play press corps with me. You have to have some good ideas—this is the president’s inner circle we’re talking about.”

“Believe me, I know.”

Lucinda’s tone was mild but her eyes flashed. She was pissed, all right. Someone—or probably any number of someones—had to have dropped the ball for something like this to even be possible. Blair said, “Okay—best guess, then.”

“What we do know is domestic protests have escalated at every one of his public venues, and we’ve observed a greater presence of individuals from radical watch-list groups in the crowds. We don’t publicize most of his calendar for exactly that reason—to limit his exposure to hostiles. That, combined with what we’re picking up from online communications, suggests extremist factions are gaining advance intelligence.”

“So he’s the specific target? We’re not talking about national security—we’re talking about his personal security being threatened, is that it?”

“That’s what we think, yes. I wish I could tell you more.”

“Do you think there’s going to be an assassination attempt?”

Lucinda set her cup down carefully, aware that the china was fragile enough to break if her grip was hard enough. She rested her hands on the desktop. “Probabilities are high—higher than we’d like. Yes.”

Blair stood and set her coffee cup on the edge of Lucinda’s desk. The icy blast of terror left her breathless. How could this happen—here, in the most advanced, sophisticated country in the world? How could they have let this happen? She paced to the wall of windows that looked out on the gardens. The carefully tended shrubs and bushes were nothing but shapeless mounds beneath snow. If she spoke now, she’d probably regret what she had to say later, and she’d learned long ago the only way to get information out of Lucinda was to keep a cool head. Lucinda was so good at what she did because she couldn’t be bullied into revealing information, or pressured into using her power to influence the president’s decisions, or coerced into paving the way for anyone who hoped to subvert channels. No matter that Blair had served as her father’s confidant and official representative countless times in countries all over the world—Lucinda still told her only what she wanted her to know. And as much as that pissed her off, she trusted Luce like she trusted few others—and Lucinda loved her father as much as she did. Calmer, she walked back around the desk and dropped into the chair. “Does he know?”

“Of course.”

“And he doesn’t care, right?”

Lucinda smiled. “He told me we have plenty of people whose task it is to see he isn’t bothered. He intends to do his job and let others do theirs.”

Blair rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t he drive you crazy sometimes?”

“Frequently.”

“And you can’t change him. Can you get him to change his itinerary for a while? Travel less, limit his public appearances?”

“Even if it weren’t an election year,” Lucinda said wearily, “he wouldn’t. If we don’t give in to terrorism, we can hardly give in to vague threats and uncertain possibilities.”

“I take it that’s a direct quote?”

“More or less. It’s business as usual—which means we have to do our jobs even better.”

“So you called Cam.”

“I need someone I can trust,” Lucinda said softly. “There isn’t anyone I can name close to Andrew who I don’t trust—and that’s the problem. Because it must be one of them. I need Cam on this, Blair, I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Blair asked, surprised. Lucinda never apologized for or qualified any decision she made.

“I know it’s not what you want Cam to be doing, and you just got married—”

“Cam decides for herself what she wants to do.” Blair laughed and shook her head. “Okay, to be fair, she does think about what I want, you’re right—and that still amazes me. That she would do that for me.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I know.” Blair turned her wedding ring with her other hand, a comforting reminder of what she knew in her heart. Cam loved her. “All the same, she’d already decided to do this before she told me. You knew she would.”

“I thought she would—and like I said, I know it’s not what you would’ve wanted.”

“I don’t want Cam getting hurt. I don’t want my father getting hurt either.” Blair rose. “That means you have two people to worry about, because if anything happens to either one of them, I swear to God, Lucinda, I’ll make someone pay.”

Lucinda studied her steadily, her deep gray eyes unblinking. “Averill and I think the most likely source is in the military office—the duty officers know his schedule in advance and are in a perfect position to provide intel on last-minute changes, exit strategies, emergency routes—everything.”

“You’ll tell Cam?”

“Now that she’s in town, I’ll brief her formally. Is she still at the condo?”