Blair pressed closer, moving her hand upward across Cam's stomach. She rested her fingers on Cam's breast, not in passion now but in contented possession. "Yes, I know."


"It will be complicated."


Blair pressed her lips to Cam's shoulder, kissing her lightly. "Yes, I know."


"We'll deal with it, somehow," Cam sighed, her lips soft on Blair's temple.


Blair closed her eyes, stealing a brief moment of peace, as she whispered, "Yes, I believe we will."




Chapter Thirty-Two

"Anything new?" Cam asked, standing behind the two people seated in front of an array of computers, voice analyzers, video monitors and other electronic tracking devices. Both swiveled in their chairs and looked up at her. Both of them looked weary but there was also an unmistakable sense of exhilaration about them, as if they were enjoying themselves immensely. The ebony skinned woman, whose bearing was nothing short of regal, spoke first, her voice modulated by a slight accent that belied her European schooling.


"We've replied only twice since first contact twelve hours ago, Commander," Felicia Davis told her. "As discussed, I've made no attempt to engage him in any way other than a few verbal probes - who are you, what do you want, why are you contacting me. Things Egret would already have said, but the kind of thing someone might ask when they were getting tired of the attention. I've tried to attach a tracking packet to my responses, but he's using some kind of anonymizer program that is preventing me from inserting any kind of bug into his machine."


"If you could, could we locate him?" Cam asked her newest team member.


The woman who looked like she might have come directly from a Paris fashion runway shrugged, a small frown line darting quickly between her arched brows. "Theoretically, yes. With what I've been able to gather from the FBI's attempts to do the same thing, he's very well hidden. My guess is even if we get a fix on his machine, it will show up somewhere in Rumania or the like. He's rerouting his messages through a gateway, probably several. It's still worth trying though."


"This could go on for quite some time," Cam observed. "The two of you are going to need a break."


Mac protested, "We're fine, Commander."


Cam appreciated that Mac was reluctant to relinquish his seat as the communications coordinator in the unfolding operation that the FBI had cleverly named Love Bug because he was concerned that his position would be usurped. It had taken a call to Stewart Carlisle along with a threat to go over his head to the Director before Cam could get Mac and her new computer expert, Felicia Davis, online with Loverboy to begin with. She had argued that her team could more easily and efficiently provide the kinds of information that an online encounter would require. Carlisle had agreed with her and had pulled a few strings of his own. So, despite Doyle's objections, Cam at least had her people in on the ground floor of the operation. Nevertheless, the FBI were hovering, and Cam had a feeling they were just waiting for the slightest excuse to take over. She couldn't afford to have her agents burning out in the first few days of what might be a protracted campaign.


"Remember, Lindsey Ryan told us that Loverboy is very astute, and in all likelihood he's been studying Egret for years. Granted, there isn't all that much information of personal nature available on her in the public domain, but he'll still be suspicious if 'she' begins to behave out of character. She would be very reluctant to have any kind of dialogue with him, and any abrupt change in that pattern is going to tip him off."


Felicia nodded in agreement. "Understood, Commander, and we have been watching both the length of the exchange and the exact nature of our responses very carefully. Nevertheless, I don't want to miss an incoming."


"Agent Ryan should be here within the next hour and I would like to conference as soon as she arrives," Cam said flatly. "After that, you're both off for six hours. And I mean 'out of here' off."


They barely acknowledged her order before they turned back, heads close together, to a stack of printouts, intent on reviewing all of the previous communications from their intended contact. She knew she was going to have to force them out of the command room later.


"I'll be upstairs in the Aerie," Cam said as she passed the agent who was monitoring the building surveillance cameras. None of them had strayed far from Command Central for the last eighteen hours. Once they had decided to go forward with the FBI's plan to lure Loverboy into a public confrontation, she had put them all on twelve hour shifts, but she noticed that no one was actually gone for more than a few hours at a time. Everyone had a personal stake in catching the man who had cost them all a friend and colleague.


She glanced at her watch. It was ten-thirty in the morning, and it had been twenty-four hours since she had last seen Blair. She had been at the command center most of the previous afternoon, enduring another meeting with Doyle while they hammered out their respective roles in the upcoming endeavor. She had been forced to accept that the decision regarding Ellen Grant's participation was out of her hands. She had let it go, choosing instead to focus her energy on assuring Grant's safety. If she needed to be on site twenty-four hours a day monitoring events to do that, then she that's where she planned to be.


It had been close to three AM the previous morning when she had finally headed across the square to her apartment. She had stopped at the corner and glanced up at Blair's window. A faint glow illuminated the double panes of glass. She had wondered if Blair were working, and had wished for a moment that she were sitting nearby, quietly watching, as she used to watch her mother work when she was young. It was the kind of memory that brought a longing for something she hadn't known she missed and couldn't afford to consider now. She had shrugged it away and continued up to her small, impersonal apartment for a few hours of sleep before the battle truly began.


*


Blair stood before the canvas, a fine sable brush in one hand, lost in the sensation of color and contour, not thinking of anything at all. It took her a few seconds to recognize the sound at her door as knocking. She put the brush down and glanced once more at the painting, knowing that when she returned, she would have it. She turned and crossed the polished wood floor, glancing at the clock, surprised to find that she had been working for several hours. She hadn't thought she would be able to. She hadn't thought that she would be able to do anything at all except wonder what was happening downstairs. That and think about what she intended to do about being crazy in love with her security chief.


She glanced through the peephole out of habit and, as it always did whenever she saw her, her heart rate seemed to triple. She pulled the door open and leaned against the doorframe, regarding the tall, dark-haired woman in the immaculately tailored suit.


"You're early for the briefing, Commander," she commented, blocking the doorway. "We aren't scheduled until three."


Cam nodded gravely. "I'm aware of that, Ms. Powell. However, I have some pressing matters to discuss with you."


"Oh?" Blair said with a shrug, stepping back from the door and closing it slowly. When Cam turned, Blair had silently moved very close to her.


"And what matters would those be?" Blair asked, sliding her fingers under the edge of Cam's jacket, her voice a husky murmur.


Cam very slowly put her hands on Blair's waist and drew her near. Captivated by the variations of blue in her eyes, she answered deliberately, "Personal matters."


Then she lowered her head and kissed her. It was a long, slow, thorough kiss that spoke of longing and desire and something else. Something beyond words, at once tender and heavy with need. When Cam lifted her mouth from Blair's, they stood silently, arms around one another, just feeling.


Finally, Blair stepped back, a crooked smile on her lips. "I'm glad you had them turn off the surveillance cameras in here."


Cam grinned. "So am I - although this wasn't what I had in mind at the time."


"Can you talk about what's happening with - all of it?"


Cam laughed, trying to ignore the insistent throbbing deep in her gut. "Well, my attention is on something different at the moment. I'd better have some coffee if you want me to think."


Blair took her arm and started to pull her towards the kitchen. Then she hesitated, turned, and grasped Cam's face with both hands. She pulled her head down and kissed her, hard and fierce. When she pulled away her knees felt weak and Cam looked slightly stunned.


"Well," Blair gasped softly, running her hands over Cam's chest. "Now I guess I'd better have some of that coffee, too."


A few moments later they sat facing one another at the counter, their hands lightly touching.


"What's going on?" Blair asked quietly.


Cam told her about Doyle and Grant and the operation underway.


Blair watched Cam's face while she talked, listening for the things she wasn't saying. She had spent her life listening to her father and his associates discuss everything from foreign policy to armed intervention, and she knew something about strategy. She also recognized when some things were being glossed over or omitted altogether.