Diane, sighing with contentment, had curled trustingly into her arms.

Valerie waited fifteen minutes, thirty, forty-—listening to the soft sounds of Diane's breathing, feeling the warm currents of her exhalations drifting over her breasts, counting her heartbeats under her fingertips. When she couldn't wait any longer, she gently kissed Diane's forehead and eased slowly away. She'd had years of practice leaving the arms of women she'd satisfied without waking them. Carefully, she gathered her clothing and the single small valise she'd brought with her.

Two minutes later she stood naked on the rear deck and dressed efficiently in the predawn light. Five minutes later, she was at the ocean's edge and walking briskly away from the house. In fifteen minutes she was three-quarters of a mile away, and the reverberations of the engine on the outboard motor sounded no different than a wave rushing to shore. She climbed into the small craft, and as it pointed away from land and the safe house and the people inside, she did not look back.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Saturday, September 29

P erhaps it was the bed growing cold that woke her, or something in her unconscious that warned her of impending pain. But when Diane rolled onto her side and opened her eyes, she was not surprised to find herself alone. She listened intently for any sound in the quiet house. The baseboard heater hummed quietly. Somewhere far out on the water, a foghorn sounded its mournful call. The house was still—Felicia asleep and Savard in Stark's bed at the main house. Valerie always placed her watch and the gold signet ring she wore on the little finger of her right hand on the bedside table when they made love. There was nothing there now.

Diane strained to hear the shower running in the adjacent bathroom, but she knew that Valerie was gone. The very air had lost its warmth, and loneliness tugged at her heart with new resolve. She lay quietly for a long time, replaying their last moments together. Her body still ached with the memory of desire. She felt Valerie's hands on her, inside her, and remembered the silent promises that had passed between them as they had taken their pleasure in one another. There had been other women who had touched her life, fleetingly, and then had left. She had learned to recognize goodbye in a kiss. That was not what Valerie had said to her as she had claimed her just hours ago.

She had to believe that, or her heart would surely break.

*

"Damn it, Cam," Blair exploded, slamming her phone down on the kitchen counter. "That was Diane. Valerie's gone."

Cam automatically looked at the clock. 5:10 a.m. Almost an hour until sunup. They had gotten out of bed at five because she, Savard, and Valerie were leaving at five thirty to rendezvous with a helicopter that would pick them up at a small private airport on the mainland and take them to DC. They'd finalized the plan before they'd turned in the night before. She, Savard, and Valerie.

God damn it.

Cam looked out the side window and counted the cars underneath the portico. None were missing. Wozinski had been on night shift, and he would have called her if there'd been any activity on the road in front of the house. Tanner's people were patrolling the entire sector of the island and definitely would have noticed a pickup anywhere in the vicinity, even if Valerie had walked from the house under cover of darkness to the road several miles away. She walked through the adjacent mudroom to the back door, opened it, and said to Hara, "Any activity out here?"

Agent Hara, who had been leaning against the deck post facing the guesthouse and the beach beyond, turned. She wore black slacks and running shoes, a navy windbreaker over a dark polo shirt, and an alert but unconcerned expression. "Good morning, Commander. Nothing out of the ordinary. Agent Lawrence walked down to the beach about"— she glanced at her watch—"thirty-five minutes ago."

"Is that her usual time?"

"Any time between four thirty and six," Hara said. "Almost every day."

Cam realized instantly that the pattern had been carefully, deliberately set, but she followed the questions to their logical end for the sake of procedure. "Does Ms. Bleeker ordinarily accompany her?"

"Not usually this early, Commander."

"How long is she usually gone?"

"Forty-five minutes. An hour at the most. In fact, she should be back any time."

"Was she carrying anything today?"

"Not that I noticed, but it was still dark. I observed her exit the building and checked my watch. By then she was partially obscured by the dunes." Hara looked uncomfortable. "Did I miss something, Commander?"

"No. I did." Cam stepped back inside and said to Blair, "They must've picked her up on the water."

"Who?" Blair demanded. "Are you telling me she's been kidnapped or something?"

"I doubt that." The muscles in Cam's shoulders tightened as she fought back the anger. "I'd imagine the Agency retrieved her."

"Why?" Blair paced in a tight circle in the center of the kitchen, growing more furious with each passing moment.

"The number of people who know she's here is very limited, and there's no reason to believe she would be a target for a kidnapping." Cam pulled her cell phone from her belt. "It's more likely this was part of the plan from the beginning."

"I can't believe she did this. Do you know what this is going to do to Diane? God damn it. Son of a bitch." Blair stalked from one side of the room to the other. "What plan are you talking about? Whose plan?"

"The CIA's. We've just identified a key player in the assault on the Aerie. We may have uncovered a potential connection to the terrorists who hit the World Trade Center. I'm sure that's the information Valerie was sent here to get. Now she has it, her job is done, and they've extracted her." Cam shrugged. "They often relocate their field agents precipitously."

"They sent her to spy on you? My father would never allow that."

Cam caught Blair's shoulders and halted her harried journey. "He probably doesn't even know about it."

"That's ridiculous. He's the president. He knows everything."

"Actually, he doesn't, and there's a good reason for it. There are times when he has to be able to disavow knowledge, especially when something may be.. .hazy, legally." Cam blew out a frustrated breath. "But I'm willing to bet Lucinda Washburn knows about it. Because she's the one who protects him."

"I'm calling her. Right now." Blair grabbed her phone from the counter and flipped it open.

Gently, Cam reached out and closed it. "She's not going to tell you. She's not going to tell me. If she knows, she won't admit it. That's how these things are done."

Blair fixed Cam with an incredulous stare. "Why aren't you angry? Don't you feel betrayed?"

"It's not personal," Cam said quietly. She couldn't view it as personal, because she needed to keep her head clear. The operation depended upon it. And even more importantly, so did the lives of her people.

"Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. That woman.. .damn it, I hate saying this, but that woman is more to you than just another agent."

"No, she isn't." Cam smiled ruefully. "Claire was, once, but Valerie isn't."

"How you can distinguish between the two of them?"

Cam considered whether it was wise to answer. Discussing her past involvement with another woman with Blair was not generally a wise idea. She knew that Blair trusted her. She also knew that Blair knew that she loved her. But Blair was Blair, and she didn't take any intrusion on their relationship lightly. Cam sighed. It went against her every instinct, but her relationship with Blair was something that she couldn't fit into the logic of the rest of her life. The only course that had ever worked with Blair was honesty, no matter how treacherous the path might appear. "What Claire and I had, what we shared, was in the past. We were different people then, and Claire is gone now."

Blair pulled out a kitchen chair and sank into it, then sat drumming her fingers on the wooden surface as she regarded Cam through narrowed eyes. "Do you ever.. .miss her?"

"Ah, Jesus, Blair," Cam said pleadingly.

"I'm not jealous, I just want to know."

Cam pulled out a second chair and sat facing Blair. She leaned forward and curled her hands around the outside of Blair's knees. She looked directly into Blair's eyes. "Sometimes I'm sad that I'll never see her...Claire...again. But those times are very rare, and they have nothing to do with you and me. It's not about the sex—it wasn't really about that for a long time, even before it ended. It's more like losing a friend."

"And what about Valerie?"

"Valerie..." Cam blew out a breath and shook her head. "Valerie is a woman I don't really know. We're connected, that's true, on a deeper level than just ordinary colleagues, but I don't know what drives her inside. I don't know why she makes the choices she does. I don't know her, and I can't be responsible for her. I have Stark and Savard and Mac and all of the others to think of."

"But you like her. I know you do."

"I do. I understand her, on a lot of levels. She's more like me than any of the others."

Blair wanted to protest, but she knew it was true. Cam would sacrifice almost everything for duty—-not love, not really—but if you didn't know her very well, it would look like that. "Well, I'm really pissed at her. She had no business getting involved with Diane if she knew she was going to be leaving. It's selfish and cruel."

"Maybe she couldn't help it." Cam traced a finger along the tense angle of Blair's jaw. "Baby. Sometimes we fall in love even when we don't want to."