Blair stepped free, kicking the clothes away and parting her thighs. Cam murmured her approval and stroked the valley at the junction of her abdomen and inner thigh. Blair gasped and her hips tightened. Cam held her steady with both hands on her ass, guiding her closer to her mouth each time she kissed her. When she stroked along her cleft, Blair gasped again.

“I won’t last,” Blair warned.

“I don’t want you to.”

Cam teased her, feeling the tension build in her tight thighs, speeding up as the muscles beneath her hands clenched and released, clenched and released.

“I’m almost there.”

Cam tugged her in and Blair came hard in her mouth, gripping her head, fingers buried in her hair, rocking and shouting. Cam closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to Blair’s lower belly as Blair quivered. Her heart pounded as if she’d just run a hard mile.

“Bed,” Blair gasped, light-headed and weak-kneed. And hungry, so, so hungry.

Cam stood and guided her down, climbed in after her, and yanked the sheets up with one hand as she stretched out above her. “More?”

“In a minute.” Blair sighed, stroked Cam’s back, and ran her fingers along the divide between the tight muscles of her ass. She pushed her thigh between Cam’s, felt the wet, and the heat. “I love how hot you get when you make me come.”

“Every time.” Cam buried her face in Blair’s neck and thrust against her thigh. “I love making you come.”

“You can get as close you want,” Blair whispered in Cam’s ear, “but I want to fuck you when you’re ready to come.”

Cam groaned. “Anytime. Now is good.”

Laughing, Blair pushed until Cam rolled onto her back. She followed her over and cupped between her thighs. Cam pushed into her palm and she filled her. Tight. Wet. Hot. Her breath stopped. Her heart stuttered. So beautiful. Slowly she stroked.

“Fuck,” Cam gasped.

Blair laughed and pushed deeper. Cam tightened around her, her belly went hard, and her back arched. Keeping steady, Blair stroked her through the orgasm and kept stroking her until she came again.

“Done.” Cam groaned again.

Blair curled up beside her, hand still between her thighs, cupping her as she settled. “I think you’ve got me going again.”

“Handy,” Cam murmured, turning on her side and drawing Blair’s leg over her hip. Blair pressed against her thigh and moaned. Cam cupped her from behind and stroked the undersurface of her clit. The want returned full force, energizing her. Blair was hers and she could never get enough.

“God,” Blair gasped, sliding up and down, “I’m going to come again.”

“Yes,” Cam whispered close to her ear as Blair shook in her arms.

Cam held her close as she drifted toward sleep. Tomorrow she would have to share her. Tomorrow and the days that followed, she’d have to depend on others to protect her, but for tonight, nothing and no one could touch her.

*

Hooker answered on the first ring. “Yeah?”

“I’ll be at Danny’s Diner outside Emmett for the next hour. I’ve got fifty thousand dollars with me.”

“What about the rest of it?”

Jane laughed. “I’m not walking around with it.”

“Is it safe?”

“Yes, and there’s nothing you could do to me to make me tell you where it is.”

“Whoa. Whoa. No need to go there.”

“Let’s not pretend we both don’t know who we’re dealing with.” The minute hand on the chrome clock behind the counter, its face dimmed with years of grease, jumped forward another notch. “Fifty-eight minutes now.”

“How do I know you’re not a cop?”

“You’ll recognize me, if you look carefully.”

“What?” He sounded genuinely confused.

“You know,” Jane said, sipping the surprisingly good black coffee, “I thought your voice sounded familiar. Now it all makes sense, why my…Graves dealt with you. You’ve got an important boss.”

She was guessing, but she knew in her heart she was right. The kind of men her father had been forced to associate with for the sake of the mission never did their own dirty work. They used men like the one she was talking to—cowards and traitors at the core.

“I don’t know—”

“I guess it’s a little too cold for ice cream this time around. You can buy me a burger instead.”

The line was silent for twenty seconds. “You’re a long way from home. Angela, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t matter now.”

“Are you sure you’re not being watched?”

“I’d know. And if I was, they wouldn’t be watching. They don’t have that kind of patience.”

“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll order the burgers.”

Hooker laughed flatly. “Fine. Make mine with cheese and fries.”

Jane hung up and signaled to the waitress. “I’ll have a refill on the coffee. I’m waiting for a friend.” She ordered cheeseburgers for both of them and fries for Hooker. “Give it half an hour.”

“Sure, honey,” the waitress said without giving her more than a glance and hurried off to slap the ticket down on the counter in front of the short-order cook.

The burgers came, and five minutes after that Hooker walked in. His hair was a little longer than when she’d seen him in Georgia and his body bulkier in a dark brown canvas coat, work pants, and boots. A day’s worth of stubble blunted his heavy features. But his was a face she couldn’t forget. She’d last seen him when she’d handed him a vial of live virus, but she’d imagined killing him a hundred times since then.

She thought about reaching for the semiautomatic nestled in the waistband of her pants at the base of her spine and shooting him as he walked toward her. He was the reason Jennifer was in prison. He’d handed off the delivery to a go-between who’d botched everything. If he’d made the exchange himself, keeping the number of people involved to a minimum, no one would’ve known. The president would be dead or severely compromised, and Jennifer would be free. Her father would be alive. And they’d be another step closer to victory.

He deserved to be punished, another lesson she’d learned in childhood. Simple justice, an eye for an eye. But right now, he was her only connection to the people who could get her the kinds of things she needed to finish the mission. He looked around, studying the few patrons in the diner. At close to nine, most everyone was off the roads and inside where it was warm. A few truckers sat at the counter, hunched over coffees and plates of food, and two teenagers occupied one side of a booth at the very end of the long railroad-car-styled room, necking. He studied her with no expression, walked down the scuffed red-and-black-tiled aisle, and slid into the booth across from her. He glanced down at the burger, then back at her. “You cut your hair.”

“I need a contact between here and Colorado Springs to provide me a product.”

Hooker took a bite of the hamburger. “Not a bad burger.” He wiped his mouth and picked up a fry. “Guns?”

Jane shook her head. “Explosives.”

Hooker took a bite of a fry, then popped the rest into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “That’s not an easy choice of weapon—you need to get close to somebody—and you’re likely to get blown up yourself.”

“That’s not something you need to worry about.”

“I’ve got two hundred and fifty thousand reasons to worry.”

Jane reached down beside her, picked up the wrinkled supermarket bag, and placed it on the table next to her plate. She put her hand on it. “You give me the information I need, and you’ll have fifty thousand less reasons to worry.”

“It’ll take some time.”

“Six tomorrow morning. I’ll be gone after that, and I’ll find another way to get what I need. When I meet the contact and receive the product, I’ll wire you the money.”

He shook his head. “Cash now. Information in the morning.”

“Ten now, the rest upon delivery.” Jane slid the bag into her lap and extracted the ten grand she’d secured with a rubber band. She tossed it under the table onto the seat beside him. She’d figured he’d want an incentive. She doubted his boss would ever see that money. “I’ll call you at six. Thanks for dinner.”

Chapter Nine

Dusty glanced at her phone. Almost 2200. “I guess we ought to get going.”

“I know,” Viv said. “Three thirty’s going to come awfully early.”

Dusty made no move to get up and neither did Viv. She didn’t really want to go, but Atlas was waiting for her. He’d be fine in his kennel at the training center, but he was used to going home earlier and having her around almost all the time. They were rarely separated because she rarely did anything other than go to work and spend the evenings reading or walking Atlas through the streets for hours on end. He loved the walks and she loved watching—the people on the sidewalks, the monuments glinting like bejeweled palaces, the night sky turning from hazy orange and red to deep purple and midnight black. The splashes of colors were like the paintings in the museums she visited over and over again on her days off. Those were about the only times Atlas didn’t come with her. There’d been a time, briefly, when she’d been young, that she’d thought she might want to be a painter. Her parents hadn’t exactly discouraged her in so many words, but her father had gently pointed out that being an artist was no way to make a living and besides, there was no money for the kinds of materials she would need, to even see if she was any good at it. She’d contented herself with absorbing the natural canvases that sprang up around her every morning and night through the ever-changing seasons in the countryside.

“What were you thinking of just then?” Viv said quietly.

A flush crept up Dusty’s cheeks, heating them. “Sorry.”

“Why? You don’t have to tell me, by the way, but you don’t need to apologize either.”