“Put the make on you.”

“That’s a good word for it.”

“So, you went to bed with her.” Viv wasn’t jealous, she really wasn’t. Much.

“No. She was a little too drunk. After things kind of got a little out of hand, I left and slept with Atlas.”

Atlas’s tail thumped at the sound of his name.

Viv stared. “In his crate?”

Dusty laughed. “No, in the kennel shed next to his crate. At the airfield.”

“If you ever feel like you need to go sleep with Atlas when we’re together, just tell me.” Viv kissed her. “And I’ll go sleep with him.”

Dusty took Viv’s empty wineglass and set it aside. “That’s never going to happen.”

“How do you—”

Dusty’s mouth on hers told her everything she needed to know.

*

Sweat streamed down Franklin Russo’s face. His heart jackhammered in his ears. Nora rode him like he was a goddamn mechanical bull in some redneck barroom. She braced her hands on his chest and drove her hips up and down in a fury, pounding his dick and beating his balls into stones.

“I’m gonna come,” he groaned.

Nora bared her teeth, her hair flailing around her face as she threw her head back and glared at him. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

He grabbed her ass, tried to slow her down, but nothing would stop her now. She closed her eyes, chanting yes, yes, yes.

He gritted his teeth when the explosion churning in his balls let loose. “Oh fuck. Oh fucking Christ.”

She came with a high, keening wail, her nails scoring his chest. A hoarse cry tore from his throat.

Thank God. Franklin panted, the ache in his loins slowly easing.

She kept going, even after he grew soft and started to slip out. She reached back, tried to get him up again, but he was done. Finally she dropped beside him on the bed and let out a long sigh. “God, I needed that.”

“Yes,” he said, feeling as if he’d been run over by a steamroller. She reached for his cock, but he covered her hand and drew it to his chest. “You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever known.”

She laughed. “You mean I’m the only woman that ever wore you out.”

“I’m not worn out yet.” He was lying and she probably knew it, but she was smart enough not to say it.

She kissed him briefly. “So, what’s the emergency?”

“Maybe I just wanted some time with you.”

“You don’t need to sweet-talk me, Franklin.” She pulled her hand free, slid it down his stomach, and wrapped her fist around him. He didn’t get hard. “I know what I want. And I know what you want.”

“I want the White House,” he said. “And I want you there with me.”

“We’re on track for that.”

“Powell is going to gain a lot of mileage with voters with this goddamn train trip of his. We need to do something to counteract it.”

“I agree. We keep working the donors behind the scenes, but we need some grassroots appearances to offset what he’s doing.”

She stroked him as she talked and goddamn, if his cock didn’t start to get hard. His heart banged against his ribs. “Such as?”

“Let me review his talking points today. We’ll start by countering some of those with infomercials. But I want you out and visible very soon. No more thousand-a-head dinners for a while.”

“Good. Wherever you need me to be.”

She straddled him and slid down onto his dick, even though he was only half hard. “Right now, this is where I need you to be.”

He stifled a groan. He was tired and a little sore, but he gripped her hips and started to thrust. “Just get me where we both want to be.”

Chapter Seventeen

Cam lay awake with Blair’s head on her shoulder, faintly aware of the rhythm of the train moving nearly soundlessly through the night, reviewing everything she knew about Jennifer Pattee’s failed attempt to infect the president with a lethal virus and the subsequent trail that led to Idaho and ended in a bloody battle where she’d killed a man whose true identity she still didn’t know. Who was Jane Doe, the fierce woman who had kidnapped her and Skylar Dunbar and tried to ransom them to free Jennifer? That one move—the attempted prisoner exchange—was the fissure in the stone façade of the case, the tiny crack she had to break open. Jane Doe’s actions, presumably sanctioned by Augustus Graves, were strategic suicide. Paramilitary groups were founded on fanatical loyalty to a cause greater than any individual. Sacrifice was expected and lauded. Jane Doe’s plan risked the entire organization for a single person. Why? Why would they do that?

The reason had to be a personal one. Jennifer Pattee was personally important to Jane Doe. Possibly even to Graves. That was the only thing that really made sense. Because otherwise, soldiers were expendable and everyone accepted that.

Cam worked the other side of the equation, playing devil’s advocate. Maybe she was wrong and Jennifer Pattee had acted alone when she’d attempted to secrete a vial of contagion into the White House. Cam’s instincts disagreed, and she couldn’t take the chance of overlooking another inside person close to the president. Jennifer was deeply embedded, and that degree of penetration into the highest echelons of the government had taken years. This was a long-range plan, one Cam believed reached far back into Jennifer’s life, and probably that of Jane Doe as well. How many other sleepers were there? How close had they gotten?

She was riding on a train filled with hundreds of people, all of whom had been thoroughly screened and were assumed to be trustworthy. Just as Jennifer had been carefully screened. And yet Jennifer had been part of the medical team that cared for the president of the United States. She could just as easily have shot him when he walked into an examining room, and she might not be alone. Jennifer, Jane, and Graves held the answers if she could just ask the right questions.

Blair stirred, stroking Cam’s abdomen. “Working?”

Cam kissed her temple. “Thinking. Am I keeping you awake?”

“You’re thinking pretty loudly.”

“Would you mind if I stepped out to make a phone call?”

“As long as you’re not gone too long. It gets chilly when you’re not next to me, remember?”

Cam had a vision of getting naked while Blair watched. A pulse of desire stirred in her depths. “I promise to return and keep you warm.”

“Go ahead. I’ll be here.”

Cam made no move to get up. She wrapped Blair closer in both arms. “You know that makes all the difference in my life.”

Blair kissed her. “Mine too. I count on you being here, understanding me, loving me. More than I ever imagined I could. It’s downright scary.”

“I know the feeling. Mostly, though, I just feel lucky.”

Blair raised herself on an elbow. “Keep it up and I’m not going to let you go anywhere.”

Cam grinned. “You know, you’re pretty easy. A little sweet talk and—”

Blair slapped her stomach. “And you are altogether too arrogant. Actually, I noticed that about you the very first day.”

“Me? As I recall, you’re the one who tried to lure me with your charms into… Come to think of it, you did lure me with your charms.”

Laughing, Blair kissed her again. “Go, so you can come back and I can lure you some more.”

Cam slid from bed, pulled on jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt with a Homeland logo on the chest, stepped into a pair of boots, and ambled out into the lounge area. Stark sat at a small dining table in the center of the right side of the car, flipping cards onto a series of rows in front of her. She’d folded her black blazer neatly over a nearby chair. Her powder-gray shirt looked fresh, the starch still evident in the sharply creased sleeves. When she saw Cam, she started to rise.

Cam waved her down. “Solitaire?”

“Evening, Commander. Yes.”

Cam craned her neck, studied the layout. “Red two on the black three in the second to last row.”

Frowning, Stark checked the cards, nodded, and moved one. “Thanks.” Setting the cards aside in a neat, squared-off pile, she went to the small kitchenette tucked into one corner and poured coffee from a pot that sat atop a hotplate next to a pile of bagels and a few tubs of cream cheese. “Get you anything?”

“Coffee would be good.”

Stark handed her a cup. “I’ve got some preliminaries on the guy from this morning. I thought you might be asleep and figured it could wait.”

Cam settled on a bench opposite the table. “Fill me in.”

“Not much to say.” Stark broke off a piece of bagel, added some cream cheese, and took a bite. “His press credentials were legit until three months ago, when he was fired from a local syndicated newspaper. Apparently he’d been acting a little oddly and had fallen behind on deadlines, turned in scattered copy, and generally underperformed.”

“History of violence?”

“Not that we could find, other than some run-ins from his college days that were chalked up to fraternity shenanigans.” Stark put the word shenanigans in air quotes and shook her head. “The kind of thing that gets pushed under the rug, but I bet if we dig we’ll find out there was some racial or other bias behind it all.”

“Easy to overlook until there’s a reason to dig.” Cam sipped the very good coffee. Traveling with the president always guaranteed excellent food and drink. “How did he get through into the hall?”

Stark winced. “His press pass had never been deactivated. We didn’t check back far enough.”

Cam nodded. Stark was shouldering part of the blame, although it hadn’t been her job to screen individuals with potential access to the principals. Her protectee had been targeted, and that made the fault at least partly hers. Cam would have felt the same way. All the same, these were the kinds of things you prepared for, but could never completely eliminate. Anywhere along the line something might have popped up to raise suspicion about this guy, but it all could just as easily happen as it did—a string of coincidences that allowed a deranged individual to get too close. At least the metal detectors had prevented him from entering with a gun. She didn’t bother saying that. They both knew weapons could be fashioned from substances that would not trip a metal detector, including ceramic guns and knives. He could have had a knife in his hand when he lunged at Blair. He could have shot her from point-blank range.