"I'll handle that, Commander."

Cam gave Stark's shoulder a brief squeeze. "Thanks. It helps that you—"

Stark's radio sounded and she listened for a few seconds. "Double-check the ID." She glanced at Cam. "An agent, asking for you." She listened again and raised her eyebrows. "CIA."

"Perfect," Cam muttered. CIA agents were notorious for not being team players. No one in the other services really trusted them, and with good reason. They showed little allegiance to anyone except their own director, never shared intelligence—and what they did share was always suspect. "Do you have a name?"

"Lawrence."

Cam shook her head. The name rang no bells.

"What shall we do with her, Commander?"

"Send her up. We might as well get a look at her."

Stark relayed the message and signed off.

"Kind of strange, isn't it?" Stark asked. "CIA doesn't usually get involved in domestic issues."

"All bets are off, now. And besides," Cam said pointedly, "we have no idea what they might know about the situation that we don't. Let's hope we can work this street both ways and learn as much from them as they think they're going to learn from us."

"Now there's a plan I can get behind."

The buzzer sounded and Cam said, "I should be at the Aerie by 0830."

"Yes, ma'am. See you then."

Cam crossed the living room while the others continued to talk and opened the door. She felt a wave of dizziness, as if the room had suddenly spun three hundred and sixty degrees while she stood rooted in place. Then her natural instincts surfaced and she felt nothing but a cold calm. Valerie looked different than she had ever seen her before. She was just as beautiful—dressed just as elegantly as ever in a Prada business suit and low Ferragamo heels—and her eyes held the same glimmer of compassion that had always drawn Cam in. But this morning she wore a weapon on her right hip, although no one who wasn't very good at detecting such things would have noticed because of the excellent cut of her suit jacket. But the core of steel that Cam always knew Valerie possessed was very close to the surface now. It was evident in the way she stood and in the sheer power of her gaze. She radiated the supreme confidence that some agents had, but few deserved.

"Agent Lawrence," Cam said quietly. "Is it still Valerie?"

"It is, yes."

Cam glanced at her watch. "We have a briefing in twenty minutes, so if you don't mind, I'd like to leave the introductions until later. Although, of course, I'm sure you know everyone's names already."

Valerie's eyes skimmed past Cam to where Diane sat on the sofa, laughing at something that Blair had said. At that instant, Diane turned her head, a look of shock crossing her face when she registered Valerie's presence. Diane stood quickly and took two rapid steps forward, her expression of pleasure quickly turning to one of uncertainty.

"I just need one minute," Valerie said, her gaze still fixed on Diane's face.

Cam didn't need to turn to know who Valerie was looking at. "I'll say goodbye to Blair."

"Valerie?" Diane asked, her voice raised in surprise.

"I only have a few seconds right now," Valerie said quickly. "Everything I said to you was true. But there—"

"What are you doing here?"

"Just listen, Diane." Valerie touched her hand so fleetingly it might have been an accident. "I couldn't tell you everything before. I'm a federal agent. I—"

Diane's expression shut down, her face going as blank as if she'd suddenly donned a mask. "Never mind. I don't want to hear it." She turned abruptly and without a word walked past Cam, who was on her way back to the door.

"Ready?" Cam asked.

"Yes." Valerie watched Diane until she disappeared into the far hallway, then met Cam's gaze without a trace of emotion. "Let's go."

*

They'd been in the car ten minutes before Cam broke the silence. "Why did they bring you in now?"

"Since Tuesday, priorities have changed," Valerie replied.

"You must have been under for a long time to establish Claire's identity. I can't imagine they neutralize your kind of operative's cover lightly."

Valerie put her back against the door to face Cam in the driver's seat. "They don't tell me all the reasons, Cameron. But we all know how important Blair's security is." She saw Cam's hands tighten on the wheel, but continued evenly. "I know the players. And believe it or not, there are people who think that I can be helpful in the situation."

Cam swiveled her head and fixed Valerie with a cold stare before averting her gaze back to the traffic. "Well you know me, don't you?"

"You fell into the net by accident, Cameron. You were never an intended target."

A muscle in Cam's jaw bunched. "And I don't suppose you can tell me who you were supposed to be spying on, can you? When you weren't fucking them, that is."

"As you no doubt realize, my job description is counterintelligence, and Washington, DC is an excellent place to find out what our friends are really up to."

"Yes, it's amazing what you will reveal when someone's just fu—"

"Cameron, please don't," Valerie said quietly. "It was never like that with you."

Cam stared straight ahead. "Are you going to tell me that you never filed a report on me?"

"I'm not going to lie about that—"

Cam laughed bitterly.

"But there was never anything compromising in the reports."

"I guess reporting to the CIA that the first daughter's security chief is frequenting whores on Capitol Hill doesn't strike you as being compromising. Christ." She had to make an effort not to grind her teeth. "I'm surprised they didn't bust me out a long time ago."

"Everyone has secrets, Cameron. Sometimes secrets can be powerful currency."

Abruptly, Cam swerved to the curb and jammed on the brakes. She swiveled to face Valerie. "Was any of it true?"

"Every touch," Valerie said quietly.

Cam searched her eyes and saw the pain. She searched her own heart for the true source of the rage that had followed fast upon the disbelief at finding Valerie at the door that morning. She'd never been in love with her, but she'd cared. Deeply. And she'd let Valerie see things that she revealed to very few people—she'd exposed herself in her weakest moments.

"Christ"

"I'm sorry, Cameron. But I can't apologize for doing my job, only that I hurt you in the process."

"Right." Cam grimaced, thinking that she'd said the same thing more than once herself. "We're going to have to work together, and frankly, I don't trust you."

"Camer—"

"I don't trust any CIA agents. On principle." Cam grinned briefly when she saw a true smile flicker across Valerie's full lips. "But as far as I'm concerned, whatever happened between us is personal. That's not part of the job now."

"Thank you." Valerie put her hand on Cam's wrist. "You were never an assignment, never work, for me."

Cam turned her hand over and slid her palm into Valerie's, their fingers linked and their eyes held, a silent acknowledgment of what they had once been to one another. Then they separated, settling back into their seats as Cam started the car.

*

"Agents Savard, Davis, Lawrence," Cam said, making rapid introductions as everyone found seats in the small living room of Stark and Savard's apartment. Cam took the end seat on the sofa and reached for the coffee mug that Savard had placed in front of her on the low wooden table. Absently, she noted that the fish tank against the far wall seemed to have a new batch of baby somethings congregated just below the surface in a shimmering silver cloud. Then the apartment receded from her view, and all her focus turned to Savard. "What do we know?"

"It's more what we don't know," Savard said. "We concentrated on the IDs of the four dead commandos, and the short answer is, no one knows who they are. Fingerprints haven't turned up anything in our databases or NCIC."

"Don't tell me these guys aren't ex-military," Cam said sharply. "These guys were professionally trained."

"Interpol?" Valerie asked quietly.

Savard gave her a long look. She 'd recognized her from a previous investigation when a few agents very close to Cam and Blair had learned of Cam's liaison with a woman identified as a Washington call girl. Apparently they had been mistaken. "They're still checking."

"DNA?" Cam asked of Felicia.

Felicia shook her head. "Not yet, but Quantico expects results within twenty-four hours."

Cam didn't ask how Felicia knew that, and she didn't care. All that mattered was that she had access to whatever intelligence was available without delay. Even though she should be able to get any information she needed to run her investigation, if she went through regular channels there would be resistance at every level, and it might take weeks to learn what Felicia could discover in a matter of hours by hacking into the various databases.

"Someone knows who these guys are. Let's get their faces out to every possible source here and abroad." Cam turned to Valerie, who sat slightly apart from the others in an overstuffed chair that had seen better days. "Any place in particular we should be looking?"

"Our best guess," Valerie replied carefully, "is the Middle East or Afghanistan. Second-best guess, Libya, although we don't believe they have the contacts required to orchestrate Tuesday's attack."

"All right," Felicia said. "That's a place to start."

"In the meantime," Cam said, "if we can't get anything on the commandos, then we'll have to concentrate on Foster. I want to know everything about him from the minute he was born. I want the names of the people he roomed with at the Academy, the women or men he dated, the names of the agents he worked with on previous assignments, his previous partners, his travel itinerary for the last ten years. I want to know everywhere he's been, everything he's done, every last thing about him."

"Since the assault team members were all Caucasian," Valerie said, "I'd suggest looking at all the paramilitary organizations nationwide. That fits their profile." She looked at Savard. "The FBI should have a considerable file internally, but there has been some counterintelligence activity by.. .other organizations, as well."

Felicia smiled. "I'll have a look around."

"Good. Let's start putting together organizational profiles on every known paramilitary group," Cam instructed. "Personnel, geographic location, financial resources, political affiliations, publications, propaganda.. .anything that might hint at armed retaliation."

"Do we have anything that ties these guys to the World Trade Center?" Savard asked, directing her attention pointedly toward Valerie.

"No," Valerie replied, her expression completely composed. "From what we know now, the hijackers appear to have been foreign terrorists. The men who attacked Ms. Powell were not." She sighed. "And neither event was anticipated. Certainly not in the present time frame."

"We need access to your people's intelligence files," Cam said, deciding it was time to find out whose side Valerie was really on. "Can you get us in?"

Valerie hesitated. "As far as I have access, yes."

"If you open the door," Felicia said, "I'll—"

Cam's cell phone emitted a series of sharp, staccato beeps and she yanked it off her belt as she jumped to her feet. "Roberts."

"Cameron," Lucinda Washburn said with an urgency that Cam had never heard in her voice before. "There's been an incident at the Aerie. They've called for a HAZMAT team and quarantined the building."

Cam didn't hear the rest of the message because she was already running for the door.

Chapter Fifteen

T he NYPD had worked fast. Cam ran into the first barricade two blocks from Gramercy Park. Patrol cars angled across the intersection and a bevy of uniformed cops milled in the street. Three helicopters swooped low over the tops of nearby buildings. She slammed her car to a halt nose-in against the curb, yanked the keys from the ignition, and jumped out. She was vaguely aware of shouts aimed in her direction as she ran, her badge extended in her left hand. Dodging and weaving around the bodies that interposed themselves between her and her destination, she just kept screaming, "Secret Service. Secret Service," and shouldering aside anyone who didn't get out of her path quickly enough.

When she rounded the corner of the gated square diagonally across from Blair's building, the congestion in the streets was magnified a hundredfold. Squad cars, ambulances, bomb squad armored vehicles, and official personnel from the police, fire, and emergency rescue departments clogged the sidewalks and streets. She rapidly scanned the building's facade, half expecting to see the top floors gone. The only thing she could imagine was that a bomb had detonated or was about to.