Honor Bound

"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.

"You can't intend for Grant to take him on herself?" Blair said when Cam finished outlining the basics of the plan.

Cam shook her head. "No. Once we establish rapport and convince him that he really is speaking to you, we hope he'll reveal something to help us trace him. Some reference to location, some historical fact -- something to give us a fix on his physical location."

"And if that doesn't work?" Blair asked quietly.

"Then we'll set up a meet under the pretext that you don't want anyone else endangered, and lay a trap for him that way."

"He might just lay a trap for -- me," Blair stated.And he lays his with bombs.

"He might," Cam allowed. "But we'll have dozens of agents securing the area, and if he's anywhere near the meet site, which Ryan assures us he will be, we'll have him."

"What about Grant?"

Cam's stomach tightened but her voice was sure. Uncertainty could not be entertained once an operation was underway. "She'll be wired and armored and hopefully she won't get close enough to be in any real danger. We just need her to leave here as you, in case he's watching the building, and to be visible approaching the meet location."

Blair was silent for a moment, then she asked, "Who's going with her as back up?"

"Savard," Cam said. She met Blair's eyes and added softly, "and me."

Blair stood abruptly and walked to the far side of the loft, her back to the room, looking out the tall windows toward the park. Cam sat for a moment, her good sense warring with an uncomfortable need to make Blair understand. She stared across the room at Blair's rigid back, telling herself that she should simply go back to work and do what needed to be done. But if she did, she knew that she would only be bringing part of herself to the job. The other part would be wondering about Blair, and that fact aggravated her almost as much as the cold silence in the room.

"Blair," Cam said quietly, crossing to stand behind her. She did not touch her, because the anger was nearly a palpable barrier between them.

Blair held up a hand, not turning, her voice harsh and clipped. "Don't, Cam. Donot tell me it's safe or any other such fairy tale about the brilliant planning of our security agencies. I know the track records."

Cam did touch her then, because she had to. She was finding that distance between them was harder and harder to bear. She didn't want to think about what that might mean, particularly not now. She rested her hands very lightly on Blair's waist, stepping near but not trying to hold her. "Everyone agrees that the risk is low."

Blair made a faint choking sound that might have been a laugh, or a sob. She turned abruptly to face her, pushing Cam's hands away. "Just when did you start thinking that I was stupid, Cam? Before or after we fucked?"

"Goddamn it, Blair," Cam growled, trying hard to hold onto her temper, "I know damn well you aren't stupid. The risksare low."

"I suppose you think that it wouldn't occur to me that Jeremy Finch is dead and you were almost killed once already? Or do you think I've simply lost my mind?"

"If anyone has lost their mind, it's me," Cam snapped, her dark eyes flashing with fury. "And itwasn't when we fucked. It happened the first time I walked into this room and you had the arrogance to come on to me like I was some rookie you could lead around by my proverbial dick."

"Well, that didn't work very well, did it?" Blair seethed, looking pointedly at Cam's crotch and then back to her face. "And it has nothing to do with the particulars of your anatomy."

"Actually, it must have worked," Cam said with irritation, running a hand through her hair, tousling the dark locks into the disheveled look that Blair found so sexy, "because I haven't been able to make a single decision since that morning without worrying about you."

Blair stared at her, remembering their first meeting and her surprise at discovering that her new security chief not only wasn't intimidated by her but actually seemed intent on working with her. "I never asked you to worry about me," she remarked, the sharp edges of her rage softening as she looked at her.

"I know that," Cam said, her voice intense, "but I do." She waited a beat, and then said even more quietly, "I didn't want you to care."

"I know that," Blair whispered, and added even more softly, "but I do."

They both moved at once, closing the distance, slipping into one another's arms.

"I'll be careful"

"Be careful"

Cam kissed Blair's temple, murmuring, "I'll wear a vest, and I'll have Savard. She's good. We'll have plenty of backup nearby, too."

Blair pressed her lips to Cam's neck, feeling her blood pulse through the arteries just under the skin. So fragile. She took a deep breath, forcing the fear away, burying it deep inside.

"She'd better be as good as she looks," Blair threatened, "or I'll be forced to hurt her."