"Casie?"
Acasia bent to kiss his groping fingers. "It’s all right. Don’t wake up. I’ll be right back."
"Mmm," Cameron murmured, and subsided back into the mattress.
A wayward strand of hair brushed his forehead, and Acasia smoothed it back into place. Repose emptied his face of years, left in their stead the youth with whom she’d first fallen in love. She watched him sleep, seeing the hand that curled on her pillow. A couple of pale scars on his face were the only physical reminders of his brush with death. Even the emotional wounds had begun to heal. There would be scars, but the same sort of pain that had weakened Acasia for too many years would strengthen Cameron, let him grow. She envied him that, his ability to shape something positive out of what was worst in life. For all the frenzied activity that she’d chased through the years, she’d never really done anything more than learn to survive. Just.
Cameron shifted again in his sleep, and his forehead creased, as though Acasia’s scrutiny disturbed him, and she leaned gently away from him, picking up her shirt, sliding it on. Socks followed, then underwear and jeans, with running shoes last. She had just finished tightening the bow on the second shoelace when her phone rang. She snapped it open and listened to Paolo without a word, then shut it with regret.
She moved across the room to slide open one of the two drawers Cameron had lent her. He sat up in bed as Acasia purposefully began to remove her clothes and put them in her duffel bag.
"I have to go," she said.
"Mansour?" Cameron asked.
"No, just an advisory appointment. I’ll be back in two or three days, no more."
"Where?"
"Caribbean. We’ve got some clients there with a problem. Jules is coming for me."
"It couldn’t wait until a reasonable hour?"
"Evidently not."
"You’re sure Mansour isn’t involved?’
"Paolo says no."
"And you trust him implicitly."
Acasia finished with the first drawer, closed it and opened the other. "I’ll trust him with your life while I’m gone. My trust doesn’t get more implicit than that." She turned and looked at him. "The risk is reasonable."
Cameron threw the sheets away from him and rose to advance on Acasia. "I’ve seen what you regard as reasonable risks and I—"
"Two or three days, Cam. Trust me that long. This is strictly hands–off—negotiation, not intervention."
"Then let someone else do it. I don’t want to let you go."
"Let?" Acasia paused on her way to the closet to retrieve the two suits she owned. "This is not a question of my asking permission, Cam. This is me going. This is my job. This is what I do."
"Come on, Casie, someone else can do this." He was frustrated, angry. She didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, least of all him. "Someone must have done it before you came along."
"That’s right, someone did." Acasia’s lips twisted. "And someone will do it when I’m gone. But right now I do it. Within a few years I’ll have to drop back and let someone younger and more agile do what I’ve always been best at. I’ll still be able to travel and negotiate and engineer retrieval plans—probably even participate in a few to some extent, but mostly the follow–through will get left to someone else. With the kind of work you do, you don’t have to worry about being eased out. Your work grows with you, it doesn’t leave you behind. Knowing one day I’ll be obsolete is not a comforting thought."
Damn it, he understood and didn’t want to. "And if it ended for you now, today, what would you do?"
"I have no concrete plans yet, Cam. I have some ideas. One of these days I’ll even sit down and iron the logistical problems out of them. Don’t worry, I’m like a professional athlete. I know someday I could take a shot to the knee and not get up from it. I can accept that."
"You could also quit now and avoid the possibility of ‘someday.’"
"And if I told you that I wanted you to quit Rhiannon and give up Wall Street and boardrooms because being who you are is dangerous, too, what would you do?" She watched Cameron’s eyes flick quickly around the room, stopping at the windows where the bulk of Rhiannon’s research center was just becoming visible in the gray dawn light. "Tough call, isn’t it?" she asked quietly.
Cameron brought his gaze back to her. "Sometimes I forget how rough you play," he said.
"I don’t play any rougher than you."
"No, I suppose you don’t." He ran a hand through his hair. "Look, I know I’m violating my own ground rules. I’m not going to apologize for it. I worry—no, I’m scared to death for you. And I’m no good at playing martyr and keeping it to myself in front of you."
"Oh, good," Acasia said, slightly prickly. "The one thing I’ve always wanted to be is the angst in someone else’s life."
Cameron smothered a grin. "Tell me I’m not the angst in yours and we’ll talk."
"Angst? You?" She gave him an innocent look. The one thing she knew with certainty was that, if she was going to share her life with anyone, it would be with Cameron, because she wanted that enough to work for it. She also knew that certainty was a tentative thing. A moment of goodbye, even if it was only a short term goodbye, was not the time for protestations and promises, no matter how badly she wanted to make them. She looked at Cameron, at the image of her thoughts mirrored in his eyes. "Even if I could delegate this, I’ve got to do it. And come back, if you’ll let me."
"I’ll let you. You were my first lover. I want you to be my last, too." He reached for her, pulled her close, held and was held. "I don’t want you to go, but go anyway." He rubbed the back of her neck, then laced his fingers in her hair. "Stay safe," he whispered, and eased her away. "Keep in touch if you can, huh?"
Acasia mumbled assurances and admonitions, then kissed him fiercely and hoped this fragile thing they held between them could survive the high cost of "someday."
* * *
Buried in the foreign news column of the morning paper two days later were two items Cameron read, then wished he hadn’t.
The escalation of fighting between government and rebel forces in the Zaragozan capitol of Magdalena has sent thousands fleeing toward the Venezuelan border. Most recently, government troops retaliated against a bombing attack on a barracks that killed fifty–seven soldiers late yesterday by raiding a Catholic mission where rebel leaders reportedly attended mass, killing forty–two women and children and injuring seventeen.
Farther down the same page:
Negotiations for the release of one French and two American journalists abducted in Magdalena, Zaragoza, late last week broke off overnight when the French correspondent was reportedly shot and killed during an attempt to free him. Also killed in the raid was the former Army Ranger lieutenant who led the effort. Negotiators refused to speculate on the fate of the two Americans still in captivity, or on when bargaining for their release might resume.
He read the last item twice and felt the panic rise. She’s all right, he told himself. This isn’t her.
"I’m an expert on Sanchez and Zaragoza," he heard her say calmly. "When Zaragoza is on the agenda, they ask for me… ask for me… ask for me…"
He brought his hands together slowly, as if straining to crush something between them. Though he wanted to go at once, to find her and bring her back, he didn’t move. The issue was one of trust. If he couldn’t weather a moment of fear this time, the next time would be harder, the time after that impossible. Because he’d decided there would
be
a next time, he had to trust her to return the piece of his heart she’d taken with her, and he had to let her go. Loving her would always mean holding fast with open hands.
With brutal determination, he rose from his breakfast, dropped the newspaper in the trash and left the house to climb the mountain to the cabin.
* * *
"Cam?"
Cameron’s heart did a little hopscotch of relief at the of sound of her voice. "Where are you?"
Limbo. "The office. New York. I’ve got some reports to clear up, then I’ll be… home."
He breathed deep and his heart hop–scotched, but he forced himself not to place too much emphasis on her referring to Rhiannon as
home
. "The French journalist who was killed, were you on that?"
"I set up the negotiating team and did the briefing, yes."
"Was the Ranger one of your people?"
"No. He free–lanced for us sometimes, but not this time."
"What about the Americans? What comes next?"
"Honest to God, Cam, I don’t know. A lot of wait’n see."
Are you going after them? he thought. "Are you all right?" he asked instead.
"Yeah, fine. A little tired, maybe. I’ll tell you about it when I see you."
She wanted to tell him that she loved him, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Not until she was sure they could have a future. They exchanged a few meaningless words, instead, then said goodbye.
At her end of the connection, Acasia listened to the sound of dead air for a moment before she closed her phone and fanned through the batch of FBI file photos on her desk. She could link two of the faces directly to Sanchez’s special squads and recognized one as a mercenary confederate of Dominic’s. The other three were unknown to her, but that didn’t matter. They were in custody for placing Cameron’s car bomb. The first three were the ones who concerned her. They were still at large, and she knew what they were capable of. She also knew how to stop them.
And Dom.
"Are you sure you know what you’re doing?" Julianna asked from the doorway.
Acasia glanced up at her. "The fastest way to stop an army is to take away its generals."
Her red haired partner snorted. "You can’t do it alone. And I can only do so much."
"Angelo made me an offer a couple of weeks ago that I turned down. By the looks of things down there, if I make a counteroffer now, he won’t refuse."
"You’re playing in a mine field, Jones. And what about Cam? If you don’t tell him about the latest on this—" Julianna pointed at the spread on the desk "—the men he hired will, since they were in on the capture. It’ll go down better if he hears it from you first. You’ll lose him if you don’t tell him."
Acasia studied her partner, her friend. Both of them appreciated the desire to keep private lives private, to voice only the essential. Their friendship existed comfortably because they rarely intruded on one another, instead respecting the need for distance. "You’re out of line, Jules. Stay out of my business. The only way I know to stop Cam from going after Dom himself is to do it first."
"Just be careful, Jones. You’ve only had one…" her lips twisted while she chose the more judicious words "…
romantic liaison
since I’ve known you, and I was glad to see that one end."
"Dom was an accident that shouldn’t have happened. Cam’s not."
"No? Then why treat him as if he is? You two must have a pretty shabby relationship for you to want to keep proving how much he can’t trust you and how you won’t trust him."
"I trust him," Acasia said coldly.
"Then tell him Dominic has been directly connected with the bomb that killed Byrd. And that we may wind up going into Zaragoza after a couple of hostages. Let him be a grown–up and make his own choices about how he’s going to deal with it. Let Lisetta go once and for all. You can’t take responsibility for everyone you know or love for the rest of your life. Loosen your grip on the controls and leave a little something for the rest of us to do. Take a little something for yourself."
She’d never heard Julianna say so much at one time. "Maybe someday."
"‘Someday’ never comes, Casie. You know that. You told me that when I was breaking up with Charlie."
"Different context. I was all for you divorcing Charlie. He was a jerk."
"Different context, same principle. Someday never came. Charlie never changed." She made a little movement of regret. "Doesn’t stop me wishing for someday, though. Look, you said it’s never been a matter of whether or not you and Smith love one another, that it’s always been the circumstances. I think you’re wrong. You love him enough to want to protect him, and that’s a lot. The thing is to love him enough to let him make his own choices."
Julianna was right, of course, but Acasia didn’t want to admit it. "I’ll think about it," she said, and let her tone make it clear that their discussion was at an end.
T
HE BED WAS soft. Cameron was hard. Acasia craved both, needed both.
There was an urgency in their lovemaking, a blend of neediness and no tomorrows and things held back.
"What?" they asked one another softly, fiercely, wanting to know, afraid to know.
"Nothing." They lied to one another, pushing the answers away for the sake of another kiss, another moment of madness.
Finally exhausted, they slept, heavily, tangled together, dreamless. Cameron woke first, in midafternoon, jacked himself up on one elbow and watched Acasia breathe. She slept flat out, on her stomach, one arm beneath her pillow, the other hand relaxed below her chin. The fact that she slept like this, without leaving part of herself on guard, was something he recognized as a gift from her to him, another incomparable piece of trust.
He touched her hand without urgency, his fingers tracing lightly up the softness of her wrist and arm, then coming to rest on her cheek. Acasia sighed, and her eyelids flickered, her eyes focused.
"Can I show you something?" she asked.
Cameron nodded despite a twinge of disquiet. "Sure."
Outside, the air was pungent, scented with new–mown grass and crushed flowers, pregnant with winter’s transition to spring. A breeze whispered past their ears, chanting on the edge of hearing, new life for old, new life for old…
"Where to?"
"Up the mountain."
Cameron swallowed a smile and followed her across the fields and up into the mountain’s greening shadows. Dry undergrowth rustled, and patches of wet moss squelched beneath their feet. The air on the mountain was cold and tasted of pine.
The clearing around the cabin was littered with fresh wood chips. A fresh cord of wood was stacked a few feet to the side of the cabin, and there were a brass doorknob and a solid dead–bolt lock on the door. Acasia’s throat tightened, and she looked at Cameron. He withdrew a small box from his pocket and placed it in her hand. On a bed of cotton, attached to a simple key ring with a leather tab, lay a key.