Slow Summer Burn: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (27 page)

And then she heard it.

Footsteps coming down the gravel path.
Oh, God! No!
Her heart stopped. Getting caught had always been a possibility, but in the abstract, not the concrete. There’d be no explanation for this. No recovery.
Whoops, I got lost going to the ladies’ room and ended up in your private, secret aircraft hangar
wasn’t going to cut it. A second set of footsteps joined the first, coming closer and closer. She flicked off the flashlight.

Get down, Cameron! Hide!

But she couldn’t make her body move. The door was going to open, she was sure of it. And the lights would go on and she’d be caught standing there like a fool doing something if not illegal, then totally
wrong
. No one could help her. Even though she was an invited guest, she hadn’t been invited in here. She might be arrested, paraded in front of the public.

Something Clarissa had once said to her echoed in her brain:

Cameron, the only time one should appear in the newspaper is for one’s birth, marriage, and death. And, if it can’t be helped, for the occasional society event. Everything else is simply uncouth
.

That was enough to get her to move. Cameron ducked down under the desk, and as quietly as she could manage, opened her clutch and fished around for the special alarm. She
found it, clutching it like a talisman.

The doorknob turned and she was about to give herself up when she heard a muffled voice. “Oh, Ted,” she heard what sounded like Hermione Alcott saying, “I’ve gotten terribly lost. Would you please help me find my way back to the great lawn, you dear thing?”

She heard the congressman agree, and then footsteps walking away. She breathed again and dropped the alarm back into her bag.

Not daring to put the flashlight back on, she made her way to the door. She put an ear up against it and listened the way she’d learned. No sounds. Carefully, she opened the door and peered out. The light was dimmer now, but she didn’t see anyone. The coast was clear, so she slipped out, shut the door quietly behind her, and made her way back down the path as fast as she could.

Heart still pounding, she nearly sprinted around the side of the house and slipped back into the orangery. Once she was back in the main part of the house, she didn’t even pause. Just blew right through like she owned the place, ignoring everyone around her.

Without missing a beat, she went straight for the back bathroom and locked the door. Immediately, she texted the pictures she’d taken to Val. Then she did her best to wash her feet and straighten her dress. Surprisingly, her makeup and hair didn’t need any touching up.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, she ran right into a familiar figure.

“Oh, my goodness, Ted, you scared me half to death!” she said, hand on her heart. She wasn’t kidding. Her heart was pounding even harder than it was before.

“I’ve been looking for you for ten minutes! Where have you been?” Junior said. He did not sound happy.

“I was in the bathroom,” she said. “Not feeling well.” The lies came so easily now.

For a split second, it seemed like he was going to challenge her. Then she lifted her chin, daring him to question the word of an Endicott. He backed off, concern spreading over his face. “Would you like to sit down? There are some comfortable seats in the library. I could get you a glass of water.”

“No, thank you,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m feeling much better now.” She smiled up at him in as guileless a fashion as she could muster. “I think I just needed some breathing room.”

“You
do
look a little flushed. Maybe a walk outside to the great lawn?”

She took his arm and gave it a squeeze. “That would be really nice.”

“Good,” he said, leading her to the front of the house. “There’s someone I really want you to meet.”

“Of course, Ted. I’d be delighted,” she said, pasting what seemed the hundredth fake smile on her face. “And maybe we could talk to your dad some more, too. I was really enjoying our conversation.”

“I’m sure he’d like that,” Ted said.

Cameron took a deep breath and smiled as though her life depended on it. Because as far as she was concerned, it did.

Chapter 27

Val sat in his pickup truck half a mile down a country road from the Kirkland estate, poring over a new case file for a drug and money-laundering scheme involving a consortium of dry-cleaning establishments, of all places. He sighed and flipped through Ellen’s workup notes. It seemed like there was no end to what people would do to make a buck, and he was constantly amazed at the ingenuity folks would employ to do bad things. If only they put their brainpower to doing some good, the world would be a lot better place.

He kept trying to focus on the case file, but his eyes were continually drawn to the pager he’d set up on the dashboard. The one that would go off if Cameron were in trouble and pressed the alert button he’d given her. It had been three hours since she had gone into the mansion, and he had no idea what was going on up there. Cursing the fact that he hadn’t insisted on a wire, all he could do was to sit tight, try to get some work done, and pray that everything turned out the way they’d planned.

After a too-long pause in his work during which he realized he’d been staring at that pager, he flicked off the light he’d rigged up in the truck, shut the file, and opened the windows. The evening was pure Massachusetts summer—fragrant and damp. The aromas of grass and wildflowers wafted in through his open window from the nearby meadow. A chorus of crickets chirping provided a soothing backdrop of sound. When he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend he was in the Meadow in Star Harbor.

As always, when he had a free moment to think, his mind drifted back to the Kirkland case. Two days ago, Colin had informed Val that the higher-ups were insistent the operation be over by the end of summer—right in time for election season, of course. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that he had jack on his lead suspect save a couple of marginally suspicious phone calls. Sure, he had enough evidence to bring in a few mid-level dealers and suppliers, but they weren’t the big fish. If he reeled them in too soon, Kirkland could slip off his hook. The DC team had tracked the congressman’s travel plans and phone records and found a few blips, but nothing that rose to the level of smoking gun. Without a warrant, any kind of wiretapping was out of the question, and Jeff had already said that to proceed based on the
information they currently had would be the worst kind of fishing expedition—legal parlance for seeking information that may or may not exist, something that would be seriously frowned upon by the courts. Somehow, he just
knew
that Kirkland was dirty, but his intuition wasn’t enough to go on. Was Kirkland really that good as to not leave any trace, or was he being protected by another source? Maybe he was wrong about him after all …

At that moment, his phone buzzed. Val snatched it up from the passenger seat of his truck.

Five different texts from Cameron, each with a photo attached. Quickly, he plugged in his computer and used his secure wireless hotspot to download the photos and get them to Ellen.

Then he picked up his phone to call her. “Ellen?”

“Got them, Val. So the plane exists.”

“Yes,” he said, no smugness in his voice, even though he’d been vindicated. “I need you to trace these N-numbers, and then we need to see about getting a warrant for a GPS device for the plane and the copter.”

“On it. She did good work, didn’t she?”

“The best.”

He hung up with Ellen. It was nearly another two hours until the phone call he was waiting for came. As soon as the phone rang, he pounced on it.

“Grayson,” he said.

“Val? It’s Cameron.”

Relief flooded through him, and he realized how tense he’d actually been. “You okay?”

“Yes. I’m in my car, about to head home.”
Thank God
.

“Can you start driving? I’ll feel better when you’re out of there.”

“Yes. I can put you on Bluetooth. Hang on.” He heard her car’s engine starting up, and then a few clicks. “Val?”

“I’m here.”

“Great. I’m on the road. Where do you want me to start?”

“With the administrative stuff. I’m sorry. I know you’re itching to tell me everything, but I want to make sure all the information you give me was obtained legally.”

“I understand.”

For a few minutes, they went through the logistics, how she got through the house, how
she gained access to the outbuilding—that kind of thing. When he was satisfied that everything was kosher, he moved on.

“Okay, now let’s get onto the big stuff. You found the plane?”

“Yes. And a helicopter. They’re both in the structure you thought they were.”

“I knew it!”

“My texts were the numbers off the sides of the aircraft.”

“Figured. And the logbook was out in plain sight?”

“Yes.”

“Cam, you did such a great job. I started pulling the records for these two crafts right away.”

“Good. I’ve traveled a lot, but I have no idea what the acronyms in the logbook were. I think they’re supposed to be the names of airports, but I’d never seen them before.”

“I saw those. KIR sounds like it should be an IATA airport code, but I had Ellen pull it up, and it’s Kerry, Ireland.”

“Strange.”

“And CNP3 and KIR2 aren’t actually IATA codes at all. Ellen’s looking into it.”

“All right. Oh, and one more thing. When I asked the congressman about going to Canada, he got really weird. At first he didn’t know what I was talking about, but when I explained that his daughter had invited Cici on a trip, he seemed almost relieved. The most interesting thing was that he said, ‘I thought you were talking about another trip.’ Is that important?”

“It could be,” Val said slowly. “Shows that he’s at least a little nervous about something.” Maybe his armor was starting to crack, after all. “Okay. I’ll meet you at your place in about an hour and we can debrief.”

“All right.”

While he was driving, he called DC to let that team know to follow up with Interpol about the Canada angle. The Canadian authorities might have some additional information worth sharing.

Thanks to Cameron’s information, they might really be getting somewhere.

He was back in Boston before he knew it and parked his truck a few blocks away from Cameron’s brownstone. He went around back—prying eyes and all that—and knocked on the
door.

Cameron opened it right away. “Hi,” she said, her eyes sweeping him up and down. He returned the favor. It had been only a day since he’d seen her at his office—making last-minute preparations for tonight’s operation—but he hadn’t truly examined her since last Sunday when they’d spent the night together in Star Harbor. Tonight, she looked beautiful but tired. He wanted to wipe away the stress and hold her in his arms until she relaxed. Until she was herself again. But he had a job to do first.

“Hi, Cam,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I’m sorry,” she said, opening the door wider to allow him in. “I’m just a little out of it, is all. It’s been a long night.” He locked the door behind him and she began walking up the stairs to the main floor. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Decaf, please.”

“Sure. It’ll be a few minutes. Have a seat and I’ll be right back.” She gestured to her sofa.

After she’d made his coffee and gotten some tea for herself, she sat down beside him. Over the next hour, she gave him a blow-by-blow of exactly what had transpired that night.

“All right,” he said. “We’re almost done. So what happened after you got the information from the hangar? You just walked right out?”

She shifted in her seat. “Not quite. There was a bit of an issue as I was leaving.”

“What issue?” he said, his voice inching into warning tones.

When she told him that she’d almost gotten caught in the outbuilding by the congressman, he kept as calm as he could and placed his coffee cup on the table.

“So you’re telling me that the only reason he didn’t walk in there was because Mrs. Alcott waylaid him and asked for help finding her way back to the party?”

Cameron nodded, looking anxious.

“And just what would you have done if she hadn’t appeared?”

“I would have used the alarm. I even had it in my hand, ready to go.”

He shook his head. He’d have to give Hermione a call to thank her for saving Cameron’s ass—and his own. Cameron wasn’t
actually
caught, but the fact that the congressman might have followed her was a bad sign. Her cover could have been blown, and there was no way he would put her in a situation like that again. Whether she was aware of it or not, her CI days were over.

“Okay, Cam, you’re right. It’s been a really long night.” He leaned over and brushed the
back of his hand over her cheek, noting the shadows under her eyes. “Let’s get to bed.”

Cameron shook her head. “We’ve already bent the rules too much. And my contract says—”

“I don’t give a damn what your contract says,” Val said, sweeping his thumb over her lips. “I’ve already spent too many nights without you, Cam. I can’t bear to spend another.”

“Me neither,” she whispered.

“Then we’re in agreement.” Then he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pulled her in for a kiss. An electric zing coursed through him, head to toe. She never failed to make his body react like this. After a few long minutes, he leaned back in order to catch a glimpse of that warm glow on her face he liked so much to see, especially knowing that he’d put it there.

Sleepily, she smiled up at him and he just melted. He’d never thought he’d want someone like her, until he realized he wanted her more than anything else.

Love and trust shone in her eyes, and he knew it was mirrored in his own. She’d done a brave thing tonight. Brave and honest. Other women of her station might not have stepped up to the challenge, but she had. And had blown him away with her strength.

“Come on, Cam, baby,” he said, sweeping one hand around her back and the other under her knees. “I got you.”