Water From the Moon (17 page)

"Thanks," he said. "That was real interesting. Horses, huh? Sure I can’t buy you a drink—or two?"

"Sorry. Rules. No drinking with reporters after flying."

"Too bad." He aimed a finger at them and made a snapping noise with his tongue. "See ya."

They watched him lope away, holding his equipment so that it wouldn’t bounce. Acasia chewed her cheek thoughtfully, swung into the plane for a quick look around and jumped down again beside Julianna.

"Sod," the latter proclaimed succinctly, and cracked a pocket of air out of her gum.

"Just doing his job." Acasia shrugged. "What would you have done?"

"For a story or a bleeding heart?"

Acasia made a noise that verged on laughter. Trust Julianna’s bluntness to cut straight to the heart of the matter. "Either one."

Julianna slammed the plane door and checked it. "Stick with it."

"That sounds easy."

"Yeah? Well, sounds can fool you." She gave herself a shake to ward off her own demons and joined Acasia. Hands in their pockets, they strolled across the tarmac beneath the sweltering sun.

* * *

"What did she tell you that she didn’t tell me?" Cameron asked. He couldn’t see much; the wall of dark jackets around him cut him off from the outside world as effectively as the outside world was cut off from him. Acasia had been right when she’d said his sojourn would bring him nothing but more of what he’d sought to avoid. "Or didn’t she tell you everything, either?" There was a hope, somewhere in the query, that she would go against type and surprise him.

Paolo snorted, and Cameron’s moment of optimism blew away. "Simon Jones’ daughter? I’ve known her a long time. She’s always had a habit of keeping her own counsel. You know how it is—the good con, like the good negotiator, doesn’t lie. But that doesn’t mean they actually tell you anything, either."

"I hear—" Cameron began, but got no further. There was a shout and a sudden jostling, and Paolo pushed Cameron’s head down and crouched over it, a human bulletproof vest.

Terse orders split the air, and Cameron was pulled and shoved, running, out of harm’s way, behind solid walls.

He flattened himself against painted brick and felt the jittery shimmy of shocked blood through his system. Now he remembered why he’d originally tucked himself away inside Rhiannon, conducting business outside the institute as infrequently as possible. Too many people took chances for him. Who he was placed too many people at risk. Too many people—and Acasia.

The vile taste of self–disgust filled his throat.

The security agent in front of Cameron cocked his head and touched a finger to his ear, listening a moment before activating the mic at his throat. "Right. No problem." He looked at Paolo. "That’s the all–clear. Just an unrelated domestic. We can move."

Relief mixed with adrenaline, chilled Cameron’s blood. He looked at Paolo. "You jumped at a shadow," he said. "Someone could have been hurt because of it."

Paolo’s shrug was faint, void of apology. "We don’t play percentages," he returned. "I’d rather run the routine for nothing than get caught being careless. Our opponents only have to be lucky once. We have to be lucky always." He straightened away from the wall. "Come on. Time for you to meet your press."

* * *

Acasia and Julianna rounded a corner of the terminal in time to catch the tail end of the commotion, the scattering of dark suits, the burst of sounds, the minor scuffle of resolution, the resurgence of calm and control. Reflex propelled Acasia toward the disruption, but instinct prompted her away after a swift visual search for Cameron. She found him tucked securely in the center of a moving huddle and gulped hard.

He found her, too, saw her standing and watching. Their eyes caught and held momentarily. There was a jolt of electricity; a touch could not have been more potent.

Fear and need pumped through her veins, hammered in her ears. How could anything so hot and fast and brilliant possibly last beyond a few stolen moments, a few idle trysts?

A step behind her, Julianna tracked Acasia’s concern and gave her friend’s shoulder a squeeze. "You all right?"

Acasia hunched her shoulders, pulling herself tight, and stared after Cameron. Julianna tugged at her, and Acasia made herself come aware. "What?"

"Case. You all right?"

Responsibility burned a hole in her thoughts. She had a job. She turned her back on Cameron and gave Julianna a lopsided smile. "I don’t think so," she said.

F
OR CAMERON, THE next two days were an interminable round of repeated questions.

Under Paolo’s omnipresent security blanket, he was shuttled through the airport from a cursory preliminary debriefing to a quick let–’em–take–your–picture–but–say–nothing press conference to a private hospital where his health was checked and approved before he was returned to the airport to board the private jet that waited to fly them to Washington.

In Washington, the questions didn’t vary, and neither did the answers. The media enjoyed a field day at his expense, turning hearsay and wire photos from his meeting with Sanchez into "fact."

At his official debriefing, time was unending, the questions repetitious. He told his story from every conceivable angle, beginning with the day six months earlier when the proposal for Smith Industries’ involvement in Zaragozan mining development had first reached his desk. He named every person he remembered who’d researched or advised him on the project, including two of his present examiners.

The State Department’s files on him were too thorough. They quizzed him about Acasia and his past relationship with her, then wondered about its current state. They asked about Fred and the clinic, tried to refute the existence of the mercenary Dominic Mansour. Cameron got the distinct impression that his examiners’ interest turned keener, their questions sharpened, at Mansour’s name.

After his fifth trip through the details, an aide was suddenly dispatched on a high–speed errand. When he returned an hour later for a whispered consultation with his superiors, the atmosphere went grim. Questions zeroed in on Acasia, leaving Cameron with clear intimations of the level of her professional status and blurred implications of the personal mistakes cluttering her past. Then, in an abrupt effort to catch him off guard, his questioners changed tack and asked him where Smith Industries’ negotiations over strategic metals mining in Zaragoza stood now.

By the time they finally dismissed him, Cameron had a too–clear impression of what Acasia had gone through after she’d been dumped, alone, by Lisetta’s kidnappers. He also had a pretty clear impression of what the State Department thought was going on.

"Why do they seem to think she’s part of this whole thing, this… whatever the hell it is conspiracy with Mansour?" he asked finally, when he and Paolo reached their hotel, passed through the chintz lobby, took the elevator and were safely through the door of suite 338.

"She doesn’t do much by the book, and they’re paid to be skeptical," Paolo returned without missing a beat.

"They don’t give a damn about the danger she put herself in for me."

"She’s paid to take her risks, same as they are."

"She could have been—could be—killed."

"So could you," Paolo said. "Mexican stand–off. It would be worse if you were together. Sanchez only wants you now because you’re a means to an end—and because you got away from him. Casie…" He made a small motion of regret. "This isn’t the first time she’s gotten between Sanchez and something—or someone—he wants. That she’s also a woman only adds to the insult. If he knew you two were…" a pause wrapped in a telling twist of Paolo’s lips "…
involved
with one another, and he could get to her through you…" He shrugged. "I wouldn’t give two cents for either one of you. And there are others out there like him. If she cares for you, you’re a danger to her, and she’s a danger to you. Apart, you both have a chance. It’s simple logic."

Cameron turned his head, his patience fraying. "Go to hell, Gianini. I don’t need another lecture on the merits of staying home, pulling in the drawbridge and forgetting about Acasia. If I couldn’t do it before, it damn sure won’t happen now." He shoved a hand through his hair, spinning around as he did so, finding his in–house security guards in their shadowed corners, one a bulwark near the window, the other on alert near the door. Their presence set his teeth on edge. "I need some space." He glanced at Paolo. "Okay if I use the john by myself?"

Paolo lifted his chin at the guard nearest the windows. "You guys check it out?"

The man nodded. "It’s clean."

"Good." Paolo waved a gracious hand at Cameron. "It’s all yours."

With an oath entirely lacking in civility, Cameron cursed Paolo and slammed out of the room.

* * *

From there the day lengthened, giving Cameron a headache that started between his eyes and speared up and back to his temples, where it settled with relentless persistence to interfere with his concentration. He spent much of the time on the phone, waiting for connections, conducting snatches of business, waiting for the State Department to decide he could go home. Worrying about where Acasia was, who she was seeing, whether or not she was all right. From time to time violence tempted him. As patient a man as he was, this kind of waiting was not his forte. It left him feeling impotent and vulnerable—not only to anyone Paolo and his crew were here to guard him against, but also to his own internal doubts. He didn’t like doubts. He’d always chosen to keep his fate in his own hands, to have things happen because he made them happen, not because he waited to see if they would.

Savagely he flung himself into the chair opposite Paolo and shifted his cell phone to his other hand.

Paolo eyed him thoughtfully, recognizing the symptoms. "It’s not the ifs of waiting that get to you," he observed to the glass of cabernet he lifted to the light. "The ifs are livable. It’s the maybes. Maybe if I’d done this differently. Maybe it’ll be all right. Maybe she’ll be home when I get there. Maybe she’ll never get home. Maybe this will be the last time. Maybe. And it’s the absolute certainty that, no matter what she promises, there will always be a next time, because there’s always someone whose needs are greater than yours, whose reasons for her to go are better than yours for her to stay." He looked at Cameron directly. "It’s tough knowing you’ll always come second to some stranger with no face or name or story you’ll ever be privy to."

"And maybe it’s the greatest act of trust," Cameron snapped irritably, covering the receiver with one hand, tired of Paolo’s incessant warnings. "Trusting someone to be there however many times you go away, maybe that’s the hardest thing to do."

Paolo stared over his wine at Cameron, startled approbation in his eyes. Cameron stared back, ending his conversation with his New York office and shutting off his phone with extreme care.

"Maybe," he said, "you underestimate me—and Acasia."

"It’s possible," Paolo admitted slowly. "It might be nice to be wrong this time. It would have been nice to be wrong about one of my own two wives and Julianna’s ex–husband, though, too. And we had fewer strikes against us than you and Casie do. You’re dangerous—"

"I’ve heard it," Cameron snapped, punching more numbers into his phone. "My visibility’s too high, and so’s my profile. I’ll work on that." He turned his attention to the phone. "Hello, Rhiannon? Tech lab."

Watching him, Paolo twiddled his fork and stabbed the last bit of sirloin on his plate. Across the room, the guard nearest the door swallowed the last of his sandwich and dabbed his mouth clean with a cloth napkin. The other guard wandered ceaselessly, limbering up his hands by rolling quarters over the backs of his knuckles. The air was rife with waiting and forced patience and silence.

"Look," Paolo said finally, quietly, during a lull in Cameron’s phone call, "sitting tight is a bitch, but the best thing you can do right now, for both you and Casie, is stay away from her and lie low, where it’s safe."

Cameron eyed him without expression and spoke into the phone, shuffled some papers, listened. He had to work, needed to act. He didn’t want to stop here, bathing in doubts, fearing for Acasia, but every word Paolo spoke struck true in a way he wanted to deny and couldn’t. His own safety could be damned as far as he was concerned, but Acasia’s was another matter. He also knew from past experience that fearing for Acasia held no future as a long term occupation, and that, regardless of what Paolo or anyone else said, long term with Acasia was the row he proposed to hoe. Under that proviso, trust would be the name of the game because it had to be. She’d fought her own battles for a long time, and he had to believe she could do it again and survive.

And return.

Tomorrow, he thought. Second star to the left and straight on till morning.

* * *

Cameron lay in the hotel bed, fingers laced behind his head, the sliver of white light shining through the crack in the curtains cutting a swath across his face and chest. For three hours his overloaded thoughts had denied him sleep, dragging him instead around the carousel where he’d spent the day: Acasia–business–security–Acasia…

The confusion his disappearance had created among his business concerns was less than he’d anticipated, but still enough to warrant his personal attention to straighten out. This meant an excess of time spent in New York under Paolo’s edict of heavy surveillance. Acasia was a problem he didn’t want to think about. The more he thought about her, the more questions he had, and the more it took to convince himself that she was entitled to her evasions, her past and her secrets. He didn’t want to believe—
couldn’t
believe—that she was better off without him. If there was one thing he had, it was enough money to protect them both once they were caged behind the walls at Rhiannon.

He caught himself on the word caged, edited it from his thoughts and refused to let the slip bother him. He knew, from personal experience, how anything caged hunted for the exit.

The phone in the suite’s sitting room jangled shrilly, and Cameron’s feet hit the floor by the middle of the first ring. Every instinct he possessed told him it was Acasia, or about Acasia.