Water From the Moon Page 14

  "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.

  Paolo beat him to the instrument by half a step.

  "Gianini… What? Casie? No… What?"

  Reception was bad. Cameron could hear the crackle of static when Paolo winced and pulled the receiver away from his ear at a particularly intense electronic whine.

  "Say again… " Paolo said into the phone when the static passed. "You’re finished? What? In a day? He’s that good? Are you serious? Oh, hell. All right. Good job… Yes, damn it, I’ll put him on. Here he is." He passed the phone to Cameron. "It’s for you."

  Relief was an intense emotion, but Cameron reined it in to keep it from galloping out of his chest and into his voice. "Casie?"

  The overseas connection had cleared up. Acasia’s voice vibrant and firm. "I’m done."

  "You okay? Any problems?"

  "Uh–uh. The contact I worked with pinpointed the kid just before I got here. All I had to do was wait till dark and pull him out. It was a piece of cake. How are you?"

  "Better now." Cameron wanted to say more, but he stopped himself. She knew how he felt. He’d told her. He knew how she felt; she’d kept her promise to call. He hung on to the transatlantic silence for a moment, holding her close before letting her go. "Thanks," he said. "For calling." He’d promised himself not to ask for more.

  "If I come home," Acasia said carefully, "will you be there?"

  Cameron’s lungs constricted. "Yes," he said, just as carefully. "When?"

  "New York early today, then Rhiannon. I’ll let myself in."

  Cameron grinned, recalling the times when she’d challenged and beaten his father’s elaborate alarm systems. "You can come through the front door if you want to. Might make a nice change." He listened to Acasia laugh, relishing the sound. "At any rate, if you’ll be in New York, I’ll see you before Rhiannon."

  "I’d like that," Acasia said. "Long as it’s at my office, not yours."

  "Sounds good. End of business?"

  "After hours would be better. Fewer stragglers to keep track of."

  The care they had to take in setting up their rendezvous irked Cameron, made him think of other things she had to hide. "After hours," he said. Then, gently, because he knew her well, because he wanted to know she’d really made the choice: "You sure you want to do this?"

  Acasia hesitated, feeling her way. "No, but… avoiding it isn’t any good, Cam. I froze… for a second… on the job tonight, and, uh… I’ve always told myself I’d be smart enough to pull back if my personal life got in the way of the way I do my job. It has, and I am, so I’m coming home. Leave a candle in the window so I don’t get lost, would you?"

  "I’ll put the floodlights on if it’ll help," Cameron promised.

  "I may need ’em," Acasia said, and hung up.

  Cameron put the phone in its cradle and glanced at Paolo. "You got a problem?"

  "Nothing a sledgehammer or some sense wouldn’t cure," Paolo snapped. He made a hissing noise between his teeth. "She’s coming back."

  Cameron nodded.

  "You’re going to let her."

  "She said she choked on the job tonight," Cameron said.

  Paolo stared at him. "You must be good if you can mess up the most self–contained person I’ve ever known in two days."

  Cameron ignored him. "You’ve got carte blanche on security at Rhiannon. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid. And having both your birds in the same cage ought to make things easier for you all round."

  Paolo’s answer was simple sarcasm. "Real easy. Instead of two people to look after, we’ll have you, Casie and everyone at the institute, as well. God knows which of them might need a little extra cash and be willing to sell your enemies a way in—or who might be willing to wield the sword himself. I wish everything we did was this easy." He turned impatiently into the sitting room and swung back. "She told you she choked?"

  Again Cameron nodded.

  "Damn." Paolo drummed his fingers on the tabletop. "Damn." He eyed Cameron again. "You’re a crazy bastard, you know that? But I’ll make the arrangements." He picked up the phone. "You can’t hide forever. You know that, too."

  "Not forever," Cameron said. "Just long enough to establish some sort of foundation with her."

  He gave the watchdog beside his door an affable nod, went into his room and shut out the security force with a satisfying click. Then he crawled between the sheets and slept.

  * * *

  Morning was well underway when the charcoal limousine pulled up in front of the hotel and the driver alighted. There were few passersby on the street: a female jogger with a stroller, a man with a briefcase, a variety of students dressed to beat the spring heat. The driver studied them all, then nodded at the hotel’s revolving doors. Two of Cameron’s guards came through, then Paolo and Cameron, with another two guards covering the rear. Paolo stopped Cameron on the sidewalk in the shade of the building.

  "All clear?" he asked the driver.

  The man in proper chauffeur’s livery nodded. "Clean as a whistle, stem to stern."

  "Good." Paolo motioned Cameron forward. Toget
her they stepped into the sun. The driver reached for the limousine’s rear door, smiling at them.

  The firebomb he’d missed under the rear seat exploded as Paolo and Cameron crossed the walk, taking the car and the driver with it.

  Chapter 12

  TILE AND LINOLEUM, white plasterboard walls and stainless steel, multicolored smocks, white uniforms, CT scans, monitors and stethoscopes.

  Waiting.

  Ears tuned to the scream of sirens, the squeaky wheels of the gurneys and the PA system, Cameron took it all in. He felt oddly detached, shredded into bits and snatches of a person, like a series of disparate photos and quotes scattered across the pages of a magazine purporting to sum up his life. Intellectually, shock was a fascinating phenomenon. He’d experienced it twice now within ninety hours, but this time was different from the last. This time he knew he should be in pain, but he wasn’t. Nothing hurt; he wasn’t cold or warm; he was detached but aware even with his vision blurred, his hearing dulled by the explosion.

  He’d never been inside an emergency ward in his life. He’d had no bad cuts, broken bones, appendicitis attacks, illnesses. Visiting sick friends had brought him through the front door, kept him on the outer fringes of hospital life.

  Boston relatives ailed in private. His father’s stroke had been attended to at a private facility, then in a specially equipped wing of the family home.

  Someone pulled back his right eyelid, flashed a penlight twice across the eye, then did the same thing to the left.

  "Possible concussion," a female voice observed. "Looks like he hit his head recently. There’s a cut back here with three stitches in it, clean, no infection." Impersonal fingers moved on to Cameron’s face, then probed his ribs. "First–degree burns and lacerations, face and chest… We’ll put stitches in those two cuts on his right cheek… First– and second–degree burns to both forearms and the backs of his hands, broken blisters on the index, middle and third fingers of his left hand." She looked up at whoever she was talking to. "Police say he used his hands to beat out the fire on his chauffeur. That quarter–size burn on the ball of his left thumb is pretty nasty. Let’s clean him up. I want a better look."

  "What about this IV?"

  "Run the rest of it in and discontinue. Order routine lab work and have X–ray take a gander at his ribs. From the looks of these bruises, the explosion threw him pretty hard."

  He wanted to participate in what was going on around him, but he couldn’t quite shake his detachment. Images flashed at him, almost registering. He saw the limousine, the chauffeur, the explosion, saw the driver, Byrd blown out toward him…. The image clung to his eyes like blindness, forcing all other sights away. He wanted to ask, to know about the driver. Byrd. The man had a name. He wanted to remember that.

  "Where—" he began, but his throat was dry. He cleared it. "How are the others, the ones who were with me? Byrd, Paolo Gianini… the others?"

  The nurse cleaning his hands glanced at the doctor who was swabbing his face. The doctor eyed Cameron without stopping what she was doing. "Gianini has a couple of cracked ribs and a broken arm. Your driver died on the way in. The others are better off than you."

  Cameron shut his eyes, and the new stitches he hadn’t felt them put in his cheek pulled. Shock faded abruptly. "Dead?"

  The doctor nodded. "You got to him fast enough that he might have survived his burns, but he had extensive internal injuries, a ruptured spleen. You did all that anyone could do."

  Cameron’s jaw clenched, and his face ached. The most anyone could do hadn’t been enough. One dead, six injured. Because he’d let someone else decide what was safest for him to do. He was responsible. Guilt raised its head, pricking his conscience, and the enemy inside him agreed with every accusation.

  One dead.

  He studied his left hand, absently noticing the antibiotic salve glistening on fingers separated by pads of gauze, now being wrapped loosely in more gauze.

  "That’s it," the doctor said, placing the tape and bandage scissors back on the treatment tray for the nurse to take away. "Those fingers will bother you for a while, but the burns themselves aren’t too serious. I do want to keep you overnight for observation, though. Someone should be down shortly to admit you, then we’ll get you into a room. Until then, just stay here and take it easy."

  She moved to the door, stopped and turned back. "I understand there’s a police detective and a couple of federal agents waiting to see you."

  Cameron’s brain switched on with a snap. "Let ’em wait," he said sharply, then quieted at the doctor’s start of surprise. "I’m sorry. I just don’t feel up to talking to anyone yet. I’d like to collect myself a bit. Would you, er, give me a few minutes…?"

  The doctor smiled. "Sure, no problem. I was about to suggest that they wait to see you until after you’re situated for the night anyway."

  "Thanks," Cameron said gratefully. "I appreciate it."

  "Anytime." The doctor nodded and left.

  The moment he was sure she was gone, Cameron heaved himself off the examining table and leaned against it until the treatment room’s sterile mix of white tile and stainless steel stopped reeling around him. He had to get out of here. Every moment he remained in protective custody he was not only in danger, but also a danger to others. You couldn’t travel in packs of ten or twelve dark suits, white shirts, nondescript ties, and limousines and expect to go unnoticed. Anonymity increased safety, and he knew that, like Acasia, he would blend into the woodwork better on his own.

  All his life he’d been instructed in the certainties of how often unpredictability determined a wealthy man’s life span.

  The death of his driver had given him an object lesson in how easily predictability killed. Right this minute, he didn’t much care if the bomb had been an attempt on his life from someone in Zaragoza or the work of some other group who’d decided that riding the shirttails of his current notoriety was the shortest way into the limelight for themselves and their cause. He would worry about that when he had the time. Whoever they were, he wanted the people who’d killed Byrd. That was a simple, cold fact. But he couldn’t do anything until he’d taken care of another, more urgent concern. If he stayed here, Acasia would walk into this circus. And he couldn’t let her do that. He loved her. And one death on his conscience was one too many.

  He had to get to Rhiannon, where he would have access to his own resources and to contacts who could handle finding a few terrorists for—or better yet, with—him. But first he had to find Acasia. Paolo was certain she would be safer apart from him, but Cameron knew better. He knew Acasia. To try to move without her would be a waste of energy. She would track him down and wind up with him anyway. Or she’d do her level best to divert attention from him by placing herself between him and whoever else might come after him. And if, as he suspected, the bomb had anything to do with Zaragoza, Emilio Sanchez or Dominic Mansour—especially Mansour, he was afraid—he had no doubt that Acasia would make a more than acceptable substitute target.

  If she wasn’t already Mansour’s primary target.

  A ball of ice formed in his stomach at the thought. He couldn’t let her be a target. She was too precious. The only chance he had to protect her was to make damn sure that, wherever he was, she was with him. He had to find a phone.

  He shoved himself erect and took a step toward the door.

  * * *

  Acasia looked around the emergency room reception area, eyeing the cubicles where nurses took information, assigning order and importance to injury and illness. The bones in her right arm plagued her with phantom pain, a reminder of the time she’d spent waiting for Lisetta in another emergency room. The muscles in her left shoulder ached from last night’s excursion, another payment chalked up against that old, invisible debt. But—and she knew this didn’t quite make sense—because she’d made this latest payment she hadn’t been with Cam, and now he was here, hurt. She felt as if she’d been up against catch–22—damned if she did and damned if she di
dn’t—and lost. Even if she’d been with him, he would probably be here. She wished she’d been with him anyway.

  "Are you hurt? Can I help you?"

  Acasia recoiled, startled, from the woman who’d touched her arm. "No. Uh, thanks, no. I’m just… waiting."

  God, she hated emergency rooms.

  She moved away from reception, what ifs piling up in her mind.

  She didn’t even consider it a possibility that someone other than Sanchez—meaning Dominic Mansour—had ordered Cameron hit. There were too many rumors that Zaragoza had made connections within certain factions inside the States and was using them to carry out contracts. Her hands formed fists at her sides, and Angelo’s threat, his offer, came to mind. She didn’t like the taste it left in her mouth, but she hated this more. If she wanted to do something to stop Sanchez, to stop Dominic, from going after people she cared about, Angelo was an option. But first she had to see Cameron.

  Grimly she glanced through the open double doors to the hallway beside Reception. The congregation of suits and uniforms midway along the hall told her where Cameron must be. She wanted to go to him, to get him out of this fishbowl. He would have his best chance on familiar turf, where he called the shots. If she spirited him out of here and to Rhiannon, he could close ranks. She’d taken a look at the institute’s security blueprints before she’d left New York, and the layout was good, if not perfect, and highly defensible. Heading there would be a hell of a lot better than bolting without direction. If she took him through his own alarm system at night, no one but his most trusted security people need even know he’d arrived, possibly for several days. Certainly long enough for her to plug the holes she’d noted in his defenses.

  After that… it would be a simple matter of making sure anyone who didn’t belong on the scene was picked off as he appeared. If he wasn’t, Rhiannon’s position between under–utilized federal lands and the Green Mountains offered a target area that could make hunting Cameron a lot like shooting fish in a barrel. Acasia scrubbed her palms dry on the deep violet silk of her suit and set her jaw. She had absolutely no intention of allowing Cameron to be a fish.