Oath Of Honor

Chapter Three

Hot zone. The term wasn’t new to Wes, but somehow she didn’t think Dr. Peter Chang was using it in the usual medical sense, meaning an area of contamination—typically bacterial or viral or chemical. In combat, the term referred to the region under fire. When teaching battlefield evacuation, Wes stressed that the hot zone was the area where the injured were still in the line of fire, and those charged to secure their safety would be too. Working in the hot zone was a way of life for a battlefield surgeon, and though her career path had been one of teaching, she’d done her tour at the front.

She hadn’t had much time to think about the tactical aspects of her new job, and she wasn’t sure who she should talk to about the specifics. One thing any team leader learned quickly was to keep their inexperience to themselves. She wasn’t too proud to ask for help when she needed to know something, but she didn’t plan to walk into her first day on the job acting like a rookie, either. No one needed to explain the critical nature of her assignment; she had only to look around the room. The president of the United States, his chief of staff, his military liaison, his daughter, her newly wedded partner, several ranking members of the cabinet, at least one member of the Joint Chiefs, the national security advisor, and the president’s security chief were all gathered in one room. A strike against this location would effectively paralyze the government of the most powerful nation in the world. It wasn’t her job to worry about the security of the nation, only the health, welfare, and safety of its leader.

Right now, that leader was dancing with his daughter, as any father of the bride would. Ushers and valets in crisp white jackets and black tuxedo pants had magically secreted the chairs somewhere out of sight. A four-piece band had set up adjacent to where the vows had been exchanged and was playing soft jazz. Waiters passed through the crowd with flutes of champagne on silver trays. The atmosphere was boisterous and relaxed. Wes didn’t feel relaxed.

She might not have officially begun her duty, but she was all but signed-on-the-dotted-line, making every individual in this room her responsibility whether she carried the black field-trauma bag today or not. She wasn’t here to socialize. She wasn’t exactly sure why she was here, but as long as she was, she intended to work if necessary.

“What’s the evacuation route to the nearest medical facility?” she asked Peter.

“There’s a EC145 Eurocopter standing by. The closest level one trauma center is about a twenty-minute ride.”

“Who flies it?”

“One of the marine pilots out of Andrews. He and our flight nurse are in the building.”

“And you’re in charge today?”

“Yes. We draw up the duty roster monthly, depending upon POTUS’s itinerary and events scheduled at the House.” Peter’s expression grew somber. “Len was supposed to have this detail.”

She wondered if Chang and the previous medical chief had been close friends, although their personal relationship didn’t really matter. The death of a colleague, especially someone you worked with every day, was painful, and no words of sympathy were ever adequate. “I was sorry to hear of his death.”

Peter nodded, watching the crowd. “Yeah. We all were.”

“I’ve seen the team roster.” Wes had been provided dossiers on all the members of the team—three docs, three flight nurses, three PAs. Not a huge group considering they covered the clinic for White House staffers, visitors, and guests, oversaw routine and urgent care for the president’s and vice president’s families, and accompanied the president on all scheduled and OTR trips. “That makes for some pretty intense scheduling.”

“It can get hectic.”

“We can pull personnel from Bethesda if we need to?”

Peter shifted slightly and met her gaze. “You can do pretty much anything you want to do, Captain. It’s your show.”

She searched his eyes, looking for resentment or resistance or challenge. He was in his late thirties, about her height, clean-shaven with a wiry build, and dressed in a navy suit, a plain pale blue shirt, and a thin black tie. His straight, glossy dark hair was precisely parted on the right side, and a thick shock fell over his forehead. His eyes were chocolate brown, steady and calm. Understated, composed, with a hint of reserve—he didn’t know her, and she was now his boss. She’d need his cooperation, if not assistance, to make the transition a smooth one and to ensure the team continued to function at top efficiency. Too much was at stake for anything less. Taking a chance that professionalism would trump personal issues, she exposed her underbelly. “Who do I answer to, unofficially?”

The guy whose job she’d probably taken smiled. “Pretty much no one, except the president’s chief of staff. Lucinda Washburn runs his schedule, which means she runs pretty much everything. If you need something that affects the president, ask her. Next in line is the head of his personal protection detail, Tom Turner.” Peter scanned the room. “He’s around here somewhere—tall, thin African American, about forty. He’ll provide our weekly itinerary and general assignments, updated every morning at briefing.”

At the mention of the Secret Service detail, Wes thought of Agent Daniels. She’d struck Wes as being a little humorless and a short step away from unfriendly—a lot like some of the military police she knew. Maybe that was just an occupational trait in closed groups with little regard for outsiders. “Where exactly do we fall in the chain of command?”

Peter waggled his hand. “We have to liaise with the Secret Service pretty intimately, because when he moves, they move, and we go with them.”

“Separate but equal?”

He shrugged. “That’s not exactly how they see it but, technically, yes. If a situation impacts his physical security, they carry the ball. If it has to do with his medical safety, we do.”

“And if we disagree?”

He smiled for the barest second. “Depends on who has the biggest bark.”

“Or bite?”

“That too.”

Wes sighed inwardly. She hated politics. What the hell had she been thinking?

*

Evyn made her way along the veranda to the rear of the house, where they’d set up their command post. After four hours outside in the wind and cold, she was ready for a cup of coffee or ten. She had no idea how much longer they’d be stuck out here in the ass-end of nowhere, but she was pretty sure she’d be outside again before they left. Departure time was fluid, depending on how long the postnuptial celebrations went on. It didn’t matter much to her. Other than being outside in the damn cold, she didn’t care how long she worked. The more she worked, the more overtime she made and the less free time she had to figure out how to fill until her next shift. There was only so much after-work socializing she could do with the other members of the detail, only so many movies she could watch while rattling around her apartment in Alexandria, and only so much clubbing she could take in search of a few hours’ company.

There had been less and less of the last diversion lately. Sometimes the effort just didn’t seem worth the payoff. She enjoyed the physical anticipation as she got dressed to go out and drove to one DC club or another. The tingle in her belly while she spent a few hours nursing a drink and scanning the room for possibilities kept her mind occupied too. Anything that got her adrenaline surging felt good, and it was hard to complain about sex in any fashion, but more and more when the night was done and she drove home alone after leaving some near stranger’s bed at oh-dark-thirty, she felt dissatisfied. Physically sated maybe, but with the nagging feeling whatever she’d been hoping to find, she hadn’t.

So on those more and more frequent nights when she was at loose ends, the best thing that could happen would be a text telling her the duty roster had changed once again and she had to report for an extra shift, or POTUS had decided on an early-morning run and they needed more bodies to go with him. She never minded.

A couple of her fellow agents were married, and they griped and grumbled about the frequent changes in the rotation, although not so loud anyone higher up could hear them. After all, they did have the premier protection detail. What could be more important than safeguarding POTUS? Some of them tried to have a normal life after hours. She wasn’t one of them and never expected to be. She’d always wanted to do exactly what she was doing—she craved the stress and challenge and satisfaction of her work. Except for the damn cold.

Nodding to the agent huddled in his topcoat on the porch of the truly awesome house, she stamped her feet on the deck to clear the snow from her boots and pushed through the door into the big kitchen that took up half the rear of the house. Caterers and waiters and busboys bustled around, replacing half-empty champagne glasses with full ones, pulling trays of hot hors d’oeuvres from the oven, and sliding cold canapés from the refrigerator. A huge coffee urn sat on a sideboard with a stack of what looked like honest-to-God china cups next to it. No way was she drinking out of one of those. She grabbed one of the paper takeaway cups pushed back under one of the cabinets and filled it to the brim with hot black coffee. Carefully making her way around the party staff, she eased through the door into the dining room, where several agents observed video feeds from external cameras, watched computer monitors displaying overhead satellite images, and manned the radio COM center. Several greeted her, and she flicked a finger in their direction.

She shed her coat, tucked it into the closet at the far end of the room, and meandered down the hall toward the noisy celebration. The coffee was hot and strong and she sipped it appreciatively. Her fingers and toes started to warm. Maybe there was life beyond December after all. She stopped in an archway with a view of the great room and automatically scanned the space looking for the other agents. Finding them posted strategically around the perimeter, and satisfied all was as it should be, she leaned a shoulder against the archway and relaxed.

She knew everyone at the gathering, either personally, by sight, or from reviewing the guest list at the morning briefing. The only person out of place was the woman standing directly across the room from her. Captain Wesley Masters. Evyn would have noticed her under any circumstances—and who wouldn’t? Her face was a striking combination of elegant angles and sweeping planes, her eyes that vivid sparkling green, her toned body showcased in the immaculate uniform. Uniforms really didn’t do much for her, since she was surrounded by people wearing them all the time, but just the same, Masters looked good in hers. Very good. Lean hips, medium breasts, narrow waist, and slightly broader shoulders. Evyn didn’t have to work hard to conjure up a fantasy of wrapping her legs around those tight hips and twisting her hands in those thick, sun-kissed locks. Instantly, she banished the image. Masters was not fantasy material. She was all too real and was probably going to be a pain in the ass.

POTUS was about to embark on his reelection campaign, which meant constant traveling, insane hours, unpredictable changes in the itinerary, and very real threats at every stop. It was game time, and no one, including the green medical officer across the room, was going to have the luxury of time to adjust to the new circumstances. Masters would have to hit the ground running, and hopefully she’d be able to absorb everything she needed to know in record time.

“Have you met the new WHMU chief yet?” a rumbling voice asked from beside her.

She turned toward Tom Turner, her boss and head of PPD. “Saw her when she came in. Surprise, surprise.”

Tom winced. “You know how it is. Decisions get made, people forget to share.”

“Uh-huh.” Politics—same old BS. “Kind of rushed to just drop her in like this, don’t you think? We never even had a briefing.”

“I’m sure the other members of her team will brief her on the medical end of things,” Tom went on.

Evyn sipped her coffee, watching Masters move away from Pete until she was standing alone at the edge of the crowd. Her face was composed, unreadable really, as she carefully focused on first one individual in the crowd then another, as if she was memorizing their faces. Maybe she was.

“She’s never worked with a security detail before,” Tom said. “She’s going to need indoctrination.”

“And pretty damn fast too,” Evyn said absently, fascinated by the intense, absorbed expression on Masters’s face. The fantasy in her head changed from the hot, anonymous body pressing down between her thighs to a glimpse of a captivatingly beautiful face leaning over her, fierce concentration in her green, green eyes. She imagined how it would feel to be the focus of all that intensity, and something fluttered under her rib cage. Her heart rate jumped and raced. Pulling her eyes away from the navy captain, she tried to capture the last few words Tom had said. No luck. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m assigning you as her unit liaison.”

Evyn stiffened. “I’m sorry? Me?”

“She’ll need basic training to know how the unit runs, how we communicate, protocols for various threat situations, and obviously, we’ll need to evaluate how she’s going to handle different types of medical threats and emergencies.”

“And you expect me to be the one getting all this done?”

Tom smiled. “You’re not complaining about a week or so off regular rotation, are you? Ought to be a slam dunk.”

Evyn slid her eyes back to Wes Masters, who was no longer looking at the crowd. She was looking directly at Evyn, her expression assessing, thoughtful, inscrutable.

The fluttering in Evyn’s belly coalesced into a hard, unsettling pulse of arousal. What the hell? She felt like prey instead of the predator, a definite role reversal and not a comfortable one. She held Masters’s gaze and threw back a little heat of her own. Masters smiled, shook her head ever so slightly, and looked away.

The instant Masters was no longer studying her, Evyn wanted those green eyes back on her. Her skin burned from just a glance. She wouldn’t try to imagine what a real touch would do to her—not while she was in public. That little fantasy would have to wait.