The alarm startled both of them out of sleep. "I'll get it," she whispered, managing to reach the doze button without shifting him. She closed her eyes against the morning sunlight; Aaron sighed and buried his head more deeply into her shoulder.
Ten minutes later the alarm split the silence yet again. "Why do we have to do this?" he groaned.
"Unless we want to shock Angie, I think we should be up and dressed by the time she gets here." She smiled. "I always thought of you as a morning person. Was I wrong?"
"No, I am. Usually." He kissed her shoulder. "But this is a special occasion. Not to mention the jet lag, and we didn't exactly sleep for twelve hours straight."
Martha chuckled, snuggling closer to him. "No." They had awakened in the middle of the night, made love a second time, then talked for a while before falling back to sleep. She closed her eyes and relaxed against him, letting her mind roam over her mental list for the day. Besides her conference with Angie she would need to make arrangements to meet with Charles, something she was not looking forward to. This thought fully awakened her, and she gave Aaron a gentle poke in the ribs. "I'll make the coffee, but you'll have to come out to the kitchen to get it."
He smiled sleepily. "Okay. I'll make breakfast if you make the coffee."
"Deal." She kissed him. "See you in ten minutes."
True to his word, Aaron appeared in ten minutes clad in T-shirt and boxers. He headed straight for the coffee maker and took his first sip with a sigh of relief. "I got so sick of tea in Russia. The only coffee St. Basil's had was instant, and it was awful." He turned to rummage in the refrigerator and then checked her kitchen cabinets. "Where's the vanilla?"
Martha got it for him. "What're you making?"
"French toast. It's kind of my thing. Every time my family gets together at the holidays I'm the one who makes breakfast."
Martha was charmed by the idea of Aaron patiently cooking breakfast for a squadron of relatives. "Well, let me watch and then next time I can help. Is this a family recipe?"
"No, it's something I got from a guy who used to run a diner in my home town. I loved his French toast, I used to order it all the time. I finally pestered him into giving me the recipe. He used vanilla. The other thing is you have to soak the bread for a while and then cook it slowly. Most people just dunk it and fry it too fast."
"But if you've got a bunch of people waiting for their French toast, what do you do?"
"Start it early and hold it in the oven on low. If you do it right, it won't dry out."
Martha thought for a moment. "So, you soak the bread while opening your Christmas presents."
"Exactly, and then the kids play with their stuff and the adults drink coffee and talk, and I cook." He grinned.
"I haven't had a Christmas like that in about a hundred years. It sounds wonderful." Martha sighed.
"Then we'll go. You can come with me if you want."
"I will. I definitely will, Aaron." She watched as he finished mixing the ingredients and poured the liquid over the bread slices.
"Now it just needs to sit for a few minutes—" he turned from the counter and found himself staring straight into Martha's eyes. Her nearness took his breath away, and for a moment he searched for words, any words, to tell her how he felt. Giving up, he pulled her close and felt her arms slide around his neck. They held each other tightly for a minute and then he pulled back far enough to look at her.
"Angie told me how you spoke up to the Gardners so you could stay with me in Moscow. That was when I knew how you really felt about me. If she hadn't told me I don't think I would have had the nerve …" he paused. "I haven't asked someone to go to bed with me since Diane left. I just couldn't."
His words confirmed what Martha had sensed since she'd first heard about his divorce from Angie. She pressed her face against his neck to hide the tears in her eyes. "But you did, and I'm so glad."
"Have I told you you look gorgeous in the morning? Because you do."
"You don't look half bad yourself," she whispered into his ear.
He raised an eyebrow. "What time did you say Angie was getting here?"
"Ten, and we still have to shower." She stroked his cheek. "You'll have to restrain yourself for another twelve hours."
He chuckled, and kissed her. "All right, but not a minute more. I'll shower first."
"Could I come with you, Aaron?"
His smile grew wider. "I think I'm getting mixed messages here," he said teasingly.
"Well, you are," she confessed, laughing. "I want to get that bandage off and take a look at your incision, but I have other reasons for wanting to get into the shower with you."
When Angie arrived she was not at all surprised to see Aaron still in the apartment and eating breakfast. She closed her eyes and inhaled the smell of cooking. "I see you still make that French toast, Aaron. Boy, does that take me back. It's like being home again."
"You want a piece? There's some left."
"I won't say no, not if you made it." She accepted a filled plate and sat down. "How are you feeling?" she inquired.
"A lot better, thanks. I think I'm going to run into the office today." He anticipated her accusing glare: "Don't bother, Martha already said it. But what else am I supposed to do? You guys are busy today anyway, and after being in the hospital I'm two weeks behind. This is still a new job for me. I'd just feel better if I had an idea of what was going on."
"I'll call Jon Cardona and tell him to kick you out if you stay too long," Martha threatened. "At least try to see the doctor today, will you?"
"I'll do that, I promise." Aaron got up from the table. "Let me get this cleaned up so you can get to work. Martha, maybe you'd better tell Angie what you told me yesterday about your divorce settlement."
Thus reminded, Martha quickly repeated what Susan had told her the day before: "By the time the lawsuits are over, everything we owned will probably be gone," she finished. "Susan's working on protecting a few things that are mine exclusively; Charles never held title to them. It won't be much, though."
"Does that mean you'd be willing to rethink the speaking tour?" Hearing this, Aaron turned around from where he'd been standing at the sink. With one eye on him, Martha answered, "Yes. I think I'm going to have to."
"Speaking tour? What speaking tour?" Aaron inquired. Though his tone was neutral, Martha somehow gathered that he wasn't in favor of the idea. Angie seemed to share her thought as she carefully replied, "It's something I suggested to Martha before we left for Russia. She's gotten a lot of invitations to appear on the West Coast and a couple in the Midwest. If we string them together and schedule them as a tour, it would save her time and travel expenses as well. It wouldn't take that long, maybe two weeks."
Aaron took a moment to consider this, then answered: "Make sure you let Jon Cardona know. He'd need time to make arrangements for you." He returned to his cleanup without further comment.
Martha quickly changed the subject. "I told you about this note yesterday, didn't I?" She handed Angie the anonymous message she'd found the night of their return.
"Yes, you did. Where did you say it was?" Martha pointed out the bowl, shifted from its original place on the mantel. Angie reread the note and then looked back at Martha. "Do you know what it's about?"
"No, but I need to find out. I'm going to talk to Charles again and see if I can get him to tell me what's going on."
"Did the cleaning service leave this?"
"We don't know yet. Aaron said he'd talk to Jon today."
"I'll ask him this morning. I'm going to run home first and then go in to see him." Aaron put away the last dish as he spoke. "I'll go get my bag." With a muttered excuse, Martha pushed her chair back and hurried to the bedroom after him.
"Aaron, is everything all right?"
Biting back an impulse to answer "no," he forced himself to smile instead. "Everything's fine, sweetheart." He put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. "It's fine," he repeated, hoping to reassure himself. "Let me ask around and find out what's going on, you work on your schedule with Angie, and we'll talk some more tonight."
"I want you to stay here again tonight," she whispered. Her directness completely disarmed him; she followed her request with a kiss on his parted lips that nearly made him fall at her feet. "You will, won't you?"
"You mean you're not sick of me yet?" He tried to ask it jokingly, but a note of anxiety in his voice gave him away. She dropped her seductive approach abruptly and laid her head on his chest.
"I'll never get sick of you. I want to spend as much time with you as I can. You'll be going back to work soon, I've probably got to do this speaking tour… we're going to be apart more than either of us wants. You don't think I actually want to leave you for two weeks, do you? Angie asked me about it before we left and I said no. But with my financial situation the way it is now—"
"I know, Martha. I understand. I'm overreacting." He felt a pang of guilt. "I know what it's like to be worried about money. After everything else that's happened, it's just ridiculous that you should have to deal with this."
"Well, it's not all bad. As Dr. Young pointed out, it's probably good for me to earn my own money. Psychiatrists love to set goals for their patients," she added dryly.
He grinned. "Am I a goal? What does Dr. Young say about me?"
"Oh, I haven't told her about you yet. I'm saving you up as a special treat." She twinkled at him.
Aaron started to laugh, overcome with a feeling of well-being. "If you want me to stay tonight, I have a request."
"Anything you want." She hugged him close.
"No alarm tomorrow. I have a feeling we're going to have a late night tonight."
Aaron strolled into his office about two hours later, wincing at the sight of paperwork stacked three inches thick on top of his desk. As he stood contemplating this bureaucratic nightmare he was distracted by an exclamation:
"Sir! Agent Pierce!" He turned and saw Mitchell staring at him. "Sir, aren't you on sick leave?"
"I am, but I'm coming back next week. I thought I'd come in and see what's going on. Looks like a good thing I did. What's all this?"
"Well, it's lots of things. A draft agenda for the next recruitment meeting, an overhaul of protocols for hiring and firing…" Mitchell's voice trailed off as he saw Aaron wince. "Agent Pierce, I was wondering if you could use an assistant. I mean, for some of this stuff so you don't have to deal with it."
"Well, I might." Aaron saw the appeal in Mitchell's eyes. "I mean, I definitely could. You could help me out quite a bit. Why don't you sort out the urgent stuff for me and I'll go talk to Agent Cardona for a minute. There was a problem a few days ago I need to discuss with him." Leaving a very enthusiastic junior agent behind him, Aaron headed two doors down to Cardona's office.
"Aaron!" Jon popped to his feet, grinning. "It's great to see you, but what are you doing here?"
"You know me, Jon. I can't sit and watch TV all day; I'd go nuts. I've got to see the doctor today anyway and I wanted a chance to talk to you away from Martha." Aaron's unconscious switch to first-name terms did not escape Cardona, but he let it pass without comment. "Did you talk to the cleaning service yet?"
"We did. They say they got a phone call requesting service four days before you got back, allegedly from Mrs. Logan's assistant. I sent somebody over there to check and the call is documented in their computer system. The person they sent over was a new hire and he hasn't picked up his paycheck. Nobody seems to know where he is."
Aaron got to his feet, frowning. "They know where she lives. They know who her assistant is. They know what cleaning service she uses…" He traded looks with Jon. "They've got to have somebody in the building."
The other agent nodded, his shoulders slumped. "It looks that way. Damn it, Aaron. I've never been in a situation like this before. She's not in the White House anymore; we just don't have the home ground advantage that we're used to having. She picked a good place to live, but it sure isn't the safe house we thought it was. I'm just thinking out loud here, but suppose we made arrangements to move her back? Even temporarily?"
"She wouldn't go." Aaron shook his head. "Even if she would there's no guarantee the White House is safe either. Remember Cummings? And Adams? No matter where she goes, anybody could be after her. And they haven't really done anything, they're just… watching. It's like they're keeping her in reserve for something. It worries me, Jon."
"I know. It worries me too." Cardona's normally cheerful expression was grim.
"If we could find out who their contact is in Martha's building, that might be a help." Aaron made this suggestion cautiously, not wanting to override Cardona's authority, and was pleased to see him perk up at the idea: "We'll do a background check on everybody there. Keep it quiet, you think?"
"As dark as you can, we don't want to scare them away. Once we know who it is we can put a tracer on them. It might be another lead to whoever's behind this thing." Aaron hesitated for a moment and then added, "I've got another piece of bad news for you. She's planning a speaking tour." He nodded at Jon's horrified expression, which mirrored his own reaction to Martha's announcement. The Agent Pierce side of his personality had wanted to talk her out of it, but he'd instantly realized that was not an option. He hoped he'd been successful in hiding his conflict from Martha, and had the fleeting thought that being her lover was proving to be more problematic than he'd anticipated.
"Tour? To where?"
Aaron shrugged. "West Coast. Chicago. They think it'll take about two weeks."
"Oh, Lord." Cardona groaned.
Out of necessity, Martha decided to postpone her meeting with her now ex-husband for a few days in favor of an intensive review of her finances and speaking schedule. A quick phone call to Joshua Tenney, in which she was careful not to make any mention of his partner, revealed that Charles had been transferred to a nearby federal prison pending his final sentencing. Tenney, though more than a little surprised, was happy to make arrangements for her visit; two days later she found herself undergoing the most intensive weapons search she'd ever endured prior to meeting with Charles in the visiting area. This makes airport searches look like kid stuff, she thought grimly.
Sooner than she'd anticipated she was staring at him through bulletproof glass with other visitors seated to her left and right. Martha, who had expected more privacy for their talk, realized that she would have to proceed with caution; picking up the telephone headset she asked quietly, "How are you doing, Charles?"
He gave her a look of disgust. "How do you think?" Dressed in prison coveralls and with his hair slightly longer than usual, he looked unfamiliar. Though his features had not changed, Martha felt no real sense of recognition when she saw him. Was I married to this man? she found herself thinking confusedly before pulling herself together.
She leaned forward: "Charles, there's something I have to tell you. Do you remember that bowl and the note I showed you the last time I saw you?" She waited for his nod. "I got another note a few days ago. I'd been out of town and found it under the bowl the night I came back. Your friends left me a message. I probably can't show it to you here, but I can tell you what it says: 'Tell Charles Logan he needs to keep his mouth shut. For his sake and for yours.'"
He looked at her, startled. "They came to you?"
"Yes, Charles. They're coming after me now, in more ways than one. Did you hear about the attack in Moscow? I don't know if you get access to the news here…"
"They let us watch it. And yes, it was all over the news. Why were you there?"
"Hal Gardner asked me to come along to help him out with the Suvarovs. It turns out Russian Intelligence is pretty good at putting the pieces together. They know you gave the motorcade information to the terrorists. Let's just say that relations between America and Russia have been a little tense the last few months." She gave him a tight smile. "Anyway, when the attack started I was standing next to Anya Suvarov and she overheard what the terrorists were saying. The Suvarovs weren't the primary target and neither were the Gardners. It was me. They wanted me taken alive." She watched him carefully, unsure what his reaction would be; he paled and his hands tightened on the edge of the counter. "It turns out they were members of a terrorist cell from Central Asia. Nobody knew I was going until less than two days before we left, so I think somebody must have leaked the information to them. We think we know who it was."
"It wasn't me." His answer came quickly. For the first time during their interview he'd dropped his defensive attitude. "It wasn't me, Marty. I swear it. I learned my lesson last time. I haven't given any information to anyone since the last time I saw you."
"Then what is this about? Why are they trying to turn me into their messenger?"
He stared off into space for a moment. "I was angry. I've lost everything I worked for all these years. By the time everyone gets through suing me, I won't have anything left. I've lost you. And they," he spat the word, "they haven't suffered at all. They dumped it all on me. Then I heard about your… new relationship." His eyes bored into her. "They really got a kick out of telling me, they called it 'ironic.' That was the last straw. I said I wanted support from them. They owed me protection. I told them I'd spill what I knew unless they made sure I'd be taken care of financially. An offshore bank account, someplace safe to live when I get out of jail… it wasn't all that much. What I wanted, they could afford easily."
"And this is their answer. They're using me to get back at you." He flinched.
"I don't want them using you like this, Marty. I don't."
"You're playing with fire, Charles. You can't trust these people. If you start threatening them something's going to happen." She paused. "As for my 'new relationship,' as you call it… yes, it's true. It didn't have anything to do with my decision to divorce you, and that's all I'm going to say. I don't want to discuss it with you." She moved to get up from her seat, but he called her back.
"Wait. You said you knew who leaked the information about Moscow. Who was it?"
She hesitated. "I'm not sure I should tell you, Charles."
"Please. I need to know. If it could help keep you safe, I want to know."
"Your attorney. We think it was Gene Dunlap."
"Oh, God. That figures." Logan said this almost to himself.
"Charles, it's being investigated; Hal Gardner has the Attorney General working on it. If you cooperate, if there's anything you can tell us, it might help."
Logan hesitated, opened his mouth—
"Time's up." A prison guard was standing behind Logan, ready to take him back to his cell. "Come back," he mouthed quickly and stood up. Martha felt a sudden chill as she watched him walk away, escorted by the guard.
