CHAPTER TEN
After the Hay-Adams brunch meeting with Beth, Camden spent the afternoon debriefing with Parker, though he didn’t think there was all that much to discuss.
Afterward, Camden met up with a few of the guys he knew on Titan’s US team.
They went out for beers, but Amelia never left his mind.
The next day, she was still there as he stepped off the metro at Union Station.
They didn’t have a reason to meet.
For all intents and purposes, he was finished with this job.
Camden’s only responsibility was to wait for Jared and the CIA to decide nothing was left to discuss—though Beth had thought he should meet one of the Dumonts’ points of contact.
Still, that didn’t have anything to do with Amelia—and Amelia was the person he wanted to meet with.
But that would be strange.
He couldn’t just ask a random person he’d spoken to on a phone call to meet up.
However, it wasn’t just one phone call, and she wasn’t a random person, at least not anymore.
After overthinking the situation, Camden decided the only meeting he needed to have was with his family.
New Jersey was a short couple of hours away if he jumped on Amtrak.
Surprising his brothers would be exactly what he needed to clear his mind.
That was the plan.
With a train ticket purchased and half an hour to kill, Camden mixed in with the morning commuter crowd and searched for a coffee shop.
He found a deli that served breakfast and no-fuss coffee.
The smell of cheesy, melty breakfast sandwiches made his mouth water.
He got in line and took his phone out.
He could text Amelia.
Or he could delete her number and never talk to her again.
Camden scrubbed a hand over his face.
This wasn’t like him.
He never doubted himself, especially when it came to women.
Was this a woman thing?
She’d certainly piqued his interest.
The problem was they’d never met.
He didn’t even know what she looked like.
That had been a purposeful decision.
It was like a built-in barrier to avoid a complication.
Somehow, someway, he liked Amelia a lot—insomuch as a person could like another a lot after a few short although somewhat life-changing conversations.
The line hadn’t moved.
A dull grumble of complaints surrounded Camden as he cleared his mind of Amelia.
“We don’t have fifty everything bagels,” the cashier told the man in front of Camden.
By the sound of it, that wasn’t the first time it had been said.
“I have about a dozen left. That’s it. Take it or leave it.”
Camden had totally zoned out and now glanced at the time.
He still had plenty of room to spare before his train departed, but a big order from the guy in front of him might screw up his schedule.
“Look, I don’t think you understand.” The man in front of Camden leaned onto the counter.
“The bagels are for very important people, and if I don’t show up on the Hill with them, very important people are going to be upset. So, can you find them or defrost them or whatever you have to do so I can pay and be on my way?”
The exasperated cashier blinked slowly.
“We. Don’t. Have. Them.”
“I heard what you said.” The guy pulled out his wallet and extracted a wad of cash.
“But there’s a really solid tip—”
“I’m going on break,” the cashier announced.
The line of waiting customers groaned.
“Come on, asshole,” someone said from behind Camden.
“Get a fucking grip. They don’t have what you want.”
The man in front of Camden turned to face off against the line.
“If I don’t have the bagels when I walk into my office, I’m gonna get fired. So, fuck you, and give me a minute while I get this straightened out.”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Camden muttered under his breath.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, remembering why he hated Washington, DC, and most everyone inside its city limits.
The majority of the area’s residents were fine.
But that special breed of jackass drawn to politics and power grated on his senses.
Another cashier, looking forewarned and fully capable of handling customers who caused headaches, took the place of the first. Her gaze skipped straight to Camden.
“Can I help whoever’s next?”
He sidestepped the jackass holding up the line.
“I’ll take a number two.”
“You can’t cut in front of me, asshole.”
“A number two,” Camden repeated.
“ On an everything bagel .”
“Oh, give me a fuckin’ break. That’s my everything bagel.”
The corners of his lips quirked.
He normally would’ve ordered an Asiago bagel.
Not today. “Don’t think it is.”
“Anything else?” the cashier asked.
“Large coffee. Black.”
Camden casually tapped his credit card on the reader and gave the cashier a nice tip and a commiserating grimace when she returned with the steaming hot cup.
“Next?” the cashier called, still ignoring the man huffing about his VIP order of everything bagels.
He stepped around the man and moved to the far counter to wait for his order.
A muted television showed the local news.
The meteorologist pointed at a map of falling temperatures as fall turned into winter.
DC was pretty that time of year.
That was about the only thing the place had going for it.
He checked the time and glanced at the line again, where the man was still ranting about the very important people on the Hill.
The line of customers progressed without him.
Camden might have been wrong, but he was pretty sure he’d started a trend.
The next several orders included at least one everything bagel.
In record time, his order was called.
The waxy paper bag crinkled in his hand.
He grabbed a handful of napkins and caught sight of the television screen again.
The mugshot of a woman about his age was above a chyron that read Arlington Double Murder Suspect Arrested.
A prickle of unease slid down his spine.
“Hey.” Camden gestured toward the television.
“Would you mind turning that up?”
The woman bagging orders glanced over her shoulder.
Another person shrugged and unmuted the local broadcast.
“Thanks.”
But the news anchor had pivoted to another story.
The screen flashed to a brightly smiling reporter who stood in front of a building with its front door wrapped in a brilliant red bow.
The closed-captioning scrolled across the bottom of the screen, announcing the ribbon cutting for a recently completed renovation of a community center.
“You can mute it again. Thanks.” Camden took a seat, pulled out his phone, and searched the internet for an arrest in a double murder in Arlington, Virginia.
It didn’t take long.
Amelia Stone had been charged with two counts of murder.
There weren’t many details.
Her mug shot landed like a gut punch thrown by a missile launcher.
Amelia Stone’s delicate features were distorted by red-rimmed, puffy eyes partially framed by a half moon of dark circles.
Her raven hair hung limply behind her back.
He couldn’t stop staring at the woman he’d spoken to—at the woman he had helped and knew to be innocent—but he finally tore himself away from the mug shot and searched for additional information.
He didn’t get much beyond the repetitive facts regurgitated by local news.
But that was because the charges were bullshit.
Fuck. Beth had said everything would get worse before it got better.
Had she known this was about to happen?
His heart hammered. Why were they setting up Amelia?
They had to have a hundred and one ways to accomplish their goal without ruining the woman’s life.
Beth owed him answers.
He swiped the news coverage away and called her.
Each passing ring fanned his irritation.
Finally, she answered.
He couldn’t tell if she’d been waiting for his call.
“You better fix this,” Camden barked, “and it better happen now.”
“I don’t take orders from you, buddy.”
Camden grabbed his breakfast and coffee in one hand and stormed back toward the metro.
He wasn’t heading to New Jersey anymore.
Where to would be determined.
But for the moment, he was hellbent on retracing his steps to go somewhere else—to Titan or to Beth.
He didn’t fuckin’ know, but he was on his way.
“Call your boss. Call the agents. Call someone . Fix it now.”
“Or what? You’re going to yell at me some more? This isn’t my call. She isn’t my case. I told you the situation would get worse—”
“Before it got better. Got it. That’s what you said. So make it better.”
“I can’t.”
He stopped in the middle of foot traffic.
Commuters streamed by, jostling him as he impeded their flow.
He couldn’t think. Sometimes, he didn’t think things through, but right then, he simply couldn’t .
He couldn’t see the play or the reasons why.
He couldn’t see the answers or how to fix the problem.
The unknown was infuriating.
But more than that, the helplessness that had a stranglehold on him was enough to drive him mad.
He considered his options.
His boss? Looping in Jared would be complicated—mostly because Boss Man would want to know why.
Why did Camden care?
Why had he maintained contact with Amelia?
Then again, what did it matter if Jared had twenty questions?
Boss Man was the one who’d sent him halfway across the world to be there.
“I’ll call Jared Westin.”
Beth’s pause spoke volumes.
“You’re not going to call Mr. Westin over some small-potatoes problem.”
Mr. Westin —that spoke even louder volumes.
It wasn’t lost on Camden that his boss was one of those VIPs, but he’d become powerful without the glad-handing and ass-kissing that seemed ingrained in so many VIP types circulating in DC.
It also helped that Jared scared most people.
He was something of a military maverick who had connections and money and didn’t care about either as long as the job got done. “Watch me.”