Love & Honor by Radclyffe

Author:Radclyffe [Radclyffe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Lesbian
ISBN: 9780972492645
Google: DRkkAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 1933110104
Publisher: Bookends Press
Published: 2002-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

At 1830 hours that evening, Cam sat in a deserted anteroom in front of a plain varnished door with a small sign bearing Stewart Carlisle’s name. She settled in to wait, but just a few minutes passed when his administrative assistant appeared around the corner and said, “He’s ready for you.”

When she opened the door and stepped into the unadorned office that had little in the way of personalized touches other than a small framed photo on the wall of a very young Stewart Carlisle with John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his brother Robert, her immediate superior was making a notation on the bottom of a report.

“Grab a chair,” he said without looking up.

She chose the right hand one of a pair of institutional fabric covered office chairs in front of his desk and crossed her right ankle over her knee, her hands resting loosely on the thin wooden armrests. When he finally closed the folder and pushed the pile of papers away with his right hand, looking up to meet her gaze, his face revealed nothing.

“What happened with that newspaper photograph?” he began without preamble. “That’s just the kind of thing the White House likes to chew my ass over.”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” she said calmly. “We should have had intelligence that the photo was going out over the wires and been prepared for the article in the Post. As it was, we walked into a hornets nest of reporters at Teterboro when we arrived last night. We were lucky it didn’t turn into a free for all. So where was the breakdown in the system?”

A muscle bunched in his jaw, but his voice, too, was even as he replied, “Since you were there when the picture was taken, I assumed you’d be able to tell me.”

For a second, Cam thought he was referring to her presence on the beach with Blair, before she realized that he simply meant San Francisco. Oddly, it didn’t bother her. There was not one moment in her relationship with Blair that she would deny to anyone. On the other hand, in a world rife with double dealings, political blackmail, and constant struggle for bureaucratic superiority, she had learned never to divulge information that could be used as a weapon against her or anyone she cared for.

“The photo was taken with a long-range telephoto lens, probably across the water from an adjacent pier. We had close physical surveillance in place, but no substantial perimeter. I had no reason to believe in that particular location it was required.”

“The camera could just as well have been a long-range rifle equipped with a night scope,” he pointed out as if discussing an inconsequential notation in the margin of a not particularly interesting article. “She could be dead instead of just caught in an embarrassing moment.”

A pain like a shard of glass tore through her chest and it even hurt to take a breath, but outwardly her expression didn’t change. “I’ve thought of that.

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