Two of the men walked to be incoming baggage belt and collected everyone's bags, loading them quickly and efficiently onto a wheeled handcart. Within minutes, the team was once again ensconced in yet another pair of Suburbans and heading out of the airport toward the Lincoln Tunnel and Manhattan.

Stark and Davis were in the front while Blair and Cam occupied the rear. The agents who were off-duty had remained at the airport, making separate arrangements for cabs or family to pick them up there.

"Are you all right?" Cam asked. Blair had been silently staring out the window since they had gotten into the vehicle.

Turning to face her, Blair smiled, her face sad in the irregular illumination of passing headlights and flickering neon signs. "I've been waiting for this. I was just sitting here, trying to think how long I've been waiting."

Cam waited but when Blair said no more she simply took the newspaper that Blair passed to her across the space between their seats. She unfolded it and held it toward the window to catch enough light to read it. Prominently displayed below the fold were a picture and the caption, "President's Daughter and Secret Lover?"

In a hazy, night shot a woman who looked very much like Blair could be seen kissing someone, although the other individual's identity was difficult to determine because of the camera angle and the obvious distance from which it had been taken.

"Son of a bitch," Cam whispered. It was a photograph of the two of them on the beach in San Francisco, the first night that Cam had arrived from DC. She raised her eyes to Blair and said quietly, "I'm sorry."

"About what? The kiss or the photograph?"

"Definitely not the kiss."

Blair nodded once, sharply. "Good."

Cam struggled in the poor light to read the short paragraph underneath the picture. It didn't say much - just the usual titillating inferences about Blair's alleged liaisons with movie stars, underworld kingpins or elected officials that were often linked to Blair in similar publications. Precisely because she was so private, and because the White House tried diligently to keep her out of the public eye unless it was a sanctioned official function, the press loved to conjecture about her love life. Except this time they were getting awfully close to the truth.

"I think it's interesting, Cam said after a minute, "that they don't name names and they don't specifically state that you are with a woman. Whoever took this photograph must know."

"I noticed that myself," Blair said darkly. "It's almost as if someone is teasing me-or taunting me. What do you make of it?"

"I don't have any idea." Cam shook her head, angry for Blair at the invasion of her privacy and furious at herself for being so careless that she let someone close enough to get the shot. "But what I want to know is where the hell he was and why my people didn't see him."

"Well, I have a feeling this is only the beginning." Blair laughed bitterly. "This is going to be embarrassing for my father, but the big question is, what is this going to do to you professionally if someone recognizes you?"

"I don't think that's the most important thing right now," Cam disagreed. "There's something off about this entire situation, because if this were just some reporter looking to make a story, my name would be in this article. The fact that you are kissing awoman would be the headline-abovethe fold."

"Blackmail?"

"If it is, they've got more balls than brains. You don't blackmail the daughter of the President of the United States. Not like this-and, goddamn it-not on my watch."

"Well", Blair said resignedly, suddenly aware of a weariness that went deeper than flesh, "Im sure well know soon enough."

Tiredly, she leaned her forehead against the glass, watching the night slide by. The stretch of highway outside the speeding vehicle was barren and seemed to echo the emptiness in her heart. Of course she had been foolish to think that she would be allowed to love anyone in peace, let alone someone like the woman seated across from her. She closed her eyes, knowing that she would sleep alone that night, and wanting more than anything else for that not to be true.

Chapter Fifteen

Cam watched Blair as wordless moments passed. It was the quiet that worried her. Anger she would have expectedeven, considering the circumstances-embraced. Accusations of her own complicity in allowing the photo to be taken, however unfounded, would have been more welcome than the curtain of silence that fell heavily between them.

She tried to imagine how it must feel to have one's most personal experiences on display, not just once, but repeatedly. She couldn't, even though it washer picture in the newspaper as well. Even had her face been clear, and her name printed in bold letters beneath the image, it wouldn't have been the same thing for her as it was for Blair. She wasn't recognized the world over, nor was her family likely to be held up to scrutiny by self-appointed guardians of right and wrong whose true motivation was nothing loftier their own their political gain. She was guilty of nothing, but even if she were, her transgression would soon be forgotten.

That was not the case for Blair Powell or her father. The President was not immune to the effect of public opinion, just the opposite. Right or wrong had nothing to do with the fact that powerful groups jockeyed constantly for position and influence in the Washington political arena. Something as inflammatory as Andrew Powell's daughter's love affair-especially herlesbian love affair-would give his opponents one more piece of ammunition to threaten him with.

"Blair," Cam began gently, "is there anything I can do?"

Finally turning away from the window and the night and her own troubled thoughts, Blair straightened infinitesimally. When she spoke, her voice was stronger, carrying a hint of its old steel. "Yes. You can tell me right now if you're up for what's coming."

"What?" Cam exclaimed, too surprised by the question to even absorb it completely. When the reality of what Blair was asking finally hit her, she replied heatedly, "You can't really think that this would matter to me?"

"It's one thing to talk in the abstract about the possibility of exposure. It's quite another thing to be the center of a media circus. Believe me, I know."

"Jesus Christ."

Cam stared at her as she bit back another irate retort. Blairs voice had been calm, steady-her face expressionless. She looked the way she'd looked the first day Cam had met her-cool, controlled, untouchable. Cam remembered very well the angry, wounded woman Blair had been, and how in recent weeks that rage had burned less brightly and the wounds had seemed less raw. Until this.

Christ, she's scared.

That realization defused Cam's anger. Fear was not something she associated with the Presidents daughter, and perhaps for the first time, she understood the price of Blairs strength-the isolation and the impenetrable defenses and the expectation of loss.

Quickly, Cam shifted across the narrow space between them until she was sitting on the seat next to Blair. She found her hand in semi-darkness and whispered vehemently, "I intend to find out who is behind this. Once I do, I intend to kick their ass from one side of this continent to the other. I love you. Nothing and no one will ever change that."

Blair tightened her grip on Cam's hand and leaned into the reassuring solidity of her body. "You don't even know yet what kind of pressure there's going to be for us to stop seeing one another."

The words hit Cam in the center of her chest like a sledgehammer. Even being shot hadn't hurt as much. "No. Don't even think it, because it gives the possibility power. Please."

"When you were shot", Blair said as if reading her thoughts, «I felt parts of me dying with you. Her voice was hushed, as if she were speaking in a dream. "I had only just begun to let you in, and I was nearly lost already. Now, I dont think I could survi"

"Blair. I love you. I am not going anywhere. I swear."

Blair searched her eyes and saw only truth. "It scares me how much I need you."

"Dont forget I need you, too". Cam lifted Blairs hand, brushed a kiss swiftly across the back of her knuckles. "More than youll ever know."

"Ill try to remember that". Blair drew the first full breath shed taken since the airport. "So-what do we do now, Commander?"

Cam laughed, but there was an edge to the laughter. "Im a Secret Service agent. Do you think I cant track down the little bastard that gave that photo to the wire service?"

"Just be careful, Cam", Blair warned. «Someone doesnt need a gun to be dangerous. In the right hands, a camera can be lethal.

"Any coward who chooses this underhanded way of going after you is no threat to me. Dont worry."

"Why dont I feel reassured?"

"Ill be careful. But this is what I do."

"I suppose I have to accept the logic of that", Blair finally conceded. Again she sighed. "I'm surprised I haven't heard from the White House by now. The Chief of Staff must be having kittens all over the West Wing."

"I thought Lucinda Washburn was a personal friend of your family's," Cam said, referring to the woman who most people considered the most powerful woman in Washington. As the first female Chief of Staff, she held the President's ear and served as his most instrumental adviser. When Andrew Powell had run for the presidency, he had made it very clear that no decision would be made without her input. That had proved to be true over the first months of his tenure when economic crises at home and the reemergence of violent foreign unrest had placed his administration in the spotlight.