The Waterfall (15 page)

“All right,” he said, straightening. He swept her with a humorless glance. “Don't be late.”

Lucy bristled. “I answer to myself, Redwing.”

His voice lowered so Madison or J.T. wouldn't hear. “You don't want me coming after you.”

Actually, she didn't. A hot, almost electric current ran up her spine. She thought she concealed it well, but Sebastian smiled knowingly before retreating to the house. The man noticed
everything.

A couple of hours on the pond renewed her spirits. The kids she taught were eager to learn, and Madison and J.T. were skilled enough Lucy didn't really have to worry about them. She relished the feel of the paddle dipping into the water, the occasional small splashes on her arms and legs, the sounds of birds and laughter. Her doubts and questions receded, and the heightened state of awareness—almost frenzy—finally quieted. By the time they packed up and headed home, she felt centered again.

But it all went to hell when she pulled into her driveway and saw Sebastian and Rob Kiley chatting on her front porch.

It was as if her two lives—the one in which she was in control versus the one in which she had lost control—had collided in a blinding crash. The two men waved and smiled, but she could see Rob's smile was forced.

“How's the pond?” Sebastian asked, sounding calm, not as pain-racked.

Lucy faked a smile of her own. “Probably much the same as when you two were kids. Catching up on old times?”

Rob got to his feet stiffly, his normal easygoing demeanor lost to obvious tension. “Sebastian never knew my grandmother gave Daisy a fruitcake every Christmas in honor of Joshua Wheaton for saving my father's life.” He managed a faint glimmer of humor. “Daisy always fed it to the birds. Sixty years of fruitcakes literally out the window.”

“It was good seeing you, Rob,” Sebastian said. He, too, rose, and, without even a glance at Lucy, he retreated inside.

Rob sat back down. “Okay, Lucy. Talk.”

So, she was right. The two men had colluded. “Talk about what?”

“Sebastian Redwing.”

She sighed.

Rob shook his head, biting off any irritation. If he hated one thing, Lucy knew, it was feeling any kind of negative emotion toward anyone. “Okay, here's what I know so far,” Rob said. “He's Daisy's grandson, his grandfather was killed rescuing my father from the falls, his parents were killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was fourteen. He went on to become some kind of shadowy security guy. He saved your husband's and father-in-law's lives during that attempt to assassinate the president a bunch of years ago, and he sold you this place.” Rob settled back in his chair; he was so tall and lanky, he barely fit. “He lives in Wyoming. And you were just in Wyoming. As I recall, you went at the last minute.”

Lucy sighed again, wishing she could be back out on the water. Maybe that's what she should do—pack up the kids and head to Canada, paddle lakes and streams and coastlines and just wait out whatever was going on here. Hide. Retreat. The passive approach, she thought.

“Rob, I'm sorry.” She shook her head, her voice tight and tense. “I should have told you what was going on before now.”

“Lucy, I deserve to know. My kid hangs out here.”

“You're right.” She leaned back in her chair and gave him a direct look. “Rob, the truth is, I'm not sure what's going on.
Something,
yes, but I could be putting incidents together that are unrelated—”

He held up a hand, stopping her. “Start at the beginning and take me through it, step by step. I'm not good at piecing things together and reading between the lines. Just give it to me straight.”

She told him everything, start to finish. She only left out the volatile chemistry between her and Sebastian. “If you want to pack up Georgie and clear out—”

“No. It has to be business as usual. We're not going to let this sick bastard win.” Rob was adamant, if a little shocked. “I'm just sorry you've put up with this for so long on your own. Why the hell didn't you say something? You didn't suspect me, did you?”

“No! I just—” She threw up her hands, at a loss. “I guess I'm just used to handling things on my own.”

“Maybe too used to it,” Rob said quietly.

Lucy didn't answer.

“This Redwing character's good?”

“He used to be. He's been retired or on sabbatical or something for the past year.”

“Why?”

She frowned. “That's a good question. I'll ask him.”

“I'm not much on cloak-and-dagger shit myself. Look, I don't blame you for not wanting to bring in the police, but if you get any hard evidence—you have to take it in, Lucy.”

She nodded. “I will. I promise.”

He smiled a little. “Grandpa Jack will calculate his political advantage and decide whether to keep the lid on this thing or not.”

“That's so cynical.”

“Practical.”

Lucy laughed, feeling better. “Thanks, Rob.”

“For what?”

“For not jumping down my throat for keeping this to myself for so long.”

He waved a hand. “I figure your just punishment was helping Redwing down from the falls the other night. Serves you right when you could have had a strapping guy like me carry him down on my back.”

“You'd have called the EMTs.”

“He was in that bad shape, huh?”

She nodded.

“Think he fell?”

“I don't know. It was his first time back to the falls since his grandfather's death. He was distracted.”

“Mini-landslides don't just happen up there. Maybe after heavy rains, but not this time of year when it's this dry.” He got to his feet. “I think I'll go check on the boys.”

 

Sebastian decided to make dinner. He got Madison and J.T. to pick whatever was ripe in the garden. What he didn't steam or throw into a salad, he chopped up and grilled. He found some chicken in the refrigerator and tossed that on the grill, too. It was a charcoal grill, and he had a couple of false starts before he got the damn thing lit. His life-style had never called for much charcoal grilling.

The smell of the charcoal, the feel of the heat on his face, the long, quiet day in a place he loved and yet had tried to forget—all helped him to feel more centered, calmer, steadier. He could go deep inside himself, where he was still and balanced, and think. Darren Mowery. Jack Swift. Blackmail. Lucy and her weird goings-on. They all fit together. He just had to find out how.

And he had to keep his mind on the job, not on what it felt like to be back home, definitely not on what it felt like to be with Lucy. He didn't know what it was about her, but she'd crawled under his skin and buried herself there fifteen-plus years ago. There was nothing he could do except live with it. Last year, he'd let emotional involvement cloud his judgment with Darren Mowery. He hadn't seen the changes in Darren, the creeping cynicism, the loss of empathy. Maybe they'd always been there, buried under a veneer of professionalism, and only last year had they surfaced, taking over.

Sebastian flipped a piece of chicken. Maybe it was like the way seeing Lucy again had taken him over, made him capable of doing who knew what. Thinking about her while grilling chicken and vegetables, for one.

He needed to think about what to do about Jack Swift. Understanding his leverage was the first step. In his experience, United States senators didn't like to talk about what a blackmailer had on them.

The screen door creaked open and banged lightly shut, and Lucy joined him, plopping down in an old Adirondack chair. She had two bottles of Long Trail beer and handed him one as she stretched out her legs, crossing her ankles. She had very good legs, tanned, slim, strong.

She smiled. “Smells good.”

“That's the charcoal and barbecue sauce. I could grill up a pile of skunk cabbage and it'd smell good.”

“I don't think I'd like skunk cabbage. I haven't even worked up the courage to try dandelion greens. People in town tell me they were a favorite of Daisy's.”

Sebastian remembered his grandmother pointing out the tender leaves, instructing him how to pick them without bruising them. “They were,” he said.

“Did you eat them?”

“With salt, pepper and vinegar.”

“Gross.”

He laughed. “Daisy and one of her old friends used to make the occasional batch of dandelion wine. God, it was awful.”

Lucy smiled again, watching him as she sipped her beer from the bottle. It was a move that struck him as incredibly sexy. Her eyes seemed darker, even more vivid, against the deepening blue of the early evening sky. “So,” she said, “did you ever think you'd stay here when you were a kid?”

“I never thought I'd leave.”

“Then you didn't hate it here?”

“No, never.” He looked around at the fields of tall grass and bright flowers, the wooded hills, the apple trees and maples and oaks. He could hear the brook and the wind, and remembered thinking that here, it was as if he were inside his own soul. He shook his head. “I couldn't imagine not being here.”

“Why did you sell, then?”

“Things change.”

He flipped vegetables, and he could feel her watching him, wondering what kind of boy he must have been. The orphan. Daisy's grandson. A child of tragedy and incalculable loss.

“What changed?” Lucy asked quietly.

“I did.”

She was silent, but he knew she wasn't letting him off the hook. Not Lucy. She would dig in, probe, commit for the long haul. He'd known that about her the day she married his best friend.

He glanced back at her, drank some of his own beer. “Daisy lived here. It was her home. For me, it was a refuge, a place to hide. And one day I knew I couldn't hide anymore.”

“You had to go out and learn how to save people. You couldn't save your grandfather—he died before you were born. And you couldn't save your parents. You weren't there.”

He looked at her. “No. I was there.”

She almost spilled her beer. She paled slightly, then whispered, “I'm sorry. I didn't know. No one's ever said. Did Colin know?”

“We drank too much one night after the assassination attempt, and it came out.” Sebastian shrugged. “We were young. We never spoke of it again.”

Lucy rallied, but he could see she was touched. “Nothing like bullets and booze to bond a couple of guys together. Was Plato there?”

“He drank wine. Merlot. We never let him forget.”

She smiled, and Sebastian remembered how much she'd loved her husband, how much Colin had loved her. She was different now, and yet the same. Strange. Impossible to articulate.

She set her beer in the grass. “So, you saw your parents get killed, and you came here to live with your grandmother. Then you left. You went into security and investigative work, started your own company, made a lot of money and retired for the past year to a hammock and a shack without electricity or running water.”

“My life in a nutshell.”

She studied him, eyes narrowed. “And you renounced violence.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“A man named Darren Mowery.”

“I know the name. You worked for him when you and Colin first met. DM Consultants. He saved the president's life.”

“That's who Darren was. He changed.”

“Tell me,” Lucy said quietly.

“There was a kidnapping case a year ago. A Colombian businessman—a client—and his wife and their three children, all under ten. I took on the case myself.”

“What happened? The children weren't—”

He shook his head. “They lived. DM Consultants had just gone bankrupt. I knew Darren blamed me. I knew he was desperate. Tempted.”

“He was involved in the kidnapping?” Lucy said.

“He helped engineer it. He damn near got off with thirty million dollars.”

Her eyes widened. “My God!”

“It was a wealthy Colombian businessman,” Sebastian said with a small smile.

“What happened?”

“I foiled their plans. I had to shoot three of Mowery's Colombian cohorts in front of the children.” He could hear their screams now, see their horrified faces. Children. Little children. “The men were pawns.”

“Would they have killed the family?”

“Yes. And Darren would have taken the money. I caught up with him in Bogotá. He went for his gun, and I shot him. Pretty straightforward. The Colombian authorities arrived, and I went back to Wyoming.”

Lucy's face had gone pale again. There was a slight tremble to her hands. “Do you know if he's alive or dead?”

She was unnerved enough. Sebastian didn't need to tell her Darren Mowery was sneaking around her father-in-law's office. “He's alive.”