The Waterfall (21 page)

It was as though the words reached up from the paper and choked her. She couldn't breathe, couldn't see. She tripped on her own feet, stumbled down several steps, reeling.

“Lucy.” Sebastian's voice. His arms came around her. “Lucy, what is it?”

She gulped for air. “The son of a bitch. The son of a bitch!” Every muscle in her body tensed. She glared up at him. “Is it Barbara? Is it? Because if it is, I'm going up there now and—and—” She couldn't get the words out. “Goddammit!”

Sebastian half carried, half pushed her to the porch steps. “You're hyperventilating. If you don't stop, I'm getting a paper bag and putting it over your head.”

Hyperventilating. Too much oxygen in the blood. She knew what to do. She snapped her mouth shut, counted to three, breathed through her nose, let it out slowly through her mouth.

“Two more times,” Sebastian said.

“Madison and J.T.”

“Two more times, Lucy. You won't do them any good passed out cold.”

She knew he was right. In another minute, she was calmer, breathing normally. He snatched up the note and read it. A slight tightening of the jaw was his only visible reaction.

“I didn't expect it,” she said. “I knew it was something, but not this. What kind of sick person would do something like that?”

She got to her feet, held onto his arm to help steady herself. Maybe he didn't have running water or electricity, maybe he'd renounced violence, maybe he had his demons to fight, but he was there, rock-solid.

When she regained her balance, she climbed the steps.
Forever, Colin.
Sick, sick, sick. She got to the front door. “Madison, J.T.—it's okay, you can come on out.”

“I'll get rid of the flowers,” Sebastian said.

Lucy nodded. “Thank you.”

“And I'll call Plato.”

 

Sebastian's take on Barbara Allen was direct and to the point. “She's up to her eyeballs in something.”

Lucy smiled. “Is that your professional opinion?”

“Gut.”

They were at the kitchen table, drinking decaf coffee long after dinner. Madison and J.T. had gone up to bed. Lucy asked, “Is your gut always right?”

“About whether or not I want a cheeseburger. With who's lying, hiding, contriving, plotting to rape and pillage—” He shrugged. “It's almost always right. I've been wrong on occasion.”

“I sometimes forget what you do for a living. When you're here, you seem so normal.”

“I'm not,” he said quietly.

She ignored a warm shudder, remembered pulling up to his shack with the dogs and the dust. No, not normal. “How does Redwing Associates manage without you?”

“I hired good people.”

“About Barbara.” Lucy sipped her decaf, which was a little stale. “Up to her eyeballs in what? You have an idea, don't you?”

Nothing.

“Sebastian, I deserve to know.”

“It's not a question of deserving. It's a question of what you'll do with the information.”

“You don't trust me.”

He frowned at her. “I don't know what that means. Do I trust you to sit back and do everything I tell you? No. Do I trust you to do what you think is right for the sake of your children? Yes.”

“That's too specific. I mean trust in general.”

“There's no such thing.”

“Yes, there is. It's when you trust someone to have an internal compass that will always point them in the right direction, not toward no mistakes—everyone makes mistakes—but toward at least trying to make good decisions.”

“I'm not sure your idea and my idea of a ‘good decision' are the same.”

“That's not the point, either. It's not about thinking alike. It's about trusting a person to be who they are.”

He drank his coffee. If he thought it was stale, he gave no indication. “You've been sitting out here in these hills too long and talking to too many crunch-granola types. Lucy, I trust you. There.”

“Good.” She sat up straight. “Then tell me what you think Barbara's up to her eyeballs in.”

“Blackmail.”

She dropped her mug, coffee spilling over her hand and onto the table. He got up, tore off a couple of paper towels and handed them to her. She was shaking. She blotted the spilled coffee, not looking at him. “My God. Blackmail?” Then the realization hit. “Not Darren Mowery. Sebastian, please tell me—”

“I wish I could, Lucy. I've been holding back on you, hoping I could tell you Darren's not involved in what's been happening to you. But he is.”

Lucy nodded, breathing rapidly. “I understand.”

“No, Lucy, you don't. Darren was my boss, he was my mentor, and he was my friend. He went bad, and I went after him. I knew I might have to kill him.” Sebastian returned to his seat; he was calm, as if they were discussing whether the tomatoes were ripe enough to pick. “I should have made sure he was dead or in jail before I left Colombia. I didn't.”

“And now—” Lucy frowned, trying to make sense of the bits and pieces she had. She left the coffee-soaked paper towels in a mound on the table. “Is he blackmailing
you?
”

“Would that he were. That'd be easy. No, he's blackmailing your father-in-law.”

“What?”

“Darren contacted him while you were in Wyoming. Jack paid him off, and when it wasn't enough and Darren came back for more, he got in touch with my office.”

“And they got in touch with you,” Lucy said, her head spinning.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Before the falls.”

“Well, you're a hell of a better liar than I am. Or Madison, even. Jesus. You've known that long?”

“Jack wouldn't give Plato the details. I let him sweat a few days. He still won't budge.”

“But you know it's this Darren Mowery character,” Lucy said.

Sebastian nodded.

“Then arrest him!”

“That's the thing about blackmail, Lucy. The victim doesn't want to go public. He doesn't care about whether the blackmailer goes to jail. He just wants him to keep quiet.”

Unable to sit still another second, Lucy jumped to her feet. She ran outside, down the back steps, into the grass. It was cool on her bare feet. She could hear crickets as she fought back tears. Blackmail! Jack was being blackmailed!

Sebastian followed her out into the grass, not standing too close. The more he had to think about, Lucy thought, the more he seemed to go deep inside himself and maintain an outward calm. It was a skill she didn't have, except on the water. When a crisis hit while kayaking or canoeing, she operated on training, instinct, skill. She couldn't afford to panic.

But this was what he did, she remembered. He dealt with blackmailers. Blackmail victims.

“How much did Jack pay—do you know that much?”

“Twenty grand in two installments.”

“That's all?”

“For now.”

She exhaled toward the starlit sky. “I just want to make a quilt with my daughter. I want to take my son fishing. I want to live my life.
Damn.
”

“Plato will be here tomorrow.”

She nodded.

“Lucy.” He touched her cheek with one finger. “Oh, God, Lucy. If I could make this all go away, I would, even if it meant you never came to Wyoming and I didn't get to see you.”

She shut her eyes, squeezed back tears. “Do you think Barbara's involved in the blackmail?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it has anything to do with me?”

“Yes. I don't know how, but yes.”

She sank her forehead against his chest and let her arms go around him. He held her. She recovered slowly, stopped crying. “I hate crying,” she said. “I haven't cried in years, except when I stubbed my toe last summer, and really, it was more because I was pissed.”

“Lucy, you're one of the strongest women I know.”

“I'm not. I just get up every day and do the best I can.”

“There,” he said, “you see what I mean?”

She opened her eyes and saw his smile, and she kissed him lightly, savoring the taste of him, the feel of his hands and the night summer breeze on her back. “If I could,” she whispered, “I'd ask you to make love to me tonight.”

“Lucy—”

“My children are upstairs in bed. They're afraid, and they need to know where I am.”

“I love you, Lucy Blacker.” He touched her hair, her mouth, then kissed her in a way that made her know he meant what he said. “I always will.”

“Thank you.”

He laughed suddenly, so unexpectedly it took her breath away. “Thank you?”

“Well—I don't know. Yes, thank you.”

He smacked her on the behind. “Go upstairs to your kids before I toss all honor to the stars and carry you off to bed.”

“That's very tempting, you know.”

“Believe me, I know.” J.T. was asleep when Lucy entered his room. As if drawn by an invisible force, she turned to the picture of him with his father. “Colin,” she whispered, touching his image. “Thank you for what you were to me. For Madison and J.T. and our years together. Thank you.”

She went down the hall and listened at Madison's closed door, then slipped into the guest room. She gazed out at the darkening sky, thinking of blackmail and Jack and a dangerous man who wasn't dead, and when she crawled into bed and pulled her quilts up to her chin, she thought of Sebastian. And she smiled. The Widow Swift was falling in love again.

 

The memo came across his desk late, around nine, and at nine-fifteen, Jack Swift gave up on working until midnight as he'd planned and got a cab home. It was a routine memo. His staff was aware Sebastian Redwing had once saved his life and had been Colin's friend, and they regularly passed along pertinent information on Redwing Associates.

Mowery.