The Waterfall (7 page)

Instead, he'd turned her down flat. Without argument. Without explanation.

She took a breath. The dust, altitude and dry air hadn't given her a bloody nose like they had J.T. They'd just driven every drop of sanity and common sense right out of her. She
never
should have come here.

She followed him out onto the porch. “You're going to take my word for it that I don't need help?”

“Sure.” He dropped back into his hammock. “You're a smart lady. You know if you need help or not.”

“What if it was all bluster? What if I'm bluffing? What if I'm too proud and—”

“And so?”

She clenched her fists at her sides, resisting an urge to hit something. “Plato fudged it when he said you were on sabbatical, didn't he? I'll bet Madison was more right than she realized.”

“Lucy, if I wanted you to know about my life, I'd send you Christmas cards.” He grabbed his hat and lay back in the hammock. “Have you ever gotten a Christmas card from me?”

“No, and I hope I never do.”

She spun around so abruptly, the blood rushed out of her head. She reeled, steadying herself. Damn if she'd let herself pass out. The bastard would dump a pitcher of well water on her head, strap her to a horse and send her on her way.

“I'm sorry, Lucy. Things change.” She couldn't tell if he'd softened, but thought he might have. “I guess you know that better than most of us.”

She turned back to him and inhaled, regaining some semblance of self-control. She was furious with herself for having come out here—and with Plato for having sent her when he had to know the reception she'd get. She was out of her element, and she hated it. “That's it, then? You're not going to help me?”

He gave her a half smile and pulled his hat back down over his eyes. “Who're you kidding, Lucy Blacker? You've never needed anyone's help.”

 

Plato didn't come for Sebastian until early the next morning. Very early. Dawn was spilling out on the horizon, and Sebastian, having tended the horses and the dogs, was back in his hammock when Plato's truck pulled up. He thumped onto the porch, his gait uneven from his limp. It'd be two years soon. He'd have the limp for life.

“You turned Lucy down?”

Sebastian tilted his hat back off his eyes. “So did you.”

“She didn't come out here for my help. She came for yours.”

“She hates me, you know.”

Plato grinned. “Of course, she hates you. You're a jackass and a loser.”

Sebastian didn't take offense. Plato had always been one to speak out loud what others were thinking. “Her kid bled on my porch. How am I going to protect a twelve-year-old kid who gets nosebleeds? The daughter's a snot. She kept comparing me to Clint Eastwood.”

“Eastwood? Nah. He's older and better-looking than you.” Plato laughed. “I guess Lucy and her kids are lucky you've renounced violence.”

“We're all lucky.”

Silence.

Sebastian felt a gnawing pain in his lower back. He'd slept in the hammock. A bad idea.

“You didn't tell her, did you?” Plato asked.

“Tell her what?”

“That you've renounced violence.”

“None of her business. None of yours, either.”

If his curtness bothered Plato, he didn't say. “Darren Mowery's hanging around her father-in-law.”

“Shut up, Rabedeneira. You're like a damn rooster crowing in my ear.”

Plato stepped closer. “This is Lucy, Sebastian.”

He rolled off the hammock. That was what he'd been thinking all night. This was Lucy. Lucy Blacker, with the big hazel eyes and the bright smile and the smart mouth. Lucy, Colin's widow.

“She should go to the police,” Sebastian said.

“She can't, not with what she has so far. Jack Swift would pounce. The Capitol police would send up a team to investigate. The press would be all over the story.” Plato stopped, groaning. “You didn't let her get that far, did you?”

“Plato, I swear to God, I wish you were still jumping out of helicopters rescuing people. I could sell the company and retire, instead of letting some dipshit busybody like you run it.”

“You didn't even hear her out? I don't believe it. Jesus, Redwing. You really are an asshole.”

Sebastian started down the porch steps. He was stiff, and he needed coffee. He needed to stop thinking about Lucy. Thinking about Lucy had never, ever done him any good. “I figured she told you everything. No need to make her go through it twice.”

“Lucy deserves—”

“I don't care what Lucy deserves.”

Sebastian could feel his friend staring at him, knowing what he was thinking, and why he'd slept out on the porch. “Yeah, you do. That's the problem. You've been in love with her for sixteen years.”

That was Plato. Always speaking out loud what was best left unsaid. Sebastian walked out to his truck. It was turning into a beautiful day. He could go riding. He could take a run with the dogs. He could read ghost stories in his hammock.

The truth was, he was no damn good. About all he hadn't done in the past year since he'd shot a friend gone bad was kick the dogs. He'd renounced violence, but not gambling, not carousing, not ignoring his friends and responsibilities. He didn't shave often enough. He didn't do laundry often enough. He could afford all the help he needed, but that meant having people around him and being nice. He didn't have much use for people. And he wasn't very nice.

“I can't help Lucy,” he said. “I've forgotten half of what I knew.”

“You're so full of shit, Redwing. You haven't forgotten a goddamn thing.” Plato came and stood beside him. The warm, dry air, he said, helped the pain in his leg. And he liked the work. He was good at it. “Even if you're rusty—which you aren't—you still have your instincts. They're a part of you.”

Then the violence was a part of him, too. Sebastian tore open his truck door. “I hate bullshit pep talks.”

“Redwing—goddamn it. You've never felt sorry for yourself for one minute of your life, have you?”

He had. The day he watched Lucy Blacker walk down the aisle and marry another man.

Sebastian squinted at the dawn. “Tell me what's going on with Lucy.”

Plato told him. He was succinct and objective, and Sebastian didn't like any of it. “It's the kids and their friends,” he said. “Maybe just their friends.”

“It's Mowery, and you know it.”

“Mowery's not my problem.”

“I had your plane gassed up,” Plato said. “They haven't taken your pilot's license, have they?”

Sebastian smacked the dusty roof of his truck.
Damn.
“I'd rather go through drown-proofing again than fly to Vermont.”

“You never went through drown-proofing. That was part of my training. I'm the ex-parachute rescue jumper.”

“You are?” Sebastian grinned at his old friend. It had been a bad day when he'd learned Plato Rabedeneira was finished jumping out of helicopters, might not even walk again. “I thought that was me.”

Plato grinned back. “Lucy's prettier than ever, isn't she?”

“Shut up, Rabedeneira, before I find a helicopter and throw you out of it.”

“Been there, done that.” Plato stood beside him. “I'll have someone look after the dogs and horses.”

“Damn,” Sebastian said under his breath.

He knew what he had to do. He'd known it the minute Lucy Blacker Swift had rolled into his driveway. Arguing about it with Plato was just a delay tactic.

He climbed into his truck and followed Plato out the dirt road.

J
ack knew he should call the Capitol Police and have them arrest Darren Mowery and bodily remove him from the premises. There really was no question. The bastard was threatening a United States senator. This was
blackmail.

But Jack didn't reach for his phone or stand up and yell to his staff. He just glared at Mowery, paralyzed. Like most of Washington, Jack had thought Darren Mowery dead, or at least out of the country for good. Instead, here he was in a senator's office.

“Think hard, Senator,” Mowery said. “Think hard before you say anything.”

Jack summoned his tremendous, hard-won capacity for self-control. “Damn you. I'd like to wipe that smirk off your face.”

Mowery shrugged. “Go ahead and buzz the Capitol Police. They look bored today. I think they'd get a kick out of bouncing a blackmailer from a senator's office.”

“Don't you think walking into my office has raised a few eyebrows already?”

“That's not my concern.”

Jack could feel the pain gnawing in his lower abdomen. Nerves. Outrage. That Mowery had confronted him in his office only added to the effrontery, the sheer insult of the man's presence.

What he did now, Jack knew, would determine his legacy as a United States senator. This was what his thirty years in Washington would boil down to—this moment. How he responded to blackmail.

He glanced around at the framed pictures and the letters of thanks, the awards, all the evidence of his long, proud career in public service. He wasn't an arrogant, power-hungry politician. To him, public service was a high and honorable calling.

“You're a cocky bastard, Mowery.” He was surprised at how calm he sounded, how restrained. Inside, his guts were roiling. “You'll never get away with blackmailing a United States senator.”

“I don't think of myself as blackmailing a United States senator. I think of myself as blackmailing a father who doesn't want the world to know his son was balling a woman who wasn't his wife, two weeks before he dropped dead on a Washington tennis court.”

Jack felt a sudden, stabbing pain, a hot arrow through him. He took a shallow breath. “I want you out of my office. Now.”

“I can arrange to have you see a sample of the pictures.” Mowery leaned forward on his chair, confident, his gaze as cold and calculating as any Jack had ever seen. “Go ahead, Senator. Call the Capitol Police. Have them haul me off. I've slipped the noose before. I'll slip it again. And even if I don't, the pictures go out.”

“You smug, insolent—”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I won't pay one single, solitary dime to you.”

“Okeydokey.” Mowery got to his feet. He wore a light gray suit, fitting in with the tourists, lobbyists, press and staff floating around the Senate office building. The perfect Everyman. “Consider the first batch of pictures already on its way to various media outlets and to Lucy Swift, the wronged widow.”

Jack couldn't speak. His jaw ached from tension. The stabbing pain in his lower abdomen spread upward. He almost wished he could drop dead of a heart attack right here, right now. He'd watched his son collapse and die. It had been so quick, so unexpected. So easy.

Colin. Dear God. What did a father owe his dead son's memory? What did he, Jack Swift, United States senator, owe his son's widow, his son's children?

And what did he owe the people of his state? Himself?

“Remember, Senator.” Mowery seemed very sure of himself. “Sex scandals are always fresh, particularly when they're about anyone or anything related to a powerful, sanctimonious, squeaky-clean senator.”

“How
dare
you.”

Mowery ignored him. “And, of course, no matter what the papers do, Lucy will know. You won't be able to stuff that cat back into the bag once she sees her dead husband with another woman's mouth—”

“Stop. Just stop. Colin's been dead for three years. Have you no decency?”

“He didn't. Why should I?”

“It's my decency you're preying on,” Jack said, more to himself than to the man standing across from him.

“Look, Jack. You can't change what your baby boy did. You can't change that I know about it and have pictures. You can only decide if it's going to remain between us or if the whole world's going to know.”

“I could kill you with my bare hands.” Jack could hear his voice cracking; he sounded ancient, pathetic. He was a goddamn dinosaur. “Damn you, if I were younger—”

“Well, my friend, guess what? You're not younger. And you don't have the pictures. I do. And,” he added pointedly, “I'm better at this than you are. I have contingency plans. You pay me or you lose. Period.”

“I won't sell my vote.”

Darren laughed. “What would I want with your vote?”

“And I won't betray my country,” Jack said.

“Jesus. That's right out of a World War Two movie. Corny, Jack. Real corny. I don't want your vote, and I don't want state secrets. I want cash.”

Cash. It sounded so simple. “How much?”

“Ten grand. It's not even enough to get the IRS interested.”

Which meant it wouldn't end here, today. Ten thousand was pennies to a man like Darren Mowery.

Jack was silent, the pain eating away at his insides.

Mowery dropped a piece of paper on his desk. “That's where you can wire the money. With the Internet, it's easy. Shouldn't take two minutes.”

“I know who you are. I can find you.”

“So? I thought about doing this anonymously. You know, the altered voice on the phone in the middle of the night telling you to stuff twenty-dollar bills in a backpack and leave it at the Vietnam Memorial. I figured, nah, too complicated. Too likely you'd hang up and go back to sleep. This way, you know exactly who you're dealing with.”

“An arrogant lowlife who threw away his own reputation and career—”

“You got it, Senator. That means I have nothing to lose. If I were still an honest man and you were my client, I'd tell you to pay the ten grand and cross your fingers.”

He started for the door.

Jack rose, his knees unsteady. “I want all hard copies of the pictures and all the negatives.”

“That's pretty old-fashioned. I could have them on computer disk by now. Truth is, Senator, with what we can do on a computer these days, they could be fakes.” He went to the door, turned and winked. “Transfer the ten grand into my account.”

He left.

Jack staggered back to his chair. For thirty years, he had refused to succumb to cynicism, venom, temptation or arrogance. He did his best. He was honest with himself and the people he represented. That was all he'd ever asked of himself, all he'd ever expected anyone else to ask of him.

Now, he was facing an impossible choice.

If Colin had cheated on Lucy, she'd have known about it. That was Lucy Blacker. She looked reality square in the eye.

But this was her secret to keep, Jack thought. His son was dead and deserved to rest in peace. His widow and children deserved to go on with their lives. Maybe the affair was part of the reason she'd moved to Vermont.

Mowery hadn't gone to Lucy with his sordid blackmail scheme because she wasn't the senator; she didn't have the power, the reputation, the money that Jack had.

But what did Darren Mowery
really
want?

Ten grand was a small price to pay for his family's peace. Giving in to a blackmailer, Jack thought, was the bigger price.

If he was lucky, it would end here. But Darren Mowery hadn't walked into Jack's office because he was lucky. He wanted something, and Jack doubted it was ten thousand dollars.

 

When Darren Mowery walked past her desk in Senator Swift's outer office, Barbara refused even to look up. She didn't dare meet his eye. He was so brazen! Her stomach muscles clamped down painfully. He'd warned her that he believed in the direct approach.

So, the deed was done.

Barbara did her meditation breathing. She wasn't very good at it. Even at home, with her eyes shut and scented candles lit, she found it difficult to focus on her inhaling and exhaling, to let her obsessive thoughts quiet.

She was not to contact Darren. He would contact her when he felt it appropriate. Even if she wanted to, she had no idea how or where to reach him. That wasn't important, she told herself. It wasn't that she trusted him or felt she had enough hold on him—she simply didn't care if he made off with all their profits. She didn't care about the money for what it could buy. She wanted to see a frightened, desperate Jack turn to her for help. She wanted him to understand just what she meant to him.

Let him suffer for taking her for granted. Let him learn.

She suddenly couldn't breathe. Oh, God! She wanted her life back. She wanted to be herself again. If only she'd never said anything to Jack. If only she'd stayed home this past week and hadn't bothered Lucy to relieve her own tension.

Oh, but it had felt good! And if Lucy came crying to Jack, so be it. Barbara could turn it into another lesson. The only danger was if Darren found out.

And the police.

Acid rose in her throat.

“Good Lord,” a staff member said. “What's Darren Mowery doing here?”

Barbara looked up as if she'd been deep in concentration. “Oh, you know the senator. He'll give anyone a few minutes of his time to make their case.”

Her colleague shuddered. He'd been on Jack Swift's staff almost as long as she had, but
he
wasn't indispensable. “The guy gives me the creeps.”

Barbara returned to her work. It was routine, nothing stimulating. She'd once been so ambitious, determined to become the senator's chief of staff, possibly his press secretary. Secretly, she'd hoped he'd run for the presidency.

She'd had so many goals and dreams. Somehow they had gotten away from her. Now here she was, in danger of becoming the sort of woman she loathed. Obsessive, secretive, in love with the boss. She was pathetic.

Except she
wasn't.

Her alliance with Darren was a show of strength. It demonstrated a great belief in herself, not cowardice.

When he finally emerged from his office an hour later, Jack looked perfectly normal. He was so understated and mannerly, not a bombastic ideologue. He wasn't a rabble-rouser, which sometimes allowed people the mistaken belief he had weak convictions. The premature deaths of his wife and son only added to his mystique, his appeal. He was the last senator in Washington anyone would think could be the victim of blackmail.

He came to Barbara's desk. Her heart jumped.

But there was no sign of fear or even distraction when he spoke. “Barbara, I've decided to spend the August recess in Vermont with Lucy and the kids.”

“You're not going home?”

“It's an easy drive to Rhode Island. I'll manage.”

Barbara saw now that he was a little off, not quite himself. Of course. He was a strong man, and he'd want to hold on as long as he could before confiding in anyone, even her. But Vermont. This was not a good development. Darren must have triggered an urge for Jack to see his grandchildren.

“J.T.'s been wanting to show me his favorite fishing spots. Madison…” He breathed in, nodded to himself. “Yes, August in Vermont. That's what I'll do. Do you mind, Barbara?”

“Mind what?” She wondered if she'd missed something, or if Jack's encounter with Darren was making him obtuse.

He ran a hand through his gray hair, and only because she'd known him for so long could Barbara detect his agitation. “I'd like to rent a house in Vermont, close to Lucy. Could you make arrangements?”

She smiled through her agony. This wasn't going at all as she'd calculated. “Of course.”

“And don't say anything to Lucy just yet. This is so spur-of-the-moment—I don't want to disappoint her and the children if it doesn't work out, for whatever reason.”

Like blackmail? Barbara quickly grabbed a stack of papers, as if she had a million things to do and Jack was just giving her one more easily handled detail. “I understand. I'll start making calls right away.”

“I think it might be better if you went up to Vermont yourself,” he said.

“What?” She felt so thickheaded, unable to follow the logic of his thinking. Why didn't he pull her into his office and beg her to help him with Darren Mowery's blackmail scheme?

“We don't have much time before the August recess, and you'll need to rent a house and get it ready rather quickly.” He smiled, looking a bit less distracted. “Unless you'd rather not seize this as an excuse to get out of sweltering Washington for a few more days.”

She made herself laugh. “Oh, no, you don't. I'll tie up a few loose ends here and be off. As I recall, there are several vacation homes above Lucy's house. I'll see if one's available to rent.”