Private Justice

by Marie Ferrarella

  The senator had been willing to deal with Dean for her, but she’d insisted on doing it herself, knowing she had to if she was ever going to have any self-respect. So she’d called the police, pressed charges and Dean was taken away. Then she’d filed for divorce—just as she’d found out she was pregnant. From somewhere deep inside, she found the wherewithal to go on.

  The senator had been her rock, her source of courage, and she wasn’t about to forget it just because he was less than perfect.

  Dylan waited for her to say more. At this point, she’d only given him half an answer.

  Was his father the father of this woman’s baby? He’d seen the two of them interact with one another, not to mention that Cindy Jensen was clearly protective of the senator. And anyone could see that the man had a soft spot for her.

  Probably not all he’d had for her, Dylan thought darkly. Maybe there was even a little love nest somewhere.

  “Okay,” he allowed. “The baby is obviously yours since you’re carrying it. But unless this is another miraculous instance of an immaculate conception, there had to be a male component at a very crucial point in this baby’s creation.” The ball in her court now, Dylan waited for her to respond.

  When she did, it wasn’t to say anything he even remotely expected to hear. “That’s a popular misconception, you know. No pun intended,” Cindy tacked on as her words echoed in her head.

  He wasn’t following. “What, that a male component is necessary to make a baby?”

  “No, that the term immaculate conception refers to Mary conceiving Jesus. It actually refers to Mary being conceived without the stain of original sin. Hence—immaculate conception.”

  She was giving him a religion lesson? She was also stalling, he decided. Why?

  “All right, I’m enlightened,” he told her. “Enlighten me some more. Are you married?” Dylan decided to start slowly in his subtle interrogation.

  She looked down at her left hand. It was still difficult for her to get used to seeing it bare, even though she hadn’t been married all that long. She’d just assumed when she’d taken those vows that it would be forever. Just the way she’d assumed that the man she’d fallen in love with would always remain kind and loving, the way he’d been on the day they got married.

  Both had turned out to be a lie.

  “No, I’m not,” she replied, her voice low, distant. Lost.

  He gleaned what he could from her tone. Interpreting tones of voice was something he relied on heavily as a lawyer.

  “But you were.” She slanted a glance in his direction, the look brimming with emotion, with unspoken feelings. She made no response to his assumption. “Oh, c’mon,” he coaxed in his best, most charming and enticing manner. He wanted her to do more than give him tightly worded answers. He wanted her to elaborate. “You’re not going to leave me just hanging out here like this, are you?”

  Her smile was self-contained, revealing nothing. Finally, she gave him an answer. Not the one he wanted. “Yes.”

  Not to be defeated, Dylan tried another line of questioning. “How far along are you?”

  Without realizing it, she glanced down at her flat stomach. At times, she still couldn’t get herself to believe it. Her. A mother. This was so wrong. What did she know about mothering? “A lot further than I’m happy about.”

  She didn’t look pregnant, Dylan thought. But, then, he knew that some women didn’t, especially not if it was their first pregnancy. One of the other lawyers in the office had a wife who had never showed at all during her first pregnancy until just a week before she gave birth. And even at that point, everyone assumed she’d just gained a little holiday weight.

  “There are options, you know,” he said, testing the waters gingerly.

  “Not if I’m to live with my conscience,” she said tersely. “Now, can we talk about the senator instead?” She looked at his profile pointedly. “And don’t even toy with the idea that this baby is your father’s, because it isn’t. Your father treats me with the utmost respect which is more than—”

  Appalled, Cindy stopped short. She’d almost let the whole story come tumbling out. How could that have happened? She didn’t really even know this man. Were hormones responsible for this near lapse of judgment? The most she should ever have considered telling Dylan Kelley was that his father had offered to stand in her corner if necessary for her to get a divorce from Dean. He’d also offered to get her protection from her controlling husband. She would always, always be grateful to the man, even if he had disappointed her so terribly these last few days.

  First and foremost, Senator Henry Kelley had been her champion and that was the way she chose to think of him. Now and always.

  Chapter 7

  “More than what?” Dylan finally prompted when she made no attempt to finish her sentence after stopping practically in midword.

  Cindy flashed an apologetic smile as her mind raced for a response. She’d been hoping he’d just let it drop.

  “Sorry. I lost my train of thought.” She saw he obviously didn’t believe her. Not that it was her concern, but it was better if the man didn’t think she was just blowing him off, so she elaborated. In a manner of speaking. “That sort of thing happens to pregnant women all the time, so they tell me. They become forgetful.” And then she swiftly turned the conversation in another, more fruitful direction. “Now, what about the senator? Are you really going to try to help him, or was that just a lot of smoke and mirrors?”

  Because the traffic was increasing, making driving trickier, Dylan felt he couldn’t risk looking in her direction. Still, because her comment mystified him, he had to ask. “To what end?”

  She shrugged, thinking specifically of her ex-husband who’d gone from being an almost perfect Dr. Jekyll to a frightening, angry Mr. Hyde for absolutely no reason. Certainly she hadn’t given him one. But the outcome was still the same.

  “Why does anyone do anything?” she asked. “Maybe you were just looking for something to hold over the senator’s head for reasons all your own. Revenge, anger—fill in the right word. It’s up to you.” She left the sentence open for him to work with.

  Was that how he came across? Dylan wondered. Did she think he was vengeful?

  “I meant what I said about helping him because of my mother.” And that was all he intended to say in defense of his motives. If he said any more, he felt he’d come across as insincere. “How familiar are you with my father’s dealings with the various groups of influence in Congress as well as with the different lobbyists?”

  This was familiar territory for her. “Those I’m all up on,” she told him. Or was she? “Or, at least I think I am,” Cindy felt compelled to qualify. “After being on the receiving end of this sucker punch, I’m not a hundred-percent sure of anything anymore,” she had to admit. “Up until this whole media circus started, I thought I was completely in the loop about everything the senator was involved with professionally.” An ironic smile curved her mouth. There was no humor in it. “Obviously, though, I wasn’t.” She looked at him. “Why?”

  He went back to one of his sticking points. “Because I’m curious why this is happening at this point in time.”

  In her opinion, that was simple enough to answer. “Because his bimbo collection decided to come forward.”

  “But why now?” Dylan emphasized, trying to make her understand his curiosity. “Why not last month? Or last spring? Or this fall?”

  She didn’t have an answer for that, but was one actually necessary? The end result was still the same: One hell of a scandal. “Does that really matter?” she asked him.

  “It might,” he replied thoughtfully, working on a knot whose ends were completely hidden to him at this point. He didn’t believe in random occurrences or coincidences. Things always happened for a reason. “It just might.”

  “Dad, I can come home, stay with you,” the young voice on the other end of the cell phone insisted. “You need someone there with you. I’m not going to turn my ba
ck on you or pretend everything’s all right when it’s not.”

  Despite the humiliating and quite possibly dire situation he found himself in, Hank smiled as he listened to his only daughter’s voice. Whatever else he’d done wrong in his life—and the list was becoming rather extensive these days—this much he’d done right. The offspring he’d produced with Sarah were all fine, upstanding young citizens, and none had a bigger heart than Lana, his beautiful little blue-eyed, blond doll.

  Not that he’d had much of a hand in anything but his children’s initial procreation. Certainly not in raising them. The credit, he freely admitted, all went to his wife, Sarah. He fervently wished that there were such things as do-overs in life. He’d go back and do so many things differently this time. Learn to treasure the good things that life had given him instead of questing for more.

  But there were no do-overs. There was only now and the future—if he managed to live through this mess to see it. All he could do was hope that things would work themselves out so that he would get the opportunity to make it up to all of them, especially to Sarah. If she let him.

  “I appreciate that, Lana, I really do. But I want you to stay in Europe. Keep up with your studies,” he urged. God knew he’d disrupted enough lives without disrupting hers as well. “I can’t have you coming here.” Even as he told her to stay away, he was making up his mind that he was going to have to go somewhere else. Away from here. And the less Lana knew about his plans, the less of a liability she was. To herself and to him. “It’s not safe being around me right now.”

  “Not safe?” Lana echoed, confused and a little afraid for her father at the same time. “What do you mean it’s not safe? Dad, what’s going on?” she cried nervously. “Please tell me.”

  Hank had always had a quick, fertile mind. It was one of the reasons the Society had singled him out in the first place. He thought quickly now, searching for a plausible lie to feed his daughter. There was absolutely no point in her worrying about him. His previous wording had been a bad slip of the tongue on his part. He was going to have to be more careful in the future.

  “I meant as in my reputation being blackened the way it is. I don’t want it rubbing off on you and if the public sees you standing by me, that’s exactly what’ll happen.”

  At twenty-four, things like reputations carried little significance to Lana. “I don’t care about my reputation, Dad,” she insisted. “What I care about is you.”

  “Very flattering, dear. I am touched.” And he was, but he needed to make her understand. “But you need to care about your reputation. In the end, that’s all any of us has—our reputations, our legacy.” And he should have thought of that earlier, he upbraided himself. He was acutely aware of that now. But that was all water under a very shaky proverbial bridge, he thought in despair.

  “Listen, sweetheart, the best thing you can do for me is make sure you and your mother keep out of the public eye. Go somewhere where the media can’t get to you.” And nobody else, either, he added silently.

  He couldn’t tell his daughter outright what he was afraid of. He had only his suspicions to guide him and they might turn out to be all wrong. He might, with any luck, be overreacting. Besides, he didn’t want to frighten Lana. Didn’t want her thinking that her own life was in danger because of something he had gotten mixed up in.

  This was what he got for being so damn full of himself, Hank thought now. He’d allowed his hubris to get the better of him and now he was being punished. That, in itself, he could make his peace with. He’d done a lot of bad things in his time and he deserved to be metaphorically lynched in public for it. But the other, the other had been a matter of being flattered that such high-ranking men wanted him as part of their ultra-secret, do-not-breathe-a-word-of-this organization, Raven’s Head Society.

  His inherent insecurities always had him hunting for validation. But fifteen minutes into the initial get-acquainted meeting, once the euphoria about rubbing elbows with these men, all famous for one reason or another, had worn off, he’d realized that he was in way over his head. But bowing out as he wanted to was severely frowned upon. He’d found that out when they’d taken a vote on what he’d initially assumed was actually a joke.

  He’d discovered this very quickly and had also discovered that the other members of this “gathering” didn’t like their members, especially their new members, taking a pass on something that required every member’s seal of approval. Words like treason and betrayal had been bandied about. All pointedly aimed at him.

  He’d walked out of that meeting turned around one hundred and eighty degrees from the man he’d been going in. Going in he’d been positive, enthusiastic. Hopeful. And pretty damn full of himself.

  That had quickly changed when he’d realized what it was that they, these captains of industry, congressmen, renowned surgeons and figures from the world arena, were proposing. It was something so outlandish, so horrific, that even now he didn’t want to think about it or dwell on the consequences its commission would have.

  Once done, the repercussions would encompass not just this country but the world as well. And the greater good they claimed they were focusing on was only their greater good. For, down to the man, they would all profit from this.

  Greedy though he was, Hank knew he had to draw the line somewhere. And this was where he drew it.

  But he didn’t want to have to stand and defend his position. He was only one man and, as such, he now realized, insignificant in their eyes. They’d roll right over him.

  And maybe worse.

  That was when he’d known he had to make himself scarce. Really scarce. That meant that he had to get away from his family estate as well. This location wasn’t safe for him. It was too well-known.

  A chill ran down his spine.

  Those reporters camped outside his gates—who was to say that there wasn’t a messenger from the Society among them? Someone with one final, silencing message.

  He needed to go.

  Almost as much as he needed to keep his family, especially his daughter and his wife, safe.

  He realized that Lana was talking to him. “I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t hear that,” he apologized. “What did you just say?”

  “I said I want to be with you,” Lana insisted. “You need someone in your corner.”

  “I have someone,” he assured her.

  For a moment, there was silence on the other end. And then Lana asked him in a still voice. “One of them?”

  He heard the contempt in each word. Lana might be the light of his life, but she was also her mother’s daughter, he thought. He didn’t blame either one of them. He blamed only himself.

  “No,” he told her. “It’s your brother, Dylan. He said he was going to help me mount a defense, take on my case.”

  This time, the moment of silence was followed by a question echoing with disbelief. “Dylan came to see you?” she asked incredulously.

  “That’s what I just said,” Hank told his youngest, his voice filled with all the affection he felt for her. “So there’s no need for you to come rushing here and turn yourself into a target—for the media’s slings and arrows,” he tagged on quickly.

  He was badly rattled, he thought. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be so careless with his words. If he frightened her, she might not be able to think clearly and might not take the precautions she needed to in order to stay out of the Society’s line of vision. He didn’t want them getting any ideas.

  “I’ll feel a lot better knowing you and your mother are safe and out of harm’s way,” he concluded.

  It was obvious that Lana thought he meant metaphorically. “Mom’s pretty upset by all this, you know,” she told him, lowering her voice a little. It made him wonder if perhaps Sarah was somewhere close by, near their daughter. Had she flown to Paris, seeking to escape the scandal he’d brought down on them all?

  The guilt he felt for having hurt his wife did hang heavily on him now, although he doubted that anyone would belie
ve him. He’d never started out to hurt anyone. He’d just wanted to enjoy himself and wield as much power as he could. Somehow it had all escalated, getting out of hand, and it was now coming back to haunt him, demanding its pound of flesh in exchange.

  Everything, Hank now realized wearily, had consequences.

  “Yes, I know,” he said to Lana. “Listen, baby, tell your mother I’m sorry. Tell her that I never meant for any of this to hurt her.”

  “Um,” Lana felt uncomfortable. Not with the request, but with what she assumed her father hoped to accomplish by extending an apology through her. “I don’t think she really wants to hear from you right now, Dad.”

  He couldn’t blame Sarah, he thought. “Tell her anyway,” he requested. “Just so she knows.” Though he realized it was overkill, his concern made him emphasize his plea one last time. “And make sure that you stay somewhere off the grid. And keep safe.”

  “Dad, you’re scaring me.”

  Damn, he had to learn to curb his mouth, he upbraided himself. It was going to bring about his ultimate downfall one day—if it hadn’t already. If he listened rather than talked, maybe none of this would be happening right now.

  “Nothing to be scared of, baby,” he assured her. “Just do as I say. Promise?”

  “Promise,” he heard her say reluctantly.

  As he hung up, Hank told himself that at least he had that to cling to.

  That, and the integrity of his sons. It was more, he realized, than he deserved.

  Squaring his shoulders, he went to pack. And to make fresh plans.

  “Are you going to get in contact with him?” Bonnie Gene finally demanded of her husband, unable to hold her tongue any longer.

  Donald didn’t answer her.