As usual, any emotional damage the family had suffered in the interim would be Sean’s fault. Even more, if Bill did know about Sean’s birth father, how would he treat “the boy” now?
Will? He’d adopt that steely, disappointed, “Wow, you went over the edge this time, little brother” expression. He’d watch with that condemning look from the sidelines while the rest of the family rained verbal chaos down on Sean’s head. Later Will would wrangle the why out of Sean through rapid-fire questions that unnerved even his toughest adversaries.
And Sarah? She’d race to him and hug him fiercely. Then, after telling everybody else to back off, she’d personally give him grief for scaring them.
He deserved anything they dished out. How had he gotten so far off track that he’d only thought about himself? One night of pursuing his desires could have ruined what he wanted to build with someone like Elizabeth. Two weeks had seemed a short time away to process such a big revelation. But if he’d lived through 14 days of thinking Will or Sarah were dead . . .
He had a choice to make. Either he could let the guilt incapacitate him—for his night of weakness, for terrifying his family—or he could buck up, hightail it back to New York, and take the heat and any consequences that followed. Doing so would take courage, yes, but Sean had only backed down once in his life and fled. He would not do so again.
The gentle voice spoke again. To those who are given much, much is required.
And there it was. His time on the mountain had clarified his focus.
The media spotlight had often been on him as a Worthington. He’d played that up at formal events and anywhere else the paparazzi caught up with him. He was the Worthington most photographed—the one the tabloids buzzed about—and with just cause. Will, who spent his time mainly in the boardroom and secreted away in his office building, warranted a Time magazine cover or two but wasn’t interesting fodder for the tabloids. Sarah had been in the limelight as a teenager and at university for her antics, diverse causes, fund-raising, and social networking. A week didn’t pass without her face and most recent event splashed across the gossip pages. But once she’d taken her job with the DOJ and become deeply religious, she’d seemed to settle.
That left Sean, the high-living bachelor, as the king of the party circuit. But Sean had grown tired of the stilted, banal conversation and of himself being the focus, with the causes he believed in garnering only a brief mention amid the gossip.
The arena of politics was not for him, he had decided. Especially since he wasn’t really a Republican and wasn’t really a Democrat. He believed both political parties had their pros and cons, and it had always troubled him that people in general bought so blindly into one or the other, mainly because family or friends were Republican or Democrat. It was difficult for anyone to step away from their tribe and risk potential dissension.
Sean knew well how to work the system after Will’s run for Senate. But he didn’t want to. That wasn’t where his passions lay. He knew he owed Kiki Estrada a call. She wouldn’t be happy, but he needed to catch her before she got the steam engines rolling.
So what was he good at? What did he really want to do—for himself? If he could choose to do anything, and he hadn’t been thrust into the role he had with Worthington Shares, what would he do?
As the night deepened, he wrestled with those questions. At last, exhausted, he squinted in the dark toward his backpack. After fumbling to light a lamp, he withdrew the book his sister had given him. He’d never cracked it open, never felt the need. The Bible stories he’d heard in childhood had stayed there, relegated to his past instead of his adult life. Now the book drew him.
Opening the first page, he saw his sister’s scribbles.
To Sean. Light for your path. Love you to the moon and back. Sarah.
It made him miss her all the more.
He flipped a chunk of pages and read the words his eyes landed on in the flickering lamplight. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
There it was again—the clarity that cut through the muddle. Every life is precious, Sean thought. Every life matters. Suddenly he realized the truth of the creation story in Genesis. God has breathed life, his spirit, into human beings. We are made in his image. That means something. That breath of life is what gives every human being infinite value, something not defined by wealth or circumstances.
At last the something “wholly other” he always felt in Nepal made sense.
Somewhere, most likely in a paradise now beneath the Persian Gulf, God had chosen to create man and woman in his image. There, in that paradise formed at the nexus of fertile land and abundant freshwater, he had literally breathed life into the human species that had evolved for hundreds of thousands of years and struggled to survive on the surface of the earth. And humankind moved forward to conquer the entire earth from there—a “wholly other” species endowed with the breath of life from God. Sean closed his eyes, remembering the infinite spirit he saw in the faces and lives of the Nepali people. The same kind of spirit he always felt among those who had little and often struggled for survival. Yet they were the most joyful people he had ever met.
In a flash, Sean knew the path ahead. What he loved most was meeting new people from financially challenged areas and seeing the light of joy in their eyes when he told them he could back their dream, improve life for them and others in their communities. He smiled as he thought of the summers he’d spent in Malawi with his mother, squatting in the dirt with the villagers as they figured out the best location to dig a well or build a medical clinic.
What would he do now? He laughed out loud as he placed the book on the floor by the bed. Exactly what he had been doing, but with a very different goal. He had pursued growing Worthington Shares through start-ups—and had won overall in the financial bottom line for the company. Along the way he had assisted fledgling businesses in underdeveloped countries and helped improve scores of communities.
But what if, instead, he flipped his thinking? Started with the goal of finding the best ways to make a positive mark on communities for the long haul? What if he even moved to a particular place in the world, got to know the locale, and then brainstormed or identified ventures that Worthington Shares could put their financial muscle behind that could benefit people the most?
As Elizabeth had said, who he was at his core had not changed. He would combine what he was best at—networking, brainstorming, problem solving, traveling at a moment’s notice, maneuvering multiple cultures and languages and feeling comfortable doing so—and use it strategically to benefit those with the deepest need. Instead of considering the company’s financial growth model as the tipping point—that the ventures would contribute to the Worthington bottom-dollar spreadsheets—he’d make his goal first to improve the lives of the poor across the world, in whatever way he could. Sure, the Worthingtons gave to a lot of charities. Giving a check and putting boots on the ground were completely different ventures. A combination of the two? Just think what might be accomplished!
The ideas were a shot of adrenaline.
Elizabeth was right. Worthington money was a gift, even though at times he’d considered it a curse because of the social trappings and responsibilities that came with it. Now, however, no matter how he had become a Worthington, he was committed to using the resources that had been granted him to make a lasting mark on the planet for good.
Those decisions made, serenity cloaked him.
At last he slept.
51
NEW YORK CITY
Michael Vara settled shakily into the chair Darcy offered him in her office after he viewed the body. His hands were trembling. His olive-toned face was pale and sickly. “I know that’s Justin, but I still don’t believe it. There’s no way he bombed that building.”
“We have film of him carrying that backpack and leaving it next to the building,” Sarah said gently.
“Then he couldn’t have known wha
t was in the backpack,” Michael insisted, gripping the arms of the chair. A lock of his dark curly hair fell over one eye as he looked up at her. “A couple of days before the bombing I talked to him. He said he was just hired for a gig. He was so happy—it was the first one he’d had for a long time. Maybe he’d even make enough to get out of the city, to get a plane ticket to meet me in Dublin, he said.”
Michael dropped his head into his hands. “He’d talked about needing a fresh start. I’d told him for a long time that he needed to get out of New York. He was doing things lately that he didn’t want to do. I told him he could always stay at my place for free.”
Sarah and Darcy exchanged glances.
“You said ‘doing things he didn’t want to do.’ What kind of things do you mean?” Darcy asked.
Michael shuddered. “Dangerous underground shows. Metal bars on windows, bulletproof glass . . . those kinds of things. I told him to stay away.”
“Ah.”
“That’s why he was so happy to get an easy two-hour gig that paid well. All he had to do was dress up in some kind of costume, carry a backpack, and wander around for a while, he said. Make sure he was noticed. Then he’d get a couple grand. I thought it was kinda weird.” He looked up. “Then again, New Yorkers are weird.”
Sarah nodded. “That matches what we saw in the video.”
“He definitely didn’t say anything about carrying a bomb. He was happy and not nervous. If he’d been about to do something illegal, I would have known. It would have come through in his voice, like when he told me about the underground shows.”
“Okay, so let’s follow that theory—that he didn’t know what he was carrying in the backpack,” Darcy said.
Michael frowned. “There’s no way he knew.”
“How do you think he would have reacted psychologically when he discovered that he’d delivered a bomb that took out part of a building and could have hurt a bunch of people?” Darcy asked.
“He would have been devastated.”
“Enough to jump off a building?”
“No.” The answer was sharp, definitive. Then he wavered. “Maybe.” A long sigh. “I don’t know. Justin went through a lot of ups and downs, but he never once told me he wanted to end his life.”
“Michael,” Sarah asked, “if we showed you the suicide note, could you identify it as Justin’s handwriting or not?”
Darcy crooked her finger at one of the DHS staff outside the glass partition. He poked his head in, handed the note to her, and shut the door again.
“What do you think?” Darcy handed the note to him.
Michael was silent as he read. Then his eyes moved back to the top of the letter, and he traced it line by line with his index finger. At last he looked up. “Justin didn’t write this note. If he was upset enough to decide to kill himself, he wouldn’t be able to think clearly enough to be this organized. He’d be rattled. Writing sporadic words, phrases, in stream of consciousness, not full sentences explaining why he decided to bomb the building and kill himself. And Green Justice? He never mentioned Green Justice or hating oil companies.”
He swept his hand over the paper. “And see the type of pen he used? I hate blue ballpoint pens, and so did he. It was one of those quirky things we had in common. I only have black fine Sharpies and calligraphy pens in my apartment. So if he wrote it there, where did he get the blue ballpoint pen? Did they find it in the apartment?”
Darcy looked startled. “Don’t even know if anyone searched for that.”
“If it isn’t there, that would mean he, or whoever wrote the note, didn’t write it at my apartment,” Michael reasoned. “Unless Justin had the pen in his pocket . . .”
“. . . and it flew out when he jumped off the building,” Sarah finished.
“The handwriting is totally different,” Michael added. “Before I started working overseas, he’d write me notes when he was doing fine and when he was doing badly and leave them at my flat sometimes. The handwriting styles were hardly recognizable as the same person. When he was doing fine, he used my calligraphy pens in a beautifully flowing script. When he was doing badly, he printed with the black Sharpies, and it was jerky. Short words, but sentences. Never in blue ink. This?” He shook his head. “It’s not Justin.”
“Did Justin have the technical ability to figure out how to put a bomb together?” Darcy asked.
Michael blinked. “Justin? He didn’t know how to check the circuit breaker in their house when the electricity blew. I had to come over and do it for him and his mom. No way. Somebody had to have delivered that bomb to him ready to go.”
“Perhaps it was set on a timer when he was given the backpack or had a remote detonation,” Sarah said.
“Justin wouldn’t have done it if he had known anyone could be harmed. Dressing up in a costume was second nature to him. We do it in the theater all the time. But planting a bomb? No. Not even at his worst. He only wanted his name in lights. Said his mother told him he’d make it big someday . . . be in the news.” Michael slumped. “Never would have guessed it would be this way.”
“One last question,” Darcy said. “Did anyone other than you know that Justin sometimes stayed at your place?”
He frowned. “Only Mrs. Chesterton. I’m pretty sure I told her he sometimes stayed there. Neighbors in my building might have noticed him coming and going, but they wouldn’t know he was staying there. They’d probably assume he was visiting someone. The tenants change a lot in that building.”
Sarah and Darcy exchanged a glance. Neither Michael nor Mrs. Chesterton would have anything to do with Justin’s death. Dead end there.
Michael winced. “She’s such a dear lady. I hate to tell her the news . . . if it’s okay for me to tell her?”
Darcy nodded. “Now that you’ve officially identified the body and there is no next of kin, the name will be released.”
“How soon?” he asked. “I’d like to let Mrs. Chesterton know and make burial arrangements for Justin. I think it would be better to have that taken care of before his name is released.”
“I understand,” Darcy said. “If you can make arrangements right away, we can have the body moved and I’ll make a request to stall the release of the name for 48 to 72 hours to allow you to make the final arrangements.”
“Thank you.” Michael lifted his chin. “Justin had problems, but he was my friend. I believe someday the truth will be revealed, and I want to be there when it is. If you need my help on anything, count me in.” His dark eyes narrowed in determination. “My friend doesn’t deserve a role in history as a terrorist.”
After Michael left, Sarah eyed Darcy. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yep. Justin was helped off that building.”
Sarah nodded. She got out of her chair and paced as she talked, ticking the points off on her fingers. “Not only did somebody make sure Catherine Englewood got him on camera, but they provided him with the backpack and bomb. They gave him instructions where to leave the evidence—incriminating the ecological activist contingent. Nobody would be that dumb to leave evidence behind their buildings. Evidence of his insanity and a signed confession were planted at Michael’s apartment.”
“Hey, wait right there. Who else other than Michael and Mrs. Chesterton knew that Justin stayed there sometimes?”
“That,” Sarah declared, “is the million-dollar question. It means there’s another player, or two, or more. And to ensure that Justin couldn’t help us put together the pieces, he was lured to the roof of that building.”
“Maybe even herded off it.”
“Exactly. Now we have to prove it.”
EN ROUTE FROM CORVO TO FLORES, AZORES ISLANDS
The sun was barely up. Sean inhaled the briny scent of the North Atlantic. Like his mother, he felt most at home on the water. She’d joked it was due to her generations of Irish roots. Now he knew why it was doubly so for him.
He’d crossed a lot of oceans on his start-up trips lately, but the last
time he’d been on a boat was the USS Cantor in the Arctic Ocean. The ice floes there were a far cry from the tropical warmth that surrounded the fishing boat he was on now, even early in the morning. Yet he preferred that icy, untamed wilderness because Elizabeth had been there. Yes, he admitted, wherever he was with her felt like home. Upon hearing her voice yesterday, he’d been ready to say, “Remember when you climbed aboard the USS Cantor in the Arctic? That’s when I knew I was in love with you.”
But he’d halted midstream. With Jon revealing his interest, Sean could never betray those friendships. They were too important to him. Still, his heart twinged at the possibilities that would never be. Lifting his face, he welcomed the breezy mist from the ocean.
Soon he’d be back on Flores. He’d gather his pilot from the hotel courtyard where he likely lay soaking up the sun and the views of the beautiful native women. After a short jaunt to Ponta Delgada, where they’d fuel up and stay the night, they’d head to New York City.
He’d be there sometime the next day.
EN ROUTE FROM PONTA DELGADA TO FLORES
The man was irritated with the delays at Nordela Airport that had kept his private jet grounded until midmorning. When they were at last in the air, he settled back in the white leather chair.
His contact approached hesitantly. “Sir?”
“What now?” the man barked.
“His cell number has popped up on the grid as being in use,” the contact reported.
There were only three options. One, Sean was alive and had taken a mini vacation from technology. Two, he’d been taken against his will, and now the kidnappers were making demands. Or three, someone had found his cell and was using it.
“Where?” the man demanded.
A Powerful Secret Page 19