“Well, don’t you look all official and everything,” she said.
Will looked up, smiled broadly, and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to Will Worthington for Senate!”
Sarah stared at her older brother. He looked genuinely happy—happier than she had seen him in a long time. His ever-present suit was missing. He wore simple khakis and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There were no worry lines on his face. He didn’t seem to care that he was sitting in a mostly empty room with card tables and folding chairs for office furniture. He also didn’t seem all that bothered by the events of the past few days with American Frontier.
She leaned against the doorjamb. “You’re really doing this, aren’t you?”
“I am. I mean, why not? We’ve talked about this, you and I, for as long as we can remember. Dad has talked about this. His dad used to talk about politics with us when we were little, and I still remember some of those stories about our great-great-granddad’s days running around with Teddy Roosevelt at the start of the last century.”
She smiled. It made her glad to see her brother happy and productive. She’d been worried about him. He’d always been intense and hard on himself. She knew how badly he’d wanted the American Frontier job, and how committed he’d been to turning that particular ship around. Now that fight was left to her. Ironic.
“Well, can I be the first to say it’s about time?” Sarah waved an arm around the room. “You’re right. We’ve been talking about politics for as long as I can remember. I’ve never understood why no Worthington ever jumped in before now, at least since . . . well, you know, so long ago. I’m glad it’s you, Will. But”—she hesitated—“are you sure this is what you want?”
He scowled. “What? Have you and Mom been talking or something? I spoke to her earlier, and it sounded like she was trying to talk me out of it.”
“I know she’s worried, but it’s a mom’s job to worry. Or so my friends who are moms have said. I think that’s even more true right now because Sean is way out of her mama-bear reach, and you know he’s not good about calling home when he’s traveling the globe.” She tilted her head and shot him a comic expression.
Will laughed. “Like he’s ever good about keeping in touch when he’s in New York City.” He scanned the office and the piles of papers spread out across the card table. “But to answer your question, yes!” He flung his arms heavenward in uncharacteristic excitement. “I’ll tell you what, though—this is hard work. I’ve been plugging away at a whole slew of research papers on everything that you can possibly imagine. I thought corporate finance was hard. This is a whole level tougher than that.”
“So what is all that stuff?” Sarah leaned forward to peer at the stash.
Will looked down at the pile. “I didn’t know exactly where to start, so I basically searched for everything James Loughlin has ever commented on or been involved in and then for background research on those topics. I figured it was as good a place to start as any.”
“Logical.” She winked. “It always pays to know your opponents.”
“Problem is, he’s been a senator for such a long time, there are probably a couple dozen big issues he’s been involved in. It’s a lot to get through and master.”
“You’ll manage, I’m sure.” Sarah grinned. “You always do. So who’s going to be your campaign manager? Have you thought about that at all?”
“I have a bit. I’ve made a couple of calls. The smart thing to do, everyone tells me, is to line up one of the hired guns who’s done this before. Time is short, and we need to assemble a professional team quickly. I’ve already asked the Worthington Shares senior executives to task a media and ad team. They’re making some calls. I don’t have to worry about fund-raising. I decided I’ll loan the money to the campaign myself and worry about fund-raising later. So I don’t need a finance chair.”
“What you need is someone who can manage your network, who has massive social skills, who has your best interests at heart, who you trust completely and will have your back no matter what, and who is able to say no to you when you’re about to do something monumentally stupid.”
He opened his mouth, but she shushed him with one hand up.
“Let me finish, big brother. You can hire everything else, but you can’t hire that kind of loyalty to run your campaign.” Sarah smirked, waiting for the none-too-subtle suggestion to sink in.
“I see,” he said finally. “So when did you get interested in politics, kid?”
“No, silly. I meant Sean. I have no interest whatsoever in politics. Never have, and almost certainly never will.”
“Don’t say never. Life’s short and things change.” He laughed. “I of all people ought to know that, based on recent events.”
“You’re right. But still, Sean’s your guy. He’d love to do it as well.”
Will tilted his head to one side and squinted his left eye. It was an old habit, and a dead giveaway that he was confronting unexpected information.
“You’ve talked to him about it?” he asked.
“Sure have. Thirty minutes ago, in fact. The Green Justice ship made it to the Alaska shoreline safely. They’re going to go back to the spill site when they can. But not Sean. He’s flying back to the States. He knows what’s going on, and he wants to help you.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Will sank back into his chair. “I never would have figured. He complains all the time about how I get the glory and he gets the dregs. So he’d really do this—stay behind the scenes while I’m out there running around in the spotlight? And it wouldn’t drive him crazy?”
“He’d do it in a nanosecond,” Sarah said firmly. “And to answer your second question, of course it’ll drive him crazy. But Sean will always be a bit crazy.” She grinned. Propping her hands on his table, she said with intensity, “You know, Will, it’s what he’s good at. I don’t know anyone with a greater network and who sees all sides of an issue more clearly than Sean. He’s perfect for this. And you’ll need someone you can trust. There isn’t anyone you can trust more than him.”
“Unless it’s you.” He waggled his eyebrows at her like he used to when they were kids. It had always made her giggle.
She couldn’t help it—she giggled. Old habits died hard, for both of them. Then she sobered. “But I’m not available, willing, or interested in the job. Sean is. So call him, talk it through. You’ll see. It makes sense.” Sarah folded her arms and waited for her brother’s answer.
Will thought about trying to stare down his extraordinarily self-confident little sister, realized how futile that would be in the end, and threw up his hands in resignation. “All right, you win,” he declared. “Sean is my new campaign manager. I’ll talk to him, and I’ll have the media team put it in a campaign announcement we’re making on a speaking tour in the morning.”
“Good.” Sarah made a big show of wiping her hands. “Now that we got that out of the way, let me tell you the other reason I stopped by.”
“Wait a minute. You mean, you planned this? You came by here to convince me to bring Sean on as my campaign manager?”
“You’re a bit slow, aren’t you?” she teased. “Oh well, that’s all right. I get the beauty, Sean gets the brains, which leaves you with—”
“So what’s the other reason you stopped by?” he asked before she could continue.
“To tell you about our case in confidence. We’re not only going after AF on the financial stuff, we’re going after them for fraud and criminal negligence. Eric Sandstrom is named repeatedly in the documents we’ve filed. I just thought you’d want to know. But more importantly, I wanted to pass on some other information. It’s confidential and speculative, and I’m not sure what you would do with it, or even if you’d want to do anything. I know you’ve moved on. But I thought you should know. It has to do with American Frontier and the bombing.”
It was true—in his mind, he’d already moved on. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to know about something that might have a be
aring on what they were doing.
“What is it?” Will asked.
“I think I told you that we’ve been working quite closely with a team of investigators who are looking into allegations of criminal negligence,” Sarah said. “We’ve cast a pretty wide net. But my best source, confidentially, is my friend Darcy. She’s been asking some hard questions about the purported bomber.”
“The guy in the polar bear suit?”
“Yes. And she’s been quietly looping me in wherever she can. Though it’s just speculation at this point, DHS is now taking a really hard look at what American Frontier knew about that bombing beforehand.”
So my suspicions might be true. Sandstrom and maybe some others at American Frontier might have arranged the bombing of their own building.
He gripped the seat of the folding chair. “What do you mean, beforehand? How’s that possible? And do they have proof?”
“It’s possible if they put the guy up to it.”
Will opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. He’d already landed on the same conclusion himself, but he still argued the point to see if his prior reasoning had been solid. “That’s insane. There’s just no way. Who would do something like that?”
“Someone with an awful lot on the line, that’s who.”
“I guess.” His mind was already spinning with a thousand questions, trying to link what his gut told him with the information he’d just received. “But I’m not sure it makes a great deal of sense. That’s a big roll of the dice.”
“It is,” Sarah agreed. “But remember who we’re talking about, who we’re dealing with. I know you’ve sweated blood for American Frontier. You wanted to be its CEO because you wanted to blaze the company ahead on a new trail. But Will, you’re all about integrity and doing the right thing. Sadly, others aren’t. This is the same company that tried—and failed—to lie about or cover up the facts about perhaps the biggest oil spill in history. We still don’t know the extent of the cover-up, but I can tell you that we intend to keep driving at the truth in the criminal negligence case. We both know what the stakes are in this.”
“Yeah. What’s that saying: ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’?”
“Something like that.” She pursed her lips.
“So maybe you’re right, and maybe it is possible,” Will said. “But it still seems more than a bit crazy.”
But in his heart, he knew the speculation was true.
47
Sean picked up as soon as Will called. He was still in a small port city on the coast of Alaska but was working on getting a plane ride out of there as soon as possible.
Will heard the disgust in Sean’s voice as he reported on the situation. “Once the storms subsided, a fleet of American Frontier ships with enough skimmers and booms to clean up half of the free oil in the oceans set sail from this little port. To the public, AF must now look pretty good, seemingly sparing no expense in the cleanup. It’s a zoo around here. The company’s press office has made certain that dozens of television news crews are on hand to film the event. I’m sure it’s by far the biggest photo op ever in Alaska’s history.”
“So they’re doing the big dog and pony show, huh?” Will asked.
“Yeah. They even just walked the media, including Jon, through a new concept to cap the leaking well. It has only been modeled so far, but the engineers say they’re confident based on past successes. Talk about a bunch of bull.”
“So with the ice moving in, American Frontier has the next six months under control,” Will reasoned. “And the media will only report on the expected progress, complete with pictures, because they won’t be able to get close enough to report on anything else anyway.”
“And by the time the ice clears, all the reporters will have moved on.”
So Sandstrom has won nearly every battle, Will thought. American Frontier had fought off a coup d’état at the board level. They’d dodged a massive public relations nightmare, despite the platform getting hit with a hurricane. And in spite of initial flurries around Jon Gillibrand’s New York Times article and some follow-up coverage, the media had seemed to lose interest, as they tended to do these days. American Frontier’s stock price had even rebounded since the accident in the Arctic. And the board had reinforced and supported the Arctic policy.
“They’re not home free,” Will told his brother.
“Oh yeah?”
“Let’s just say I heard from a very good source that Sandstrom is fit to be tied and has been taking it out on Jason Carson. Sandstrom’s getting hit with a fresh round of attacks from the White House, Wall Street, and the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division—thanks to Sarah. And remember her friend Darcy Wiggins at DHS? Seems even the domestic terrorism investigators there are lobbing some shots American Frontier’s way. It’s a real mess. As much as I can’t stand Jason Carson, or anybody else of his ilk, I wouldn’t want to be him right now.”
“Well, it’s justly deserved.”
“Speaking of justly deserved, brother,” Will said, “a little bird told me you might be interested in adding something more to your already overwhelming plate.”
There was a slight pause, then, “Sarah? You mean that little bird?”
“Indeed.”
“So come right on out and ask me, and quit stalling.”
Will grinned. With everybody else on the planet, Sean was Mr. Negotiator, smoothing over any ruffles between parties. But with his brother, Sean tended to go head to head. Still, Sarah was right. There was no one else Will trusted more than Sean to do what was right. Even if his brother did color outside the lines every once in a while, he’d never stepped over a moral or ethical line, at least not that Will knew about.
Both brothers were cut from the same cloth. Their father had raised them to always tell the truth because the truth would always win out. You never had to fear any hidden consequences that could bite you in the keister. So as a Worthington, Sean was trustworthy and honest. He simply liked to do things very differently than his brother. And Sean had developed enough pull in his social network to accomplish just about anything he set out to do.
Now Will was counting on that skill to help them streamline the Senate race. “Okay, brother, I want you to become my campaign manager for the Senate race.” He paused, then added, “Please.”
A chuckle resounded on the other end of the line. “When you say it that way—done.”
Drew swept in the door looking impeccably groomed, as usual, in a Giorgio Armani suit. But his expression was grim.
“The game’s just ramped up,” he reported. “And Worthington Shares is the target. Sandstrom knows he’ll be in trouble when you complete the sell-off of your shares. It’ll kill the stock price. Sandstrom’s worried you’re going to use every opportunity during the Senate race to beat up on American Frontier. Loughlin seems certain of it and is demanding that Sandstrom do something about it. He doesn’t want you in the Senate race and now blames Sandstrom for forcing your hand.” He raised a brow. “They’re not happy bedfellows at the moment.”
Will wasn’t worried. He could take the heat. He was used to it in the boardroom—surely politics couldn’t be any worse.
But Drew wasn’t done. “Sandstrom says you three Worthington kids are the key to all this mess. That your sister is calling the shots on the criminal negligence case at Justice and has investigators digging every which way but Sunday. It doesn’t help that Sean’s little ecological biodiversity NGO is talking about billions in damages if they can prove a lot of oil is spilling out.”
Will narrowed his eyes. He understood that he was in the spotlight. After all, he’d been in it every day since he could remember. But thus far, Sean and Sarah had only been highlighted here or there in the media and could go about their business quietly most of the time. Now they too were being targeted. And not just by the media. By some power-hungry people who might be willing to do anything to ensure they got what they wanted—William Jennings Worthington VI ou
t of the Senate race.
“And Sarah’s DHS investigator friend is starting to come to certain conclusions that could blow American Frontier sky-high as a company.” Drew raked his fingers through his hair and rubbed the base of his neck.
“So?”
“Word is that Sandstrom has decided to take out the Worthington family—that it’s time to play that card. And he told Jason Carson he wants to tie up loose ends for good. That it’s the only way to get you Worthingtons out of the way. He wants to kill three birds with one stone.”
“Do you know how?” Will couldn’t help the little shiver of fear that coursed through his body. Sandstrom indeed had to be desperate and the situation dire to be thinking of taking out a family like the Worthingtons.
Drew shook his head. “All I know is that his plan is to cripple the criminal negligence, shareholder lawsuit, and NGO center cases all at once. And he’s sending Jason Carson back to New York to do it on the QT.”
48
EN ROUTE TO CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION
When Will decided the best place to announce his Senate race was in Chautauqua, the siblings did something highly unusual for three busy Worthingtons. They decided to pile into Will’s Land Rover and make the long drive through the Catskills and Western New York to arrive at the quiet family summer estate together.
Laura and the kids were coming too, but would drive separately and arrive in time for the Senate announcement. “Are you sure?” he’d asked her. “Want me to wait and drive with you and the kids?”
She’d tilted her head and studied him. “I couldn’t be more sure. Will, you need this time with your family. With all of them together. It’s important, for more than the usual reasons. I don’t know why, but a still small voice is telling me that.” She sighed. “And you need to find out what’s wrong with your mother. She really hasn’t been herself ever since you announced your Senate race. Even when she talks to me on the phone, she’s distracted. Promise me you’ll find out what’s up? For her sake and yours?”
A Perfect Ambition Page 21