The Waterfall

by Carla Neggers

  When? How? Why?

  Wouldn’t someone—Madison, J.T., Georgie, Rob, the damn mailman—have heard or seen something?

  They’d run up to Manchester last night. It could have happened then, when no one was home.

  The windows faced east across the side yard and the garage, the barn, Joshua Brook. A hunter or target shooter could have been in the woods near the brook and accidentally landed a stray bullet in her dining room, panicked, slipped inside and dug it out.

  “Ha,” she said aloud.

  This was no accident.

  Lucy was shaking, sick to her stomach. If she called the police, she’d be up all night. She’d have to explain to Madison and J.T. Rob’s grandmother had a scanner—she’d call Rob, and he and Patti would come over.

  And that was just the beginning. The police would call Washington. The Capitol Police would want to know if the incidents had anything to do with Jack Swift. He would be notified.

  She staggered to her feet and picked up her tea.

  Now was she desperate enough to ask Sebastian Redwing for help?

  She ran into the kitchen, dumped her tea down the sink and locked the back door. She went into her bedroom to pack. “You need a dog,” she muttered to herself. “That’s all.”

  A big dog. A big dog that barked.

  “A big, ugly dog that barks.”

  He’d take care of intruders, and she could train him to go fishing with J.T. Even Madison would like a dog.

  That settled it. Never mind Redwing. When she got back from Wyoming, she’d see about getting a dog.

  Two

  Sebastian slipped off his horse and collapsed in the shade of a cottonwood. He was out on the far reaches of his property where no one could find him. Still, the bastards had. Two of them. In a damn Jeep. It was bouncing toward him. He could take his horse through the river, but the idiots would probably come after him.

  He sipped water from his canteen, took off his hat and poured a little water over his head. He could use a shower. The air was hot and dusty. Dry. He hoped the dopes in the Jeep had water with them. He wasn’t planning on sharing any of his canteen. Well, they could drink out of the river.

  The Jeep got closer. “Easy,” Sebastian told his horse, who didn’t look too worried or even that hot.

  A man jumped out just as the Jeep came to a stop about twenty yards off. “Mr. Redwing?”

  Sebastian grimaced. It was never a good sign when someone called him Mr. Redwing. Not that chasing him in a Jeep was a good sign.

  He tipped his hat over his eyes and leaned back on his elbows. “What?”

  “Mr. Redwing,” the man said. “I’m Jim Charger. Mr. Rabedeneira sent me to find you.”

  “So?”

  Charger didn’t speak. He was a new hire, probably waiting for Sebastian to get up and act like the man who’d founded and built Redwing Associates, a premier international security and investigative firm. Instead he kept his hat over his eyes, enjoying the relief from the Wyoming summer sun.

  Finally, he sighed. Jim Charger wasn’t going anywhere until he delivered his message. Sebastian liked Plato Rabedeneira. They’d been friends since their early twenties. He’d trust Plato with his life, the lives of his friends. But if Plato had been the other man in the Jeep, Sebastian would have tied him to this cottonwood and left him.

  “Okay, Mr. Charger.” He tipped his hat back and eyed the man in front of him. Tall, blond, very fit, dressed in expensive western attire that was no doubt dustier now than it had ever been. A Washington import. Probably ex-FBI. Sebastian could feel the blood pounding behind his eyes. “What’s up?”

  If Sebastian Redwing wasn’t proving to be what Jim Charger had expected, he kept it to himself. “Mr. Rabedeneira asked me to give you a message. He says to tell you Darren Mowery is back.”

  Sebastian made sure he had no visible reaction. Inside, the blood pounded harder behind his eyes. He’d left Mowery for dead a year ago. “Back where?”

  “Washington.”

  “What’s Plato want me to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. He asked me to deliver the message. He said to tell you it was important.”

  Darren Mowery hated Sebastian more than most of his enemies did. Once, Sebastian would have trusted Mowery with his life, with the lives of his friends. No more.

  “One other thing,” Charger said.

  Sebastian smiled faintly. “This is the thing Plato said to tell me if I didn’t jump in your Jeep with you?”

  No reaction. “Mowery has made contact with a woman in Senator Swift’s office.”

  Jack Swift, now the senior senator from the state of Rhode Island. A gentleman politician, a man of integrity and dedication to public service, father-in-law to Lucy Blacker Swift.

  Damn, Sebastian thought.

  At the reception following Lucy Blacker and Colin Swift’s wedding, Colin had made Sebastian promise he’d look after Lucy if anything happened to him. “Not,” Colin had said, “that Lucy will want looking after. But you know what I mean.”

  Sebastian hadn’t, not really. He didn’t have anyone in his life to look after. His parents were dead. He had no brothers and sisters, no wife, no children. Professionally, though, he was pretty damn good at looking after people. That mostly had to do with keeping them alive and their pockets from getting picked. It didn’t have to do with friendship, a promise made to a man who would be dead thirteen years later at age thirty-six.

  Colin must have known. Somehow, he must have guessed he would have a short life, and his wife and whatever children they had would end up having to go on without him.

  When Sebastian had made his promise, he’d never imagined he’d have to keep it.

  “What do you want me to tell Mr. Rabedeneira?” Charger asked.

  Sebastian tilted his hat back over his eyes. A year ago, he’d shot Darren Mowery and thought he’d killed him. It was carelessness on his part he hadn’t known until now whether Mowery was dead or alive. In his business, that kind of lapse was intolerable. There was no excuse. It didn’t matter that Darren had once been his mentor, his friend, or that Sebastian had watched him send himself straight into hell. When you shot someone, you were supposed to find out if you’d killed him. It was a rule.

  But this was about Jack Swift. It wasn’t about Lucy. Plato would have to handle Darren Mowery. Given his personal involvement, Sebastian would only muck up the works.

  “Tell Plato I’m retired,” Sebastian said.

  “Retired?”

  “Yes. He knows. Remind him.”

  Charger didn’t move.

  Sebastian pictured Lucy on the front porch of his grandmother’s house, and he could almost feel the Vermont summer breeze, hear the brook, smell the cool water, the damp moss. Lucy had needed to get out of Washington, and he’d made it happen. He’d kept his promise. He no longer owed Colin.

  He decided to stop thinking about Lucy. It had never done him any good.

  “You’ve delivered your message, Mr. Charger,” Sebastian said. “Now go deliver mine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man left. Sebastian suspected he hadn’t lived up to Jim Charger’s expectations. Well, that was fine with him. He didn’t live up to his own expectations. Why should he live up to anyone else’s?

  He’d quit, and that was the end of it.

  Barbara Allen fumbled for the keys to her Washington apartment. Acid burned in her throat. Sweat soaked her blouse, her dozens of mosquito bites stinging and itching. Part of her wanted to cry, part to scream with delight. Incredible! At last, she’d acted. At last!

  She unlocked her door and pushed it open, gasping at the oppressive heat. She’d turned off the air-conditioning before she’d left for Vermont. Vermont had been cooler than Washington, wonderfully exhilarating. She quickly shut her door and leaned against it, letting herself breathe. She was home.

  She had no regrets. None. This surprised her more than anything else. Intellectually, she knew what she’d done was wron
g. Her obsession with Lucy was even, perhaps, a little sick. Normal people didn’t spy on other people. Normal people didn’t stalk and terrorize other people.

  But if anyone deserved to live in fear, it was Lucy Blacker Swift. She was the worst kind of mother. Self-indulgent, impulsive, reckless. Colin had provided a necessary check against her worst excesses, but with his death, there was no one to rein her in.

  For more than a year, Barbara had taken a secret thrill in sneaking up to Vermont on a Friday night to watch Lucy, heading back to Washington on Sunday. She was Jack Swift’s eyes and ears, his confidante, his trusted personal assistant. She’d given twenty years of her life to him, suffered every loss with him. The ups and downs of his political career, the assassination attempt, the long, slow, painful death of his wife, the sudden death of his son.

  Then, Lucy’s galling decision to move to Vermont. It was the last straw. Barbara knew Jack was appalled at how she was raising his son’s children. Madison, aching for a real life. J.T., running wild with his dirty little friends. But Jack would never say anything, never do anything to force Lucy to wake up.

  Well, Barbara had. At last, at last.

  Let people underestimate her. Let them take her for granted. She knew. She had the courage and self-discipline to do what needed to be done.

  With one foot, she nudged her suitcase into the corner by the coat closet. She’d unpack later. She turned the air-conditioning on high and went into her living room. Like the rest of her apartment, it was simply decorated in contemporary furnishings, its clean lines and clean colors reflecting her strength of character. She despised anything cute or frilly.

  She sat in a chair by the vent. Her apartment was in a nondescript building on the Potomac; it was one of the smallest units, with no view to speak of. Not that she spent much time here. She was in the office by eight and seldom out before seven.

  She closed her eyes, feeling the cool air wash over her. She’d worn long pants and a long-sleeved shirt to hide her bug bites. Each one deserved a tiny Purple Heart. They were her badges of courage. It wasn’t weakness that had made her act—it was strength, courage, conviction.

  She’d been meticulous. She wasn’t an idiot. She hadn’t felt the need to do anything dramatic to conceal her presence. She’d stayed at a Manchester inn and driven a car she’d rented in Washington. She’d had a plausible cover story in case she had been discovered.

  Oh, Lucy, I was just stopping in to see you and the kids. I took a few days off to go outlet shopping, do a little hiking. By the way, did you hear gunfire? I saw someone going up the dirt road over by the brook with a rifle. They must have been target practicing awfully close to your house.

  It had never come to that. She’d conducted exhaustive surveillance before implementing her plan, even something as simple as the late-night hang-up. Lucy was too self-centered, too stupid, to catch her.

  Firing into the dining room had been Barbara’s supreme act. It was even better than the bullet on the front seat. That was just the proverbial icing on the cake. Barbara had waited until Lucy and the children left for Manchester. She was parked up on the dirt road, as if she were off to check out the falls. She crossed Joshua Brook, jumping from one rock to another, and dropped down low, working her way up the steep, wooded bank until Lucy’s house came into view. She lay flat on her stomach in the brush. Mosquitoes buzzed in her ears, chewed on every inch of exposed skin. Her tremendous self-discipline kept her focused.

  If she’d been caught then, at that moment, with her rifle aimed at Lucy’s house, she’d have had no cover story. The risk—the challenge—was part of the thrill, more exhilarating even than she’d imagined.

  Her father had taught her and her three sisters how to shoot. He had never said he wished he’d had a son, but they knew he did. Barbara was the youngest. The last, shattered hope. She’d become a very good shot. No one knew how good—certainly no one in Jack’s office. Not even Jack himself. They knew her only in relation to her work, her devotion to her job and her boss.

  Only after she’d fired and lay in the still, hot, prickly brush did she decide to go after the spent bullet. It wasn’t concern over leaving behind evidence that propelled her across the yard behind the barn—it was the idea of further terrorizing Lucy, imagining her coming into her dining room and seeing the shattered window, then realizing someone had slipped inside to dig the bullet out of the wall.

  The back door wasn’t locked. Lucy often didn’t lock all her doors. Perhaps, Barbara thought, this would teach the silly twit a lesson.

  The acid burned down her throat and into her stomach, gnawing at her insides. The urge to scare Lucy, throw her off her stride, had gripped her for days, consuming her. With each small act of harassment, Barbara felt a little better. The pressure lifted. The urge subsided. Now, she could think straight.

  “So. You’re back.”

  She jumped, suppressing a scream. “Darren, my God, you startled me. What are you doing here?”

  He stepped over her feet and sat on the sofa. “Waiting for you.”

  Even knowing Darren Mowery, Barbara thought, was a calculated risk. She’d heard the rumors in Washington. He’d gone bad, he’d lost his company, he’d been killed in South America. He was dangerous. She knew that much. She smiled uneasily. “You could have turned on the air-conditioning.”

  “I’m not hot.”

  “You must be half lizard.”

  They’d bumped into each other a few weeks ago at a Washington restaurant and ended up having dinner a couple of times, although Barbara had no serious romantic interest in him—or he in her, as far as she could tell. She didn’t know where their relationship would lead, but her instincts told her he was important. Somehow, Darren Mowery would help her get off the grinding treadmill that had become her life. Perhaps it was because of him that she’d finally taken action against Lucy.

  “You disappeared for a week,” he said.

  “I didn’t disappear. I took a few days off. I told you.”

  “Where did you go?”

  She didn’t answer right away. Darren was a man who’d want to believe he was in charge, that he had the upper hand. He was very handsome, she had to admit. Early fifties, silvery haired. He could have stood out in Washington if he’d wanted to. Instead, he chose to blend in with his conservative dark suits and country club casuals, his only distinguishing feature his superb physical condition. He was in better shape than many men half his age, but his reflexes were the real giveaway. This was not a man who’d spent the past thirty years behind a desk.

  “I went outlet shopping,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “New England.” Let him think she was being evasive. She didn’t care. She wanted him to know she was strong while at the same time believing he was stronger. It was a delicate balancing act.

  He scratched one side of his mouth; he always looked relaxed, at ease with his surroundings. Yet he was observant, alert to every nuance around him. Barbara knew she couldn’t make a misstep with such a man. He’d probably searched her apartment, she realized; but she’d anticipated as much.

  No, she had no illusions. She wasn’t yet sure of the exact nature of the game they were playing, but she knew Darren Mowery would kill her if she crossed him. She had to be careful, strong, sure of herself. And smart. Smarter than he was.

  “We’ve been dancing around each other long enough,” he said. “Let’s put our cards on the table. I want to know everything. No surprises.”

  What did that mean? Did he know about her and Lucy? Barbara dodged the little needle of uncertainty and suppressed the surge of excitement that finally they were getting down to it. She shrugged, nonchalant. “All right. You first.”

  He studied her. He had very blue eyes. Stone-cold blue eyes. “Lucy Swift left for Wyoming today.”

  It wasn’t what Barbara expected. Another, weaker woman might have panicked, but she sat back in her chair and yawned. She was the personal assistant to a powerful United States s
enator, a professional accustomed to managing the unexpected. She already knew about Lucy’s trip to Wyoming; she’d found out when she’d checked in with Jack’s office yesterday. Lucy must have told Jack, and a member of his staff had left Barbara a routine message. The unexpected was that Darren knew. “Yes, I know. Something to do with her adventure travel business, I believe.”

  “Redwing Associates is based in Wyoming.”

  “Ah, yes. Sebastian Redwing sold Lucy her house in Vermont. It belonged to his widowed grandmother. From what Jack tells me, he and Lucy aren’t very good friends. Didn’t Sebastian once work for you?”

  She was tempted to pick at an itchy mosquito bite, but resisted. “I gather his company is doing very well.”

  Mowery didn’t react. Barbara liked that. It meant he had self-control. According to Washington gossip, there was no love lost between Sebastian Redwing and his old mentor. There was even talk that Mowery blamed Sebastian for the downfall of DM Consultants, Darren’s private security firm.

  Barbara supposed it was theoretically possible that Lucy would go whining to Sebastian about what had happened to her this week, but she doubted it. Lucy was quite determined to prove herself capable, independent—which, of course, she wasn’t. Barbara had already calculated that Lucy wouldn’t go to Jack or to the Capitol Police. Lucy wanted no part of being a Swift.

  “I get the impression you don’t like Lucy Swift very much,” Darren said.

  “I don’t see what concern that is of yours.”

  He leaned forward. “Cards on the table, Barbie. I have a bone to pick with your boss. I want to make him sweat. And I want your help.”

  “My help?”

  “I think you’ve got something on him,” Mowery said, smug and confident.

  “No. Senator Swift is a man of sterling integrity.”

  Mowery threw back his head and laughed.

  Barbara pursed her lips. “I’m serious.”

  “Yeah, well, so am I. Barbie, Barbie.” He shook his head at her, sighing. “Office gossip says you threw yourself at the old boy a couple weeks ago, and he laughed you out of his office.”