The Waterfall

by Carla Neggers

  And he needed a shave, but the only razor around was pink. He decided to wait.

  He staggered out to the kitchen, where Lucy was at her laptop at the table. She had on a white top and shorts—simple, sexy. She barely looked up at him. “Coffee’s made.”

  “Thank you.” He moved slowly to the counter. “You stole my pants in the middle of the night.”

  “Actually, it was only about nine o’clock. You were dead to the world.”

  “What if bad guys had stormed the house?”

  “I could dial 9-1-1 as easily as you could.”

  She kept the mugs in the same place Daisy had. He dragged one out and poured his coffee. “I hate going after bad guys in my shorts. I like having my pants. It’s one of my rules.” He leaned against the counter with his coffee. “Lucy Blacker, are you laughing at me?”

  “Me? No way.” She tapped a few keys. “Anyway, since you’ve renounced violence, you wouldn’t have gone after the bad guys even if you were up to it.”

  The coffee was hot and strong, and made him feel almost human again. He took note of Lucy’s bare arms and legs, their smooth muscles. She was strong and fit. No wonder she’d been able to help him down from the falls.

  “The best thing to do in a dangerous situation,” he said, “is to get out of it. Having a gun can give you a false sense of security. And just because I’ve renounced killing,” he added, “doesn’t mean I can’t still catch bad guys.”

  She licked her lips. “Have you renounced all violence or just deadly force?”

  “I don’t carry a gun. I don’t own any firearms. When I did, I only fired my weapon when I believed deadly force was the only option.” He sipped more of his coffee. “You don’t shoot to wound someone. You shoot to kill.”

  “Uck,” she said.

  “Yes. It’s too often too easy to see shooting as your only option when you’re armed to the teeth.”

  “But would you hit someone?”

  He smiled, which made his face ache. “As in spanking or beating the shit out of someone?”

  She flushed slightly, whether out of annoyance or embarrassment, he couldn’t tell. Probably annoyance. He didn’t think Lucy embarrassed easily. She looked at him. “What would you have done if you’d caught whoever knocked you into the falls yesterday?”

  “I don’t deal in hypotheticals.” He dropped onto a chair across from her. “I’ve done enough killing. That’s my only point.”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t, which is good. Can you point me to breakfast?”

  “I can even fix you breakfast.”

  “You pulled me off the rocks and washed my clothes. That’s enough.”

  She got up and opened the refrigerator. “I don’t need you collapsing on my kitchen floor. A cheddar cheese omelette okay?”

  “It would be wonderful. Thank you.”

  The kitchen quickly filled with the smell of eggs, butter, Vermont cheddar cheese and toast. Sebastian remembered countless sunny summer mornings here in his grandmother’s kitchen. In Wyoming during the past year, while he gambled, rode his horses, walked with his dogs, bided time in his hammock and otherwise did nothing, he’d found himself haunted by his childhood in Vermont. Images, memories, smells, the hopes and dreams of the introspective boy he’d been. He’d assumed it was because of Lucy, knowing she was here. But maybe not.

  He refilled his mug and reached for the bottle of Extra-strength Tylenol.

  Lucy turned a lightly browned omelette onto a plate. “Why didn’t you go to the funeral?” she asked quietly.

  At first he thought she was talking about Daisy, but he pulled himself out of his own depths and realized she meant Colin. “I was in Bogotá. A kidnapping case.”

  “You didn’t call, write, send a flower—”

  “Would it have made you feel better if I had?”

  She buttered the toast, not looking at him. “No. That’s not the point.”

  He knew it wasn’t.

  She placed his food in front of him and walked out of the kitchen, leaving him to his breakfast. And her laptop. Sebastian slid it over with one finger and poked around her hard drive while he ate. Lucy Blacker Swift was a very busy lady, he decided. Her adventure travel company was an attractive mix of active sports, education and relaxation. He called up a draft of her new brochure. Autumn inn-to-inn canoe trips ranging from a long weekend to ten days. Sea kayaking on the coast of Maine. A nature and history hike in Newfoundland. And on it went. Each trip was described with the kind of rich detail that made Sebastian realize he hadn’t been that many places just for fun. Tracking down kidnappers in Colombia wasn’t the same as enjoying its fascinating culture and scenery.

  Madison plopped onto the chair across from him. “Are you spying on my mother?”

  No good-morning. No polite enquiry into the state of his health. He eyed her over the laptop’s screen. “I’m checking my e-mail.”

  “No, you’re not. The modem’s not hooked up.”

  “Okay. I’m spying on your mother.”

  She gave him a direct, no-nonsense look. “Why?”

  The kid was a pain. “You’re fifteen. Why don’t you have a job?”

  “I do have a job. I work for Mom’s company.”

  “That’s not a job. That’s working for your mother.”

  She made a face. Probably if he weren’t so bloodied and bruised and dangerous-looking, she’d have told him what was what. The kid had spirit. He shut down Lucy’s money file and a financial spreadsheet he’d pulled up. Taking a look at her new brochure was easier to explain. He’d have to talk to her about password protection.

  “I figure you can drive me out to my motel,” he said. “I need to pick up a few things if I’m going to be laid up here.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. You drive, right?”

  “I have my learner’s permit. I can’t drive without an adult—”

  “I’m an adult.”

  Her mouth snapped shut.

  “Go ask your mother while I finish my breakfast.”

  The girl seemed taken aback. “Are you serious?”

  He sighed. “Don’t I look serious? I fell off a flipping cliff last night. I’m not in the mood to joke around.”

  She mumbled something about asking her mother, and fled. If nothing else, Sebastian figured he’d given her a good excuse to make her retreat. He’d always made kids nervous. He didn’t know why.

  Madison returned in a few minutes, breathless. “Mom said absolutely not.”

  “How come?”

  She shrugged. She was a pretty kid, looked a lot like her father.

  Sebastian grinned at her. “You mean you didn’t put up a fight? I thought all fifteen-year-olds snapped up every opportunity to drive.”

  “I have things to do,” she said quickly, and disappeared.

  A teenager who didn’t want to get behind the wheel. He had to look bad.

  At least his head was clearing, if slowly. He felt better after eating. He cleaned up his dishes and poured himself a third cup of coffee, staring out at the backyard. Birds twittered in the garden, and he could hear the hum of bumblebees in the still summer air. A Japanese beetle had made its way onto the kitchen windowsill.

  The air, the feel of the light, the vegetation—everything was so different from Wyoming. This was more like a dream, or an elusive memory.

  “What do you need at your motel?” Lucy asked behind him.

  He pulled himself back into the moment. This wasn’t Daisy’s house anymore. This was Lucy’s house, and Lucy was in a kind of trouble that still didn’t make sense to him.

  He turned and leaned against the counter, avoiding any sudden movements that could send his head or stomach into a tailspin. “I want to check out.”

  “And go back to Wyoming?”

  “And move in here for a few days.”

  She didn’t react. She wasn’t twenty-two anymore, the happy and ambitious young woman starting a life w
ith Colin Swift, the son of a senator, a decent human being who wanted to make the world a better place. Sebastian didn’t have such high hopes for himself. Now she was the mother of two children, he realized, and a thirty-eight-year-old widow. She was making a name for herself in the competitive world of adventure travel. If the years had made her stronger, they’d also taken some of the spark out of her. She knew life could kick her in the head.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “If your fall yesterday wasn’t an accident—”

  “Which we don’t know.”

  “Granted. But if it was deliberate, why you? Why not Rob or Patti or me?”

  “Two immediate possibilities. One, our little friend saw me checking on you and your place, didn’t know who I was and worried I’d mess up their fun. Two, our little friend recognized me.”

  “How?”

  “I grew up here, and I have my share of enemies from my work.”

  “But your work has nothing to do with me,” Lucy said.

  Sebastian chose not to tell her about Darren Mowery. “True.”

  “Could it be someone I’d know, too?”

  “Maybe.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Who?”

  “If I knew who,” he said, “this’d be over.”

  She gave herself a small shake. “This’ll make me crazy. All right. I’ll go check you out of the motel. You can bunk in my room. I’ll move upstairs to the guest room.”

  “I don’t mind the guest room.”

  “Are you kidding? If someone leaves another dead animal in my bed, I’d much prefer you be the one to find it.” She grabbed her keys off a wall hook. “You’ll look after the kids while I’m gone? Rob’s putting Madison to work this morning, and J.T.’s hanging out with Georgie. They have chores to do.”

  “My childhood revisited,” Sebastian said dryly.

  She smiled over her shoulder at him. “A little normalcy will do you good.”

  She pushed open the screen door, felt the morning air warming up fast. “I don’t like the idea of you going out to my motel by yourself,” he said.

  “Oh, sure. Big help you’d be.” She turned and shook her head at him through the screen. “Sorry, Redwing, but you look as if you took a header off a waterfall. I know, even beaten and broken, you can probably still take half the men on the planet, but—” she flipped him another smile “—I’ll take my cell phone and call 9-1-1 if I run into trouble.”

  “Have the desk clerk go into my room with you.”

  She trotted down the back steps, calling back, “Why? If anyone’s hiding under your bed, I wouldn’t want to endanger some poor innocent desk clerk. If not, then there’s no reason to worry.”

  He went to the door. “Lucy.”

  She looked up at him. “I’ll be fine, Sebastian. Back in an hour.” She frowned suddenly. “Oh, wait.”

  For a moment, he thought she’d changed her mind about going alone. But she ran back into the kitchen, grabbed her laptop, and, as she walked past him again, said, “I’ll remove temptation.”

  Two minutes after she left, J.T. and Georgie made their way into the kitchen. They kept their distance, checking him out like a couple of wary dogs.

  “He looks scary,” Georgie half whispered to his buddy.

  J.T. licked his lips and asked Sebastian politely, “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “All in all, I’d rather be in Wyoming. What’re you boys up to? I thought you had chores.”

  “We’re done,” J.T. pronounced.

  “I’ll bet. Let’s go take a look at your mother’s garden, see if it’s weed-free.”

  They didn’t like that idea, but they weren’t going to tell him. They scampered back outside, Sebastian following at his own reduced speed. He hurt like hell. Pure, dumb luck had saved him worse injury. He couldn’t afford to let his mind wander again.

  But when he stepped into Lucy’s garden, it was as if his past reached up out of the ground and grabbed him by the throat. The feel of the warm dirt under his feet, the sounds of the birds and the wind, the smell of flowers and earth and mown grass. Skinny beans hung from bushy plants. Green tomatoes slowly ripened in the sun. Five varieties of lettuce were at various stages of growth, and prickly vines of cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini and pumpkins spread in their raised beds.

  Daisy hadn’t had raised beds or mulched paths. She’d planted more vegetables. Her garden hadn’t been just a hobby, it had been a way of life for her. What she couldn’t use herself, she’d given away. And she’d always had garden work for Sebastian. It wouldn’t have occurred to her not to.

  She’d never assumed he didn’t want the place. Even when she was old and dying, and he was starting his own business and buying a ranch in Wyoming, she’d told him, “You’ll get the farm after I die.”

  “I don’t want it,” he’d said.

  “So what? Once you get it, you can do with it as you please. I don’t have anyone else.”

  “You could donate it to the Nature Conservancy.”

  She’d scoffed at that idea. “If you get yourself killed before I die peacefully in my sleep of natural causes, then I’ll consider giving it away. I worked too hard to hang onto this place. If I’d wanted to give it away, I’d have done it fifty years ago.”

  He hadn’t tried to follow her logic. Daisy Wheaton had a mind of her own, and she’d do what she meant to do, regardless of what he thought. She’d lost a husband and her daughter, her only child, and gone on without them, living by a code that made sense to her.

  “You’ll know what to do with the place, Sebastian,” she’d told him later, when she walked with a cane and could no longer tend her gardens. “I know you will.”

  He’d sold it to Lucy.

  “Can we go fishing?” J.T. asked.

  Sebastian shook off the onslaught of memories. This was why he’d gotten rid of the damn place. It stole his mind, invaded his senses. “No. Weed the squash. Then you can go fishing.”

  “Mom didn’t say we had to—”

  “I’m saying it.” J.T. stood his ground. “You’re not our boss.”

  Sebastian smiled. It was about the first time the kid had impressed him. “So? You’re still weeding the squash. I’ll sit up on the back steps and watch you.”

  “Mom trusts us.”

  “Good for her. I don’t. First chance you get, you boys’ll be sneaking off to the brook. Did she tell you no fishing without adult supervision?”

  They didn’t answer, which meant she had.

  “Yeah,” Sebastian said, smug, and headed stiffly to the back steps.

  Madison appeared in the back door. “Sebastian, there’s a call for you. Your friend Plato Rabe—I can’t say his last name.”

  “Rabedeneira.”

  “He was calling for Mom. I told him you were here, and he said he’d talk to you.”

  She looked at him expectantly, as if he’d explain, but he took the portable phone from her without comment. Being her mother’s daughter, she stayed in the door. He sat on the steps and glanced up at her. “You going to listen in?”

  She blushed. “I wasn’t—”

  “I thought you were working in the barn.”

  “I was. I’m on break.”

  These kids. “Your brother could use help weeding.”

  “I don’t weed,” she said. His look must have done the trick because she added quickly, “But I will today. It’s not like I don’t have chores in the garden. I picked beans the other night.”

  “That was the other night.” He pointed with the phone. “Weeds’re waiting.”

  She slid off down the steps, and Sebastian put the phone to his ear. “I’m here.”

  “I don’t even want to know what that was all about,” Plato said. “Sounds like goddamn Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

  “Tell me you’ve ever read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. What’s up?”

  “Jack Swift called for you.”

  Sebastian was silent.

  “Blackmail,” Plato said.


  “Mowery.”

  “He wouldn’t give me the details, just that someone’s blackmailing him and he wants to talk to you.”

  “Did you tell him where I was?”

  “No.”

  It was a stupid question. Of course, he wouldn’t. Plato was a talker, but he wasn’t indiscreet. “No details on the blackmail?”

  “None.”

  What could the intrusive and determined Darren Mowery find on a squeaky-clean senator like Jack Swift?

  “The girl said something about you slipping into a waterfall?”

  Sebastian sighed. No secrets in this family. “I had help.”

  “Let me know when you need me,” Plato said. “I’m scheduled to leave Frankfurt in the morning. I can leave tonight.”

  “I’ll let you know. Thanks, Plato.”

  “Happy Ford hasn’t picked up Mowery’s trail. I put her on Jack Swift.”

  Sebastian nodded. “We won’t find Mowery unless he wants us to.”

  “You found him a year ago.”

  “Yes,” Sebastian said, “but I didn’t finish the job.”

  Lucy parked in front of Sebastian’s motel room and let herself in with his key. The room was hot and dark, the curtains and shades pulled, and she felt as if she were meeting a lover. She quickly reminded herself the man who’d occupied this room was in no condition for a romantic tryst or whatever it was her mind was conjuring. And besides, he was Sebastian Redwing.

  “Enough said,” she muttered and got to work.

  His clothes and personal items were simple, functional and obviously expensive. He was a man accustomed to travel. There was nothing frivolous, just exactly what he needed for a few days or even a few weeks.

  Nor, Lucy thought, was there anything to satisfy her growing suspicion that he had other reasons for being in Vermont. It wasn’t just her. It wasn’t just some sense of obligation to Colin. She wasn’t sure what had triggered her doubts, but last night, waking up in her guest room with the eerie sounds of an owl in the nearby woods, she’d latched onto the idea that Sebastian was holding back on her. He knew things, he had suspicions that he was keeping to himself.