by Vicki Hinze
“Austin had a problem with walking in your shadow. I knew it. Hell, everyone knew it. I threatened to kill the man, Sybil.”
“You had nothing to do with my divorce.” She shoved the food across the desk, farther away from her. “I swear it.”
Silence fell between them. Jonathan didn’t ask, but the question of what had caused it hung over them like a rain-swelled cloud. Sybil would rather not think about the past, much less talk about it. Surviving that kind of humiliation once was a hell of a blow to a woman’s dignity. But she didn’t want to lie to Jonathan to avoid the indignity of humiliation, either. He deserved better from her. He deserved the truth. And she would tell it to him. But she wasn’t strong or brave enough to look at him while she did it.
Fixing a blank stare on the screen, she confessed. “Austin wasn’t content with me. He hadn’t been for a long time. I tried to make him happy, but he…just wasn’t. He never mentioned being unhappy enough to want a divorce, and I couldn’t see any advantage in getting one, so I accepted the way things were between us and just went on living.”
“You were afraid of what a divorce would do to your career?”
“Indirectly.” God, but that sounded cold and ugly. “We know what impact it had now. But then I really wasn’t thinking about that specifically. I was thinking that my career was all I had left. I didn’t want to lose it, too.” The stark truth didn’t sound much better, but she’d take a fragile esteem over cold and ugly any day. Her mouth felt like cotton, so she sipped some iced tea and then went on. “Since grade school, all I’ve wanted is a family and a political career.” She shrugged. “We never had kids.”
“So you divorced Austin because of the vasectomy”
Austin’s vasectomy. Few things in the world had the power to hurt her as much as Austin’s vasectomy. “Actually, I didn’t.” God, but this was hard to admit, especially to Jonathan. What he thought mattered, and she would sound like an idiotic fool. The worst kind of idiotic fool.
“Before and after we married, Austin and I often discussed having children. When I didn’t conceive, I went in for testing and found out I was fine.” Her throat threatened to close. She swallowed hard to clear it, then pushed on. “Austin resisted but finally underwent testing, too. By then we had been married for several years. It turned out that he was sterile.” The lie she’d been fed and had believed for years burned in her throat, her chest, her heart.
“Why didn’t you adopt?”
“Austin refused.” Memories of their many arguments about that raced through her mind in shattered images. She stiffened against them. “Finally I just quit raising the subject. It wasn’t worth the hell it caused. He’d give me the silent treatment for days. Sometimes longer. I hate to admit it, but the truth is, right before we actually separated, I’d bring up adoption so he would give me the silent treatment. I needed the respite.” Her face went hot. “That’s not the kind of thing that belongs in a marriage, you know?”
Jonathan nodded, sifted through what she’d said. “So if he was already sterile, why did he have a vasectomy?”
“Austin had the vasectomy a year after we married— right after I financed the founding of Secure Environet.” Bitter, Sybil looked away, studied the images cycling onto the screen. “I suppose he would have had it done sooner, but he wanted to make sure he didn’t have to give me a child to get his company founded.” She took a cleansing breath, trying to let go of the anger, the bitterness of his betrayal, the sense of failure she felt as a woman, the disillusionment she discovered in a relationship that had been founded in trust. “He’s told some people he had it done before we married—he even altered the date on a doctor’s report to prove it—but he didn’t have it then. He waited until he was sure he had the money for his company.”
“I’m sorry.”
The tenderness in Jonathan’s tone had her fighting back tears. “Me, too.” She had gone into marriage with such high hopes and dreams, with such determination to have that closeness and intimacy absent in her parents’ marriage. Instead, she’d gotten Austin and had worse.
“Yet you stayed with him.”
She nodded. “This isn’t very flattering, but the truth is I didn’t know about the vasectomy until many, many years later.” She wanted to hide, to run away from the ugliness, the humiliation, the betrayal. Good God, how she had staggered under the weight of that betrayal. Even now she couldn’t escape it. And, though tempted, she wouldn’t hide it from Jonathan. “Not long after David and I were elected, Cap Marlowe came to my office. We had a horrible confrontation, Jonathan. Horrible.” She shivered at the memory. “He accused me of fraud—because I publicly favor children’s issues. He swore he was going public with the truth.”
She shrugged and risked glancing at Jonathan. “I didn’t know what truth he meant, so I asked. That infuriated him.” The veins on his neck had bulged out like thumbs and his face and neck had turned wine red. “He told me he had proof that Austin’s sterility was self-inflicted.”
He had the altered doctor’s report.”
“Yes!” The shock and anguish she had felt then returned now, and all her muscles contracted at once. Pain and betrayal. Stunned disbelief. “I guess Cap saw from my reaction that I hadn’t known. He never went public, though I’ve expected him to every day since then. It’s the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning: that today might be the day he destroys me politically” The day he takes the one thing in her life she had left to take.
“So then you confronted Austin?” Jonathan sat forward in his chair now. His feet flat on the floor, elbows bent and resting on his knees, he stared down at his sneakers.
“Yes.” She pulled in a breath, praying to draw courage in with it. “He confessed. He hadn’t told me because he feared losing me—and he might have,” she admitted. “I can’t say I would have stayed married to him, Jonathan. I wanted children so badly. I just don’t know what I would have done.”
“Some questions we can’t answer, but we damn well deserve to be asked.” Jonathan hurt for her. The betrayal, the lies, and disillusionment at having a partner you couldn’t trust. One of the worst parts had to have been her learning about something so important and private from Cap Marlowe. Of all people in the world, why him? That had to have knocked her to her knees. “So that’s why you divorced him.”
“Not really.”
That surprised Jonathan into looking at her. He had assumed the vasectomy had sealed her rocky marriage’s fate.
“I won’t say it was easy because it wasn’t. But I forgave Austin for that. Some men just aren’t meant to be fathers.” She leaned back in her chair. “Do you remember when we stopped in Columbus, I think—at that elementary school?”
“How could I forget?” Jonathan chuckled. “Every kid in first grade had to have a turn hanging on my arm.”
“They loved you.” Sybil smiled at the memory. “Austin was with us that day”
Jonathan thought back but, for the life of him, he couldn’t recall Austin being with them at the school. “Was he?”
She nodded. “He wouldn’t come in to the classroom with us to talk with the kids. He wouldn’t even leave the car.”
“That’s right.” He’d sulked most of the afternoon, too. “I’d forgotten.”
“That wasn’t an isolated incident, Jonathan. Some men just don’t relate to children. Austin not only doesn’t relate, he doesn’t like them. So he avoids them. His not having children was a blessing.”
“But you would have been a wonderful mother.”
“Yes, damn it, I would have,” she said frankly. “But I chose to marry him. I loved the man I believed him to be, and when I married him, I believed he loved me. It isn’t right to ask someone for more than you know they’re capable of giving. Austin never knew his father. His mother hated the man, and Austin learned to hate him through her. I think he believed all fathers were hated, so he chose not to become one.”
Too tense to sit any longer, she stood up. “I
don’t know that, it’s just a supposition. I do know he would hate being a father. Anyway, I forgave him and we went on. It was hard, but I accepted I’d never have kids of my own.”
And she’d publicly declared that they hadn’t had children due to a medical challenge, letting everyone assume it was hers and not Austin’s to spare him any discomfort. After all, she was the public figure by choice. He’d married into it.
She clasped her hands. “Then Cap dropped his second little bomb.”
Jonathan watched her closely, instinctively knowing what he heard next would be the real reason she had divorced Austin.
“You know Secure Environet deals mostly with government contracts. And when I was elected, to avoid conflicts of interest, we put all our financial assets in a blind trust.”
“Yes.” All things considered, she really hadn’t had much choice on that.
“Austin resisted. Actually, he resisted and resented. I had to threaten to divorce him to get him to agree. Frankly, that made me suspicious. I wondered if he and Cap had made a side agreement for preferential treatment. So I investigated, but I never found any evidence of Cap favoring Austin. The day of our second confrontation, Cap brought proof that I had violated the blind trust. I hadn’t, but Austin had. How isn’t significant, but it created huge credibility problems for me.”
Jonathan imagined her learning about the vasectomy and then about this trust business. Austin Stone had gone for her jugular and succeeded. “So you forgave him for lying to you about kids, but you divorced him for lying about money?”
“No,” she protested. “Lying to me was one thing. But when Austin broke the blind trust, he violated the American people I swore to serve and protect. The combination of lies was too much. I couldn’t forgive him. Inside, I just wasn’t strong enough to fight for him any more. I didn’t want to fight for him any more. By then I hated him more than I loved him.”
Another sacrifice, and yet she had refused to play the martyr. Kids and her career, all she’d ever wanted. The damn fool had to have been deliberately trying to destroy her.
Sybil walked a short path along the desk to him. “I ordered Austin out of the house, met with the president and told him the truth, and then I hired a divorce attorney”
“And Austin fought you every step of the way”
“Yes, he did.” She grunted and grabbed another crab rangoon. “But don’t delude yourself into thinking it was because he loved me. He didn’t. Austin Stone only loves power. He wanted my stock and I wouldn’t give it to him. He tried to force me into a buy-back. Fortunately, the judge agreed with me. After months of Austin dragging things out, I finally agreed that the stock would revert to him on my death. That’s when he signed the divorce papers.”
“And when he began planning your death.” Jonathan wished he’d killed the bastard when he’d had the chance. No wonder she had asked about the thorns in the plane. From the sounds of her marriage, there hadn’t been many rose petals but, man, had she had thorns.
She stared at him, her eyes stretched wide. “I didn’t consider him capable of murdering me then.”
“What about now?”
“Now I have to believe it. It’s happened, Jonathan.” She blinked hard. “Austin’s tried to murder me.”
The pain in her voice ripped at his soul, and Jonathan swore he’d give everything he owned to be able to disagree with her. But he couldn’t do it without lying, and both Lady Liberty and Sybil Stone had heard too damn many lies. Instead, he drew her into a hug. “I’m so sorry, Sybil.”
“Knowing a man you once loved wants you dead really sucks.” She closed her arms around Jonathan’s ribs, squeezed, and held tight.
“Yeah.” He dropped a kiss to her temple. “But we’re not all bastards, though I wouldn’t blame you if you doubted it.” Austin Stone, Cap, Sayelle, Barber, and Winston. She had little reason not to doubt it.
“I know.” She reared back to see his face. “You’re nothing like Austin, Jonathan.”
So serious, those eyes. So clouded by pain, and memories of promises broken, and dreams denied. “Sybil.” He cupped her face in his hands, seeing more than feeling his own slight tremble. “You deserve so much good. I wish—”
“What?” She waited but he didn’t answer, just beheld her, and the warmth and tender care shining in his eyes touched her far deeper than any words could reach. “What do you wish?”
He pecked a kiss to her chin, then shook his head and backed away. “You don’t want to know. Not now. The timing is all wrong.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then fell silent.
Jonathan stepped away. Later would be soon enough. After the crisis. Providing they found a resolution and there was a later, after the crisis. Because he wanted that more than he ever had dared to want anything, he closed his eyes and forced himself to focus on the business at hand. Austin Stone had taken enough. He wasn’t getting any more. Not from Jonathan, and if he could stop it, not from Sybil.
Weighing in the divorce and stock factors, Austin had been ripe for a Faust proposal. Jonathan let his thoughts flow, testing, measuring, and slotting possibilities into place. Austin agreed to give Faust the inside track to halt the peace talks, and Faust agreed to kill Sybil. Faust continues to sell arms to Peris and Abdan, and Austin gets back his Secure Environet stock. Everyone wins.
Except Sybil.
“Jonathan.” Sybil’s tone turned brittle, wooden. “It— it’s Austin.”
He looked up at her. She stood completely still, staring through the Plexiglas at the screen. “Is that a photo of Faust?” she asked. “It looks exactly like the sketches. Exactly.”
Jonathan turned and locked his gaze on the large center screen, pressed the intercom button. “Freeze it, Max.”
Five men stood, their glasses lifted in a toast: Faust, Mark, Austin Stone, ET—and Ken Dean.
Jonathan’s stomach soured and the taste in his mouth turned bitter. Dean. A man he had known fifteen years. He’d had dinner in Dean’s home, had gotten to know his wife, Linda, and their kids. And now the reason for their disappearance seemed all too clear.
“The second man from the right,” Sybil said. “What is he holding in his left hand?”
“A penny.”
Sybil sucked in a sharp breath. “He’s the guy from the swamp. ET”
“I know.”
“Why the penny, Jonathan? What does it mean?”
“He’s signaling that the man to his immediate left is Gregor Faust.”
Sybil didn’t ask why. Intel operatives had many signals. The placement of a finger on a glass, the positioning of a pair of glasses on the nose, or a penny held in a specific hand. “I’m confused,” she said. “Faust religiously refuses to be photographed. How did we get this?”
“Intel satellite would be my guess.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, no.” Sybil tugged at Jonathan’s sleeve. “The man on the far right. That—that’s Captain Dean.”
“Yes, it is.” A world’s weight of disappointment bore down on Jonathan. “He’s our second chuter.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Saturday, August 10 First-Strike Launch: 07:00:00
Sybil had been angry many times, but never had she been angry enough to kill. She was now. Her jaw clenched so tight her teeth ached. Shaking all over, she depressed the intercom button. “Max, who signed off on this frame?”
“Winston, ma’am.”
“Trail it.” She waited, her gaze locked with Jonathan’s.
“He forwarded copies to Commander Conlee, Senator Marlowe, and Richard Barber, ma’am.”
Jonathan frowned. “This doesn’t make sense. Barber or Cap might protect Austin, though I can’t see it. Not in a case like this. But Conlee?”
“They never saw it,” Sybil speculated. If the commander hadn’t been included on the list, she would have considered it possible, but not Conlee. So who stopped them from—she stilled. “Max, who was the courier on the delivery?”
“Captain Men
doza, ma’am.”
Understanding flickered in Jonathan’s eyes. “Austin got to Mendoza.”
Nodding, Sybil reached for the phone. Before she could lift the receiver, Jonathan’s hand came down on hers, and she glared up at him.
“Who are you calling?” he asked.
“Conlee. Austin is going to jail.”
“We need more evidence.”
“We have evidence.”
“Sybil, I know you’re trying really hard to be calm and reasonable, and I’ll tell you the truth. In your shoes, I’m not sure I’d do nearly as well as you’re doing. But we need answers more than we need justice. In about seven hours, a missile we’ve launched is going to blow a lot of people straight to hell. We’ve got to focus on the bottom line and get what we need to stop it.”
“Which is what I am doing,” she said, seething. “Listen, there’s nothing I’d like more than to beat the hell out of Austin Stone right now. But if we can nail him—and this frame of film does that, Jonathan—then maybe, just maybe, I can force him into telling me how to stop this damn missile from detonating.”
“ Austin folds under pressure?”
“No. But considering whoever we target will launch a proportional response that’s going to blow him straight to hell with the rest of us, he might just change his habit this time.”
Jonathan dragged a hand through his hair. “He’s going to say you’re out of your mind. That he has as much at risk as the rest of us—his life. Conlee and the others are going to believe him because it’s true. They’re going to assume he’s rational and sane and, if he could stop the launch, he would. That’s why we need strong evidence. We need proof he was leaving D.C.”
That made her think twice, then a third time. “You’re right.” Sybil grabbed a phone book, looked up a number, and then dialed.
“Who are you calling now?”
“Mary,” Sybil said. “Austin always uses her travel agency, and he—” Someone answered the phone, and Sybil shifted to talk to her. “Mary? Oh, good. This is Sybil Stone. I need to double-check Austin’s flight with you.” A pause, then: “That’s right. M. Kane.” Another pause, then: “Could you fax me a copy of that ticket and his itinerary?”