Free The Waterfall by Carla Neggers Page B

life, have you?”
    He had. The day he watched Lucy Blacker walk down the aisle and marry another man.
    Sebastian squinted at the dawn. “Tell me what’s going on with Lucy.”
    Plato told him. He was succinct and objective, and Sebastian didn’t like any of it. “It’s the kids and their friends,” he said. “Maybe just their friends.”
    â€œIt’s Mowery, and you know it.”
    â€œMowery’s not my problem.”
    â€œI had your plane gassed up,” Plato said. “They haven’t taken your pilot’s license, have they?”
    Sebastian smacked the dusty roof of his truck. Damn. “I’d rather go through drown-proofing again than fly to Vermont.”
    â€œYou never went through drown-proofing. That was part of my training. I’m the ex-parachute rescue jumper.”
    â€œYou are?” Sebastian grinned at his old friend. It had been a bad day when he’d learned Plato Rabedeneira was finished jumping out of helicopters, might not even walk again. “I thought that was me.”
    Plato grinned back. “Lucy’s prettier than ever, isn’t she?”
    â€œShut up, Rabedeneira, before I find a helicopter and throw you out of it.”
    â€œBeen there, done that.” Plato stood beside him. “I’ll have someone look after the dogs and horses.”
    â€œDamn,” Sebastian said under his breath.
    He knew what he had to do. He’d known it the minute Lucy Blacker Swift had rolled into his driveway. Arguing about it with Plato was just a delay tactic.
    He climbed into his truck and followed Plato out the dirt road.

Four
    J ack knew he should call the Capitol Police and have them arrest Darren Mowery and bodily remove him from the premises. There really was no question. The bastard was threatening a United States senator. This was blackmail.
    But Jack didn’t reach for his phone or stand up and yell to his staff. He just glared at Mowery, paralyzed. Like most of Washington, Jack had thought Darren Mowery dead, or at least out of the country for good. Instead, here he was in a senator’s office.
    â€œThink hard, Senator,” Mowery said. “Think hard before you say anything.”
    Jack summoned his tremendous, hard-won capacity for self-control. “Damn you. I’d like to wipe that smirk off your face.”
    Mowery shrugged. “Go ahead and buzz the Capitol Police. They look bored today. I think they’d get a kick out of bouncing a blackmailer from a senator’s office.”
    â€œDon’t you think walking into my office has raised a few eyebrows already?”
    â€œThat’s not my concern.”
    Jack could feel the pain gnawing in his lower abdomen. Nerves. Outrage. That Mowery had confronted him in his office only added to the effrontery, the sheer insult of the man’s presence.
    What he did now, Jack knew, would determine his legacy as a United States senator. This was what his thirty years in Washington would boil down to—this moment. How he responded to blackmail.
    He glanced around at the framed pictures and the letters of thanks, the awards, all the evidence of his long, proud career in public service. He wasn’t an arrogant, power-hungry politician. To him, public service was a high and honorable calling.
    â€œYou’re a cocky bastard, Mowery.” He was surprised at how calm he sounded, how restrained. Inside, his guts were roiling. “You’ll never get away with blackmailing a United States senator.”
    â€œI don’t think of myself as blackmailing a United States senator. I think of myself as blackmailing a father who doesn’t want the world to know his son was balling a woman who wasn’t his wife, two weeks before he dropped dead on a Washington tennis court.”
    Jack felt a sudden, stabbing pain, a hot arrow through him. He took a shallow breath. “I want you out of my office. Now.”
    â€œI can arrange to