The Waterfall by Carla Neggers

Author:Carla Neggers [Neggers, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Romance
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2012-07-03T04:00:00+00:00

Nine

Sidney pressed both hands on Jack’s shoulders to keep him in his chair in the courtyard. “You sit,” she told him. “I’ll make the martinis.”

He smiled up at her, could smell her fresh perfume as she stayed close behind him. She was so beautiful, so kind. “You don’t need to wait on me.”

“This isn’t waiting on you.” She headed off toward the kitchen, laughing over her shoulder at him. “This is snapping you out of your funk. You have one chance—one martini—then I’m out of here, and you can wallow.”

In another minute, Jack heard her humming, clinking glasses. His eyes welled with tears. She was such a good woman. Smart and decent, comfortable with herself. He wished he had the courage to tell her about Darren and the blackmail. About Colin. About how he’d sniped at Lucy for living in Vermont, as if somehow the blackmail, his loneliness, was her fault.

But he couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone. It was as if speaking the details out loud made them real and true, unavoidable. He supposed he was still in denial, as the pop shrinks would say. Yet his silence ate at him, chewing away at his gut like an acid leak. Except for the day he’d stood over his son’s body, he’d never felt so isolated and alone, so goddamn helpless.

Sidney blamed his work. His schedule was jammed with last-minute political jockeying before the August recess. He was using every ethical tactic he knew to garner support for legislation he and another two senators were sponsoring.

To have it all end like this, he thought. He tried to be optimistic. He wanted desperately, horribly, to believe that Darren Mowery would give up his blackmail campaign without bleeding Jack completely dry or asking him to compromise his oath of office. He could only afford another ten or twenty thousand before someone started to notice, before someone talked. It could be anyone—a bank teller, his accountant. Word would get out, questions would be asked. What secrets was Senator Swift hiding? His political enemies would jump. The media would be overzealous in their watchdog role. Truth would mix with gossip and rumor, and the politics of personal destruction.

And that was the best-case scenario. The worst was if Mowery asked Jack to compromise his oath of office, the ethics by which he’d tried his damnedest to live and work his entire adult life, even before he’d taken public office. Then, who knew what would happen.

He was on his own. Sebastian Redwing hadn’t returned his call. Jack wished he hadn’t given in to impulse and contacted Redwing Associates. Plato had warned him Sebastian probably wouldn’t call back if Jack wasn’t willing to be more forthcoming. “Call me back if you want to talk details,” Plato said. “I’ll get word to him.”

He’d refused to say where Sebastian was or to put Jack’s call through to him, and finally Jack hung up in frustration. Admitting he was the victim of blackmail had made him physically ill. What difference did the details make? It was Mowery.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.