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 wrong. 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,
