all right. I’m not saying this very well. This is embarrassing, because I’m usually very good with words. But you do have a reputation, Jesse. For honesty. For being a straight shooter. For being intensely loyal and definitely trustworthy.”
“Now I’m embarrassed.”
She shifted on the seat, turning to face him. “Last week,” she began, then closed her eyes for a moment before looking at him again. “Oh, this is so hard.”
“Just say it fast, Samantha,” he advised her, taking her hand in his. Her fingers were icy cold, nearly bloodless. He didn’t know what was wrong, but whatever it was, she wasn’t only worried, she was scared.
“All right. Last week, Thursday, I think, I…I was licking stamps. I mean, not really licking stamps, but I was there late, and there was mail to go out, and since I was there and had no plans, I stayed to do it.”
Jesse’s radar switched on. Mail. Mail leaving a senator’s campaign office. The possibilities were endless. “Go on,” he urged when she stopped speaking.
“I can’t. I can’t do this. Senator Phillips has been so good to me. And my father? He adores the man. They were in the army together. I mean, I used to call him Uncle Mark. I still do, in private.”
“Samantha, sorry, but you can’t stop here. What was in the mail?”
“Outgoing mail,” she clarified, then sighed. “It had to be a mistake. I mean, he wouldn’t do anything wrong, I know he wouldn’t.”
“What was in the mail?” Jesse repeated, squeezing her fingers.
“Something…something that shouldn’t even have been in there, in the campaign office,” she said quietly, pulling her hand free. “You know he chairs the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and they deal with some very sensitive material…”
“Money, Samantha. They deal with a lot of money. In Washington, money equals power, and power equals money. Now, one more time, Samantha. What was in the mail?”
“Tomorrow,” she said quickly, one hand on the door handle. “Come to the office tomorrow evening. Around seven. Everybody else should be gone. I…I’ll show you then.”
“You didn’t send it out?”
She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t. I’m sure that information should never have been released. I shouldn’t even have seen it.”
“Did you also save the envelope?” Jesse asked, thinking ahead.
“Yes. That’s how I got to see the contents. The envelope wasn’t sealed correctly and the glue was all gone. I wanted to tape it shut but couldn’t find any tape—sometimes our office is a real mess—so I slipped everything out of the envelope to put it into a new one and I saw…I saw…” Her voice was so quiet he had to lean over to hear her above the sound of rain pelting the roof of the sedan. “I’ll…I’ll show you everything.”
She opened the car door, then turned back, grabbed his arm. “But you can’t tell anybody. Not until we know exactly what’s going on. I mean, it was the senator’s mail, but that doesn’t mean that he—”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, Samantha,” Jesse said, putting his hand over hers. “It’s probably nothing.”
“That’s what I think. It’s nothing. Just a…a mistake. Good night.”
And then she was gone, running through the rain to the steps of the town house. She knocked, and a few moments later a uniformed maid opened the door, spilling mellow yellow light out onto the brick sidewalk.
“Nice work if you can get it,” Jesse muttered, putting the car in gear to head home to a sleepless night.
Chapter Two
A t ten o’clock the next morning, Jesse passed by the well-dressed secretary who held the door open for him, and into the large, teak-paneled law office of Rand Colton, oldest son of former Senator Joseph Colton.
His relatives. Amazing. A whole, huge branch of the family Jesse and his family hadn’t known existed until a few short weeks ago. The wealthy, socially and politically prominent branch of the family, about as far away from Oklahoma and Black Arrow as a person could get.
He’d seen photographs of Senator Colton, read stories of the scandal and murders and near tragedies that had nearly torn the California family apart.
He’d run several Colton names through the Internet, read the microfiche newspaper articles at the library, and had come to the conclusion that the last thing these people needed was for another problem to rear its ugly head, both privately and for public consumption.
The public had consumed plenty already, with the murder attempts on the former senator by both his business partner and his supposed wife.
That had been the double whammy, that his wife had been the victim of amnesia for ten years while her twin sister, a convicted murderer, had impersonated her, taken her place in Joe Colton’s house, Joe Colton’s bed.
Bizarre.
It was the stuff of tabloids, made for TV docudramas, all that sleazy stuff. Except it all had happened to good people.
But all of that was over, in the past. Problems solved, lives mended, the future bright.
Until these latest revelations that, thankfully, were still hiding under the press’s radar. Until, if the information Jesse had received thus far was correct, it had been learned that his grandmother had been the legal wife of Joe Colton’s father, Teddy. The only legal wife of Joe Colton’s father.
Making Senator Joseph Colton the bastard born on the wrong side of the blanket. Oh yeah, the tabloids would gobble it up if they knew. One thing Jesse wanted to make very clear to the senator’s son was that nobody in the Oklahoma branch of the Coltons planned to go public with anything. Ever.
“Jesse,” Rand Colton said, walking around from behind his desk, his right hand extended in greeting. “Or should I say, cousin?”
Jesse took the man’s hand in his, felt the dry warmth and solid strength he hadn’t expected to find in the grip of a lawyer. “Jesse’s fine,” he said, then took a seat on a chair that was part of a small conversational gathering of chairs and couch on one side of the large office. “Are we really sure?”
“You’ve spoken to your family?” Rand asked, lowering his six-foot-two-inch frame into the facing chair.
“Yes, when I went home after my grandmother’s funeral. I couldn’t be there in July, as I was traveling in Europe with the president, but I finally got there. They’ve been having some pretty interesting times in Black Arrow.”
“Thanks to my uncle, yes,” Rand said, shaking his head, then looking toward the now-open door. “Is there something wrong, Sylvia?”
“Oh, no sir, Mr. Colton. I only wondered if you and Mr. Colton might like some coffee,” the secretary said.
“Coffee?” Rand asked, looking at Jesse.
“Sure,”
