After Midnight

by Diana Palmer

  This might be a little on the shady side, to expose a potential adversary’s chief supporter thwarting the environmental laws. But if it gave Clayton a wedge to use in the election, then he was going to use it. He’d been bested too many times by people without scruples.

  At least he didn’t take money under the table, he thought, rationalizing his use of what Nikki would call gutter tactics. No doubt Nikki would disapprove, if she knew. But then, he added, he would be doing the city a service, wouldn’t he? And perhaps it would make people stop hounding him about that infernal owl!

  In the meanwhile, there was no reason for Nikki to know anything yet. She needed her vacation. He wasn’t going to spoil it by calling her up to tell her how he was gaining on his rival. There would be plenty of time for that later.

  He couldn’t help but wonder how young Mark had managed to dig up such a tasty scandal for him. He really would have to watch that eager young man. He was an asset.

  Derrie unpacked her bags in her small apartment and lamented about the nice dinner and play she could have been enjoying if Clayton hadn’t dragged her back to Charleston with him. He never worked on Saturday, but he’d convinced her that tomorrow was going to be the exception and he couldn’t work without her.

  Not that she cared much about the D.C. official she’d been going to share the dinner and play with. In fact, he was something of a bore. But it had been an opportunity to show Clayton that he wasn’t the only fish swimming within hook range.

  Who am I kidding, she asked her reflection in the mirror. She had two new gray hairs among the thick blonde ones. She also had wrinkles at the corners of her big dark blue eyes, and dark circles beneath them from lack of sleep. She’d worked for Clayton for three years in Washington and he never noticed her at all. He was too busy enjoying the companionship that his political standing gave him.

  He was very discreet, but there were women in his life. Derrie stood on the sidelines handing him letters to sign and reminding him of appointments, and he never did more than tease her about her deprived social life. Which was his fault, of course, since she didn’t want to go out with anyone except her stupid boss.

  The newly-elected congressman who’d taken her with him to Washington three years ago was changing before her eyes, she asserted as she got ready for bed. He’d run for the office on a conservation platform, but it was eroding these days. His lack of defense for the spotted owl was just the latest in a line of uncharacteristic actions lately.

  It was the first issue Derrie had braced him on, but not the first she’d opposed. He’d had angry letters from any number of constituents about his voting record during the present session of Congress. He’d voted against most environmental issues, ever since he’d been sleeping with Bett. He’d hired that investigative reporter right off the local news show, and was using him to find flaws in other peoples’ characters that he could use for leverage to accrue votes for issues he championed. And he was suddenly associating a lot with his ex-brother-in-law, Senator Mosby Torrance, an active anticonservation and pro-liberal advocate. He was also voting the way Torrance wanted him to on major bills. In fact, he’d introduced a couple of bills for Torrance.

  Derrie wondered if Nikki had noticed these changes in Clayton’s personality. Nikki hadn’t been well, and Clayton had spent more time in Washington than ever during the past six months. It was well-known that Bett and Senator Torrance were occasional companions. Perhaps he was using Bett to entice Clayton. Or perhaps there was some other connection. No one knew why Nikki and Mosby had broken up. Knowing Nikki as she did, Derrie blamed Torrance. Anyone who couldn’t live with Nikki had to be a basket case.

  She climbed into bed and pulled up the covers, heartsick and demoralized. She’d never argued so much with Clayton before. Now it seemed she was fated never to do anything else. She really must have a long talk with Nikki about him…

  Bett Watts was going over accounts on her computer when the telephone rang stridently. She reached out a hand distractedly to pick it up.

  “Bett?”

  She turned away from the computer. “Yes. Hello, Mosby. What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me that you’ve convinced Clayton to let me handle this thing about Lombard.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said gently. “I can promise you that. I’ve got him right in my little fingers.”

  “My God, I hope so. Don’t let him do anything on his own, do you understand? Nothing!”

  She hesitated. “Well, certainly, I’ll take care of it. But, why?”

  “Never mind. I’ll tell you what you need to know. Good night.”

  She hung up, curious, but not worried. Mosby was careful and discreet. But she did wonder what he had in mind.

  Chapter Six

  It had been so simple at first, Kane told himself as he piloted his sailboat out into the Atlantic. All he had to do was ignore Nikki and her influence would disappear like fog in the hot sun. But she hadn’t. It had been three days and he was more consciously aware of his own loneliness than he could remember being since the death of his wife and son a year ago.

  He lifted his dark face into the breeze and enjoyed the touch of it on his leonine features. One of his forebears has been Italian, another Spanish, and even another one Greek. He had the blood of the Mediterranean in his veins, so perhaps that explained why he loved sailing so much.

  He glanced over his shoulder at his crew. They were working furiously to put up the spinnaker, and as it set, his heart skipped a beat. The wind slid in behind it, caressed it, then suddenly filled it like a passionate lover and the sailboat jerked and plowed ahead through the water.

  The wind in his hair tore through it like mad fingers. Kane laughed at the sheer joy of being alive. It was always like this when he sailed. He loved the danger, the speed, the uncertainty of the winds and the channels. In colonial days, he was sure that he would have been a pirate. At the very least, he’d have been a sailing man. There was nothing else that gave him such a glorious high. Not even sex.

  He spun the wheel and brought the sailboat about to avoid collision with a lunatic in a high-powered motorboat. He mumbled obscenities under his breath as he fought the wake of the other boat.

  “Damned fools,” he muttered.

  Jake, his rigger, only laughed. “It’s a big ocean. Plenty of room for all sorts of lunatics.”

  The older man was wiry and tough. He had red hair, going gray, and a weather-beaten sort of leathery skin. Jake had crewed for the yacht Stars and Stripes with Dennis Connor in the America’s Cup trials the year she won the race. Like the other tough seamen who survived that grueling sport, Jake had a freeness of spirit that gave him a kinship with Kane. From the time Kane was a boy, he had looked to Jake for advice and support in hard times. The older man was in many ways more his father than the tabloid owner in New York who shared his name.

  “You’re troubled,” Jake observed as they traveled seaward amid the creaking of the lines and the flap of the spinnaker as Kane tacked.

  “Yes.”

  “Bad memories?” Jake probed.

  Kane took a slow breath. “Complications. I seem to be acquiring them in bunches like bananas lately. Especially one slender brunette one.”

  “A woman. Not a professional woman…?”

  Kane chuckled. “No. She’s the pipe and slippers sort, to be avoided at all costs.”

  “Not like Chris, in other words.”

  Kane gave him a narrow look. “No. Definitely not like Chris. She isn’t an opportunist.”

  “What is she?”

  “Intelligent and proud,” he muttered. “Possessive. Independent.” He didn’t want to talk about her. “I don’t want another hard fall. One in a lifetime is enough.”

  “Oh, by all means, avoid entanglements,” the older man agreed easily. He glanced up at the ballooned sail and smiled as he admired the set of it. “We’re making good time. We really ought to enter this baby in the Cup trials.”

  “I don’t
want to sail in the Cup.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one reason—because I don’t have the time.”

  Jake shrugged philosophically. “I can’t argue with that. But you’re missing the thrill of a lifetime.”

  “No, I’m not. Look out there,” he said, gesturing toward the horizon. “This is the thrill of a lifetime, every minute I spend on this deck. I don’t have to prove anything to the world, least of all that I’m the best sailor in the water.”

  “Nice to feel that way. Most of us feel we have to live up to some invisible, indefinable goal.”

  “Why bother? You can’t please most people. Please yourself instead.”

  Jake leaned against the rail and stared at him, hard. “That’s selfish.”

  “I’m a selfish man. I don’t know how to give.” He met Jake’s eyes, and his own were cold, leaden. “Like the rest of the minnows in this icy pond we call life, I’m just trying to stay alive in a society that rewards mediocrity and punishes accomplishment and intelligence.”

  “Cynic.”

  “Who wouldn’t be? My God, man, look around you! How many people do you know who wouldn’t cut your throat to get ahead or make a profit?”

  “One. Me.”

  Kane smiled. “Yeah. You.”

  “You’re restless. Isn’t it about time we went back to Charleston and you did what you do best?”

  “What do I do best,” he asked absently, “run the company or make waves for the local politicians?”

  “Both. I don’t run a major business, but I know one thing. It’s damned risky to leave subordinates in charge, no matter how competent they are. Things go wrong.”

  Kane turned to study his friend. “Something you know from experience, right?”

  Jake chuckled. “Yeah. I sat out half a race and we lost the Cup.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “Tell me that every day. I might believe it.” He glanced out over the sea toward the horizon. “Storm blowing up. We’re in for some weather. It might be a good idea to head back, before you get caught up in the joy of fighting the sea again,” he added with a dark look.

  Kane had cause to remember the last time he’d been in a battle with the ocean during a gale. He’d laughed and brought the boat in, but Jake hadn’t enjoyed the ride. He’d been sick.

  “Go ahead, laugh,” Jake muttered.

  “Sorry. I need a challenge now and again, that’s all,” he said apologetically. “Something to fight, someone to fight. I guess the world sits on me sometimes and I have to get it out of my system.”

  “The world sits on us all, and you’ve more reason to chafe than most. It’s just a year today, isn’t it?”

  “A year.” Kane didn’t like remembering the anniversary of the car bomb that had killed his family. He scowled and turned the wheel, tacking suddenly and sharply, so that the sailboat leaned precariously.

  “Watch it!” Jake cautioned. “We could capsize, even as big as we are.”

  “I hate anniversaries,” Kane said heatedly, hurt in his deep voice. “I hate them!”

  Jake laid a heavy, warm hand on the broad, husky shoulder of his friend. “Peace, compadre,” he said gently. “Peace. Give it time. You’ll get through it.”

  Kane felt sick inside. The wounds opened from time to time, but today was the worst. The sea spray hit him in the face, and the wind chilled it where it was wettest. He stared ahead and tried not to notice that there were warm tracks in the chilled skin.

  Chris was waiting for him in the beach house when he returned. He didn’t like her assumption that she could walk in and boss his people around whenever she felt like it. She was giving Todd Lawson hell because he was drinking up Kane’s scotch whiskey. Ironically, she was sharing it with him.

  What, he wondered, was Lawson doing here?

  He walked in, interrupting the argument. They both turned toward him. Lawson was tall, just over six feet, very blond and craggy-faced. He was an ex-war correspondent and had the scars to prove it. He also had a real problem with career women, and his expression as he glowered at Chris punctuated it.

  “I see you’ve met,” Kane remarked. He went to the bar and poured himself two fingers of scotch, adding an ice cube to the mixture.

  “Wouldn’t collided be a better choice of words?” Chris asked testily. She glared back at Lawson. “Shall I leave, so that you men can discuss business?”

  “Why?” Lawson asked innocently. “Don’t you consider yourself one of us?”

  Chris’s face went an ugly color. From the severely drawn back hair to the pin-striped suit and bralessness under it, she felt the words like a blood-letting whip. She whirled on her heel and departed, so uncharacteristically shaken that she did it without even a word to Kane. Normally, Kane might have taken up for her. But today was a bad day. His grief was almost tangible.

  “No purse, either,” Lawson drawled, watching her empty-handed departure. “Don’t tell me. It’s a sellout to carry something traditionally female.”

  Kane lifted an eyebrow. “What do you want?” he asked, irritation in the look he bent on his family’s star reporter.

  “To tell you what I’ve uncovered.”

  Kane’s hand stilled with the glass of scotch held gingerly in it. “Well?”

  “You take your scotch neat,” Lawson remarked, moving closer. “I suppose you can take your bad news the same way. Seymour is after you. The rumor is that he’s got something he can use to get you on environmental charges. Since that little incident last month, he’s confident that he can find something.”

  “That incident was an accidental spill into the river,” Kane said curtly. “We weren’t charged.”

  “Not for that, no. But evidently Seymour thinks where there’s one accident there are bound to be others.”

  Kane ran his hand through his windblown hair. He knew there were problems with his plant manager being absent so much, and there was a new man in charge of waste control. The new man had been responsible for the sewage leak. He was just new, that was all. He told Lawson so.

  “New or not, he’s clumsy. You can’t afford to let this go without looking into it.”

  “Why is Seymour on my tail?”

  “Because your family’s tabloid is crucifying him over his support for the loggers, because your brother Norman is Sam Hewett’s new executive administrative assistant for his campaign, and because your whole family is endorsing Hewett, Seymour’s major Democratic opponent. But I think Seymour’s ex-brother-in-law is behind this campaign to smear you.”

  “What ex-brother-in-law?”

  “Senator Mosby Torrance.”

  Kane frowned. “Why would he be after me? He’s a business advocate—notoriously a jobs-over-environment man. The Sierra Club would furnish the firewood to burn him at the stake. Like Seymour,” he continued, “he’s supporting the opponents of the spotted owl in the northwest.”

  “The spotted owl won’t hurt Torrance very much right now because he doesn’t have to run for reelection this year. But Seymour does, and the spotted owl bill has hurt him at home,” Lawson said cynically. “However, a few well-placed and well-timed blows at industrial pollution in his home district could kindle a lot of public opinion in his favor and put him back in Washington. I don’t know what he’s found, but he’s got something. You can bet if John Haralson is helping him—and he is—he’s got something.”

  “Haralson.”

  “Senator Torrance’s district director. Mr. Sleaze,” he added curtly. “The original dirty tricks man.”

  “Working for Seymour? That doesn’t sound like Seymour. I’m a Democrat from the feet up, but even so, from what I’ve read about Seymour, he’s never been a politician who tried to smear anybody for personal gain. He’s an idealist.”

  “Perhaps he’s learned that idealism is a euphemism for naïveté in politics. You can’t change the world.”

  “That doesn’t stop people from trying, does it?”

  “Seymour is going to c
oncentrate on you. Your family news tabloid has been his major embarrassment since this spotted owl thing began, and the press coverage he’s been given has cost him points in the polls. If he can connect you with anything shady, the inference is that he can cost your family some credibility. That will also hurt Hewett—because your brother is his senior advisor. That’s what your father thinks, anyway,” he added.

  “You’re his star reporter,” Kane said. “What do you think?”

  Lawson put his empty glass down. “I think you’d better make sure there’s nothing to connect your company with any more environmental damage.”

  “I told you, that sewage leak was purely accidental. I don’t have anything shady to worry about.”

  “You sound very sure of yourself,” Lawson said quietly. “But you’ve been away from work for a couple of weeks.”

  “I have competent managers,” Kane said, getting more irritated by the minute.

  “Do you?” Lawson straightened. He was almost Kane’s own height. “Then why have you turned out a reputable company like CWC?”

  “CWC.” Kane nodded. “Oh, yes, I remember. I had a talk with the new solid waste manager. He said that CWC had done a sloppy job at enormous cost. He wanted permission to replace the company and get someone more efficient—and a little less expensive.”

  “That’s very interesting. CWC has a very good reputation. One of the national news magazines recently did a piece on them. They’re very efficient and high-tech.”

  Lombard pursed his lips and scowled. “Are they? Well, perhaps they’ve fallen down on the job. I’ll look into it when I get back to Charleston. Meanwhile, what have you found out about Seymour?”

  “Not much. But I’ve got a few rumors to check out about Seymour’s connection with Mosby Torrance.”