“Hard to explain,” Sabrina answered, momentarily looking confused. “I’m not sure I would have been ready for this five or ten years ago. Maybe I’ve grown into it. Maybe circumstance made me ripe for it.… Then again,” she said, tapping a Wheat Thin against her lip, “I’ve only been here since September. Maybe by this time next year I’ll be starving for New York.”
“And Derek? Think he’ll last up here?”
The Wheat Thin went into Sabrina’s mouth. It crunched between her teeth. She washed it down with her wine, thinking all the while. It wasn’t the first thought she’d given the subject. Indeed, brooding might be a more accurate description. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “He seems happy, but whether he’ll get tired of all this…” Her words trailed off with a shrug.
Maura didn’t pick up on her friend’s concern, or if she did she chose not to pursue it. “What about work? Is he thinking of getting back into it?”
“Eventually.”
“Back into reporting?”
“I think so.”
“But how? Where?”
“I’m not sure he’s figured that out yet.”
“Then he’s not looking for something?”
“Not at the moment.”
“His agent is…” She squinted with one eye. “Jacobs, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is he talking with people?”
“I’m not sure. Originally he wanted Derek to do the talk-show circuit, but Derek refused, and he’s stuck by his refusal. Craig calls here every so often, and I don’t hear what he’s saying; but from Derek’s end of the conversation I’d guess that Craig is champing at the bit. Whether he’s already looking, though, or whether he’s waiting for a green light from Derek, I don’t know. I have a feeling it’s a combination of the two. Craig’s looking, but he hasn’t come up with anything that appeals to Derek; and since Derek won’t settle for second best, he’s prepared to wait it out.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, he’s on vacation.”
Maura snorted. “Vacation? Doesn’t look to me like he’s on vacation. Looks like he’s changing professions. Becoming a carpenter.”
“Not quite. What he’s doing in the barn is for fun. I mean, there’s a practical purpose to it, but it’s strictly an avocation.” She thought for a minute. “It’s therapeutic. He needs it.”
“Prison was rough?” Maura asked, and was answered by a look that was eloquent in its bluntness. She studied Sabrina for a minute, then placed a Wheat Thin on her tongue and brought it into her mouth as though it were a sacramental wafer. “If I were in his shoes,” she mused, “I’d be furious. I’d be wanting to lash out at everyone and everything. I’d feel used and abused. And I’d want revenge. But Derek seems calm. Content. Is that because of this place and your marriage, or has he legitimately accepted what happened?”
Sabrina didn’t answer immediately. She thought about the discrepancy between what she wanted to be true and what, in fact, she knew to be true. “I think,” she said at last, “that the contentment you see is because of this place and our marriage. He hasn’t accepted what happened. I’m not sure he ever will. He was deprived of two years of freedom. His name has been dirtied, his career derailed. There are times”—she lowered her eyes and continued more quietly—“when he’s still very angry. Not often—at least I don’t think it’s often—just from time to time. He tries not to let me see, but I do. It’s in his eyes, in his jaw and his hands and his shoulders.”
Maura was regarding her strangely. “You sound defeated.”
“I would have liked,” Sabrina admitted after a moment’s consideration, “for our marriage—and me—to have been enough. I keep asking myself what I can do to make it so, but I don’t have the answer.” She frowned at the bit of wine pooling in the bottom of her glass. “I wanted to be successful at this, and to some extent I guess I have been, but not completely.” She looked back at Maura. “I want him to forget the past. But he can’t.”
“So what’s he going to do about it?”
Sabrina wore a painful look on her face but said nothing.
“What are his plans? He won’t just sit back and brood. I mean, hell, I don’t know the man other than by reputation and the little time I’ve spent with him here, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to live with that kind of anger forever. Seems to me he was a doer. A crusader. The general consensus is that he had balls made of steel. Has he lost them?”
On behalf of her husband, Sabrina was offended by Maura’s statement. “He hasn’t lost a thing,” she said, “but there are right ways and wrong ways to do things. Derek can’t just walk out on the street and start hurling accusations.”
“Who would he accuse?”
“It’s a very long story.”
Maura shrugged and tossed her gaze around the room. It was empty except for the pillows, the tray of cheese and crackers, and the two friends. It was a room of endless time and leisure. “I’m game.”
Sabrina was initially reluctant. To tell Derek’s story would be to betray his confidence. But as she looked at Maura—off-the-wall Maura with her newly darkened hair in stylish disarray, her canary-yellow tunic, royal-blue tights and sea-green granny boots—something else came over her. Maura was her best friend and had been so since they were kids. Over the years they’d shared many intimacies. And as far as this one went, Sabrina needed to get it out. It had been festering inside her since she heard it from Derek. She wanted another opinion.
Maura had that. “Jesus, what a book,” she said, eyes bright in excitement by the time Sabrina had reached the end of her tale. “Revenge makes for a great plot.”
“I’m not writing it.”
“Sure you are. You’re a writer. That’s your thing.”
“I’m also Derek’s wife. For now, that’s my thing.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“Sabrina, these are modern times. You can write and be Derek’s wife.”
“I know that,” Sabrina countered quietly, “but for now I’m just his wife. Maybe I’m on vacation, too.”
“You’ve been on vacation for three-plus years,” Maura remarked, then qualified herself when Sabrina stiffened. “Bad word. I know the agony you went through with Nicky. That was no vacation. How about hiatus—you’ve been on a three-plus years’ hiatus from writing.”
“That’s okay.”
There was a pause, then Maura said, “So why don’t you get back to it? You have the perfect vehicle.”
“I won’t use that particular vehicle. Not yet. I told Derek I wouldn’t, and, anyway, he’s right. The files are the key.”
For a minute Maura looked as though she was ready to argue further about the writing. Then, wearing a resigned expression, she said, “If the files exist. It could be a long shot. I’d think Derek’s time would be better spent looking for proof that Greer put him in jail.”
“The fact is,” Sabrina said, “that he may never be able to prove it. His best hope is that if he’s able to expose Greer’s dealings with Ballantine, someone will come forward after the fact and shed light on what really happened with Joey Padilla and that murder trial. Men like Greer make enemies along the way. They have to. There must be people out there who would be more than happy to pound another nail in Noel Greer’s coffin. First, though, he has to be discredited. Right now he’s too powerful.”
Maura was very quiet for several minutes. She ate a cheese cube, then a cracker, then another cheese cube. She finished off her wine, then cocked her head to the side.
“Greer’s power is not to be underestimated.”
“I know that.”
“Isn’t Derek worried that he’ll be tailed when he goes after those files?” She paused, then stuck on a quick, “Greer knows about the files. You said Derek told him.”
Sabrina, shifted her gaze to the panels of glass that looked out on the woods surrounding the farmhouse. Life here was so peaceful. Mentio
n of Noel Greer, of Lloyd Ballantine, of the files and revenge stirred a nervous crinkle in her stomach that was very much at odds with that peace.
Unfortunately, the nervous crinkle wasn’t about to go away by itself. Again, Sabrina opted to share her fear with Maura, this time in the hope that she could ease it. “I think Derek’s hoping that Greer will be too involved with his Senate campaign to bother.”
“Isn’t that a simplistic approach? If Greer doesn’t bother, and if Derek comes up with those files, and if they’re as condemning as Derek hopes they’ll be, Greer’s Senate campaign would be shot to hell.”
Sabrina grimaced. “You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to say Derek is probably right. You’re supposed to say that Greer has too much on his mind to worry about Derek, even that Greer is arrogant enough to think that Derek wouldn’t dare cross him again. The thought of someone monitoring Derek’s activities doesn’t thrill me.”
Tipping her wineglass to her lips, Maura drained it.
“But I suppose you’re right,” Sabrina said, feeling discouraged. “Greer is a powerful man. He’s the puppeteer pulling the strings. To accomplish what he has already, he’s probably utilized a whole cadre of men. One of them could easily be spared to keep tabs on Derek.”
Maura gave a sudden frown and seemed momentarily distracted. Then, as quickly as it had come, the frown vanished. “Christ, we’re getting morose,” she said with a return of her usual ebullience. “There’s no need to think about this now, is there? This is supposed to be a festive season.”
It was. J. B. and Maura tolerated each other enough to minimize the verbal sparring, and what there was of it was, in its way, entertaining. But that was just the start of their entertainment. As a foursome, Derek, Sabrina, J. B. and Maura spent a day bucking the Christmas-week crowds on the ski slopes, a night gorging on roast duckling at a quaint little inn, another day on snowmobiles, another night at the movies. Sabrina took Maura browsing through the shops she most admired of those she’d discovered since she’d come north. And she cooked. To lavish praise and many a raised glass, she prepared goodies ranging from apple pancakes to veal scallopini to butternut-squash soup to English trifle.
She was pleased with her life. Derek was never far from her side, and she had Maura, her good friend, and J. B., who, with a stretch of the imagination, was beginning to resemble a friend. While she’d been expecting to feel down over the holidays—the first without Nicky—that depression never materialized. And her need for professional accomplishment temporarily took a backseat to her responsibilities as a wife and homemaker.
Two days before New Year’s, Maura left to return to New York and to Richard—which was the name she’d finally given for the man she was seeing. Under J. B.’s taunting, she also admitted that he was a businessman; but no amount of taunting, coaxing or pleading—from any of them—had produced another word.
New Year’s Eve was an experience. Sabrina and Derek had been invited to a party thrown by a pair of writers she’d met when she first moved to Vermont, and they wouldn’t hear of leaving J. B. behind. In his own way, he’d truly become part of the family. Beyond that, Sabrina suspected that Derek wanted him along for moral support. This was to be the first time that Derek had “gone public” since his arrest. It was the first time that he would be standing around making social conversation with people who knew exactly who he was and where he’d been.
“We don’t have to go,” Sabrina assured him more than once.
But Derek only shook his head. “It’s time.”
When he said things like that, Sabrina felt a tiny frisson of tension, because if it was time for Derek to mix, it would soon be time for more. But she was determined not to let that particular thought ruin her New Year’s Eve, and it didn’t. Standing back, watching Derek and J. B., she was amused. It was like the blind leading the blind. J. B. was as nervous about the party as Derek. Each became the other’s personal crusade.
By the time they returned home in the wee hours, Sabrina was doing the driving. Derek and J. B. weren’t drunk, just pleasantly tipsy. It even occurred to her that their lightheadedness wasn’t caused by alcohol at all, but by the fact that they’d been received well—either that, or relief that the ordeal was over. In any case, she wasn’t taking any chances.
As it happened, Derek had sobered sufficiently by the time they reached the farmhouse to lead Sabrina to their bedroom, take her in his arms and show her how very deep his love was. She half suspected that his New Year’s resolution had something to do with that, for he was more hungry than ever for her in the days to come. Her own resolution was more a wish—that this honeymoon at home could go on and on and on.
On the twentieth of January, it ended. That was the day when Noel Greer shocked no one by formally announcing his candidacy for a seat in the United States Senate.
Chapter 15
DEREK SPENT the twenty-first of January doing some heavy thinking. He had long since mapped out his plan of attack, knew just where to begin his work, but his thoughts ranged ahead, hovering about the various possible weaknesses that had made Lloyd Ballantine corruptible. One of those possibilities would determine the ultimate direction of his search. That direction would be where the danger lay.
Derek didn’t want Sabrina subject to danger. She had been by his side when David had called on the phone to alert him to Greer’s announcement; she had been by his side when the evening news had replayed the speech. She had made a quiet statement of her intent that if she couldn’t fight him, she’d join him.
That scared him a little.
He wanted her help. She was a first-class researcher—organized, thorough and concise in her notes. He’d been through them several times and knew most everything there was to be publicly known about Lloyd Ballantine from his birth to the time he’d joined the Supreme Court. After that, the picture faded. To bring it back into focus, and to learn about those small, personal, non-public items in his biography—that second life, if it existed—would require interviews with the late justice’s family, friends and colleagues. If Sabrina conducted such interviews it would openly identify her with Derek’s cause. He wasn’t ready for that yet.
Nor was he ready for what happened in the early afternoon of the twenty-second of January. Amid dual clouds of misting breath, Ann Fitzgerald and Justin Shagrew appeared on his doorstep like lost puppies from his past. They were swathed in parkas, hats, scarves and gloves, and the little skin that had been left exposed to the subfreezing temperature was ruddy.
Surprised and pleased, if a little puzzled, Derek hauled them inside and introduced them to Sabrina.
“Annie-Fitz and Justin worked with me on many a story,” he explained, then gave a skewed grin. “They always were great for showing up just when the pizza did.”
Justin held up a hand and vowed in a voice that was slightly slurred by a numb mouth and jaw, “Pure coincidence—and we wouldn’t have popped in at lunchtime now if it hadn’t been so cold. The cycle doesn’t offer much protection. We couldn’t bear the thought of sitting on the steps for long, when there were such wonderful smells coming from inside.”
Derek shot a glance out the window toward the drive. “I can’t believe you came on the Harley.”
“I figured,” Justin said, “that if the Harley could make it, we could. The windchill factor was something else, though.” He looked at his fingers, which were still curled from the handlebars. “They may never be the same.”
Sabrina estimated both he and his companion to be in the vicinity of twenty-six or twenty-seven, which meant that they’d started work with Derek fresh from college. They looked clean, and were dressed well, if casually. Ann was petite and seemed shy; Sabrina had the impression she was hiding beneath both the multiple layers of her clothing and the thick mane of sandy hair that, freed now from the heavy wool cap she’d worn for the trip, fell in tight curls to her shoulders. The dark-haired Justin stood taller, wore his layered sweaters loose, his jeans tight, boots to hi
s knees and a tiny gold stud halfway up the curve of his ear. He had a sure smile and made eye contact readily. He struck her as a younger Derek McGill, at first glance the leader of the pair.
“Craig gave you the address?” Derek asked. His initial surprise gone, he was puzzled and slightly wary.
“Reluctantly, and only after we agreed to devote ourselves to getting you back to New York.”
“If that’s why you’re here,” Derek said in a light tone that meant serious business, “you’re wasting your time.”
This time, Justin’s smile was surprisingly mature, surprisingly understanding. “It’s not why we’re here.”
Derek sought Sabrina’s gaze in an instant’s silent communication before saying, “In that case, it’s lentil soup with franks that you smell, and there’s plenty, if you’d like to join us. We were just about to eat.”
Neither Justin nor Ann was about to refuse. Settling gratefully into mate’s chairs around the captain’s table in the kitchen, they told of their adventures on the road. At Derek’s questioning, they also related what they’d been up to in New York, which, inevitably, brought them to the reason they’d come.
“We need direction,” Ann said in a soft, tentative voice. Up to that point, she’d been content to let Justin do most of the talking, which he, in turn, had been more than content to do. But Sabrina had the sudden impression—from what source, she didn’t know—that once past her shyness, Annie-Fitz, as Derek fondly called her, was a very bright woman.
Ann went on. “What you used to do at the network was exciting. There’s been no one else in the field who can do it quite the same. You had the guts to stand up to Greer, so your stories were a cut above the rest.” She darted a timid glance at Sabrina, looked down at the tabletop, then back at Derek and spoke quickly. “If it hadn’t been Greer, it would have been someone else. Every network has its self-appointed censor. Unfortunately, that means that some stories are never approached because they are considered too touchy from the start.”
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