Private Justice

by Marie Ferrarella

“Your Chief Staff Assistant gave it to me.”

  “Cindy Jensen gave it to you?’ his father asked incredulously. “She believed you?”

  Dylan sighed. He hadn’t come here to play games. His time was too precious for that. Hitting the speaker button, he retired the receiver into the cradle. “Here, why don’t you ask her yourself? I just put you on speakerphone.”

  “Where are you?” Hank wanted to know, far from won over.

  “I’m standing in your Beverly Hills office,” Dylan told him. And then he turned his attention to Cindy. “Ball’s in your court, Chief Staff Assistant,” he said, deliberately putting emphasize on the word chief.

  “Cindy?” Hank asked uncertainly.

  “I’m right here, Senator,” Cindy answered, moving closer to the phone on the desk.

  “Cindy.” There was relief in Hank’s voice, as if he could now relax because someone he trusted—one of the few individuals he trusted—was there on his behalf. “And you’re convinced that you’re dealing with my son? One of my sons?” Hank said, qualifying his question.

  “Yes, sir,” Cindy replied firmly. “He showed me his driver’s license.”

  “Driver’s licenses can be faked,” Hank pointed out, then instructed her to describe him.

  Cindy frowned. She hadn’t thought of that, that the man could be showing her a fake driver’s license. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the individual on the other side of the desk more closely. Something in her gut told her she was right, despite the momentary uncertainty.

  “He’s about six foot one,” she began.

  “Six foot two and a half,” Dylan corrected her. It wasn’t that the inch and a half difference was so important, he just wanted her to be accurate. He knew damn well that his father had absolutely no idea how tall he actually was.

  Cindy ignored Dylan’s interjection. “He’s got intense blue eyes and really thick dark hair.” She paused for a second, weighing her next sentence before continuing. “He could stand a haircut,” she commented.

  He’d gotten nothing but positive responses from the women in his office and the ones he went out with. Obviously this one liked to go against the grain. “I like it this length,” Dylan informed her.

  Cindy responded with a careless shrug of her slim shoulders, then went on as if he hadn’t said anything. “But he dresses well. And if I look at him from the side,” which she did now, moving to another vantage point around the desk, “he looks a little like a younger version of you, Senator.”

  They heard Hank blow out a breath, as if he’d been holding it. “All right, I’m convinced.”

  “Hallelujah,” Dylan enthused cryptically. “Now can we get on with this, please?” He didn’t wait for a response to his plea. “Where are you?”

  Ever since the scene on the courthouse steps, Hank had taken measures to keep ahead of the media hounds. “I’ve been moving around, trying to stay a step ahead of the press.” The silence that met his statement told Hank that Dylan was waiting for him to elaborate. “Staying with different people.”

  “Your mistresses?” Dylan asked. There was a coldness in his voice.

  He didn’t expect the answer he heard. “Hell, no,” his father hooted. “They’re a jealous bunch. They didn’t know about each other,” he confessed. “Now they’re all ready to vivisect me.”

  “That would save the government the cost of a trial,” Dylan commented dryly. He found himself relating to this unreal collection of supermodel blondes. “Can’t say I blame them,” he said almost under his breath, but still audible enough to be heard. “So exactly where can I meet you?”

  “Then you really are serious about wanting to help me?” Hank pressed.

  There was a part of Dylan that still couldn’t shake the thought that he was going to regret this, but he answered in the affirmative. In a manner of speaking. “Unfortunately, I am.”

  Hank thought for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind. There were few enough people whom he could trust. Everyone who’d professed friendship and support during the good times had turned on him. The body count was rising as his choices were diminishing.

  “Meet me at the house,” Hank told him. “I can be there in an hour.”

  “The house” was his sprawling, incredibly opulent estate in Beverly Hills. There were few like it. There were sheiks who had palaces that might lay claim to rivaling the area that Hank whimsically called home, but there was nothing like it around here. And that was saying a lot, given the affluence that could be found in Beverly Hills.

  “Aren’t you afraid that the media will ambush you?” Dylan asked. “From what I hear, they’re camped out in front of the security gates at the house.”

  After the scene the other day, Hank wouldn’t want to come within fifty yards of the media, but fears had to be faced. “There are ways to get in and out undetected if I have to.”

  “Is that how you did it?” Dylan wanted to know.

  His father obviously wasn’t following him. “Did what?”

  “Stepped out on Mother all those times that you were at home?”

  The twenty-room estate, built on the site of a silent-movie great’s one-of-a-kind mansion, had incorporated some of that former legend’s quirky designs, including an underground passage that ran close to a mile and a quarter, eventually coming out into the basement of the estate next door.

  Legend had it that the passage had originally been used by the movie star to sneak away for regular trysts with the woman who eventually became his third wife, when both he and the woman in question were married to other people.

  Dylan could almost see his father scowling on the other end of the line.

  “This isn’t the time for that discussion, Dylan,” Hank informed him.

  “No, I wouldn’t think it would be,” Dylan replied glibly. “Okay, one hour,” he agreed. “I’ll see you there.” But then a complicating factor hit him. “But if I go directly to the estate, the newshounds camped outside the estate gates will suspect something is up.”

  “As long as you don’t stop to talk to them, we’ll be fine. Knowing and suspecting are two very different things,” Hank pointed out.

  “You would be the expert on that,” Dylan couldn’t help observing. “Okay, one hour. I’ll be there.”

  Reaching out, he was about to disconnect the call when he heard his father say, “Oh, and Dylan?”

  Now what? “Yes, sir?”

  “Thanks.” The single word came without a preamble. Not even a mild word of foreshow, a whisper, something to give him a clue this was coming.

  The one sure thing was that he hadn’t expected it. Not from his father. Maybe from one of his father’s handlers or from the staff members he was, or had been, running into the ground—that he could see.

  But from the old man himself? Not possible. And yet, he’d said it. Who knew that the middle of September was the time for miracles?

  The single word of gratitude had sounded genuine. Definitely a first for the old man, Dylan thought cynically.

  “Yeah, well, don’t go thanking me just yet. We’ve got a ways to go with this before you’re anywhere in the clear.”

  But Hank was not about to take back what he’d said. “Just knowing you’re there, in my corner, means a lot to me, Dylan.”

  Like you were there in Mother’s corner, Dad?

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask that, but it wouldn’t serve any purpose, would just stir things up, muddy the waters. The past was the past and his father was not a man who would suddenly have an epiphany because one of his sons had taken him to task for his very tarnished behavior. It just didn’t work that way. Not where his father was concerned.

  He let the comment go.

  “Okay,” Dylan repeated, his voice somewhat stilted. “One hour. Security code still the same to get in the gates?” he asked.

  “Yes, except that you need to reverse the numbers. I reentered them that way last month.”

  Dylan wondered if his father even remembe
red that his son did that unintentionally more times than he liked to think of. Most likely the old man didn’t remember that one of his children battled dyslexia.

  Nothing new there. Actually remembering how many children he had, would be a major accomplishment for his father.

  Legitimate children, Dylan qualified. God only knew how many other women his father had gotten pregnant before this latest one had stepped into the spotlight, demanding her due.

  Pressing End, he disconnected the call and shook his head. Though he was accustomed to a fast-paced life, this all still felt like a circus to him. A loon-fest about a man who bore little to no resemblance to the man he’d once known as his father.

  Or had thought he’d known, Dylan amended.

  Just shows that I wasn’t all that bright as a kid, he thought.

  Turning from the desk, he saw that his father’s petite guard dog in the smart light-gray suit was watching him. If it didn’t seem so incredible, he would have said that there was sympathy in her eyes. But that was impossible; guard dogs didn’t feel sympathy. Not that he would have welcomed it anyway.

  “He meant that, you know,” Cindy told him quietly just as Dylan was about to pick up his hand-stitched leather briefcase and leave.

  Which part of the conversation was she referring to? “Meant what?” he asked.

  “The part about being grateful to you for offering your help.” She had the sense that the senator was feeling rather alone right now, what with his formerly adoring followers suddenly turning on him, recoiling the way people did when confronted with something dangerous and evil.

  Dylan shrugged. “Well, like I said, I’m not doing it for him. He goes down, everyone in the family’s going to be dragged through the mud with him.” He looked at her, wanting no mistake to be made about this. No false intentions attached to what he was doing. “I’m not about to see that happen.”

  She nodded, as if she understood. The smile on her lips this time around was neither mocking nor cynical. It was, he caught himself thinking, rather sweet. The next moment, he pushed the thought aside. The last thing he needed right now was to be having any sort of sensual thoughts about one of his father’s women.

  “So you’re the family crusader?” she was asking.

  He didn’t care for labels. Nor did he welcome any false notions about who or what he was. That was strictly his father’s purview.

  Shaking his head to negate her assumption, he told her, “I’m just a guy who doesn’t want to see his mother and his brothers and sister have to endure any more than they already have.”

  Feeling suddenly woozy, Cindy leaned her hip against the desk, needing a little support as a vague dizziness threatened to intensify. Her head didn’t feel right. Wouldn’t that be just perfect, fainting in front of the senator’s son?

  She struggled to find her way out of the fog. A moment later, much to her relief, the strange dizziness receded. Cindy concentrated, focusing on what Dylan had just said. She wanted to draw attention away from herself.

  “And what was it that they—and you—have already endured?”

  He shrugged. He wasn’t trying to make her think that his family life was unique, just that it was very far from the perfection his father had purported it to be.

  “Nothing that a lot of other families of public personalities haven’t had to put up with. A husband and father who was never there. Who only took an interest—or pretended to—when it suited his need to appear to be an involved husband and parent.”

  He shrugged again, but his tone belied this attempt at casualness. “I resented being used,” he confessed.

  The next moment, Dylan caught himself. What the hell was he doing? Since when did this become true-confessions time? He was usually a great deal better at keeping things to himself. He was gregarious, but schooled in the art of appearing to say much while really saying very little.

  Something, he supposed, he’d actually picked up from his father.

  “Did you ever stop to think that maybe that was the only way the senator could relate to you and your siblings?” Cindy suggested.

  He didn’t see how she got from point A to point B. There was an entire river between them. “You mean by using us to pad his résumé, to make himself look like a genuine walking, talking family-values kind of guy?”

  He had been severely hurt by his father’s inattention, Cindy thought. He just wasn’t about to admit it to anyone, even himself. Sympathy stirred within her.

  “I mean, he had to relate to you within the only realm where he felt comfortable,” she said. “The political arena.”

  He’d concede that she might have a point. “That could be true about us—he never got to know any of us. We were all just little kids when he won his first election and went off to Washington. But what about my mother?” he asked. The answer, as far as he was concerned, was a foregone conclusion. “She knew him before all this political smoke-and-mirrors garbage came in to distract him. If it wasn’t for her,” he pointed out, “he never would have been able to become the U.S. senator from California. It was her money, her inheritance, he used to fund his campaigns.”

  She was aware of the anger in his eyes and would have backed away, but something he’d said had caught her attention. It didn’t add up. He’d said that he and his family had stayed on the home front while his father had gone to Washington. But she’d had the impression that they’d gone with his father.

  She asked him about it. “I remember seeing a photograph of the senator with his family with the White House in the background. I got the impression that you weren’t playing tourists.”

  “No, we did live there. For a while. Mother was determined the family would stay together, but the social whirl, the long hours, the constant campaigning—official and covert—got to be too much for her.”

  He remembered those early years. Remembered wanting to do something to make his mother smile again. Remembered resenting his father for doing this to her. For not giving them a normal life.

  “And besides, she hardly saw my father anyway. He was always working late on some committee or other.”

  Was that when it started, Dad? Did you connect with your first mistresses there, while using that old chestnut on Mother about having to work late? Was it a woman you were “working on” and not a bill?

  There was no point in wondering about that, Dylan decided. The time for mending family fences was long gone. He’d meant what he said about doing this just for his mother’s sake. If she weren’t around, if all this wouldn’t take a toll on her pride, he’d let his father twist in the wind, hanging from a rope that the old man had fashioned out of all his failings and shortcomings.

  The woman with the expressive eyes was still looking at him. Was she expecting some dramatic revelation to be forthcoming? He had already said far more than he should have.

  “He really hurt you a great deal, didn’t he?” It was in the form of a question, but he sensed that his father’s Chief Staff Assistant wasn’t asking, she was confirming. He didn’t like being backed into a corner, didn’t like being deposited into a labeled space. It wasn’t the way he operated.

  Instead of answering, he picked up his briefcase. “I’m going to take off,” he told her. “There’s no telling what I’ll run into, even just trying to get near the senator’s house.” He and his siblings had grown up there, but it had never been much of a home to him. More like a museum with a tennis court and sauna.

  She nodded, about to turn back to what she’d been doing before he ever walked in. And then she stopped abruptly.

  There was absolutely no point in manning the office or getting the senator’s files in order, not until she knew whether things were going to change drastically. There was also absolutely no reason to organize files that would ultimately wind up being shredded. Or to draw up schedules that weren’t going to be followed.

  Looking at the senator’s son, she made up her mind quickly. He was probably not going to like this, but she didn’t car
e. She wasn’t doing it for him. “I’m going with you.”

  Chapter 4

  The attractive assistant’s declaration, coming out of nowhere, took him by surprise. “I don’t remember asking you to come along.”

  The look in her eyes told him she took offense at what he’d just said; the fire in her eyes made her even more attractive. Under different circumstances… But circumstances weren’t different and there was no point in going there.

  “I don’t remember needing permission,” she informed him.

  Why would she want to come with him? Off the top of his head, he could think of only one reason. “Afraid I’m going to do something to your boss?” He’d nearly said lover instead of boss, but had caught himself just in time.

  Walking out of the senator’s office, she led the way to her own, far smaller one, to get her purse before they left. “I just want him to see a friendly face.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “Yours obviously isn’t.”

  He had no right to tell her not to come, and if she went with him rather than on her own, he’d get an opportunity to ask her a few more questions about his father. Maybe he’d even get a feeling for just how bad the situation actually was. He had a strong feeling that his father couldn’t be trusted to be one-hundred-percent honest with him. Too many years of “embellishing” any questions put to the man had gone by.

  He shrugged, negating what had come across as his initial opposition. “Sure, why not? Shall I drive you or do you want to drive me?” he asked her.

  Neither of the choices would have been her first. Now inside her office, she crossed to her desk and took her shoulder bag from the bottom drawer. “Why can’t we both just drive separately?”

  Dylan sized her up for a moment before answering. He was fairly certain he had her number in at least one department: ecology.

  “Oh, that’s not very green-minded of you. Haven’t you heard?” Dylan deadpanned. “Conservation is in, that includes fuel consumption. Going separately would be pretty wasteful.”

  Though the man sounded sincere as he said it, she instinctively knew he was putting her on. She decided to go along with him for a far more basic reason than taking one car off the road for the space of a round trip; in as much as he’d grown up at the estate and she herself had never been there, Cindy decided it would make more sense and be faster if Dylan were the one to drive.