The Waterfall Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    â€œWhat 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.
    â€œTell Plato I’m retired,” Sebastian said.
    â€œRetired?”
    â€œYes. 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.
    â€œYou’ve delivered your message, Mr. Charger,” Sebastian said. “Now go deliver mine.”
    â€œYes, 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.
    Â 
    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