Abandon. Carla Neggers
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shoved him onto a rickety chair and briskly went to the counter, soon returning with two coffees.
“Those paper cups burn my fingers,” Harris said, hearing the whininess in his own voice. He’d always hated whiners. “Don’t they have any of those little cardboard holders?”
“No. Start drinking. You need to sober up.”
“I am sober.” Harris leaned over slightly, so that he could inhale the steam from his coffee. “Too sober.”
“Damn it, Harris,” Cal said with a hiss. “I’ve been looking for you since last night. I saw you at the hotel with your FBI agent. What the hell were you doing? Anyone could have seen you.”
“Special Agent Rook and I were just having a quiet drink. I know a lot of FBI agents.”
“I checked him out. Rook’s a tough customer. He’s not talking to you out of the goodness of his heart.” Cal placed his elbows on the small table and clenched and unclenched his fists, staring at them. Finally, he regarded Harris not so much with hostility as disdain. “He’ll throw you under the bus, you stupid bastard.”
“I haven’t told him anything about you, Cal. I wouldn’t. You’re not the one—”
“Rook doesn’t care about you.” Cal didn’t raise his voice. “He cares about what information you can give him to help him advance his career. That’s it.”
“He’s ambitious, but he’s not dishonorable.”
“Dishonorable?” Cal snorted in disbelief. “Only you, Harris. People don’t care about honor anymore. They care about results.”
Harris wished he could think clearly, but thoughts floated by him, just out of his grasp. Nothing felt nailed down. It was as if he was on a current of air that was taking him wherever it wanted, and he had no control.
He leaned over his coffee, the steam rising into his eyes. “Rook can save Bernadette.”
“From what?”
“From you, Cal.” Harris raised his gaze to the man across from him. “And from Jesse.”
There. He’d said the name. Jesse Lambert. The devil.
Harris had known Cal even before he’d started seeing Bernadette, but only in the past three months had their fates become intertwined. Cal was hard-driving and ambitious, a womanizer who had seemed, at least in the early days of his marriage to Bernadette, ready to settle down.
Bottom-feeder that he was, Jesse Lambert had sensed Cal was ripe for the picking. With impeccable timing, he’d pounced at Cal’s weakest moment.
And Harris had helped.
“You should give him the money,” he said. “Trust me, Cal. I know of what I speak. Give him the damn money now. Then get out.”
Cal averted his eyes. “If I give Jesse the money, there’ll be no getting out. Ever.” He returned his gaze to Harris. “I’ll turn into you.”
“If you don’t pay him, he’ll kill us both.”
“He’s a dealmaker, Harris, not a killer. We’re offering him a deal. Don’t weaken now.”
Harris could hear the disdain for him in Cal’s voice. After all, Harris was the one who’d brought Jesse Lambert into Cal’s life.
Into Bernadette’s life.
That was what ate at his soul. In using Cal, Harris knew he was also using the one friend he had left in the world.
“Jesse is the devil, Cal,” Harris said quietly. “And we made a deal with him.”
Cal didn’t respond right away. He drank his coffee, eyeing Harris, his expression unreadable. Jesse Lambert had walked into Harris’s life five years ago, preying on his insecurities and compulsions—and Harris had let himself be victimized. The gambling scandal that had ended his career was the least of his transgressions. Because of Jesse, he had betrayed his friends and the public’s trust for financial gain.
You let the devil have his way with you.
Three months ago, Jesse had returned to Washington, wanting fresh meat in return for his silence about Harris’s wrongs.
Harris had thrown him Cal Benton.
Cal’s work and his marriage to Bernadette Peacham provided him with the kind of access and information that Jesse could use. He stayed in the background, maneuvering, manipulating. But when Jesse came to collect, Cal had refused to pay up.
“It’s time to give the devil his due, Cal.”
“We will, but on our terms. We’re not stealing his money. We’re delaying payment in return for Jesse getting out of our lives.”
“We?”
Cal leaned forward. “Don’t think Jesse doesn’t know you helped me.”
Harris could feel the blood drain from his face. A few weeks ago, he’d dropped one tidbit about Jesse Lambert to Cal, and Cal had run with it, uncovering Jesse’s true identity. Cal had a complete dossier on their devil. Names, addresses, bank accounts. His insurance policy, he called it. His game was straightforward but dangerous. Using information Cal provided, Jesse blackmailed people—among them a popular U.S. Congressman, a powerful Senate aide and a well-to-do, well-connected Washington widow. Jesse remained in the background, anonymous. Cal and Harris were the ones who arranged payments. In three months, they’d amassed $1.5 million. In cash. They were to split five hundred thousand, and Jesse was to get a million.
Only Cal was withholding the million until Jesse exited from their lives.
He’d keep the dossier. If Jesse ever breathed Washington air again, it would end up in the hands of federal investigators. They wouldn’t need to know a thing about Cal or Harris’s involvement with Jesse to nail him.
“Going to the FBI won’t save you,” Cal said.
“I haven’t given them anything. I just thought if they were looking…” Harris trailed off and blew on his coffee, wishing he could understand his own motives, his own thinking. When he’d first gotten in touch with Andrew Rook three weeks ago, his plan had seemed so logical and sensible. Now, he didn’t know. Finally, he shrugged at Cal. “I guess I hoped Jesse would think twice about killing us if I’d talked to the FBI.”
“Does he know?”
Harris shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re a sniveling weakling, Harris. You’re trying to save your own skin. That’s all.”
“If only you’d been faithful to Bernadette…” Harris pushed aside his coffee and sank into the cheap wooden chair. He felt crumpled, saggy and old. He’d broken so many promises over the years—to his ex-wife, his children, his friends. To himself. “I don’t want her to get caught in the cross fire.”
Cal’s jaw tightened visibly, and he spoke through half-clenched teeth. “She won’t.” There was no hesitation in his tone, no regret, no guilt.
Harris stared at his coffee, a film forming on it as he tried to get his head around his thought. “But it’s not fear of humiliation that sucked you into Jesse’s orbit, is it, Cal?” He looked up, giving Cal a knowing, bitter smile. “You wanted the action. The risk. The same impulses that prompted you to take your little tootsie to Bernadette’s house for the weekend got you into the pickle you’re in now.”
“Would you have preferred I’d capitulated and let Jesse put out the pictures for the world to see? How would that have helped your good friend Bernadette?”
They were graphic pictures. Harris had seen them. Cal Benton copulating with a very young, inexperienced, beautiful Congressional aide in the bedroom he and his wife had once shared. They were the kind of scenes that would not only ruin him, but the aide and Bernadette. Her authority in the