The Senator’s Daughter (45 page)

W
hen Sylvia saw Tony Valetti surrender, she stepped out from behind the tree. From far away down Highway 29, she heard sirens.

Recalling the reason she and Lyle had come to Lava Springs, she went back through the gate and found the black box. She hoped there would still be enough of the mercury solution inside to prove their case.

When she muscled the box across the road into the vineyard, Tony's dark eyes flicked over it, then away. He stood with his hands on his head, while Lyle held the rifle pointed at his chest. With the calm assurance of a veteran, Charlotte frisked Tony for additional weapons, then moved to the passenger seat, removed a handgun from Luigi's lap, and checked his carotid artery for a pulse.

“Alive,” she said.

The single word almost sent Sylvia to her knees. Thank God, Lyle hadn't killed anyone, and thanks, too, that they were alive. She'd been running on pure adrenaline since diving into the spring, and suddenly she didn't have any left.

Though she wanted nothing more than to fold down and sit between the vine rows, she had to hear what Tony might spill about the black box.

Carrying the evidence, she took it closer and set it on the ground behind Lyle. “You know who I am?” she asked Tony.

“Of course.”

“Which of us was supposed to die in the fire at the inn, me or Lyle Thomas?”

“We had too much to lose with him,” Tony jerked his head at Lyle, “snooping around.”

“The bomb came through my window.”

Tony's eyes flicked to Luigi, and Sylvia surmised the guard been the thrower. “When it got dark,” Tony said, “I came down and checked the room register.”

Sylvia remembered Mary frowning and closing the book.

“That was you sneaking around at the springs,” Lyle said. “Luigi must have seen the light go on in Sylvia's room and thought we'd gone there.”

“If Lyle was the target, didn't you think there'd be hell to pay with my father if I got killed?” Sylvia pressed.

The sirens were closer, turning in to the lane.

“Collateral damage.” Tony shrugged with an insolence that was tough to imagine when he had his hands on top of his head and a rifle aimed toward him should he bolt. “We were getting to the point of needing leverage on Chatsworth.”

Charlotte Longstreet whistled. “These guys don't kid around.”

Lyle glared at Tony. “You know, I actually liked you. Worried about you when you went missing.”

“When Chatsworth heard my plan for tanking the land values, he threatened to turn me in.”

Sylvia's ears perked up. There was a sign Daddy hadn't…

Vehicles pulled up behind her, doors slammed.

“After we bought up plenty of land at ten cents on the dollar, we were going to pull the device. Then we figured on Chatsworth to influence the commissioners about zoning … he would have profited along with the rest of us, but he only works within the law.”

Sylvia nearly sagged with relief. There would be no disgrace, no resignation from the Senate, and, best of all, no facing Mom and telling her she had been the one to expose Lawrence Chatsworth.

“Keep talking, Tony,” Lyle said. “Your confession will sound good in court.”

Tony sneered. “I have not said a word. If I had, I have not heard my Miranda rights. I will hire the best lawyer in the country, and nobody will pin a thing on me.”

“You were a big dreamer when I met you,” Lyle replied.

Law-enforcement and army personnel surrounded them. Paramedics started working on Luigi.

A dark blue sedan pulled up.

“FBI,” Lyle told Sylvia. “That was fast.”

A pair of sheriff's men cuffed Tony and bent him over the hood of their car. Once they had, Lyle handed over the rifle and Sylvia the pistol.

A pair of plainclothes agents flashed their credentials. “We had a tip that Tony Valetti would probably be up here today pulling a device that was dispensing mercury into the Lava River.”

“Who …?” She started to ask who had dropped dime.

Lyle broke in, “We need to tell the authorities to pick up Andre.”

“No need,” said the voice of Lawrence Chatsworth, as he emerged from the rear seat of the FBI sedan.

She gasped. “Daddy!”

Her eyes met Lyle's; he looked as shocked as she felt.

Then she looked at her father, whose blue eyes checked her over with concern. Thankfully, the cuts on her hands had stopped bleeding.

He addressed the group. “Andre was arrested in the wee hours, after he phoned me last night. Threatened to kill my daughter if I didn't use my influence with the zoning commission. You can't imagine my shock when I heard on the news that the mercury evacuation was actually happening and not some demented dream.”

“You should have called the FBI weeks ago, when Tony told you his plan,” Lyle said. “He doesn't strike me as somebody who bluffs.”

“I learned that the hard way,” the Senator said. “Once they picked up Andre, who had a mean bump on his head,” he made eye contact with Sylvia, “I knew Tony would try to pull the device.”

“We just wanted to prove it existed once we figured it out,” Sylvia said. “We didn't know we were in a race.”

Her father smiled. “A race you won. I rode up with the FBI … to tell Tony he's a damned fool.”

While the ambulance drove away with Luigi under guard and the FBI secured the black box for transport to a lab, Sylvia approached her father. Lyle felt like a third wheel.

He'd imagined when this was over he'd have his arm around her and she him.

There were so many ways he could have lost her in the past hour. When he'd seen her limp form pressed up against the grate in the spring outflow, his heart had almost stopped. The seconds it took to get her to the surface seemed an eternity. Watching her desperate struggle with Luigi over the Winchester, Lyle had taken a challenging forty-yard shot—the equivalent of a basketball Hail Mary from behind the centerline. When Luigi had fired the Glock, as it had turned out to be, from the helicopter, Lyle had expected at any second for Sylvia to lose him from a bullet in the back.

Charlotte Longstreet stood a little away from the clutch of milling law enforcement, talking on her cell phone. She'd certainly missed her next client.

Lyle shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Sylvia and her father were embracing now.

How was he going to play this? He wanted to make it clear he was in love with the Senator's daughter. From Sylvia's challenge, asking him to be her Sir Galahad, he believed she would stand beside him..

So, as soon as there was an opportunity, a break in conversation, Lyle would step over and put both hands on her shoulders. The gesture would speak volumes, and then he would explain how Sylvia had asked him to keep her location secret … that from last night in Japantown until the end of time, her wishes would come first … above everything and everyone else in the world.

Sylvia was in her father's arms for the first time in … how many years? Her Jag was three years old, so it must have been then. That had been a quick hug, with most of her concentration on the car.

“Oh, Daddy.” Tears came on in a flood. They must be staining his shirt, but he clutched her to his heart.

Was it her imagination or was his breath jerky, like hiccups or sobs? Any doubt she had as to whether he had wished her gone evaporated.

After a long moment of feeling like a little girl again, she and her father drew apart.

His eyes were watery, yet he gave her a mock-stern look. “You know, you scared the hell out of your mother, kid.”

“Just her?”

“No, not just her. I was torn between giving you a bear hug and ripping your head off.”

The corners of her mouth turned up. “The hug was nicer.”

“Indeed, it was.” He pulled out his cell. “I'm calling your mother right now to tell her I'm standing next to you.”

While he dialed, Sylvia saw Lyle about ten feet away, looking at her with the same yearning she felt.

Then she wasn't standing next to her father, but launching herself into Lyle's arms. With her head pressed to his chest, she could feel his strong heart pumping.

“Baby,” he whispered at her ear. “I was so afraid I'd lost you.”

She wanted to kiss him, but their audience was too large.

“Sylvia! Come talk to your mother.”

Lyle stiffened. She froze. It reminded her of when Julio Castillo's taunts had destroyed their first kiss.

“We'll tell him about us,” she told Lyle.

“You bet we will.”

She went over and took the cell. Lyle had said he'd seen her mother crying, she assumed on TV. As she lifted the phone toward her ear, she imagined Laura's penetrating black eyes, heard her say, “We'd just as soon you disappeared.” Heart pounding, Sylvia said, “Mom?”

“Darlin.' Ah have been out of my mind with worry.”

“I'm all right.”

“Thank God. That horrible Andre Valetti called and threatened to kill you. Larry said he had you prisoner at his town house and you hit him over the head and escaped.”

“That's right.” Sylvia kept her tone even.

“You come straight home, now. Don't even think about staying in the City.”

Sylvia's eyes met Lyle's. There was only one place she wanted to spend the night and that was in his arms. But she would have to see Mom, and the way to accomplish both was to bring him along. Surely, after being “out of her mind with worry,” Mom would have to accept she had taken up with “that common lawyer,” who happened to be the most uncommon man she'd ever met.

“Daddy and I will be there in a few hours,” she said. No sense trying to explain on the phone she was bringing Lyle with her.

Folding the cell, she passed it to her father.

With a little shock, she saw he was glaring at Lyle. What was the matter now? Was he going to pull that, “not with my daughter, you lowly lawyer” crap, too?

Lawrence Arthur Chatsworth III, not Daddy now, advanced on Lyle. “Andre Valetti said you'd been shacking up with Sylvia at the Lava Springs Inn.”

Lyle's expression turned stony. “I wouldn't call it shacking up, sir, when I—”

“You're as much a damned fool as Tony and Andre. If you had told me where Sylvia was, she wouldn't have been turned into the Valettis' pawn. She could have been killed, either in the fire or when Andre kidnapped her. Why in hell didn't you just take the money?”

“Money?” Sylvia heard the unsteadiness in her voice.

“I offered Lyle Thomas a half-million dollars to find you.”

Her heart started to slam. “You've been working for him?” She stared at Lyle, who looked sick.

“I told you he tried to hire me. I refused to take anything for searching for you.”

He could have decided to anytime. “You talked about trust. How we had to trust each other. My God—”

“Sylvia, wait. I didn't call him, I never turned you in.”

Lyle reached for her. Her father fended him off. Several of the sheriff's men stepped closer to the altercation.

His voice lowered, so she had trouble hearing. “I had decided I'd never take anything for finding you. Even after I lost my job and maybe everything I've worked for.”

He'd said his locating her was coincidence, and she'd fallen for the sincerity in his baby blues. “You told Kelly at the spa you wished you had some of my father's money.”

“That was a joke!”

“Sylvia,” her father said. “It's time to go.”

“I believed in you. I fell in love with you.” She'd trusted Lyle, with her heart, with her life. Now she didn't know what to believe.

She turned away from him. “Get me out of here, Daddy, and take me home.”

O
n the drive to Sausalito in the FBI sedan, Lawrence Chatsworth played the politician, chatting with the two agents. Sylvia stared out the window.

The gathering clouds now covered the sky; the ceiling would be low for a helicopter.