61
NEW YORK CITY
The room spun crazily around Sarah as she considered the possibilities.
“Wait,” Jon said. “Look carefully at the photos again.”
His quiet voice cut through the dizziness, and she blinked. “What about the photos?”
“Check every photo. Note the angle of the camera. Sean is always a profile. But the bomber? He changes positions for each photo, as if he’s mugging for a camera . . .”
“. . . so his face can be viewed from all angles, for positive ID,” she finished.
“Exactly.”
“You’re thinking this is a setup,” she said.
“You bet I am. Sean might be a wild card sometimes, but he’d never be involved in a bombing.”
She shook her head. “This looks really bad.” It was hard enough that Will was on the board of AF and Sean was with a Green Justice buddy in the Arctic when the oil fiasco happened, and now she was the one prosecuting the DOJ’s criminal negligence suit against AF. Even though she’d given up any legal decision-making power to Worthington Shares when she’d taken her DOJ job—a decision her father would never understand—that wouldn’t mean anything to the public. She was still a Worthington in their eyes. And if it was the least bit possible Sean had anything to do with the bombing and with trying to control the flow of information about the oil crisis by having a New York Times reporter on board with him . . . well, her thoughts couldn’t even go there. The press would crucify the DOJ, the entire Worthington family, and Jon Gillibrand.
“I agree. The evidence looks pretty incriminating,” Jon admitted. “Then again, any evidence can be manufactured. We both know that. My guess is that he was just being Sean. He met a guy at a bar when he was killing time waiting for somebody, and they talked. Sean had no idea he was being captured on camera.”
“How long can you keep this info under wraps?” Sarah asked.
“I called in a favor with a lab tech friend to run Sean’s facial recognition and body profiling software, to make sure my gut was right—that the profile was a match for him. My friend will keep his mouth shut until I tell him it’s okay to open it. But there’s no guarantee other people don’t have or won’t receive copies of these photos and won’t come to other conclusions.”
“There’s only one person who can tell us the truth—Sean.” She speed-dialed his number.
“Actually, two,” Jon corrected. “Whoever set him up.”
Sean was sitting on the porch, enjoying the peaceful view. His mother was moving happily around the kitchen, rustling up a simple dinner. Sean didn’t want anything to eat, but his mother needed to prepare it. His stomach still churned at the confrontation soon to come.
Out of habit, he checked his cell for calls and messages. Sarah had phoned three times in the past 15 minutes and left a terse text.
Call. Now.
Like he needed more tension in his life at the moment. He wasn’t ready to explain anything to his sister.
The phone rang again with her ringtone. Leave it to his attorney sister to be so persistent.
He took the call. He knew she wouldn’t give up until he did. This time he couldn’t claim he was in a meeting halfway around the world and too busy to take it—a tactic he knew she was wise to but he still tried.
He was right. Her lawyer side was in full swing, and she was in interrogation mode.
“You met some guy at a bar and talked to him. Who was it?”
“What?” Now he was confused. This wasn’t about where he’d been the last two weeks? He hadn’t been in any bars in Portugal or the Azores.
“A bar near 20th and Madison,” she clarified.
He searched his memory, and guilt set in. That was the night he’d been trying to duck the family dinner that Drew had set up. The night Drew had given the three siblings the spiel about how the American Frontier crisis would change each of their destinies. He’d been late. “Yeah, I was there once, for a meeting with an executive, but that’s been a while. And the guy never showed.”
“So who did you talk with?”
“And this is important why?” he tried.
“Just answer the question!”
It was like dealing with a younger version of their father. He acquiesced to get it over with. “I had a long wait, so I chatted with some people.” He thought back. “One guy in particular, who sat next to me at the bar. Seemed nice enough, but a bit odd, or maybe he’d already had too much to drink.”
“But you didn’t know him?”
“What? I’d never seen him before. Haven’t seen him since. Don’t know his name. So now are you going to tell me why you’re grilling me?”
“I’ve just seen photos of you with that guy. And he happens to be the Polar Bear Bomber,” she announced.
He dropped his phone. “You have what?” he said after he’d fumbled to pick it up from the porch steps.
“Wait, and I’ll send one to you.”
He raised a brow when he saw it. “Yes, that’s me, and that’s the guy who was a little off. We just chatted for a bit about nothing, I guess. Can’t remember. Then I left to go to the dinner at Drew’s. So why would somebody take a picture . . .” Reality set in. “Are there more?”
“Yes. Jon’s got them on his phone.”
“Jon? He’s seen them? What does he know? Where did he get them?” He fired the questions at her.
“Jon’s here. He showed them to me.”
Jon was there? Sean didn’t have more than an instant to ponder that.
His friend’s voice came on the line. “You know what this means, right?”
He did. His heart was racing as he put together the pieces. “But you don’t think . . .”
“Of course we don’t think,” Jon replied, “but you should probably—”
“—let Will know.” He would as soon as he hung up with Jon.
“And Sean? Don’t worry. I’ll be here with your sister.”
Leave it to Jon to be the knight in subtle armor.