Page 46 of Sapphire Sunset

“Connor, please. This is about your father, yourgrandfather. Everything they built. I’m not saying it’s the right choice for youto step up and do this. But we can’t let Rodney wash away their entire legacyin twenty-four hours without so much as a meeting with the lawyers. We can’t. Ineed you home now.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

Which seemed like a silly thing to say since she was the onewho’d already sent a car for him.

And a plane.

Connor had never flown on a private jetbefore. When he was a kid, he used to ask his dad why they didn’t fly privatesince the other kids thought they were rich.

His dad said they weren’t that kind of rich.

When Connor asked what kind of rich flew on private planes,his dad answered, “The kind of rich that doesn’t stay rich.”

Now a dream he’d had when he was seven had finally beenrealized, but he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy it. For most of the flight, hepaced the narrow, carpeted, cosseted cabin and chewed the nuts they’d offeredhim. Occasionally the one flight attendant would stick her head in and ask himif he needed anything. After the second time he asked her to rewind the handsof time to the day before, she stopped asking.

He monitored the flight’s path on the digital maps that filledthe screens on either side of the cabin. He tried some stretches and breathingexercises he’d learned from Jaycee.

Then, somewhere over Illinois, he broke down and popped openhis laptop and watched more of the disaster unfold.

He couldn’t handle much of the TV news clips that were beingrefreshed and added to by the minute. The familiar motor court turned into amedia circus. The drone and helicopter shots that floated in over the resort’sexpanse atop its green promontory as a reporter’s bombastic voiceover madeclear this pristinely beautiful oasis had become a den of moral rot andcriminality. These images were too painful to bear.

But the FBI press conference was all hard facts, and that,for some reason, he could stomach.

So he watched it twenty times.

The case, it seemed, was solid, almost six months in themaking. It rested on testimony and wiretap evidence gathered after two victims ofthe scheme had broken down and alerted the authorities. One of them, the wifeof a cancer victim who’d apparently spent the last months of his life mailingsubstantial checks to Rodney Harcourt to keep him from telling the board of hiscompany that he was dying and getting his treatments privately in one of theirvillas.

Then, just a week ago, Rodney Harcourt, Buddy Haskins, andthree other security agents—who were identified as Pete Roman, Willis Devon,and Scott Springer—all collected blackmail payments from three differentvictims, each one of whom was wearing a wire for the FBI. With the exception ofthe now deceased CEO whose deathbed letter had cracked open the scheme, the FBIrefused to comment on the nature of the secrets these additional victims had beenblackmailed over, despite dogged and invasive questions from the reporterspresent.

Somewhere over Kansas, Connor decided that this was all hisfault.

If I hadn’t left…if I’d stayed and fought.

By Colorado, he decided this was both arrogant and ridiculous,and as the plane turned southwest toward Orange County, he’d formulated amantra.

Here to support my mom.I’m here to support mymom, that’s all.

By the time they’d landed at John Wayne Airport, he’d whisperedit, chanted it, even sung it to a strange sing-songymelody. Then he was watching the passenger planes parked at the main terminalslide by the windows as the Gulfstream taxied to the far end of the tarmac.

And there, standing next to a parked SUV, was a familiarfigure that brought a much-needed warm feeling to his heart. About Connor’s height,even though he usually lied and said he was five foot six, with a bit moregym-built brawn than when they’d been college roommates and considerably morefacial hair and an adult confidence in his otherwise rigid steps. Naser.

Right now, there was no one Connor wanted to see more, andas they approached each other on the tarmac, his eyes misted.

Three months. That’s how long it had taken Naser to stopvisiting their favorite hangout spots and texting Connor a picture of the placewhere he used to sit, stand, or chill, and accompanying the photo with amaudlin quote on loss and grief from literary sources ranging from Tolstoy toRumi. Finally, Connor had enough and responded, “Bitch, I moved to New York, notAntarctica. And you currently make more in a month than I’ll make this year.Get your gay ass on a plane and come visit me.”

Things were a little better after that. But Naser’s firstvisit, he was still a scared puppy. He never opened up easily. He made fewfriends, but the ones he did make, he made deeply and well, and the loss ofConnor in his daily life had hurt him harder than Connor had expected it to.But there’d been another darker emotion lurking under Naser’s pain, and it onlysurfaced after the fourth or fifth visit.

Connor’s best friend had blamed himself for everything thathad happened with Logan Murdoch.

It took a long time to convince Naser that the factors thatdrove Connor to chuck it all on a moment’s notice and move east were more complicated.Maturity helped with perspective. The older they got, the more they realizedlife didn’t always center around great dick.

Sometimes it did, but not always.

And the older you got, the more you realized that if the guyattached to the dick wasn’t great then the dick couldn’t be considered great either.

“Gurl,” Naser groaned as he opened his arms. “Most of thetime my East Coast friends come home it’s for something tedious like rehab. Butyou had to go be all scandal ridden and dramatic.”

“Nothing’s funny right now.” He fell into Naser’s arms.“Seriously, I can’t deal.”

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