Deep Harbor
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Synopsis
In this stirring new novel, acclaimed number one New York Times best-selling author Fern Michaels delves into the remarkable ways in which moments of crises can lead to our greatest acts of courage....
When Carol Ann “CJ” Jansen lost her beloved older brother, Kick, in a boating accident, she came adrift. Kick had taken on the role of caring for his little sister after their parents were killed in a car crash. Inheriting half his fortune has left CJ financially secure — yet needing a purpose. As administrative assistant to powerful congressman Snapper Lewis, she’s immersed herself in the exciting and often tumultuous world of politics.
But suddenly, the career that anchors her life is threatened. CJ stumbles upon information that could implicate her boss in corruption. When the congressman goes missing, the closer CJ gets to uncovering the truth, exposing one shocking secret after another, the more she wonders if she’s also in jeopardy.
Moving to a small New England town for her own protection, CJ gradually begins to engage with her new surroundings. Her blossoming friendship with the owner of a charter fishing boat offers the promise of much more. But before she can claim happiness, CJ must navigate a course through all her doubts and fears, and trust that this time, the water that took so much from her might just lead her safely home....
Release date: April 28, 2020
Publisher: Kensington Books
Print pages: 352
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Deep Harbor
Fern Michaels
She double-checked that she had her driver’s license, which featured a picture of her round face, light brown hair that hung down to her shoulders, blue eyes—that sparkled in the sunlight, if not in the photograph—up-tilted eyebrows, narrow mouth, and tiny nose. She also had her government ID that said she worked for Congressman Otto “Snapper” Lewis, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, her lone credit card, and fifty dollars. She never carried more than fifty dollars for fear of having to hand it over to some thug. She was good to go. She zipped up the running belt, wrapped it around her waist, and slapped on her Fitbit.
CJ glanced over her shoulder to make sure her computer was in sleep mode. Check. Desk lamp off. Check. Desk drawers locked. Check.
The little digital clock on her desk said it was 5:10. It had been a light workday, which had allowed for the late-afternoon run. Congressman Lewis had told her she could leave even earlier, but she had declined to do so because she was conscientious to a fault. She thought about how insistent he’d been lately and wondered why, but in the end she shrugged it off as just another one of Snapper’s quirks.
Satisfied that everything was in order, she opened the door to Snapper’s office, and called out, “I’m leaving, boss. Unless you need me to do something.” Not bothering to wait for a response, CJ rattled on. “Remember, you need to be on time this evening for that black-tie dinner at the Armory. And I’m going to be late in the morning because I have an early appointment.” CJ had an appointment with her therapist, whom she had been seeing ever since her brother, Kick, had died four years ago.
“Got it. Have a nice night, CJ.”
He really doesn’t sound right, CJ thought to herself. “Is something wrong, boss? You sound, I don’t know, distracted? I know how you hate those dinners, but you can split after an hour. In fact, you should be leaving for the dinner now.”
“I will, but I’m waiting for a phone call. Run along, CJ.”
CJ chewed on her lower lip. He was waiting for a phone call? Snapper Lewis never waited for a phone call. He was the one who made the calls, and if you didn’t pick up, you didn’t get a second call. Weird.
“Okay, but be sure to log it in when it comes through. I don’t need a ton of paperwork to chase down some dry cleaner calling to remind you to pick up your tux.” It was all said in a joking manner in the hopes her boss would tell her who was calling. Nothing. It didn’t work.
“Go already!” Congressman Lewis barked.
“Okay, okay, I’m gone. Be sure to turn out all the lights and lock your desk and the door.”
“Yes, Mother,” he drawled, but CJ picked up the hint of anger in his voice. It was definitely time to leave.
Outside the office, CJ debated taking the elevator or the stairs. She was a health nut, so she opted for the stairs. She pulled at the heavy door and whizzed through it just as the elevator door opened. An unfamiliar scent wafted her way. Wow, she thought, someone took a bath in some crappy cologne that must have come in gallon jugs. She sniffed several times, hoping to get the abominable scent out of her nostrils.
Once she was in the parking garage, she headed to where she’d parked her ten-year-old Nissan Sentra and climbed in. The ride to the Tidal Basin wouldn’t take that long; she’d run for forty minutes, then head home. The engine coughed and sputtered to life. She really needed to get a new car. Maybe a new used one. She put it on her to-do list and was about to shift from park to reverse when she remembered something that hit her like a whack to the side of her head. “Oh crap! Crap! Crap! Crap!” She had forgotten to leave the report the congressman was going to need for his 7:00 A.M. meeting. And he didn’t have the keys to her desk. Banging her hands on the steering wheel, she knew she had to go back. “Hell! Well, maybe you’ll start up when I get back!” she yelled at her lump of a junkmobile.
CJ hauled herself out of the car and ran back into the Rayburn House Office Building, in which she had toiled since the day she’d got out of college, twelve years ago. Twelve years. And all of them for Otto “Snapper” Lewis. There were people who said she was almost as powerful as Snapper, but she always pooh-poohed the idea. People were always trying to curry favor with the congressman and tried to get to him through her. It was a fruitless endeavor since she protected him against any and all such attempts. She was the proverbial brick wall against those he did not want to deal with. It was her job to both protect her boss and oversee the workings of his office. She wasn’t sure, but she did think that she’d probably stop short of taking a bullet for him.
Because she was in good physical shape, she was able to take the stairs two at a time. When she arrived at the door that led to the hallway, her heart was pumping at the pace of a good workout. She frowned when she got a whiff of the same foul odor she’d encountered earlier. Once she opened the door, the scent was so overwhelming that she gagged. The hallway smelled like a funeral home filled with too many flowers that had begun to rot.
CJ had her key in hand when she realized that the light was on in the congressman’s office, which brought a frown to her face. Surely, his call must have come through by now. Rather than risk his wrath, pretended or otherwise, she walked around the corner to the second entrance to the suite and let herself into her own office, which was adjacent to his. If she was very quiet and didn’t make any noise, she could be in and out, do what she had to do, and good old Snapper would never know she’d almost screwed up.
The moment she opened the door, however, she knew something was wrong. While she couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, the tone of the loud voices was high-pitched and very ugly. She caught a word here and there. She stood still, uncertain what to do. Her inner self, which she relied on daily, told her to move her feet and get the hell out. Instead, she quietly advanced inside and walked over to her desk, which was in the middle of the room. Whatever was going on in the congressman’s office was none of her business. It was after hours, so he was on his own. She kept trying to convince herself not to pay attention to what was transpiring in the other room.
CJ did what she had come to do. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out the bright yellow folder sitting on top. Snapper liked everything in yellow folders with bright green tabs. No other color. Just bright green tabs. It was another one of his many quirks. She centered it on her desk, relocked the drawer, and turned to leave. And that was when her leg hit the metal trash can next to her desk. She held back the desire to utter an expletive, and this time she paid attention to her inner self, which was warning her to hide.
Acting accordingly, she dropped down under her desk just as the door connecting her office to Congressman Lewis’s opened. CJ sucked in her breath. The smell of cologne was so powerful, she thought she was going to gag, or even worse, sneeze.
“There’s no one here. I told you my chief of staff left half an hour ago. I saw her leave. No one gets into the building after hours. Maybe you need to get your hearing checked, because I didn’t hear anything. This is an old building; sounds carry through the vents. Maybe what you think you heard is coming from the night cleaning crew. Can we just get this over with? I have a dinner I have to attend this evening. Well?” Snapper snarled as he marched back to his own office.
CJ waited, hardly daring to breathe. Would Mr. Crappy Cologne follow her boss’s instructions or decide to investigate further? Ten seconds, twenty seconds. Then footsteps. But the door connecting the offices still did not close. And now she could hear them more clearly.
CJ strained to hear what the two men were saying. Whatever it was, they were not friends—of that she was absolutely certain. Snapper always treated people with respect, even those he wasn’t fond of. Not this man. She could hear the hate in his voice.
“You know what you have to do. I hope I don’t have to come back here again,” Mr. Crappy Cologne said in a menacing tone of voice.
CJ continued to listen, hearing things that made no sense. What did make sense to her was that Mr. Crappy Cologne was threatening her boss. She heard words like “Robotron” and “getting it done pronto!” What exactly was Robotron? The name sounded familiar. She knew she’d heard it recently but could not recall where and in exactly what context. What was it?
“Just get the hell out of my office. Now!”
CJ almost jumped out of her skin when she heard the next sound. She didn’t have to see the action to know that her boss had just gotten kicked in the groin. “Don’t you ever make the mistake of telling me what to do again. Tell me you understand what I just said. And then tell me you’re sorry,” Mr. Crappy Cologne growled, demanding that Snapper demean himself with an apology.
CJ waited, hardly daring to breathe. “I understand. I’m . . . I’m sss . . . sorry,” Snapper finally responded, gasping for air. CJ could hardly believe her ears. One of the most powerful men on Capitol Hill, in the country, apologizing to the man who had just pounded him to the floor. She moved slightly, so she could peek out of her hidey-hole. Directly in her line of vision she could see her boss writhing on the floor in the fetal position as he struggled to catch his breath.
After the man who had assaulted the congressman left, CJ wanted to go to her boss’s aid, but her inner-self voice warned her against making such a move. Better to wait it out. In all twelve years of working for Snapper Lewis in the Rayburn House Office Building, first as a low-level aide and now as his chief of staff, this was the first time she felt as if she were swimming in deep, uncharted waters. So she leaned back and waited until she could leave without being noticed.
Finally, sounds coming from the outer office told her that Snapper was off the floor and tidying up his desk, all the time making low, groaning sounds with every move he made. She could hear him shuffling about as he packed up his briefcase. Her instincts and common sense told her he wasn’t going to make the black-tie dinner that would be starting within the hour.
Finally, the lights went out, and the door to the hallway opened, then closed. CJ literally exploded from under her desk and ran into Snapper’s office. It looked just the way it always looked, but it smelled terrible.
What to do? Go home of course. Take the stairs. Go slow. Make sure Snapper had left the entire area before she went back into the parking garage and hit the highway. It was lucky that his spot in the garage was nowhere near hers, so he would not see that her car was still there. She forced herself to wait ten more minutes before she exited through her own office door. Then she used up another ten minutes taking the stairs to the garage in the basement. She cursed under her breath because now she was right in the middle of rush-hour traffic.
Climbing back into her car, she hissed, “You better start up right now or off to the junkyard you go!” As if the car understood her threat, it turned over immediately. Huh. I should try that trick every time I get into this thing. At least something was finally going right.
Forty minutes later, the Nissan Sentra made a right turn onto the street where she lived. The traffic had been brutal. She pushed the button to open the security gate, pulled into the driveway, and stopped for a few minutes before she popped the garage door open. Every day that she lived in this house, she did the exact same thing. The deed said it was her house but she had never felt like it was hers. It had belonged to her older brother, Kick, and his life partner, Colin Kelly.
This particular house was one of the biggest, most prestigious custom-built houses in all of Kalorama, matching the elegance and historic themes of the neighborhood. She had interesting neighbors, including some of the country’s highest-profile politicians and their offspring. But that merely made her feel more isolated. Not that she cared a twit about her neighbors, the house’s architecture, or its furnishings, as opulent as they were. She’d give it all up in a heartbeat to have her brother Kick back in her life, so she wouldn’t feel like an orphan.
When CJ was ten years old, she had been on an overnight Girl Scout camping trip when their parents died in a fiery car wreck on the way home from a yachting regatta. Kick had blamed himself because he had been racing that day. Why had he insisted that they come for the festivities? He had been racing for several years and was finally confident enough in his skills to have his family on hand. After the accident, he was guilt-ridden and took over parenting his sister. Kick had raised her, and she, in turn, had loved and adored him.
Kick was whip-smart, and by the time he, too, had been taken from her in a boat-related accident, he and Colin Kelly owned a string of sixty-four restaurants. The chain was called KC’s Hatchery.
“How bizarre,” she would often think. Her parents were killed coming home from a boating party and her brother was killed in a boating accident almost twenty years to the day later. She wasn’t sure if she could go near the water ever again. Even jogging along the Tidal Basin gave her the willies at times.
When their parents died, it had become local gossip that the Jansens had no money. The high life of social galas, together with conspicuous overspending, had taken its toll on the family finances. The Jansens should have downsized years before they died, but CJ’s mother was all about “what people thought,” and the embarrassment would have killed her.
At the time of their parents’ death, Kick had already graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and had just gotten his MBA from Wharton. He was the “it” boy of up-and-coming restaurateurs in the DC area when his parents were killed. A life insurance policy was all that remained of their estate; their impersonation of the upper-middle-class wealthy had left them with virtually nothing else. Even their house was mortgaged to the hilt. Kick was able to use the insurance money to support CJ—at least until he could get more backing for his restaurant enterprise. One of the first people to pony up investment money was Colin Kelly, who became Kick’s partner in KC’s Hatchery and, eventually, his life partner.
CJ had inherited everything except for one piece of property that Colin kept—a cabin near Salisbury on the eastern shore of Maryland. Colin and Kick would spend weekends there when they wanted to get away from all the glitz and social climbers. The Wallet Sniffers. People who always had their hand out, looking for a loan or presenting a new business proposition that needed financing. Colin and Kick were great partners, in life and business. Kick knew how to run a restaurant, and Colin knew the business side. Investing was second nature to Colin, and his skill at dealing with people was equally impressive.
After Kick’s death, when the property had been settled and the will read, CJ saw—for the first time—the brokerage accounts that were now hers. They were so robust that she almost got dizzy just looking at the bottom line. She had wanted Colin to take all of Kick’s estate, but he absolutely refused. He didn’t want the house or Kick’s half of KC’s Hatchery; he didn’t want the Italian sports cars in the garage. He didn’t want the Aspen ski chalet or the estate in Hawaii that Kick had purchased from his share of the profits. The cabin was the only thing that gave Colin the very personal and intimate connection with Kick that he wished to maintain even after Kick’s death.
In spite of all the restaurants, it was the cabin that Colin and Kick had been the most proud of, a place to which they could retreat away from the prying eyes of the public. It was something they had literally built—together. Each weekend for years, they would go to Home Depot and load up their supersized pickup truck and head out.
With Kick’s death, other than the cabin, CJ owned all the property, including half of KC’s Hatchery, which made her a very rich woman indeed. She could have retired at age thirty and lived a life of leisure. But she wasn’t comfortable with any of it and had never given a moment’s thought to retiring. She remembered hearing her parents arguing in the dark of night about money, and how much self-control it took for her father not to lose his temper over her mother’s self-indulgence.
CJ sighed. Someday, she was going to figure out why she tortured herself like this every day. She didn’t have to live here. She could live anywhere she wanted in Washington or the suburbs of Maryland or Virginia. After Kick had died, she somehow convinced herself that he wanted her here. Otherwise, she concluded, he wouldn’t have left the ten-thousand-square-foot house to her, along with all the rest of his worldly possessions. He would have left them to Colin.
Colin had explained to her in great detail how he and Kick had made wills and how their property was to be distributed if either one of them died. Colin would get the cabin if Kick died, just as Kick would have gotten it if Colin had died. She couldn’t argue with him after that discussion. He was very clear. And totally sincere. So, she had no option other than to accept Kick’s wishes as expressed in his will. Nonetheless, she had never touched the money in the estate or the cars in the garage. She’d never visited the vacation spots, either. Yes, she did live in the house—that was her one concession. She used the large guest bedroom suite on the first floor. It had a luxurious adjoining bath, a small sitting room, and sliding doors that opened onto a patio surrounded by impeccable landscaping. Down the hall was the monster kitchen in which she cooked on rare occasion. Her “cooking” amounted to using a microwave to heat up a prepared dish, or perhaps leftover Chinese food she had brought home. More often than not, because of her late hours, she ate out, ordered in, or picked up something on the way home. Clearly, she was no chef like her brother.
Shaking her head over the memories of the past and the bizarre circumstance of the afternoon, she finally punched the code for the garage door, drove in, parked, and turned off the engine.
Except for her old junkmobile, the garage looked like a European sports car showroom with three Italian beauties in it: a red Maserati, an electric-blue Lamborghini, and a canary-yellow Alfa Romeo. They were all spectacular sports cars. In his leisure hours, if Kick wasn’t sailing, he’d be motoring on long journeys in one of his “babies.” It was his only real indulgence. The vacation homes were mostly used for cooking classes for teens who showed promise in the kitchen. There would be regional competitions, and Kick would select a handful of young adults, both men and women, who would spend several days under his tutelage. It was a superb opportunity for the young chefs.
Snapping out of her deep thoughts, CJ frowned and looked at the contrast between her heap and the shining exteriors of the Italian sports cars, exteriors whose gloss she maintained by having her local mechanic’s son come every other month to keep them in top-notch condition, wiping, polishing, and taking them for a spin in the neighborhood so that they remained in fine shape.
She did a quick jog to the door leading to the kitchen but first she had to wait for the retina scanner and thumbprint scanner to recognize her, after which she had to type in a code that changed every three days, a reminder of the new code kept in her cell phone.
In plain English, it was a pain in the ass, but she was safe here in Kick and Colin’s fortress. Today, she was thankful for the security. That encounter with Snapper and Mr. Crappy Cologne left her more than slightly at sea.
There was nothing particularly welcoming about the state-of-the-art kitchen because CJ had never taken the time to do anything with it. There were no green plants, no colorful place mats, no knickknacks, no magnets on the Sub-Zero refrigerator. Nothing was color coordinated. It was just a kitchen. Everything in it was high-tech, functional, and totally sterile.
CJ kicked off her sneakers, marched barefoot to the wine cooler, and pulled out a bottle of Caymus Cabernet. This was going to be both her main course and her dessert. She needed to think. She absentmindedly opened the bottle with the wall-mounted BOJ corkscrew and poured the wine into a Baccarat goblet. She curled up on the window seat and gazed out at the backyard. It was still a little light out, so she could see the flowering shrubs along the borders and the Bloodgood Japanese maple in the center of the lawn. She downed the first glass in two gulps and poured another.
Snapper was in trouble, of that there was no doubt. Whether it was of his own making or not, she had no way of knowing. And it had something to do with Robotron, whatever that was. And the guy with the awful-smelling cologne that he apparently bathed in? She wondered how Snapper could know someone like that, someone who had kicked Snapper to the ground, then forced him to apologize, no less. It didn’t make any sense. Kick had always said that when something didn’t make sense, it was probably because someone was doing something that was just plain stupid.
CJ was about to pour her third glass of wine when she thought about her early appointment with her therapist. She quickly sent off a text to the shrink’s after-hours phone. No way was she going to keep that appointment tomorrow, not with what was going on at the office. She was going to go in early and see how Snapper had documented the phantom phone call that had probably never happened, and she would check the log book to see how he recorded Mr. Crappy Cologne’s visit. She was virtually certain that there would be no entry for a phone call or a visit. She could mention the phone call but not the visit. To do so would alert Snapper that she had been in the office after she had left for the day.
Maybe she needed to eat something. Crackers, maybe, but she didn’t have any. She looked in the Sub-Zero, but the only thing in there was a wedge of cheese and some leftover Chinese food, with hair growing on it. After she tossed the Chinese, she ripped the wrapper off the cheese and bit down. Extra sharp cheddar. With a real tang. It made her eyes water. She spit it out and went back to her goblet to rinse her mouth. “How about that for spending money wisely,” she quipped, “a sixty-five-dollar bottle of mouthwash!” Being wasteful wasn’t her style. But a good bottle of wine was about the only extravagance she allowed herself.
Congressman Lewis fumbled with his key fob at the door of his Watergate condo. His hand was shaking so badly, it took three tries before he managed to get the door unlocked. He pushed the door open and galloped into the condo as though hounds were on his heels. He loved hearing the sound of the door closing, knowing it would lock automatically. He dropped his heavy briefcase in the middle of the foyer and made a beeline for the bar on the wall of the long, spacious living room. The room was his favorite place in the whole twenty-five-hundred-square-foot condominium. From that room, he had a spectacular view of the city. He thought about making his special martini—five ounces of gin, one-half ounce of vermouth, a twist of lemon, and some Angostura bitters—but decided he needed a pure hit of the twenty-five-year-old Glenlivet scotch he kept for special occasions. Not that this was the kind of occasion he had been thinking of. Hand shaking, he upended the bottle and guzzled until his eyes started to water. Then he poured two ounces into a squat tumbler and headed for the black leather sofa in the middle of the room.
“Son of a bitch!” he bellowed to the emptiness around him. “Son of a bitch!” he roared a second time. He gulped at the amber liquid in the tumbler, then set it down on the glass coffee table with a thump. Why was he so upset? He had known this day might come. Knew it in every pore of his body. He had lived in fear of it, and now that it was here, he wasn’t prepared.
How weird that he could handle world affairs, raise money out the wazoo, schmooze on both sides of the aisle, and yet he couldn’t take care of his own goddamn business.
Snapper leaned back into the soft, luxurious, leather sofa and closed his eyes. Life as he’d come to know it was never going to be the same. He mourned the loss as his mind raced. But did he deserve to go down in flames for trying to help a family member? Didn’t his thirty years in the House of Representatives count, the last six of which as the chairman of the Ways and Means committee after being the ranking member for two years before that? But he knew that he would be remembered—if he was remembered at all—for what was about to happen, and it made him feel sick to his stomach. Too much whiskey with no food. Not a good plan.
He struggled out of the depths of the sofa and shuffled into the kitchen, where he made a pot of coffee and headed to the master bedroom. He stripped down and pulled on a set of ancient sweats from his college years, which still fit his six-foot-two, two-hundred-twenty-pound frame. They were like old friends, and he would never give them up, not for anything. They defined him was how he thought of it. He was never an “out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new” kind of guy. He padded back to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich.
Snapper’s twice-a-week day-housekeeper always made sure the refrigerator was full. Snapper wondered who ate the food because he rarely ate at home even though he was an excellent cook. But cooking took time, one of the few things he did not have. He finally came to the conclusion the she ate the food herself or took it home to her family. And could he begrudge her that? Not at all. She was a woman of modest means, and since he hated to see anything go to waste, he never said a word, glad that he could help.
Snapper sliced thick pieces from an Applewood Farms ham. Adding lettuce, tomatoes, and Duke’s Mayonnaise, he had it all. The sandwich was so thick, he had to press down with the palms of his hands or he wouldn’t be able to bite into it. He forced himself to eat and drank two cups of black coffee. Eyeing the Glenlivet bottle he’d carried into the kitchen, he shook his head. He had had enough for one day. He needed his wits about him from here on in.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! He’d forgotten all about the black-tie dinner at the Armory. Damn it to . . . He looked at the clock. By now, the waitstaff would be serving dessert and coffee. There was no way he could make it at this point. He consoled himself with the fact that Dick Franz, the congressman from Delaware, had told him in the middle of the afternoon that he was going home because of a stomach bug that had hit the House Office Building. As far as excuses went, it would have to do. Not that he usually cared one way or another about missing a dinner. And right now, he certainly did. . .
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