Читать книгу Double Play: Ambushed! / High-Caliber Cowboy - B.J. Daniels, B.J. Daniels - Страница 11

Atlanta, Georgia

KERRINGTON LANDOW never thought he’d be relieved to have the phone ring in the middle of a meal. But if he had to listen to one more of Sandra’s lies…

“Let the maid get it,” Sandra said with impatience.

He ignored her as he shoved back his chair and gave her one of his this-isn’t-over-by-a-long-shot glares. Throwing down his napkin, he turned and stalked out of the dining room to take the call on the hall phone.

“Hello,” he snapped, surprised how furious he was. In truth, he didn’t care if Sandra was cheating on him or not. No, what made him angry was that she seemed to think he was so stupid he didn’t know what she was up to.

“Jasmine’s car’s been found.”

He went rigid.

“Did you hear me?” Bernard Wolfe demanded.

“Yes. I heard you.” But still he couldn’t believe… “What about—?” He looked up. Sandra had followed him. She was watching him from the dining room doorway, frowning, definitely interested in whom he was talking to.

“They haven’t found Jasmine’s body. Not yet anyway,” Bernard was saying. He sounded upset.

The same way Sandra would be when she heard. He had purposely not said Jasmine’s name in front of her for that very reason. Sandra had thrown Jasmine up to him for years.

“I know I was your second choice,” she said whenever they had a fight. “Do you have any idea what it’s like living in that woman’s shadow? It was bad enough when Jasmine was alive. But now I have to contend with her ghost?”

He had tried to reassure Sandra but the truth was, he’d never gotten over Jasmine and doubted he ever would. And now her car had been found.

“What is it?” Sandra asked coming down the hall. She was looking at him as if she’d seen him pale, had noticed the tremor in his hand clutching the phone. Sweat broke out under his arms. He worried she could smell the fear on him.

“They found her car in an old barn near Antelope Flats,” Bernard was saying on the other end of the line.

Kerrington said nothing. He’d checked out the town when Jasmine had told him her plans to marry the sheriff. He’d laughed in her face. He’d known she would never go through with it.

“What?” Sandra demanded. She was standing directly in front of him now, her eyes locked on his face as if she could see through him, always had been able to.

Sometimes he forgot that Sandra had known Jasmine probably as well as anyone. She and mousy little Patty Franklin had been Jasmine’s roommates at Montana State University in Bozeman. Jasmine had gone there on a whim after she’d already worked her way through all the men at several other universities, he thought bitterly.

Sandra had been the opposite of Jasmine, tall and slender, her hair dark like her eyes. She’d been available and he’d needed someone to use to make Jasmine jealous. Jasmine would never have believed it if he’d dated Patty the Pathetic, as Bernard called her.

“What?” Sandra demanded again, practically spitting in his face.

“They’ve found Jasmine’s car,” he said, knowing it would be impossible to keep something like this from her.

He’d expected the green-eyed monster to rear her ugly head. Instead, Sandra seemed stunned. She leaned against the wall, her face stony and remote.

“Sandra is there?” Bernard said with obvious disgust.

Where else had Bernard expected her to be? She was his wife, although Kerrington couldn’t even guess where she’d been spending a lot of her time lately. He was hit with the most ridiculous thought. That the man Sandra had been seeing behind his back was Bernard. The two deserved each other, no doubt about that. But they couldn’t stand to be in the same room together.

He rubbed a hand over his face and turned his back to Sandra to look in the hall mirror. He felt a need to assure himself and he’d always been reassured by what he saw in the mirror, as long as he didn’t look too deeply.

Jasmine used to say he was classically tall, dark and handsome. Only she’d made it sound as if he were a cliché. He’d even overheard her and her brother Bernard refer to him as her “mindless pretty boy.”

He shook off the memory, replacing it with a more pleasant one. Jasmine naked and in his arms begging for more.

“I’m flying out tonight,” Bernard was saying. “I think you and I should talk before I go, don’t you? The cops are going to be asking a lot more questions. I think we need to get our stories straight so we tell them the same thing we did seven years ago.”

Kerrington swore softly under his breath. It had been so long, he’d thought all of this was behind them. He should have known Jasmine’s car would eventually turn up. Wasn’t that what he’d hoped? Just not now, not after all this time.

“I’m going, too,” he whispered into the phone as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Sandra had gone into the living room and sat down, her sour hatred of Jasmine almost palpable.

“You should just stay home and take care of your wife,” Bernard said.

“Never mind what I should do,” Kerrington growled. Had Bernard heard something about Sandra? Is that why he was suggesting Kerrington take care of his wife? Or was that earlier thought of Bernard and Sandra closer to the truth than he’d wanted to admit? It would be just like Bernard.

“I’m flying to Montana as soon as I can get a flight,” Kerrington said, keeping his voice down, his back to Sandra and the living room. “We can talk there.”

“That’s not a smart thing to do.”

“She was my girlfriend,” Kerrington argued.

“The one who dumped you.”

“Who knows who she’d be married to now if she were still alive.”

Bernard made a scoffing sound on the other end of the line. “Assuming she’s dead.” He hung up.

Assuming she’s dead. Kerrington stood holding the phone. Did Bernard know something? It had been Bernard who’d come to him with the offer of an alibi.

“If you need to, you can say you were with me,” Bernard had said two days after Jasmine disappeared—just before the cops arrived to question them. “I was hiking in the Bridger Mountains. Took my gear and camped up there. Didn’t get back home until well after dark the second day.”

Kerrington had been so grateful to have an alibi at all that he’d gone along with Bernard’s. It wasn’t until later that he realized he’d also given Bernard an alibi.

He hung up the phone, then turned, bracing himself for the mother of all arguments he knew he was about to have with Sandra.

But Sandra was gone.

Antelope Flats, Montana

NEWS TRAVELED AT the speed of light, even in a county where there was little or no cell-phone service and ranches were miles apart.

The news about Jasmine’s car being found had given Shelby McCall’s return-from-the-dead story a rest. For hours Cash had been able to avoid his mother’s call, but when the phone rang shortly after he’d hung up from talking to Bernard Wolfe, he knew before he answered who was calling.

“Cash? Are you all right?”

He wanted to laugh. He was so far from all right…. “I’m fine.”

“I think you should move back home so you are close to your family during this time.”

That did make him laugh. This coming from a woman who’d been gone for thirty years? Where was his mother when he’d needed advice about Jasmine? Being raised in an all-male household had left him pretty clueless about women. Dusty hadn’t counted since she was just a kid. He really could have used a mother during those years.

“I’m sorry, Cash.”

Sorry that Jasmine’s car had been found and searchers expected to find her body in some shallow grave on the old farm at any time? Or sorry that she’d never been a mother to him and it was too late to start now?

“I know what you must be going through.”

“Do you?” he said, then could have kicked himself.

“Obviously you loved her or you wouldn’t have asked her to marry you.”

He said nothing, afraid of what would come out.

“Let me know if there is anything I can do.” She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, she hung up. She didn’t mention dinner. Must have realized it would have been a bad time to ask for anything.

When he looked up, his brother J.T. was standing in his office doorway.

“Mother? She means well,” J.T. said, closing the door behind him as he came in.

Cash grunted.

J.T. stood, looking uncomfortable. That was the problem with being raised by a bad-tempered man like Asa and a disagreeable ranch foreman like Buck. The brothers had grown up believing that softness was a weakness. So they sure as hell knew nothing about comforting each other.

Even Dusty was more tomboy than girl.

But J.T.’s rough edges had been smoothed a lot since Regina Holland had come into his life last fall. Cash had seen the change in him and approved. Reggie, as J.T. called her, was perfect for his brother, strong and yet soft in all the right ways. She was like a ray of sunshine in J.T.’s life and it showed in his older brother’s face. Cash had never seen J.T. so happy.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked now.

Cash shook his head, figuring Reggie had sent him. “The state investigators took over the search. I’m supposed to go fishing.”

J.T. nodded. “You’re not going to though, are you?”

Cash smiled. His brother knew him too well.

“Reggie said if you need someone to talk to…”

Cash laughed. He knew Reggie had sent J.T. His brother looked too uncomfortable for words. “Tell her thank you.”

J.T. nodded, looked down at his boots, then up at Cash. “I’m sorry.”

Cash nodded. “Maybe it will finally be over.” He knew that was what his family had hoped for, that he’d be able to move on once he knew what had happened to Jasmine. If they only knew the truth. He feared though that before this investigation was over, they would know. Everyone would.

After J.T. left, Cash picked up the phone and dialed the number for Jasmine’s car insurance company, which he’d found in her glove box. He knew Mathews would find out soon enough that he was doing some investigating on his own and all hell would break loose.

But all hell was going to break loose eventually anyway and he couldn’t just wait for the state boys to call and tell him they’d found Jasmine’s body and they had some questions for him.

Atlanta, Georgia

BERNARD WENT THROUGH the motions. He called to have the company jet readied, instructed George, his English butler, to pack for him, and told the chauffeur to stand by to take him to the private airstrip later tonight.

Bernard had held it together fairly well he thought. Even when he’d had to deal with that jackass Kerrington. It was just like the fool to fly to Montana.

But he’d wanted to be the one to tell him. He didn’t want Kerrington seeing it on the news and doing something stupid. And it would be hitting the news, if it hadn’t already. He seldom paid any attention to more than the financial news.

He thought about ringing George and having the bottle of champagne he’d asked to be chilled brought out and opened. But he could wait.

He’d waited seven years so he could have Jasmine declared legally dead. Before their father had died, Archie had put aside part of his estate for Jasmine, still holding onto the ridiculous hope that she would turn up one day.

Bernard deserved that money. He’d spent his life “watching out” for his stepsister. “Keep an eye on her, won’t you, Bernard,” Archibald Wolfe would say. “Take care of your sister.”

He wished he had a dollar for every time he’d heard his stepfather say those words.

His mother had married Archie when Bernard was four. Jasmine had been just a baby, her mother having died in childbirth.

Bernard had seen his stepfather struggle with trying to love him as much as he did Jasmine. There had been times when Bernard had felt loved, felt like he really was a Wolfe, not just adopted because his mother had married Archie.

But then Jasmine had grown up, been a wild teenager and an even wilder adult. Keeping her out of trouble had proved impossible. She had loved to upset their father, hadn’t cared that she got Bernard and herself into trouble, had rebelled at every turn as if it were her birthright. The Wolfe money had meant nothing to her. She was Daddy’s golden girl and she’d known he would never disinherit her. At least not for long.

Bernard had never felt that secure as the stepson.

When Jasmine had decided to get another degree in a long line of degrees, this time in Montana, Archie had asked Bernard to go with her. “Just keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s all right. Be there if she needs you.”

Bernard had wanted to laugh. Jasmine hadn’t needed him, hadn’t even liked him, and he’d resented the hell out of his role as protector of his precious stepsister.

But Bernard had known he’d had no option. Archie had set him up in a condo near the university with unlimited spending and nothing really to do other than ski and party—and of course try to keep Jasmine out of trouble.

Jasmine had reverted to form and had enticed Kerrington to come to Montana so they could be together, except for those times when she was bored with him. Archie had heard about it and had been furious with Bernard, but even more furious with Jasmine. This time Archie had done more than threaten to disinherit her, he had done it.

Kerrington had been beside himself, begging Jasmine to make up with her father. He and Jasmine had argued and the next thing Bernard knew, she had announced that she was engaged to some cowboy sheriff from Antelope Flats, Montana. Kerrington had been inconsolable. He’d been dating Jasmine’s roommate Sandra to make Jasmine jealous. It apparently hadn’t worked.

Bernard had pretended to reason with his sister, but with her out of the will, he would get everything. Jasmine had never listened to him anyway. He hoped she would marry her cowboy sheriff and live in some dinky town in Montana, but he knew her better than that. Jasmine had just been playing them all.

Then Jasmine had disappeared. Archie had never said outright that he blamed Bernard, but Bernard knew he did. It had taken a while, but Bernard had finally gotten close to his stepfather before Archie died.

He’d worked hard to take over the Wolfe Furniture conglomerate, proven himself worthy in so many ways. In the end, he’d felt as if Archie respected him, maybe even loved him. Then Archie had died and Bernard’s mother Fran had been killed.

Bernard was left alone—with everything—except for the chunk that had been left to Jasmine.

In just a few weeks, Bernard could have had her declared legally dead. And now this. Jasmine’s car turning up, stirring it all up again. It was as if Jasmine was plotting against him from the grave. As if she couldn’t stand for him to be happy.

Now he would have to fly to Montana or it would look suspicious. He would have to act as if he gave a damn. He just hoped it wouldn’t take long. He’d always resented Jasmine, often disliked her. But right now he hated her.

His cell phone played “Dixie” in his suit pocket. He didn’t have to look at the number to know whom it was. He also knew what she would want. “Yes?”

“I need to see you. Where are you?”

“At home getting ready to leave for Montana.” He’d been waiting for her call. Had the champagne chilling for the two of them.

“Don’t move.” She hung up.

He smiled and snapped his phone shut as he thought of her and what she would want him to do to her. It was warped, twisted in ways he didn’t even want to think about. It was also dangerous. But worth it.

He checked to make sure George was finished with his packing, then rang the kitchen and asked for the champagne to be brought up to the master bedroom.

She would be here soon. He was already aroused just thinking about the pain he would inflict on her. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad day after all.

Las Vegas, Nevada

“ARE YOU CRAZY?” Angel demanded for the hundredth time. “You let Molly get away.”

“She knows we’re after her,” Vince assured him again. “I was counting on Lanny calling her. She’ll lead us right to the diamonds. It’s all part of my plan.”

“You’d better hope this works,” Angel said.

Vince heard the threat in his brother’s tone. “I thought you might like to gamble while I get everything ready before we go after her.”

Angel’s eyes lit because he knew Vince would also provide the money. Angel had already blown what little he’d had.

Four hours later, Vince found Angel at a blackjack table in the casino where he’d left him earlier. From Angel’s expression, he’d lost all the money Vince had given him and was in a foul mood. Nothing new there.

“Come on,” Vince said.

“I hope to hell we’re finally going to do something,” Angel snapped as they left the casino and headed for the car. “I’m sick of waiting around.”

Vince slid into the passenger seat as Angel got behind the wheel. He sat tapping the steering wheel as if he couldn’t sit still. With each passing day, Angel had become more tense. Sitting next to him was like being next to an electrical wire in a thunderstorm. Vince wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep Angel under control.

“I told you. We needed to give her a head start,” Vince said, knowing this wasn’t what Angel wanted to hear.

Angel swore as he pulled out of the casino parking lot in a screech of tires. He pushed his foot hard onto the gas pedal and roared out into the traffic.

“We’ve waited fifteen years,” Vince said patiently. “We can wait a little longer. She’s still moving. I want to wait until she lights.”

Angel shot him a look and almost rear-ended the car in front of them. He slammed on the brakes. “Did you ever consider that she’s gotten rid of the car and you’re tracking the wrong person?”

“She won’t get rid of the car. She has no reason to.”

“You should have let me handle it,” Angel argued. “If you’d let me wait for her outside the café where she worked it would be over by now.”

Vince didn’t doubt that. “Like you handled Lanny? You would have killed her before we found out where the diamonds were and where would that’ve left us?”

“You’ve never given me enough credit,” Angel complained, slamming his fist down on the steering wheel as the traffic began to move again. “You think I couldn’t do this without you?”

Vince felt himself go cold.

Angel seemed to calm down. “You’re sure this GPS thing will work, we’ll be able to find her?”

“Global positioning system.”

“I know what the hell it is,” Angel snapped. “I just don’t like the idea that she’s taken off and we might not be able to find her again.”

“We can pinpoint her location down to the street number,” Vince said. “Once she stops running, I can even pull up a map that will show us exactly how to get there.” He could see that Angel was dubious. Angel hadn’t been interested in learning about computers or electronics while in prison.

“She thinks she’s gotten away, that she’s safe. That’s why I don’t want to crowd her.”

Angel muttered something under his breath.

Vince groaned and glanced in his side mirror. “We agreed we would do this together,” he said to Angel as he felt a headache coming on. “Or we don’t do it at all.”

Angel shot him a look. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Vince didn’t answer. He spotted a black-and-white behind him, the patrol-car light bar gleaming in the desert sun. Vince glanced over at the speedometer then up the street. “Watch your speed.”

Vince figured he would have to give Angel more money to lose gambling. It would be the only way to keep his brother from getting into trouble while they waited.

Angel let up on the gas. They cruised through the intersection.

Vince looked in the side mirror again. The cop in the patrol car had pulled in two cars behind them. Vince looked ahead and saw another cop car turn into the motel where he and Angel had been staying.

“Trouble,” he said as yet another patrol car fell in behind them.

“What?”

“We’ve been made,” Vince said.

Angel’s gaze darted up to the rearview mirror.

“Another car just turned into our motel,” Vince said.

Angel swore. “Who would put the cops on us?”

“Who do you think?”

As Angel drove on past their motel, Vince saw yet another patrol car coming toward them. The cop hit his brakes. “They know our car. He’s spotted us.”

The cop made a U-turn in the middle of the street, flashing lights and siren coming on.

Angel hit the gas and ran the next red light. Brakes screeched, horns blared and a wail of police sirens took up the cry behind them. Vince was glad Angel was behind the wheel. Angel loved this. He cornered hard and accelerated, driving Vince back against the seat.

So Molly wanted to play hardball? Vince was surprised. He still thought of her as a fourteen-year-old little girl. This changed his perception of her.

Another cop car joined in the chase and Vince thought he heard a helicopter overhead. As Angel wheeled around corners, racing along the backstreets of Vegas to the scream of sirens, Vince shook his head. He was not pleased with Molly. How could she call the cops on them after it had been cops who’d killed Max, the man who had picked her up off the street and been like a father to her? Did the woman have no loyalty at all?

He sighed, unable to understand that kind of thinking. He had planned to cut Molly some slack in respect for Max. He might have even let her live after she gave them the jewels. Or at least he would have told Angel to kill her quickly.

But now she’d left him little option. He would let Angel use the knife on her, keeping her alive until she gave them the jewels and apologized for betraying them.

First though, they had to escape the cops. Then there would be no more waiting. They were going after Molly.

Atlanta, Georgia

KERRINGTON POURED HIMSELF a stiff drink and sat down in his empty living room. He couldn’t believe Sandra had left without a word—not after they’d just been arguing about her recent disappearances.

He’d checked the garage, not surprised to find her car gone. She wasn’t even trying to hide her affair. Did she really believe he was going to put up with this? The woman must think him a complete fool.

He took a gulp of his drink. The expensive Scotch sent a wave of warmth through him. A thought floated past on the boozy warmth. What if it wasn’t an affair? He couldn’t imagine what else Sandra would be sneaking behind his back about if not sleeping around. He realized he had no idea what she did all day. Or with whom.

He finished the drink and poured himself another, the booze calming him. He was almost relieved Sandra had left. She would have been looking for a fight if she’d stayed.

“What do you care if Jasmine’s car’s been found?” she would have demanded. “Like she gave a damn about you.” Sandra always threw it up to him that Jasmine had broken the engagement.

“She dumped you,” Sandra was fond of reminding him. “After that big article on the society page. How did that make you feel?”

Sick. But he’d never told Sandra that. Sandra thought he had been embarrassed, made to feel like a fool. What Sandra didn’t know was that when you lost someone like Jasmine all you thought about was getting her back. Once you got over the initial shock and that feeling of being sick to your stomach.

Jasmine had a way of making nothing matter but her. She was like a drug you needed to survive. You would do anything to have her.

Unfortunately, Jasmine knew it. She made you crazy, until you felt that if you couldn’t have her, no one else would either. Hell, he’d followed her to Montana and she would have changed her mind and married him if it hadn’t been for her father cutting her out of the will.

He sipped his drink, eyes narrowing at the thought of Jasmine. If she were alive, she would have come to her senses and realized he was the only man for her. How different his life would have been. Her father would have come around. Archie would have never denied Jasmine her legacy if he truly believed she had married the right man. And Kerrington was the right man.

And he would never have married Sandra. Even when she told him she was pregnant with his baby. She blamed Jasmine’s disappearance for her miscarriage. Bernard had always said Sandra wasn’t even pregnant and Kerrington had been a fool to buy in to her story without demanding proof.

All water under the bridge, he thought putting down his drink. He picked up the phone and called the airport for a flight west. If he hurried, he could get out right away and be there by tonight. Let Sandra come home to an empty house and wonder where he was for a change.

Across town

FROM HIS HOT TUB on the master-bedroom deck, Bernard told George to send his guest up when she arrived. The water was hot, the jets relentless. He was sunk up to his neck, eyes closed. It wasn’t long before he caught a whiff of her perfume. Opening his eyes, he found her framed in the doorway. He closed his eyes again, knowing when he opened them she would be waiting in the bedroom.

He took his time. He liked to make her wait. He dried himself and, breathing in her scent, moved through the large master bedroom, expectation arousing every nerve fiber.

She lay on her back across the end of his king-size bed, buck naked, her eyes closed. He watched her chest rise and fall, her nipples already hard nubs. Her legs were long and shapely, her body as close to perfect as money could buy.

He let the towel wrapped around his waist drop to the floor.

She turned her head to look at him, watching him with a mixture of excitement and fear in her expression. He liked that about her.

He picked up the belt from where he’d left it on the chair near the end of the bed and looked down at her, their eyes locking.

Then slowly, he raised the thick leather belt, saw her tense, her eyes widening but never leaving his.

He brought the leather down sharply across her thighs. She let out a cry, arching her back. He lay the leather across her belly, her breasts. He had never wanted to hurt her as badly as he did tonight.

She didn’t stop him, just as he knew she wouldn’t. This is what she came here for.

To the sound of her soft whimpers, he finally tossed the belt aside. She was watching him again, almost daring him to do whatever he wanted with her.

“Tell me Jasmine is dead,” she whispered as he rolled her over.

“Jasmine is dead.”