Caballo Security Box Set

by Camilla Blake

  She was still alive. That was a good sign.

  “Mrs. George? It’s Prescott Armstrong. I’m going to get you out of here.”

  If she heard me, she didn’t respond.

  I backed away and stood again, pacing the room. There was nothing else in it—just the mattress and two hostages. No windows, no closets. It wasn’t a house. Could it be a shed of some sort? A garage? I tried to remember what I knew about the George estate. I hadn’t gone much past the garden, but I remembered the pool house and… I thought there was a barn-like structure out past it. Was that where we were? It would make sense. The kidnapper wouldn’t want us to go far, not if she wanted to keep an eye on us.

  I knew who was doing this now. And I thought I knew why. I just had to get the hell out of here to prove it.

  The door was right beside the spot where I’d been lying. I turned my back to it and used my hands to explore. The doorframe was smooth, finished. The door itself was cool to the touch. Some sort of metal? And the doorknob. I turned it, but of course it was locked. It couldn’t be that easy, could it?

  I tried pushing against it, tried throwing my body against it. Nothing. The thing wouldn’t budge.

  Where the hell was I? What were they doing to Skylar while I wasn’t around?

  I hoped she didn’t wander into that third-floor storeroom. What would they do if she put two and two together? And, as smart as she was, I was sure she would do it a hell of a lot quicker than I had. I felt like a damn fool for not seeing it sooner.

  I just wanted to get out of here and get back to her. I had to find a way to do that.

  Chapter 20

  Skylar

  They said I couldn’t leave the house. They didn’t say I couldn’t explore the house.

  I felt like an expectant father in the forties, pacing in a waiting room while my wife did all the work. I needed to be in there, needed to know what the hell was happening! I needed to be involved.

  Why did they take my great-gran? Did it have something to do with the quarry thing? Or was it something else?

  Miranda had said that I was no longer in my great-gran’s will. I wasn’t sure I believed that, not that I’d ever anticipated inheriting everything, but I knew my great-gran would leave me something. Just like I knew she planned to leave something to Zander and his entire family; just like I knew she’d leave a significant part of her fortune to the charities she’d founded and primarily funded from the moment her husband had died. She believed in this town and the people in it. She would give them everything she had if the lawyers would let her.

  I didn’t know the whole story, but I knew great-gran’s relationship with my great-grandfather had been strained. She was a local girl who’d worked in this very house as a young woman, and he’d been a playboy who’d married her to vex his parents. At least that was what she said. They were married thirty years, so there had to be more to it than that, but that’s the story Great-Gran had told me. He gave her two children and his entire fortune when he died, so she figured that was a good exchange. She’d said that, in those words, many times.

  She’d never gone into detail, but I knew the marriage had been difficult. And I knew she didn’t agree with the way her husband ran the businesses they owned in town. That was why she started all these charities, the scholarships and the funding for the schools and the housing project that got most of the town out of rusty trailers and into proper homes with brick exteriors. It was her way of paying off some sort of debt she felt she owed because of her husband. I wasn’t clear on why she felt that way—whenever I asked, she just said that her husband had been a ruthless businessman—but I knew she carried some guilt because of it.

  Was that what this was all about? Had something Mark George had done come back to hurt my great-gran? Or was it something else?

  Was this all about changing my great-gran’s will? Or was it more than that?

  I couldn’t sleep. I knew Ox and the others were at the cabin, doing their best to find Prescott. And I knew they would, sooner rather than later. But I was always a part of the planning, always involved in the supporting part of any operation Caballo engaged in. I felt out of place, restless, waiting for them to do things I wasn’t even privy to. I was out of the loop and I didn’t like it.

  I couldn’t even look at the bed because my thoughts went to Prescott and then I found myself wondering if the people who’d taken him were capable of murder. What had I gotten him into? Was he going to survive what was supposed to be a simple visit to my great-gran and had turned into some great big conspiracy?

  I couldn’t just sit and do nothing.

  I pulled on a sweater and made my way up to the third floor. I’d seen my great-gran’s desk in a storage area at the back of the floor, shoved into a crowded room with carefully packed boxes filled with family heirlooms. If there was anything in my great-gran’s papers to tell me what was going on, they would be there.

  I opened the door and flipped on the light, and knew immediately that someone else had already had this thought. It had to be Prescott. Papers were spread out across the top of the desk and on a few boxes that had been moved to provide more flat surface. There were stacks, carefully organized, placed side by side across the surfaces. I walked down the line they created, reading little bits here and there, figuring out what category each stack represented. Financials, business deals, real estate documents. All the paperwork generated in running the business Great-Gran had headed for thirty years.

  There was a chair pulled up to the desk. I sat gingerly on the edge of it as I looked around. All the drawers were empty. This was all the paperwork that Great-Gran had with regard to the business. The rest was properly kept electronically or at the lawyer’s office.

  There was no will.

  What did my great-gran’s disappearance have to do with the lawyer’s death? What had the lawyer intended to show me? She hadn’t wanted to say on the phone. She’d called before I came to visit Great-Gran, then called again when we arrived, but she didn’t say why either time. She’d just asked me to call her. And when I did, she’d only said that she had something she wanted to talk to me about. What was that? I never got a chance to find out.

  There was a business deal on the table, something about reopening the quarry. The contract was here, and it was incredibly generous. I looked through it, reading all the fine print. It would be a good deal for Great-Gran. It would provide jobs for the people in the town, too. But it was unsigned.

  Why? I knew Great-Gran hated the quarry, so she would likely think twice about reopening it. But if it was beneficial to the people in the town, she would do just about anything. Did this have something to do with the kidnapping? Did the kidnapper want her to sign the deal?

  Maybe. But it didn’t feel right.

  I kept looking, worrying every detail. The fact that there was no will at all here bothered me. I knew my great-gran liked to have paperwork in a physical copy, that she liked to be able to hold papers and read them. I knew she would take something like a will very seriously. That would be the one thing she would be determined to have a physical copy of nearby. So, where was it?

  Was this all about the will? Was someone trying to get her to change her will? Was that why the pills? Was it because they could induce a sort of amnesia that would cause her not to remember signing a new will? If that was it, then why had they stopped feeding her the pills, and why did they make her disappear? What was the purpose in that?

  Unless my visit had interrupted the plan.

  Had I come at a bad time for the conspirator? Had the changed will not been signed yet? Was it concern over this new will that had caused the lawyer to call me? Was that what got her killed, or had she simply died of an ill-timed heart attack?

  Following that line of thought, I tried to think of who would benefit most from a change in my great-gran’s will. The town would be cared for. My great-gran had told me on many occasions that she planned to leave a large portion of her fortune to them when she died,
stating that the lawyers couldn’t stop her from doing it then. But all other discussions about her will had always been in generalizations. I didn’t want to think about Great-Gran dying, so I always changed the subject whenever the subject came up, which didn’t happen all that often. I don’t think she liked to think about it, either. Maybe I should have asked.

  I knew she would leave money to Zander and Johnny and Hannah, too. But there was no other family—just me. I suppose my mother was technically family, too, but she and Great-Gran didn’t like each other, so I doubted she would be in the will. That was all.

  The town.

  Zander, Johnny, and Hannah.

  Me.

  I knew I hadn’t done it. I knew most of the town loved her and would never do anything to hurt her. And Zander, Johnny, and Hannah…

  What had Miranda said about Hannah? That she was engaged to my dad once?

  Had I known that?

  Everything I knew about my father I’d learned from my great-gran. My mom didn’t talk about him much, preferring to leave the past in the past. But Great-Gran talked about him with great pleasure, loving the ability to share her memories with someone else. And I listened with rapt attention.

  I did remember her telling me once that he’d had a steady girl all through high school and that everyone assumed he’d marry her. But then he’d talked Great-Gran into allowing him to take a sort of walkabout in the United States. He wanted to see the antebellum homes in the South and the revolutionary era sites in the East. He was a history buff, my father, and he loved stories of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War more than anything. He’d wanted to see all those old battle sites and landmarks before tourists destroyed them with their curiosity and lack of respect. She’d told me once that it was the worst and best decision she’d ever made because on that trip he’d met my mother and created me.

  Great-Gran had been shocked when he came home with a pregnant wife. They argued often, she said, creating terrible tension in the house. But then I came along, and then my father joined the military, moving his little family back to Texas. Great-Gran said she was heartbroken, but it had improved their relationship, for which she was grateful.

  There was little mention of the girl he’d left behind, the girl who’d thought she was going to marry him, and didn’t.

  Could it have been Hannah? The timing… Hannah was about the same age as my father. But Zander was several months older than me. In fact, he was six months older than me. A woman waiting at home for her fiancé to return wouldn’t get pregnant before he returned. Unless…

  No. That wasn’t possible.

  Hannah was the most honest woman I knew. She wouldn’t kill a fly, let alone hurt a human being. She adored Great-Gran.

  It was a stupid idea.

  Moving on, I turned my attention back to the quarry contract. But there was something about the Hannah story that bothered me. And then I realized that not all the paperwork important to my great-gran’s business was here; there was a safe in her bedroom where she kept investment papers. It took me only a moment to find it and get it open. She’d given me the combination once when she’d needed some papers she didn’t want to retrieve herself. I guess I should be glad of that.

  The safe contained several file folders filled with investment information. There were security bonds and the deed to the house and several of her other businesses, too. There was jewelry that I hadn’t seen in years, diamonds and rubies that Great-Grandfather had given to her over the years, jewelry she didn’t wear often. And a bit of cash. I was more interested in the paperwork, rifling through it a little at a time.

  And then I found what I suppose you could call the smoking gun. A hard copy of her will, signed four years ago when I turned eighteen. There was also a letter paper-clipped to it, the words haunting and sad.

  Why had she kept it? Why did she not throw it away?

  It was guilt. My great-gran carried guilt heavy on her shoulders. She was a woman who never let a perceived hurt go unaddressed. It was a reminder, an explanation. It was meant for me—to explain why she’d written her will as she had. She wanted me to know the truth that she had helped hide for twenty-three years.

  And now I knew.

  Chapter 21

  Skylar

  Hannah was always in the kitchen at dawn, planning the day’s meals and beginning preparation for breakfast. Great-Gran expected breakfast to be laid out in the dining room by 07:00 a.m. even when she was the only one in the house. She’d always been an early riser and she expected all her guests and employees to be the same.

  When I walked into the kitchen after dressing, she was already there, peeling potatoes for hash browns.

  “How are you, dear?” she asked when she saw me.

  “Worried. Wondering where my husband is.”

  “Didn’t you say he went into Seattle to deal with some… I don’t remember what you said. Some business problem?”

  “I did say that, but it was just to keep everyone from knowing that someone had taken him out of the house and is holding him wherever they have my great-gran.” I leaned against the center island, watching Hannah. “Must be difficult trying to force her to change her will when the lawyer’s dead.”

  Hannah glanced over her shoulder at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Wasn’t that the plan? To dope her up, make her easier to manipulate, and have her sign a will you dictated? One that left the majority of her fortune to Zander rather than the town?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Does he know, Hannah? Does Zander know about the lies you told? Does Johnny?”

  She stopped what she’d been doing, her body tense as she stood like a statue in front of the sink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally said, her words clipped. Hard.

  “I was a little confused, too. I didn’t understand why the lawyer kept calling me, asking me to come to her office but refusing to say why. And then Great-Gran sounding so off during our phone call this past Friday when she’d been so clear-minded on all the others. Everyone telling me she’d been sick for nearly a month, lethargic and confused. But she’d sounded normal on all her calls until this past week. When Prescott discovered the illegal drug in one of her prescription bottles, it began to make a little more sense. She had good days, didn’t she? Was it because you allowed her a good day by not giving her the street drug?”

  “It’s not my job to administer medications to Mrs. George. That’s Nolan’s job.”

  “Nolan’s so distracted all the time by his smartphone that he probably never looked that closely at the pills. You counted on that.”

  “Why would I drug your great-grandmother?”

  “Because you clean the study. You saw a copy of her will and realized she wasn’t giving Zander as much as he deserved.”

  Hannah began peeling the potatoes again. “I’ve never seen Mrs. George’s will.”

  “Sure, you have. She had a copy in her desk drawer. I’ve even seen that one.”

  “I don’t make a habit of going through my boss’s desk,” Hannah said with some bitterness.

  “That’s why she kept it there, you know. It was a decoy, a conversation starter. She told me it had been a draft that she kept, planning to have it made public on her death so that the gossipmongers in town would have something concrete to talk about. She said there were things in her real will that she didn’t want made public. Her lawyers apparently had very strict instructions about her will.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Do you want to see her real will? I found it in her safe.”

  Hannah shook her head as she dropped the potato she’d been working on. She dried her hands slowly, turning to look at me. “You clearly think you know something. Why don’t you just put it out there?”

  “I have friends searching the property. I have an idea that you never meant to hurt my great-gran or my husband. You just wanted to keep them from telling anyone what you had done—right?�
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  She didn’t say anything.

  “I think you wanted Great-Gran to change her will. Zander had a friend who’d moved to Seattle and got himself involved with the wrong people, selling an illegal drug. You got him to give you some of those pills, then you fed them to Great-Gran, using the effects of the drug to get her to sit in on meetings with her lawyer about a new will, then to sign the new will—right? Is that how it went?”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “But then I showed up and interrupted your plan. And the lawyer started calling me, insisting we meet. Did you go see her? Did you try to stop her from telling me about the new will?”

  Hannah shook her head. “You have no idea what you’re talking about! I’ve been a loyal employee to Mrs. George for thirty years! I would never do anything to hurt her!”

  “You haven’t hurt her. You’re just trying to manipulate her.”

  “I’m not! What motive would I have?”

  “The fact that she sent my father off on his walkabout, leaving you behind pregnant and alone?”

  Hannah paled. “That’s got nothing to do with anything. She took care of us. She did everything she could.”

  “But the will—”

  “Yes, I’d like to see my son allowed to take the George name and to have the money he would have inherited had his father married me! But that’s not the way it went and there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “But—”

  “It wasn’t her. She knows nothing about what’s been going on.”

  I turned, shocked to find Prescott standing there, Ox and Akker behind him. Overwhelmed with relief, I rushed to him, grateful to feel his arms come around my waist. I touched his face, exploring his skull for injuries. He smiled this soft, gentle smile I’d never seen before as he rested his forehead against mine.

  “I’m okay,” he said softly. “Just a little ashamed of allowing myself to be overtaken.”

  “I was so worried! I was so afraid that… God, I can’t believe you’re here and safe!”