As usual the first few reports made her jump. A half dozen rounds later, she relaxed and fell into a rhythm. The last six shots were dead center.
James was right. Practice made perfect.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
While Beth brought the last horse in from the pasture for his dinner, she kept one eye on her daughter. A safe distance away, Katie sat in the grass holding a scrap of chicken in front of Henry’s nose. The dog complied with her requests to sit and lie down, never once making any move toward the chicken until it was offered.
Beth snickered. Jack couldn’t get the dog to do anything. Henry would sing a tune for Katie if he could.
Over the past couple of weeks, she and Ben had developed a daily routine. Beth ducked into the barn and began checking water buckets while Ben measured feed and dumped it into the tubs in each stall. Black rubber banged against wooden walls as the horses nosed for stray bits of grain. Finished with the feeding, Ben fetched a pitchfork to shovel manure from the aisle while Beth headed up into the loft for fresh hay.
She was two rungs from the top when a loud crack startled her. With a splintering sound, the wooded ladder pulled away from the wall and began to tip backwards. She shifted her weight forward and stretched her hand toward the wall, glancing down at the floor ten feet below.
Beth froze, her breath trapped in her throat. Everything remained motionless for a few seconds. Her heart pounded inside her rib cage. Then, ever so slowly, the ladder began to tip back toward the loft. She exhaled and reached for the handrail.
Almost there.
Her hand was inches from the wooden supports when the ladder split in two under her sneakers. The barn turned upside down. Pain ripped through her right arm as it caught on a piece of debris. Beth crashed down into the dirt aisle, where she landed with a solid thud on the packed earth. Dirt and blood flooded her mouth in the split second before pain exploded in her head and everything went black.
Jack sat in the study, sipping iced tea and reviewing the roofer’s estimate. He knew the mansion had an acre or so of neglected roof, but he hadn’t been prepared for the size of the quote.
Holy crap.
Not only was it six pages long, but, Christ, the total was more than his annual salary had been. With a resigned sigh, he pulled out a calculator and began adding figures. Just because he had the money didn’t mean he wanted to give it all to the roofer. Living on a budget for forty-eight years had left its mark. He might have become a millionaire, but he’d be a tightwad forever.
After just a few weeks of living at the estate, he was starting to understand why Danny had let it get so rundown. It wasn’t just the money. No shortage there. His uncle had had a knack for picking investments. Repairs and maintenance for a property of this size took a sizable chunk of time and energy.
Figures totaled, Jack set the page aside for Beth. The numbers looked OK to him, but her math and bookkeeping skills were far superior. No doubt she’d double-check the quote and generate a spreadsheet for their records in the efficient manner he’d come to expect and rely on. Jack glanced at the clock. Beth and the kids should be returning from their evening chores any minute. Ears tuned for the sounds of their entry, Jack reached for a stack of bills Beth had set aside for them to discuss this evening after the kids had gone to bed. He was looking forward to reviewing the accounts with a ridiculous amount of anticipation. No doubt she’d keep the conversation all business, but they’d still be alone. Damned if he didn’t like talking to her as much as he enjoyed fantasizing about which thong she might be wearing.
A door slammed. Sneakers squeaked on hardwood.
“Jack.” Ben’s yell carried through the closed door of the study. “Where are you?”
“Ben?” Jack jumped out of his swivel chair and limped into the hall, nearly colliding with the boy. His heart skipped when he saw the blood smeared on Ben’s hands. “What happened?”
“Mom fell. Her head’s bleeding and she’s unconscious.” Ben’s voice broke. The boy’s hair stood up, wet and red from running his shaking hands through it. He wiped his trembling, bloody hands on his shorts.
“Where’s Katie?” Jack followed Ben through the house, jamming his cell phone and keys into his pocket as they sped through the kitchen. The kick of adrenaline dulled the pain in his knee. He paused long enough to grab his first-aid kit from the pantry and snag his cane from its resting spot behind the door.
“She wouldn’t leave Mom.”
They jumped into the golf cart, and Jack jammed the pedal to the floor. The cart careened along the rutted path. At the barn door, Jack skidded to a stop in the dirt. Ben leaped out of the cart and beat him into the stable. Jack followed, cursing his weak leg. He flipped open his cell phone. The battery was dead. Fuck.
In the dim aisle, Henry lay next to Beth’s prostrate form, whining and licking her limp hand. Next to the dog, Katie knelt in the dirt, face pale and drawn. Tears streamed down, leaving clean trails on her dirty face.
Jack dropped his cane, lowered his body onto his good knee, and wrapped one arm around Katie’s shoulders. He tugged her backward. “Let me get in here, honey.”
Ben helped Katie scoot backward a few feet.
“Beth? Can you hear me?” Beth lay on her side against the wall. Blood oozed out of a gash on her forehead and another just above her elbow. Her T-shirt was soaked deep red. Jack pressed two fingers against Beth’s throat. Her skin, always pale, was nearly gray, but her pulse felt strong and steady. Although both cuts had obviously bled copiously at first, the bleeding had slowed to a trickle.
He opened the first-aid kit and tore open the white paper envelopes of several large square gauze pads. At the sound of paper tearing, Beth’s eyelids quivered. She moaned softly. Her eyelids fluttered, then opened. He looked down into her unfocused eyes, brushed a stray lock of blood-soaked hair off her forehead, then pressed a folded, clean piece of gauze firmly against the cut.
“What happened?” Beth’s eyes blinked hard as she squinted at Jack’s face.
“You fell. Don’t move.” Jack reached for more gauze. “Do you know where you are? Can you tell me what hurts?” He wrapped the wound on her arm in gauze and secured it with first-aid tape.
Beth squirmed. “I’m all right. Let me get up.”
Jack placed a firm hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy. We need to get you to the hospital. I have to go back to the house to call an ambulance.”
“No, no ambulance. I can walk.” Beth pushed the blanket aside and tried moving her legs.
Jack pinned her legs to the ground with one hand across her ankles.
“Hold still. You fell pretty far. You could have spinal injuries. Let the paramedics move you.”
“No!” She successfully pulled herself to a sitting position and turned her head from side to side. “My neck is fine. See, I can move everything.”
Jack felt his blood pressure spike. His voice rose. “For Christ’s sake, would you stop moving?”
Ignoring him, Beth bent her legs. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”
With a glance at the children, Jack inhaled and lowered his voice. “Cut it out. OK, no ambulance, but do not try to get up.” He put a hand on her shoulder to hold her down.
“You two stay here with her while I bring the car around. Be right back.” Jack patted Katie on the shoulder as he moved past her. “Ben, don’t let her move. I mean it. Sit on her if you have to.” He looked directly at Beth and pointed at her for emphasis.
A few minutes later, Jack drove the SUV right into the barn, as close to Beth as he could manage. “Take your time. Lean on me.”
If he’d had had two good legs, he’d have scooped her up and carried her to the car, but the best he could do was wrap an arm around her waist and keep her on her feet.
He wasn’t exactly knight in shining armor material.
Luckily, the ride to the hospital was short, and the number of ski resorts in the area meant it had an excellent emergency room. Tiny though it was, Westbur
y Community Hospital served as the Regional Trauma Center.
Jack parked under the carport at the emergency entrance and helped Beth through the automatic sliding doors. The kids followed like baby ducks. They passed a man filling out forms on a clipboard, his ice-pack-encased foot elevated on a plastic chair. A sleeping woman and a teenage girl waited in another row. The teen didn’t even look up from her rapid-fire texting as they passed her.
“You two wait here. I’ll be back.” Jack motioned the children toward an empty row of chairs. Even with the support of the cane, his knee throbbed as he half carried Beth up to the desk. The blue-scrubbed nurse at the desk took one look at the blood-soaked bandages and rounded the counter to fetch a wheelchair.
“We’ll put her in room one.”
Jack eased Beth into the faux leather seat and read the nurse’s nametag. While Jack helped Beth onto the examination table, he asked, “Is Dr. Wilson working tonight, Jean?”
“Yes, he is. He should be here in a minute.” Another nurse entered the room, her white soles squeaking on the linoleum.
“You need to come with me and fill out some paperwork.” Nurse Jean tapped Jack on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow her. “Betty will take good care of her. Here’s Dr. Wilson.”
Jack stepped into the hallway to greet his cousin, Quinn, who pulled him into a shoulder-slapping hug. “What’s wrong?”
“Hey, Quinn, I’m sure glad to see you.” Jack described Beth’s accident, and Quinn ducked into the examination room.
Jack gathered a stack of forms and a clipboard from the desk. As soon as his butt hit the hard plastic chair, Katie curled into his body. On his other side, Ben bit his nails, or what was left of them. Jack answered as many of the questions as he could. He was not surprised when Ben claimed to not know his mother’s birth date. “Do you know if you have medical insurance, Ben?”
Ben shook his head. “Are they gonna make her leave? We don’t have any money.”
“It’s OK. They’ll take care of your mom. They always do, even if you can’t pay. Doctors are the good guys. Besides, it’s my barn and my responsibility.”
Ben continued to gnaw on his fingertips.
Jack put his hand on Ben’s knee. “Don’t worry, Ben, I’ll take care of it. Dr. Wilson is my cousin. He’s a really good doctor and a nice person. I promise he’ll take good care of your mom.”
Jack made a mental note to look into some medical insurance for his employees.
With the forms as complete as they were going to get, Jack leaned back against the wall and reviewed Beth’s accident in his head.
Damn. This was all his fault.
Beth hadn’t mentioned the barn needed any repairs, but the estate was his responsibility now. He should have made sure the building was safe. The roof needed to be replaced. It wasn’t a huge stretch to assume the barn had additional structural defects.
He rubbed his braced knee, which ached from the night’s exertion. There was no way he’d get up a ladder to see if the loft had any other major problems. Tomorrow he’d call a carpenter. No more excuses. It was time he took care of business, including his new employees, instead of whining about his knee and being cheap about repairs. This estate was turning into a full-time job, and he’d better accept that fact before any more damage was done.
The acrid smells of antiseptic and disinfectant assaulted Beth’s nose, and her stomach rolled with nausea. She swallowed and breathed through her mouth.
The doctor looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. He was in his late forties, with a touch of gray sprinkled though his sandy-blond hair. Wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and sneakers on his lanky frame, he lifted the stack of bloody bandages off Beth’s head and examined the cut.
“Not too bad. I’m Doctor Wilson, but you can call me Quinn, since I’m Jack’s cousin and all. If I hadn’t fallen asleep, we’d have met the day you arrived at the estate.”
Oh, right. Quinn had been out cold on the living room sofa that day. No wonder his face rang a bell.
“Dizzy or nauseous?”
“I’m all right.”
Quinn gently probed around the cut with gloved fingers.
Beth flinched.
“Sorry.” The doctor shined a penlight into her eyes. “Jack said you were unconscious for at least five to ten minutes. Have you had any concussions in the past few years?”
“Yeah, a couple.”
“A couple? How long ago?” The doctor’s face revealed nothing as he continued to examine her.
“About a year and a half. I was in a car accident.” Beth shifted uncomfortably on the table. Lying took a lot more energy than she had at the moment.
“That accounts for one.”
“I fell down the stairs last year.”
Quinn moved his hands down to her stomach and lifted her shirt a few inches. As he gently pushed on her ribs around a darkening bruise, he zeroed in on the thick line of scar tissue that ran across her rib cage. “How did you get that?”
“In the car accident.”
Quinn’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t ask about it again. Which was a good thing, because she was way too damned tired to spin a believable story. She swallowed the lump in her throat and shifted her eyes away from Quinn’s, counting the tiles in the exam room ceiling.
“OK. X-rays first, stitches second. Then we’ll talk again.”
Beth opened her mouth to protest but he’d disappeared.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Richard Baker crossed the thick grass and approached his father. The former senator, Stafford Baker, leaned on the fence, watching a broodmare and her foal in the early twilight. The mare’s elegant lines were indicative of careful breeding. Her colt’s parentage was evident already in the slope of his shoulder and prance in his step. This baby would be a fine addition to their racing stock.
Stafford glanced sideways at him. “Johnson has a lead on Elizabeth’s whereabouts.”
Richard rested his forearms on the rail and bit his tongue for a few seconds, not wanting to reveal his excitement at the news.
“I’m sorry I talked you into marrying her.” Stafford placed a hand on his shoulder. The apology was a surprise. His father didn’t often admit to making mistakes. “But you needed a wife to get elected. People were starting to talk, linking your name to celebrities, whores—and worse.”
Richard nodded. If his father only knew. A few celebrity scandals were nothing compared to the truth.
Stafford removed his hand and thumped a tightly clenched fist on the top fence rail. “I thought Elizabeth would be easy to control, but I misjudged her.”
“We both did.” Richard had learned all about keeping women in their place from dear old Dad. Elizabeth had seemed so vulnerable. Grieving widow, no family, young children to provide excellent leverage if necessary. He’d assumed she’d be malleable. Her backbone had been an unpleasant surprise.
The bay mare approached. He patted the big animal’s neck, and then scratched the colt behind the ears when it stuck its bony head through the fence rails to nibble on his trousers.
“Where is she?” Richard kept his eyes on the horse, barely containing the thrill that coursed through his blood. The urge to hurt his wife grew with every beat of his heart, flowing through his veins, fueling his dark desire the way gasoline powered an engine. It was all he could think about since he’d made the decision to do the deed himself.
“Westbury, Pennsylvania. It’s just past the Poconos. My men had already narrowed it down to there or one other Podunk town, but when someone made a call to James Dieter’s number from a pay phone in Westbury, that clinched it. We have photo confirmation.” His father turned toward him. “You need to let Johnson handle this. It’s his job. We keep people like him on the payroll for a reason.”
Richard met his father’s hard stare. The old man’s eyes were the same bluish gray as a shark’s and just as cold. “I’ll take care of Elizabeth. Your men have already failed several times. I have another situation t
hat requires Johnson’s expertise.”
The vein in his father’s temple throbbed just once before he responded. “I’ll have Johnson contact you. He’ll take care of whatever you need.” Stafford turned back to the horses.
Did he suspect? Richard often wondered. Good old Dad would never ask for the details of his only son’s transgressions. The Bakers came from a long line of powerful men. Their wealth and sphere of political influence swelled with each generation. Their appetites were insatiable; their need for control, absolute. In such an atmosphere, it was just as easy to be tainted from within the family as from the outside. Keeping one’s hands clean could be a chore.
Stafford’s jaw tightened. “I assure you that Johnson is more than capable of multitasking. This time I’ll make sure he does the job himself. No subcontracting. There can be no question that her death is anything other than a tragic accident. The wheels are already in motion. You stay in Washington, far away from Elizabeth.”
Richard almost always followed his father’s advice, but this time, well, that just wasn’t going to happen. His father’s employee needed to dispense with the blackmailer first. Richard would make that clear, and he’d provide a little extra incentive for Johnson to back off Elizabeth. Stafford might be the head of the family right now, but Richard was the future. Johnson would shift his allegiance. No question.
His calendar was full for the next few days with appearances he couldn’t get out of without attracting attention, but after that Richard would arrange a few days off to relax at his Philadelphia home, which happened to be just ninety minutes from the Poconos—and his lovely wife.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jack shifted in the hard seat. His shoulders extended far beyond the back of the chair, and the curved plastic dug into his back. He didn’t want to move, though. Katie slept against his shoulder. Ben slumped in the chair on Jack’s other side. Given the awkward tilt of Ben’s head, the boy would have a stiff neck later.
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