by Sandra Brown
“I don’t have a choice.” He looked her over carefully. “You seem to have come through it without any noticeable damage.”
“Yes, most of my scratches—”
“I wasn’t referring to Sunday. I was talking about the time you’ve spent with John.”
Although she wasn’t sure whether he’d meant that as a joke, she treated it as one. “Granted. He can be a real pain in the butt.”
But The Major was no longer looking at her. He was looking at Trapper. “Back to my original question, what have you been up to?”
“What do you know about Thomas Wilcox?”
Kerra hadn’t expected Trapper to bring up Wilcox so soon, and The Major seemed as struck by his blunt question as she. His eyebrows drew together above the bridge of his nose. “Dallas real estate? That Thomas Wilcox?”
“Do you know him?”
“I met him once. He attended a banquet where I delivered the after-dinner speech. He came up afterward and introduced himself.”
“Hmm. That’s interesting.”
“Why?”
“How’d he act?”
“Act? As I recall, he was very pleasant.”
“Did he mention the Pegasus?”
“Only in the context of complimenting me on my talk.” The Major looked over at Kerra before going back to Trapper. “Why bring him up?”
“You ever hear any dirt on him?”
“No. But he and I hardly run in the same circles.”
“Shady business practices? Winner take all? Hear anything like that?”
“I wouldn’t have had occasion to.”
“Did you know he coveted the plot of ground under the Pegasus Hotel?”
Kerra watched The Major’s expression grow increasingly stern as he began to grasp Trapper’s meaning. “What are you driving at, John?”
“Go back a year or two before the bombing and scan through the business sections of the Dallas Morning News. It’s well documented how Wilcox tried like hell to acquire that property. No dice. Oil company didn’t want to sell.” He paused before adding, “But Wilcox wound up with it after all.”
The Major stared at his son for a moment, then put his middle finger and thumb to his eye sockets in a manner that reminded Kerra of Trapper when he was forced to think about something he’d rather not.
“Three years ago,” The Major said, “when you came to me with your theory of a mastermind behind the bombing, you refused to give me a name. Please don’t tell me that Thomas Wilcox, a millionaire—”
“A millionaire many times over. Partially because of the hotel and entertainment complex in the heart of downtown that he developed on the tract where the Pegasus had been.”
“You think Thomas Wilcox instigated the bombing?”
“Let’s just say he had his nerve even attending a banquet where a survivor of it was speaking, much less coming up to you afterward and being pleasant and complimentary.”
The Major shook his head sorrowfully. “If this is the speculation you took to the ATF, it’s no wonder they fired you.”
Had The Major slapped him, Trapper’s hardened expression couldn’t have been more telling. He turned on his heel and headed for the door. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
The Major tried to call him back. “John.”
“Eat your applesauce,” Trapper said over his shoulder, “you’ll be out of here in no time.”
“Damn it, come back. I apologize.”
Trapper stopped and turned around but stayed where he was.
The Major made a placating gesture. “What I said was uncalled for.”
Unmoved, Trapper said, “But what? You think I’m delusional?”
“No, I think you’re pigheaded and can’t stand to leave anything alone. You want answers about the Pegasus and—”
“I got answers. Everybody got answers. The problem with those answers is that they’re crap.”
“And you can prove that? I asked you three years ago if you had proof that the one who confessed was acting on someone else’s orders. You admitted then that you didn’t have enough. Do you now?”
“Working on it.”
“Working on it,” The Major repeated in a woeful mutter. “For how long, John? At what point will you give this up and take on a life?”
“I had given it up. Then you went back on TV and got yourself shot.”
The Major sighed and said quietly, “Glenn has a suspect in custody for Sunday night’s attack.”
“Hate to spoil your news flash, but I already know that.”
“Well? This man Duncan is far too young to have had any connection to the Pegasus. Meaning that it and Sunday night’s episode are unrelated. He and his buddy, whose identity is yet unknown, probably heard about my gun collection and came to the house to rob me.”
Trapper scoffed. “If it eases your mind, stick with that. But you know in your gut that’s not the case. This all goes back to the Pegasus.”
“All right, for the sake of argument, let’s say it does. The character that Glenn described to me isn’t a fifty-something bigwig millionaire.”
“I’m not saying that Wilcox himself was sneaking around your house.”
His frustration mounting, The Major looked up at Kerra, who had remained silent throughout their contentious exchange. Looking at it from The Major’s standpoint, without knowing what had occurred with Wilcox in Trapper’s office, without knowing about Berkley Johnson or the factory fire that had initiated Trapper’s covert investigation, the allegations against a wealthy and influential man would appear completely irrational.
“You’re a smart young woman, Kerra,” he said. “You deal in facts. Truth. Are you buying into this cockamamie theory?”
She looked across at Trapper before answering. “I went to Trapper’s office as a total stranger. I caught him…not in prime form. I showed him the photograph that has been seen by millions of people over the course of two and a half decades. In a matter of hours, he puzzled it through and figured out who I was. So, Major, in answer to your question, I think his pigheadedness works for, not against him, and I wouldn’t dismiss any of his theories as being cockamamie.”
Kerra came out of the bathroom to find Trapper just as he’d been when she’d gone in.
He was lying on his back on the bed nearest the door, but he didn’t look relaxed. His body was as taut as a piano wire. His jaw was locked and barely moved when he said, “I didn’t need you to defend me.”
“Well, at least now I know why you’re angry and have barely spoken to me since we left the hospital.”
“Don’t come to my rescue, Kerra. With anybody, but especially not him. I didn’t need—”
“I heard you the first time.”
After leaving the hospital, he’d checked them into a motel—not the same one they’d stayed in before. She’d remained in the car but witnessed his transaction with the clerk through the dusty glass windows of the office. Trapper had paid with cash. The registration process was conducted with such efficiency and detachment by the attendant that, when Trapper returned to the car, she’d asked if he’d bribed the man to see nothing, hear nothing, remember nothing.
“Not necessary. He caters to a clientele desiring anonymity and privacy. For twenty minutes at a time.” That was followed by a snide “But you can relax. The room’s got two beds.”
Almost as soon as they had cleared the door to the room, he’d shed his coat, pulled off his boots, and flopped down onto the bed, all without acknowledging her. She’d gone into the bathroom, taking with her the bag she’d brought from her condo, having stuffed into it a couple changes of clothes, a t-shirt and pajama pants, and some toiletries. She’d cleaned her face, brushed her teeth, and swapped the tight jeans for the much roomier and more comfortable PJs.
Now, after their brief but antagonistic exchange, she pulled back the covers on the second bed. The sheets were dingy, but they smelled of laundry detergent, which was reassuring. She climbed in, rolled onto her side,
and looked across the narrow space separating the beds.
She defied his dark mood by saying, “She still loves you.”
He didn’t move, except for his jaw, which clenched tighter.
“Marianne. She still loves you.”
He punched his pillow and resituated it beneath his head, mumbling, “She’s where she belongs.”
“Yes, and she knows that. But—”
“But nothing. Hearth and home were what she wanted.”
“She has that with David. All the same, she still loves you. I could see it in her eyes.”
“Affection. Sentimental fondness. That’s what you saw. Like I feel for her. I want Marianne to be happy. She feels the same toward me. But don’t read more into it than that. Now go to sleep.” He reached up and snapped off the lamp on the nightstand between the beds.
Several moments passed, then Kerra said into the darkness, “Why do men avoid conversations like this?”
“Because they’re pointless.”
“What did you think of him?”
“Who?”
“You know who, Trapper. Marianne’s husband.”
“A prince among men.”
“Who is resentful of you. What if he tells someone about the mysterious package you mailed to yourself?”
“He won’t.”
“You’re that sure of him?”
“No, I’m that sure of Marianne. She knew that envelope had come from me. She knew if I’d gone to those lengths, it was no trivial matter. Despite her sweet demeanor, she was a federal agent, don’t forget. She’ll impress on her husband how important that package was and then tell him to erase it from memory. As far as he’s concerned, we were never there.”
“You’re probably right. He wouldn’t place her in jeopardy. He seemed very protective. He loves her.”
Trapper mumbled something.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
He exhaled with annoyance. “He does love her, that was plain. But I’ll tell you something. In his position, if my wife’s former lover showed up at my house, a man I knew had caused her to lose her job, lose her baby, and had left her with a broken heart, I’d have flattened him as soon as I saw him, warned him not to even think about putting his hands on her, and then I’d’ve ripped his goddamn head off.
“Which is why Marianne is where she belongs, with a nice man who controls his primal impulses, instead of with a nightmare like me who’s on a destructive path and a hazard to everybody around him, and that brings us right back to where we started, which is why I said that conversations like this are pointless.”
His alpha male outburst caused an excited hitch in her breathing. “Maybe if Marianne had known you felt that possessive of her—”
“I didn’t. Wasn’t her I was thinking about.”
She sensed the sudden motion, and then he was there, on his knees straddling her, pulling her into a sitting position. He took a fistful of hair at the back of her head and held it in place while he kissed her with unleashed hunger. His lips slanted across hers. He thrust his tongue into her mouth with insistence.
But then it gentled and moved slowly in and out between her lips with gliding strokes. When he finally broke away, she was left panting for breath and trying to balance. Her heart was pumping fast, but her bones seemed to have liquefied.
“I want to take you like that,” he whispered as he dragged his open mouth down her neck to her collarbone, then lowered his head and rubbed his face against her breasts.
“I haven’t forgotten how you feel inside. I want to be there. In you deep.” His voice was rough and low, his lips aggressive against her raised nipple under her t-shirt. “It may never happen, but the mere thought of any other man being on you, in you…I’d want to kill him.”
He pressed his face against her, breathing hard and hot. Then he came up straight and, clasping her face between his hands, stamped a kiss on her lips. “Now go to sleep.”
Chapter 23
Glenn looked down with distaste at The Major’s hospital breakfast. “I wouldn’t want to eat it, either.”
“I’ll choke it down only because I want to get my strength back.”
“You’ve had a shock to your system. Most bet good money you’d never recover. You’ve beaten the odds so far. Don’t rush it.”
The Major smiled. “That’s exactly what Kerra advised.”
“Kerra advised? When was this?”
“Sometime in the wee hours. She and John sneaked in.”
“They did, huh?” The sheriff propped one buttock on the end corner of the bed and recounted for his friend the telephone conversation he’d had with Trapper the night before. “He was coming back because he’d heard about our suspect. He didn’t say outright that Kerra was with him, but he promised to produce her this morning. Bright and early.” He arched an eyebrow.
The Major took his meaning. “They’re sleeping together.”
“You know John.”
“All too well.”
“They got off to a rocky start,” Glenn told him. “Trapper was mad as hell at her over the earring business, but late that evening, when I went looking for him to tell him you’d regained consciousness, I interrupted a tender moment in her motel room.”
“Back up, Glenn. What earring business?”
“I keep forgetting how much drama you missed that first couple of days.” Glenn told him about Kerra’s missing shoulder bag and the reappearance of one earring. “Though it seems highly unlikely Trapper discovered it under her hospital bed. If her bag didn’t make it to that room, how’d her earring get there?”
“John lied to you?”
“Also to a pair of Texas Rangers.”
“Why would he have taken Kerra’s bag? And when?”
“All of the above remains a mystery. But looks to me like Kerra believed his explanation, no matter how improbable, and he forgave her for suspecting him.”
“Suspecting him of what? Why was he talking to Texas Rangers?”
The sheriff scratched his eyebrow with his thumbnail. “Don’t make me play the tattletale on the boy.”
“He’s not a boy. He’s a man.”
Ill at ease, Glenn fiddled with the leather hatband around his Stetson. “From the get-go Trapper’s been poking into the investigation, hovering around Kerra, wanting to know what she saw, who she saw, if she saw anything. I called him on it, but…”
“He responded to correction in his customary fashion.”
“Basically. But his interest in what happened out at your place drew attention. It seemed more intense than a family member’s wish to catch the bad guys who shot their kin. After the earring thing, the Rangers were ready to put him in lockup and hold him as a possible suspect.”
“For shooting me?”
“I told the Rangers it was horseshit. But, let’s face it, in view of your falling out, which everybody is aware of, he had to be given a hard look.”
“John would never have done it.”
“What I told the Rangers, and I don’t think they really suspected him so much as they disliked his smart-aleck attitude. Anyhow, we had nothing to justify holding him. His alibi for Sunday night checked out. Since then, though, he hasn’t curried any favor by running away with our material witness and keeping her under wraps.
“So either he and Kerra are screwing like bunnies and barely coming up for air, or he’s keeping her in his hip pocket for some other reason, and, knowing Trapper as I do, I’m scared even to speculate on what that might be.”
As he listened to all this, The Major’s features had become increasingly knit with worry and indecision. He asked Glenn to close the door.
Glenn did as requested, then returned to his perch at the foot of the bed. “This looks and feels serious.”
“It is,” The Major said. “I’m afraid John is creating a dreadful situation for himself.”
“What kind of situation? With Kerra?”
“No, this ha
s nothing to do with her, except that he’s drawn her into it.”
He stopped with that, but it was clear to Glenn that his friend was still wrestling with indecision, so he kept quiet and gave him time to collect and arrange his thoughts. Then The Major began to talk and did so in a steady stream without interruption. It was ten minutes before he finished, and by then he was spent, his respiration wheezy.
Glenn ran his palm across his forehead, unsurprised to find that it had turned damp. “Jesus. It’s almost too much to take in.”
“You only just heard it. In three years, I haven’t taken it all in.”
“Well, now I know how the rift between you and Trapper came about. Did he ever hand over Debra’s diary?”
“No. But there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have used it against me if I’d taken that book deal. He didn’t want me out there talking about the bombing.”
“For your own protection.”
“That’s what he believed and still does. I was hoping that he had let go of it while the rest of his life was going down the drain. Then Sunday night got him all fired up again. He’s more certain than ever.”
“That this Thomas Wilcox was behind the Pegasus?”
The Major nodded.
“And that now, twenty-five years later, he made an attempt on your life?”
“Because of Kerra’s unexpected emergence and what the two of us might recall during the rehashing of the experience we shared. I know it sounds outlandish. But John is…is…John.”
Seeking to reassure his old friend, Glenn addressed him by his real name. “Frank, listen to me. Trapper is as sly as a fox, impulsive, cocky as hell. About half the time, I’d like to whack him up alongside the head. The other half of the time, I wish my own son were more like him.
“But for all his brass, Trapper is also one damn good detective. He has an instinct for it that, honestly, I envy. What I’m getting to is, he wouldn’t base a hunch on an influential millionaire unless he had something on the guy.”
“He did tell me one thing. After the Pegasus was bombed, Wilcox acquired the site. He’d been coveting it for years.”