Devil's Cut

by J. R. Ward

  Mr. Harman whipped off his cap. "I didn't vote fer ya."

  "That's okay. A lot of people 'round here didn't."

  "It true you're from Daniel Boone's people?"

  "Yessir."

  "Might have something in common, then."

  "How 'bout we find out by talking sometime?"

  As Sutton looked back and forth between the two men, she found herself liking Dagney even more. Here he was, one of the richest and most powerful men in the state, and you would never have known it.

  "Yup, you can come back," Mr. Harman pronounced. "But only with Miss Sutton. The wife don't like outsiders."

  "Aggie likes me," Sutton offered.

  "You ain't no outsider." Mr. Harman slapped his cap back on and nodded like that was that. "You know where t' find us. Safe travels."

  The man left with the same lack of fuss with which he'd arrived, taking off into the wilderness on his ATV, disappearing down the mountain trail.

  Dagney glanced over. "I'm pretty sure he would have shot me if I'd slept in your cabin, whether or not anything happened."

  Sutton nodded. "Mr. Harman is very old-fashioned--and also good with a gun."

  Dagney lifted the sack. "We'll eat this on the way home."

  "Oh, listen, we don't have to leave. It's a long drive--"

  "Who said we're driving?" Dagney whistled and the pair of state policemen who were his guard jumped out from behind the cabin. "Boys, we'll be getting Ms. Smythe back to town now. Call ahead and tell them to have the 'copter at Southfork Regional. We'll intercept in thirty minutes."

  "Roger that, Governor."

  "Thank you, boys."

  As Dagney turned back around, Sutton shook her head. "You don't have to do this."

  "Hey, if you can't impress a girl with the perks of the office, what good are they? Besides, I've got about fifteen people in Charlemont who have wanted to meet with me for the last two weeks. I'll line up the meetings on the way so this is official business."

  "I'm not sure what to say. Other than it's really not necessary."

  Dagney tilted in and spoke like he was sharing a secret. "I think you came out here to escape and it didn't work. You keep staring out at those hills like you're trying to convince yourself you did the right thing, and sometimes, it's better and more efficient to just give in and do what you have to do."

  "What if it's the wrong thing, though?"

  "When was the last time that you steered yourself off course listening to your heart? And don't worry that it will hurt my feelings. I've been through much worse and I'm still standing. Besides, I had a great time driving out here with you last night and the stargazing was phenomenal. How many meteors did we see? Twenty? Twenty-five?"

  Damn it, Sutton thought as he waited for her inevitable capitulation. Why could she not be in love with this man?

  --

  Back at Easterly, Lizzie left her and Lane's suite and headed for the staff staircase in the rear of the mansion. As she went along, she checked to make sure her black shift dress was in the right place on her shoulders. The Talbots number was nothing she would ordinarily wear or own--when she was on the job as the Bradford family's horticulturist and landscape designer, she was in her uniform of khakis and a polo with the estate's crest on it. Outside of work? Blue jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers were just fine.

  You needed a funeral dress, though, or you weren't a grown-up, and she'd gotten this one in a consignment shop in the little town by her farm in Indiana. Heaven only knew how it had found its way onto that rack filled with colorful castoffs, but for twenty bucks, she had plugged a major hole in her wardrobe and was totally willing to overlook that the thing was a little tight on top.

  As she went down the hall, she made mental notes about vacuuming, dusting, and--

  The wave of nausea tackled her from behind, sneaking up from out of nowhere and sending the world on a wonky-spin that had her throwing out a hand to catch herself.

  With a frantic glance over her shoulder, she thought, Nope, not going to make it back to their room.

  Rushing forward, she threw open the first door she came to, plowed across a vacant guest room, and beelined right into a peach marble bathroom.

  She hit the floor so hard, she bruised her knees, and then she nearly caught her chin as she popped the toilet lid open and gave in to the dry heaves.

  Nothing came up. Which made sense because the last time she'd eaten had been at dinner the previous night. Or wait...she had felt ill then, too. Had it been lunch? At the hospital?

  As she sat back and sagged into the cool wall, she thought, Great. The stomach flu.

  Just what she needed right now. She had to leave with Lane for the cemetery in, like, ten minutes, and she wasn't sure how she was going to make it down to the car, much less through whatever ceremony--or non-ceremony--was going to happen relative to his father's ashes.

  Taking a deep breath, she lifted her head, looked around--and cursed.

  "Oh, come on..."

  Of all the bedroom suites she could have chosen? Really? Chantal's?

  Lane's soon-to-be ex-wife's previous crib was the last place she wanted to revisit. And okay, yeah, sure, fine, there were so many no-longer-a-part-of-their-lives in that preamble that she really shouldn't have cared one way or the other. In the wake of that woman's departure from the household, this fancy'd-up repository for plumbing was no different than the other fifteen or twenty loos in the mansion: elegant, well appointed, and--as with most now--vacant.

  But Lizzie really didn't like to think of Lane's impending divorce. Or that hateful female.

  As she waited to see if her stomach was going to cramp up again, she thought about all the effort she and Lane had put into moving Chantal's things out--while the woman had stood on the sidelines flapping her arms and stamping her feet. Clearly, it had been one of the first consequential learning experiences of a very privileged life.

  Cheat on your husband with his father + Get yourself pregnant = Eviction

  The math was quite simple.

  Putting her knees up, Lizzie balanced her arms on them and let her fingers dangle. Breathing slowly and evenly, she tried to reason with what was going on underneath her diaphragm. And what do you know, memories of all of Chantal's bullcrap were soooooo helpful.

  That elegant blond woman with her Virginia pedigree and her wedding-ring entitlement was both the reason Lane and Lizzie had broken up two years ago--and why they'd ended up back together.

  Well, actually, it had been two breakups and two reconnections, Lizzie supposed--but certainly most, if not all, of the ugliness between them had been because of Chantal. Which was what ensued when a wife falsely accused a husband who wasn't in love with her of domestic violence. While pregnant with his own half brother or sister.

  It was something out of an old episode of Dynasty. Except they were actually living it.

  And yet Lizzie couldn't hate the woman. She knew what had happened behind closed doors between Chantal and William Baldwine. She'd seen the shattered makeup table in here, the blood on the vanity, the aftermath of the real violence that had gone down--and thus proved that wealth and social standing didn't guarantee you safety and security.

  Or love.

  All things considered, it had only been a matter of time before someone killed Lane's father. It was just too bad that Edward had had to be the hero, once again.

  "So what's it going to be?" she said as she stared down at her midsection. "Are we done here?"

  She gave things another couple of minutes to percolate; then she got to her feet and washed her face off with cold water. Cleaned her mouth out. Waited a little longer.

  As she looked at herself in the mirror, the reflection that stared back at her was a washed-out version of her normal appearance, her skin sallow, dark bags under her eyes, a faint green line around her mouth.

  Rearranging the top of the dress again, she thought about Chantal's wardrobe. The woman would never have gone the consignment route--or put any
thing from Talbot's on her perfectly proportioned body. She had been Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, all the way.

  And only the current seasons, of course.

  On Lizzie's side? Jeez, before she had worked here, she couldn't have named those designers, much less recognized their work. And even now, after a decade of rubbing shoulders with the likes of the Bradfords' kind of money--or what they'd used to have, at least? She really didn't care.

  Rich people had a way of inventing stress for themselves, and what was considered fashionable or not was exactly the kind of self-engineered, arbitrary obsolescence that gave them a bad name.

  Now, ask Lizzie about the different sorts of flowering plants in the Aquifoliaceae family? The perfect time to plant new trees? What kind of sun hydrangea needed? On it. Then again, that's what you focused on when you'd gotten your master's in landscape architecture at Cornell. As opposed to your Mrs. from some rich guy.

  Chantal and she were polar opposites. And although Lizzie didn't like to be arrogant, she could totally understand why Lane had made the choice he had.

  Turning away, she walked through the suite, taking note that it, too, needed a vacuum job and a dusting. She would take care of that later, along with the rest of this wing. With all the staff let go, except for her and Greta in house, and Gary McAdams and Timbo on the grounds crew, Easterly was definitely a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-'er-done situation.

  Plus, she was stressed with everything Lane was dealing with and there was no better remedy for that than making tidy little Dyson tracks in rugs.

  Unless you were mowing a lawn, of course. And Gary was getting used to letting her do that, too.

  Back out in the corridor, she was almost at the back stairs, when Lane came up them.

  "There you are." His worried eyes went over her as if he were looking for signs of an internal injury or a worrisome rash. "Are you okay?"

  "Just fine." She smiled and wished there was time to brush her teeth. "I'm ready to--oh, shoot, my purse. Hang on--"

  "I've got it." He held the simple clutch up. "And I've brought the car around in front. Gin and Amelia are coming with us. Max is on his own--if he goes at all."

  "Great."

  As she came up to him and got her purse, she took a moment to enjoy the view. Lane was a classically handsome man, with thick, old-school Hugh Grant hair that cowlicked on one side, a jaw that was strong but not hard, and eyes that were nearly impossible to look away from. He was wearing a dark blue suit and an open-collar white shirt, and she knew the disrespect was intentional. Where Lane came from? One only ever wore black and a full tie to anything that resembled a funeral. What he had on now was more for lunch at the club.

  It was a screaming f-you to his father's memory.

  Indeed, his tribe had a lot of rules. And didn't that make the fact that he loved her loud and proud a testament to how much he valued her over the elitist way he'd grown up.

  Lizzie was well aware that people in town thought he was just with "the gardener."

  As if there were something wrong with getting your hands dirty for a living.

  Fortunately, she didn't care what they thought any more than he did.

  Putting her hands on his shoulders, she looked up into that blue stare she loved so much. "We're going to get through this. We're going to shove that urn where the sun don't shine and afterward, we'll visit Miss Aurora at the hospital and hope for some good news, 'kay? That is our plan."

  His lids closed briefly. "I love you so much."

  "We can do this. I'm right by your side."

  Lane wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly to his body. Everything about him, from the way he fit against her, to the scent of his aftershave, to the tickle of his still-damp hair on her cheek, grounded her.

  "Let's go," she said as she took his hand.

  Walking down to the kitchen and then proceeding out to the front of the house together, she managed to discreetly take a piece of Wrigley's out of her purse and pop the gum in her mouth. What a relief. The mint taste not only cured her dry mouth, but it seemed to settle her stomach a bit.

  When she and Lane stepped out of Easterly's broad front door, she paused to appreciate the landscape down the hill to the river. The green descent to the shimmering stripe of water was the kind of thing you saw on the cover of a coffee-table book about how beautiful America was.

  Annnnnd then there was the "car."

  The Bradfords had a Phantom Drophead, and not an old one, either. Then again, how could they not have at least one Rolls-Royce while living in a place like Easterly? Today the top was up, and as Lane went ahead and opened the passenger side for her, Lizzie looked inside at the mother and daughter pair who were in the backseat.

  Suicide doors were good like that, providing a completely unobstructed view.

  Gin was dressed in peach and she lifted a graceful hand with a huge diamond on it in greeting. Amelia was in skinny jeans and a red and black silk top that, yup, was Chanel, going by its double-C buttons--and the girl didn't seem to notice anything, her attention riveted on the iPhone in her hands.

  Lizzie almost didn't accept the palm Lane held out for her, because she was used to getting in and out of such non-dangerous, non-moving, non-threatening things as--gasp!--cars, by herself. But she knew the gesture was both reflexive and yet important to him, a way for him to show her that he was thinking about her and taking care of her.

  As she settled in and clicked her seat belt, she glanced back at Gin.

  "Isn't Richard coming?"

  "Why would he?"

  Back before the two of them had made their peace, Gin's quick retort would have been a jab at Lizzie designed to make sure she knew her place as a staff member. Now, it was a total dismissal of the woman's husband--and though it was sad to consider such a thing an improvement, Lizzie had learned well before she had come into the lives of the Bradfords that she had to take good news where she could find it.

  Amelia glanced up. "I'm glad he's not here. He's not family."

  Lizzie cleared her throat. "So...ah, what's on your phone?"

  The sixteen-year-old swung the screen around. "Dymonds. It's like Candy Crush, but better. Everyone plays it."

  "Oh. Cool."

  As the girl refocused, Lizzie turned back to the windshield and felt as though she were eighty years old. Make that a hundred and eight.

  Lane slid behind the wheel, and Gin spoke up. "This is just us at the cemetery, right?"

  "And Max."

  "He's coming?"

  "Maybe." Lane pushed a button to start the car and put them in gear. "I hope so."

  "I don't understand why we can't just empty that urn on the side of the road. Preferably in a ditch or over a dead skunk."

  "That argument is not without merit," Lane muttered as he reached out and squeezed Lizzie's hand. "And I'm taking the staff road out. I don't want the reporters down at the front gates to see us."

  "Vultures."

  Lizzie had to agree. The news crews had set up camp around the main entrance to the estate days ago, their trucks and equipment crowding River Road and nearly eclipsing the great stone pillars of the Bradford estate.

  Harpies. All of them. Just waiting to take pictures through car windows that they would curate to fit their headlines, regardless of the actual context around the snapshot: If Lane looked down to adjust the air control on the car's console, that head tilt and expression could be paired with Bradfords Lose Everything!; a hand raised to scratch a nose would suddenly represent Lane Baldwine Cracking Under Pressure!; the twitch of a mouth and shift of a gaze sideways would be used to punctuate Unrepentant in Bankruptcy!

  To think there had been a time when she had trusted the press. Hah. There was nothing like being on the inside of a scandal to learn just exactly how much of the news cycle was engineered to get viewers, clicks, and comments. As opposed to report the facts.

  Walter Cronkite turned in for Ryan Seacrest.

  The trouble was, the Bradford fal
l from grace was clickbait, big-time. People just loved to see the rich tumble from their lofty heights.

  It was better than any success story.

  Cave Dale Cemetery was the only place in Charlemont that a Bradford would ever be buried--and even then, they were not put into the ground like commoners but rather locked in a marble temple that, as Lane's grandfather had always said, was only a vestal virgin and an animal sacrifice away from securing the fortunes of Rome.

  As Lane drove down the outside of the cemetery's wrought-iron, Addams Family fencing, he looked through the bars to the countless grave markers, religious statuary, and family crypts that hodgepodge'd around the rolling grass, specimen trees, and pools. How the hell was he going to find where his ancestors were kept? Once you were inside all those acres, in that maze of winding lanes, everything looked the same.

  But first, an immediate problem.

  As he rounded the corner to the entrance, there were reporters...everywhere. With cameras. And news crews.

  Damn it, he should have known--

  "Are those...more news trucks?" Lizzie said as she sat forward in her seat.

  Sure as bourbon burned the gut, there was yet another encampment of paparazzi around the great stone-and-iron pillars of the cemetery--and with the Phantom Drophead being about as inconspicuous as a Macy's Thanksgiving Day float in May, there was a flurry of activity at its approach, cameras flashing even though at eleven a.m. there was plenty of light.

  Great. So he had two choices. Pump the brakes and give them a fishbowl into the car.

  Or he could just plow through the bastards.

  Not really much to deliberate, was there.

  "Duck your heads," Lane barked as he hit the gas.

  The Rolls-Royce surged forward and he wrenched the wheel, piloting that heavy bank-vault front grille with its Spirit of Ecstasy on a path directly into the throng that was blocking the way in.

  "You're going to hurt someone!" Lizzie yelled as she braced herself.

  "Mow them down!" his sister called out from the back.

  Meanwhile, the men and women with the cameras just kept snapping away, ignoring the whole E=mc2 thing.

  Gripping the steering wheel, he hollered, "Get the fuck back!"

  As security guards came rushing out of the guardhouse, he did indeed strike someone, the guy with the Nikon bouncing off the hood, while somebody else kicked at the bumper and all kinds of people cursed and threatened to sue.