Wild Justice

by Joanna Mansell

  All the same, she didn't have much choice. The sun was growing hazy as a faint mist began to gather over the mountains, and there was a definite chill in the air now. Wrapping her arms around herself, she very slowly retraced her steps up the path and then through the entrance to Glenveil.

  Jared was no longer in the drawing-room, which was a relief. She chucked a couple more logs on to the fire, and then huddled over its warmth as the temperature outside began to plummet. She could feel the cold rising up from the stone-flagged floor, with nothing except a couple of small, scattered rugs to stop it. Cassandra grunted in annoyance. Hadn't Jared Sinclair ever heard of carpets? He seemed determined to live in as much physical discomfort as possible.

  She had to cook her own meal that evening, because there was still no sign of Jared. Once or twice, though, she could hear the faint sound of coughing coming from upstairs, so she knew he was still in the house. Perhaps his cold had got worse, and he had taken himself off to bed. She didn't really care enough to go up and find out. After she had eaten, she found herself a book from the surprisingly wide selection in one of the smaller side-rooms. Then she curled up in the chair, in front of the fire, trying to keep warm as she rather half-heartedly began to read.

  The house seemed very silent. Apart from the occasional creaking of ancient woodwork, and the spitting and crackling of the logs on the fire, there wasn't a sound. After a while, it started to get on Cassandra's nerves. Irritably, she flung her book down and got to her feet.

  'To hell with this!' she muttered. 'I might as well go to bed.'

  Like last night, her room felt freezing. She undressed and scuttled into bed in record time, and then curled up in a small ball, trying to get warm.

  'An Eskimo would feel right at home here,' she mumbled to herself. Then she closed her eyes very tight, determined to get to sleep despite her frozen hands and feet, and the deeper chill that lay somewhere inside of her.

  Rather to her surprise, she succeeded. When she next opened her eyes, the room was still dark, but she had the feeling that she had been asleep for several hours. Then she wriggled rather uncomfortably. She needed to go to the bathroom. She was just about to get out of bed when she realised there was every possibility she was locked in, as she had been last night. Her face gathered into a furious frown. It would be the absolute end if she had to hammer on the door and yell for Jared to come and let her out!

  When she tried the door, though, she was surprised to find it opened straight away. Had he forgotten to lock it? Or had he decided he could trust her? Cassandra's eyes gleamed. If he thought that, then he was in for one or two shocks over the next couple of days!

  She hurried along to the bathroom, and on the way back realised she could hear the sound of a persistent fit of coughing echoing through the house. It seemed to be coming from behind a door that stood slightly ajar. For a few moments, she stood and looked at it. Should she go in? See if he was all right?

  No, definitely not, she decided. Jared Sinclair didn't deserve any sympathy or attention. In fact, she hoped he felt thoroughly lousy.

  She was just about to continue on her way back to her bedroom when another thought suddenly struck her. If he had felt so ill that he had forgotten to lock her door, perhaps this was something she could take advantage of.

  Very alert now, she silently walked back to the door that was slightly open. Carefully, she pushed it a few more inches, so she could see right into the room.

  A small lamp was still switched on, giving off enough light for her to see the bed fairly clearly. And what she saw made her heart suddenly leap.

  Jared's eyes were open, but they gave the impression of being completely unfocused. And where his face had been very pale the previous afternoon, it was now touched with a high, unnatural colour.

  Cassandra came further into the room, and then looked down at him with some satisfaction.

  'Well, Mr Jared Sinclair,' she said softly. 'Somehow, I don't think you're much of a threat to me any more.'

  The sound of her voice seemed to dimly register, because Jared turned his head towards her. It was odd to see those silver eyes so glazed. She was used to seeing them either cold and mocking, or deliberately unemotional. Now, they gave the impression of being strangely helpless, and for a moment something twisted a little painfully inside Cassandra. Then she lifted her shoulders and her gaze hardened. Oh, no, she wasn't going to let him get to her!

  From the speed with which he had succumbed to this illness, she guessed it wasn't just a cold, but the flu. Probably one of the fairly virulent forty-eight-hour varieties. In a couple of days, he would be feeling weak, but fine again. But, by then, she wouldn't be around.

  'Now, where have you put those car keys?' she said thoughtfully.

  Jared was still staring at her, but he didn't seem to be making much sense of what she was saying. He muttered something in a hoarse voice, but it was just a slurred mumble and Cassandra ignored it.

  She glanced around, and saw his clothes lying in an untidy heap on the floor. He had obviously felt too bad to do anything except drag them off and crawl into bed.

  'Do you still keep your car keys in your pocket, Mr Sinclair?' asked Cassandra with a bright smile, almost beginning to enjoy herself. As she reached for the leather jacket, something appeared to click inside Jared's head and he made an attempt to sit up. The effort was obviously too much for him, though. With a fierce growl, he fell back on the bed again, his skin glistening with sweat, and his breathing coming in short, alarmingly wheezy gasps.

  Cassandra slid her hand into the pocket of the jacket, and her smile broadened as her fingers closed around a small bunch of keys.

  'Very careless of you,' she taunted him, 'leaving them where I could so easily find them. But also very convenient.' She moved a little closer to the bed and dangled them just in front of him. 'Do you know what this means? That your clever little plan has fallen apart. Such a shame,' she mocked. 'It was all so carefully thought out, and you were enjoying it so much. Now it's ruined, and all because you caught the flu. Still, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men—'

  A flicker of comprehension briefly showed again in Jared's eyes, and one hand came up, as if to grab her wrist and wrench away the keys. Cassandra easily dodged away, though.

  'I'm afraid that won't work, not this time,' she informed him with some satisfaction. 'In fact, it seems to me that you don't have a great deal going for you at the moment. And that's good, because it means that I don't even have to hurry. I can go back to my room, get dressed and packed in my own good time, and then just walk away from this hellhole of a place. No, not walk away—drive away,' she corrected herself, staring down at him triumphantly. 'In your car!'

  Jared began to say something, but was then seized with a fit of coughing that obviously left him quite exhausted. Cassandra firmly squashed a quick surge of pity.

  'Do you expect me to feel sorry for you?' she asked, forcing her voice to remain hard. 'Well, I'm afraid that's asking too much. As far as I'm concerned, you can go to hell, Mr Jared Sinclair. And if we ever set eyes on each other again, it'll be in a court of law, because I intend to make sure that you go to gaol for what you've done to me these last couple of days!'

  Keeping her eyes deliberately averted from the man on the bed, she turned and marched out of the room. A quarter of an hour later, she was dressed, packed, and ready to leave. The car started first time, but, as she swung it away from the house, she reluctantly stopped for a few moments and stared up at the one lighted window in the darkened house of Glenveil.

  Her conscience suddenly gave a strong twinge, but she deliberately ignored it.

  'I won't feel any sympathy for him,' she told herself fiercely. 'And I definitely won't feel guilty about leaving him.'

  With fresh determination, she headed the car towards the road and drove off into the night.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was full daylight by the time she finally reached Inverness airport. She d
umped Jared's car in a no-parking area, and hoped the police came and towed it away. As far as she was concerned, the more trouble she could cause for him, the better! Then she caught an early flight to London, and was back in her own flat by late morning.

  It felt odd to be back home again. Everything seemed so—well, so normal, she said to herself rather ruefully. When something traumatic happened to you, somehow you expected the whole world to fall apart in sympathy. Everyone was going about their everyday lives, though, quite oblivious to the fact that a stranger had walked in and just snatched her away from everything for a couple of days.

  For some reason, she began to feel strangely weak as soon as she was safely back home. Ridiculous, she lectured herself, a little impatiently. The danger was past now; she could relax, and get on with her life again. Yet she had the feeling that, from now on, she would never be able to feel completely relaxed. She would always be haunted by the knowledge that Jared Sinclair was out there somewhere, perhaps planning further revenge on her for whatever he imagined her father had once done to him.

  Cassandra shivered. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, knowing you were that vulnerable. And Jared was so unreasonable, so obsessed with his hatred for her father. You couldn't talk to him, convince him that no sane man would continue indefinitely with this vendetta against the Gregory family.

  Yet when she remembered his cool silver eyes, the logical reasons he had given for his behaviour, it was equally hard to convince herself that he was actually crazy. Another picture flashed through her mind—she saw him lying on that bed, sweating and weak, all alone in that cold, empty house. He could develop pneumonia, become very seriously ill, even—

  Stop it! she ordered herself sharply. There was no need to get melodramatic over it. He had flu, that was all. He looked like a strong man—he would soon get over it. And if he was alone, that was entirely his fault. If he lived like an ordinary human being instead of shutting himself away in that freezing barn of a place in the middle of nowhere, he wouldn't be facing those problems. Whatever happened to him was entirely his own fault—and no more than he deserved!

  The ringing of the telephone interrupted her rather disjointed and confused thoughts. With a hand that wasn't quite steady, she reached for the receiver.

  Before she had time to say a word, she heard her father's voice. 'Cassie?'

  He was the only one who shortened her name, and ever since her teens she had hated it. It was—childish, she told herself. 'Cassie' sounded like a little girl's name. She had asked him over and over to use her full name, but he only smiled and said, 'You'll always be my sweet little Cassie, no matter how old you are.'

  And now, for some reason, it was irritating her all over again. Why was she worrying about it at a time like this? she wondered with a wry shake of her head. She had far more important things that ought to be occupying her!

  'Cassie, where the hell have you been?' asked her father anxiously. 'I've been phoning you over and over these last couple of days, but I couldn't get any reply. No one knew where you were, not even your secretary. Why didn't you leave a message, or give me a ring to let me know where you'd be?'

  Cassandra knew that she ought to be blurting out the whole story, and demanding that he do something about the outrageous thing that had happened to her. Instead, she found herself unaccountably annoyed by her father's attitude. All right, this time he had every right to be worried. After all, she had been virtually abducted, and it was only by sheer luck that she had got away. But what if she had just decided to go off with a friend for a couple of days? Perhaps even a male friend? Didn't she have any right to a private life—even a sex life, if that was what she wanted? Did she really have to account to her father for the way she spent every minute of her days—and nights?

  'It's—a rather long story,' she said at last, still slightly amazed that she hadn't come straight out and told him what had happened to her. 'And rather a complicated one. Can I come round and see you? It's difficult to talk about it over the phone.'

  'Come round straight away,' he said without hesitation. 'I'll be waiting for you.'

  Cassandra put down the phone, and then wondered why she had the strong feeling that she ought to deal with this herself; that it was time she stopped automatically running to her father with all her problems. Sometimes, she felt as if the past few years had been a long—and mainly unsuccessful —struggle to break away from him. He seemed determined not to let her grow up, though, and he knew so many subtle ways of keeping her dependent on him. The trouble was, she had almost got to the point where she was tired of fighting him. It was so much easier just to give in, and let him take charge of all the things that troubled or bothered her.

  Her mouth curled into a dry smile. Most people who knew her wouldn't believe she had this problem. They saw her as independent, strong-minded, even sophisticated. And so she was, up to a point. But when she went anywhere near her father, the whole facade just fell apart, and she knew the only real freedom she had was what he allowed her. She sighed softly. It was something that an outsider would find so hard to understand. They wouldn't know how he had dominated her childhood, a charismatic man who had spoiled her shamelessly, but demanded to share her life, allowing her no close friendships with anyone else. And they certainly wouldn't know how hard she had found it to return that smothering love. That was her own guilty and closely guarded secret.

  And he still hadn't released his grip on her, even thought she was now a fully grown adult. Sometimes, she thought she would go right through her life still being his 'little girl'—and the prospect secretly appalled her.

  Yet here she was, running back to Daddy again. Any time she was in trouble, she trotted straight round to him. Old habits were hard to break, and over the years he had found so many ways of making sure that she kept to a certain pattern of behaviour.

  Half an hour later, she was knocking on his office door. It opened at once, and her father stood there with a light frown on his face.

  'Come on in. Are you all right? Where have you been?'

  The instant barrage of questions—and his automatic assumption that he had the right to know where she had spent the last couple of days—aroused her old sense of resentment all over again. She had been about to blurt out the entire story, to demand that her father find Jared Sinclair and make him pay for what he had done to her. Instead, though —amazing even herself—she walked into her father's office and sat down in the chair in front of his desk.

  'Before we get round to that, I'd like to know one or two things,' she told him in a voice that sounded almost as cool as Jared's had been.

  Her father came over and sat opposite her. 'About what?' he demanded. 'Cassie, what's this all about?' His gaze swept over her suspiciously. 'You look—different,' he muttered at last. 'Older, somehow, not quite like my Cassie.' His face darkened. 'My God, is it some man? Is that where you've been these last couple of days?'

  'A man's certainly involved,' she agreed. Then, as his features became positively thunderous, she added, 'But not in the sense that you mean. Either way, it isn't important—'

  'Not important?' her father cut in incredulously. 'How can you sit there and say that?'

  'Quite easily,' she replied, still astonishing herself with her own calmness. It was as if she had been through so much the last couple of days that she had run clean out of emotional responses. 'I'm twenty-two years old. I think that's quite old enough to run my private life as I please.' Her voice a little crisper now, she went on, 'But that isn't what I want to talk about right now. I want you to tell me about Glenveil Toys.'

  When she had first walked into his office, she had never had any intention of asking him such a question. In fact, nothing about this conversation was turning out the way she had expected. With some detachment, she wondered if she was suffering from some kind of delayed shock. She certainly felt almost light-headed. Yet, at the same time, her mind was perfectly clear.

  She studied her father as if he were a stranger. Hi
s face was very familiar, but today she was seeing things that she couldn't remember ever noticing before. He had said that she looked different, and yet so did he. She realised that his good looks were beginning to become rather florid, so that he was no longer the handsome man she remembered from her childhood, dazzling her with his appearance. And he was putting on weight. Too many business lunches, she thought dispassionately. But it was his eyes which kept drawing her attention. Had they always had that hooded, guarded look, as if he were a man who had a great many secrets he needed to keep hidden? And why hadn't she noticed before that they had no real depth, no warmth? Jared Sinclair's eyes had often been cold, and yet they had never aroused in her this faint sense of repellence that she was experiencing now.

  'Glenveil Toys,' she repeated firmly. 'I want to know all about it.'

  'Why this sudden interest in a second-rate little company?' demanded her father.

  She was instantly alert. 'It wasn't second-rate when you bought it, was it?'

  'No, it wasn't,' he said irritably. 'How was I to know it was virtually a one-man show? These last few months, it's gone steadily downhill. No new lines worth talking about, and I can't find anyone who can design a new range of toys to take over from the old products.'

  'What do you mean, it was a one-man show?' Cassandra was sure she knew exactly what he meant, but for some reason she needed to hear her father say it.

  'I'm talking about Sinclair, the previous owner,' he muttered angrily. 'He designed every new toy they produced. It turns out no one else can touch him. We've brought out a few new products since then, but they've all been mediocre and sales are dropping away faster and faster.' He scowled. 'After I'd taken over the company, I told Sinclair he could stay on, offered him a damn good salary and generous perks. He didn't even have the decency to reply to my offer. Just vanished into the blue, and no one's heard of him since.'