Raising the Stakes

by Sandra Marton

  * * *

  Outside, in the shadow cast by the indigo, a dark figure squatted, motionless.

  Harman was pressed between the shrub and the wall of the house, silent and watchful. He’d been there for hours and it pleased him to think how other men would have felt cramps in their legs by now or at least a stiffness in their muscles. Not him. He’d grown up hunting in the mountains of northern Arizona. No deer, no bobcat, no wild critter could outlast him or spot him, when he lay in waiting. He knew how to become part of the scenery, how to be still as a stone…

  How to be as deadly as a rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike.

  Bile rose in his throat when the door to the house where his wife lived swung open. Graham Baron stepped outside, yawned and stretched. Harman had spent a lifetime scenting game. Now, his nostrils widened as he took in the stink of sex and woman. Baron had come straight from the whore’s bed.

  Harman’s hands closed into fists. The lying son of a bitch! All that crap about music boxes… Shit, all of it. Dawn had come into money. His mouth twisted. And Baron had come into her.

  Ah, how good it would feel to kill him. How easy. The street was deserted. Not even a dog wandering by. He could be on top of Baron before the bastard knew it. How he’d love to feel his hunting knife slip between Baron’s ribs and watch his face as the blade pierced his heart, watch as shocked awareness turned to terror and, at last, to acceptance of his whoremonger’s fate.

  Harman shuddered, licked his lips. Then he’d go inside and take care of the whore herself. No knife in the heart for her. She didn’t deserve a quick end. He’d do her slowly, let her beg for a merciful death. Just thinking about it made him hard as a rock—but it would have to wait. There were things to do before he dealt with the slut and her lover.

  Baron was pacing the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets. After a while, a taxi turned up the street. Baron waved and it pulled to the curb.

  “The Desert Song Hotel,” he said, and climbed inside.

  A grin spread across Harman’s mouth as the taxi drove away. When the cab disappeared, he rose silently and turned a hungry gaze on the curtained window.

  Yes. He could do it right now. Give his whoring wife what she deserved. Climb through the window—it had been easy to jimmy the lock last night. Climb through, come up to her, put his hand over her mouth and gag her, then tie her down, strip away her clothes with his knife and spread her legs so that he could see the place she’d always tried to deny him and then teach her the price a woman paid when she forgot the vows she’d taken.

  He drew a breath, wiped the spittle from the corners of his lips with the back of his hand.

  Except, his son would be lost to him. The bitch would sooner go to hell than reveal the boy’s whereabouts.

  He couldn’t kill Dawn until he knew where Thomas was.

  Harman smiled to himself. Dawn had never credited him with being smart, but he was. Smart enough to have let Baron start down the mountain before he climbed into his truck and tailed him to the Winslow airport and the place where rich men kept their planes, and to have one of his drinking buddies who worked there tell him where the plane Baron chartered was going. For twenty bucks, his pal had let him search the car Baron had paid him to drive back to Flagstaff, and it was worth it because the city lawyer had been in such a hurry to get to his whore that he’d forgotten his briefcase.

  There were papers and pictures in it, and then he’d struck gold. The best thing in that briefcase was the name of the place where Dawn worked…and the mother lode, her address in Las Vegas.

  Harman had driven like a madman, using back roads whenever he could to avoid cops and speed limits, racing through the night without stopping until he finally got to Dawn’s street. He parked a block away from her house, walked back and felt the presence of his whore of a wife even before he’d jimmied the lock on the window and heard the sounds coming from her apartment. Her voice. Baron’s voice. The grunts and groans of two animals rutting, noises she’d never made for him.

  A rush of crimson flooded his vision. Harman closed his eyes, breathed deeply the way he’d trained himself to do when long hours waiting for game threatened to upset him. He had to stay calm, stay focused. He’d waited four years for this. A few hours more was nothing.

  He tucked his hands into the pockets of his overalls and walked away. No need to rush things, not now that it was all falling into place. A man had the right to enjoy his rewards, and he fully intended to do exactly that.

  By the time he reached his truck, he was whistling.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CASSIE dug into her chicken salad, swigged down a mouthful of iced tea, looked across the table at Dawn and decided she’d never find out what was happening between her friend and Gray Baron if she went on being subtle.

  For days now, ever since Dawn had admitted she was seeing Gray, Cassie had said things like, “How’re things going?” “Is the guy as nice as he seems?” “How long’s he going to stay in Vegas?” In response to which Dawn, big talker that she was, said, “Fine,” “Yes,” and, even more succinctly, “I don’t know.”

  Cassie took another forkful of salad. It was obviously time for a more direct approach.

  “So,” she said, “are you sleeping with him yet?”

  Dawn choked on her grilled cheese, coughed and held up a hand while she gulped down some water.

  “Ask me something personal, why don’t you?” she said, when she could talk.

  Cassie grinned. “You know me. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. Fire when you see the whites of their eyes.”

  “It’s don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

  “Either way it’s the same thing. I could have asked you last night, on the phone, but I didn’t. I figured I’d wait until I could look right at you and know if you were giving me a truthful answer or not.”

  “Why should I give you any answer?” Dawn said reasonably.

  “Because I’m your best friend?”

  “You are, yes, but that doesn’t mean—”

  “You’re sleeping with him. Don’t shake your head. I can tell. If you weren’t, you’d just laugh and say I was crazy, or you’d give me that look you get whenever I try to convince you there’s no reason for you to live like a nun.” She beamed smugly, stabbed a piece of chicken and popped it into her mouth. “So, how is he?”

  “I’ve already told you,” Dawn said, deliberately misunderstanding the question. “He’s a very nice man.”

  “In bed. How is he in bed?” Cassie rolled her eyes. “Wonderful, I bet. Gorgeous. Inexhaustible. Knows every page of the Kama Sutra by heart… What?” she said, when Dawn started to laugh. “The Kama Sutra isn’t funny.” She giggled. “Well, maybe it is. Did you ever take a really good look at some of those illustrations?”

  “You’re impossible, you know that?”

  “I’m interested, only because I want you to be happy…and because my own love life sucks and I’m hoping for a couple of vicarious thrills. Seriously, is he wonderful?”

  “Yes,” Dawn said simply. “He is, Cass. I’ve never known a man like him.”

  “A stud, huh?” Cassie spoke briskly, but her smile was soft.

  “He’s—he’s everything a woman could want. Strong. Tender. Caring.” Dawn pushed her sandwich aside. “And he’s fun, too. We went to the movies the other night—”

  “The movies,” Cassie said, and sighed. “A big date.”

  “That’s the way it felt. I mean, it was just a movie but we had such a good time. It was that theater doing that romantic comedy retrospective, you know the one? They were playing Sleepless in Seattle and afterward, on the way home, Gray did the Tom Hanks part and I did Meg Ryan, and we laughed because he sounded more like Martin Short trying to do Tom Hanks than Tom Hanks, and…” She laughed softly. “Do I sound completely insane?”

  “No,” Cassie said. She put down her fork and reached across the table to give Dawn’s hand a squeeze. “You sound like a woman i
n love.”

  “Oh, I’m not. In love. I’m—I’m…” Dawn caught her lip between her teeth. “I can’t be in love,” she said quietly.

  “Jeez Louise, puh-leeze don’t give me that `I’m still married’ routine again! You’re not married, not in any way that matters. Besides, this is the twenty-first century. They don’t burn you at the stake for falling for another guy, especially when your husband is such a bastard that you’re terrified of even trying to divorce him.” Cassie paused. “Unless there’s a complication I don’t know about, like, Mr. Right wants you to marry him.”

  “No.” Dawn touched her napkin to her mouth and placed it on the table. “Nothing like that.”

  “Ah. But you wish, huh?”

  Dawn looked up. Her smile had faded; her eyes glittered with distress. “He hasn’t asked me. He’s just here on vacation. And—and even if he wanted to—if he wanted something more permanent, even if I thought about trying for a divorce, I couldn’t let it happen.”

  “Because?”

  “Because there are things about me… There are things…” Dawn reached for their check and pushed back her chair. “I couldn’t, that’s all. Leave it at that.”

  “Back to Dawn the Mysterious,” Cassie said, and sighed. “No, that’s okay. I’m not trying to pry. Well, I am, but I know there’s no point.” She patted her lips with her napkin, tossed it on the table and reached for her purse. “Your turn for the check? I’ll leave the tip.”

  The women walked out of the restaurant into the hot noonday sun. “I’m happy,” Dawn said quietly. “Really happy.”

  “Yeah, but for how long? Whatever this thing is that you never want to discuss, it’s still there. And, look, I hate to make like a wet blanket but, well, what happens when Mr. Right decides it’s time to pack his suitcase and go back to New York?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Oh sure. You’ll be great. Four years, and you’ve never so much as looked twice at a guy and now you’re walking around with Cupid’s arrow stuck between your shoulder blades but you’ll be fine when this guy leaves.” Cassie looped her arm through Dawn’s. “You really think I believe that?”

  “No.” Dawn’s smile was shaky. “I don’t. And I don’t believe it, either, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “And suppose he wants more than that? Suppose he says yes, this has been great but it’s not over? What if he wants you to go with him and be part of his life?”

  Dawn took a steadying breath. “I’d have to tell him I can’t.”

  “Oh, Dawn…”

  “Don’t you have to be back on the floor in ten minutes?”

  “Five,” Cassie said, glancing at her watch. She looked up and frowned. “By the way, I think you have an admirer.”

  “Cass, honestly, I don’t want to talk about Gray any—”

  “No. Not Mr. Right. Some other guy.” Cassie made a face. “Frankly I don’t think you’d want this one.”

  “Don’t tell me.” Dawn sighed dramatically as they checked the lights, crossed the street and hurried toward the Song. “Another poor soul like that farmer last year who hung around the casino every night for a week and kept telling me I looked just like his wife when she was a girl?”

  “This one looks more like something out of American Rifleman magazine.”

  “American Rifleman magazine?”

  “Yeah. He’s big. Rawboned, I guess you’d say, but you can see lots of muscle hiding under these god-awful clothes. Plaid shirts. Camouflage pants tucked into hunting boots… Dawn? What’s the matter?”

  Dawn had come to a dead stop. “What does he look like? His face? What color is his hair? His eyes?” She gripped Cassie’s arm. “Cass? Tell me what he looks like.”

  “I don’t know. I got so caught up in the funny outfit that… Okay. Let me think. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Long, bony face.”

  “That’s it? Can’t you be more specific? What does `dark’ mean, Cass? Black? Brown? You have to tell me!”

  “Okay. I’ll take a better look if he shows up again. He’s been hanging around the casino the past couple of nights.”

  “Asking about me?”

  “Well, not exactly. Well, yeah. Maybe. I mean, he says stuff like, `Where do they get all the pretty women to work in this place?’ and we say—”

  “We?”

  “The cocktail waitresses. We figured he was coming on to us and, yuck, we’re all willing to smile for a big tip, so we say, like, `Thank you, they found me in a Cracker Jack box,’ whatever, but then he always says yeah, but where did they find that woman I see talking to those big shots from time to time, and then he describes you to a tee, and wants to know all about you… Ouch! Dawn? You’re digging your nails into me!”

  Dawn looked from Cassie’s face to where her hand had closed around her friend’s wrist. Slowly she loosened her grip.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry, Cass. I just…” She licked her lips. It didn’t have to be Harman. It couldn’t be Harman. Why would Harman try to be subtle? He wouldn’t hang around or ask questions. He’d come straight at her, beat her, kill her, worse than that, he’d drag her into his car or his truck and try to take her away…

  “Dawn?” Cassie moved closer. “What’s the matter? You don’t think…” She caught her breath. “You think it’s your ex?”

  “I don’t know. It could be.”

  “Oh shit.” Cassie’s eyes widened. “No. No. It’s impossible.”

  “What?”

  “No, it’s crazy. I just—I mean, first Mr. Right turns up and works his way into your life and then, a couple of days later, this man—somebody who might be your husband—turns up, too…”

  “You think that Gray and Harman…” Dawn shook her head and refused to think back to when she’d considered the same thing. “Never! Gray isn’t—he’d never—Cass, no. That’s not possible.”

  “That’s what I just said. Forget I even mentioned it.”

  Dawn forced a smile. “The rest of it, too. Harman—my husband—would never… I can’t imagine how he’d have found me. Even if he did, he wouldn’t ask questions, he’d—he’d…” She looped her arm through Cassie’s again. “We’re both going to be late if we don’t hurry.”

  Cassie nodded. By the time they’d entered the hotel, she was smiling and chattering about a dress she intended to buy when she got her paycheck at the end of the week, but as soon as they parted and Dawn disappeared into her office, she ran to find Keir.

  * * *

  Mary Elizabeth O’Connell was having a wonderful time and the best part was, she wasn’t supposed to be having a wonderful time at all.

  She’d knocked on the door of Dan Coyle’s office a while ago, supposedly so they could discuss some security changes Dan had suggested and they’d done that for maybe fifteen minutes. After that, Dan had asked if she’d like some coffee.

  “The low-test brew,” he’d said, with that grin she found charming.

  She’d said that sounded like an excellent idea and he’d phoned for coffee and, because it was almost noon and a working lunch seemed like a good plan, he’d asked the kitchen to send up a couple of salads and a sandwich assortment.

  “Is that all right?” he’d said to Mary.

  “Fine,” she’d answered, and it had been, though they hadn’t talked about anything remotely connected with work ever since.

  Instead they’d talked about themselves. Mary now knew lots about Dan’s daughters.

  “Wonderful girls, the both of them,” he’d told her, and Mary had wagged her finger and said, lightly, that he was the one who had admitted they would probably prefer to be called “women.”

  “You’re right,” Dan had replied, with another of those marvelous smiles, “but they tolerate their old man’s sexist language because—or so they claim—they’re crazy about me.”

  “I can see where they would be,” Mary had answered, stunning both of them, but they’d recovered and now they were into a long, friendly debate over whether a person contempl
ating a trip to the old country should best plan it for the spring or the summer.

  “Spring,” Mary said, pouring them both second cups of coffee. “Ireland’s beautiful then, with everything just coming into bloom. Ruarch and I always went that time of year.”

  “Summer,” Dan said, adding a dollop of cream to his cup. “There’s the rain, yes, but the countryside is such a shade of green, it breaks your heart. That’s why Flo and I always traveled there that time of year.” He paused and looked at Mary. “Of course, there’s something to be said about going in the autumn, if one were interested in starting fresh, Mary. Do you know what I mean?”

  Mary’s eyes met his. She thought she knew precisely what he meant and her heart gave the sort of lurch that would never trouble her doctors, but before she could phrase a reply, there was an impatient tap at the door. It swung open, and Keir stepped into the room.

  “Dan? Listen, I…” His glance fell on his mother. “Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed,” Mary said crisply. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I just, ah, I need a few minutes with Dan, that’s all. If you wouldn’t mind, Mother…”

  “I would mind. Very much. I can tell by the look of you, Keir, that something’s upset you. Are you afraid it will upset me, too?”

  Keir flushed. “Mother. Duchess…”

  “Dammit,” Mary said, with deliberate heat. She never cursed and her uncharacteristic use of the word made it sound like the worst kind of obscenity. “I am not an invalid. When will you get it through your head that I can handle bad news without clutching my chest and falling to the floor? If you’ve come to tell Dan something important, you’re going to have to tell it to me, too.”

  A tiny vein throbbed in Keir’s forehead. After a few seconds, he nodded. She was right and he knew it.

  “You recall our talk about Dawn Carter?” He looked from his mother to Dan. “Well, I think something’s about to happen.”

  Dan shot to his feet. “Where? In the casino? Did you alert the—”