Coldhearted

by Beverly Barton

  “Of all days, I chose today to venture out and go into town as if all was right with the world,” Jordan said.

  “You had no way of knowing that The Chatterbox was going to print an exposé on your and Dan’s personal life.” Rene gasped. “Oh, God, Jordan, what about Devon? He’ll be absolutely devastated when he finds out.”

  “Call him,” Jordan said. “Tell him what’s happened and what’s going on here. Explain that I’ll talk to him as soon as I can.”

  One horn honked, and then another and another, creating a godawful racket that only added to Jordan’s stress level. Just as Rene placed the call to Devon, a small, black sports car behind both the van and the SUV swerved onto the opposite side of the road, sped past them, and then came up alongside Jordan’s Navigator.

  “Crap!” Rene muttered under her breath. “That guy’s crazy.”

  “Gun it,” Maleah ordered. “Put some distance between us and them.”

  “If I go any faster, I don’t know if I can control—”

  “Do it!” Maleah practically shouted. “If you don’t get ahead of them, they’re going to try to surround you and block us in.” Then into the phone, she said, “Yes, damn it, we need help now!”

  Jordan gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled fierceness, pressed her foot down on the gas pedal, and prayed. The Navigator charged into high gear and shot down the road like a small rocket.

  When her cell phone flew out of her hand and landed on the floorboard, Rene grumbled an unladylike obscenity. “Hell, just let it lay there. Devon didn’t answer. It went straight to voice mail.”

  “He may have his phone turned off,” Jordan said, her gaze riveted out of the windshield, the scenery zipping by at lightning speed as she pushed the Navigator up to ninety.

  The massive gates of Price Manor loomed in the distance. She could just barely make them out, but even a long-range glimpse offered her hope that they could make it to the estate before being overrun by their pursuers. Once behind the gates, they would be safe.

  “We’re almost there,” Jordan said.

  “Good,” Maleah replied. “That black sports car is gaining on us.”

  As Jordan approached the entrance to the estate, her heart in her throat and her pulse pounding like war drums inside her head, she all but cried out when she saw what lay ahead—four vehicles effectively blocking her path. The Powell agent whose name she couldn’t remember was talking to the woman who had parked her Toyota Camry directly in front of the closed gates.

  “Now what?” Jordan knew their choices were limited to two, stop at the gates and be overrun by reporters or keep going and hope she could outrun them.

  “Is there a side road somewhere around here?” Maleah asked.

  “Yes, there’s an old gravel road that leads to the back entrance of the estate, but it’s at least a mile from here,” Jordan said, then suddenly drew in a gasping breath. “Wait, there’s a dirt road that cuts through the Landaus’ cotton field or what used to be a cotton field. We’ll have to go through the woods and I’m not sure how clear that old lane is.”

  “Keep going,” Maleah told her. “Turn off on that road and disappear as quickly as possible. There are two sheriff’s deputies on their way here right now. They’re not more than three miles away. We just need to buy some time.”

  Jordan didn’t even slow down as she passed the entrance to Price Manor. The Navigator shimmied just a little when it reached ninety-five. She didn’t ease her foot off the gas pedal until she saw the partially hidden dirt lane where she would have to turn.

  Dear God, help me turn this truck off the road without wrecking us.

  “Hold on,” Jordan yelled.

  She turned the steering wheel sharply, almost fishtailing the SUV, but she got it under control just before running over several small shrubs that lined the grassy path into the woods.

  “Dear God!” Rene clutched the dashboard.

  When they were through the woods and on the old road leading into what had once been a cotton field, Maleah alerted them to bad news.

  “The black sports car is behind us.”

  “Only the one car?” Jordan asked.

  “As far as I can tell.”

  When the path abruptly ended, Jordan stopped and slowly, carefully turned the SUV around, heading out.

  “What are you doing?” Rene asked.

  “I’m going to run over that damn little sports car, if that’s what it takes,” Jordan said.

  “Who do you think you are, Mrs. Rambo?”

  “No, I’m Jordan Price and I’m sick of being hounded, of being made to feel like a prisoner in my own home, sick of being tried and found guilty in every newspaper, magazine and television newscast in the country.”

  Rene laughed. “You get ’em, girl.”

  The tension inside Jordan boiled over, released like steam from an overheated kettle. She laughed and laughed; then she buried her face in her hands.

  “Are you all right?” Rene punched Jordan’s shoulder.

  She lifted her head and smiled. “I’m okay. We’re all alive and that’s a miracle, don’t you think?”

  “Before you run over this guy, let me see if I can talk to him.” Maleah opened the back door and stepped down and out of the SUV.

  “Now she’s playing Mrs. Rambo,” Rene said.

  As Maleah walked toward the approaching car, she dialed her cell phone and spoke to someone. The sports car pulled to a halt a good twenty feet from the front of the Navigator and the driver opened his door and got out to face Maleah. The man was tall, slim and dark-haired, probably in his early thirties. He wore tight jeans, a cotton knit sweater, and a pair of aviator sunglasses. From the way he moved, it was obvious that he was more than comfortable in his own skin.

  Jordan and Rene waited while Maleah carried on a conversation with the man. He kept shaking his head and looking toward the Navigator. Once, when he tried to sidestep Maleah, she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. They squared off, as if on the verge of fighting.

  “Listen,” Rene said. “I hear a siren.”

  Jordan heard it, too, and within minutes she saw the sheriff’s car driving up behind and to the side of the sports car. Two uniformed deputies emerged. Maleah spoke to one of the deputies while the other talked to the reporter. After arguing heatedly with the deputy, the guy finally gave up and got in his once clean and shiny, now filthy, black sports car. He shifted into reverse, backed into the field, turned around, and sent a cloud of dust into the air as he ripped off toward the highway. Maleah walked over to the Navigator and opened the driver’s side door.

  “I want you two to go with the deputies,” she told them. “They’ll take y’all home. I’ll follow in the truck.”

  Jordan gladly did as Maleah suggested, relieved to have a police escort. But her relief was short-lived. When they arrived back at the entrance to the estate, they found not only more news people in their cars, trucks, and vans, but a small crowd of what she assumed were curiosity seekers. The deputy driving stopped in the middle of the road and the other deputy got out and shouted orders to the horde assembled in the road, along the road, and even across the road. Some people were actually standing in the shallow ditch. A few of the onlookers carried binoculars.

  Clearing all the vehicles out of the way took at least ten minutes, but eventually, they unblocked the route to the entrance. One deputy remained at the gate with the Powell agent while the other eased the patrol car up to the entrance, and then gave the signal for the Powell agent to open the gate. The minute he did, the deputy sped through and onto the drive, but not before some idiot threw himself onto the hood. With his face pressing against the windshield, he glared at Jordan and shouted a string of damnations. As the gates closed behind the car, the deputy stopped, got out and peeled the man off the hood.

  “Murderess! Whore! Infidel!” he shouted. “There is a special place in hell for women like you.”

  The deputy handcuffed the man, marched him to the
guardhouse, and handed him over to the other deputy.

  Rene draped her arm around Jordan’s shoulders. “Don’t let what he was saying bother you. He’s obviously crazy.”

  “Yes, but there are people who aren’t crazy who think the way he does. And there are others who believed in my innocence before today, who will now condemn me, just as they’ll condemn Dan and Devon.”

  “Then they’re cold, heartless bastards. They have no right to judge you. Your arrangement with Dan and Devon was nobody’s business. You three were happy with the way things were.”

  “Were we?”

  Jordan hadn’t realized she had voiced her thought until Rene stared at her, obviously surprised by her comment.

  Thinking back over the past few years, Jordan admitted to herself that she had not been happy. Not really. Nor had Devon and Dan. They had each settled for less than they should have. She had escaped into a bogus marriage believing it could protect her from ever being hurt again. Devon had loved Dan enough to give him what he’d wanted—a secret love affair and a marriage to Jordan that had been in name only. In the beginning, their arrangement had seemed quite logical and it had worked for all of them. But only for a while. Their having a child together, her undergoing artificial insemination, her being pregnant with Devon’s baby, had been a mutual decision, one they all thought would cement the cracks in their unique three-way relationship.

  Rene didn’t say a word; she simply sat there in the backseat of the patrol car and kept her arm around Jordan’s shoulders. By the time the deputy drove up in front of the house, Maleah was right behind them in the Navigator. Before either vehicle came to a full stop, the residents of Price Manor swarmed around them.

  Jordan emerged to arms reaching for her and voices clamoring their concern. She hugged Tammy, who had shoved her way to the forefront, then came Roselynne and then Darlene, each in need of comfort and reassurance.

  “How long have you been here?” Jordan asked Darlene.

  “I got here before the hordes descended,” Darlene replied. “Oh, my dear girl, are you truly all right? Just when we thought things were finally getting better, this had to happen.”

  “I’m fine or I will be. I just want to go inside, get a stiff drink and pull myself together.”

  “Yes, of course. Just know that I’m here and I’m staying. I won’t leave you again no matter what you say.”

  Maleah came up behind Jordan, curved her hand over Jordan’s shoulder and said, “I want y’all to step back and give Jordan a little breathing room. I’m sure she’ll want to see y’all again later, but right now, I’m taking her inside where she can catch her breath.”

  Grateful to have Maleah as a buffer between her and her loved ones, Jordan allowed the Powell agent to lead her into the house.

  “Would you like to go up to your room or—”

  “I wasn’t joking about that stiff drink,” Jordan said.

  Tobias and Vadonna stood in the foyer, both staring at Jordan, each obviously concerned. She turned to them and smiled.

  “Miss Jordan, if there’s anything Vadonna or I can do for you…” Tobias said.

  “Thank you. The only thing I need right now is some time alone. And, Tobias, would you bring me a bottle of that fig vodka I like so much? I’ll be in my study.”

  “A whole bottle, ma’am?”

  “Yes, the whole bottle.”

  His eyes widened, but he nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  While the others entered the foyer and watched her as she escaped down the hall and into her study, Jordan realized that only Maleah’s hard glare kept her distressed family at bay.

  Half an hour and several drinks later, Jordan had spoken to Devon, who was an absolute basket case. She hated that he was there in Bethesda, all alone, when the news of his true relationship with Dan became public knowledge.

  “Just stay put for the time being. Hole up there in the townhouse until you hear from me. I’ll arrange with Powell’s to send an agent to D.C. to escort you home.”

  “Who would have done such a thing? Only a handful of people knew the truth about Dan and me.”

  “As much as I hate to even think it, we both know it was someone in the family.”

  After a lengthy conversation with Devon, she sat quietly, trying to make sense of what had happened, and not just what had happened today with the vicious story in The Chatterbox, but with the events in her past as well.

  Just as she was considering pouring herself another drink and dulling her senses even more with alcohol, someone knocked on the locked study door.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Maleah.”

  When she stood, she realized she was slightly tipsy. Steadying herself, she walked to the door, unlocked it, and said, “If it’s bad news, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “One off Powell’s helicopters has just landed in the south field behind the house,” Maleah said. “Rick Carson has come back.”

  Jordan couldn’t breathe for a couple of seconds. Every cell in her body responded to the thought of her seeing Rick again.

  “If you’d like, I’ll go with you to meet him.”

  “Yes, I’d like that very much,” Jordan said.

  Chapter 25

  The helicopter created a thunderous roar and a rotating wind surge that flattened the grass and swayed the nearby bushes and treetops. Maleah and Jordan watched from a distance as Rick landed the chopper in a wide open field on the Price estate. Sunlight danced off the blades as they slowed and finally stopped. The quiet stillness of the green meadow, the only sounds those of nature, seemed all the more pronounced once the chopper engine shut off. Jordan raised her hand as a visor to block the blinding sun. The chopper door swung open and Rick emerged.

  Jordan’s heartbeat accelerated with anticipation.

  She wanted to run to him. She didn’t. Instead, with Maleah at her side, she walked briskly toward Rick as he threw up his hand and waved at them.

  With her thoughts centered on Rick’s return, on what it would mean to have him back in her life, Jordan didn’t hear, see, or sense anything else. Her entire being was centered on this one moment and this one man.

  And then, without warning, the distinctive resonance of a rifle shot rang out, terrifyingly clear. Before Jordan had a chance to react, Maleah shoved her forward behind a clump of tall bushes and then onto the ground, coming down over her like a protective shield. It took Jordan half a minute to realize that someone had shot at them and a full minute to realize that she had screamed.

  Maleah grunted. “Are you all right?”

  “I—I think so.”

  “Stay down,” Maleah told her.

  Jordan felt something wet and sticky dripping onto her neck. She managed to maneuver her hand up so that she could run her fingers over the substance. She looked at her fingertips and gasped when she saw that they were smeared with something red. Oh, God. She had blood on her fingers, blood she had wiped off her neck. Had she been hit? She hadn’t felt the impact of a bullet entering her body.

  “You two all right?” Rick shouted.

  “Jordan’s okay,” Maleah replied. “But I’m hit.”

  “Stay put,” Rick told her.

  “You’ve been shot?” Jordan asked her bodyguard, who at that precise moment was literally protecting Jordan’s body with her own.

  “It’s a shoulder wound,” Maleah said. “It won’t kill me.”

  Jordan managed to turn her head just enough to peer through the bushes and get a glimpse of Rick, gun in hand, carefully canvassing the area as he made his way toward them.

  Fully expecting to hear more gunfire, Jordan uttered a prayer. Please, God, don’t let the shooter fire again.

  With her pulse pounding rapidly, the sound drowning out everything else, all sense of time and place distorted by fear, she wasn’t sure how long it took Rick to reach them. He hunched down, reached out, and hauled Maleah away from Jordan. When Maleah rolled over onto her side, Jordan did the same, so the two fa
ced each other. It was then that she saw the hole in Maleah’s blood-soaked blouse. She clamped her teeth together to keep from crying out.

  “Did you see where the shot came from?” Rick asked as he visually examined Maleah’s wounded shoulder.

  “From the left,” Maleah told him. “Left, into the woods, and a little in front of where we were, not from behind.”

  “We need to get you to the hospital.” Still holding his gun in his right hand, he used his left hand to pull his cell phone from his pocket. He hit a pre-programmed number. “Yeah, Maleah’s been shot. Put in an emergency call and get some men over to the field where I landed the chopper ASAP.”

  Jordan watched as Rick ripped apart Maleah’s blouse and checked the entry wound, then looked for an exit wound. He frowned. “The bullet went straight through, but it left a hell of a mess.”

  She grunted. “Yeah, and it hurts, too.”

  Rick grinned at her, then still holding the gun, shrugged off his jacket and tossed it to Jordan. “Fold this into a thick, compressed square and use it to apply pressure to Maleah’s shoulder. We need to stop the bleeding.”

  Silent and dazed, Jordan followed his instructions.

  He glanced at her. “How are you holding up, honey?”

  She couldn’t manage to speak, so she simply nodded.

  “Help’s on the way,” he told them, but his attention was focused elsewhere. He watched and listened, apparently preparing for a second attack.

  “Don’t pass out on me,” Maleah told Jordan. “You’re white as a sheet.”

  “I—I’m okay. Just—just worried about you.”

  Maleah grimaced. “It’s probably not as bad as it looks.”

  If only she could stop trembling, but she couldn’t. Jordan knew without anyone saying it—the bullet Maleah took had been meant for her. She had been the target, not her bodyguard.

  * * *

  Jordan had wanted to go to the hospital with Maleah, but Rick had quickly nixed the idea. He knew that Jordan was concerned, that she cared, that she felt responsible for what had happened to her bodyguard; but her staying put was the safest course of action.