Killing Secrets

by Docter, K. L

  “You two are quarreling, aren’t you?” his mother said into his ear. “That’s why Rachel’s not sleeping. I thought it was worry about Dixon’s recovery, but she told me today she was happy with his progress.”

  Patrick looked through the leaded glass in his back door in time to see lightning strike a couple of miles away. He jumped when the thunder crashed through the house seconds later. “How do you know she’s not sleeping?”

  His mother snorted. “She’s been creeping down the stairs in the middle of the night to work at the table in the breakfast nook. Two of the stairs squeak, you know.”

  He did know. His dad caught him sneaking out of the house a couple of times as a teenager before he accepted he’d never pull one over on his policeman father and decided to fly right.

  Before she re-connected with her father at the hospital, Rachel had been working at the site trailer on the landscape designs for Katy. But then, she’d taken over the Southgate job so it wasn’t surprising she felt it necessary to work in the middle of the night to finish Katy’s projects. But was that the only reason she wasn’t sleeping?

  Was she as restless as Patrick? He wanted to believe she was missing him as much as he did her, but he had no illusions. She was devastated by what he’d just done. He’d seen the bleak look in her eyes before she ran away.

  “Yes,” he admitted to his mother, turning his back on the storm outside to resume his pacing. “We had a disagreement.” A weak word to describe his stupidity.

  “Are you sure that’s all it is because she’s not eating either. It’s not like her to—”

  His mother’s words stopped registering as his gaze fixed on Rachel’s radio sitting on one corner of Jane’s desk. She’d left without it? Rachel wasn’t upset enough to leave Denver in the middle of a storm, was she?

  Memories of the day he and Karly argued, the way his wife ran away after their argument, the horrible events that led to her death, reared their ugly heads. “I’ve got to go, Mom,” he said abruptly. “Call my cell if they show up.”

  “Patri—”

  He hung up and rolled his shoulders to ease the fear threatening to paralyze him. Rachel wasn’t Karly. She wasn’t suicidal. Greg Bishop was still out there somewhere. She wouldn’t leave Denver until Amanda was safe from him. Staying presented another problem, though. Rachel had become a target for Patrick’s saboteur as well. That meant danger was coming at Rachel and Amanda from two different directions. Could it have become too much?

  Dammit, where were they? Why hadn’t Cook guard responded to Patrick’s call?

  His gut twisted. He’d allowed his dick to endanger the very people he wanted to protect. He had to find them.

  He snagged his radio off his desk, and then picked up Rachel’s so he wouldn’t get caught without a functioning battery. Digging out his wet weather gear stored in the hall closet, he also grabbed a couple of flashlights and his emergency pack, still packed from his last hiking trip into the mountains to Lost Lake. He didn’t know how long it would take to find the missing trio. He wanted to be prepared for anything.

  With no idea where they’d gone, he could only hope Rachel had the good sense to pull the truck to the side of the road somewhere until the storm passed or he tracked her down. She’d said she had work to do, so he’d start with the one project he knew she was working on.

  Using the base radio on the credenza behind Jane’s desk, Patrick checked in with his crew at Southgate again. None of them claimed to have seen her. That didn’t mean she wasn’t there. The way they all catered to her, if she’d told them she didn’t want to talk to him, they’d cover for her. He understood. He could live with that. They could lie through their teeth as long as she and Amanda were safe.

  With a growl of frustration, he decided to check Southgate himself. If she’d actually gone somewhere else, well, he’d cross that bridge when, if he came to it. Climbing into his dad’s half ton pickup, the one he’d been using so Rachel could use his larger crew cab, the sense of impending disaster that had built all day suddenly took form. He’d never felt so helpless.

  And for the first time since he’d buried his wife and unborn son nearly two years earlier, he prayed.

  ~~~

  A vicious gust of wind smacked the three-quarter ton pickup broadside, wrenching at the steering wheel beneath Rachel’s hands. It had been stupid to let her pain and anger drive her from the safety of Patrick’s office out into this storm with her daughter. To compound her foolishness, she’d only stopped at Southgate long enough to pick up the directions the real estate mogul, Grant Colbert, had given her the day he proposed she submit a bid. He’d waited five days while she sat with her father at the hospital. She could have waited another day to make this trek out to the property. But, when Larsen Cook suggested they wait out the storm, she’d still been too upset with men in general, and Patrick in particular, to listen.

  Living all over the country growing up, she was used to severe weather conditions so she didn’t think Cook’s concern was necessary. It didn’t help Patrick tried to call the bodyguard either. That, more than anything, drove her out to the empty county roads northeast of Denver’s airport where ten-acre country estates were springing up like exotic wildflowers.

  Every mile she traveled, however, the storm worsened and she regretted forbidding Cook from taking Patrick’s call. She’d mentioned where they were going to his foreman, John Branson, but the man had been loading his truck to go home for the day. Who knew if he would miss them if they didn’t come back?

  Her bravado weakening, she glanced at the man sitting in the passenger seat. Somehow, Cook’s calm demeanor and the fact he hadn’t fastened his seat belt—to keep his mobility in an emergency situation, he’d explained the first time she mentioned it—eased some of the tension from her shoulders. “Keep your eyes peeled for the abandoned barn with Stirling Stables painted on it,” she said. “We should be able to spot four-foot letters across the front of it, despite the rain.”

  Peering through the rain-washed windshield, she tried to spot the building which would pinpoint how far they were from the next turn. Between the deceptive sameness of the open prairie roads, the dark pall of the storm, and their distance from city lights that might cut the gloom, it was difficult to spot the various landmarks in Colbert’s directions. She should have called the man, told him she wasn’t taking the job, not traipsed out here to scope it out!

  Why had she thought to take on another project after Southgate was finished? Maybe it was because Colbert was so complimentary when he’d asked her to draw up a design for him, and Patrick had taken exception to the man’s manner. She shouldn’t have allowed her conflicting emotions to provoke her into accepting the challenge. The police were closing in on Greg. Jack had reported only yesterday that they’d found the motel where he was staying, although he’d checked out by the time they got there. Soon she’d be free to go about her life again and she would take Amanda back to Dallas where they belonged.

  Rachel had every reason to return to Texas with Katy’s proposal to make her a partner on the table. After months of backbreaking work to save her older friend’s livelihood after Greg destroyed it, she had a personal stake in seeing its continued prosperity.

  But, with Katy’s health no longer keeping her from running her own affairs, and the managers Rachel had trained for all three nurseries, she didn’t really need Rachel any longer. The truth was Rachel needed Katy. Rachel had originally planned to get her friend back on her feet, then leave. However, she’d also found a hole to crawl into, a place to lick the emotional and physical wounds she’d sustained during her disastrous marriage. And, for the first time in years, she’d found peace and some facsimile of contentment.

  Katy recovered. The question was, had Rachel? Her dream was always to have a landscaping business of her own, but was this the way she wanted to get it? Once Great-aunt Amanda’s estate was settled and she paid off the last of debts threatening Katy’s homestead, Rachel could buy her own n
ursery. A whole franchise of nurseries. For that matter, she could quit working altogether and fill her life with luncheons and cocktail parties as her mother’s brothers expected of her.

  It wasn’t the life she wanted for herself or for Amanda. So the question came down to one thing. Would she return to Texas because she wanted a stake in Kolthern Nurseries, or was she simply looking for a familiar bolt-hole to dive into so she could lick fresh emotional wounds? The ache buried deep in her heart since she left Patrick’s office suggested the latter.

  If she didn’t get away from the man—and soon—she’d do something she’d really regret. Like beg him to love her back. Patrick didn’t want her that way. He’d made that abundantly clear after his parents’ return. Pain lanced through her breast at how easily he’d pushed her from his bed, out of his life. How long would it take her to do the same?

  When he took her in his arms in his office, laid her down on the desk and kissed her like he was desperate to have her again, as he had the night he’d shown her what lovemaking could be like between a man and a woman, she’d almost caved. One second longer under his sensual demand and her twitching fingers would have taken a life of their own. She would have grabbed him and never let go. She’d been that close to settling. For his desire. For whatever scraps he reluctantly gave her. It took every ounce of willpower she had to walk out of his office.

  She hadn’t felt this much desolation about losing someone since her father left her behind in that motel room. For ten years, she’d believed her father never really loved her. She knew differently now, but the painful loss she’d felt then was still a sharp memory.

  It was a good thing she’d come to her senses and never admitted her love to Patrick. He’d never know he had the power to hurt her. She might leave a large portion of her heart behind in Denver, but she could still slink back to Texas with her pride intact. Anger and pride. They’d sustained her more than once in the past. The only thing that mattered was the love she had for her daughter.

  She glanced into the rear view mirror at Amanda sitting in her car seat, a teddy bear she’d found stuffed in a door pocket clutched in her arms to replace her doll left behind in Suze’s playroom. Lightning flashed through the stormy darkness and gilded Amanda’s honey blond hair. The loud boom of thunder that immediately followed made her little girl jerk in her seat. Her brown eyes widened with fright as she stared back at her mama.

  Rachel didn’t have time to reassure her because, just then, a full sheet of plywood came out of nowhere and smashed into their left front fender. She gasped. Her heart thundered as she watched it flip over the hood into the field beyond.

  Something her father once said jumped into her mind. Distractions are a killer in the arena, little chickadee. Give that ol’ bull a chance to get into your head and he’ll run you straight through.

  Evidently, Cook agreed. “That was close,” he said. “You might think about pulling over until the worst passes.”

  “Easier said than done,” she muttered. Driving rain made it difficult to gauge where the shoulder began or ended. There was a four-foot drop into a drainage ditch on both sides of this stretch of road. The last thing she wanted to do was to misjudge the distance and drive off the edge.

  Suddenly, it began to hail. Hard. Visibility ahead of the truck’s front bumper shrank from a quarter mile down to ten or twelve feet. A deluge of ice pounded the metal hood and roof, the noise in the cab a relentless din in her ears. A golf-ball-sized chunk of ice struck the upper right hand corner of the windshield launching a spidery series of cracks. One raced from the impact point across the top of the windshield just above her line of sight.

  Her nerves bounced with each impact. “What kind of tornado activity do you have here?” she asked Cook.

  “We’ve been known to have them,” he said, his gaze darting back and forth across the road, like he was searching for a funnel. “Especially out here on the plains.”

  A small gasp from the back seat made her look in the rearview mirror again. “It’s okay, honey,” she said, her voice shakier than she liked. “We’re almost there.”

  They could be five minutes away or completely turned around. Rachel knew they weren’t okay. Hail blanketed the road like snow, at least an inch thick, and it didn’t show signs of easing. She’d lived all over the country and never experienced a storm like this!

  Slowing until her speedometer hovered below ten miles per hour, she checked the headlights reflected in her rearview mirror the last fifteen minutes. Thank God, they weren’t completely alone on this stretch of open prairie. The lights drew closer as if the other driver, too, felt less intimidated by the storm with her taillights guiding his way. In the next instant, they disappeared.

  She didn’t have time to do more than decide the other vehicle must have turned into a driveway she’d missed before she spotted Stirling Stables. Slowing further, she prepared to pull off the road. “We’re less than a mile away from the turn into the Colbert estate,” she said, “but we can wait out the storm here.”

  “Good i—” Bright lights abruptly filled the truck cab, cutting Cook off.

  Startled, she risked a glance over her shoulder and saw a large vehicle close in with terrifying speed. High beams flashed, blinding her before the driver lost traction on the slick road and his headlights slid to the open prairie on her left. She registered a quick impression of a dark truck, the silhouette of one occupant in the cab, before he straightened and she was again pinned under the glare of his headlights.

  Greg! His truck was a smoky gray color, wasn’t it?

  Alarmed, she automatically pushed her foot harder on the accelerator. But, it was too little, too late.

  Cook shouted a warning. “Hang on! He’s right on our tail!” His voice was obliterated by the sound of metal grinding metal when the other truck struck.

  Her head snapped forward. The steering wheel shuddered beneath her hands. Fishtailing on the carpet of hail covering the road, the truck skated sidewise for an unbearable few seconds. Rachel held on for dear life. Throat tight with stress, she somehow regained control.

  Her gaze immediately shot to Amanda’s reflection in the mirror. She seemed okay in her car seat, if Rachel discounted her small fingers pinched so deep in the teddy’s head they almost touched in the middle. She looked like Rachel felt. Unhinged. Terrified. Did she know it was her father trying to kill them?

  Greg came in for another attack. Rachel applied more pressure to the gas pedal.

  “Don’t speed up,” Cook instructed tersely, pulling his gun from the holster beneath his jacket as he began to turn in his seat.

  Clamping down on her urge to run, Rachel eased her foot off the pedal. But, before Cook could take aim, Greg smashed into them again. Harder than before.

  Hit from an angle this time, Cook was knocked off balance, directly into Rachel. His momentum slammed her sideways. Her head smacked the driver’s side window with a sickening crunch. Pain exploded in her left temple and cheek. Her fingers slipped on the wheel. The pickup lost traction. Headlights tracking her path, she watched in horror as the edge of the road rushed toward them at breakneck speed.

  In that moment, she knew they were going to die. “Patrick!” she cried his name as they went over the edge.

  The truck dropped sideways into the drainage ditch. Without thinking, she turned the wheel and the truck rolled. Her body slammed into her seat belt, and then hit the door frame. Agony ripped through her shoulder. Her left hip. Her head snapped forward when Cook’s shoulder clipped her before he catapulted through the windshield. Eyes squeezed tight, the squeal of twisting metal and the breaking of glass assaulted her ears. Dozens of knives jabbed her face and hands. Pain. Terror. More wrenching pain. The truck was still rolling when Rachel heard Amanda scream.

  “Mamaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  ~~~

  “I’m going to kill her,” Patrick muttered, his fingers white-knuckled on the steering wheel as he struggled to keep the truck and his temper under control
. When he’d left the office to chase after Rachel he’d been worried about her. Now he wanted to strangle her when he found her.

  What was she thinking driving all the way out here in the “worst storm in twenty years” according to the gleeful weatherman on the radio? She hadn’t bothered to stop long enough at Southgate to call ahead to see if her client was home, as he’d done when one of her landscapers told him where she’d gone.

  No. The bull-headed woman just pointed her sexy backside toward an empty house in the middle of nowhere in a hailstorm. He’d wring her neck. Then he’d tie her to his bedposts so he could sleep at night. That way he could fire Larsen Cook, who obviously couldn’t protect the woman from herself.

  He increased his speed. He was pushing his luck considering the road conditions, but he couldn’t dispel the worry that lay beneath his anger. “You’d better be sitting on Colbert’s doorstep,” he muttered half threatening, half praying.

  The hail quit as abruptly as it started, which improved visibility considerably. A few minutes later, he spotted the first set of skid tracks in the two-inch mat of hail and ice. His heart stopped, and then started again when he traced the skid back into a straight line. His hands tightened on the steering wheel when he saw another series of erratic tracks thirty feet further. These disappeared off the shoulder and included a reddish trail of transmission fluid that looked too much like blood staining the stark white blanket of ice.

  Skidding to a standstill in the middle of the road, he threw his truck into Park, pushed his door open, and ran toward the point where the tracks disappeared. He faltered when he spotted his crew cab pickup, a twisted heap of scrap metal resting upright at the bottom of the ditch fifty yards away. No! No! No! “Rachel! Amanda!”

  Patrick scrambled down the icy incline to the center of the ditch, dodging bits and pieces of his truck. Skirting his cross-bed toolbox ripped from its moorings, he ran to the left side of the truck where the cab roof had caved in. He tried to yank the driver’s door open. It was jammed. All he could see of the unmoving figure slumped over the steering wheel was a head of honey blond curls matted with blood and glass. “Rachel! Rachel, honey…oh, God!”