Table of Contents - White Diamonds
WD-Chapter 1
WD-Chapter 2
WD-Chapter 3
WD-Chapter 4
WD-Chapter 5
WD-Chapter 6
WD-Chapter 7
WD-Chapter 8
WD-Chapter 9
WD-Chapter 10
WD-Chapter 11
WD-Chapter 12
WD-Chapter 13
WD-Chapter 14
WD-Chapter 15
WD-Chapter 16
WD-Chapter 17
WD-Chapter 18
WD-Chapter 19
WD-Chapter 20
WD-Chapter 21
WD-Chapter 22
WD-Chapter 23
WD-Chapter 24
WD-Epilogue
Dear Reader Letter
About the Author
Books By Shirley Hailstock
Chapter 1
"Blood!"
Sandra Rutledge's eyes opened wide as she stared at the red stain dripping through her fingers. The white snow, reflecting from the ground, made the color stand out brighter.
The man in the car lay slumped over the steering wheel. Instinctively she grasped the door handle and pulled. It opened easily.
“At least he had the foresight to unlock the door and turn off the engine before he. . .” she stopped, refusing to utter the word. The car was stuck, but it hadn’t been in an accident. The airbag had not deployed. Looking down, Sandra saw breath congealing in the cold air. A sigh of relief escaped her.
He was alive.
She had tried to pull him up when she felt the stickiness that dripped through her fingers and stained the snow. She hadn't seen his face. What was he doing on this road? It was the only one that led to her parents' Pocono Mountain cabin. Except for the local park rangers who sometimes came to check to on her, no one came this way without an invitation. And she, as the only occupant at this time, had invited no one.
Her mother’s first order would have been to check the extent of his wounds, but Melissa Rutledge was a doctor and her daughter was not. So Sandra pulled him upright to find out who he was.
She gasped when his pale face came into view. Wyatt Randolph! She stumbled back a step, the depth of the snow checking her movement, as she recognized him. His head hit the steering wheel before she could recover her surprise.
The junior senator from Pennsylvania’s face had been plastered all over the news for a week. Stories of his disappearance topped every newscast. Speculation ranging from him being in a sanitarium to a covert operation in a foreign country had played over different news stations. Sandra knew none of them were true. She was the daughter of a U.S. senator and from her experience most of what was printed or reported had only the semblance of truth to it. He could be anywhere.
So, what on earth could Wyatt Randolph be doing here? Why was he bleeding? And who had beaten him up? She frowned at the bruises discoloring half of his face. One eye was swollen, with blue veins visible against his pale skin.
"Damn," she cursed. What would her mother do now? Sandra thought for a moment, then pressed her hand to his throat. She felt a pulse. Her breath came out with relief at the weak but steady thump against her fingers. Stop the bleeding. The thought came from nowhere. She tried to find the source of the blood flow, but his position in the car hindered her. She had to get him back to the cabin. At least there she'd be able to see what she was looking for. Not that she'd know what to do then, but at least they wouldn't freeze to death in the wind. She reinforced her decision by telling herself she couldn't undress him here, with snow flying in her face and the north wind whipping at them. She pulled his legs out of the car and placed his feet on the ground. Polished black shoes sank into the deep snow. He wasn't even properly dressed for this kind of weather, she thought. Where were his parka and boots? Again she wondered what he could be doing up here. The weather forecast called for an additional twenty inches of snow before morning. That would add to the double-digit amount already covering the ground. Any fool would know better than to try these roads in a car without four-wheel drive during a snowstorm.
Sandra heard a groan as she called on all her strength to get him out of the driver's seat. Good, she thanked herself. The groan meant he was still alive. His weight leaned against her, almost crushed her. One hundred and twenty pounds could hardly carry him. She dragged him across the short expanse to the snowmobile and placed him on the seat. It had to be a good mile back to the cabin, she estimated. Sandra was good on a snowmobile. She used it as a pleasure vehicle often plowing through the snow just for the heck of it. Occasionally she’d take it down the mountain to satisfy an uncontrollable craving for chocolate, but when she came to this out-of-the-way sanctuary, she brought everything she’d need for her stay. A six-foot-plus hunk of dead weight had never been on her list of cravings. And trying to balance an unconscious man while she wove the snowmobile over uneven terrain would be an Olympic challenge.
She took a deep breath, calculating the distance between their position on the road and the cabin on the distant hill. Despite the wind and cold, she was sweating, yet her hands were raw. She took a moment to put on her fur-lined gloves. Mounting herself behind Senator Randolph, she turned the key in the tiny vehicle and set off for the cabin. "I can do this," she said out loud, hoping the words would make the actions true.
Wyatt Randolph!
His body wobbled like a puppet from side to side, forcing her to compensate quickly for his shifts. The snow pattern behind her looked as though a drunk had woven a crooked line to her door.
How she got him into the cabin she'd never know, but she did have him on the table of her mother's surgery. Melissa Rutledge often came here to write and relax. She wrote many of her papers in this cabin. She also found out that as a doctor she was often needed for some emergency. What had started as a small den had grown into a full surgery. This is where Wyatt Randolph lay.
Now what? Sandra asked herself. She checked his eyes, lifting the lids to make sure. . .of what—that his eyeballs were still there? She'd seen it done countless times, but had no idea why anyone did it. Sandra was the daughter of a famous surgeon, a woman whose medical skills included the successful transplantation of human hearts. Melissa Rutledge led a team of experts whose mastery was world renowned, yet she, Sandra, didn't know how to change a bandage.
She did know there was more blood on the senator’s belly than had been there before. Either she had made the wound worse by moving him or the heat in the cabin was warming him. The bruises on his face were superficial. She didn't think there would be any permanent damage to his eye, despite the fact that he looked like a monster from an old black-and-white movie. Whoever beat him had only damaged one side of his face. The other half was unmarred. Carefully she began opening items of clothing to reach the source of the blood. Her protected fingers worked quickly to unbutton his coat and shirt. When she should have found skin, she discovered a band around his waist.
It was a crude attempt at a money belt. Blood soaked it. She frowned, skewing her nose at the amount covering the cloth. In this storm he should have picked a different road on which to get stranded, one where there was a doctor!
Sandra glanced at his face. He was helpless, unconscious. Paleness clung to him like a death shroud. She was his only hope. Sandra went back to work, taking a pair of bandage scissors and cutting the bound cotton in two places. She lifted it away and stared at the gaping wound. Blood oozed from it. Even her untrained eyes knew he'd been stabbed and that he needed stitches.
Absorbed by the thought that she was going to have to administer to this wound, she let go of one side of the cloth she held. Suddenly, she jumped at the noise and stepped away from the shards of glass pecking her legs as they fell from the bloody cloth and danced about her feet.
Sandra gasped, dropping the cloth. Diamonds, huge, cut stones, stained the white floor, skittering about like bloody jumping beans before momentum ceased and they came to rest. Her m
ind whirled with questions as her eyes darted back and forth between the floor and the man on the table. What was he doing with all these diamonds? An unnamed fear rose in her throat but she pushed it down. She didn't have time for that now. At the moment she had a man who needed her complete attention.
Ripping off the rubber gloves, she dropped them in the medical wastebasket and, without lifting the receiver of the speaker phone she punched her mother's phone number at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC. She waited while the secretary connected her, praying silently that Dr. Rutledge was available and not in surgery.
Sandra knew surgeons could assist in operations in all parts of the world by satellite hookup. Here, in the remote Pocono Mountains, they didn't have that kind of equipment and she was no doctor, yet the man lying on the table behind her would bleed to death if she didn't get help for him. This was the best she could do. Sandra let out a relieved breath when her mother's strong voice came over the line. She was going to have to walk her through the steps that would save the life of a United States senator. Then Sandra could wonder about the diamonds on the floor.
***
Twenty-four inches and more on the way. . .Sandra turned at the crackling sound of the radio weatherman's voice. She hugged herself as a sudden chill shook her. In all her years of growing up in Budd Lake, New Jersey, snow had been a natural result of winter. Yet today was the first time she'd felt stranded and faced with several feet of the white puffy flakes.
The last time she'd been at the cabin John had been alive. The grass was green, sloping like an emerald rug away from the cabin. They'd played like children, laughing, running, and rolling down the hill, then ending the day making love in the large bed upstairs. It had been a happy summer. Summer had turned to fall and then winter. Three winters since his death. Would the pain ever go away completely?
Sandra turned away from the window and stretched. Snow continued to pile up outside the cabin as it had all night and all day. The sun, low in the sky, dropped quickly behind the mountains. In moments the light was gone and the solitary cabin was draped in total darkness. She lit several lamps, suddenly needing the light for no apparent reason.
She'd been up here alone many times and had never felt remotely uneasy, yet tonight she was afraid. Upstairs a man who'd been stabbed lay in her sister Annie's bed. Wyatt Randolph had become both famous and notorious in the last week. Sandra didn't know which of the many newscasts detailing his background she should believe. In her experience, what the newscasters said was rarely the real story. Yesterday, her life had coincided with the senator's, and that fact didn't make her comfortable, even if she discounted the millions of dollars in precious stones he'd had with him.
Reviewing the facts in her mind as she often did aloud in class for her students, she thought: he's a U.S. senator with access to all manner of information not available to the public; he could be a member of a powerful sub-committee, although as a junior senator he would have little power; he'd been missing for over a week and apparently no one knew where he was, at least no one who'd come forward. Unease made her shiver, but she continued her mental assessment of the facts. He'd been stabbed. Quickly, she turned about, looking in every direction as if someone else was in the room and could hear her thoughts and knew that the senator was only a floor away. Running her hands up and down her arms, she tried to dispel the coldness that seeped through to her bones. Someone had deliberately tried to kill him. He could have fallen on a knife, she thought, rejecting the theory before it had time to form. And he'd come here. Why? They didn't know each other. Her father, the senior senator from New Jersey, was not there and her mother was so closely followed by the media that it would be easy to find her if it was a doctor he was seeking. He had to be looking for her father. But why then hadn't Wyatt gone to his office or called?
Sandra had the phone in her hand and was dialing before she could decide what she would say when her father answered. She checked her watch. It was after eight o'clock, but she knew he would still be in. His secretary, Michael Waring, spoke crisply in her ear after the first ring. He told her that her father was unavailable and could not be reached. She knew better than to try to badger an answer out of him, but this was an emergency. She wouldn't politely accept that he was away and say good-bye.
"Where is he?" she asked.
"He can't be reached at the moment."
"This is an emergency. I need to talk to him."
"I'll ask him to call you when he returns."
"Are you expecting him tonight?" Often the two of them worked late, and since her mother had left town, her father had no reason to go home early.
"He didn't say."
Sandra's frustration level increased. Why was Michael being so mysterious? He'd never been that way before. "Please ask him to call me when he returns, no matter what the time," she added.
"I will."
Sandra replaced the receiver and quickly lifted it again. She tried the Georgetown house. The maid told her the senator had gone away last week and had not returned.
This was not unusual for her rather. But why hadn't Michael said something? Senator Rutledge often went on fact-finding missions, some of them publicized, others not. Yet, this time she feared something was grossly different. Her hands grew clammy and she brushed them down her long sweater.
"Stop scaring yourself," she told the empty room. There was a perfectly logical explanation. It was like mathematics; everything fit together and worked in a logical order. All she had to do was wait for the junior senator upstairs to regain consciousness and ask him her questions.
Remembering the man in the bed, she looked at the ceiling. Sandra had been called upon twice today to use Herculean strength to save his life. She was more than a little afraid of what she had done. Suppose infection set in, suppose he began to bleed again? What if a fever developed? Suppose he needed a real doctor? What could she do? Her mother had been bound for the airport when Sandra's call had stopped her. It wasn't likely Sandra would be able to repeat what she'd done earlier.
Melissa Rutledge had used her calm professional voice to take away the panic Sandra felt at having to check the senator's body and then close his wound. She'd done exactly what she was told, even reconnecting the automatic chair apparatus to the stairs they hadn't used since Sandra's grandmother passed away six years ago, to get Wyatt Randolph to a comfortable bed on the second floor of the house.
He'd been little help in his semiconscious state, and Sandra had used all her available strength to get him to one of the three bedrooms. When she'd finally laid him down and pulled the quilt over his prone frame, she remembered her mother's last instruction, to call Brian, the forest ranger at the Pocono station. She knew she should report the stab wound, but Wyatt Randolph was a United States senator. Shouldn't she give him a chance to explain before he found himself confronted by a roomful of police? Her logic didn't make sense and she knew it. He'd been stabbed. He carried a cache of diamonds clearly worth enough to start a revolution, but something made her want to talk to him before she reported him to the police.
Sandra knelt on the sofa, her finger playing with the bright stones lying on the small table that held a lamp, several books, and a candy jar filled with leftover Christmas candy.
She'd cleaned the blood away until they shone, yet they were flawed. She could see the flaws with her naked eye. It didn't mean they weren't worth a fortune. The diamonds were another reason she should report to the authorities. Gunshots and stab wounds were required by law to be reported. Her mother had told her that just before she hung up. She felt guilty that she hadn't followed Melissa's instructions. They had a good relationship and Sandra never lied to her. Yet today, when she'd asked whom the man was, Sandra told her his eye was swollen so badly and his face so bruised that he'd be hard to recognize even if she knew who he was. Technically the truth, she rationalized, but she'd recognized Wyatt Randolph the moment she'd pulled his slumped body up in the car.
; Sandra chewed on her lip remembering her decision not to call Brian until she could at least talk to the senator. Maybe she'd been wrong. She should have called the police. The snow had continued until it was impossible to reach the small house now. If the senator died it would be her fault.
Again she looked at the stones, fifteen of them. They'd make a beautiful necklace, she thought with a wry smile. What was he doing with them? she wondered. Why did he have them banded about his waist and who had tried to kill him?
***
The radio crackled static. Sandra jumped as she turned and stared at it. The cup of coffee shook in her hand and she set it on the table. Why was she so nervous? Wyatt—He was Wyatt now. She'd checked on him several times during the night. He did develop a fever and she'd spent part of the night sponging his face and chest, keeping him cool. After such intimate contact she no longer thought of him as Senator Randolph. He had only been in her house one day and he was already upsetting her normal routine. She hadn't thought anything about studying for her orals since she'd seen the blinking lights of his car in the distance and wondered who could be on the road in such bad weather.
"K7950 calling K5895. Princess, are you there?" Sandra's spirits lifted at the absurd tag Officer Brian Court used when he called her on the shortwave radio. He called frequently when she was staying at the cabin under the pretext of checking to make sure everything was all right. Sandra knew he had a crush on her, but that was all it was. Going to the unit, she flipped the switch to TALK and spoke into the microphone. "K5895, the Ivory Tower: Good morning, Brian." She smiled into the instrument, ignoring the rules of ham operators. Brian had called the Rutledge cabin the Ivory Tower because it was so far up the mountain. When she was younger he'd dubbed her sister Annie the princess of the tower and referred to Sandra as the other princess.
Sandra didn't mind. Brian acted like most men did when they saw her beautiful sister. He still called them both princess. "I'm fine," Sandra lied. She'd put twenty stitches into Wyatt Randolph and a nervousness she couldn't define settled on her since she'd found him in the road yesterday, but she kept this from Brian.
Under the Sheets (Capitol Chronicles Book 1) Page 33