A Hasty Wedding

by Cara Colter

  "Aquifers change, maps become outdated. A little earth tremor can do it."

  "I don't understand," she said.

  "I don't think whoever poisoned the water ever meant to hurt anyone at the ranch, Holly."

  "Really?"

  To the men listening in she was playing the interested schoolgirl to the hilt.

  Todd lowered his voice. "Springer has been looking to expand operations. Contaminated water drives down land prices."

  "Careful, Holly," Rory said in an undertone.

  "Springer has lots of money," she said. "Why would they care about land prices?"

  "They don't. If somebody else cheaply picked up the land, or a lease on the land, they could sell it to Springer at a major profit."

  "Wow," Holly breathed, "that's brilliant, isn't it?"

  "Just guessing, of course," Todd said.

  "Well, it makes sense. It has to be an insider at Springer. Someone who knows they want to expand and has access to that chemical."

  "We're conducting an internal investigation."

  "But whoever did this is way too smart to get caught, aren't they?"

  "That would be my guess."

  Both men listening caught the sickening note of pride in the voice.

  "How much money would you think would be involved in something like that?"

  "Millions," Todd said.

  "She's walking him right into it," Rory said with satisfaction. "He trusts her."

  "Did I tell you my do-gooder days are over, Dad?"

  "Really? It's about time. I've got a job waiting for you at Springer."

  "Millions sounds more appealing to me."

  Todd was silent, and the men in the van waited to see if she had overplayed her hand.

  "What are you saying?" Todd finally asked, sounding a little nervous.

  She lowered her voice. "I know you did it, Dad. I know it's not over. And I want in."

  Fifteen

  Her father cast his eyes around the room nervously. "Be careful what you say."

  "Nobody's listening to us." Holly didn't quite know how she pulled that off when the only reason she was staying so calm—almost detached from her own body—was that she knew Blake was listening and she could feel his presence close to her.

  It was that, more than the fact that she knew their waiter was an FBI agent, that made her feel safe.

  "You never know that for sure," Todd said, fishing in his wallet for some bills, which he threw onto the table.

  For a split second she thought she'd overdone it, and he was leaving without her.

  "Come on. We'll go for a drive."

  "Sure. I didn't feel like dessert anyway." He wanted to tell her everything. She could tell. Carrying secrets of the magnitude he was carrying weighed a man down, made him feel lonely. Holly sensed his eagerness to unburden himself.

  They left the restaurant and she waited while he unlocked the car door and opened it for her. Save for one brief glance at the van when she had come out the door, she forced herself not to look there.

  As far as she could tell, Todd hadn't even noticed it. "Where are we going?" she asked.

  "Just for a drive."

  She decided to wait him out, to play on her hunch that he wanted to talk. She was right.

  "So, doll, what makes you think your old man has been up to no good?"

  She realized she needed to get him to do the talking. She needed his confession, not to fill up the tape with her conjecture.

  "Who said anything about no good?" she said with a laugh.

  "Lots of those little ankle nippers you've been working around got sick."

  "Nobody died."

  "That's what I thought. Plus, I gave the ranch the Pathfinder. About as close to an apology as could be expected under the circumstances. What more can a man do? So, you think I need a partner?"

  "It's going to look mighty suspicious if you obtain that land in your name."

  He shot her a look. "I always knew you were a bright girl."

  "And not much better if we acquire it in my name."

  "So?"

  "I've got a friend. We can use her name without getting her involved. She's dumb as a brick. She won't catch on."

  "That's my girl."

  She realized he didn't know her at all. She would never call one of her friends stupid. He'd never known her, and now he never would. But Holly did not have the luxury of feeling sad about that right now.

  "So, tell me everything." They were pulling out of Prosperino and heading toward the coast. Todd turned off on an unmarked road, but he seemed confident of his whereabouts.

  She slid a look to the passenger side mirror and felt her heart fall at the absolute blackness behind them. And then she caught the quick flicker of lights and relaxed slightly.

  Todd confessed. But she had been wrong about one thing. It was not the burden of his secrets that made him so eager to talk, it was that so far what he considered his brilliance had gone unapplauded, unapproved.

  He told all. She was stunned to learn her father had kidnapped Libby Corbett, and she tried not to think of Rafe listening.

  "Of course," he said finally, "every plot has a mistake."

  She noticed he avoided using the word crime.

  "You made a mistake?"

  "Two of them. I wanted the land on the Crooked Arrow Reservation. When they drilled the new well there, I saw my opportunity. Reserves aren't usually that open to letting go of land, not even lease agreements. Especially since what Springer needs is a test ground for some fairly serious chemicals. Nobody wants that in their backyard. The option is going to a third-world country, but they're always so damned unstable.

  "The new well meant they were soon going to be putting houses in the area I wanted. So, they drill a well, I put in a chemical, they test it, and voila, decide it's not safe for people to live there.

  "My thinking was if the land had been rendered useless for habitation, I could pick it up or lease it for a song, then sell it or lease it back to Springer for a fortune."

  "I did my homework, checked the lay of the land, which was harder than you might think. The aquifer—the water table—had been mapped twelve years ago, but the map was no longer available. I had to track it down, which was the mistake that nearly got me caught, but I'll get to that in a minute.

  "Anyway, I went to the state archives and looked at the damned maps, then based on them did the dirty deed. Was it my fault that the map missed a shift under the ground and didn't show that the water would eventually trickle down into the aquifer used by the Hopechest Ranch?"

  "Tell me how you nearly got caught," she said, pretending breathless interest in his tale. She was trying to watch the road, which was twisting dangerously now as it hugged the cliffs. It was deeply rutted and didn't seem to ever be used. If anybody was following them, they had long since turned off their headlights.

  "The EPA sent a guy out. Charlie O'Connell." He pulled the car over, stopped it, turned off the lights. "Get out. I want to show you something."

  She got out her car door and went and stood beside him. He was staring over the edge of the cliff, a look on his face that made her shiver with suppressed terror. She tossed her hair over her shoulder as an excuse to glance back at the road. Nothing.

  "I killed a man here," he said softly. "The only one who knew. He got too greedy."

  Was it a warning to her?

  "You killed somebody?" she stammered, as if this came as a complete surprise to her.

  He turned and faced her. "That's what you've got to be prepared to do to get what you want. Anything."

  He seemed to be waiting for a reply. She had none.

  "He was a useless moron anyway. Government employee, parasite on society. He signed into the state archives to look at those maps, same as me. And guess what? There was my mistake. My name on the sign-in sheet.

  "From that, he figured it out. He made a mistake when he thought he was going to be a parasite on me, though. He was feeling sorry for himself
because he'd been passed over for promotion once too often. He figured I'd make a pretty good retirement plan, so he tried to blackmail me.

  "I played along, even paid him once to lull him into a sense of security. Boy, I'm an actor."

  Holly tried not to show her revulsion at this almost gleeful retelling of the tale.

  "Told him I was scared to death to get caught paying him. Talked him into meeting me way up here. I waited right over there for him, in one of the company trucks. When he parked, I just drove up behind him and pushed him off."

  Holly followed Todd's gaze down the unforgiving cliff.

  "I was worried. I'd heard that the exact model and make of a vehicle can be traced from paint, and I knew there was going to be a bit of paint on that bumper. So you know what I did, sweetheart?"

  "No," she said in a small voice. He was tickled by all this. It wasn't a man's life to him, people's lives, it was just a big, entertaining game that pitted his craft and cunning against the world.

  "I took that vehicle in and parked it in the company garage. And then I suggested we donate it to the Hopechest Ranch. But I thought maybe we should repaint it first, since Springer has all their vehicles custom-painted white. We decided on silver.

  "That will teach him to take advantage of me," Todd said, still staring over the cliff. The moon came out from behind a cloud and glanced off his face.

  She saw the madness in his eyes.

  Had she made the same mistake as that poor EPA man? Had she taken exactly the wrong tact to win her father's confidence? Had he brought her here to kill her? Where was her backup? She had to trust that they were good. She had to trust they were close by, and so good at what they were doing that even though she knew they were there, she could not detect them. Her father, lost in his reverie, didn't have a clue.

  She forced confidence into her voice, "So is that why you brought me here? To kill me, too?"

  "Holly! How could you think such a thing? Kill my own daughter?"

  She saw this was a variation of the honor-among-thieves philosophy. He had his lines he would not cross. Unless of course he discovered the tape recorder strapped to her waist.

  "So what's our next step?" she asked, putting careful emphasis on the our, trying to get him to think of her as part of his team.

  "I don't know yet," he said thoughtfully. "A man like me doesn't ever see failure, only new opportunity. I have two options now. I bet if someone made an offer on the Hopechest Ranch right now, it would go pretty cheap. Or if traces of DMBE started showing up in the water again, that would probably clinch the deal.

  "Or I can try again for the reservation with a different wellhead. I skimmed a bit of DMBE from some of the barrels. Put it away for a rainy day." He chuckled softly, as if that was a joke.

  "Where is it?"

  He tore his gaze away from the cliff, and looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time that night.

  His expression became puzzled, wary.

  His confession made, Todd seemed to suddenly realize how vulnerable he had made himself.

  "So what's with the big turnaround?" he asked, slowly. "Last time I saw you, you were giving Mother Teresa a run for her money. Come to think of it, you even look different. I thought you loved that dead-end job and those good-for-nothing kids."

  She didn't like the way he was looking at her, the intensity of his gaze, the sudden hardness in his eyes. She somehow knew if she lied now, she would be in big trouble.

  And so, she opted for the truth. The absolute truth.

  "I fell in love with my boss."

  Her father snickered. "Well, Holly, you aren't really the type to inspire grand passions. Not like your mother."

  "I just wanted him to love me the way I loved him."

  "Consider yourself lucky he didn't. He probably would have taken advantage of your romantic nature, bedded you a few times and then dumped you in the discard pile. That's the nature of the beast. Even a goody-goody beast like the young Fallon."

  With effort, she held her temper, kept her expression bland.

  Todd couldn't seem to stop talking now that he had started. "I don't care what people say about his old man. I get tired of the 'Joe Colton, America's Greatest Hero' song that everybody in this valley sings so loud. I was happy when old Emmett took a shot at him. Too bad he missed."

  Holly tried to stifle her gasp.

  "We could probably get rid of your SOB of a boss if we played our cards right. DMBE is pretty versatile stuff. It's colorless, tasteless, odorless. You could put some in his coffee."

  It was more than she could pretend. The gasp escaped her.

  "You're in now, Holly girl. You know all my secrets. It's too late to decide you don't have the stomach for it."

  She tried to smile, but she could see the strange gleam in his eye, and knew that her father had crossed that fine line between sane and insane at some point that they had all missed. They had missed it because he was clever, and because he never let anyone get too close to him.

  Only he was watching her narrowly now, suspiciously. "You're having me on, aren't you?" he asked softly, understanding dawning in his eyes.

  "What do you mean?" she asked, backing away from him as he moved closer.

  "You couldn't kill anybody. You couldn't poison the water system. I can see that in your eyes. You used to blubber if I swatted a fly when you were a kid."

  She said nothing.

  "Now you've gone and put me in a really bad position. You know everything, but you don't really want to be my partner. I'm getting a little nervous here, Holly."

  "You're reading it wrong," she said nervously.

  "I don't think so," he said, taking another step toward her. "You damned little goody-two-shoes, what do you really want from me? Are you going to turn me in?"

  She tried to deny it, but her voice was frozen in her throat.

  "You're going to betray your own father?"

  This said as if it were the worst of crimes. Much worse than poisoning water, killing an EPA man, plotting to poison her boss.

  He was moving rapidly toward her. She backed away, wary of the edge of the cliff. They circled gingerly.

  "You're not my daughter," he said in a harsh voice.

  Which she knew meant he had no code at all that he had to honor anymore.

  "You're being crazy," she told him.

  He lunged at her, and she sidestepped, and then turned and ran. She was in far better shape than he, but she was not driven by his desperation. She could hear his footsteps falling heavily on the ground behind her. She could hear the harsh, labored rasp of his breathing.

  She thought she had succeeded in putting some distance between them when he tackled her around her knees and brought them both crashing to the ground.

  She tried to break free of his hold, but couldn't. He settled heavily on her stomach, right on top of the recorder, pinning her hands on either side of her head.

  "What the hell am I sitting on? You're wired?" He looked stunned, momentarily hurt and afraid, and then furious.

  She closed her eyes against the fury in his face. He had become the monster in her dreams.

  Suddenly they were illuminated in a strong beam of light. In the distance she could hear sirens.

  Her father flipped behind her, pulled her to sitting, wrapped his beefy arm around her neck and dragged her back toward the cliff. Something sleek and hard and cold touched her temple.

  She knew, without being able to see, that it was a gun.

  "You come a step closer, and I'll kill her," he said. "Turn off the light. Now."

  The light winked off.

  "Who are they?" he asked her, tightening his grip around her neck. He reached under her sweater, ripped free the tape recorder and smashed it on the ground. "Who are they?" he asked again.

  "Some friends of mine."

  He gave the recorder a little kick. "Yeah. Got access to some pretty good technology. Who are they? Cops or FBI?"

  She said nothing.

/>   "Okay, doll, listen up. I might have just found a way to get me a couple of million anyway. You just became my hostage."

  "Why do you want money so badly? Why?"

  "Do you live in the real world? Money is everything. It's power and it's privilege. Without it a man is nothing.

  "I've given my whole life to Springer. Do you think I ever got invited on the executive holidays, to the executive dinners? Nope, I was just the guy who could be counted on to do the dirty work. They thought I'd work for a pat on the head forever."

  "They made you vice president," she said, trying to calm him, trying to make him rational.

  "At two-thirds of the salary Corbett made. That actually made me laugh. I was glad I was going to screw them out of a couple of mil. Glad."

  "Daddy, doesn't love count for anything?"

  "Don't make me puke." He raised his voice. "Listen to me. I want five million and a helicopter. I want it within the hour. And if I don't get it, your little snitch is going to die."

  "You won't kill me," she said loudly.

  "I'm backed up against a wall here, Holly. I'll do whatever I have to do."

  She heard the sound of voices over by the road. Male voices. She recognized Blake's. And knew, suddenly, he was coming for her.

  Rory and Rafe would try to stop him, might even try to physically restrain him. But they would not succeed.

  Then absolute silence reigned. She could feel her father's fear in the slick sweat on his arm where it wrapped around her neck. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw a shadow move. Lamb saw it, too. The metal left her temple, and the sound of a shot exploded the night.

  "No," she shrieked, and with the superhuman strength born of absolute desperation, she shoved her whole weight back against him. She felt him rock.

  She thought she had lost the gamble, when Blake came tearing out of the darkness. Todd took aim, but Blake was on top of him before the gun went off. It catapulted out of his hand and into the darkness. She heard it clatter down the cliff.

  Blake and Todd struggled, so close to the edge of the cliff.

  Other men were running toward them now, out of the darkness.

  Blake lifted his arm, formed a fist and swung. He hit Todd, and then he hit him again, his face a mask of fury.