The Bequest

by kindle@netgalley. com

  A gunshot rang out from deep in the shadows.

  She plunged into the trees.

  CHAPTER 48

  Chad leaned his rifle against a tree trunk and pulled his tee-shirt over his head. With his teeth and one good arm, he ripped free a ribbon of cloth. Working as best he could with one hand and his mouth, he strapped it around his shoulder, tied an awkward knot, and pulled it tight. The cotton strip turned red in just a matter of seconds, soaked with blood. The pain throbbed, running down his arm to his hand, and pulsed across the back of his shoulder, up his neck, and right into his brain, pounding, pounding, pounding.

  Veterinarians knew a little bit about human anatomy; large animal vets knew even more than small animal vets. Chad knew that his wound was bad but not fatal. At least not instantly fatal. The bullet was still inside, probably lodged in his chest after passing through his shoulder. No organs had been hit, but there was blood. Not so much that blood was gushing, but enough that there was a steady flow. The bullet must have nicked an artery. If he could keep that in check, he could buy time. But if not, or if the pressure widened the nick and he lost too much blood...well, he didn’t really want to think about that.

  He heard the zzzipp of an angry projectile whizz by his head almost before he heard the echo of a gunshot. Instinctively he ducked, though it would have been too late had the shot been more accurate. He grabbed the rifle and ran deeper into the trees.

  The ground sloped upward, heading toward a ridgeline. Chad knew every inch of his land, which had been in his family for four generations. As a boy, he had roamed these woods with his cousins, playing boy-games like cowboys and Indians, pirates, cops and robbers, and hide-and-seek. He knew where the ridges were, where the valleys were, where the bluffs were, and where the caves were. Should he hide in one of the caves or seek higher ground to gain an advantage on his pursuers? He felt sure that if he got to one of the caves, he could conceal himself as long as it took. The sun would be down in a couple of hours, but darkness always preceded the actual sunset in these thick woods as the sun drooped in the western sky. When that happened, the two men would give up and leave, defeated by lack of light.

  Wouldn’t they?

  The problem, though, was how long it would take for them to leave, even once it grew dark. And how would he know if and when they did? Especially if he were hiding in a cave. If it took too long, and if he couldn’t slow the flow of blood enough to stay conscious, then maybe he would simply stay hidden until someday a future spelunker in the caves found his dry bones.

  And what about Peggy? The armed men only cared about Chad Palmer as a conduit to Peggy. Or Teri Squire, or whatever the hell her name was these days. When the men stopped looking for him, they would go looking for her. He knew that, after talking to her mom, she would ride for a while, to clear her head, but sooner or later, she would return to the ranch house, if she hadn’t already. If the men were still on the ranch...well, he couldn’t let that happen.

  He kept moving deeper into the woods, but at the same time higher, to a ridgeline about two miles in that bisected the ranch. From there, he would make his stand.

  Teri barely felt the branches that scraped at her cheeks and grabbed at her arms, their tips like fingernails, clawing at her flesh. The ground was uneven, threatening at any moment to upend her. The biggest hazards were small stumps of cedar trees that had been chain-sawed nearly, but not quite, flush to the ground. Every step was an adventure, but she willed her feet to almost float above the surface, to avoid the obstacles, to keep her body upright.

  The trees got thicker the deeper into the woods she ran. The ground sloped gradually downward, but she knew it would soon start to rise. It had been a lot of years since she had been here, but the Palmers and Tuckers had been close ever since she was a little girl, and the Palmer kids and Tucker kids had spent hours playing in these woods. Adam and Chad, especially, neither of whom seemed to care if little sister Peggy tagged along. She knew the hiding places, she knew the observation sites, and the caves. And she knew Chad. He wouldn’t hide; he would protect her. She knew where Chad would go.

  She crossed a dry creekbed, planted her left foot, and cut right, headed uphill. Doug Bozarth paused and leaned back against a tree. They had lost sight of the veterinarian shortly after the last shot. He wiped his sleeve across his face, soaking up perspiration that bathed his temples. It pissed him off that Dolan seemed immune to the heat. Though sweat had soaked through his shirt, turning the denim dark blue, the man barely seemed out of breath. If anything, he seemed bothered that they had to pause even momentarily to rest. Goddamn Texans.

  “Looks like an upslope that way,” Dolan said, pointing with his gun. “My money says he’s headed for high ground. He’ll try to get an angle on us.”

  “He’s shot. He’s bleeding. He’s just looking for a place to lay low.” Bozarth paused, painfully aware of the uplilt in his voice as he said it, as if the sentence ended in a question mark instead of a period. An expression of wishful thinking instead of a statement of confidence.

  “If you say so, Chief,” Dolan said. “But I’d keep my head down if I were you.”

  Bozarth looked at this watch. The shadows were already starting to lengthen in the trees. “How long ‘til the others get here?”

  “Hour, give or take.”

  Bozarth pushed away from the tree. “Let’s keep moving. Maybe we can finish this before they get here.”

  Chad crested the ridgeline and knelt behind a deadfall, a large oak that had been uprooted years ago following a thunderstorm that generated nearhurricane strength winds. The roots stretched like tentacles at one end, the massive trunk extending parallel to the edge of the ridgeline for a good fifty feet.

  Down below, at the start of the ridge, was a cluster of prickly pear cactus, with a narrow opening in the middle. A parallel row of cedars climbed the slope from the cactus, almost as if forming a fenceline on either side of a path to the top. It would be nearly impossible for someone down below to see through the cactus and over the tree, but with the right perch behind the trunk, and at just the right angle, a person would have a perfect funnel of vision from above to below.

  Just perfect for a sniper. Assuming, of course, that the target entered the field of vision at the bottom end of that funnel. Chad was counting on it. The opening in the prickly pear virtually beckoned entry, as if it were the gate to the easiest route to the top.

  Chad rested the barrel of the rifle across the trunk, gripped the stock tightly, and sighted down the funnel. He would have one shot, at the first man who appeared. After that, the element of surprise would be gone. Besides, his ability to work the bolt would be virtually non-existent for a second shot.

  He took the box of shells from his pocket and set it on the ground. Eight bullets. He wasn’t sure how many were in the rifle. One-handed, he put two into the magazine, but the effort of even that exhausted him. He put the other six in his pocket.

  He curled his index finger around the trigger, took a deep breath. And waited. Teri continued what she hoped was a flanking movement, of a sort that would have made any military field commander proud. She wasn’t sure where the armed men were, but she knew why they were here. If it had just been two unidentified men with weapons, she would have assumed, but couldn’t be sure, that they were after her; after all, it seemed like everyone was these days. But Doug Bozarth was the dead giveaway. He must perceive her as some kind of threat, although she couldn’t be sure exactly what that threat was. Was he behind the murder of Leland Two? She only had suspicions on that front, but maybe he viewed her as a weak link in the chain of silence that would lead to him.

  Or was it simply because the questions about ownership of the screenplay would be brushed aside if she were to turn up missing? And she had no doubt that, if Bozarth and his cohort found her, it would be the last time anyone found her. She would end up buried somewhere on Chad’s land, and the mystery of the missing two-time Oscar winner would be the subject of future documenta
ries and sensational stories on the Entertainment Channel or other tabloid shows on television. In the meantime, he would count his back-end profits all the way to the bank.

  Common sense told her to turn, get back on Gretel, and ride for help. But Gretel had probably already run off by now, probably back to Hansel at the barn. Besides, Chad needed her. He was bleeding and he was hurt, and it was all because of her. Now it was time for her to stand beside him as he had done for her all those years ago.

  She increased her speed, the ground flying beneath her feet. Dodging trees and rocks as if she were a running back covering a broken field, she moved gradually higher, aiming for a ridgeline that she knew would give her a vantage point even in the thickness of the woods, but maybe a half mile beyond the track she believed the gunmen were taking. If she was right, she would end up ahead of them, not behind, giving her the element of surprise she desperately needed.

  In San Antonio, California Highway Patrol detectives Nichols and Stillman exited a Gulfstream III private jet that had been provided, at Swafford’s request, courtesy of the chairman of Cinema USA, the studio set to release Teri Squire’s new movie. An airport employee drove them in a golf cart to the car rental counters, where they picked up a pearl-colored Toyota Camry. Stillman plugged in the coordinates for Chad Palmer’s Bandera ranch on the GPS device as Nichols got on his cell phone to call the Bandera County Sheriff’s Department and announce their arrival.

  “My guys have eyes on the Tucker place, but no sign of Ms. Squire or anyone else, for that matter,” Sheriff Trey Waggoner said.

  “We think she may have gone to Chad Palmer’s ranch,” Nichols said. “Do you know where that is?”

  “Sure do.”

  “That’s where we’re headed.”

  “I’ll meet you at the gate.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d stay out of sight,” Nichols said. “We don’t want him to know we’re coming until we get there.”

  “If he hasn’t done anything wrong, why’s it matter?”

  “If Ms. Squire’s there, we don’t want to spook her.”

  “You really think she had something to do with your killings out there?” Waggoner asked.

  “Our concern is that she’s the next victim. If she’s at the ranch, we don’t want her running off before we can get there. Especially if the bad guys already have boots on the ground.”

  “Okay. I’ll meet you out on the state highway leading to the place, and we’ll go in together. It’ll probably take you an hour, hour and fifteen minutes to get there. I don’t figure anything much will happen before then.”

  An ancient Ford pick-up chugged across the meadow, kicking up dust in its wake. It slowed briefly by the body spread-eagled on the ground, blood soaking the dirt around it. The driver, a bearded man in his late thirties, glanced at the body.

  “That’s Morgan,” he said. “Poor bastard.” The clean-shaven passenger, a .38 resting on the seat beside him, looked past the driver and shook his head. “Happy birthday, Morgan.”

  “Today his birthday?”

  “Yeah. Me and him was going down to the Riverwalk tonight to celebrate.”

  “Looks like you got your evening back.”

  The clean-shaven man laughed. “Life sucks, and then you die.”

  The driver eased down the slope and stopped next to the Dodge. Both men got out, the clean-shaven man tucking the .38 in his belt while the bearded man retrieved a rifle and a box of bullets from behind the seat. He also wore a holster, just like an old west cowboy, a Colt .45 New Frontier revolver riding low on his hip.

  While the bearded man loaded the rifle, the clean-shaven man checked the interiors of both trucks. “Got blood here,” he said, looking in the window of Chad’s pickup. He scanned the ground around both trucks. “Also got some prints. Looks like a horse.” He looked around, peered into the trees, then back toward a ranch house in the distance. “Horse went that way, but I got boot prints, too. Looks like the rider went into the trees.”

  The bearded man pulled a cell phone from his pocket and hit a speed dial number as he approached. When he heard nothing, he tucked it back in his pocket. “No signal.” He noted the prints on the ground, the blood in the truck, and nodded his consensus with the clean-shaven man’s assessment. “Boot prints are small. A woman.”

  “The actress?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  The clean-shaven man pulled his gun from his belt while the bearded man gripped the rifle in both hands. They disappeared into the trees.

  CHAPTER 49

  Chad wiped sweat from his eyes. The salt stung and momentarily blurred his vision. He didn’t know if it was the heat getting to him or the blood loss. He had never been a hunter. How did they do it? How did they stay on alert long enough to spot prey and get off that one perfect shot? He knew he would get but one shot before giving himself away, and he had to make it count. But even that was largely out of his hands. His target had to walk into the right spot, at the end of the funnel, and had to be still long enough for Chad to squeeze the trigger. It was all going to be about luck and split second timing. He hoped God was on his side.

  He lowered his left arm, letting the barrel of the gun rest solely on the fallen tree. The pain in his shoulder continued to throb but felt duller. It left him with mixed emotions; less pain was less pain, but less feeling was a harbinger of bigger problems. A wave of nausea steamrolled across his body. Bile rose into his throat, burning as he swallowed hard to force it back down. Tiny wiggles of white swam through his vision. He shook his head. Warmth settled across his being. All he wanted to do was to lie down on the leaves, close his eyes, and sleep. But he knew that if he did, he might never wake up.

  A sound below snapped him to attention. The crack of a broken twig, the rustle of movement on fallen leaves. Using his right hand, he raised his left arm, which felt like dead weight, as if it had fallen asleep. He positioned his left hand on the barrel of the rifle, like placing ballast on top, to hold it in place. He gripped the stock with his right hand, his finger along the trigger, and sighted down the barrel.

  And waited.

  The rustling grew louder, closer. He tensed, fighting an urge to

  vomit. His vision blurred, obscured by sweat and impending unconsciousness. He had to stay alert, just a minute or two more. His life might depend on it. Peggy’s life might depend on it, too.

  A shadow appeared in the opening at the end of the tunnel. Chad shifted his weight, lifted higher on his bended knee. He tightened his finger on the trigger, squeezing. It moved slightly, just a hair’s breadth away from firing. The shadow moved closer, now filling the target area. It was followed a beat later by a figure.

  Chad squeezed the trigger.

  Blackness overwhelmed him. He slumped to the ground behind the deadfall, his finger still curled around the trigger of the rifle. Teri picked up her pace at the sound of the gunshot. Her hunting instincts, honed as a little girl raised on a ranch, had been dulled by years in the Hollywood limelight, but they were merely dormant, not extinguished. She knew instantly the source of the sound. High, along the ridgeline. That meant the shot had been Chad’s; that was good news. There was no return shot, at least not yet, and that was more good news.

  But the ensuing silence was also worrisome. It was a total sensory blackout that allowed her imagination to run rampant, and given the nightmarish events of late, her thoughts instinctively took a dark turn.

  She reached the foot of a steep bluff along the edge of the ridgeline. She veered to her right, where the face of the drop-off transformed to more of a slope than a cliff. She drove hard off of her right foot and leaped. She scrabbled for purchase with both hands. With the grace of a mountain goat, she skittered up the hill until she reached the crest. Once again on level ground, she turned left and sprinted toward the source of the gunshot.

  Dodging tree branches, leaping over rocks and low stands of prickly pear cactus, she weaved her way along the ridge. The shadows were already darken
ing as the evening sun descended in the west, making it hard to see more than ten or fifteen feet in front of her. But the same dimming of the light that hindered her vision would also help provide cover from the assailants. Provided she could get to Chad in time.

  Her toe kicked a stump, throwing her off balance. She stumbled forward, waving her arms in front in a swimming motion, free-styling her way forward as she struggled for balance. Her upper body outdistanced her feet. With one last stroke, she dove forward. Her knees hit the ground first, followed by the heels of her hands as she sought to avoid a face-plant. Pain screamed in her body as her right hand slammed down on a rock. Its sharp edges didn’t break the skin but bruised the heel of her hand deeply.

  She rolled sideways then scrambled back to her knees. As she gripped her hands together, a hint of color in her peripheral vision drew her attention away from her own pain.

  “Oh, my God,” she said under her breath. “Chad.” Staying low, on her hands and feet, she skittered toward his crumpled body lying behind a fallen tree. Blood soaked his left side, running down his arm to his hand. The blood had also soaked his shirt, which sopped it up like a sponge. She felt for his pulse. Nothing at first, then she shifted her fingers and found it. Weak, but steady.

  She rolled him onto his back. He moaned, but his eyes stayed closed. She leaned close and listened for his breath sounds. Shallow, but as with his pulse, steady.

  “Veterinarian!” The voice came from below, down from the fallen tree. Loud and strong.

  And familiar. Doug Bozarth’s voice.

  “I hope you’ve got your hunting license, veterinarian,” another man’s voice said. “You done killed a deer.”

  Teri moved close to the fallen tree, lifted her head as much as she dared, and looked through a dark funnel that telescoped downward to an opening where a bleeding deer lay on its side.

  She pried the rifle from Chad’s hand, laid the barrel along the tree trunk, and sighted toward the deer. Then she waited.