The Rivals

by Joan Johnston

  Sarah saw the tightening of Clay Blackthorne’s jaw as he took the woman’s shoulders in his hands and moved her away. Evaluating people was an important part of Sarah’s job, and she was aware of the tension between them.

  Libby was clearly flustered when she turned back to Sarah and said, “This is Clay Blackthorne.” Libby hesitated, and Sarah waited with bated breath to hear how the petite woman would explain the U.S. attorney general’s presence this late at night—in his shirtsleeves. “A friend,” Libby said at last.

  Clay reached past Libby and shook Sarah’s hand. “Thanks for coming, Detective Barndollar. How soon will the Amber Alert go into effect?”

  Sarah turned to Libby before she could escape and said, “How old is your daughter?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Almost eighteen,” Clay said.

  “We’ve never done an Amber Alert in Wyoming,” Sarah said. “Kids around here that go missing are mostly taken by divorced parents. We’re too small a town to have a local TV station, and the only flashing sign we have to announce an Amber Alert is on the Snake River at Hoback Canyon, and it’s used to warn folks there’s road work ahead.”

  “Christ.” Clay shoved both hands through his hair in agitation.

  “I’ll have the dispatcher alert everyone to be on the lookout for your daughter, and we can e-mail your daughter’s picture to statewide law enforcement. We usually wait twenty-four hours to post information on missing persons with NCIC.”

  “What’s NCIC?” Libby asked.

  Sarah had made the explanation so many times, she had it memorized. “The National Crime Information Center,” she said. “It’s a centralized computer system with statistics and information about crimes and missing persons that allows different jurisdictions to make comparisons of data.”

  “Does it work?” Libby asked.

  “It’s how we identified the girl who was found last spring buried in the mountains. NCIC came up with a match on a missing persons report out of Las Vegas.”

  Sarah realized the mistake she’d made when Libby’s face paled and she began to tremble. Before Sarah could reach out to the other woman, Clay Blackthorne had stepped up behind Libby and steadied her by wrapping an arm around her waist. Libby immediately turned and buried her face against his shoulder.

  Blackthorne’s cold-eyed gaze dared Sarah to say anything. She kept her mouth shut, but that kind of body contact between a man and a woman suggested a relationship beyond that of mere friends. Was the U.S. attorney general having a clandestine affair with Libby Grayhawk? Then she remembered reading that Clay Blackthorne’s wife had died a while back of cancer. Not clandestine, then. Just private.

  “In a special case, you could put the information on NCIC without waiting the full twenty-four hours, couldn’t you?” Blackthorne asked.

  “In a special case,” Sarah agreed.

  “I want Kate Grayhawk’s info put on now,” Blackthorne said.

  “I don’t think—”

  “I don’t like pulling rank, but I will,” Blackthorne said, his arms tight around Libby Grayhawk. “I want that information posted on NCIC immediately.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “I’ll go get that picture,” Libby said, pulling free of Blackthorne’s embrace and heading toward the back of the house.

  Sarah pulled her purse strap higher on her shoulder and said, “I didn’t realize you were visiting in Jackson, Mr. Blackthorne. Usually the Secret Service asks that someone from our office be assigned to help protect dignitaries when they’re in town.”

  “I’m not here on official business,” he said.

  “Where are you staying?” Sarah asked.

  Blackthorne’s gray eyes turned to ice. “That’s none of your business.”

  Sarah flushed. She glanced at Libby, who’d returned with the picture of Kate, then turned back to Blackthorne and said, “I just dropped off Drew DeWitt at the ranch house at Forgotten Valley. He mentioned the two of you own it together.”

  “We do,” Blackthorne said.

  “I asked where you were staying because I towed his truck out of the river tonight—that’s another story—but he was hurt in the accident and it might be a good idea if someone stayed with him tonight to make sure he doesn’t have a concussion,” Sarah said. “So I wondered if—”

  “I see,” Blackthorne said. “I am staying at the ranch. I promise to keep an eye on him, Detective.”

  “Here’s the picture of Kate,” Libby said, handing over a 5x7 color photo of an extraordinarily beautiful black-haired, gray-eyed young woman. “I gave a lot of information to someone over the phone. Is there anything else you need from me?”

  “Is there anyone in town your daughter might have gone to see? A girlfriend? A boyfriend?” Sarah asked.

  Libby shook her head. “I already gave a description of the stranger Kate left the Mangy Moose with to someone at the sheriff’s office. I can’t imagine who the man was. No one I know, for sure. I called all of Kate’s friends here in Jackson when I got home around four-thirty, but none of them had heard from her recently. Kate has been attending a private school back East for the past four years, so her friends live all over the country.”

  “There’s no one—”

  “I said there’s no one here in Jackson,” Libby said sharply. “Just my brother North and me.”

  Libby was caught up in her thoughts when the detective asked, “What about Kate’s father? Any chance he might—”

  “Kate’s father doesn’t live around here,” Libby said quickly.

  Too quickly, Sarah thought. She watched Clay Blackthorne stiffen beside the petite woman.

  “Have you been in contact with him?” Sarah said, her eyes on Blackthorne. “Maybe your daughter—”

  “He’s been informed,” Libby said. “He doesn’t know where she is, either.”

  Sarah looked from Clay Blackthorne to Libby and back again and waited, letting the silence do its work. She wondered what Blackthorne had to do with this situation. She’d learned better than to make guesses, but her gut told her there was more going on than she was being told.

  When it became clear that Blackthorne wasn’t going to offer any further explanation for his presence, she handed her card to Libby and said, “If you think of anything you believe might be useful, give me a call.”

  “I will,” Libby said as she followed Sarah to the door. “Thank you, Detective.”

  “You’re welcome, Libby. And please, call me Sarah. I’ll go back to the Mangy Moose and see if anyone noticed your daughter leaving or saw the vehicle she left in. If I find out anything more, I’ll be in touch.” She didn’t offer platitudes. They weren’t going to help find Libby Grayhawk’s missing daughter.

  Sarah didn’t look back as she headed for her Tahoe. She had a bad feeling about this one. Clay Blackthorne’s presence lent more weight to the girl’s disappearance. Why had he come here? What, exactly, was his relationship to Libby Grayhawk? And why did he seem to care so much about Libby Grayhawk’s daughter?

  “I should have told her Kate is my daughter,” Clay said.

  “Why?” Libby asked. “What difference can it possibly make?”

  “They’ll do more to find her if they think she’s the daughter of someone important.”

  “She’s a Grayhawk,” Libby said. “In Jackson, that’s enough. I’d rather you say nothing.”

  Clay lifted a brow in question and Libby explained, “Whoever has her may kill her if he realizes that both the Grayhawks and the Blackthornes will come down on him for taking her,” Libby said. “I don’t want her connection to you made public yet. Besides, aren’t you afraid of the political repercussions if it gets out that you have a grown daughter you’ve never told anyone about?”

  “I think my career can survive it.”

  “And if you thought it couldn’t, would you still make the ultimate sacrifice for your daughter?” Libby said bitterly.

  “You know I would.” Clay put his hands on Libby�
��s shoulders, looked into her eyes, and said, “I love Kate. She’s all I have left in the world.”

  Clay saw Libby wince before she pulled free and turned away. He’d known the words would hurt, but he hadn’t been able to curb his tongue. At forty-six, it was getting harder not to say exactly what was on his mind. To hell with diplomacy. He’d spent his whole life being careful not to offend the right people. If ever there was a time for plain speaking, this was it.

  “What’s going on, Libby? What is it you haven’t told me? Why did Kate leave school and fly back here?”

  Libby turned to face him, her arms crossed protectively over her chest. “That’s the worst part. I don’t know. She called to say she was coming home, that she had something important to talk to me about. She never said what it was.”

  “She’s pregnant,” Clay said flatly.

  He watched as Libby sucked in a breath. “I thought the same thing,” she said.

  “So maybe Kate met the father here, and that’s who she was with at the Mangy Moose,” Clay speculated.

  Libby shook her head. “I don’t think so. The bartender seemed to think they didn’t know each other. He overheard a little of what they said,” she explained when Clay lifted a skeptical brow.

  “How could this have happened?” Clay demanded.

  Libby’s eyes looked bleak.

  Suddenly Clay was remembering how he and Libby had met. How easily he’d succumbed to Libby’s flirtatious smile and her young, supple body. She was still slim, still beautiful. But the smile was gone. He rarely let himself think about the good times they’d shared. Staying focused on her betrayal was the only way he’d been able to keep his distance from her. She was a dangerous flame, and this moth already had singed wings.

  “I’d better go,” he said, crossing to the door.

  “Clay…”

  He unrolled his sleeves before putting on his tux jacket, then turned to her as he slipped into his cashmere overcoat. “Any ideas where I should start looking in the morning?”

  “I’ve already looked everywhere I thought she might be,” Libby said.

  “I’ll go by the sheriff’s office—”

  “You can’t do that,” Libby protested.

  “Why not? I’ll go as a friend of the family.”

  “You’re being naive if you don’t think someone will call the newspapers to tell them you were there,” Libby said.

  “Thanks to you, there’s nothing to connect me to Kate,” Clay said bitterly. “My name doesn’t appear anywhere. I’ve never contributed a dime to her support.”

  “You’ve never complained,” Libby retorted.

  “Would it have done any good?” Clay pulled on his black leather gloves. “You’ve had everything your way for nineteen years,” he said. “That ends now. I’m going to do whatever I think needs to be done to find my daughter.”

  “ Yourdaughter?” Libby said, her chin up, her eyes sparkling with anger.

  “ Ourdaughter,” Clay corrected.

  “Even if it means the past will come out?”

  “It was never my choice to keep the fact I have a daughter a secret,” Clay said angrily. “I did it because you convinced me it was the best thing for Kate. The only thing I’m concerned about now is getting Kate back home safe and sound, and then helping her through whatever crisis got her into this mess in the first place.”

  Clay was nearly out the door when Libby said, “I want to go with you.”

  He turned to stare at her. “Now?”

  She flushed. “No. When you go hunting for her tomorrow.”

  “What purpose will that serve?”

  “I won’t be here worrying all alone.”

  “What if she calls and there’s no one here to take the call?” Clay asked.

  “I can have the calls forwarded to North’s house. He can call me on my cell if there’s any word.”

  Clay didn’t want to spend the day with Libby. He still found her far too attractive. Holding her in his arms tonight, kissing her, touching her, had brought back memories he would rather forget.

  But from a practical standpoint, it would be easier to get information from the sheriff’s office if he was with Libby. And she might know places to look in Jackson that he didn’t know.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll pick you up after breakfast.”

  “I could make breakfast for you here,” Libby said.

  Clay pictured Libby with her shoulder-length blond curls in tangles, her eyes sleepily seductive, her rosy nipples barely hidden beneath a thin cotton shift, then said curtly, “I’ll meet you at Bubba’s at seven.”

  Libby nodded.

  Clay figured breakfast at the popular restaurant in town was a safe compromise. He wouldn’t be tempted because they wouldn’t be alone, and they could start their search that much earlier.

  He let himself out, closing the door firmly behind him. It was snowing, the flakes big and fluffy and coming straight down, rather than being blown sideways, for a change.

  Clay wondered if his daughter had been in an accident. Maybe she was lying injured on the side of the road, and the snow was covering up her body. Or maybe she was tucked up under a blanket in front of a fire with the love of her life, so caught up in passion that she wasn’t aware of the worry—and terror—she was stirring in her parents’ hearts.

  Clay raised his face to the sky and let snowflakes land on his eyelashes, opening his mouth to feel the coldness on his tongue. The snow would make a wonderland of the landscape. But right now, it was more menace than miracle. If it kept up, it was going to make the search for Kate much more difficult.

  He got into the SUV he’d rented at the airport and tried not to speed during the twenty-minute drive to Forgotten Valley. He wondered if Drew would still be awake. He needed someone to talk to, someone to make him feel less afraid for his daughter. Someone to tell him he was a fool for having the carnal thoughts he was having about Elsbeth Grayhawk.

  Hell, if Drew was asleep, he’d wake him up. Someone with a concussion wasn’t supposed to sleep anyway.

  Clay had his own key, but the kitchen door wasn’t locked. He flipped on the light switch and was surprised to see a man’s shirt in the middle of the floor. He left his overcoat on the stand by the door and followed the trail of clothes down the hall to Drew’s bedroom, realizing that someone of the female persuasion had obviously come to make sure Drew wasn’t suffering alone.

  Clay made a face. There was no way he was going to drag his cousin out of bed to talk to him when he was with some woman. What he had to say would have to wait until morning.

  But as he passed Drew’s door, it opened, and he found himself facing the barrel of a shotgun.

  “Whoa, there,” Clay said, instinctively putting his hands up in the classic Western pose.

  Drew’s blond hair was standing up in spikes, his forehead was bruised and he was stark naked. He squinted at Clay and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Clay reached out and moved the barrel of the shotgun away. “You look like something somebody rode hard and put away wet.”

  Drew let the barrel of the shotgun fall, opened the door wider and said, “Sexual frustration will do that to you.”

  Clay could see through the open door that the bed-covers were mussed, but the bed was otherwise empty. “From the trail of clothes leading in here, I figured some woman was in there easing your pain.”

  Drew hung the shotgun back up over the fireplace in his bedroom, then headed straight for the bed and crawled into it. “She had to leave. Duty called.”

  “Duty? What kind of female are you bedding these days?”

  Drew grinned. “This one’s a deputy sheriff.”

  Clay put two and two together and said, “Her name wouldn’t be Sarah Barndollar by any chance?”

  Drew’s grin disappeared. He started to frown, then winced and put a hand to his bruised forehead. “How did you know?”

  Clay took a breath and said, “Kate’s missing. The det
ective came by to ask some questions and pick up Kate’s picture.”

  “Missing?” Drew sat up abruptly, then gingerly touched his head.

  “How’s your head?” Clay said. “You seeing double or anything?”

  “It’s just a bump,” Drew said irritably. “Tell me about Kate.”

  Clay crossed to sit in a cowhide and burled-wood chair near the crackling fire. “Don’t know much. She called Libby to say she was coming home, then left the Mangy Moose this afternoon with some stranger, and we haven’t heard from her since.”

  “Let me get my hands on the sonofabitch, and he’ll be sorry he touched a hair on her head,” Drew said.

  Clay had been forced to tell Drew that Kate was his daughter because they both vacationed at Forgotten Valley, and he wanted Kate to be able to visit him there. Kate had taken an instant liking to Drew—most females did—and the two of them had become fast friends.

  “Why aren’t you out looking for her?” Drew said, sliding to the edge of the bed and reaching for his shorts.

  “You’re not going anywhere until I’m sure you don’t have a concussion,” Clay said.

  “To hell with that. She could be lying hurt by the side of the road.”

  Clay’s hands tightened on the arms of the chair. “There’s nothing we can do until it gets light. I’m meeting Libby for breakfast at Bubba’s. You’re welcome to join us.”

  “You’re damn straight I’m going to join you!” Drew staggered, then sat down. “As soon as this damned headache is gone.”

  “Have you taken anything for it?”

  “I’m not supposed to take anything,” Drew mumbled as he got back into bed and pulled the covers up over himself.

  “Get some sleep,” Clay said.

  “I’m not supposed to sleep,” Drew muttered.

  Clay slid his tuxedo jacket off, then slumped down into the chair. He didn’t think he could sleep himself. But he needed to get some rest if he was going to spend tomorrow hunting for his daughter.

  He was almost asleep when he remembered he hadn’t called Jocelyn to tell her what he’d found out about Kate’s abrupt departure from boarding school. His wife’s sister had been a great comfort over the past year since Giselle had died. He and Jocelyn had been dancing at a British Embassy ball when Clay had gotten the call on his cell phone from Libby that Kate was missing. He’d taken Jocelyn’s hand and sought out his father to tell him he had to leave.