Breaking Free (Thoroughbred Legacy #10)

by Loreth Anne White

  Late-afternoon sunlight streamed in through French doors open to the patio, the water in the pool outside shimmering as if someone had just dived in. But Dylan made straight for the cabinet, pulse quickening as he noted a vacant spot on the red velvet where Louisa’s .38 had rested last June.

  It was missing.

  But as he leaned forward for a closer inspection of her collection, the library doors swung open with a crash and Louisa Fairchild’s voice resounded through the room.

  “What in hell do you people want now!”

  Dylan straightened, turned slowly to face her, projecting a powerful confidence and calm he didn’t quite feel.

  Framed by the double doorway and flanked by her stubby housekeeper holding her black velvet riding helmet, Louisa Fairchild cut a tall, sophisticated and formidable figure for her eighty years—spine held stiff, crisp cotton stock-tied blouse high at the neck, tan breeches, dusty leather riding boots and silvery hair pulled back in a sleek chignon. She had handsome features and the very tanned and lined face of an Australian outdoorswoman. Her hands were brown, too. Veined, but elegant. Strong. Working hands, if rich ones.

  Louisa was a blend of what defined this country in many ways. A woman of the land, one who’d made her wealth from it. Descended from a family that had risen from common stock brought over on boats to the penal colony to become rich in a warm climate of equal opportunity.

  If Louisa had the same respect for equal justice as she had for opportunity, if Dylan didn’t hate her so much for what she’d done to his family, he might even find a grudging respect for this matriarch. He thought of his own frail mother, of this formidable woman’s indirect role in unraveling her.

  “G’day, Miss Fairchild—”

  “Cut to the chase, Detective Sergeant,” she snapped. “What do you want?”

  He noted the strain in her neck muscles, the way she held her riding crop tight against her thigh, and he let silence hang for a few beats, just to rattle her further.

  “We’d like to ask you some questions, Miss Fairchild,” he said, walking slowly toward her. “We’d like to know, for example, where your Smith & Wesson revolver is.”

  Her eyes flicked to the gun cabinet and back. Her hand clenched the crop tighter. “If you’re here about that Sam Whittleson thing—”

  “You mean his homicide?”

  “I have nothing to say about that. And I must insist you get off my estate.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to come down to the Pepper Flats station then, just to answer a few questions?”

  “Are you arresting me, Detective Sergeant?” Her chin tilted up in defiance. “Because if not, I have no intention of going anywhere with you, and I’m ordering you off my land. Now. Before I call my lawyers.”

  “Then I’m afraid we’ll have to do this the hard way, ma’am,” Dylan said, reaching for the cuffs at his belt.

  “Miss Louisa Fairchild,” he said, reaching for her arm, “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Sam Whittleson.”

  Megan Stafford stepped out of the pool, wet hair splashing droplets at her feet as she reached for her towel, the evening sun balmy and soft against her bare skin.

  She began to towel herself as she studied the purplish-yellow haze on the horizon. It looked as though a thunderstorm was brewing, but she knew better. The haze was from the Koongorra fires.

  It reminded her of Black Christmas when bushfire had raged across New South Wales for almost three weeks—the longest continuous bushfire emergency in the state’s history. No one in this region took the threat of mega fires for granted after that, especially with drought conditions like this.

  Especially after the scare at Lochlain Racing, a neighboring stud farm owned by Tyler Preston.

  Megan and her brother Patrick had arrived at Fairchild Acres two days after the murder of Sam Whittleson and the tragic Lochlain blaze. Sam had been shot in the Thoroughbred barn at Lochlain, late at night. One shot in the chest, one in the back. His body had then been dragged into a vacant horse stall, doused in turpentine and set ablaze. The fire had spread quickly through the H-shaped barn buildings, devastating the farm with losses into the millions.

  Several prize Thoroughbreds had died; nearly forty others were left injured and incapable of ever racing again.

  The barn had been under closed-circuit-camera surveillance, but the CD containing the footage from that night was missing.

  Now emotions in the region were as brittle as the rustling dry gum leaves—the whole valley fearing an arsonist and murderer was loose among them.

  Megan bent sideways, trying to knock water out of her ear. It had been an awkward time to arrive. She felt strange to be here at all.

  She and Patrick had come to Fairchild Acres at the behest of their estranged great-aunt Louisa, who wished to determine if her only living relatives were worthy of her inheritance.

  Louisa’s blunt letter had been a slap in the face to Megan.

  She knew the woman by reputation only as a cold-hearted and phenomenally wealthy battleaxe with a prized talent for spotting winning horses. She also knew her great-aunt had—for some unspoken reason—banished her own sister Betty from Fairchild Acres many, many years ago, totally severing that branch of her family. Megan’s gran had never spoken about the incident. Neither had Megan’s mother.

  And the family secret had died with them.

  Megan had adored her Granny Betty, and she had no interest in the fortune of the noxious old dame who had shunned her gran.

  If it hadn’t been for some serious argument on the part of her pragmatic brother, who claimed Betty had been denied her rightful share of the Fairchild estate, Megan would not have taken time off work, packed her bags and been standing barefoot at the Fairchild pool right now.

  But the Fairchild legacy Megan had really come seeking was not money. She’d come to find an answer to that old family secret. She wanted to know where her gran had really come from, and why she’d been banished. It was a sense of birthright, of belonging, that Megan hungered for.

  But her thoughts were suddenly shattered as the unflappable Mrs. Lipton came barreling out of the library. “Megan! Megan! Come quick! It’s Miss Fairchild! They’re arresting her!”

  Megan stilled, towel in midair. “Arresting Louisa? What for?”

  “Murder!”

  Megan dropped her towel, grabbed a pool robe from the deck chair, and yanked it over her arms as she raced up the flagstone steps to the library.

  She froze in the doorway.

  A large sandy-haired cop was ushering a handcuffed Louisa out of the library as a skinny young policeman moved towards the gun cabinet.

  Megan’s heart started to hammer. “Louisa?”

  They all spun round.

  The tall officer holding her aunt narrowed eyes like hot blue lasers onto Megan. Steady eyes. The most startling cornflower blue she’d ever seen. Eyes that sucked her right in. And held her.

  Her stomach balled tight and her heart began to patter.

  Part of her job as a legal consultant and art buyer was to evaluate instantly color, form, function. The artist in her appraised the cop just as fast.

  He was tanned, well over six feet, features ruggedly handsome. He had the lean, hard lines of an endurance athlete—a sign of mental resilience, the kind that could too easily translate into obstinacy. But it was the overall impression—his electric aura—that shocked her to her toes. The impact was total, complete.

  And it made her mouth turn dry.

  “Thank God you’re here, Megan,” Louisa said, trying to twist out of the cop’s grasp. “Get my lawyer, Robert D’Angelo, get him on the phone. At once!”

  Megan felt herself hesitate. The directness in the cop’s clear gaze was unnerving, commanding her attention in such a way she was barely able to register anything else in the room.

  She cleared her throat, her eyes beginning to water with the effort of meeting his penetrating gaze. “I’m Megan Stafford,” she said to the cop. “Louisa i
s my great-aunt. What’s going on here?”

  His eyes dipped quickly over her damp body, her skimpy bikini, bare feet. Megan pulled her robe closed, belting it tightly across her waist.

  “Detective Sergeant Hastings,” he said. “And this is Constable Ron Peebles. The constable is here to execute a search warrant on the property. It’s on the desk over there. Your aunt is coming with me. She’s under arrest in connection with the murder of Sam Whittleson.” He began to escort Louisa out.

  “Wait!” Megan surged forward, grabbed his arm. “You’ve made a mistake,” she said, locking eyes with his. “My aunt is eighty. She…she didn’t do this.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Hindering an officer is an offense under the law—I don’t want to have to take you in as well, Ms. Stafford. Now if you’d please step back.”

  She withdrew her hand slowly, adrenaline zinging through her, and with it came the first stirrings of hot anger.

  The officer walked Louisa out of the library.

  “Megan!” she called over her shoulder as the man led her into the hall. “Just get D’Angelo, will you? His number is on the library desk. Tell him to meet me at the Pepper Flats station at once. And watch that numbskull search,” she demanded. “Don’t let him touch a damn thing! Mrs. Lipton—”

  “This way please, Miss Fairchild.”

  “Mrs. Lipton, get Patrick,” Louisa shouted, craning her neck round as the cop opened the front door, escorting her out. “Tell him to speak to the managers. Tell them…tell them I’ll be back in a few hours.” Louisa’s voice was strained, her features pinched.

  But it was the parting look she shot Megan that unnerved her grand niece the most.

  Megan barely knew her estranged aunt, but the woman’s iron reputation preceded her. Louisa Fairchild was unshakable.

  Unsinkable.

  Except now. Megan could see in her steel-blue eyes that this macho cop had rattled her aunt. Badly.

  He’d shaken something deep and hot in Megan, too.

  Adrenaline tightened her stomach. With it came an uncomfortably cold whisper of doubt. The cop had to have something on Louisa to actually arrest her.

  Could her aunt be involved in murder?

  She exhaled, trying to steady her hands. Right. Call Robert D’Angelo. Then get Patrick. Her brother could help gather the farm managers together.

  She scrabbled through the papers on Louisa’s library desk. She’d met D’Angelo at dinner last week. He’d reminded her of a hungry beak-nosed bird of prey. Damn, she couldn’t find his cell number anywhere in this mess. Louisa’s private office was being redecorated, her boxes stacked in one of the outbuildings while most of her immediate paperwork and files had been temporarily relocated to this oak rolltop.

  “Do you have the keys for this gun cabinet, ma’am?” Constable Peebles asked.

  Her eyes shot to the young, dark-haired cop. “No. I don’t.”

  He broke the lock. Tension fluttered through her stomach and perspiration began to prickle over her brow. “Mrs. Lipton! Where’s th—” She found an address book in the drawer. “Oh, I got it!” She flipped it open to D’Angelo, Fischer and Associates, quickly dialed the firm’s number in Sydney. He wasn’t there, but they gave her his mobile number. She dialed again.

  Robert D’Angelo answered on the first ring. And the knot of tension tightened in Megan’s stomach as he told her he was miles away, on the outskirts of Sydney, and that APEC security blockades were going up along all major arteries because of the bomb blast. It was unlikely he’d make it through anytime soon.

  “You need to get down to the Pepper Flats station yourself, Megan,” Robert instructed in his reassuring baritone. “And tell Louisa not to say one word. Anything she says while in police custody can be used against her in court. Drive that home to her, understand? I cannot stress this enough.”

  Megan knew this was going to be a tall order. Asking Louisa to keep her mouth shut and her abrasive opinions to herself was akin to asking the sun not to come up.

  “The police have four hours within which to officially charge her and to get her in front of a magistrate,” Robert said. “If they want to hold her longer, they’ll need to apply for another warrant. Watch this. Let them know you know it. And you must be allowed to speak to her in private.”

  Megan nodded to herself, thinking ahead. She knew the basics. She’d started studying criminal law at university herself, before dropping it in favor of art and corporate law. The combative nature of the criminal justice system wasn’t a fit for her personality. She’d learned that pretty quickly.

  “Keep me updated via mobile,” Robert told her. “I’ll start assembling a criminal team at the town office.”

  “You…think it’s that serious?”

  “It is if they believe they have enough to take her in. My team will commence background checks on the arresting officer right away. What did you say his name was?”

  She glanced up at Peebles, now rifling through cabinet drawers, and she thought of the cop with the steady blue eyes. “Detective Sergeant Hastings.”

  “By the time I’m done, Hastings won’t have a job. And you let him know it.”

  Megan hung up picturing the tall, swarthy and cerebral Robert D’Angelo squaring off with the physically robust and tanned cop. And a shimmer of electricity rippled through her belly at the thought of having to square off with him herself.

  She was no substitute for the formidable lawyer.

  And no match against that determined hunk of police officer.

  Chapter Two

  “Mrs. Lipton, get someone to bring a car round for me!” Megan yelled as she raced up the sweeping marble staircase.

  She flung open the cupboard in her guest room, grabbing a sleeveless shift dress, the creation of a young up-and-coming Sydney designer, urban casual.

  All Megan’s clothes were the work of emerging artists—fledgling designers she predicted would become household names. She liked to support them at the start of their journeys. It had become her trademark philosophy, and her sartorial style on the Sydney art gallery circuit had begun earning her a familiar spot on the social pages of the city newspapers and glossies. That in turn had garnered attention for her clients.

  Attention for her clients was good. It fed her business.

  She shimmied into the dress, not wasting time to take her bikini off. Quickly sliding her feet into sandals, she grabbed her purse, and stalled in front of the mirror as she caught sight of her wet hair still plastered to her head. She cursed, grabbed a silk scarf off the dresser, flinging it over her hair as she snagged her large sunglasses, and clattered down the broad staircase, and out the front door.

  “Biltong” Laroux, Louisa’s rugged broodmare manager, had brought her aunt’s champagne-colored Aston Martin DB9 convertible round to the front door.

  Megan stalled, eyes whipping to his. “You want me to take this?”

  “Patrick’s got the sports ute. The other cars are either out or in the shop.”

  “It’s…not an automatic,” she said.

  Biltong pushed his felt hat farther back on his head, a glint of amusement in his warm brown eyes. “Do you need someone to drive you, Ms. Stafford?”

  “Of course not,” she said reaching for the door handle. “Just…hold fort here, please.”

  Megan started the ignition and promptly stalled the high-end sports car. She cursed, hotly aware of Biltong watching her from under the brim of his bush hat. She knew how to drive a stick shift. She just hadn’t done it in a while.

  She depressed the clutch and turned the key, setting the engine purring again. She shifted into First gear, and jerked sharply forward, almost giving herself whiplash before taking off down the driveway in a blast of dust, Louisa’s blue heelers yipping at the wheels.

  Damn.

  Louisa rarely went anywhere without her two cattle dogs, and they were going to get hurt if they kept this up all the way down to the estate gates.

  Megan hit the brakes, kept the eng
ine running as she reached over to open the passenger door. “C’mon. Get in Scout, Blue!”

  The blue heelers scrambled excitedly onto the butter leather, settling next to her in the two-seater.

  Megan engaged gears, releasing the clutch as she simultaneously depressed the gas pedal, having to consciously think in order simply to drive. Finding her rhythm, she gathered speed down the mile-long driveway under the jacaranda trees, billowing fine red Australian dust in her wake.

  As she neared the gates, a group of horses kept pace at a canter in the adjacent field.

  She wheeled the sports car onto the farm road, picking up more speed as she headed for the small town of Pepper Flats. Dusk was settling over the dry valley, and her heart hammered in her chest as she mentally prepared to face the physically disarming cop again. She wondered just how the hell she’d gotten to this point in the space of a week.