Breaking Free (Thoroughbred Legacy #10)

by Loreth Anne White

  That knowledge made his heart hammer, soft and steady, as he searched the approaching surgeon’s features for a sign of positive news.

  “She’s going to be just fine,” Dr. Jack Burgess said with a warm smile as he neared.

  “Oh, thank God!” Megan cupped her hands over her mouth, her eyes shimmering with emotion as they flashed to Dylan’s. But she froze at the look on Dylan’s face.

  He knew why.

  His cop mask was back, the moment between them lost to the night.

  She turned back to the surgeon. “What exactly happened?” she asked.

  “She had a myocardial infarction—your basic heart attack,” he said. “We performed an emergency angioplasty, inserting two drug-eluting stents, which are basically little medicated wire baskets that will help keep the arteries open. As long as Louisa rests and takes regular medication, she could be up and about within three or four days. It’s a fairly common procedure, and recovery is generally swift.”

  “When can I see her, talk to her?”

  The doc smiled at Megan. “You can see her now. The process was done under local anesthetic using a catheter inserted into her left femoral artery. But we did sedate her, so she’ll be a bit woozy.”

  “So you expect her to be discharged in about four days, then, Jack?” Dylan asked. He was on first-name terms with the doc, as he was with most people in town.

  “We may want to keep her under observation a little longer because there were a few minor complications. Otherwise, yes, about four days. She’s a fighter. But—” He directed a warm grin at Megan again, which for some reason irked Dylan. “That’s going to be part of the problem. Louisa needs to relax, and you’re going to have to be there to make sure she does, Megan.”

  “What…kind of complications?” she asked.

  “Her white-cell count was a little low, so we’d like to watch that—keep an eye out for infection at the site of insertion. We also want to make sure there are no drug interactions, but we should know more when Patrick gets back. And we want to watch for internal hemorrhaging. The potential for another heart attack still remains with this procedure, which is why she must stay calm.”

  Dylan cleared his throat. “And when will she be fit to see me, doc?” he asked, feeling Megan’s eyes boring hotly into him.

  The surgeon pursed his lips, his brow furrowing slightly. “You mean…in a professional capacity?”

  “She remains in police custody.” Dylan raised the papers in his hand. “I do need to officially charge her as soon as—”

  Megan whirled to face him. “You cannot possibly still be thinking of charging her?”

  “—as soon as she’s well enough,” he finished his sentence, eyes remaining firmly on Jack.

  “I’d wait until tomorrow, Dylan,” said the surgeon. “Check in with me then and I’ll be in a better position to make a judgment. Now—” he smiled again “—if you’ll both excuse me, I do have another patient. Megan, Jenny will show you to Louisa’s room. If you have any questions, ask her. She’ll page me if it’s urgent.”

  “Of…of course. Thank you, doctor.” She spun to face Dylan as the surgeon left. “You’re insane.” She glowered at him. “I want to know how on earth you can think Louisa burned that barn full of horses? What makes you so certain she killed a man?”

  “The murder weapon is registered to her—”

  “Doesn’t mean she pulled the trigger! It’s just not logical to think an eighty-year-old is going to sneak out of her house late at night to go kill her neighbor in someone else’s barn miles away. And there’s no way in hell Louisa—a woman everyone knows loves horses more than people, and who owes her livelihood to the industry—would burn someone else’s Thoroughbreds.” Frustration burned into her eyes, making them crackle deep emerald against her tired complexion, and all Dylan could think about was sex.

  “What else do you have on her?” she demanded.

  “Megan, we have a witness placing her at Lochlain Racing shortly before the blaze broke out. The description of the slate-gray Holden seen fleeing the arson scene matches her truck. The soil in her Holden’s tires was also a match to Lochlain soil. The courts had been about to rule in Whittleson’s favor on the Lake Dingo ownership issue. Phone records show Louisa called Whittleson’s mobile at Sydney airport just before he was due to board a plane for a safari in Kenya. Then he mysteriously abandoned that flight to head to Lochlain, where he was killed in the barn. With her gun. A weapon she used to shoot him before.”

  Her brows drew low. “Oh, and tell me why she might have lured Sam to Lochlain Racing?”

  Dylan had no idea. It didn’t make sense. Yet.

  However, Whittleson’s phone records showed he’d placed a call to his son Daniel, the head trainer at Lochlain, just prior to receiving Louisa’s call at the airport. The incoming call before that had come from Whittleson’s lawyer, who later confirmed he’d called his client to let him know the lake-ownership issue was likely going to come down in Whittleson’s favor. Whittleson could conceivably have tried to call his son with this good news, and upon getting Daniel’s voice mail, decided to abandon the safari and drive to Lochlain to tell him personally. It was, after all, news that would save Whittleson Stud, which had meant absolutely everything to the debt-ridden sixty-one-year-old. Life had finally been on the upturn for the Whittlesons the night Sam was murdered.

  “You’re not her lawyer, Megan,” Dylan said quietly. “And I really am not at liberty to discuss the investigation further with you.”

  “Damn you,” she muttered in exasperation. “For a moment there I…I thought…” She dragged her hand through her hair, and Dylan noticed she was shaking. “I don’t know what I thought. That maybe you were a nice guy, or…something.”

  Her words cut deeper than he should allow them. “I’m a cop, Megan. Just doing my job.”

  Her jaw tensed with sudden resolve. “Robert D’Angelo will be here within a few hours,” she said, eyes searing into his. “And I’ll tell him how you pressured Louisa in that interrogation room, without the benefit of her legal counsel. It was obvious she wasn’t well. That fact was caught on your own interview tape. You totally disregarded the fact she is eighty years old—elderly—and thus vulnerable. You precipitated her heart attack, Sergeant. You nearly killed her.” Megan’s voice was clear and firm. “And if you continue to pursue this case against my aunt, I can guarantee D’Angelo will take you down for it.”

  Something very personal, and very hot flickered through Dylan. “Is that what you want, Megan, to take me down?”

  She swallowed, something reciprocal flickering darkly in her eyes. “What I want,” she whispered, “is for you to stay away from my aunt. You heard what Dr. Burgess said. She needs to relax. I don’t want you going in there and giving her another heart attack and actually killing her this time.”

  He stepped closer, a combative anger beginning to hum deep in his gut as he bent close to her ear, lowering his voice to make sure he was out of anyone’s earshot except hers. “Seeing as you’ve taken the gloves off, Ms. Stafford, I have to admit I’m asking myself who’d benefit if she did kick the bucket? Or is it a bit too soon for you and your brother? Is that why you want me to drop this case, so you and Patrick have a bit more time to kowtow to the grande dame before she cashes in?”

  “Oh, that is low.”

  She was so close, he could smell her, kiss her if he dared, and she was making him hot enough to do it. “If you didn’t come for the inheritance, Megan,” he said, his voice thick, low, “then why are you really both here out of the blue?”

  She blushed, eyes flickering.

  And Dylan knew a liar when he saw one.

  He’d stomached his fair share in police interrogation rooms, and her reaction made his heart turn cold, his unbidden lust for her simply hardening his resolve to win this one.

  “How much do you really know about your aunt, anyway?” he said, watching her eyes closely, waiting for them to give her away again, trying t
o ignore the faint scent of sun lotion that lingered on her skin, reminding him of family summers at Bateman’s Bay, of happier times. “Because I suspect I know Louisa a helluva lot better than you do, Megan Stafford. I know just what she is capable of. I’ve seen the Thoroughbred set close ranks around their own. I’ve seen her and D’Angelo’s father buy ‘justice’ before.”

  He’d seen it thirty years ago, when he was eight years old, and his brother Liam eleven. It had been the incident that tore his family to shreds, forcing them from their modest home in the Hunter.

  It was what had ultimately made Dylan become a cop.

  And now that he was back, now that it was within his power, he was not about to let her kind get away with murder—again.

  “If you want to be a part of the Fairchild team, if you want to take me down personally, then, Megan, you and I are going to be at war.”

  He turned and headed for the doors, heart thudding. He needed to focus. He needed to cut Megan from his mind. She’d already proven an emotional distraction he couldn’t afford right now. His priority was to find officers he could rotate on twenty-four-hour guard outside Louisa’s door, and he knew it was going to be an issue. He couldn’t use Peebles. He was a probationary cop. It was against protocol.

  His phone rang as he reached the hospital doors. He unhooked it from his belt, snapped it open. “Hastings,” he barked.

  It was an officer at the Scone station. He said a Scone patrol officer had picked up Heidi on her bike. She’d had an accident, but she was fine.

  Dylan froze on the spot. “Where is she?”

  “We took her home.”

  Confusion spiraled through his brain. Heidi was supposed to have been at home, asleep. “What happened?”

  “She was cycling along a dark section of Burumby Road a couple of hours ago when an oncoming sedan swerved to avoid a wallaby, running her bike into a ditch. The vehicle didn’t hit her, but she’s quite shaken up. The driver called it in, tried to help her. He was worried about a young girl that age being out alone at night on that stretch of road.”

  White-cold fear and anger lanced through Dylan.

  He shot a look at Megan, who was watching him intently from the nurses’ station. And he felt suddenly, inexplicably, naked. Vulnerable.

  Furious.

  With himself. With her. With everything.

  He hadn’t realized just how much he’d needed to talk, to lean on someone with his family issues. She had made him feel that need.

  And suddenly her compassion, her interest, the way she’d drawn him out, felt deceptive. Deceitful. He felt cheated. Lured.

  He spun on his boot heels and stormed through the hospital doors into the pale dawn, the threads of his life unraveling at his feet.

  Be damned if he was going to let the Fairchild clan take him down again.

  He wasn’t going to lose what little control he still had left over his family.

  Over himself.

  This time his family would not run. He would stand up and fight. And this time there would be only one winner.

  Him.

  His family.

  Chapter Four

  Dylan arrived home as Heidi was getting ready for school. She was pale, eyes avoiding his as she ate her cereal at the round oak table in front of sliding glass doors that overlooked their garden and the fields beyond.

  He had to forcibly tamp down a surge of anger. She was safe. That was the main thing. He closed the front door quietly behind him, and entered the kitchen area, struck suddenly by how much his daughter’s thick blond hair resembled Megan’s—and Sally’s—drawing another parallel between the two women he didn’t care to see.

  He’d made a terrible mistake falling for Sally.

  They’d both been too young to start a family, and completely incompatible on any long-term basis.

  Sally had been sexy, flirtatious, artsy, full of vibrant laughter and energy, and it had translated into a dynamic experience in bed. But outside the bedroom her craving for the continual excitement of a metropolis, alternative lifestyles, and the flattery of men, had begun to cost them.

  Sally had needed to be the centre of attention, and loved going out to parties all the time.

  Dylan was more traditional. He liked the outback, bushwalking, the ocean. Winter nights by the fire. He liked things simple. Wholesome. Sally called it boring.

  But by then they were married, and things had started going sideways.

  And when she’d become pregnant at twenty-four, she’d felt overweight, unhappy and lonely with Dylan doing long, gritty hours of overtime to support them.

  When Heidi was born Sally had detested being cooped at home with only other young mothers for company. She’d rebelled and had a raging affair, seeking validation in another man, an artist.

  Her infidelity had completely broken Dylan.

  He was a one-woman guy. A lifer. When he fell, he fell hard and forever. And falling for Sally had cost him a mighty big chunk of his life.

  He’d avoided getting involved with other women while raising Heidi solo. He’d dated, but only superficially. His focus was his family.

  “Hey there, kiddo,” Dylan said gently.

  Heidi said nothing, just stared at her cereal.

  He heaved out a lungful of air, removed his Glock, locked it in the gun safe, and undid his heavy gun belt, setting it on the counter with a soft clunk. He sat down, rubbing his neck, his back stiff.

  “Talk to me, Heidi.”

  She pulled her mouth into a tight pout, glaring at her cereal bowl, stirring milk with her spoon as she hunkered down behind the super-size cereal box.

  Dylan moved the box aside. “Heidi, I’m not going to be mad,” he said, struggling to hold on to his temper. “I just want to know where you were going last night.”

  Silence.

  Irritation itched at him. Their dog Muttley scratched at the glass door, and Dylan got up to let him out. His mother usually let Muttley out first thing in the morning, but she hadn’t come down for breakfast yet, which was unusual for her. Tension knotted in his shoulders.

  He took a seat opposite Heidi. “Were you going to the party?”

  Her eyes flashed up at him. “No. I needed to see Anthem.”

  He waited a beat just to make sure his voice came out neutral. “Why so late? Why didn’t you wait until this afternoon, after school?”

  Her bottom lip started to wobble a little. Dylan’s chest tightened. “Heidi? Talk to me. Please.”

  She looked up slowly, and was about to say something when they heard Dylan’s mum coming down the stairs.

  Heidi cast her eyes down, then suddenly pushed her chair back from the table, grabbed her schoolbag and started for the door, unfinished cereal left on the table.

  “Heidi!”

  “I’m going to miss my bus,” she snapped, and the door slammed shut behind her.

  Dylan cursed and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Morning, Timmy,” said his mother, moving towards the kettle and filling it. “Did you sleep well?”

  “It’s Dylan, Mum.”

  She looked momentarily confused. “Of course,” she said softly, plugging in the kettle. “I know that.”

  Dylan got up to let Muttley back in, his heart sinking. He felt flat. Tired. His mother was worse than he thought. This was the second time in a week she’d called him by his brother’s nickname.

  A brother who’d been dead for thirty years.

  He needed to take June for another checkup. That would require a trip to the city, impossible right now. He also had to find a way to break through to Heidi. And he had to get back to work. He’d had no sleep, but no one else would be in the station today.

  Dylan had also been left with no choice but to place Peebles outside Louisa’s hospital room for the first shift, short of doing it himself. And that wasn’t going to happen—he still had an investigation to conduct, because no matter how he looked at it, things were just not adding up with Louisa the way he’d like them
to.

  He stood for a moment at the glass door, absently studying the smoky haze in the distance as he rolled the facts over in his mind again.

  As much as he hated to admit it, Megan had hit on the key thing troubling him. It was possible Louisa’s gun had been stolen from the cabinet, and that she hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger.

  But she could also have hired someone to do the job. That might explain the arson. Because again, he was forced to agree with Megan—he didn’t see Louisa as capable of torching horses.

  He needed better evidence against her, or evidence of an accomplice, or they were going to end up having no case.