Rivals

by Janet Dailey

  With her uneasiness growing, Flame slowed the Lincoln, trying to force the car behind her to pass. But it slowed down, too. When she speeded up, it did, keeping the same close distance behind her. Her palms began to sweat. The hawk-faced man had never been this obvious when he’d tailed her before. Why now? Then she realized that whoever was back there wanted her to know she was being followed—he wanted her to be worried…frightened. The worst of it was—he was succeeding.

  Straining, she tried to see beyond the bright beams of her headlights into the blackened night, searching for a landmark that would tell her how much farther it was to the turnoff for Morgan’s Walk. Ahead, the highway curved sharply to the right. From that point, Flame knew it was less than a mile to the ranch’s drive. She flexed her fingers, trying to ease their knuckle-white grip on the steering wheel, as she slowed the Lincoln to make the curve.

  But the car behind her didn’t, its headlights suddenly looming closer, the reflection of their glare nearly blinding her.

  “Are you crazy?” Flame cried out. “Don’t you know there’s a curve up ahead?”

  A second later it slammed into her from behind, the impact jolting her, pitching her forward against the steering wheel, and sending the Lincoln shooting into the curve. She was going too fast! The car would never hold the curve!

  As she braked frantically, the Lincoln briefly skidded sideways, crossing into the other lane. She fought desperately to control it, fear tightening her throat, nerves screaming. But she couldn’t hold it on the road. The car careened wildly into the ditch on the opposite side. There was a split second of terror when she thought it was going to roll. Somehow the Lincoln righted itself and plunged up the other side of the ditch, bouncing and roughly tossing her from side to side.

  It came to a shuddering stop in an open pasture twenty yards from the road. Flame sat there for a full second, her fear-frozen hands gripping the steering wheel. Then the shaking started, tremors of relief vibrating through her as she realized how very close she had come to disaster. She sagged against the seat back, then stiffened, remembering the car that had forced her off the road. All she could see of it was the red of its taillights in the distance.

  She had no idea how long she sat there with the engine idling, the transmission in park—something she had no memory of doing—waiting for the shock to subside. Finally, on shaky legs, she got out and inspected the damage. All she found were some dents in the chrome bumper and clods of earth and clumps of grass caught here and there.

  Aware that there was little hope of anyone driving by at this hour, she realized that she either had to walk for help or drive out of there and back onto the road herself. She chose the latter option.

  That mile to Morgan’s Walk was the longest she’d ever driven in her life, her arms, her shoulders, her neck aching from the banging about she’d taken. She was certain she’d wind up with several lovely bruises, but at least that was all. It could have been much worse—and that was the scary part.

  The telephone started ringing the minute she walked into the house. She stopped short, dread sweeping over her as she stared at the beige telephone on the foyer table. Slowly she walked over and picked it up.

  “Hello,” she said, a wary tension in her voice. That alien voice replied in its eerie monotone, “You were warned. You may not be so lucky next time.”

  Flame gripped the phone, unable to speak, unable to move-paralyzed by the significance of that message. As the line went dead, she could feel every aching bruise and strained muscle in her body…and the fear rising again in her throat.

  Fighting it, she quickly depressed the button and heard the familiar hum of the dial tone. Hurriedly, she punched a set of numbers, but in her haste, she inverted two of the digits and had to start all over again.

  “Ben.” She held the receiver with both hands. “Someone…someone deliberately ran me off the road.”

  “What? When?”

  “Just now. On my way back to Morgan’s Walk. It was deliberate, Ben. Somebody’s trying to kill me.”

  “Flame, where are you? How do you know it was deliberate? What makes you so certain?” The questions came rapid-fire, the shock in his voice evident.

  “I’m here…at Morgan’s Walk. I just got a phone call telling me—” She stopped, catching the edge of panic in her voice, and started again, forcing a calmness. “—telling me that I’d been warned—and that I might not be so lucky next time.”

  “What?” Ben sounded as stunned as she had been. “Who was the call from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it a man’s voice? A woman’s?”

  “It was a robot’s,” she replied and laughed nervously, trying to shake off her fear.

  “What? Be serious, Flame.”

  “I am. Somebody’s using some sort of voice synthesizer to make these threatening calls.”

  “These calls,” Ben repeated. “There have been others?”

  “This makes the fourth—or maybe its’s the fifth. I can’t exactly remember now.”

  “Dammit, Flame, why didn’t you tell me about them?”

  “I didn’t think they were important. I thought they were a prank. Now…” She breathed in deeply. “Now I think I should notify the police.”

  “I’ll do it. You stay there and I’ll bring a detective out to talk to you. As soon as you hang up from me, call Charlie. I don’t want you alone in that house.”

  She started to protest that such a precaution wasn’t necessary, then thought better of it and agreed to call Charlie.

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes—forty at the outside,” Ben promised.

  Flame sat in the parlor with both hands wrapped around her third cup of the strong black coffee Charlie had made for when he arrived. Time and the potent brew had managed to push most of the fear to the back of her mind, and enabled her to regain control of her emotions, allowing her to go over the events again and again and again with the detective from the Tulsa police department.

  “No. I told you I couldn’t see what kind of car it was,” she repeated her previous answer. “He followed too close. The glare of the headlights—”

  “He? The driver was a man?”

  “That was merely a figure of speech,” Flame insisted, her patience waning at this endless picking over ever little detail. “I couldn’t see the driver. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman.”

  “And there weren’t any other cars on the road?”

  “None,” she said, shaking her head. “Not before or after I was forced off the road.”

  “Let’s go back over these threatening calls you say you’ve been receiving.”

  “Again?” she murmured, sighing in irritation.

  “Yes, ma’am, again,” he confirmed, his voice remaining unmoved and continuing its stubborn and polite run. “What did the caller say?”

  “He—” Flame caught herself. “—it warned me that I’d better stop or I’d be sorry—or a variation of words to that effect.”

  “Stop what?”

  “I don’t know!” As the answer exploded from her, she took a quick breath and tried to control her rising temper.

  “You must have assumed something,” the detective persisted.

  “I assumed the calls were a prank.” She shoved the coffee cup onto the end table and rose from the sofa, too agitated to remain seated any longer. She crossed stiffly to the fireplace, ignoring the throbbing protest of her right knee at the renewed activity, then turned back to confront the detective. “Somebody tried to kill me tonight, Mr. Barnes, and I want to know what you’re going to do about it!”

  He leaned back in the chair, resting his head against the rose brocade upholstery. “Who would want to kill you, Ms. Bennett?”

  Flame hesitated a fraction of a second. Abruptly, she turned her back on the detective and stared at the ornate fireplace screen. “I moved here only a few weeks ago. I don’t know many people here.” She hesitated again and turned back to face him. “I’m not sure
if there’s any connection, but—before I moved here—when I was in San Francisco, I was followed by this man. Twice he slipped me threatening messages.”

  The detective looked at her with sharpened interest, his pen poised above his small black notebook. “What did he look like? Can you describe him?”

  “He was…of average height and build, in his late forties. I think he had brown hair and I believe his eyes were hazel. And there was a very pronounced hook to his nose. I always thought of him as the hawk-faced man.”

  “And these messages, were they the same as the phone threats you’ve been receiving?”

  “No, they were different. That’s why I’m not sure if it means anything. The hawk-faced man was always warning me to—I quote—‘stay away from him.’”

  “Who were you to stay away from?”

  “I—”

  “Excuse me,” Ben Canon spoke up. “I think I can clear up this matter. You see, on behalf of my late client Hattie Morgan, I engaged the services of a private detective in San Francisco—a man by the name of Sid Barker—first to locate Ms. Bennett, then to…look out after her.”

  Flame swung around to stare at him. “You hired him to follow me?” she demanded, reacting with a mixture of shock and outrage.

  His smile was meant to calm. “You were the heir to Morgan’s Walk at that point. And Hattie was anxious that…nothing happen to you.” His deliberate hesitation made it obvious to Flame that Hattie had been trying to warn her away from Chance.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” But it was too late to be angry about it, especially when she knew how right Hattie had been to warn her about Chance.

  “It never occurred to me,” Ben said ruefully. “I’m sorry.”

  “Then who’s making these calls? Who’s trying to kill me?” She didn’t want to think Chance was behind all this. But, with the hawk-faced man eliminated, who else could it be?

  “There must be someone, Ms. Bennett,” the detective insisted. “An ex-husband, a former boyfriend, a jealous lover, an angry wife—someone.”

  Diedre. Did Malcom’s wife feel so threatened by her affair with him that she would do something this drastic? No, it wasn’t possible. She was in San Francisco; that was much too far away. The same was true with Lucianna…unless she or Diedre hired someone. But Flame rejected that possibility, too, unable to visualize either woman actually hiring someone to kill her.

  She lifted her head in challenge. “My ex-husband is Chance Stuart. Does that help you?”

  He breathed in deeply at that. “Stuart, eh.”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice clipped and sharp, betraying her strained nerves. “Tell me, Mr. Barnes, exactly what are you going to do about the attempt on my life tonight?”

  His shoulder lifted a vague shrug. “Check your car over, see if the lab can pick up any traces of paint from the other vehicle that might help us identify at least the make of it.” He paused briefly. “But to be perfectly honest with you, Ms. Bennett, even if we are lucky enough to track down the owner of the car, it still doesn’t mean he or she was the driver of it. And even if we could, it’s doubtful that they could be charged with anything more than reckless driving.”

  “But what about the phone calls? The threats on my life?” she demanded. “You can’t simply disregard them.”

  “To make a case for attempted murder, we’d have to be able to prove the driver of the car made those phone calls. We could put a tap on your line and monitor all your calls, but—from what you’ve told me—the caller never stays on the line for more than fifteen or twenty seconds. Which means there wouldn’t be time enough to trace the call.”

  Flame read between the lines, a fine tension gripping her. “And if you could, what then?”

  The detective had the grace to look uncomfortable as Ben Canon spoke up. “The caller would probably be charged with a misdemeanor.”

  “A misdemeanor,” she repeated in a stunned voice.

  “That’s assuming we can’t prove the caller was the driver of the car that tried to run you down,” the detective explained. “I’m sorry, Ms. Bennett, but until a felony is actually committed—”

  “You mean until—this person—actually kills me, there’s nothing you can do,” Flame accused, trembling now with an anger born out of this awful feeling of helplessness.

  He said nothing to that, instead closing his notebook and slipping it into his jacket pocket. “If you think of anything else that could be useful, you have my card. You know how to get hold of me. And if you receive any more threatening calls, mark the time and the exact message, and keep me informed.”

  Ben stood up. “I’ll see you to the door, Mr. Barnes.”

  “That isn’t necessary.” The detective rose from the wing-backed chair and nodded politely to Flame. “I can find my way out.”

  There was silence in the parlor, broken only by the sound of his footsteps in the entrance hall, then the final click of the front door closing behind him. Flame was conscious of both Charlie and Ben watching her.

  “I think it’s obvious the police aren’t going to be much help in this.” She tried to sound nonchalant, cynical, but the words came out stiff and brittle.

  “You think it’s Chance, don’t you?” Ben said.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she replied, agitation putting a sharp edge on her answer. She didn’t want to believe it was Chance even though he was the only one it could be. He had vowed to stop her. Yet she couldn’t imagine him resorting to violence to accomplish it. Could she be that wrong about him?

  “Flame, I—” Ben began.

  Briskly, she interrupted him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m tired and I…just want to get out of these clothes.” And forget, she thought to herself, but she knew that was impossible even as she walked from the room.

  41

  With the ease and deftness of long experience, Charlie Rainwater reached down and unlatched the pasture gate without dismounting from his horse. Flame waited on her mount while he swung it open for her. She rode through the opening, then reined in her horse on the other side and watched as he swung his horse through and closed the gate, again from horseback. Satisfied it was securely fastened, he straightened in his saddle and looked for a moment at a pair of white-faced calves cavorting about under the contented eyes of their Hereford mommas.

  “That’s a sight these old eyes of mine never get tired of seein’,” Charlie declared as he turned his horse away from the gate and walked it up to hers. His faded blue eyes studied her thoughtfully. “Are you really goin’ through with your plans for that development?”

  “If I can.” Assuming she didn’t get killed first, Flame thought, the memory of her near brush with death too fresh yet.

  These last five days, she’d thought of little else, becoming tense and on edge—and suspicious of everyone. She’d sworn Charlie and Ben to secrecy, extracting their promise not to mention the threatening phone calls or the attempt on her life to anyone—not even Malcom. If he found out, she knew he’d insist that she return to San Francisco. In her mind, to run from these threats would be the equivalent of giving up, and she wasn’t about to do that. Neither could she totally discard the possibility that Malcom’s wife might be the one behind them. Or Maxine, who had looked after Chance as a child and believed he should have inherited Morgan’s Walk. Or Lucianna Colton, who might want Flame completely out of Chance’s life. Or some crazy environmentalist who didn’t want the river dammed and made into a lake. Dammit, it could be anybody. It didn’t have to be Chance.

  Frustrated and confused, Flame pointed her horse toward the imposing brick mansion that crowned the gentle knoll and overlooked the entire valley—the mansion her great-grandfather had designed and built. Suddenly it hit her. Morgan’s Walk had to pass to a blood relative! All along Chance had been the obvious suspect, but now she realized that he had an even better reason to want her dead—Morgan’s Walk would automatically pass to him. The facts seeme
d inescapable: he was the only one who stood to gain if she either gave up the fight—or was killed.

  Yet, when she remembered the times she’d been with him, the tender strength of his arms, the loving stroke of his hands, Flame couldn’t imagine, no matter how she tried, that Chance actually would hurt her, not physically. He was trying to scare her. That’s what he was doing. He thought he could frighten her off. She was angry then, angry that he thought she could be intimidated by the threat of violence. But why should that be a surprise? It wasn’t the first time he’d underestimated her.

  She was so engrossed in her own thoughts, that she barely heard Charlie when he said, “Every time I look at those Herefords scattered across that green pasture, I try to picture a bunch of rich folks riding around in those electric carts chasin’ a dimpled ball. But it just won’t come to me. I just keep seein’ the river, the trees, and the cattle.” His horse snorted and pricked its ears in the direction of the house. “Looks like you’ve got some company, Miss Flame.”

  “What?” Frowning, she gave him a blank look.

  “I said you got company.” He nodded in the direction of the dusty pickup parked in front of the house.

  “I wonder who it is?” Someone was at the front door—a woman. Maxine appeared to be arguing with her. Flame lifted her horse into a trot and cut across the front lawn, the thick grass reducing the echo of hoofbeats behind her to a dull thud as Charlie followed.

  Nearing the house, she heard the woman’s voice raise in angry challenge. “I know she’s in there. You just march right back and tell her that I’m not leaving until I see her!”

  “But she isn’t here,” Maxine protested. “She went—” She stopped, catching sight of Flame riding up with Charlie.

  The woman turned, giving Flame her first good look at her as she reined her horse to a halt short of the portico steps. Somewhere in her early thirties, she was a tall woman, a solid woman, dressed in a pair of polyester knit slacks, the kind with the elastic waistband and stitched-in creases, an overblouse of print cotton giving her upper body an extra heaviness. Her light brown hair was cut short and curled in a tight frizz that required little care. She faced Flame in tight-lipped anger.