She did. Or she tried. Her hands moved to unfasten the buttons of her jumpsuit, as if he weren’t even there. But it didn’t matter; she was shaking so badly she couldn’t manage the buttons. He reached out and grabbed her hands. She looked at their hands, then, slowly, up to his face.
“Kendall, what’s wrong? What really happened out there?”
“I . . . I’m all right. The railing held. Just enough. The back wheels caught . . .”
A chill began in Jason’s stomach. His hands tightened over hers. “Caught? You mean you were just . . . hanging there? Over that drop?”
“It took them so long to get out there . . .”
He could just imagine. The nearest fire station was a good ten minutes away, down that winding road. Ten minutes that must have seemed like an eternity. That drop-off had to be a good seventy-five feet. The chill spread, sending an involuntary shiver through him.
“No wonder you’re so shook up,” he said.
“No.”
“What?”
“That’s not . . . why.”
“It’s enough,” Jason said grimly. “But what, then?”
She looked at him for a moment, with an expression he couldn’t read. Then she sighed and, lowering her gaze, shook her head. And pulled her hands free of his.
“You won’t believe me. You never do. Even the police don’t believe me, not really.”
“What don’t they believe?” When she didn’t answer, he lifted her chin once more, but she avoided his eyes. “What, Kendall?”
She let out a long breath. “It wasn’t an accident.”
The chill blossomed, and he shivered again.
In danger.
“What,” he said carefully, “do you mean? The cop said it was a reckless driver.”
“I told you they didn’t believe me. He wasn’t reckless. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Kendall—”
“I know. I’m hysterical. Wrought-up. And all those other labels men like to hang on agitated women. I’ve heard them all this afternoon. Well I’m not. I’m scared. But I’m not hysterical.”
Some of the life was coming back into her voice, but it felt wrong to him, like the last fierce glow of a light before it burnt out.
“I was only going to ask why you’re so sure,” he said quietly.
“He tailgated me all the way from the cemetery. When we got close to the curve, he nudged my rear bumper. When we reached the curve, he pulled out from behind me, and then swerved. To hit me. Deliberately. I saw his hands move on the wheel.”
Jason was silent for a long moment. There was no way she could have planned this, he thought. No matter how much the scam was worth, no one would take a chance of going over that drop, not when a much safer accident could easily be arranged. But if she was telling the truth . . .
“Why?” he finally asked. “Who?”
“I couldn’t see the driver, because of the sun, the glare.”
“What kind of a car?”
“I’m not sure. Brown, and big. That’s all I can be certain of.”
An image of the brown car he’d seen at the airport flashed through his mind. He tried to dismiss it, but it wouldn’t budge. But he didn’t want to frighten her, not now, she was already shaken enough.
“That’s the who,” he said. “So, why?”
“I . . .” Her voice trailed away, but he’d seen the flicker of suspicion in her eyes.
“You suspect somebody,” he said. “Who’s behind this?”
“Alice,” she said flatly. “She told me if I valued my life I’d leave this alone.”
Jason’s brows lowered. “She threatened you? Physically? You didn’t tell me that.”
She met his gaze then. “Nothing else I said seemed to make any difference to you. Why should that?”
He couldn’t answer that, because he didn’t know why it made a difference, only that it did. Then, as he’d feared, the brief burst of animation faded. She sagged, her normally straight posture vanishing. She swayed on her feet, and his hands shot out to catch her shoulders.
She was about to collapse, he thought. Her eyes were closed, she had lost what little color had remained in her face, and she seemed unaware of his presence.
This was ridiculous. He wasn’t a nursemaid. He didn’t know the first thing about taking care of people like this. He’d made some pitiful efforts as a child, on the rare occasions when his mother had admitted to being too sick to go to work, but other than that, he’d rarely dealt with ailments of any kind; he never got sick himself, and hadn’t really been seriously hurt in years.
But he had to do something. He couldn’t just leave her like this. Feeling a little like a character in a bad movie, he methodically unbuttoned her jumpsuit and tugged it down and off her legs. She never protested, just let him do it, her eyes still closed, her body still slack, barely standing.
A part of his mind that he’d been trying to keep under stern wraps noticed the lovely contours of her body, the narrow waist, and the gentle, feminine curves of hips and breasts. Too curved for modern fashion, he supposed, but he liked a woman who could never be mistaken, even from a distance, for a boy. And his body certainly liked this one. He tightened the controls another notch, reining in the response, and after a moment was pleased to find that he was able to look at her dispassionately. Well, dispassionately enough to get through this, anyway.
Plain, functional underwear, he thought. Cotton, in a pale blue, with just the barest touch of lace on the high-cut panties and the bra. His control slipped for a moment as he remembered when he’d wondered if her nipples matched the soft peach color of her robe. He clamped down on the urge to find out the answer. He gritted his teeth and reached past her to flip back the covers. He lowered her to the bed.
She relaxed with a tiny murmur, and he let out a breath of relief. Then he sucked it back in again as she moved, turning on her side, emphasizing the womanly curve of her hip as one leg moved forward, and the soft fullness of her breasts as they were pressed together by her arms.
With a grated curse, he pulled the covers up over her. It was going to be, he thought, a very long afternoon.
KENDALL WOKE slowly, feeling disoriented and oddly groggy. She lay quietly for a moment, fighting the muddled fog that seemed to have enveloped her. Where was she? Why did she feel this way, almost drugged, as if—
Her breath caught as a vivid image flashed through her mind, her car careening as she fought the wheel, the sound of rubber squealing on asphalt, the hideous thump and vertigo-inducing lurch of her car over the railing, leaving her staring down over a drop that seemed endless.
All grogginess vanished. She jerked upright. Strained muscles protested, and she winced. The movement pulled at the extremely tender spot on her forehead, and she remembered the three stitches the doctor in the emergency room had used to close the cut. Instinctively she lifted a hand to touch the bandage.
“You should leave that alone.”
Kendall smothered a startled cry. She turned sharply, wincing again as a sharp pain shot through her shoulders.
Jason sat in the chair he’d been in before, the chair she had used while he’d slept. The book sat once more on the table next to him, open to a page she couldn’t see from here. His feet were raised, resting on the end of the bed again, but there was nothing of insouciance in his manner this time, or in his face. His expression was utterly unreadable as he watched her steadily.
Under his scrutiny her awareness of various aches in her head and body faded, and she suddenly realized she was clad in only her underwear. And that her swift movement had sent the covers falling to her waist. Reflexively she grabbed at the sheet and pulled it up in front of her. Jason’s eyes seemed to follow the movement. Another image came back to her, of Jason carefully unbuttoning her jum
psuit . . .
Her gaze shot to his face. There was still nothing she could read there, nothing her years of practice enabled her to see, to understand his mood. His expression seemed emotionless, yet there was an odd tension about him, not in his body but in the sheer unwavering steadiness of his gaze, as if he was concentrating so intently that any movement would be a distraction. And the longer she looked at his eyes, the less concerned she became about her state of undress.
“Jason?” she asked softly.
He didn’t answer her. She glanced at the open book again, then back at his face.
“Is it the book again?”
He glanced at it almost with disinterest. “I left it this afternoon,” he said. “At the library in town.”
She didn’t ask what he’d been doing there, she thought she could guess. “But now it’s here.”
He nodded.
She took a deep breath. “Jason, I didn’t—”
“I know. You were out like a light. It wasn’t here when I . . . put the covers over you. But when I turned around . . .”
Her brow furrowed, but she quickly stopped the instinctive motion when it tugged painfully at the stitches again.
“The legend says . . . it won’t be left behind. That it can’t be destroyed. That it will always reappear.” She expected his usual scoffing comment, but nothing came. After a moment, she asked, “Has it . . . changed? Again?”
“Yes.”
She was afraid to ask. He sounded so strange. She hadn’t realized how much inflection there usually was in his voice, until now, when it was utterly flat.
“What is it, Jason?”
He still didn’t look at her. “Do you believe this book is for real? That the things in it are authentic?”
She noticed that he was no longer accusing her of being behind it, but she didn’t think commenting on that would be wise right now. “I can’t be positive. Only you would know.”
“But you believe in it. The . . . legend, I mean.”
“My mind doesn’t. My heart . . .” She shrugged, even though he wasn’t looking at her. It didn’t hurt to move quite as much this time. “I’d like to believe it. Yes, it’s foolish, but I think it’s . . . wonderful, as well. And when it comes right down to it, I have no other explanation for what’s happened.”
“Neither do I,” Jason said, still in that flat, inflectionless voice. “But if it’s true . . . if it’s right . . .”
“What?” she asked yet again when he trailed off.
“If it’s right . . .,” he said again, finally lifting his head to look at her; his eyes were as opaquely expressionless as his voice. “If it’s right . . . Alice Hawk murdered my mother. And probably meant to kill me along with her.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I DIDN’T WANT her dead,” Alice snapped. “I just wanted her warned.”
“She’s not dead.”
“She could have been. That drop is—”
“She was never in any danger of going all the way over. I’m very good at what I do, Alice. That’s why you hired me, remember?”
Alice felt a spurt of irritation at his use of her first name, but this was hardly the kind of man you demanded respect from. She turned and walked to the head of the grave. She stopped, staring down at the stone that had been installed just this morning.
It was inscribed simply with Aaron’s name and the dates of his birth and death. They had tried to sell her something more elaborate, something with some loving sentiment inscribed, but she had refused. She had humbled herself to Aaron, declaring her love, too often in his life; she wouldn’t do it yet again now that he was dead.
“You wanted her to know you were serious about what would happen to her.” The voice came from very close behind her, and she barely managed not to jump; she hadn’t heard him move at all. “You wanted her scared. Well, she’s scared. Trust me, she is scared.”
“But is she scared enough to back off?” Alice muttered, not looking at him, still staring down at the headstone.
“You’d know that better than I.” Those barren eyes looked at her, not even a hint of curiosity in them.
He didn’t care, Alice realized. He’d done his job, accomplished his objective, and that was all that mattered to him. And, she realized with a little thrill of fear she quickly quashed, he would have been just as detached, just as uncaring, if her orders had been to make sure Kendall Chase had gone over that deadly drop. She shivered, certain it was the chill of the early evening air and nothing more.
But had what he already done accomplished the objective? Alice didn’t know, and she didn’t like the feeling of uncertainty.
“She’s a tough one, for all that sweet, big-eyed exterior,” she said, more to herself than out of any illusion that the man cared one way or the other; a large part of his reputation had been built on the certainty that nothing would sway him from his purpose, even—some said particularly—a pretty face.
He plucked a pale blond hair from the sleeve of his jacket, held it up, frowned at it, flicked it away, then went on. “She seemed pretty cool when I picked her up this morning in front of the bank over on California Street.”
Alice’s head came up then, quickly. “The bank? Our bank?”
The man shrugged. “That’s where I first saw her. I was on my way to your old man’s office, like you said, to wait for her to show up, when I saw her car. I parked and waited, and she walked out of the bank right in front of me, pretty as you please. So I followed her here.”
Alice grimaced. He had told her of Kendall’s visit here to Aaron’s grave, had told her that the girl had sat here for a very long time, crying. He’d related the incident coldly, unimpressed by either the sentimental visit or the tears. His lack of solicitude had soothed her displeasure at this further evidence that there had been a genuine bond between her husband and this young woman.
The bank, she thought, going back to what had caught her attention in the first place. What had she been doing at the bank? There were only two banks in town, and one of them was privately owned and held by the Hawks. By her, now. And that was the bank Kendall’s personal account was in. The account that Alice had had the money deposited in.
Had Kendall decided to take the money? Had this afternoon’s exercise in coercion been unnecessary?
With a smothered exclamation she turned and strode back to the waiting car. She didn’t drive much anymore, but she had done so today, needing to maintain anonymity. It wasn’t that she couldn’t drive anymore—hardly, she was as alert and quick as she’d ever been, she told herself firmly—it was that she preferred the luxury and convenience of the limo and a driver. She deserved it. But she hadn’t yet found someone to replace Mr. Carver; she would have to see to that.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, she turned on her cell phone, and in a few moments had the number for the bank Kendall had been at. She dialed, and demanded to speak to Brad Simms, the bank’s manager, immediately. Her name had the usual effect, and she was quickly put through. It didn’t take much persuasion to get the information she wanted, but she hadn’t expected it to; the Hawk name was at the top of the list of the bank’s board of directors, and on a large chunk of shares of the bank’s stock.
“Damn that little bitch,” she said moments later as she turned off the phone.
“Oh?”
Alice looked up at the man who had followed her to the car. “She pulled the money from her account. In cash. And put it straight into a safe deposit box. With dated and timed records. In front of the bank staff.”
The man lifted a pale blonde brow. “So she can show she never touched it?”
“It won’t stand up in court,” Alice declared. “And I can make sure that the staff swears they never saw a thing.”
The man shrugged. “Still, it could b
e a problem. Reasonable doubt, and all that. Clever girl.”
“Too clever. She always was.” Alice tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, beating out a rapid little tattoo of irritation. “And she’s had the box for a while. No doubt she had a copy of that codicil stashed there, too. She must have it with her now. So she’s decided to fight me.”
“Maybe she’s changed her mind after this afternoon.” He inspected his jacket sleeve, as if searching for more blond hairs. “A lot of people don’t respond to threats until they’ve been forced to look the consequences in the face.”
“Maybe.”
Alice wasn’t convinced. She’d watched Kendall for ten years, watched her take on more and more, watched her grow, watched her meet every challenge Aaron had thrown at her. And she had watched the girl manage Aaron in a way she’d never been able to herself, never arguing with him, merely planting suggestions and retreating until Aaron, after much blustering and posturing, reached the conclusion she had wanted him to.
Kendall hadn’t seemed to mind never getting the credit for having had the idea in the first place, an attitude Alice had never been able to understand. But even she had had to admit that the girl’s instincts were good; she had even, reluctantly, admitted that some of her ideas had been very beneficial to Hawk lndustries.
It was too bad the girl was so damned virtuous.
“You want me to make another move on her? Scare her some more?”
Alice thought for a moment. “Not yet. Not until we know what’s she’s going to do. But be ready.”
“Want me to keep following her?”
“Yes. I want to know where she goes and who she sees.”
He nodded. “What about the guy?”
Alice’s lips thinned out in distaste. “Don’t do anything. Yet. I don’t want him spooked into running. I want to be able to get my hands on him.”
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