Chapter Eight – A Lot More Free
Chapter Eight
Rafe
A LOT MORE FREE
Performed by Max McNown
It was later than I’d wanted to leave by the time Fallon and I headed out of the penthouse on Tuesday afternoon. I’d spent the morning firing both my hotel manager and the florist. After investigating the poorly maintained floral arrangements, I’d found out they’d lied to me about their personal relationship and were up-charging me for the flowers while pocketing the difference. This was what happened when I didn’t have the time to keep a closer finger on all aspects of this business. I needed to hire a chief operating officer for Marquess Enterprises—someone I could trust. But wasn’t that just the rub. Trust and me didn’t come easily, and every time I took a gamble, something like this reminded me why I didn’t.
Jim Steele’s face appeared on my phone’s screen. Thank God I had at least one person I could trust with both my life and my business.
“Have you left already?” Steele asked when I answered.
“Just heading to the elevators. What’s up?”
“Can you stop by the control room on your way out?”
“I’ll be right there.” I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with the manager and florist I’d had him walk out the door.
Fallon rolled her eyes at the detour but didn’t comment.
Last night had been the first good evening we’d had together in more months than I could count. Even before Spence had died, things had grown strained between us. My daughter despised leaving the ranch every time she’d had to come see me and had started questioning all my reasons for not visiting her in Rivers.
But watching the ridiculous show, we’d been able to leave all that behind us. She’d laughed and screamed at the characters, and I’d teased and taunted her about the ridiculousness of the relationships and the impossibility of Buffy’s powers. We’d followed dinner up with a fraisier cake I’d had sent up from my five-star restaurant simply because the strawberry sponge cake layered with pastry cream and topped with marzipan had always been one of Fallon’s favorites.
Slowly, some of the tension had left her shoulders, and I’d marked it down as a win.
But when I’d walked back into the suite this afternoon after dealing with the hotel manager, she’d been pacing the living area with all the weight of the world having landed back on her. I wanted to tell her this was exactly the reason I was selling the ranch. She was too young to have it hanging on her already. I didn’t want my daughter to limit herself, thinking she had to step into Spence’s and Lauren’s shoes to continue a heritage that was wrought with as much ugly as good. The estate had been founded in drama and turmoil from the moment our great-grandfather had won the ranch from Adam and Lauren’s great-granddaddy in a poker match. Thousands of acres had become ours with the flip of a card.
And when the diamonds had been found and mined, turning our family into one of the wealthiest in California at the time, the Hurly family had all but declared war. They’d gone to court, fighting over whether the mineral rights had transferred along with the land in that godforsaken poker game. They’d lost that battle, and Tommy Hurly had shot himself, leaving his son to find him in the cabin he’d taken over after refusing to leave the property. In what I’m sure Great-grandpa Alasdair saw as a grand gesture, he’d carved out an acre right around the cabin, right in the middle of our property, to give to the widow and her children. Not enough to survive on. Not enough to find any of the diamonds studding the hills. But enough to call home without having to pay anything more than the property tax.
After that, Hurly’s widow and their children had come to work on the ranch, and from that moment forward, there had always been a Harrington and a Hurly working on the land, side by side, twined in some sick, symbiotic relationship. One Spence and I had only added to by fighting over Lauren’s hand.
Fallon would never see the truth, but selling the ranch might just rid us of the curses that had haunted our families from the very beginning. Maybe we could actually put it all behind us. Maybe we’d get a fresh start.
Maybe you just don’t want to see the good that’s still there , my devil taunted.
As the elevator doors opened in the basement of the hotel, I shoved that thought aside and strode down the hallway to the control room outfitted with top-of-the-line computers and equipment that allowed the security team to watch thousands of cameras around the casino. Whenever I was in Vegas, Steele made the control room his office, keeping an eye not only on the security here but the security of all my businesses around the world.
A decade older than me, Steele was a broad-shouldered, dark-haired former Navy SEAL with eyes the same color as his last name. He’d left the military due to a colossal fuckup by some bureaucrats that had cost him several members of his team and spent five years in private security before winding up running security for a casino near the alley where I’d been stabbed. He’d saved my life that night, running off the three individuals who’d attacked me.
I pointed Fallon to a chair near the front doors of the control room, far away from the cameras and activity. “Have a seat. I’ll just be a minute.”
She huffed but immediately took her phone out of her pocket and started scrolling. Maybe I should have confiscated it as part of her grounding, but I hadn’t had the heart. She’d had enough loss this year. I couldn’t take away the conversations she had with her friends on top of it.
I made my way through the desks to where Steele sat at a long row of monitors hanging from the back wall. He was typing away at a keyboard, which seemed to be his favorite spot these days.
“Steele,” I said.
He glanced up, pushed a few buttons, and the five monitors right above him flickered from their current views into Puzo’s ugly mug. Between the different screens, they showed him strolling in through the side door of the casino and making his way calmly to the café. Steele let one of the videos play, and we saw the hostess lead him to the veranda where he waited for Sadie to join him.
Just the sight of her black hair swinging past her chin and those impish blue eyes dancing with life was enough to tighten every inch of my body in inappropriate ways. I could taste her all over again. I hated that I still hungered for what she’d offered before I’d had to send her away. Hated that I’d seen her with Puzo and yet still couldn’t seem to get her out of my head.
Steele hit play on the video of her with Puzo, zipping through it at three-times speed until the moment I showed up at their table. Thankfully, the anger and betrayal I’d felt weren’t evident on the screen. Still, Puzo had known I was upset, and my stomach rolled knowing I’d shown him those cards.
After he left, I had a firsthand look at the only real display of emotion I’d let out. Every ounce of frustration was clear in the way I’d hauled Sadie up against me and held on viciously to her arm. Regret swarmed through me.
“Care to tell me about the dame?” Steele asked.
“Is this what you brought me to see? She’s no one,” I said, careful to keep every emotion locked up and put away. When he raised his brow and flicked a different monitor to show Sadie and me on our way up to my penthouse Sunday night, my eye twitched with annoyance. “I’ll repeat it so you hear it this time. She’s no one.”
“You don’t take ‘no one’ to your suite, Marquess. You’ve never taken anyone but Fallon there. Hell, you don’t even host parties in your home, and yet you took her. And the next day, she’s all cozied up with Puzo? No wonder you were pissed.”
“I’ve already done a background check on her.”
“So have I. Sadie Hatley. Twenty-three. She won the grand prize in your dart competition. I can’t find any links to her and Puzo online, but we both have eyes. We both see them sitting there having a snug little breakfast together.”
It wasn’t anything more than what I’d already thought, and yet every word knifed through me. “I won’t ever see her again. She’s probably already back in Tennessee.”
“She left in a rental car just after the café incident, which is what caught my attention and why I asked you to come down.”
I waited as he swiped a hand over the touch-screen monitor, bringing up another camera. This one was near the registration desk. Sadie appeared, stuffed her room key into the drop box, and headed for the revolving doors. She’d gotten all the way through it before a completely innocuous man in khakis and a green polo drifted out behind her. Another swipe of a screen brought up the parking garage. Sadie wheeled her suitcase to a blue sub-compact with a rental sticker in the rear window. She tossed the luggage in the back with ease before sliding into the driver’s seat. She sat there for at least two minutes, and while we couldn’t see what she was doing in the car, we could see the same man in the khakis and polo step into view. He got into a gray SUV parked across the aisle from her.
Eventually, Sadie backed out and headed down the ramp, and the man did the same.
Another touch of Steele’s hand brought up the exit booth. Sadie put her ticket into the machine and the bar rose to let her out, where she was forced to stop at the red light just outside the entrance. The man in his SUV was parked on her bumper, and when the light turned green, he followed Sadie as she turned right.
Acid burned through my stomach.
It could mean nothing. Could just be a man leaving my casino at the same time as Sadie had, both of them heading down The Strip in the direction of the airport. But I knew it wasn’t true. Steele wouldn’t have shown it to me without a reason.
“Who is he?” I asked.
Steele tapped back to one of the screens showing Puzo sitting in the café before Sadie had arrived. It was then I realized the polo-shirted man was sitting at the table right behind him. They were back to back. It took Steele rewinding the film, enlarging it, and stopping several times before I saw it. They were talking. Puzo hid his words behind his napkin, but the man very clearly nodded in agreement, accepting orders.
“He works for Puzo?” That acid turned into a heaving, boiling pit.
“I’m still waiting on facial recognition. The man paid in cash at the café. I’m a day behind, so obviously the dishes had already been washed, so there’s no chance of DNA. I double-checked the cameras, and I didn’t see him touch a single thing anywhere else in the casino.”
Puzo was following her, and I doubted she knew it. Debate waged war inside me. Should I tell her? It wasn’t my business. If she’d gotten in bed with the devil, that was on her.
Or maybe on you , my demon cackled.
“Was the man here the night before? Did he see Sadie with me in the Marquis Club or the piano bar?”
Steele shook his head. “Not that I saw. I’ll look through all the footage again, but as far as I can tell, yesterday morning was the first time he’d stepped inside The Fortress.”
“Right now, we have nothing to tell her, and I have no desire to stick my nose in more Puzo business. She’s not our responsibility.” Even as I said it, something dark and feral and beastly inside me objected. The same animal who’d wanted to leap out of its cage when I’d first seen Sadie sitting with him. The same one who’d tried to claim her by biting her neck and baring her skin against the wall of windows in my suite.
I ignored the beast and headed for Fallon and the exit. I called back over my shoulder, “If you identify him, let me know. Otherwise, we move on.”
“Marquess,” Steele grunted, and I turned back. His brow was furrowed. “She might need help.”
“Not mine and not yours. She’s not our business.” The beast growled and banged on its cage, but I ignored it again.
Steele wasn’t happy with my answer. But I’d had enough of the dark-haired vixen. I wasn’t going to let her curse me more than I already was.
Fallon looked up as I passed by her. “Let’s go, Ducky,” I said.
She hefted her bag onto her shoulder and dragged her feet as she came to stand by me. “What did Steele want?”
“Nothing. Just a false alarm,” I told her, holding the door open for her.
“Is Parker still at the Naval Academy?” Fallon asked as we stepped into the hall, and I raised my brows in surprise. I didn’t know she’d kept tabs on Steele’s son. My protective-dad warning bells went off in my head. Parker was a good-looking kid. Nineteen, muscled and strong. He’d entered the Naval Academy right out of high school with every intention of joining the SEALs just like his father and grandfather had. He was way too much for a hormone-driven teenage girl.
“As far as I know. Why do you care?” I asked as we made our way to the elevator.
Her cheeks turned every shade of red that was possible, and the beast I kept caged rattled against the bars for an entirely new reason. Steele was going to get a lecture from me, and Parker wouldn’t be anywhere near my daughter in any near future.
“Don’t make a big deal out of it, Dad ,” she said, sarcasm dripping. “He was just always nice to me when I was around.”
Steele wasn’t my bodyguard, but he went practically everywhere I did, especially when I was traveling out of the country. Steele’s wife and son had traveled with us at times too. Parker and Fallon had been together in that way kids of friends often are, but I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. The five years between them had seemed enough to keep me from thinking it could ever be something more.
But then, look at the twelve years that existed between Sadie and me. It felt like nothing. It had been nothing when I’d had my tongue in her mouth and my fingers digging into her hips.
“No boys, Fallon. You’re too young.”
“As if Parker would even look at me that way,” she said with a heave of adolescent drama. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t date. Mom and Spence were dating when they were in high school.”
The gleam in her eye just about killed me and had me growling, “Different times. Different situation.”
She laughed and patted my arm. “Don’t worry, Dad. I know every single boy at my school, and believe me, none of them are interesting enough to let them kiss me.”
That wasn’t any kind of reassurance.
I was suddenly very glad we were heading back to the ranch. I needed to talk to Lauren. Needed to get on the same page about this next stage of Fallon’s life. Dating was out of the question, especially when I knew exactly what those senior boys at her high school would be thinking on the first day of the new school year. I’d heard the term Fresh Meat in the locker room way too many times growing up in our small town. The guys had thought the freshman girls were fair game now that they were in high school when, two years before, they wouldn’t have been caught dead even talking to them. With just barely four hundred students in the school, the guys had wanted a new batch of girls to practice on.
No way would that be my daughter.
Selling the ranch and moving her the hell out of Rivers seemed to take on even more importance. I’d enroll her in an all-girls high school and keep her in the little bubble of safety for as long as possible. It would be one more reason she found me despicable, but I’d protect her any and every way I could.
? ? ?
The sun was just starting to dip downward when we landed at the private airport about thirty miles from the ranch. Stepping onto the tarmac outside the shared hangar where the Harrington Ranch Cessna had been kept, the heat hit me with a staggering force. People never understood that July in the foothills of California didn’t mean seventy-degree beach weather. It was hot. Damn hot.
It was the kind of day growing up that would have ended with a trip to the falls to duck our heads under the winter run-off or sent us to the lake with inner tubes slung over our saddlebags. Anything to cool off, to shed the heat and dust of the ranch for crisp, clean waters.
My dark suit absorbed the sun like a sponge, and I shed the jacket as I made my way to the Jaguar F-Class that I’d left in the hangar after I’d driven to Rivers from Vegas for the funeral and then had to have my pilot pick me up so I could fly to Tokyo. The car now sat next to the empty slot where the Cessna had been parked, and my gut clenched all over again at the thought of Fallon piloting it alone. I cursed my brother again for teaching her to fly, even though I knew why he had.
Growing up, Dad had required Spence to learn how to use and repair every piece of equipment that was needed to run the ranch, and Spence had done the same with Fallon. The plane was just another tool, allowing them to assess the thousands of acres of land for issues and track the cattle with ease. Regardless of whether it was a necessary piece of equipment or not, it was going to be one of the first things I sold. If we needed a bird’s-eye view, I’d have Steele hook us up with the latest drones to do the work.
I took my frustration at Spence out on the road, speeding along the mountain lanes with the Jaguar hugging the curves. I’d loved racing along these paths as a teen, taking them way too fast and feeling way too invincible. Both Spence and Lauren had given me a hard time about it. They’d always told me I was lucky not to have crashed, and in hindsight, they were right.
My jaw ticked.
This was why I hadn’t wanted to come back to Rivers after Dad’s funeral. Too many memories haunting me. Good ones that only bled into pained ones. Loss and humiliation and betrayal that clung to me. Mine and Spence’s and Lauren’s.
We were almost at the turn-off to the ranch when Fallon’s voice, low and quiet, asked, “Did you always hate it here?”
I rubbed a hand over the short bristles of the beard I kept clipped tight as a thousand images filtered through me like a slideshow reel. Laughter. Horses. The joy of that moment when a wild mare finally submitted to the bridle. The smell of the flowers. The sound of the rushing rivers merging from different corners of the property only to spew out into the lake. The feathery touch of the first snowflakes falling and melting on your hand.
“No,” I told her honestly. “When I was your age, I felt just like you—as if it was my entire world. As if it was the only place I’d ever want to be.”
“But you hate it now?”
“No. I can just look at it without the haze of my childhood love covering up the truth. It will never be able to stand on its own. It’s a losing bet, no matter how you play it. I don’t want you to struggle to try to keep it alive when there’s nothing you can do to keep it breathing in the long term. All you’d be doing is giving it life support. But once you pull the plug, it’s still going to die.”
The analogy was harsh, but I’d made it on purpose. She needed to hear it in those real, raw terms.
Her arms hugged her body tighter, and she turned her head to look out the window, chin raised. She was angry and frustrated, and I completely understood it. If someone had told me the same thing when I’d been her age, I would have taken a swing at them.
But the truth was still the truth.
We pulled through the gate, and the sight of the house kicked me in the gut, just as it had when I’d come back for the funeral. But just the money it took to maintain the buildings was enough to put the estate in the red. Fallon didn’t have a clue how many dollars ran through the accounts each month.
I drove around the back of the house to the parking lot and pulled up next to a blue car I didn’t know and yet still looked familiar. Fallon was out and running toward the front door before I could get another word in.
I grabbed my suitcase from the back and slammed the hatch. I’d just started to pass the blue subcompact when my feet stalled at seeing a rental car sticker in the back window.
The dark acid that had burned in my stomach in the control room returned.
What the fuck?
It couldn’t be the same car.
I hadn’t paid attention to the license plate while watching the video. I’d been much more interested in the man in the polo who’d pulled out after it. My head whipped around, eyeing the work trucks parked on the far side of the barns, looking for the man’s SUV and not finding it.
The anger and frustration my daughter had been feeling decided to take its turn with me.
No way was this a coincidence.
No way Sadie Hatley ended up on the ranch without purposefully arranging it.
That same sense of betrayal and disappointment that had swarmed me yesterday morning returned, growing in leaps and bounds as that damn beast rattled around in its cage again. Was Sadie after something from me in particular? Or was she just after any rich man? Had she entered the dart tournament as a way of getting close to me, or was she really working for Puzo? His man following her made everything all the more uncertain.
But there was one thing I was sure of—I wasn’t going to let her screw with me and my family. Whatever was going on, whatever excuse she’d used to get on the property, it didn’t matter. I was going to kick her sweet little ass all the way back to Tennessee before she could do me or mine any harm.