Chapter 13
Last night’s rain had washed everything clean.
Lash took his morning cup of coffee out onto the veranda and gazed across the yard into the trees beyond.
Although it wasn’t visible from where he stood, he could hear the water rushing through the creek below.
He smiled to himself and took a slow, careful sip of the hot brew, careful not to burn his lips.
It was all falling into place. The kidnapping of Delaney Ruban’s heir was a brilliant plan. He knew exactly how it was going to happen—who was going to do the deed—even the amount of ransom he was going to ask for the safe return of Ryder Justice’s wife.
The ideal location in which she would be hidden had all but fallen into his lap.
An aging client had been admitted to a nursing home via letter and phone by a distant cousin.
The law offices of Marlow Incorporated had been given power of attorney to see to her monetary needs, as well as prepare for the impending funeral that was bound to occur.
Lash had done as the family had asked. Fostoria Biggers was now residing in the second room on the right at the Natchez Home for the Aged.
Fostoria’s money was in the bank, but Lash Marlow’s name was on the signature card of her account.
Her home out in the country was to be put on the market, and it would be—as soon as he no longer had need of it, which would be right after the Rubans coughed up three million dollars for Casey’s safe return.
Friday he’d closed his office and gone to Natchez.
The two men he’d hired with five hundred dollars he’d borrowed from Fostoria Biggers’s account had come into town last night and were in a motel waiting for his call.
The five hundred dollars was just a down payment on what he’d promised them when Casey’s abduction was completed.
He took another sip of his coffee as he came down from the steps.
He laughed to himself, and the sound caused a pair of white egrets roosting in an overhead tree to take flight.
Fifty thousand dollars. Last month he couldn’t have come up with fifty dollars, and now he had promised Bernie Pike and Skeet Wilson fifty thousand.
And, compared to what he would have in his pocket before the week was over, it was a pittance.
The air was rich with the scent of bougainvillea that grew wild within the skeletal arms of a long-dead oak. The grass was still wet from last night’s rain and by the time he reached the ivy-covered gazebo, the hems of his slacks were damp.
He stepped inside, then set down his cup and looked around.
For the first time in more years than he cared to count, he could see light at the end of his tunnel of financial woes.
It wouldn’t be long before he could begin the repairs on Graystone and he could hardly wait.
Even the gazebo was long overdue for a face-lift.
And while it would have to wait just a little bit longer, there was one thing he could do.
He began gathering up the unpaid bills he’d been tossing on the gazebo floor, making a pile of them in the middle of the yard. Since the grass was damp, he had no qualms about what he did next.
He struck a match and gave it a toss. The papers were damp as well, but finally one caught—then another—then another, and while he watched, the ugly reminders of his past went up in smoke.
* * *
The folder from Childers Investigations lay on Casey’s desk unopened. The private investigator was gone—had been for over twenty minutes, and Casey hadn’t been able to bring herself to read the report. Fear overlayed curiosity as she stared at the name beneath the Childers logo.
Ryder Justice—Confidential
Right now her world was just about perfect. But when she opened this up, it could reveal a Pandora’s box of despair that no amount of money could buy, sell or fix.
She walked to the window overlooking the downtown area of Ruban Crossing and stared out onto the street without seeing the traffic or the flow of people coming and going into the Ruban Building itself.
And because she was so lost in thought, she didn’t see Ryder drive up and park, nor did she see him getting out of the Lincoln with her briefcase—the one she’d left in the kitchen chair during breakfast.
She glanced back at her desk, then walked to the far side of the room to refill her coffee cup. Another cup couldn’t hurt. And it was as good an excuse as any to put off reading the report.
Her intercom buzzed, then Nola Sue’s voice lisped into the silence.
“Mrs. Justice, your husband is here with your briefcase. He’s on his way in.”
A smile of delight broke the somberness of Casey’s features as Ryder came through the doorway, dangling her briefcase from the ends of his fingers.
“Hi, darlin’, sorry to interrupt, but I thought you might be needing this. I’ll just lay it on your desk and get out of your hair.”
Casey gasped. The report! It was on her desk! Before she could think to move, Ryder was halfway there.
Hot coffee sloshed on her fingers as she shoved the cup on the counter and made a run for the desk. “Ryder, wait!”
Startled by the urgency of her shout, the briefcase slid across the desk and then onto the floor, taking everything with it as it felt.
“Sorry about that,” he said quickly, and knelt, intent on gathering up what he had spilled. But he froze in the act, unable to ignore the fact that his name was on every sheet of paper he picked up.
“It’s not what you think,” Casey said quickly, as she grabbed at the papers he was holding.
The look on Ryder’s face had undergone a frightening transformation. The sexy smile he’d worn into the room had been replaced by a grim expression of disbelief. He stood, his words thick with anger.
“What does this mean?”
“I…uh—”
“You had me investigated?”
“You don’t understand.”
“So—you’re telling me you didn’t have me investigated.”
Casey couldn’t look him in the face. “I didn’t say that.”
“Then…what you’re trying to say is that file is not a dossier of my life story.”
Because she was so afraid, she took the defensive. “What I did was—”
“What you just did was stand there and tell me a lie.”
She paled. The cold, hard glitter in his eyes was scaring her to death. Dear God, what had she done?
“I did it for you,” she said. “For us.”
He pivoted, then picked up a cup full of pencils from her desk and flung them against the wall. They shattered and scattered like so much buckshot against a tin barn. Moments later, Casey’s secretary burst into the room.
Ryder spun. “Get out.”
Nola Sue gave Casey a wild, helpless glance and left at Casey’s quick nod.
Ryder was so hurt, so betrayed by what she had done that he didn’t trust himself to touch her. When she reached for him, he shoved her hand aside. “Well? Did you find what you were looking for?”
Panic-stricken, she wanted to throw herself into his arms and beg his forgiveness. But she couldn’t weaken now, not when their future was at stake.
“I didn’t read it.”
The curse he flung into the air between them was short and to the point. Casey took it as her just due.
“But it’s true. I was afraid to read it.”
He grabbed at the scattered sheets he’d tossed on her desk and waved them in her face.
“Why, Casey? Don’t you know enough about me by now?
Couldn’t you trust that there was nothing in my past that could hurt you?
” He groaned, and threw the papers on the floor.
“Damn you. I would die before I let anyone hurt you—even myself.”
This time she couldn’t stop the tears. They spilled in silent misery.
He kicked at the papers on which he was standing, sending them scooting across the floor.
“Then if you haven’t read them, I’ll save you the trouble.
Depending on the depth of the report the investigator did, you will see that I’m the middle child of three sons born to Micah and Barbara Justice.
They were ranchers. My older brother, Royal, still lives on the family ranch south of Dallas.
My younger brother, Roman, is ex-military and is now a private investigator.
I am a pilot. I own and run a charter service out of a private airport on the outskirts of Fort Worth.
I also own a little under fourteen hundred acres of prime real estate on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, and unlike what you believed about me when we met, I am comfortably solvent.
Before you, I had never been married, but last winter, I did something I’d never done before in my entire life. ”
Casey tensed.
“I ran away from home.”
It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. Truth be told, she didn’t know what she’d expected, but that certainly hadn’t been it.
“I don’t understand. What happened to make you turn your back on family and friends? Has it anything to do with the nightmares you have? The ones that drive you out of our bed? The ones you won’t talk about?”
He started to shake, and Casey wished to God she’d never meddled.
“I was piloting a plane that crashed. I walked away. My father did not. He’s dead because of me.”
The look that passed between them was full of painful memories. For Casey, they were of the panic she’d seen on his face when he’d taken her to the airport. Of the plea in his voice not to fly in the storm. Of the desperation in his touch when he’d seen she was alive.
For Ryder, it was the death of a myth he’d been living. Of pretending that everything between them was perfect. Of hiding behind a marriage of convenience instead of facing the truth.
“You know, wife—I don’t think you should be so judgmental about the terms your grandfather put in his will. From where I’m standing, you’ve picked up his manipulating ways all too well.”
With that, he turned and walked out of the office, ignoring the sound of her voice crying out his name—calling him back.
* * *
It was all Casey could do not to cry. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him all day?”