Hidden Motive

by Alexander, Hannah

  “Where are the others?”

  “Bryce was lying in front of the fire with Dillon when I came back in. Audrey’s examining the antiques in the family room.” He chuckled. “That’s irony for you, isn’t it? An antique loves to look at other antiques.”

  Sable rolled her eyes at him. “You’re never going to grow up, are you? And you’re not likely to ever marry with that attitude.”

  He raised his hands. “I read somewhere that anything over fifty could be considered an antique. It’s all I’m saying.”

  “Then you won’t mind when someone calls you an antique the day you turn fifty.”

  He grimaced. “Sorry I said that.”

  “So am I. What about the others? Any idea where they are right now?”

  “No telling where Simmons is. Perry’s probably in his room guarding his case.” Craig picked up a lampstand. “You have to admit it’s curious. You should have felt that case last night. Heavy. I picked it up once to put it out of the way and Perry watched me like a mother watching a stranger hold her baby. What do you think he’s carrying in that thing?”

  “It’s none of my business,” Sable said. Or was it? “Maybe he’s carrying a laptop and doesn’t want it stolen.”

  “A forty-five-pound laptop? Get real, Sable.” Craig’s eyes flashed with curiosity. “Like you said, it’s your home. I’d study everybody a little closer.”

  Sable dusted her hands together and bent over another box.

  Craig took a slow step closer to her. “So when are you going to tell me what’s really going on here?”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder.

  “What do you mean?”

  He stepped around a box. His candid brown eyes narrowed. “Why did you turn around and come straight back home? You wrecked your Camaro, you apparently nearly died on the cliff this morning, and you’ve been awfully grumpy today.”

  “I’m not grumpy.”

  “You've been as jumpy as a buck during hunting season. Is it money?”

  “Money?”

  “Look, I know this place cost the family a lot of money to fix it up and it's not doing you any good since it isn’t being farmed anymore.” He glanced around the attic. “I wasn't going to bring this up yet, but…well…when your family decides to sell this place, I want to be first on the list before you call an agent.”

  “Sell?”

  Craig cleared his throat. “Don't turn me down too quickly. I have more money than you think. The boat dock brings in enough. My expenses aren't much and I've stuck a lot in the bank. Enough to pay half down on the asking price.”

  “How do you know what the asking price would be?”

  “I’ve checked the prices of other places like this. The place would be a great hunting lodge.”

  “My grandfather's not even cold in the grave and you're already after his property?” She shoved the lid back on the box, then pushed the box out of the way with her foot. Maybe she was grumpy.

  He held his hands in front of him. “What’s with you? I offered to buy the place, not burn it down. My parents got an offer for their property and they need the money to help fund Dad’s campaign.”

  “Then why don’t you buy their property? You’re already living there.”

  “I've always liked this place. You know that.”

  She stood up to scan the rear wall with her flashlight beam. “You sound like Otis Boswell—or didn't you know he was trying to buy Grandpa out?”

  There was a long silence. She turned to look at Craig.

  His brows had drawn together in a scowl. “Please tell me Josiah didn't sell to that goon.”

  “Do you have any good reasons why he shouldn't have? He’s got the funds without needing a loan.”

  “Filthy money.”

  In her heart she had to agree. “I know you have personal prejudices against Boswell. I never knew why.”

  Craig looked at her for a moment in the dim light, then sighed and stepped over to the shaded dormer window. He stood looking outside for a long moment. Sable had almost decided the conversation had ended when he turned around.

  “Dad’s running for state senator, you know.”

  “What does that have to do with Boswell?”

  Craig shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and turned to stare out the window again. “Dad's a good man.”

  “Of course he is. He’s always been a good neighbor and he'll be a great senator.”

  Craig hesitated again. “How…how loyal are you to Otis Boswell?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Are you going back to Oklahoma?”

  She relented slightly. “No. I’m coming here to live. With Grandpa gone there’s nothing for me in Freemont.” Except maybe arrest.

  Craig looked toward the stairs, then leaned closer to her. “We’ve been friends a long time, right?” There was a vulnerability in his deep voice that touched her.

  “Of course.”

  He paused and took a breath. “Remember when Jimmy Ray and I were in the wreck that killed Tom Hall?”

  “How could I forget something like that? You were a senior in high school. I was in my first year at Columbia.”

  He grimaced at the floor. “My blood alcohol was one point five.”

  “You were drinking and driving?”

  “Yes, but Tom swerved into our lane. All the way over. It was like he was playing chicken or something. I couldn’t pull off the road because it was on the bridge at Eagle Rock, remember?”

  “So you traded lanes with him. I know all this. I didn’t know you were drunk.”

  “I didn’t cause the wreck, Sable. Tom swerved back at the last second. That’s really what happened. It wasn’t my fault but nobody would have cared. They would have pointed out the alcohol. I was eighteen and could have been tried as an adult for manslaughter.”

  That would have been tragic. She knew it. Craig hadn’t been a bad kid, only restless at times.

  “Dad was a judge then,” Craig said. “He pulled a lot of strings with his friends to keep me out of big trouble.”

  She paused a moment to let that digest. “So you’re saying your father used his political influence to prevent you from being prosecuted.” She heard harshness in her words and was sorry for that. But it still disturbed her.

  “You can’t imagine how that’s haunted me,” Craig said. “And my family. I shouldn’t have been drinking and I never drank and drove again. I'll live with it the rest of my life. Believe me it isn’t easy. But I didn’t cause the wreck. You have to understand why Dad did what he did.”

  “I understand he didn’t trust the judicial system he’d sworn to uphold.” She hated the sound of her words. Hated the fact that she was taking her pent-up frustration out on Craig because of everything else that was happening.

  “He didn't want his son to go to prison.”

  “So he believed you would go to prison even though it wasn’t your fault?”

  “I was in the wrong lane. I had been drinking. He knew all bets were off if the prosecuting attorney found out I’d been drinking, no matter who caused the wreck. Dad never did anything like that before or since. If I'd been caught joyriding in a stolen car, or shoplifting, or driving under the influence, he'd have let me take my knocks. This was different because someone died.”

  “No one would have pulled strings for my family if that had happened to my brothers or me.”

  Craig combed his fingers through is hair. “You can’t imagine the regret I live with. Dad risked his whole career—and his values—for me. He almost lost it all because of Otis Boswell.”

  “What happened?” She needed to hear the details and slow down her train of angry words.

  “Jimmy Ray’s father couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He went fishing with Otis one day and told him what really happened that night. Otis apparently did some digging. A couple of years later, Otis had a chance to buy some private property in the middle of the Mark Twain National Forest. He petitioned for some zoning changes
so he could set up a galena mine on the property. His petition was blocked. He went to Dad and threatened to expose me if Dad didn’t pull some strings.”

  “And Reuben gave in?”

  Craig closed his eyes and nodded. “He didn't think he had any other choice. It didn't work. The land suddenly went off the market and Otis moved to Oklahoma.”

  Sable leaned against the window frame as she digested this piece of information. Otis Boswell would be able to hold his dirty secret over Reuben for the rest of his career. It was a tragedy. But what would Reuben do the next time Boswell tried to expose their secret? How could a politician give the man so much power? The Holts needed to move back to the farm and forget about the senate.

  “You mean Otis had reason to believe there was galena around here?” she asked.

  “That’s right.” Craig turned toward the stairs. “I’ve got more wood to chop. If you change your mind about things, let me know.”

  “I will,” she said more gently.

  Sable listened to the sound of his descending footsteps, impatient with herself for her treatment of a friend who needed a listening ear. He’d bared his soul—risking his reputation and his father’s—to warn her about Otis Boswell.

  Maybe she should pay more attention to the warning.

  She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the dormer window. “Oh Grandpa, why?”

  A movement outside caught her attention. Someone several hundred feet away was splitting wood beside the creek. As he moved, his shadow mingled in and out of the trees, but from his size and the breadth of his shoulders Sable could tell it was Murph. He raised the axe high into the air and plunged it into a log in a perfect split. Two more strikes and he moved to the next log.

  She enjoyed watching him work and was so grateful for his presence here. Until the sun broke through or until the temperature warmed, the ground would remain encrusted with ice and they would remain stranded.

  Impatient with her own thoughts, she studied the thick barrier of clouds that had settled back over the hills. The atmosphere in the house seemed to reflect the sky.

  When she looked back down into the woods, she was surprised to see another figure moving through the trees above the place where Murph was working.

  Murph handled the axe as if it were a lightweight toy, breaking away ice with what appeared to be a flick of his wrist. The newcomer balanced on a cliff above Murph in a thicket of tangled brush so dense Sable could barely make out the human form. At times the person was barely visible, at times merely a part of the dark green line of cedar trees near the ledge—except for a bright red-orange halo that seemed to bob with the person’s movements. A knit hunting cap?

  Something about this second figure grabbed Sable’s attention, something stealthy, as if…as if he were trying—

  Sable gasped. “No!”

  The newcomer raised a branch the size of a man’s leg and moved into line above Murph.

  Sable unlocked the window and shoved it up. She fumbled with the lever of the storm window, tried to open it. The thing wouldn’t move. Why hadn’t she fixed this last summer?

  She pounded on the window. “Murph!” She looked around for something to hurl through the glass, fumbled once more at the window frame, and felt it give. She shoved it hard and as the pane flew up she cried, “Murph! Look out!”

  The intruder heaved the branch over the cliff at Murph.

  At the sound of her voice, Murph straightened and looked around. The branch hit the side of his head lengthwise, then crashed to the ground with a sound of shattering ice. Murph plunged face first across a half-cut log.

  Chapter 14

  Sable raced downstairs from the attic to the living room, flung open the front door and rushed out into the icy air, stopping only when she reached the slick steps that led down from the front porch to the yard. She grabbed the pickaxe someone had leaned against the steps and used it to balance herself across the frozen slope of winter brown.

  There was no longer any doubt about a threat—someone had tried to kill Murph—and might have succeeded! Someone had come after them and was in these woods right now.

  Sable scrambled across the ice to a steep old trail a couple hundred feet from the house. She raised the pickaxe over her head and plunged the tip through the thick ice crust, pulling herself up a few feet at a time, frustrated by her slow progress. When she reached level ground again, she scrambled through the trees toward the place where Murph had fallen.

  “Murph!” She grabbed at the slender trunk of a dogwood to keep her balance. “Murph answer me!” She couldn’t see him.

  A crash reached her from a stand of cedars, a crackle of brush and more shattering of ice—the attacker was getting away. She couldn’t take time to follow.

  At last, past a huge bare-branched oak, she caught a glimpse of Murph’s tan coat. His limp body lay prone over the log where he had fallen, the axe beside him in the ice.

  Sable used the pickaxe to steady herself on her way toward him. “Murph, please answer me!” Sharp spines of a cedar branch slapped her face.

  Murph groaned.

  Sable nearly cried out with relief. He had an airway and was breathing. She stumbled to his side. “Murph, can you hear me?”

  Again he groaned. He started to turn over.

  “Don’t move. Not yet. You know the drill. Wiggle your fingers.”

  He did. All moved well. “I’m okay,” he said. “Now can I move?” His speech wasn’t slurred.

  She grabbed his arm and helped him turn over. A red welt followed the line of his right cheek and the right side of his neck. Several small cuts seeped blood. He opened his eyes. His pupils were equal and reactive.

  “Thank God you’re alive,” she said.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to be thankful for that yet,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Tell me what day of the week it is.”

  “Saturday afternoon, we arrived earlier this morning in the middle of an ice storm, your birthday is next week, and you’ll be thirty-one. Satisfied?”

  “You can sit up. Slowly.”

  He blinked and raised his head. “Man, I didn’t hear that coming.” He sat up, grimacing. “Should’ve waited for Craig to help. Dangerous under these trees.”

  Sable darted a glance up the cliff where she had seen the other figure. “That branch didn’t fall.”

  “What?”

  “Somebody threw it at you from the top of that cliff.” She pointed to where crevassed rocks loomed overhead, then to the log a few feet away. “If you hadn’t moved when you did, you’d have a crushed skull.”

  His face gradually lost its color and Sable braced herself against him. “Rest for a moment. I can’t hold you up and you can’t afford another fall.”

  He touched the side of his face, then turned his head from side to side. “I’ll be okay. Did you see who it was?”

  “All I saw was a shadow of green topped by red. Most likely a stocking cap. Did you hear me shout from the window?”

  “Yes. That’s why I turned.” He took her hand. “That was a close one. If you hadn’t called to me…did you see who was in the house as you left?”

  “No. I was so panicked when I ran out of the house I didn’t think to pay any attention. I didn’t tell anybody, I just ran.” She shivered. “I was so scared. All I could think about was reaching you. I—”

  He placed his fingers gently on her lips. “You did fine.”

  Sable shivered again.

  “You’re terrified.” His fingers trailed across her face, and he cupped her chin. “You didn’t even stop to get a coat.” He undid the buttons of his thickly quilted jacket.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said. “Let’s get back to the house.”

  “We will. First, however—” He pulled the jacket from his shoulders and placed it around hers. The lingering warmth from his body encompassed her. “If you must rescue me, allow me to salvage some of my macho pride with a gesture of chivalry.”


  She accepted the coat. “I’ll be glad to help. But let me complete my mission. You need some medical attention and that’s back at the house.”

  “Agreed. And now I’m cold.” He bent over to pick up his axe and stumbled.

  She grabbed his arm. “Are you okay?”

  He retrieved the axe and straightened up. “I’ll be fine, only a little dizzy when I bend over.”

  “Then don’t bend over.”

  The fine lines around his eyes deepened with humor. He looked down at her as he put an arm across her shoulders. “Think we can get back to the house without another fall?”

  “If we walk in the brush and dried grass to the side of the trail, it isn’t quite as bad.”

  “Good observation.” He stepped into the patches of broken ice where Sable had used her pickaxe, and together they made their way back toward the house. Slowly.

  “I’ve been talking with Craig,” she said. “A lot of things have fallen into place. Boswell resorted to blackmail in the past to get what he wanted.”

  “How does Craig know about it?”

  Sable hesitated. “His father was the one blackmailed.”

  “That would make sense, then.”

  They stepped out of the woods and crossed the frozen yard toward the house. The house was constructed of used brick, with white columns supporting the front porch and black shutters at each window. Today all the shutters were folded back and the blinds were raised to let in as much light as possible. This gave the unfortunate impression of eyes open wide, watching every move Sable and Murph made.

  “We could hike out of this hollow with a pickaxe, the way you hiked to me,” Murph said. “Get help from a neighbor.”

  “The neighbors are in the same situation.”

  “Call for help.”

  “From where? The neighbors won’t have cell reception either. Our radio doesn’t even work. The battery’s dead. The lines are down all over with this kind of ice. Face it, we’re stranded.”

  * * *

  Murph had trouble concentrating as he stepped onto the front porch—partly because his brains had a tendency to scramble lately when he was near Sable, but mostly because of the pain that shot through his head and down his neck with devilish regularity.