Gambling on a Secret

by Ellwood, Sara Walter

  Zack shook his head. “No. The FBI is now involved, but it’s like Ferguson disappeared. His mother swears she knows nothing.”

  “You don’t believe her?” he asked in response to something in Zack’s tone.

  “I believe her claim of not knowing where he is, but I do think Mrs. Ferguson knows more than she’s letting on.”

  “Maybe she knew about the will forgery. You remember from your Tracy days, Maddie and my mother got along like two wild cats stuck in a burlap sack, don’t you? Maddie hated my mother because she felt Mom was Granddad’s favorite. Leon’s mother would do anything to protect him.”

  “Maybe. But if she did know about the forgery, she’s an accessory to the crime and will go down with her son.” Zack looked around the hallway. “How’s Charli?”

  “She’s holding up. Talked Ella’s girl into coming out to the ranch and helping with the horses. I think Charli would like for Annie to move in with us. Sam and Julie don’t have room for her.”

  “Not a half-bad idea. Neither Sam nor Julie is parenting material. Sam can barely take care of the kids he has, and Julie is too wild. Charli will be great with Annie.”

  “Yeah. She knows exactly what she’s going through.”

  “Is Charli at the ranch?”

  “No, she and Tracy went to the mall to buy a dress. We’re going to the ball tomorrow night. I don’t know how much fun we’ll have, but we decided to go for it.”

  Zack groaned. “Don’t remind me about the ball.”

  “Will you be working and had a hot date planned?”

  Zack laughed and shook his head. “Hell, I wish I was working. I’ll be at the party, but I don’t have a date. I can’t date anyone.”

  “Why not?” He frowned. “You surely haven’t given up women, have you?”

  The sheriff narrowed his eyes on him. “I have a six-year-old daughter who still asks me every night when her momma will come home from heaven. I can’t confuse her by bringing another woman home. Besides, I’m too busy with work and the ranch.” Zack slapped his hat on his thigh and looked away from him. “But God, sometimes I wish I could find a good woman. Amanda needs a mother. She’s six going on sixteen.”

  Winnie Cartwright opened the door of the meeting room and smiled broadly at them. She ushered them into the conference room. “We’re happy you could take time to come and talk to us today, gentlemen.”

  Zack charmed his aunt with a big grin. “Not a problem, ma’am.” He glanced at Dylan. “I’m glad we’re here, too.”

  Dylan needed to do this. Talking about what had happened was a way to heal, but so was accepting not everything had been bad. He wasn’t speaking about his last mission. He’d tell the ladies about the missions that had defined him, made him want to go back again and again, and given him a feeling of accomplishment.

  He wasn’t surprised when he saw Brenda sitting beside her mother. As Zack greeted several of the other women, Dylan approached his ex-wife and her mother. “Good day, Mrs. Grady,” he said to his former mother-in-law.

  Linda Grady scowled at him. “We don’t want any trouble here, Dylan. I didn’t want Brenda to come, but Winnie insisted she had to be here.”

  He grinned. “I put Winnie up to it. So, don’t worry, I’m not here to cause trouble. Brenda, I’d like to talk to you before we start.”

  Brenda glanced at her mother and nodded. After she and Dylan were outside the room, she spun to face him. “What do you want?”

  He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  Looking down into her narrowed brown eyes, he gently said, “I’m sorry I never was the husband you wanted me to be. I guess by now you’ve heard Charli Monroe and I are living together.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard.”

  “I’m in love with her, and I realized you and I were never meant to be. I hope you’re as happy with Nicholas as I am with Charli. Goodbye, Brenda.”

  He walked back inside the conference room, leaving Brenda gaping after him.

  While Zack told his own story, Dylan gathered his thoughts.

  He needed to accept the past, and put it behind him. With Charli, he was a new man, a better man.

  Zack finished his story about his time in the Marines and the attack at the checkpoint that nearly killed him.

  With each beat of his heart, Dylan was reborn. Like he’d shed a cocoon. When Zack stepped away to give him the podium, Dylan grinned and spread his wings.

  He was free.

  Chapter 22

  Every eye in the place turned toward Charli as she entered the ballroom on Dylan’s arm. She fidgeted and murmured, “Maybe, I should’ve gotten a longer dress.” Or one that wasn’t backless, or showed so much cleavage.

  Dylan tightened his arm around her waist and leaned over to whisper by her ear, “Stop. Since when did you start feeling uncomfortable in your own skin? You are easily the most beautiful woman in the whole damned place.”

  “I think you’re biased. But that wasn’t what I meant.”

  “Charli, no one here knows your past, and even if they did, I wouldn’t care. And you shouldn’t either. You are a better person than most of the people in this room.”

  She relaxed a little.

  Tracy huffed as she came up beside her brother and looked over the crowd. “Why did I let you talk me into coming to this thing? I feel stupid.”

  He lifted his free hand and rubbed his index finger and thumb together. “Here, let me play you a sad song on my little violin.”

  Tracy rolled her eyes. “You are so juvenile sometimes.”

  “Go mingle. You might just be surprised who you’ll find.”

  “Yeah, with my luck I’ll find Mr. Right, and I’m dressed in a God-awful hot pink bridesmaid dress. I wore this thing to the wedding of a couple who aren’t even together anymore. How romantic is that?”

  Charli couldn’t hide her smile. “You could’ve bought a dress yesterday, or I offered you one of my dresses. You would’ve looked great in the little blue slip dress.”

  “Sure, that would’ve worked. I’m four inches taller than you and am stick-figure skinny. The strip of silk you call a dress looks great on you, you look great in anything.” There was only a hint of envy in her friend’s voice, but it wasn’t malicious. If anything, it was sisterly. “On me it would have been worse than this rag.”

  She picked up the full satin skirt of the floor length dress and let it fall in disgust. Turning her indignation on Dylan, she gestured at his Texas tuxedo. “You guys have it so easy. Hell, you wear the same getup to the grocery store.”

  “Oh, for Christ sakes, Tracy. Go!”

  Before she got lost in the crowd, Tracy glanced over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Oh, yeah, sis, that’s real mature.”

  Once they moved toward the bar in the corner, Charli asked, “What do you have up your sleeve?”

  “Playing matchmaker.” He turned to the bartender, requested two glasses of ginger ale and paid for them. He handed her one of the tall plastic cups. “I only know of one other person here, who doesn’t have a date and isn’t either too old or too young.”

  “Zack Cartwright.”

  “Bingo. I owe my sister. And in many ways, I owe Zack.”

  She raised a questioning brow.

  He sipped the soda and shrugged. “If Tracy hadn’t called you about your newspaper ad, I wouldn’t’ve applied for the job.” Dylan placed a soft kiss on her temple and grinned lopsidedly. “And as they say–the rest is history.

  “And Zack?”

  After Dylan sat beside her at an empty table, he said, “He helped me remember my time in the Army wasn’t all bad.”

  A few moments later, he led her onto the dance floor. She hadn’t danced in years.

  The band, led by Zack’s younger brother Logan, broke into an old Alabama love song. She stumbled over the stiletto heels of her strappy sandals, but Dylan supported her and surprised her at his skill as he led into a two-step. Re
laxing in his arms, she got caught up in their love feeling so right, just as the lyrics suggested.

  His warm breath fanned over the side of her face. “I think I’ve finally found a country song I like. It’s definitely giving me some ideas.”

  She pulled away and looked up into his desire-darkened eyes, and got some interesting ideas herself.

  The song ended and the band shattered the mood by breaking into Charlie Daniels’s The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

  They moved off the dance floor as the dancers lined up for a line-dance. She looked around for Tracy and found her over by the edge of the room talking with Zack, who said something and Tracy laughed. Oh, yeah, they had plenty of sparks to start a fire if given enough kindling.

  Before they got back to their table, she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.

  She left the bathroom at the end of a long dimly lit corridor. The muted revelry of the party seemed so far way, as a dream on the peripheral of her conscience. On the opposite side of the hall was a darkened coatroom. A glass door barred an exit at the end of the hallway.

  Curiously, she peered through the glass into the darkness. A halo of dim light from the streetlight disappeared in the shadows of the thick woods bordering the employee parking lot. The full moon glimmered off the calm water of Gambler’s Lake.

  A shuffling sound came from behind her.

  What was that? She turned around and shivered. From the doorway of the coatroom, Leon stepped out of the darkness hatless and with a lock of hair hanging over his forehead. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, and his beard had come in dark and thick. The insane gleam in his brown eyes shook her to her core. Knowing someone would hear her, she opened her mouth to scream. He pulled a handgun with a silencer on the end from behind him.

  “Hello, Charli.” He pointed the gun at her with the ease of someone used to handling firearms. “I wouldn’t do anything stupid if I were you.”

  Swallowing the scream, she held out her hands in front of her and pressed herself into the corner. “Why are you here?”

  His sickly smile never reached his arctic eyes. “I came back to get the two things I can take away from Dylan.” Leon paused, and her heart sank into the depths of her boiling stomach. “You and your bastard.”

  “You’re crazy. I’ll never go with you.”

  Definitely the wrong thing to say to a madman. He lost the smile and bore down on her, grabbed her by the hair and yanked her around so her back came up against his chest, hard. She cried out, but choked down the yelp when he shoved the gun next to her temple. Oh, God, he’s going to shoot me.

  “Either alive or dead, it doesn’t matter to me how I take those things away.”

  “Please,” she pleaded between sobs, trying to fend off the nausea twisting her belly. “Don’t hurt me.”

  She shuddered as his hot breath fanned over her bare shoulder. “As long as you do as I tell you, I won’t.”

  Giving a jerky nod, she swallowed the bile in her throat. “I’ll cooperate.”

  “I always knew you were a smart girl.”

  Determined to buy as much time as possible, she asked, “Why do you hate Dylan so much?”

  His chuckle grated on her nerves like sandpaper over delicate silk, snagging, ripping. “Because my father preferred him over me.”

  “You mean because Jason Ferguson willed Oak Springs to him.”

  Leon tugged on her hair hard enough to bring tears of pain to her eyes. The gun nozzle dug into her temple as he growled next to her ear, “That’s part of it. We’re leaving. Open the door.”

  * * * *

  While Dylan waited for Charli, Tracy and Zack came to the table. Zack sat next to him and Tracy settled next to Zack.

  “Where’s Charli?” Tracy asked and sipped from a glass of Zinfandel.

  He wondered the same thing himself and glanced at his watch. “She went to the ladies’ room, but it was a while ago.”

  A teenage boy, dressed in the white kitchen help uniform, ran into the middle of the ballroom. Over the band’s loud rendition of Little Texas’s God Blessed Texas and the chatter of over two hundred people, he yelled, “Is the sheriff here?”

  “Over here.” Zack stood and waited for the kid to run over to the table. “What’s going on?”

  “I was coming from the kitchen when I heard a noise down the hallway to the bathrooms.” The boy gestured wildly with his hands as he spoke in a breathless rush. “When I looked, I saw a man grab a lady back there. It looked like he had a gun and was fixin’ to go out the back door.”

  Dylan was out of his seat, ready to bolt.

  “Let’s go,” Zack said. As they ran through the crowd, he pulled out his cellphone and pushed a key. “Dawn. Leon Ferguson was possibly spotted at the Country Club, armed and considered dangerous. He may have Charli Monroe. Call in the Rangers and the highway patrol to block every road out of the county. Send backup. I’m in pursuit”

  At the doorway out into the lobby, Dylan stopped and took a breath. He had to get a game plan. Zack paused and glanced at him.

  “If the bastard harms a single hair on her head, I’m killing him, Zack.”

  “That’s why I’m making you a temporary deputy. More paperwork is involved if you kill him, but I can possibly keep your ass out of prison.”

  He nodded his appreciation.

  Zack looked around. “Here’s the plan. You’re good with the sneaking up on the enemy. So, you follow. Think, Dylan. Don’t let the emotion get ahead of reason.”

  “Got it.”

  He pulled a Glock from a shoulder holster under his vest. “I’ll circle around the back of the building in the cover of the trees.”

  Dylan nodded again and headed through the door. Zack almost barreled into him when he turned abruptly. “Zack, there’s something you should know. Charli’s pregnant.”

  “We’ll get to her, Dylan.” Zack patted him on the shoulder; the action was strangely comforting. “Now, let’s go, Captain.”

  Zack sprinted for the outer exit. Adrenaline made Dylan drunk as he turned and rushed down the hallway leading to the bathrooms and the employee exit. His heart kicked into his throat like a caged mustang as his mind galloped in a hundred maddening directions. By the time he reached the door, he corralled the stray thoughts and tried to tame his wild heart.

  Taking a breath, he was startled to smell the faint scent of peaches. Charli had been here only minutes ago. He slowly opened the door to slip out into the darkness, his instinct, honed by years of training, taking over.

  He saw movement between the parked cars and pressed himself into the shadow of the wall. Behind Charli, Leon pushed her toward the trees next to the parking lot with a pistol held to the back of her head.

  Crouching, Dylan rushed across the open driving lane and hid by a pickup.

  Leon pushed Charli behind a car.

  “Where are you taking me?” Charli’s voice rung with fear.

  “Someplace far away. Hope you like the tropics, Bambi.”

  With his heart beating painfully in his chest, he sprinted on silent feet toward the woman he loved and the lunatic threatening to take her away. He stepped on a wayward twig, the unwelcome snap warning Leon of his presence. Cursing his luck, he awaited the consequence of his misstep.

  Leon dragged Charli around by the hair. For one terrifying moment, he thought Leon would shoot her.

  “Let her go.” Dylan fisted his hands by his side. If he’d been able to get a little closer, he could’ve overpowered Leon from behind. But with a gun on Charli, he didn’t dare move.

  “Dylan!” Charli screamed.

  “If it’s not GI Joe. Some hero. You’re nothing but a fuck-up. You aren’t getting what you want this time.”

  “What’s your plan, Ferguson? Kidnapping Charli?” He didn’t give a rat’s ass what was going on in Ferguson’s crazy head, but the longer he kept him talking, the better chance he had of getting Charli away from him. As he held his hands out from his sides, he took a tentative
step toward Leon, coming out from behind a car. “This is between you and me. Leave Charli out of it.”

  Leon turned the gun on him.

  Dylan let out the breath he’d been holding.

  Charli screamed his name again.

  “You’re right.” Leon sneered. “This is between you and me. But I think I’ll keep the little whore anyway. Ever since you moved back here, you’ve weaseled your way into getting what should’ve been mine.”

  “Where’s the will, Leon?”

  Ferguson chortled humorlessly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  So, he hadn’t destroyed it.

  “Other than Oak Springs, what else have I supposedly taken?” He caught a flash of Zack’s white shirt as he weaved his way through the woods behind Leon. Dylan glanced at Charli, trying to reassure her with his eyes. Leon held her against him by her hair. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle, and she looked as if she’d puke any minute.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “My own father threw you in my face! He wished I’d turned out like you.”

  He kept his surprise out of his expression and voice. Sure, he’d spent a few lazy summers when he was a teenager with Jock, wallowing in their common dislike of Madeline Ferguson, but he didn’t understand Leon’s assertion. “Why would Jock Blackwell care about me?”

  Ferguson’s eyes widened and he jerked his head to the side. “So, you figured it out. Or did the son-of-a-bitch tell you when you and he were all buddy-buddy, how he got my mother pregnant? He married her only to dump her for Colleen Stryker before I was even born. Then happily signed the damned adoption papers to give me to that pompous asshole Jason Ferguson.”

  What the hell did Leon mean by him and Jock being buddies? Jock had tolerated him catching snakes out of the lake to torment Maddie, and told him how proud he was of him for joining the Army. Jock had done a tour in Vietnam. He sympathized with him when Jason Ferguson left Oak Springs to Leon. Colleen was the mother of Jock’s eldest illegitimate son. The fact Maddie Ferguson had legally wed Jock came as a shock. But why would Jock sign his son away?