by Nina Bruhns
Nevertheless, she wished she’d called Conner to tell him where she was going.
Lord, she’d been so upset last night when he never came home. She’d stared at the ceiling until the sun was streaming through the windows and still he hadn’t gotten home. In her mind she knew why. She understood what he was doing. That he was not cheating on her. That he hadn’t gotten tired of her already and was out having fun with another woman. He was working. He’d probably gotten caught up in…well, God knew what. But whatever it was, she was sure he had a good reason why he couldn’t be there for her.
But she’d needed him so badly. She’d been devastated by her father’s renewed attack on her and had desperately wanted Conner’s warm, comforting presence to soothe the razor-sharp pain in her heart. And in that same hurting heart, she’d felt the slightest bit betrayed.
Even though she knew it was wrong to blame him, that he had an important job to do, she’d been mad enough to arrange this lunch with her brother and take off without paying any heed to Barton’s warnings that she shouldn’t leave Conner’s house. She saw now she’d been acting like a selfish baby.
Surreptitiously, she glanced in the side mirror to see if she could catch a glimpse of Barton following her. But she hadn’t seen him since before leaving the restaurant where she’d met Henry. At least she didn’t think so. She thought there might have been someone following far behind them, but it wasn’t the same color car as Barton had been driving and had since disappeared. Probably wishful thinking on her part. Last night she’d tried to get him to lie down on the sofa, but he’d insisted on sitting up the whole night on a chair outside her door punching buttons on his ubiquitous BlackBerry. No doubt Barton had figured she was safe having lunch with her own brother and had gone home to get some sleep.
So she was on her own here.
Her heartbeat kicked up as Henry turned the car onto an old macadam road heading up into the craggy desert bluffs. “Doesn’t this go up to where all those old quarries are located?” she asked.
He glanced at her in surprise. “You know about those?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” She gripped the car seat with her fingers. “Are you sure this is the way to the bistro?”
“Actually, we’re making a quick stop first.”
Okay, now she was officially nervous. “Where?” She hadn’t been able to stop her voice from squeaking.
He glanced over at her, an enigmatic look on his face. “To see Darla.”
“What!?” Confusion coursed through her. Along with a tingling of fear. Why wouldn’t he have said that in the first place? Oh, God. Had she made a horrible mistake trusting him?
Her pulse doubled. She should bail. Even though the car was climbing up a steep incline and on her side a sheer cliff dropped a hundred feet practically straight down, she should jump out right now. Take her chances on foot—if she survived the fall—while they still weren’t too far from civilization and she had a shot at making it back alive.
A shot…
Cold fear surged through her veins. What if he had a gun?
“I had to hide her where no one could find her,” he said all-too calmly. “You’ll understand when you see her.”
Yeah, because she was probably dead. The man was a sociopath!
Blind panic had her grabbing the door handle and yanking hard. It didn’t budge. Ohgodohgodohgod. He had the child safety locks on.
“What are you doing?” he barked, slashing her a glare. “Are you nuts?”
“No, but you are if you think I’m just going to sit here and—”
Suddenly, he swung the car behind a huge boulder and pulled to a halt amid a cloud of dust that nearly obscured the silhouette of an ancient mining hut.
“Don’t be stupid, Vera,” he said, unlocking the doors.
She jerked it open and lunged out, taking off at a run. And immediately tripped in the gravelly sand. Hell! She’d wanted to impress Henry so she’d dressed to the nines, including the pair of exorbitantly expensive high heels she’d borrowed from Darla’s closet for the ball. The spike heels pierced the sand like tiny jackhammers, and one of them broke off, hurling her forward into a warm body.
She screamed.
“Vera! Oh, thank God you’ve come!” wailed Darla, grabbing onto her and giving her a death-grip hug, then pulling away to peer frantically into her eyes. “You’ve got to help me!” Her voice was filled with desperation.
And her face was covered by knuckle-size cuts and livid purple bruises, her wrist wrapped in a discolored bandage.
“Oh, God, Darla! What has that monster done to you?”
“He beat me up,” she wailed, “and I didn’t know what to do. I’m so sor—”
Behind her, the car door slammed. Vera didn’t wait to hear more of Darla’s explanation. She kicked off the ruined shoes, and at the same time as she spun to face Henry, she swooped down and grabbed a fist-size rock from the ground, shoving Darla behind her.
“Vera? No! Wait!” Henry rushed toward them, reaching into his pocket. Going for his gun!
She raised her arm, prepared to fling the rock at his head.
“Vera!” Darla grabbed her wrist. “What are you doing?!”
Vera hesitated in confusion. Just as a loud gunshot rang out, cracking the air like thunder.
To her shock, Henry cried out and jerked backward, a cloud of red blossoming around his right shoulder as he fell to the ground.
“Henry!” Darla shrieked. “My God, Henry!”
He’d been shot!
It hadn’t happened often, but there had been one or two shootings at the clubs where she’d worked, so Vera knew enough to hit the dirt. She pulled Darla down with her and immediately started tugging her toward Henry and the car.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked, keeping the panic at bay by a thread as they scurried. “Who’s shooting at us?” And from where? The hut?
“It’s Thomas! Oh, Vera, I’m so sorry I got you into this! He threatened to kill me if we didn’t get you up here! You have to believe me, we didn’t want to, but he swore he wouldn’t hurt any of us if you only came.”
Thomas? Darla’s ex-boyfriend, Thomas? “Me? Why me?”
Another shot erupted and whined off the boulder just above her.
“The ring!” Darla cried in despair. “He wants the diamond ring! You know, the one I told you to hide for me?”
They sprinted the last few feet. “But I don’t have it! The police do!”
“What?” Darla looked at her in horror. “Noooo! Now we’re dead for sure.”
But there was no time to explain. They’d reached Henry. “Grab his feet!” she ordered her sister as she put her arms around her brother’s chest to drag him to safety behind the vehicle. As she did, a newspaper clipping fluttered from his fingertips. Not a gun.
“Oh, Henry,” she murmured distraughtly. He hadn’t wanted to kill her. Some maniac was trying to kill him!
Three shots in succession punched through the windshield of the Lexus as she and Darla frantically hauled Henry around to the other side between the car and the boulder.
Correction: someone was trying to kill all three of them.
Lord. How had she gotten things so wrong?
Darla was sobbing, and if Vera weren’t so terrified, she’d be dissolving into tears herself. But her instinct for self-preservation was too strong. It kicked in big time. One advantage of growing up hard and fast, she thought sardonically.
She pulled off her summer jacket and pressed it to Henry’s bleeding shoulder. “Here, hold this here,” she told Darla, taking her hand and pushing it firmly onto the cloth. “Harder, or he’ll bleed to death.”
Darla shuddered out a sob but obeyed. “What are you going to do?”
“Get my cell phone.”
Vera reached up from the ground and eased open the Lexus door. Immediately a shot took out the driver’s window. Lord, how many shots did that gun have? She tried desperately to remember how many Clint Eastwood counted before
he asked the bad guy if he felt lucky…
Okay, that so didn’t matter. Focus!
Sucking down a deep breath, she opened the door wide and snaked onto the car’s floor on her belly, snagged her purse from the other side and wiggled out again. Success!
She whipped out the phone and frantically hit speed-dial number one. Conner.
“Please answer. Please, please, please,” she prayed. “I swear, I’ll never doubt you again. Or get mad at you. Or do anything to make you—”
“Ver…? Where the…ll are…?” His anxious voice surged across time and space to yell at her. Well, space anyway. Sort of. Static broke up the words, but she got the drift.
She sobbed with relief. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”
“…alk to me, damn it! I…rd shots.…where the h…id he take…ou?”
“We’re on a little road up in the mountains behind Henderson!” she said, exchanging a desperate look with Darla when Henry moaned in agony. “Nearly up to those old gravel quarries!”
“…reaking know that! Where?”
Two more shots blasted through the noon heat, plinking through the car hood and zinging off the engine block right above them.
She and Darla both let out bloodcurdling screams.
“Vera! V…! Are y…ight?” Conner’s voice shouted through the phone.
“Yes! Sorry! We’re just so scared!”
“Wh…’s wit…ou?”
“Darla and Henry are with me. Henry’s been shot! Oh, Conner, he might die if he doesn’t get—”
“Vera, list…me! H…the…rn!”
“What?”
“…orn! Hon…e horn!”
“Horn?” What did he—“Oh!” Suddenly hope blasted through her chest. Was he that close by? “Hang on!” She thrust the phone into Darla’s lap and crawled partially into the car again. She reached up and gave the horn a hard blast.
This time the bullet came through the passenger door and thwacked into the driver’s seat, not twelve inches from her head. She smacked a hand to her mouth to muffle her terrified scream and hit the horn again two more times, then slammed herself down onto the ground. She met Darla’s wild, tear-filled eyes again. A bullet must have severed some wires because the horn continued to blare like a siren. Or was it the car alarm?
“Vera! Vera!”
She whipped her gaze to the phone in Darla’s lap. But Conner’s voice wasn’t coming from there. It was coming from—
His car fishtailed around the boulder, blasting its horn and spraying gravel all around it like a machine-gun turret. Conner hung out of the driver’s-side window shouting her name.
“Conner!” She jumped up and ran straight for him as he dove from the car, rolled and came up sprinting. Belatedly she realized running to him wasn’t the smartest move. He grabbed her and lunged back behind the Lexus.
“Get the hell down!”
But no more bullets came at them. No more shots. As they held their breath, the only sounds to be heard were the distant cry of a hawk, the warm breeze rustling through the creosote bushes and the ticking of Conner’s car engine.
“Is he gone?” Darla half sobbed in a pathetic whisper.
“Yeah,” Conner finally said after a few more tense moments. “I think he is.”
And that’s when Vera lost it. Sinking down in his arms, she collapsed in a flood of tears.
Chapter 18
Agent Duncan wheeled up ten minutes after Conner in an unmarked SUV, followed closely by Conner’s cousin Natalie, who wailed up in a LVMPD cruiser with lights spinning and sirens blaring. Thank God he’d called them when he did.
By now, Conner’d gotten Vera reassured and Darla’s hysterics under control, and the three of them had managed to stop Henry’s bleeding and make him comfortable until the ambulance could arrive. He was going in and out of consciousness, but Conner was pretty sure he’d live.
Before the cavalry arrived, Conner had refrained from asking more than two questions, since he knew they’d all just have to go through the story again with Duncan. But his mind burned with theories.
Especially after he found a newspaper clipping on the ground. It was an article about the charity fund-raiser held at Luke Montgomery’s Janus Casino several months ago. Next to the column was a photo taken at the event, of Candace showing off the Tears of the Quetzal for the camera. On the night of her murder.
Coincidence?
He didn’t think so.
That’s what had prompted his two questions. That, along with Darla’s badly bruised face.
“Did you beat up your sister?” he asked Henry during one of his lucid moments.
Pain flared in the other man’s eyes, though Conner couldn’t say if it was physical or mental. “No,” Henry rasped. “I’d never hurt Darla.”
Darla had gasped softly at the question and nodded at her brother’s answer. “He wouldn’t,” she assured Conner brokenly. “Ever.”
Satisfied, Conner accepted that and returned his gaze to Henry. “Did you kill Candace Rothchild?” he asked evenly.
Henry’s eyes squeezed closed, and he hacked out a dry laugh. “No. She almost got me killed.” He opened his eyes. “And my sister.” He glanced at Vera apologetically. “And now almost my other sister, too.”
Baffled, Conner furrowed his brow. “Candace is dead. How could she possibly be behind the shootings today?”
Okay, so three questions.
But Henry slipped into unconsciousness, his mouth going slack, and didn’t answer.
“This wasn’t Henry’s fault, Conner,” Vera said. “He was trying to save Darla’s life.”
But she didn’t have a chance to explain further because just then Duncan and Natalie had gotten there and leaped from their vehicles, weapons drawn and shouting orders to their subordinates to fan out and start searching for the gunman Conner had alerted them to as soon as he’d heard the first shots fired.
“Conner! Are you okay?” His cousin Natalie came running up at full tilt, double-fisted grip on her service revolver, looking like a lean, mean cop on a mission.
Conner rose and swept one arm around her waist and gave her a big hug. “I’m good, Nat. Thanks for coming. I know it’s not Metro jurisdiction.”
She holstered her weapon and squeezed him back. “Are you kidding? Family’s family.”
It hadn’t always been that way. Natalie was Candace’s twin sister and had participated fully in the disparagement of young wrong-side-of-the-family Conner. However, Natalie had matured emotionally faster than her twin; she’d realized their taunting was wrong and hurtful and stopped her part of the torment around the time they graduated high school. Candace never had. But then, by that time, Conner had realized she was an equal-opportunity bitch. Family, foe, friend, stranger: she didn’t care who she ripped apart. Anyway, over the past ten years or so, he and Natalie had actually become good friends.
Which was probably why her brows hit her hairline when she noticed that his other arm was firmly around Vera and that Vera was clinging to him like a limpet to a ship’s hull.
Ah, hell.
He knew damned well that whatever Natalie knew, the whole damn Rothchild clan would soon know…which meant word would get back to his parents in about, oh, ten seconds flat.
He really wasn’t prepared for this now.
“Natalie, this is Vera Mancuso. Vera, my cousin Natalie,” he said to stave off any immediate pointed inquiries, and left it at that, despite Natalie’s crazy eye gyrations, and the fact that he refused to let go of Vera even if it meant he was so freaking busted.
“Nice to meet you, Vera,” Natalie said. “Wish these were more pleasant circumstances.”
“Thanks, me, too,” Vera murmured softly.
“Were you and Ms. St. Giles injured?” Natalie asked.
Vera swallowed and darted a glance at Darla, who was holding Henry’s hand as the EMTs loaded him onto a stretcher. “I wasn’t. Darla was beaten, but I don’t have it exactly straight who did it. Not Henry, though,”
she said and looked up to Conner for support.
“That’s what they both claim,” he affirmed. “I believe them on that point. But they’re obviously involved in some seriously bad stuff. And…” He dug in his pocket and wordlessly handed Natalie the newspaper clipping.
She froze, absorbed the implications in a nanosecond and motioned to Darla to hold out her wrists. “Sorry,” she said, bringing out her handcuffs. “I’ve gotta do this.”
“Whatever,” Darla said bleakly.
“Come on. You can say goodbye to your brother before he’s taken to the hospital.”
“Wait!” Vera said and stepped away from Conner to give her sister a mutually tearful hug.
“Thanks, sis,” Darla said, choking up. “He really was going to kill us. You saved our lives.”
“No,” she denied, wiping her tears. “It was Conner who saved the day. I just beeped the horn.”
Nevertheless, Darla said, “You’ve always been my biggest hero,” and kissed Vera’s cheek as Natalie, for some reason, smiled at him, then led Darla away.
“Beeped the horn, my patoot,” Conner said, turning back to Vera, who was suddenly preoccupied with wiping the dust off her ruined skirt. “You’re far too humble.” That’s when he noticed she was barefoot. “And what is it with you and shoes?” he asked with a tender smile, and swept her up in his arms just to be able to hold her tight. He was so damn proud of her. “I always seem to be carrying you around. Not that I’m complaining,” he added in a low murmur in her ear. “Gives me a chance to cop a feel.”
She gifted him with a sweet, watery smile. “You really don’t have to carry me. If it embarrasses you, I can—”
“Don’t be silly. Why would it embarrass me?” Where had that come from? He started walking toward the car, then paused. “Um, listen, I’d like a quick word with Duncan. You want to come with? Or…?”
“Would you mind if I just sat in your car and waited?” she asked, nibbling on her lip. “My knees are still shaking so hard I don’t know if they’ll hold me up. And to be honest…it makes me cry to see my sister in handcuffs.”
