Carey shook his head, his mouth set in a stubborn line. “We can’t prove that.”
“I can feel it,” Wes responded, confident in his intuition. “You said it yourself, Mack was number two. Maybe he wanted number one badly enough to kill to get it. Who else was closer to Rob? And Mack would have known Sam had no interest in running the company, even if she wasn’t already heading into her first tour of duty.”
“No,” Carey insisted, vehement. “I grew up with Mack. I know him. There’s no way in hell he’d ever do that. He and Uncle Rob were thick as fleas on a farm dog, I’m telling you.”
Wes recognized a wall when he saw one. And he needed Carey’s help besides. His insight into Rob’s inner circle had pushed his investigation forward by weeks. So he’d just have to step back from this battle and look into Mack McDevitt on his own.
“Okay, then let’s go back to focusing on Travis Brandt then,” Wes offered, sidestepping the issue of Mack. “When I knew him, he was an up-and-comer working for Rob. Travis was being groomed for something big. Then he ups and leaves after Rob dies, to start his own company. Why?”
Carey rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly, I don’t know. That was all before my time. I don’t even know Brandt that well. It’s just a loose family connection at best.”
“Do you know if his company is solvent?”
Carey shrugged. “Honestly, no. He’s not on my radar.”
“Then he’s the guy we look into next,” Wes said with a nod before picking up the photograph of an older Japanese man with a head of thick, white hair, a pristine mustache, and the regal demeanor of a man accustomed to being in charge. “That leaves Toma Sakurai.”
Carey eyed the picture. “He’s Sam’s uncle. The estranged brother of her mother.”
Wes frowned. Sam had rarely ever spoken of her mother, much less her family—nothing other than to say that they hadn’t supported her mother’s marriage to an American Navy officer.
“I thought the Sakurai’s disowned her mother?”
Carey rubbed his mouth, thinking. “I know there was a rift. To what extent I’d have to ask my dad about. He was enlisted at the time—stationed in Okinawa. That’s how he and Uncle Rob became close. They served together on the same naval base there. Dad was best man at their wedding. He used to tell Ry that his mother was descended from samurai and that the Sakurai’s were a big deal in feudal Japan. I don’t know if those were just bedtime stories though.”
“Have you ever met Toma Sakurai?”
“Once,” Carey nodded curtly, his mouth compressing into a flat line. “At the funeral. The only reason I remember is because Dad was shocked he came. No one knew who he was. He was there and then he was gone. I don’t think he even spoke to Sam.”
Wes reached for a sheaf of papers. “According to the will, Toma Sakurai inherited his sister’s shares of Wyatt Petroleum when she died. He owns seven percent of the company.”
“Why would he want to kill Rob and Ry?” Carey questioned. “His sister died giving birth to Ry. That was years ago.”
“Revenge?” Wes shrugged. “I think it’s part of the Bushido warrior code if the samurai stuff is true.”
“How on earth do you know about that shit?” Carey marveled.
“I did an article about the last generations of practicing samurai a few years ago,” Wes explained. “There are many who believe that if revenge isn’t carried out, no matter how long it takes, they would lose their honor. Maybe the Sakurai family blamed Rob for their daughter’s death. Maybe they never let it go.”
“I’d have to ask my dad,” Carey admitted. “To my knowledge, Sakurai isn’t involved in Wyatt Petroleum’s meetings. He doesn’t sit on the board, and Sam’s never mentioned him to me.”
Carey’s mobile phone rang and he glanced at the screen. “It’s Sam. De Soto’s probably driving her nuts.”
Wes didn’t doubt it. Those two had always fought like cats and dogs. When they weren’t outright fighting, they were bickering like those two old grouches on The Muppet Show.
Carey stood and answered the call. “No, you can’t kill de Soto, so quit asking,” he teased before crossing into Wes’s bedroom and shutting the door.
In the week they’d been working together, Wes had to hand it to him: Carey’d been serious about separation of church and state. He kept news and updates about Sam to a minimum, and their interactions, while fairly frequent, were pretty strictly related to their investigation. But that didn’t mean Wes wasn’t above leveraging his alliance with Carey, however brief. He picked up his phone, turning on one of the nanny cams he’d hidden in his suite so he could listen in.
“You’re sure the intel is good?” Carey was saying, a serious expression of his face as he paced the room.
Wes’s ears pricked up.
“I should go with them,” Carey muttered. “I should be there.”
Go with who? Where? Wes turned up the sound, wishing he could hear both sides of the conversation.
“Yeah, I can come back to the ranch tonight,” Carey continued, glancing at his watch. “I don’t think I can get my parents to leave, but it’s worth a try. Either way, we need to tell them what’s going on. It’ll come back to bite us in the ass if we don’t.”
If Sam wanted Carey back at the ranch and she wanted Grant and Hannah off the ranch, something major was fixing to go down. Wes wondered briefly if Lightner was in Texas. Was that the intel Carey was referring to?
“It doesn’t make sense for anyone to be at the ranch right now. Not until we kill that bastard once and for all.”
Shit. Wes’s hands tightened around his phone. If he knew her, she’d stay right the hell put out of stubbornness alone. Sam wasn’t one-hundred-percent better, but she was well enough to travel. Wes could hide her until Lightner was either shot or captured. He’d survived in some of the most dangerous places in the world covering stories. He knew how to stay off radar when he needed to. But if Carey and de Soto couldn’t get her to leave her home, could he?
“De Soto, I need a word in private with Sammy if you don’t mind. Can you take me off speakerphone?” Carey said after a moment before continuing, “Sam, I know you don’t want to leave the ranch, but de Soto has a point. It’s better if you go underground—just for a little bit.”
Wes immediately started thinking of all the places they could go; all the places they’d be invisible.
“You’re letting Jack stay?” Carey blurted suddenly, incredulous.
What the fuck? Wes did a double-take. Jack was at the ranch?
“How do you know he can get his father to help?” Carey continued, cautiously.
A light dawned. So that was Jack’s play. Smart. Dangle Sandro Roman’s connection to the CIA to buy some time. Who knew if anything would come from it? It was a big ask—maybe a fifty-fifty chance of yielding something of value. In the meantime, Jack would get face time with her and make his move. Shit. Wes wanted to chuck his phone across the room, but then he would have missed the rest of the conversation.
“Yeah, I’m just at the office,” Carey said, glancing at the bedroom door with a brief look of guilt. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
Carey hung up and dialed another number, giving instructions to have the helicopter meet him at the top of Wyatt Towers within twenty minutes.
Wes shut off his phone’s screen just as Carey stepped out of the bedroom.
“Hey, sorry about this—but I’ve got to cut this short,” he told Wes, chagrined. “Something’s come up.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Wes replied casually, standing. “I’ll keep looking into Brandt.”
Carey nodded distractedly as he slipped his suit jacket back on.
“Can you ask your dad about Sakurai next time you talk to him?” Wes asked.
“Yeah.”
As soon as Carey left, Wes was on the phone to his assistant, getting her to set up an interview with Travis Brandt under the guise of a ‘Most Powerful Men Under Forty’ article for Texas Monthly. A prou
d blue blood like Brandt would eat that right up. Wes told her to use Chris’s name to get his foot in the door. Nobody said no to being interviewed by a former Dallas Cowboy either. That just wasn’t done.
Wes stared unseeingly at the Picasso when he was done. Sam wouldn’t leave the ranch or see him again unless she had good reason to, so all he had to do was give her good reason. Which meant Wes had to ID her father’s killer first—before Jack Roman beat him to it.
*
April—Evening
Wyatt Ranch, Texas
J A C K
After a little cajoling and a sworn promise to share his family’s Saltimbocca alla Romana recipe, Jack unseated Alejandro as Hannah’s sous chef for the evening, as she prepared roasted peppers stuffed with goat cheese, braised pork belly vin cotto with pickled vegetables and cornmeal fried okra. It was just as well; Alejandro had been sequestered in the library with Samantha for hours, and Jack welcomed the distraction of getting to know Hannah while helping her prepare sautéed king salmon atop a bed of nettles, morel mushrooms, shallots, and garlic.
“World-class chefs could do with a few lessons from you, Hannah,” Jack told her earnestly as he prepped a spinach salad straight out of her garden with sliced granny smith apples, toasted pistachios, and a chili and garlic olive oil dressing he hoped she’d approve of.
“I cook for cowboys who’d be happy eating burgers and meatloaf every day,” she said with a smile. “I learned a long time ago if I wanted to stay sane on this farm, I’d have to expand their palettes and challenge my imagination.”
“What was Samantha’s favorite food growing up?” he asked, grating the aged Parmesan over the salad.
Hannah laughed. “Lord, that girl wasn’t any better than any of the guys. She’d have been happy eating beef jerky and Hostess cupcakes if I’d let her get away with it.” Her smile was warm. “I remember the first time she tried caviar at one of her father’s fancy cocktail parties, she was horrified he had the caterers serving what she thought was ‘fish bait.’”
“No kidding?”
“I think those years of eating MREs in the military did her in, though,” Hannah confided. “She came willing to eat anything as long as it wasn’t served in a waterproof pouch.”
“Can’t blame her there. Eight years of military food—” Jack shuddered at the thought. “I’m a self-admitted food snob. Learning to cook like a real Italian was a requisite thing in my family. If we didn’t help cook, we didn’t eat. Both my parents worked full-time jobs, but dinnertime was sacred. My mother always had a saying: ‘Mangiare per vivere e non vivere per mangiare.’”
Her eyes sparked with interest. “What does it mean?”
“‘Eat to live and don’t live to eat,’” Jack translated, tossing the pistachios onto the salad.
“That’s lovely.”
Jack grinned. “It is, isn’t it?”
Hannah took a slow sip of her iced tea, considering him with a thoughtful expression. “You’re probably good for Sammy, Jack. She was raised in tall cotton, but she’s only just learning to enjoy the finer things in life—the kind of things money just can’t buy.”
And that succinct observation made him think as they finished preparing dinner, the kitchen rich with the scent of cooked food and spices. Being at the ranch for even a modicum of hours, Jack could see more where Samantha got her salt-of-the-earth style. Her family lived off the land, woke up at the crack of dawn to tend to the hard work of raising cattle, and for all their outrageous wealth, they conducted their lives rather modestly. The house she was raised in was lovely, but far from ostentatious. Jack had watched her talking to the ranch hands like old friends, and Grant and Hannah were certainly as regular as folks could get, despite running one of the biggest ranches in the state of Texas.
For the first time, Jack understood how outlandish the purchase of the penthouse in Chicago had been for Samantha. He recalled eating stew with her in her sparsely furnished place, her thanking him for selling it to her. He got now why she’d waited so long to purchase her first home away from Texas.
Jack’s musings were interrupted by the sound of a chopper approaching. He frowned, wiping his hands on a dish towel as he stepped toward the window.
“Must be Carey coming to dinner,” Hannah remarked, not bothering to turn from the stove. “Can you help me set the table? Guess it’ll be six tonight.”
As Jack set the large wooden table in the kitchen, he watched out the window while ranch hands lit up a space in the darkening field near the house with powerful spotlights. A Sikorsky helicopter emblazoned with the Wyatt corporate logo spun and hovered over the glowing circle, landing nimbly in the rippling grass. Carey bounded out of the chopper as the rotors slowed, waving to the hands before loping toward the house. He burst through the kitchen door within seconds, bristling with energy as he headed straight for his mother, smacking a loud kiss on her cheek before he even noticed Jack.
“Whoa—hey there, Jack. It’s good to see you,” Carey said with a grin. “Mom already putting you to work?”
“I volunteered gladly,” Jack replied, shaking his hand. “I’m hoping she’ll put in a good word for me with Samantha in exchange for my indentured servitude.”
Carey chuckled. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
“Oh, stop,” Hannah smacked his shoulder lightly. “Sam and Alejo are in the library, and your dad’s washing up. Can you go let them know dinner’s ready?”
“Sure thing, Mama,” he said agreeably before heading down the hall shouting in a booming voice, “Chow’s on! Come and get it!”
Hannah sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes. “Might as well give that boy a cowbell,” she said under her breath, making Jack smile.
Dinner was a remarkably casual and lighthearted affair, with Hannah and Grant at either end of the kitchen table while Jack and Alejandro sat across from Samantha and Carey. Carey entertained them with stories about his day at Wyatt Petroleum, and Grant talked about the two new calves the hands had helped birth. Jack watched Samantha surreptitiously as she pushed the food around her plate, eating just enough to not draw attention to herself. She smiled at the right points and interjected here and there, but it was obvious she was distracted.
Alejandro remained largely silent beside him, preoccupied as well, only speaking when spoken to. He was polite, but distant, and knew with certainty whatever was going on with Samantha, Alejandro knew about it, like they were tethered together by the same wire.
“Alright, you two look like you’ve got your ox stuck in a ditch, and Carey’s going on and on like he’s fixin’ to talk the legs off a chair covering for you two,” Grant said after a moment, his gaze swinging from Samantha to Alejandro then Carey in a sharp triangle. “Better come out with it. What’s going on?”
Everyone looked to Samantha. She fiddled briefly with her fork before putting it down.
“We think we’ve got a lead that could yield Lightner,” she told him calmly.
A frisson of excited relief went down Jack’s spine. He unconsciously sat forward. “Where?”
Her eyes flicked to him, but her lips compressed.
“Then why do you look like we just buried the dog?” Grant pressed.
“I’d like you and Aunt Hannah to leave the ranch. Just for a little bit,” she told them.
“Just until we get this guy, Dad,” Carey clarified quickly.
“Oh hell, is that all?” Grant replied after a moment, digging back into his food like nothing had happened. “Thought you were going to tell me something really worrying, like Jerry Jones had kicked the bucket or something.”
Jack blinked, unclear on what was happening. You could cut the tension in the kitchen with a knife, but Grant looked like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Samantha leaned her arms on the table, sitting forward. “It’s not safe, Uncle Grant. I can’t keep you safe if you stay at the ranch.”
Grant leaned back, chewing slowly as he considered her. “You got it ass backwards,
Sammy girl. We’re protecting you.”
“Dad—” Carey started.
Grant held up a hand the size of a bear paw. “Son, I get why you’d show up to back Sammy’s play, but there isn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell your mama and I are leaving you to deal with whatever storm’s coming.”
Hannah reached for Samantha’s hand, clasping it tightly. “He’s right, honey. Whatever’s happening is gonna come, either way. We’re not running from anything. That’s not how we live.”
“Let me help you, tesoro,” Jack offered, leaning in. “What do you need?”
“I need you to leave,” Samantha responded flatly. “All of you.”
“Are you leaving?” His gaze met Alejandro’s. The tension emanating from him was palpable.
“No, I’m not leaving,” Samantha said finally, her voice like granite. Alejandro and Carey didn’t say anything, though a muscle ticked in Alejandro’s jaw. They were both soldiers to the end—but they were Samantha’s soldiers. What she said went. Even if they didn’t agree with it.
“Why not?” Jack questioned tightly. “If you suspect for one moment that he’s coming after you here, why the hell would you stay?”
“Because I’m too big a target,” Samantha answered calmly. “And thanks to your hotheaded heroics, so are you, Jack. You stole Lightner’s company from him even though I deliberately told you not to get involved. Now as long as he walks this earth, you and I will forever be targets. And that includes everyone we love—everything we care about—they’re all at risk.” She met her aunt’s eyes. “That’s why I’m asking you—no,” she took a breath. “Aunt Hannah and Uncle Grant, I’m begging you—please go.”
“No.” Grant answered just as calmly. “Pass the okra.”
“Dad, we’re just trying to look after you—” Carey started.
Grant stopped him before he could say anything else. “Son, that’s my line, and that’s my job. Been that way since before you were born. We’re armed to the teeth here, and if I know you and Sammy, you have a plan in place to head this sonofabitch off at the pass.”
“We do, but—”
“Alejandro, you want to weigh in here?” Grant asked casually, like they were discussing the cost of steer.
Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three Page 26
