by J. R. Ward
Had she been sick as a child? Bullied? When she had woken up in that huge white house during thunderstorms, had she imagined her father coming for her and saving her, like some white knight--
"Who is she dating?"
"I'm sorry?" Gin said.
"Who. Is. She. Dating." He punctuated that with a hard pull off the rim of his glass. "Does she have a boyfriend."
"No." Gin cleared her throat. "There was a guy she liked at the beginning of the year, but I guess it didn't work out. She told me while we were on the Pennsylvania Turnpike."
Okay, he was so relieved that some dumbass teenage boy with all those hormones and bright ideas wasn't hitting on his little--
"I want the test." He looked back over. "I want it so that I know I'm safe to feel for the kid. I don't trust you, and after this, I never will. I'll meet with her as soon as she gets back."
He thought about telling Gin it had to be without her presence, but that wasn't going to help the situation.
"Good." Gin lowered her voice. "That's good. Thank you--"
"I'm not doing this for you." He turned his back on her and headed for the door into his kitchen. "I'm not doing anything for you, ever again."
--
In spite of the fact that Merrimack had all but ordered Lane off the premises, he was not about to leave his family estate as the CSI vehicles showed up by the garages. Yet neither could he just hang out on the sidelines, a pedestrian bystander on his own damned property.
He ended up in the business center, in his father's office--from which, every half hour or so, he would head down to the other end of the facility so he could look out of the shallow window in the supply room at what they were doing to Miss Aurora's car.
Unfortunately, he couldn't see much. The CMPD had put up a bright blue awning so that the rain that had started to fall wouldn't disturb their investigation, and the thing had a side flap that the wind had to kick aside in order for him to get any visuals.
Merrimack was everywhere, though, going back and forth between the kitchen's screen door and the car and the trucks. He didn't seem to notice that there was a storm blowing things around, and in other circumstances, Lane would have respected the guy's tenacious focus on the job at hand.
But he kind of hated the man.
With a curse, Lane turned away and walked back through the dim corridor. The business center had been ostensibly designed and decorated as a testament to the power and prestige of the Bradford Bourbon Company--but in reality, it was more like William Baldwine's tribute to himself, the maroon and gold carpeting and the heavy velvet drapes and the company seals creating a cultivated environment of power.
Especially the reception area.
Behind the vacant desk, which had not been occupied since Lane and Jeff had thrown all of senior management out, there were flags of both the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the United States--as if you were entering the damn White House. And to that point, the space itself was even circular like the Oval Office, the carpet bearing the ornate Bradford family crest on it in the center.
The CEO's office had an anteroom where William's German shepherd of an executive assistant had enjoyed control over access to him. And beyond...was a space that Lane still had a hard time walking into.
For one, it continued to smell like his father's cigarettes and cigars, the lingering tobacco aroma making it seem like a humidor with a throne and a desk inside. Then there were the pictures in the shelves behind the command center. Whereas Miss Aurora's photographs were all of other people, William's were always of himself with prominent folks like presidents, movie stars, socialites, and politicians.
Staring at the images, Lane picked out his father in each one. The expression on that distinguished face was always the same, no matter the age or context, whether it was black tie or on a golf course, at the opera or the theater, in the White House or on one of Easterly's terraces: cold, narrowed eyes, and a smile that was, actually, not dissimilar to Merrimack's.
A professional's mask.
Then again, William had had to hide who he really was. He had come from a lesser Southern family and had set his sights on Lane's mother as the first of many conquests. As for why she had married him? There was supposition that Little V.E. had taken a shine to him because he was so handsome, but clearly she had soon learned to regret her romantic notions.
Lane did look a little like the man.
Actually...quite a bit.
Refocusing on the desk, he went back around to the piles of folders he had taken out of the file cabinets in the business center's back storage room. He'd reviewed most of the deals struck by the BBC under William's reign, and found nothing out of the ordinary for a bourbon company.
Nothing owned by WWB Holdings, either.
And none of the businesses John Lenghe had detailed from memory.
Lane sat down in his father's leather chair and swiveled things around. Underneath the shelves, which ran only halfway up the wall, there were a series of locked cabinets, and it didn't take a genius to surmise that a man who was operating outside the scope of the law and who was not computer savvy would probably keep details of his deals right behind where he sat every day...in an office that, when he was away for so much as a trip to the loo, was guarded by that executive assistant of his...in a facility that, when he left for the night, was not just locked, but secured by an alarm system to rival the Smithsonian's.
Lane had already tried the brass knobs before and found the handmade doors locked.
He was done with that.
Reaching across the desk, he picked up an ashtray that was as big as a dinner plate and as heavy as a nautical anchor.
This was going to feel great.
He stood up, pushed the chair out of the way, and hefted the weight up over his shoulder. Then he swung the thing like it was a baseball bat, crashing it into one of the double-door'd lower compartments.
It was an inconvenient testament to the makers that he had to strike a number of times before the heavy-duty mahogany splintered and cracked. Phase two was all about the bare hands, his fingers clawing into the panels and snapping them off their hinges.
When he was done with the first of four sets, there was wood everywhere and he was panting, but, God, it was satisfying.
And hey, what do you know.
Files.
His knees popped as he got down on his haunches and transferred bundles of papers up onto the wide lowest shelf. There were so many that, to accommodate the load, he shoved pictures of his father out of the way--and yup, that also felt good.
And then, in a moment of hey-wait-let's-not-confuse-things, he had the forethought to take all the documents he'd gotten out of the "official" records storage and move them off the desk to the conference table across the room. That way, he would know what had come out of where.
Before he sat down and started to work his way through the new batch of files, he ran back to check on Merrimack again. He had told the detective he was leaving, but then had disappeared into the house--only to enter the business center through one of its French doors on the garden side.
He didn't want Merrimack to come looking for him in here and find all of this.
For godsakes, Jeff was already worried the Feds weren't going to buy the diversification story that had been "leaked" to the press. And with Lane's luck, that homicide detective had a lucrative side job handling embezzlement charges for the U.S. Government.
Hey, stranger things had happened.
Like every fucking day since he had come back to Charlemont.
Staring out of the tinted window at the CSI guys, he saw a whole lot of nothing-much, just people in uniforms and latex gloves walking around in the rain, coming and going out--
Oh, check it. They were removing things from the house in plastic bags with seals on them.
He thought of that knife.
Shit. If Miss Aurora had sacrificed one of her beloved knives, it would only have been for a very specific reason. Those blade
s were her pride and joy, the tools of her trade, the kind of thing that no one ever used but her.
A chef's knives were private. Hell, even the sous chefs who came in for events brought their own rolls of blades.
No, she had used that Wusthof for something important.
She had kept it for a good cause.
And she had placed it behind his picture to send a message.
He would never have thought her capable of something so violent. But one thing had always been true about her.
She loved him more than anyone else. Theirs had been a special connection.
And he feared that a mother's love could turn murderous, under certain circumstances.
"Miss Aurora," he whispered, "what did you do?"
When Gin returned to Easterly, she was so sleep deprived and emotionally wasted that she missed the staff road because of her daze--and then lacked the energy to turn the Mercedes around and head back. At the estate's main entrance, flashbulbs went off as she had to pause for the wrought-iron gates to open, but at least the storms had caused a good half of the news trucks to leave.
As she went up the hill, the mansion's imposing facade was spotlit by a lick of lightning, the brilliant, jagged flashing making her think of the start of a horror movie.
She parked the sedan right in front and left the keys in it.
Then she waited.
For the butler to come out and retrieve her with an umbrella and a free hand to take her things in.
It was quite some time before she remembered there was no more staff. No one poised for her to give a command to draw a hot bath. Nobody to unpack for her and summon her a light salad and a bottle of Chardonnay.
Getting out, she gathered her Louis Vuitton duffel and her quilted Chanel bag and lugged them up the steps through the rain--and then realized there was no one to take the car around to the garages. No man in a chauffeur's uniform to wash and detail it after its long trip, or check its tire pressures and refill its tank.
Whatever, she thought as she muscled the mansion's heavy front door open. The thing had been rained on before. It would survive.
As she stepped in out of the storm, the air in the house was cool and still, and all was quiet. Which was eerie. Easterly had never been a silent house, what with the crowd of people who had lived and worked under its roof--
"You're back."
She slowly turned her head. Richard Pford was sitting on the silk sofa in the receiving parlor on the left, his legs crossed at the knees, his fingers bridged up, his elbows tucked into his sides.
"Not now, Richard." She dropped her duffel and couldn't believe she had to close the door behind herself. "I'm tired."
"Isn't it more, I've got a headache?"
"As if that matters with you."
Another flicker of lightning permeated the windows, turning Richard's face into something sinister.
"Where were you."
"Taking Amelia back to school."
"I thought she usually flies."
"Not this time."
"No?" He sat forward. "Too expensive? So you decided you would drive her. What a good mother you are."
Gin moved her eyes toward the stairs without shifting her face away from him. Was there anyone else in the house? Where were Lane and Lizzie?
"You haven't been answering my calls, Virginia."
"I was driving."
"All the way through the night? You didn't rest even once?"
"No, I wanted to get home."
"Back to me, of course." He put his thin hand over his heart. "I'm touched."
Richard surged to his feet and picked up something from the low table in front of him. An envelope. A large manila envelope, the kind you'd put through the mail.
Gin took a step back. "I'm going to go up and have a shower."
"Oh, I can imagine you're ready for one." He smiled as he came closer. "I want you to do me a favor first, though."
She glanced down the hall, hoping to see someone coming out of the door into the staff part of the house.
If she screamed, would her mother's nurse hear it? Maybe.
But probably not, she decided as thunder answered the lightning's call.
Richard didn't stop until he was a foot away from her, and he made a show of opening the flap on the envelope. "I really need you to see these. Tell me, did your brother Lane mention that I've moved out?"
Gin narrowed her eyes. "No. Have you?"
"Yes, I don't think this marriage is working out for me. I left last night and came back today after work to gather my belongings."
"Where is your car, then?"
"Just under the magnolia tree. I was going to bring my things down, but then I decided to wait for you."
With a steady pull, he took out some floppy eight-by-ten sheets of--photographs; they were glossy photographs.
Of her and Samuel T. in the Jag at the cemetery: He was holding her hand and they were staring into each other's eyes--just before he had turned things around to show her her own engagement ring. And then they were driving off. There were others, too, from when they had come out of his penthouse's building after they had made love.
But the most frame-able, of course, was the one from when Samuel T. had helped her back into the Jag. She had gripped the man's black tie and pulled him down to her mouth.
"Do you know what else these came with?" Richard said with a voice that vibrated with growing menace. "An invitation by a reporter to comment on them. They're being printed in tomorrow's Charlemont Courier Journal--what kind of fool are you trying to make of me!"
She ducked just before he hit her, and then she spun around and lunged for the front door. As thunder roared across the sky, she tried to yank the vast weight open, but Richard caught her by the hair and pulled her back.
"You whore! You fucked him, didn't you! And then you ran away with him! You didn't take your goddamn daughter to school--you went--"
Gin pivoted around, her hair long enough to let her turn. Richard's face was twisted in rage, and she had some thought that this was it. He was going to kill her right here, her blood spilling over the black and white marble floor, her brother or maybe Lane's fiancee the one to find her body.
Thank God she had hocked the diamond out of that engagement ring and put those gold bars in a safety-deposit box for Amelia.
And thank God she had told the jeweler and the bank manager that if she died, it was Richard's fault.
And lastly, thank God she had come clean with Samuel T. At least Amelia would still have one parent.
Oh, and while she was making her final list? Fuck you, Richard.
Without being conscious of moving, she grabbed on to his forearms...and drove her knee up right between Pford's legs, nailing him so hard, she felt the impact all the way through her own pelvis.
As he jacked in half and released her in favor of his manhood, she kicked off her heels so she could run properly and bolted for the door again. This time, as she cranked on the handle, a gust from the storm hit the front of the house and blew things wide open.
With rain and wind in her face, she raced for the Mercedes, skidding around its trunk, her bare feet getting torn up by the loose stones of the drive. And then she was in behind the wheel, slamming the driver's door shut, locking everything. Her hands skipped and fluttered around the ignition button--
Boom, boom, boom!
Richard was pounding on the driver's-side window, beating the glass with his fist--
"Leave me alone!" she screamed.
The Mercedes came alive with a subtle shiver and she threw it into reverse and punched the accelerator, the weight of the car lurching in Richard's direction, knocking him down. She didn't even look to see if she was going to hit him: As soon as the drive down the mountain was in front of her, she jerked the gearshift down and floored the gas.
In the rearview, she had a brief impression of him jumping to his feet, his arms banging on the trunk before he was again thrown off to the side.
&n
bsp; Gin kept the car on the lane, even as gravity increased her speed and buckets of water lashed the windshield. Holding on with both hands, she didn't dare turn on the wipers because she was afraid to loosen either grip for even a second.
At the base of the hill, she hit the brakes, the car skidding on the slick pavement as she came up to the gates. She was of half a mind just to ram them open, but she was worried the Mercedes wouldn't drive afterward--
With a glance in the rearview, she prayed she wasn't going to see any headlights.
Yet she feared Richard was going to--
Just as the gates were almost open enough, a twin set of beams made the turn at the top and started down for her at a dead run.
--
Samuel T.'s farmhouse had a kitchen that overlooked the same meadow that the back porch did, and he watched the storm come in through the picture window over the sink. Or, rather, he and his bottle of Family Reserve did. And as the ice cubes melted from his glass, he didn't bother replacing them; he just continued on with the warm heat of the bourbon, neat.
As he stood there, his eyes tracking the rolling clouds and patterns of downfalls, his mind was a superhighway of random thoughts, fears, and regrets. He didn't let any hope in. Too dangerous--
When his cell phone rang in the pocket of his discarded jacket, he didn't answer it. He did not want to talk to anyone about anything.
God, the lightning was so beautiful, forking through the angry, aubergine sky, the sheets of rain falling as curtains from cloud to land, the thunder stomping through the air, an invisible giant.
Racking his brain, he tried to remember any time that he had ever seen Amelia: He had one vague memory from right after she was born. He'd come home to Charlemont and there had been an event at the Bradfords'--something that he had only attended because he'd wanted to eyeball the Scandal of Easterly.
Gin Baldwine, home from school, with her professor's baby.
He'd had to engineer an excuse to go up to Lane's room and then had "gotten lost."
Gin hadn't been home. The baby nurse had been uniformed, pleasant, and very protective.
Amelia had looked...like a baby. She had been swaddled in a pink blanket and there had been a mobile of plush toys over her head. Yes, he thought...a mobile with a white moon, three yellow stars, and a sky-blue cow with a milkmaid's pink and lace dress on.
