“I’ll give him somethin’ to be afraid of,” her husband said. He rose up on one elbow, groaned and fell back against the pillows. “In the mornin’. I’m too wore out now. Man works all day, comes home for a little peace and quiet and does he get it?”
“Maaamaaa…”
“Go shut the kid up, you hear me, Dawn? You keep him quiet, or else.”
Dawn sprang from the bed. She tugged what remained of her nightgown together and ran into the next room. Tommy was standing up in his crib. He was too big for it, really, and suddenly she knew why she hadn’t suggested it was time to put him into a bed, because she’d been afraid of this all along, afraid of Harman taking a good look at their child and realizing he wasn’t a baby any longer.
“Mama?”
Tommy sobbed her name, lifted his arms to her and she scooped him up, held him close, soothed him with whispers and kisses.
“Hush, sweetheart,” she said softly. “Mama’s here. She won’t let anybody hurt you.”
Except, it was a lie. Harman would hurt him and she’d be powerless to stop it from happening. Hot tears burned her eyes. Why had she denied the truth for so long? Her husband was a monster. He took pleasure from inflicting pain on those too weak to fight back. Tommy’s life would be even worse than hers. He was a child, and helpless. Harman would brutalize him…and when he grew up, what kind of man would he be? One who’d learned to beat others into submission with his fists?
No. God, no. She couldn’t let that happen. She was the one who had brought her baby into this and she was the only one who could save him. Dawn knew it as surely as she knew that the silk moth outside would be dead by morning.
Sounds came through the thin wall. Harman was asleep and snoring. He’d snore straight through to morning and wake up mean-tempered and even more dangerous than he was now.
Quietly she stole from the baby’s room to the kitchen where the day’s laundry lay neatly folded in a wicker basket, awaiting the touch of the iron. She always ironed on Saturdays. Harman preferred it like that. He liked to sit by the stone hearth and watch her iron. She’d told herself it was a charming, homey thing to do. Now, for the first time, she saw it for what it was, a fabrication that made them seem like a real family when they were actually something out of a nightmare.
Tommy had fallen asleep. Holding him carefully in one arm, Dawn dug into the basket for a change of clothes for her son and a cotton dress and underwear for herself. Gently she laid him in the basket while she stripped off her torn nightgown and put on the fresh clothes. She knew she looked a mess, not just because her dress was unironed but because her face had to be bruised. Almost as an afterthought, she looked down at her feet. No shoes. Well, that was all right. Shoes were easy enough to come by.
Life wasn’t.
Dawn settled the baby in the crook of one arm as she took the flour canister from the cupboard and dug down inside it for the few dollars she’d managed to squirrel away from what she earned selling her blackberry preserves each season. She’d never let herself think about why she’d saved the money and hidden it; it had been a terrible risk that would surely have brought her a beating. Now, she knew she’d put the money aside in anticipation of this moment.
Harman’s keys lay on the floor, glittering in the light cast by the lamp. She picked them up, opened the door and stepped onto the porch where the thwarted silk moth still beat against the window screen. Dawn hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she went back into the house and reached for the lamp.
The light blinked out. The awful sound of the moth’s wings thudding fruitlessly against the screen stopped in almost the same instant. Carefully Dawn eased the door open and stepped outside. In the faint wash of the moon, she could see the creature hovering in confusion at the window.
As she had done so many years before, she scooped up the silk moth with her hand.
“Fly away,” she whispered. “Fly away, and don’t ever come back.”
The moth’s great wings beat. It lifted into the air, hung suspended before her for an instant, then flew into the night. Dawn climbed into her husband’s truck, strapped her baby into the seat beside her. She took a deep breath, stuck the key into the ignition, turned it and stepped down, hard, on the gas.
In her heart, she’d always known it would come to this, that she would have to take her child and run for his life and for hers.
She was leaving the monster she’d married and she was never, ever coming back.
CHAPTER ONE
Four years later:
GRAHAM BARON stepped out of the terminal at the Austin airport and wondered how he’d ever survived spending the first seventeen years of his life in Texas. He was thirty-three and lived in New York now but whenever he came back here, the fact that he’d been born in this place always surprised him. It all seemed alien. The people. Their lazy drawls. The vastness of land and sky. The weather.
Oh, yeah, he thought, the weather, as the heat washed over him like an open furnace. And it wasn’t really summer. Of course, there were those who said this wasn’t really Texas, either. The guidebooks called the area hill country. So did people back East.
“Are you really from Texas?” somebody would say, if the subject of his birthplace came up.
“Yup,” he’d reply, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops and putting on a John Wayne drawl, “ah surely am.”
It always got a laugh, considering that he had no accent, didn’t wear cowboy boots and had washed away the stink of oil, cattle and horses sixteen long years ago.
“Where in Texas?” they’d ask. And when Gray said he’d been born in Austin, someone would nod wisely and say, Austin, huh? Wasn’t that, like, different? Weren’t there green trees and rolling hills in Austin? It wasn’t really the same as the rest of the state, right?
Like hell it wasn’t, Gray thought as he put down his briefcase, peeled off his suit jacket, loosened his tie and rolled back his shirtsleeves. A man accustomed to a soaring Manhattan skyline had little use for the puny imitation of this one, and the hills of Central Park rolled as much as the land around here.
Dammit, he was in a rotten mood. For what had to be the hundredth time since he’d boarded the plane at La Guardia this morning, he wished he hadn’t let himself get talked into making this trip…but he had. What was that old saying? Curiosity killed the cat. In his case, it had put him on a 6:00 a.m. flight to Texas.
A horn beeped at the curb. Gray looked over, saw a dark green Jeep with the Espada longhorns painted on the door. Abel Jones waved a hand. Gray waved back and trotted over.
“Nice of you to pick me up,” he said as he got into the seat beside Abel and dumped his briefcase in the back.
Abel gave him a long look, then spat out the window and pulled into traffic. “Jes’ part of the job,” he said laconically.
So much for conversation. Not that Gray was surprised. Jonas Baron’s foreman was a lot like the old man himself. Tall, spare, seemingly ageless, and not given to small talk. Well, that was fine. Gray wasn’t much interested in conversation. He sat back, let the coolness of the air-conditioning wash over him as they made their way out of the airport and onto the highway that led from the city to the town of Brazos Springs, and tried to figure out what his uncle could possibly want.
Jonas had phoned late last night. The call had drawn Gray from the kind of deep sleep that came of having a woman lying warm and sated in his arms. The woman, someone he’d been seeing for several weeks, murmured a soft complaint as he rolled away from her and reached for the telephone, an automatic reaction that came of eight years of practicing criminal law.
You got a lot of middle of the night calls, when your clients weren’t exactly the salt of the earth.
“Gray Baron,” he said hoarsely.
The voice that responded was one he hadn’t heard in a long time, an easy Texas drawl laid over a whip-sharp tone of command.
“Graham?”
“Jonas?” Gray peered at the lighted dial on his alarm clock
, then sat up against the pillows. “What’s happened?”
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with your old man, if that’s what you mean. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with nobody you care about, so you can relax.”
“Gray?” the woman beside him murmured. “What’s the matter?”
That was what he was trying to figure out. He reached back, smoothed his hand over her warm skin. Telephone at his ear, he got to his feet and walked, naked, from the bedroom.
“What’s that supposed to mean? That there’s nothing wrong with anybody I care about?”
“It’s jes’ a statement, boy. No need to try and parse it.” There was a brief pause. “I guess you’re wonderin’ why I’m callin’ so late.”
“You guessed right,” Gray said dryly.
“What time is it there, anyways? Midnight?”
“It’s almost two. What’s up, Jonas?”
There was another silence. “I just, uh, I just thought…I thought that we ain’t seen you in these parts for a while.”
Jesus, Gray thought, his uncle had finally gone senile. “No,” he said carefully, “you haven’t.”
“Not since Samantha married that Dee-mee-tree-ose guy,” Jonas said, turning the Greek name of his stepdaughter’s husband into pure Texas.
Forget senile. The old man still had a mind like a steel trap. “So?”
“So…” More silence, then the sound of Jonas clearing his throat. “So, I wondered if you might be in the mood to pop down for a visit.”
“Let me get this straight,” Gray said carefully. “You phoned in the middle of the night to invite me to Espada?”
The old man chuckled. “You don’t buy that, huh?”
“No.” Gray walked through his dark apartment to the kitchen, tucked the phone against his shoulder and opened the refrigerator. He took out a bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the top and lifted it to his lips. “Hell, no,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Did you really think I would?”
“That’s what I like about you, boy. You ain’t like some people. You don’t believe in treatin’ me like I was God.”
Gray laughed. What his uncle meant was that he didn’t like the old man and he’d never pretended otherwise. He’d never toadied up to the Baron money the way his father did. Jonas whistled; Leighton came running. It had always been like that, all the years Gray was growing up. Sometimes he’d been hard-pressed to know which of the men he despised more, his father for sucking up or Jonas for wallowing in the pleasure of it. After a while, he hadn’t bothered giving it much thought. All that mattered was that he hadn’t done the same thing. He’d thumbed his nose at both of them and at a system that should have died out in the middle ages, and made his own way in the world.
“No,” he said bluntly, “I don’t.” He put the bottle on the counter and made his way back toward the bedroom. “Look, Jonas, let’s cut the crap, okay? It’s the middle of the night. This is the first time you’ve ever phoned me. Come to think of it, this might just be the first time you’ve said more than three words in a row to me.”
“Or you to me, boy.”
“Absolutely. So, why would you expect me to buy into the idea that you called to invite me down for the weekend? Get to the bottom line. What’s the deal?”
Another of those pauses hummed over the phone. Gray could hear the rasp of the old man’s breath.
“You’re some kinda hotshot lawyer up there in New York, ain’t you?”
Was he? He was a partner in a prestigious firm, but did hotshot lawyers spend their days putting the scum of the earth back on the streets?
“I’m a lawyer, licensed to practice in the state of New York,” Gray said brusquely.
“Well, I got a legal matter needs tendin’.”
“A legal matter?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why come to me? For starters, I’m not licensed to practice in Texas.”
“Don’t need you to practice. Maybe I should have said what I need is legal advice.”
“You have people to give it to you. Your son, for one.”
“Travis is a lawyer, all right. But he lives in California.”
“Yeah, and as we both just agreed, I live in New York.”
“I don’t want to involve Travis in this.”
Did the old man know the effect that remark would have? Gray squelched the sudden rush of curiosity that shot through him.
“Well,” he said, “you’ve probably got a powerhouse law firm on retainer in Austin.”
“Damned right.” A touch of pride crept into his uncle’s voice. “The best.”
“Exactly. Whatever legal advice you need, you’d be better off turning to them than to—”
“This here’s a private matter. I want you to handle it, not my son or a passel of lawyers who got no more interest in the Baron name than when they see it on checks.”
Another little flare of curiosity went through his blood but Gray ignored it. “That’s very flattering,” he said politely, “but—”
“Bull patties,” Jonas said curtly. “I ain’t tryin’ to flatter you, an’ you wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn if I was.”
Gray sat down on the edge of the bed. The old man was good at this. He played people like a virtuoso played a Stradivarius, but Gray wasn’t going to let himself be drawn in.
“You’re right,” he said, “I wouldn’t. Look, whatever this is about, I’m not interested. I’m in the middle of a case.”
“You could fly down in the mornin’, fly back by nightfall.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Besides—”
“Besides, you’d sooner work for a no-account horse thief than me.”
The only good thing about Jonas was that he was always direct. Gray often thought it was the single quality he and his uncle had in common.
“Yeah.” He smiled into the darkness. “That about sums it up.”
“You know, boy, it ain’t my fault your father’s spent his life suckin’ up to my money.”
Gray rose to his feet. “It’s late,” he said coldly, “and I’ve had a long day. Good night, Jonas.”
“Wait!” The old man huffed audibly. “I need your help.”
Jonas Baron needed help? His help? Gray paused with his finger on the disconnect button. “In what way?”
“You fly down to Espada and I’ll explain.”
“I have no intention of flying down to Espada. Tell me the problem now.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Jesus, I don’t believe this! You get me up in the middle of the night, you mutter some crap about legal advice, and I’m supposed to drop everything and head for Texas?”
“Yes,” the old man said sharply, and Gray suddenly realized his uncle’s just-folks accent had disappeared. “That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.”
“Here’s a news flash for you, Uncle. I’ve never done what I was supposed to do and I’m not going to start now.”
“You might find this interesting.”
“I doubt it.”
“Gray.” Another exhalation of breath, this one slightly ragged. “I’m an old man.”
Ah, hell. Gray sat down again. “Look,” he said, “it’s true, you and I never really got along, but—”
“We’d have gotten along fine if we hadn’t based our judgment of each other on your father.”
Gray laughed. Definitely, direct and to the point. And maybe even dead-on correct. “I guess that’s possible. But we did, and it’s too late to go back and change things.” His voice softened. “Jonas, I wish I could help you. But I really am in the middle of a case, and—”
“I’m getting old, boy. Real old.” Jonas cleared his throat. “And—and I did something, a long time ago, that I need to atone for, before my time comes.”
“Hell, I’m no clergyman.”
“Dammit, are you listening to me? I don’t want some candy-assed preacher to hear me confess my sins. What I need is a man I can trust.”
“And you
think that’s me? Why? You and I hardly know each other.”
“There’s some of my blood in your veins, boy, even if you wish there wasn’t. My brother was your grandfather.”
Gray pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Jonas. Listen, if you need advice, I can recommend someone. One of my partners clerked for a Federal judge—”
“So did you.”
That the old man would know so much about him took him by surprise. Still, he didn’t want to get drawn into this, whatever “this” might be. Over the years, he’d kept his distance from his father, from his uncle, from Texas. He went back for weddings and big family parties but only because he liked his cousins. Other than that, he’d never felt part of the Baron clan, never wanted to be part of it.
“Graham?”
“Yes. I’m still here.”
“I’m tellin’ you again, boy. I need your help.”
“And I’m telling you, Uncle. I can’t give it.”
The old man’s patience slipped. “Damnation,” he’d roared, “you fly down here and I swear, it’ll take less time to tell you my problem than it’s takin’ you to tell me you ain’t interested in hearin’ it!”
Gray had known that was probably the truth. Besides, he couldn’t quite repress that unwanted curiosity. After another few minutes he’d said okay, he’d take the first flight out of La Guardia in the morning.
“Good,” his uncle had said briskly. “You’re on TransAmerica flight 1157, leavin’ at 6:05 in the a.m.”
The phone had gone dead and Gray knew he’d been had. He’d cursed, then laughed, finally climbed back into bed and when the woman in it rolled into his arms he’d made love to her. But part of him had remained at a distance while he’d tried to come up with a reason his uncle would go to such lengths to arrange for this command performance. At four-thirty, he’d risen from the bed, showered, dressed, left a note for his still-sleeping lover asking her to please let herself out and that he’d phone her in a day or two. Then he’d taken a taxi to the airport.
Yes indeed, he thought, as the Jeep pulled through the wrought iron gates that marked the entrance to Espada, curiosity killed the cat—but he was, just as Jonas said, a hotshot New York attorney, too smart to be drawn into anything against his will. He’d hear his uncle’s story, offer some legal mumbo jumbo to soothe whatever twinge of conscience could plague a man at the end of such a long, powerful life and be back in New York by suppertime.
Raising the Stakes Page 2
