Raising the Stakes

by Sandra Marton

  “You son of a bitch!” Keir exploded through the door, slapped a hand in the middle of Gray’s chest and shoved him against the wall. “What did you do to Dawn?”

  “You’ve got the question wrong, O’Connell. It’s what did Dawn do to me?”

  Keir jerked his head back and took a look at Gray’s face. “Jesus.”

  “Exactly. And if you don’t get your fist out of my gut, I’m just liable to toss my cookies all over your shoes.”

  Keir dropped his hand to his side, took a step back and glared at Gray. “Security tells me you manhandled Dawn Carter.”

  Gray barked out a laugh. “You’ve got it backward.” He dipped the towel in the basin and wrung it out. “And what’s Security doing, keeping tabs on your guests?”

  “They were keeping tabs on Dawn, Baron, not on you.”

  “I don’t understand.” Gray hissed as he put the wet towel against his temple. “Why would they do that?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me,” Keir snapped. “You might have fooled her but I saw right through you from the beginning. You’re up to something.”

  “Listen, O’Connell, I’ve got my hands full right now, okay? I’ve got to figure out a way to make a woman stand still long enough to hear the truth. You want to fight? Well, save it for another time.” Gray looked into the mirror and caught Keir’s eyes with his. “You’d be wasting your time, anyway. Dawn’s in love with me.”

  “She’s been hypnotized by you, is what you mean.”

  “Sorry, pal. She’s in love with me.” Gray dropped the towel into the sink and turned around. “And I’m in love with her.”

  “Sorry? You think I’m interested in Dawn as more than an employee? I mean, she’s great, she’s terrific, but…” Keir narrowed his eyes. “You’re good, Baron. I come busting in here because I know you’re up to no good and now you’ve got me explaining that you’re wrong about what I feel for Dawn Kitter—”

  Keir swallowed the name as soon as he said it, but it was too late.

  “You know,” Gray said in amazement.

  Keir jerked his thumb toward the door. “I know that you’re going to be out of here in five minutes.”

  “You know who she really is.”

  “Five minutes. After that, I’ll have you tossed out on your—”

  “Dammit, man, don’t play games with me!” Gray clasped Keir’s arm. “How much do you know?”

  “Everything,” Keir said coldly. He shook off Gray’s hand. “That’s why you’ve been wasting your time. Did you really think we wouldn’t figure out that you were working with her husband?”

  “That I was…” Gray barked out a laugh. “You’re dead wrong, man. Her husband is scum.”

  “That’s the only thing you and I would agree on. And after I throw you out of my hotel I’m going to find Harman Kitteridge and toss him into the gutter with you.”

  “Listen, O’Connell, you’ve got this all…” Gray caught his breath. “What the hell are you saying? He’s here? Dawn’s husband is in Vegas?”

  Something in Gray’s voice made Keir bite back the sarcastic retort that had sprung to his lips.

  “Yeah. He’s here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Ninety-nine percent. Give me a break, Baron. You expect me to think—”

  “Does Dawn know?” Gray demanded, curling his fists around the lapels of Keir’s suit jacket.

  “Get your hands off me!”

  “Answer the question, dammit. Does she know?”

  “Yes. She—”

  “Jesus Christ, O’Connell, she’s going to run!” Gray jammed a wad of toilet tissue against the oozing cut over his eye, raced into the bedroom and grabbed a shirt. “You don’t believe me? Call downstairs. See if she’s in her office. I’m betting she ran straight out the door and into her car.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do it, man!” Gray swung toward Keir. “I’m not working with Dawn’s husband. I’d just as soon beat the bastard to a bloody pulp as look at him. It’s true, I came here to find her but it had nothing to do with Harman. It’s too complicated to explain right now. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “Yeah,” Keir said grimly, “and the check is in the mail.”

  “I love Dawn. I want to protect her. And I can’t, because she’s gone after her kid and I don’t know where the hell he is!”

  “You don’t know anything,” Keir said, but without much conviction.

  “But you do, don’t you? You know where the boy is.”

  “Pack up, Baron, and get out.”

  “O’Connell. Listen to me. If Kitteridge is here, he’s watching her every move. He sees her fly out of this place looking like she did when she left me, he’ll know she’s on to him. He’ll follow her. She’ll lead him straight to the kid and once she does… Dammit, are you gonna just stand there and let him beat her senseless, then snatch her and the kid?”

  Gray glared at Keir. Keir glared back. Was Baron lying, or was he telling the truth?

  “At the very least, you’ve got to know I’m right about Dawn going to her son.”

  She would. Keir knew that much.

  “And if I’m right about her husband following her…” Gray took a step forward. “Here’s the deal. You know where the boy is. Take me there with you. You have security people? Let them come along. And if I make one false move when we find Dawn, tell your men to do whatever it takes to stop me.” His mouth twisted. “O’Connell, I love this woman. I’d give my life for her. And if I lose her because you’d rather stand here than come to a decision, I’ll kill you right after I beat her son of a bitch husband to death with my bare hands. Do you understand?”

  The threat didn’t work. The fear in Gray’s eyes did. Keir grabbed for the phone and jabbed a button. No, Dawn wasn’t at her desk. In fact, Becky said, she’d been trying to find Keir to ask him what was going on. Dawn had come flying through the lobby and the guard at the employee’s entrance said she’d driven out of the lot like a bat out of hell. And oh yes, Mr. Coyle had left a cryptic message for Keir, should he stop by, something about a faxed photo of a man who had been identified on a security tape by a cocktail waitress…

  Keir slammed down the phone. “Let’s go. Take the fire stairs. It’s faster.”

  They pounded down the steps. Keir grabbed his cell phone as they ran through the lobby. “Dan? I’m on my way out the door. I’m heading for Rocking Horse Ranch. Take a couple of your men and follow me.”

  Seconds later, the little entourage was on the road. Keir shot Gray a look filled with warning. “If this is all bull and you’re working with Kitteridge, I promise you, Baron, your life won’t be worth a damn.”

  “It won’t be worth a damn without Dawn,” Gray said softly, and then he stared out the window as the empty desert flashed by, and prayed that they’d reach her in time.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CARS. Cars everywhere. And trucks and people, all of them crossing the street against the light, laughing and talking and paying no attention to traffic because they were on vacation and she was going to go crazy if everything and everybody didn’t get out of her way. Get out, get out, get—

  Dawn slammed her fist against the horn ring. A woman stepping off the sidewalk jumped back. Her plump face reddened and you didn’t have to be a lip-reader to know she’d said something short and ugly but Dawn didn’t care.

  All she could think about was Tommy. She had to get to him before Harman did.

  Ahead, the light went from green to amber. She stepped on the gas, shot through it before it changed to red. Another minute and she’d leave the city behind. Then it was a clear shot along the asphalt until the turnoff that led to Rocking Horse Ranch. Harman couldn’t have gotten there yet. Maybe he hadn’t even located Tommy. He would, though. There was no doubt of that.

  She’d made a terrible mistake underestimating him, thinking him vicious and cunning but not really clever. But he was, clever enough to have gotten together with someone
like Gray, someone she could hardly imagine breathing the same air as her husband.

  The road opened ahead. Dawn tromped down on the gas. She couldn’t think about Gray. Not now. It was too dangerous to let herself realize how stupid she’d been. How careless. Four years spent erasing the past and then a man came along and she listened to his soft lies and now she’d compromised everything. She was about to turn Tommy’s life upside down, go on the run, take him from the only stability he’d ever known… If she was right, and Harman hadn’t yet found him.

  A whisper of despair burst from her throat and she blanked her mind to everything but the road arrowing across the desert and the child who waited, had to be waiting, at its dusty end.

  * * *

  Gray gripped the roll bar of Keir’s SUV and stared blindly at the road ahead.

  “You sure this’ll get us there faster than the highway?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much further?”

  “Maybe another forty, fifty minutes.”

  “This damn thing’s a track, not a road. What if we run into some kind of barrier? Downed trees? A gully?”

  “You find a tree within fifty miles of this place, you’ll make it into the Guinness Book of Records. We see a gully, we drive through it. Or around it.” Keir shot him a cold smile. “That’s what Sports Utility Vehicles are for, Baron. Even a city slicker like you should know that.”

  “You sure we won’t miss that turnoff?” Gray said, ignoring the kind of insult that would ordinarily have wrung a sharp retort.

  “We’d both have to be blind not to see a pair of boulders the size of Godzilla’s balls.”

  “That’s the first marker. You said there were two.”

  “The second’s a mesa, about half a mile from the Ranch. Look, you want to do something useful, check once in a while to make sure Dan’s still behind us. Otherwise, just shut up and count yourself lucky I let you come with me.”

  “Don’t push it, O’Connell,” Gray said softly. “That’s my woman out there.”

  “Your woman?” Keir laughed. “You don’t even know her. How long have you been here? A week?”

  “Ten days,” Gray said tightly. “And I know her, all right, same as I know that the man she’s married to would as soon make her suffer as breathe.”

  Keir’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Amazing how things worked out, isn’t it? You turn up. Then he turns up, and it’s all one big coincidence.”

  Gray looked at Keir. A muscle knotted in his jaw and he looked back at the road.

  “It’s no coincidence. I was stupid. I underestimated Kitteridge. I forgot that snakes aren’t as smart as humans but that doesn’t stop them from being just as deadly.”

  Keir glanced at Gray. There was pain in the man’s voice. Okay. Maybe he’d cut him some slack.

  “How about telling me why you came to Vegas looking for Dawn?”

  Gray craned his neck, saw the fast-moving dust cloud that was Dan Coyle’s SUV behind them. “It’s a long story.”

  “And it’s a long drive. We’ve got time.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Gray ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. “Well, I have an uncle.”

  “Wow. That’s unusual.”

  “You want to hear this,” Gray snarled, “or you want to do stand-up comedy?” He took a minute to collect himself. “My uncle’s an old man. He’s sick, he’s rich and he’s had what you might call an interesting life.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with Dawn.”

  “You will, if you stop interrupting me.” Gray shifted in his seat and looked at Keir. “A few months back, he asked me to do him a favor. He told me this story about a love affair that went wrong half a century ago.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  “My uncle got involved with his partner’s wife. When his partner found out, he divorced her. Months later, she gave birth to a child. A daughter. My uncle never knew about it until recently and he figures it’s possible he fathered the girl. Her name was Orianna. She grew up and had a daughter, too. She named her Dawn.”

  Keir scowled as he worked it through. “Let me get this straight. Your uncle is Dawn’s grandfather?”

  “Maybe. He’s not sure but if he is, he wants to include her in his will.”

  “I still don’t see your involvement in this.”

  “Yeah.” Gray sighed. “Well, neither did I but my uncle insisted on playing this close to the vest. He didn’t want anyone to get wind of what was going on until he had some answers, so he asked me to find Dawn Lincoln Kitteridge—Dawn Carter—and check her out.”

  “Check her out, how?” Keir looked at Gray. “You gonna tell me all you’ve been doing is getting samples of her DNA?”

  “What I’m telling you is that I’m tired of your smart mouth,” Gray said coldly.

  “Okay. Take it easy. I guess that was a little out of line.” A scrawny coyote darted across the track just ahead. Keir cursed, swung the wheel and missed the animal by inches. “Traffic hazards, even out here,” he muttered. “Check her out, how?”

  “See what she was like. Her personality. Her lifestyle. Don’t look at me that way, man. I know it sounds nuts but if you knew my uncle—”

  “Jonas Baron. Yeah. He’s got a reputation for coming up with unusual requests before he makes an investment.”

  “That’s right. I guess that’s how he sees this, as an—” Gray frowned. “You know who I’m talking about?”

  “Don’t look so surprised. Did you think you could come sniffing around the Song and not attract our interest? I had you checked out.”

  “Were you worried about your hotel—or about Dawn?”

  Keir looked at Gray, saw the tightly banked jealousy in his eyes, and laughed. “Take it easy. I was worried about Dawn but not for the reasons you think. Actually it was my mother who was worried about her and, believe me, that story’s even longer than yours. Let’s just say my interest in the lady is strictly fraternal.”

  Gray thought it over, considered the openness in Keir’s expression and nodded. “A good thing for you that it is.”

  Keir decided to let that pass. “So your uncle told you where Dawn was, and—”

  “Jonas told me nothing, not even the truth about him maybe being her grandfather. He just said he wanted to settle an old debt and asked me to do the groundwork. I didn’t want to do it—I’m not one of my uncle’s fans—but it turned out I owed a debt, too, to him, so I agreed.”

  Gray told Keir the story, from his first meeting with Harman to the last. “That’s when I underestimated him. I didn’t realize it but I must have tipped my hand and—O’Connell? Those rocks up ahead. Is that the formation we’re looking for?”

  “Yes. Another ten miles, maybe less, and we’ll be there. If we’re right and Harman shows, I just hope—”

  “Hope won’t do it,” Gray said coldly. “But I will.”

  Keir looked at the man seated beside him. Gray seemed deceptively still. Once, hiking a canyon just a few miles from town, he’d spotted a mountain lion ready to spring on a mule deer. He remembered how the cat had concentrated all its energy, reflexes and mental acuity on that one moment, that one purpose and what it was about to do.

  “You really do love her,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” Gray said simply, “I do.”

  “Baron?” Keir hesitated. “Look, if we’re right and Harman shows—”

  “He’ll show, all right. I can feel it.”

  So could Keir. What worried him wasn’t that Harman might not turn up, it was the icy determination of the man beside him.

  “Yeah. Well, if he does… You let Dan and me deal with him. Okay?”

  “Is that what you would do,” Gray said quietly, “if Kitteridge was after the woman who’d become your life?”

  The men looked at each other. Keir nodded, not only in acceptance but in understanding. Gray smiled thinly. Then he turned away and stared out the window until, at last, the buildings and corrals of the Rocking Hor
se Ranch rose in the distance, shimmering in the heat of the thin desert air.

  * * *

  Mrs. Wilton was doing her best to smile. Dawn was doing her best to be civil.

  “If you’d simply call ahead, Ms. Carter,” the owner of Rocking Horse Ranch said, the same as she had a little over a week ago during that other unannounced visit. “We do have a schedule. The boys appreciate holding to a routine.”

  “I’m sure they do, Mrs. Wilton.” Dawn knotted her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. She’d decided to treat her appearance here as nothing extraordinary, just another quick visit squeezed in during the work week. She didn’t want anyone to realize she was about to take her son and disappear. “As I said, I managed to free up some time at the last minute and I thought Tommy would like to go to dinner and then to a movie with me.”

  “There’s a hot dog roast tonight, and cake and ice cream for Barry Salter’s birthday.”

  “That sounds lovely,” Dawn said brightly, “but I really think Tommy will enjoy the special treat I’ve planned.”

  “You’ll be back late,” Mrs. Wilton said, looking down her nose with disapproval.

  “I’m afraid so. In fact…” Dawn smiled again, though it felt as if her lips were sticking to her teeth. “I might just keep Tommy overnight instead of bringing him back after the movie.”

  Mrs. Wilton sighed. “You’ll be taking him home with you for the night, then?”

  “Yes,” Dawn said blithely. How easy it was to lie, when lying was all that would save you. “I’ll have him back tomorrow morning, bright and early.”

  “Very well, Ms. Carter.” Mrs. Wilton rose from her chair. “Thomas is probably watching cartoons with some of the other boys. I’ll take you—”

  “That’s all right. I know where he is. I’ll get him myself.” Dawn paused in the doorway. “Mrs. Wilton? Thank you for everything.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure. After all, one night’s disruption in routine—”

  “I mean, thank you for all you’ve done for Tommy. He’s been very happy here.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Wilton’s face softened. “Well, that’s nice of you to say. He’s a fine little boy.”