by B. J Daniels
Her smile widened for a moment before she bit down on her lower lip and gave him her most innocent look. He’d fallen for that look, for that smile, for that young girl whom he’d actually thought that he could save.
“What do you want, Tiffany?”
“I know you’re angry with me—”
“No, I’m not. I was angry when you killed one of my crows. I was angry when I realized that you’d lied to me about being my daughter—”
“I honestly didn’t know until Mom—”
“Don’t bother. It’s way too late for me to believe anything you say. Just tell me why you had to see me.”
Tiffany got a self-satisfied look on her face as if just getting him to come when she demanded was enough for her. “I know I have no right to ask for your help, but—”
He laughed. “If this is about getting you out of here...” He shook his head. “Not. A. Chance. In. Hell.”
That wiped the smile off her face. Some of her true feelings burned bright in all that blue. Tiffany wasn’t just a psychopath, she was evil. She took pleasure in hurting other people. The last doctor here at the hospital had been convinced she was getting better. The stupid man had actually worked toward getting her released. He’d even hooked her up with a lawyer who thought he could get her off the attempted murder charge and the other charges dealing with the two staff members she’d almost killed.
But then Frank had heard that the doctor had quit without warning. There was talk of him being brought up on charges of his own involving trying to rape one of his patients.
The sheriff didn’t need to guess who that young female patient was. Nor did he believe for a moment that the doctor had tried to rape her. What the doctor had done was fall for Tiffany’s lies. When he couldn’t get her out of the mental hospital, she’d turned on him, taking him down without an ounce of conscience or regret. Tiffany would do whatever it took to get what she wanted. Just like her mother.
And right now she wanted out of the hospital so she could finish getting revenge against him and Lynette. It was her one single motive for everything she did. He found that to be the most horrendous thing Pam had done. Because of her mother, Tiffany had nothing else to live for.
“I don’t blame you for the way you feel,” she said, trying another tactic.
“Good, then you’ll understand why I won’t be driving up here ever again at your beck and call. It’s over, Tiffany. You had a good run, but I’m out. I don’t plan to ever see you again.” He turned to leave.
“You’ll see me again!” she cried. He heard her advance on him from behind. He also heard the orderly beating a path toward her.
Frank turned, half-expecting to see a pair of scissors clutched in her hand arcing toward his heart. If she’d managed to get them once, she could again.
But her balled-up hands held no weapon.
She stopped short of him as if she, too, heard the rapid approach of the orderly. She dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper that turned his blood to slush. “You will wake up and find me standing over your bed. You will see the flash of a blade before I plunge it into your heart. My face will be the last thing you ever see.” Her contorted features softened back into the young innocent-looking girl who’d broken his heart and who now wanted to cut it wide open.
“But first you will watch your precious wife die,” she whispered with a smile before the orderly reached her.
“Is everything all right, Tiffany?”
She nodded, looking close to tears. “I’m okay, Jerry. Daddy’s just leaving.” Her gaze met Frank’s. “He said he’s never coming back.” Her voice broke.
The orderly looked at him as if he couldn’t believe anyone would say something like that to this girl.
“Jerry, this probably won’t save your life,” Frank told him. “But if you trust this young woman, she’ll cut your throat when you least expect it.” With that he turned and started out of the hospital, swearing he would never enter it again.
Behind him he could hear Jerry trying to comfort his sobbing hysterically pretty young patient. Jerry didn’t have a clue that he was being set up. He wouldn’t remember Frank’s warning until he felt the cold steel of the blade when Tiffany plunged it into him. Frank knew it would be a knife because Tiffany had just told him what she had planned.
He put in a call to Dr. Iverson, her latest champion, as he drove away from the mental hospital. “Tiffany Chandler has gotten her hands on a knife.”
“What?” the doctor demanded. “How is that possible? Did you see this knife?”
“Just listen,” Frank said impatiently. “I’m telling you, she has a knife hidden somewhere. You need to find it. Turn the whole place upside down if you have to. But she is going to use that knife if you don’t find it.” He hung up, the doctor still wanting to argue. Dr. Iverson better hope Tiffany made her move on his day off.
She might not be his daughter, but she was Pam’s and he had known his ex-wife intimately. She’d loved to play ruthless games with people’s lives. So did Tiffany. She was already reeling in Jerry and whoever else fell for that “poor little girl” act of hers.
Frank could see the future but there was nothing more he could do. He’d always known that it was just a matter of time before Tiffany would be coming for him and Lynette.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“THERE HAS BEEN only one mention of The Prophecy in over thirty-five years,” Cassidy said between bites of French toast and bacon as she put down her cell phone. “This recent article didn’t even make the front page of the local paper when one of the members was killed and another is awaiting trial. How dangerous can they really be?”
“We know the answer to that,” Jack said. “I understand what you’re saying. They seem...harmless. No one cares about them anymore. They’re history.”
“Sure seems that way. They’re all...” She hated to say old, but they certainly weren’t anything like the photographs from the metal box. “Older.” They’d aged. “They don’t look like terrorists.”
“Which is to their advantage. If they’ve been active, they’ve kept it quiet. They’ve probably also brought in new blood.”
She tried to imagine anyone her age getting involved with them. Then again, she’d never been very political. She’d left that to her father.
She and Jack had done independent searches online to familiarize themselves with everything they could find about the anarchist group. There wasn’t a lot since the group hadn’t apparently been active except in the latter 1970s.
The music was still playing on the radio, reminding her of earlier when they danced and she’d been in his arms. “So what now?” she asked, pushing her plate away.
“We pay your mother a visit. We have the element of surprise,” he said as he stood to take their plates to the sink. “Also, I will be armed. But I think you need to be ready for what she might tell us.”
“We already know she was a member of The Prophecy.”
He nodded. “What if she still is? What if the group has been working behind the scenes? If what my father said is true...”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe she’s so determined to keep my father in the presidential race that she would have her own daughter kidnapped.”
“I didn’t believe my father could do what he’s done either, so I understand.”
Cassidy rose to help clean up, knowing he was right. The thought of facing her mother paralyzed her. During the few times she’d been around Sarah, she had felt her mother’s frustration. The woman seemed to want to reconnect, but none of them really knew her, especially Cassidy and Harper.
“You aren’t getting cold feet, are you?”
She looked up at him, swallowed back the lump in her throat and said, “No. I just want this over.”
“Me, too.” His gaze locked with her
s for a moment before he seemed to drag it away. He glanced toward the bag full of money. “I need to do something with that.” It was sitting on one of the spare chairs. The metal box with all the information about The Prophecy was at the other end of the table, open and some of the contents lying on the table’s surface.
“Maybe we should have had Evan take us to Europe,” Cassidy said, suddenly feeling overwhelmed. She’d led too pampered a life to have to face kidnappers, let alone killers.
A muscle jumped in Jack’s jaw. “You can always give him a call,” he said without looking at her. “Maybe you should.” His gaze rose to hers again. “In fact—”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m not leaving you. Like you said, we’re in this together.”
His gaze softened. “This is dangerous business, Beany.”
She smiled, warming at the use of her nickname.
“Maybe we should just tell your father what’s going on. With the evidence we have in that metal container—”
“Do you think that’s enough proof to have the people in those photographs arrested?” She could see his doubts. “I can tell you right now that my father would never believe Sarah was a member of The Prophecy let alone that she is still the leader. He loves her. He’s blind and deaf when it comes to her. Do you doubt that The Prophecy will harm my family—just as your father threatened?”
He hesitated too long.
“My father would try to protect all of us, but do you really think it’s possible to keep us all safe? And for how long? The only hope I see is confronting my mother. If she is behind having me kidnapped...” Cassidy couldn’t finish. She couldn’t imagine any mother doing that to her child.
With a sigh, Jack raked a hand through his dark thick hair. His look was sympathetic. “You really think she’s going to confess everything?”
“No, but I want to see her face when I turn up at her door. From there I guess we play it by ear.”
“Just as we have so far,” Jack agreed. “Let’s see what your mother has to say.”
* * *
TIFFANY WATCHED AS the orderlies tore her room apart looking for the knife. She sat in the corner, her arms around her knees, hiding her gleeful expression as she watched in mock surprise and anguish.
They hadn’t mentioned a knife, but she knew that was what they were searching for. Inwardly, she smiled. She’d known Frank would pick up on it and tell. The lawman thought he was so smart. Tiffany loved that she could run circles around him.
“I am so proud of you,” her mother whispered next to her. Since her murder, Pam Chandler Curry had begun visiting her. At first Tiffany had been a little frightened to wake up and see her dead mother. In life, Pam had wanted nothing to do with her after Tiffany had failed to kill Sheriff Frank Curry—her ex.
But in death, Pam was like she’d been when Tiffany was a child. She would sit with her for hours and tell her how proud she was of her, how she would help her grow into a strong woman who no man could ever hurt.
“You have fooled them all,” Pam whispered. “Look at them making idiots of themselves looking for the knife. Once they don’t find it, they will think Frank was just trying to make trouble for you and them. They’ll trust you even more.”
Tiffany smiled inwardly since that was exactly her plan.
“You are your mama’s girl,” her mother whispered. “It won’t be long now. I want to be there when you kill Frank and Nettie. Write my name on the wall in their blood, will you?” Her mother laughed softly. “I want everyone to know, I may be dead, but I’m not forgotten. You’d do that for your mama, won’t you, Tiffany?”
“I will,” she said quietly under her breath as the orderlies finished and left her alone in her room. They hadn’t found the knife because it wasn’t there. But it was close by. “Won’t be long now, Mama.”
* * *
THE HOUSE WHERE Sarah Johnson Hamilton lived wasn’t far down the road. Jack was struck by two things as they drove. Hamilton Ranch lay in the shadow of the Crazy Mountains, an incredible, rugged snowcapped range. He couldn’t get over how beautiful the area was.
And all of it, according to her, was owned by her father. Apparently, he’d been buying up smaller ranches for years.
Jack thought of his own father and his need to buy and own and conquer. He wondered if Buckmaster Hamilton and Tom Durand weren’t all that different.
Cassidy had been right. A person could get lost here it was so vast and isolated. He wondered if they should do exactly that, as they came over a rise and she pointed down to what had once been someone’s small ranch before it had been gobbled up by the Hamilton Ranch.
The house was larger than the one he and Cassidy were staying in. There were several old barns and outbuildings behind it, then nothing but green valley that ran to the Yellowstone River.
“As I drive past, see how many cars are parked outside her house,” he told Cassidy.
“I see only one, the SUV my father bought for her.”
He drove farther up the road and then turned around in a wide spot. He didn’t go far before he stopped in the shade of a grove of huge cottonwoods along the creek. “I’m thinking we’ll park here and walk back to your mother’s. If we drive in—”
“She might have time to make a call,” Cassidy agreed.
Jack was glad to see that they were on the same page. No matter what Cassidy said, she didn’t trust Sarah any more than he did. “There is an animal trail that leads back that way,” he said as he checked his gun. He’d reloaded it after their run-in with Ed. Now he tucked it into his jeans, covering it with the jacket he wore. “Ready?”
Her expression was one of determination, but he could see a tremor of fear beneath it. “If you’d rather stay here—”
“No.” She shook her head. “She has to see me. She has to look me in the eye.”
He wasn’t so sure it would be that easy. If Sarah was the leader of The Prophecy as his father had claimed, she probably had lying down to an art form. But he wasn’t about to argue with Cassidy.
Confronting Sarah would tell them what he needed to know, he feared. But he wasn’t planning to go by what he saw in her eyes—even if he held a gun to her head. If she lied, he would demand to see her cell phone—where he suspected he would find his father’s number and real proof that she was part of all this.
* * *
THE KNOCK AT her door made Sarah jump. She leaped up from where she’d been sitting cradling a hot cup of coffee in her hands for warmth. She hadn’t seen Buck since she’d confronted him at Russell’s house. He’d insisted she drop him off at the main ranch house. Not wanting to argue, she had. Now he wasn’t answering his cell phone. She’d left a message, but he hadn’t called.
A chill had filled the house at the thought that it might be over between them. She shouldn’t have kept the news about Dr. Venable from him.
She glanced at the engagement ring. It felt too heavy on her finger. Or maybe that was just her conscience making her feel that way, she thought as she rushed to the door. She’d locked it last night, in no mood for a visit from Dr. Venable. But she hadn’t heard from him either.
Filled with hope that Buck had returned, she opened the door expecting to see him on her doorstep. He wouldn’t have liked the way he’d left things with her. It would be just like him to surprise her.
And she was surprised. Shocked in fact. “Cassidy?” Heart in her throat, she grabbed her daughter and pulled her into her arms. Tears blurred her vision so much that she didn’t even notice that Cassidy wasn’t alone.
Nor had she felt at first that her daughter had stiffened in her arms. As she let go of her, Cassidy stepped past her into the house. “So you’re alone?”
She frowned at her daughter’s words. Who had she expected to find here? Her father? “Yes.” She looked to the handsome cowboy stand
ing in the doorway and thought for a moment that he was the man The Prophecy had hired to kidnap her daughter. She frowned because there was something familiar about him.
Belatedly, Sarah realized she shouldn’t have opened the door so hastily. She wished she had her gun. But it was too late now. “And you are?” she asked.
“Jack. Jack Durand.” He said it as if he was waiting to see if she knew the name. She didn’t. He had a Southern accent. She was sure that she’d never seen him before and yet there was something about him.
Turning back to her daughter, her mouth went dry at the expression on Cassidy’s face. “I don’t understand. I got a call that you’d been kidnapped.”
“Who called you?” Cassidy asked.
“I...I didn’t know the voice.” She took a step toward her daughter, feeling off balance and half-afraid. The air around them sparked with a tension that had her on edge. “I’m just so glad to see you.” Behind her, she heard the cowboy step in, close the door and lock it.
She stopped a few feet from her daughter, desperately wanting to take her in her arms again, but seeing that was the last thing Cassidy wanted. Her hand went to the small silver horse on the necklace at her throat. She touched it nervously as she asked, “What’s going on?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Mother?” she said and thrust a crinkled photograph at her. “Or should I call you Red?”
* * *
NETTIE COULDN’T STAND it any longer. She opened the kitchen drawer and took out the tiny box she kept hidden in the back of the cabinet. She often carried it in her purse, especially when she went to see Kate at the cafe.
But not today. She’d left it at home in the drawer, afraid to ask it anything. Even though she’d confessed to Frank about what was inside the box, she still kept it hidden. Often the contents felt almost...evil. It was definitely dangerous since she’d become addicted to its use.
Stepping to the kitchen table, she removed the lid and took out the small felt bag. Her fingers shook as she undid the drawstring and carefully poured out the contents into her palm.
