The Sheriff's Daughter

by Jessica Andersen

  Honestly, she’d been letting herself off easy by not offering the choice. If there wasn’t a choice, she couldn’t be hurt by his decision.

  Worse, she hadn’t asked herself to make a choice, either. Would it be so awful for her to leave Black Horse Beach and make a start somewhere else?

  For the first time in her life, the answer was maybe not.

  Stunned, she turned between the stone columns that marked the main entrance to Bellamy Farms.

  What had changed?

  She was different, she realized. She and Logan together were different. But could it work?

  There was only one way to find out. And that would involve turning down Bellamy’s offer.

  She climbed out of the truck and walked to the guard shack. This time, she was waved through without question. “Mr. Bellamy is expecting you,” the young man said. “He’ll meet you down in the broodmare barn.”

  Her feet followed the clamshell path while her mind spun furiously. Should she take the job and stay in Black Horse? Should she turn it down and ask Logan to take her with him? Should she play the middle ground and ask Bellamy for time to think over his offer?

  God, she didn’t know. Things that had seemed so simple, so black-and-white suddenly held new shades of gray.

  New complications.

  “Mr. Bellamy?” she called when she reached the wide, arching doors of the mare barn.

  There was no answer, which seemed odd. Even this early in the morning, there should be stable hands feeding and mucking, grooms checking their charges.

  She felt a shiver of unease, but passed it off as a byproduct of the past few days as she stepped inside the barn. Her feet carried her to the third stall on the right, which held the pretty chestnut mare she’d helped birth a foal earlier that week.

  When she reached the stall, her lips pursed in a silent whistle. The baby had seemed big when she’d helped turn him right way round and aided the mare in the delivery. Now, he seemed huge.

  “You’re going to be a monster,” she said aloud, and admired the colt’s straight legs, wide-set intelligent eyes and upright neck. “Classy looking, but a monster.” She glanced at the clipboard hung neatly on the stall door.

  And paused.

  She looked back at the mare, suddenly putting her finger on something that had bothered her the other night, but had since been overridden by the danger…and Logan.

  But now she pursed her lips consideringly. This was a thoroughbred racing stable. According to the information on the clipboard, the foal was a full thoroughbred, the son of Bellamy’s recently deceased stud.

  Yet Sam would bet her veterinary degree the mare wasn’t a registered thoroughbred. She was small, and her long barrel and high hindquarters suggested quarter horse ancestry.

  Curious, Sam opened the stall door and spoke gently to the mare. “Hey, sweetie. Remember me? I just want to look at your lip. I’m not going to hurt your baby…” Still crooning, Sam caught the mare’s halter and inverted the horse’s upper lip to reveal the shiny pink skin inside, where her racing tattoo was.

  Or should have been. There was no tattoo.

  The mare was either an unraced thoroughbred—in which case, why breed her to a stud with a million-dollar fee?—or she wasn’t a thoroughbred at all.

  “Weird.” She looked at the colt again. Damned if he didn’t look like a full thoroughbred, though granted it was a little tough to tell when they were that young. She let herself out of the stall as an awful suspicion formed in her mind.

  The racehorse industry forbade any medical manipulation of breeding stock. Frozen semen and artificial insemination were banned, as was embryo transfer—ET. In ET, a donor mare’s egg was fertilized and then implanted in a recipient mare for gestation. In the show-horse world, where it was legal, ET meant a mare could be “bred” and still remain in competition while her foal developed in another mare’s womb. The technique could also be used to breed an older mare, or one that might not maintain the pregnancy. More importantly, it could allow several breedings between a mare and stallion to be born in a single season.

  But ET was illegal in racehorse breeding.

  Stunned, Sam moved to the next stall down, and froze when she looked at the registration numbers listed for the sire and dam of the foal within. Then she strode quickly to the next stall. The next. Then she darted across the wide barn aisle, glancing at every clipboard.

  Within minutes, she’d figured out what Bellamy was up to.

  There were forty broodmares in the barn with foals at their sides—but the foals came from only four different mare and stallion pairings. Bellamy had ten copies of each pairing, probably crosses that had produced winners for him in the past. Presumably, he would register the pairing under a single name, train the horses in secret and pick the fastest to run under that name. The DNA-typing required by the Jockey Club would pass with flying colors because the horse would be the true offspring of the registered parents.

  But it would have been born to a surrogate and selected from among ten of its full brothers and sisters.

  It was brilliant. It was also completely and utterly illegal. And who knew how long it had been going on? Who knew how many of Bellamy’s wildly successful winners had been produced this way?

  If the racing world ever found out, Bellamy would be ruined.

  Which was why he’d paid—or simply asked—Horace Mann to kill her, Sam realized with a jolt of fear and understanding sharp enough to cause pain. He hadn’t meant for the barn help to call her to the foal’s birthing. Dr. Sears was no doubt neck-deep in the deception and likely performed the ET procedures himself. He wouldn’t tell.

  But Sam…she was Sheriff Bob’s daughter. She would have blown the whistle on this illegal operation the moment she suspected. Which is why Bellamy had tried to get rid of her—for a pre-emptive strike.

  And that was why he’d called her to the farm now.

  To kill her.

  She spun on a sudden jolt of adrenaline, then froze when she saw a man’s dark silhouette framed in the sunny arch of the doors.

  Before she could turn and run, he closed the distance between them, grabbed her arm, yanked it up behind her and jabbed a gun in her lower back. “Just in time for our meeting, I see, Dr. Blackwell.”

  Thomas Bellamy was a middle-aged man of below-average height and above-average weight, but determination and desperation lent him strength and the gun gave him leverage. He muscled Sam out of the barn and across the curiously deserted stable yard.

  Heart pounding, she dug in her heels, trying to slow him, stop him, trip him up. She was frantic to do anything to keep him from manhandling her away from the farm buildings toward the paddocks and the land beyond, which ended abruptly at First Cliff, the highest of the five stone ledges that surrounded Black Horse Harbor.

  Logan! Help! She instinctively shouted for him in her mind, knowing he’d come for her if he could, but also knowing he was on his way back to the city, to his life. The thought that she might never see him again speared through her, sharper even than the strain of her arm when Bellamy shoved her onto the path that led to First Cliff.

  “No!” Sam screamed, hoping someone would hear her over the rising offshore breeze. She thrashed, but couldn’t budge his iron-hard grip, which pushed her inexorably toward the edge. “They know! Logan knows what you’re doing. He won’t let you get away with it!”

  Bellamy’s chuckle held little mirth. “Nobody knows except Sears and my most trusted employees, and they’re all paid well for their loyalty. Don’t you get it? I’ve been doing this for years. How do you think I breed all my winners?” He chuckled, and she wasn’t sure whether he was talking to her or to himself when he said, “This is the future of racehorse breeding. Mate the best to the best over and over, cull the weaklings and race the fastest. In a few decades, I will have created an entirely new standard of thoroughbred horse. A perfectly designed, engineered animal.”

  “That’s exactly what the Jockey Club doesn’t want
,” Sam said, noticing that the more he talked, the more his grip on her arm slackened and the less the gun pressed into her back. “That’s why they’ve outlawed cloning, in vitro fertilization and embryo transfers!”

  “Shortsighted idiots,” Bellamy snarled, his grip loosening even further. “Why can’t they see that—”

  Sam yanked away from him and turned to run.

  “Bitch! Get back here!” He grabbed her hair and pulled her back. Sam screamed and struck out, but he looped an arm across her chest, pinning her. She kicked back, but he only grunted at the stinging contact.

  Trapped! She was trapped, caged by his superior strength. By his mad greed. Tears stung her eyes and she whimpered and fought as he dragged her to the edge of the cliff. Two words reverberated in her brain.

  Help me!

  LOGAN’S CELL PHONE RANG as he took a country-road corner on two wheels. “Hello?”

  Please let it be Jimmy calling to say she’s at Jen’s house, he thought. Or the sandwich shop. Anyplace but Bellamy.

  But his gut told him she was at the farm.

  “They’ve got him!” The words were what he was hoping for, since the staties were on their way to Bellamy at that very moment. But the voice was wrong.

  It was female. Tearful.

  “What?” he barked into the phone, conscious of time passing, of the pounding urge to reach Sam, to hold her in his arms and never let go.

  “Stephen. HFH got him out. He’s on his way home! He’ll be here the day after tomorrow!” It was Nancy. Oh, God.

  Something broke inside Logan and left him exultant and aching at the same time. Joy shivered beside terror, neither gaining the upper hand and both leaving him hollow.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “That’s wonderful, Nance. But I can’t talk right now. Sam needs me.”

  And in that instant, in the moment that he put Sam ahead of his sister, he understood it. He understood that even while Nancy had sat at home, pregnant and mourning her husband while waiting for the quiet phone to ring, she hadn’t regretted the marriage, or the love.

  He understood it.

  And so, of course, did Nancy. Her voice hitched once and she said, “Call me when you can. And take care of yourself. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he said, and it was his first time speaking the actual words in a long time. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I’ll be there to meet Stephen’s plane, I promise.”

  “Just make sure you and Sam are both there to meet his plane, okay?”

  Logan turned between the stone pillars, blew through the parking lot and past the guard shack before the kid even knew what was coming. As he sped through the stable yard, scattering startled-looking grooms like leaves, he said, “I’m going to do my best.”

  He slapped the phone shut and cursed when he rounded a turn and saw two figures silhouetted against the sky. Sam and Bellamy.

  Struggling at the edge of the cliff.

  SAM SHOT HER ELBOW BACK and tried to ignore the pain radiating down her other arm. She’d managed to tear away from Bellamy and slap the gun from his hand. It had flown over the cliff, but at what cost? Her arm was numb from his hold, leaving her down to one fighting hand.

  And two feet.

  She kicked at him, missed and staggered, her balance thrown off by her bad arm. He rushed at her, arms wide as though he intended to lift her bodily and throw her off First Cliff.

  The image spiked terror through her soul. Logan! Where are you? she cried internally, needing him even though she knew he’d be halfway to Boston by now.

  Engine noise roared suddenly. Sam jerked her head toward it and saw the red pickup erupt over a low hill nearby and slide to a halt twenty feet away. Logan leaped from the truck and charged toward the edge of the cliff.

  “Logan!” she cried, love and fear and joy bursting through her in a headlong rush. She reached toward him—

  And Bellamy hit her with a flying tackle that sent her over the cliff.

  “NO!” LOGAN ROARED when he saw Sam’s body fling backward and disappear over the edge. “No!”

  He grabbed Bellamy by the shirt and spun the man toward the truck, away from the edge. Without giving the other man an opportunity to speak, to plead, to gloat, whatever the bastard might have thought to do, Logan sent his fist hurtling into Bellamy’s face and knocked him into limp unconsciousness.

  “Sam! God, Sam!” Sick with dread, with horror, with the all-but-certain knowledge that he’d figured out his priorities too late, Logan scrambled to the edge of the cliff. He lay flat on his stomach, eased his upper body over, and looked down.

  And saw her.

  “Logan?” Eyes wide, face pale, she perched gingerly on a ledge barely wide enough for her sneakers. Far below, the Atlantic crashed and growled around the rocks, a hungry, mindless giant waiting for its prey.

  He took in the scene in a heartbeat, even as relief crashed through him, followed quickly by terror when the narrow rock outcropping crumbled beneath her left foot and pebbles fell.

  She was incredibly lucky to have landed on the ledge. She’d be even luckier if it held up long enough for him to rescue her.

  But it had damn well better hold up. He wasn’t going to lose her now. Not when he’d just realized how much she meant to him. How much he wanted to give her and promise her.

  Himself. A future.

  He reached an arm down to her. “Sam, give me your hand. Gently. Just reach up and give me your hand. I’ll pull you up. I swear it.”

  She looked up and didn’t move. Her lower lip trembled, though he could see from the determination in her eyes that she was fighting the tears and the panic. “Don’t you have a rope or something in the truck?”

  “I do,” he said, “but I don’t think the ledge is going to hold out that long. Just reach up and grab. I won’t let you fall. Trust me.”

  She lifted her hand as a few more pebbles came loose and fell, then a hand-sized chunk of rock. “I trust you.

  In fact, I think I love you. I was going to tell Bellamy I didn’t want the job, so we could work something out between us. But then I figured out what he’s been doing….” She trailed off and looked at him, eyes dark with fear and emotion.

  “You can tell me about Bellamy later,” Logan said urgently. Sweat broke out across his lower back as another piece of ledge gave way. But Sam, close to shock, didn’t seem to notice. So he said, “And we can talk about how we’re going to make it work later, too. But the important thing is that I think I love you, too. Scratch that. I know I love you. I love you, Samantha, so give me your damn hand this instant!”

  At his shout, she gave a little leap upward and grabbed on just as the rock beneath her feet gave way. Logan clasped his fingers tightly around her wrist, felt himself pulled a little toward the cliff, cursed and dug in with his toes and free hand. He inched backwards and felt rocks bite into his chest and stomach.

  They weren’t going over. No way.

  He gritted his teeth at the pain in his ribs, and bodily hauled her toward the rocky edge. She used her feet to help, and gained the top quickly.

  It happened in a flash. He saw her eyes widen. Heard her scream, “Logan, look out!”

  Suddenly he felt himself pushed headfirst toward the drop-off.

  At the last possible second, when it seemed as though gravity was sure to claim him and send him hurtling to the rocks below, Logan grabbed onto the now-conscious—and murderously angry—Bellamy and hauled himself away from the brink. The man staggered away from the cliff’s edge.

  Sam screamed again when Bellamy howled and lunged, and she darted forward, though Logan knew she’d be too late to save him from the villain’s mad rush.

  Bellamy leaped toward Logan, who pivoted aside and stuck out a foot, hoping to divert him, to bring him down shy of the brink. But Bellamy changed course and crashed into Logan, driving him to the edge of the cliff.

  “No!” Sam screamed and reached for Logan. He felt rocks give beneath his feet,
felt Bellamy’s weight push him over—

  And felt Sam’s fingers close on his flailing hand.

  She yanked and Logan flung himself toward safety. At the last moment, he reached back for Bellamy, but it was too late.

  The racehorse breeder teetered on the edge, arms windmilling, eyes and mouth stretched wide in terror.

  Then he fell, screaming.

  Moments later, the screams ended with horrifying suddenness.

  Stunned, shattered, and so incredibly thankful that he couldn’t even put it into words, Logan turned to Sam and gathered her into his arms. For her sake. For his sake.

  For their sake.

  “I love you,” he said into her hair. The words didn’t hurt, and they didn’t create the anxiety he usually associated with knowing someone cared for him.

  But this wasn’t just someone. This was Sam.

  She pulled away slightly to look up at him. Her eyes shone with relief and emotion. “I love you, too. We can figure out the rest as we go along.”

  And though that might have made him nervous, since he knew that was exactly what had gone wrong in her previous relationships, he wasn’t worried. Because between them, they had more than her other relationships combined.

  They had love enough to make compromises.

  He dropped his head and she reached up, and their lips touched as a thunder of rotor blades, shouts and a dog’s bark announced the arrival of the others.

  A state police chopper set down on the flat ground downwind. Jimmy and his deputies ran up from the stable block, accompanied by half a dozen confused-looking farm employees and one mangy, yellow pit-bull cross.

  Logan dropped a hand to Maverick’s head and scratched the fellow behind his scraggly, scarred ears as he broke the kiss and slung his arm around Sam before turning to the others. He nodded to Jimmy. “We’re okay. Bellamy’s not.” He jerked his head to the cliff. “It may take him a few days to wash up onshore.”