Slade went on the alert. “Beyond the fence? You mean Cloister Point?”
“Yes, sir. I told that Bekins person a moment ago, and he looked all about. But he didn’t see her.”
Bekins was sharp-eyed, so if he didn’t see something the size of Esmerelda, then Hammonds probably was mistaken. Still, his mood being the suspicious one it was, Slade stared at the fence, mentally measuring Essie’s breadth against the spacing of the iron bars. She couldn’t squeeze between them. He started to dismiss Hammonds’s story, but his mind made the next logical leap for him. She may not be able to squeeze between the bars, but she could dig under them. Son of a bitch.
All right, so what did he have? The dog was on Wilton-Humes property. Maybe she’d run off before Bekins went to investigate. And, if she had a hole dug, she’d come back the same way—when she was damned good and ready. Slade turned to his man. “She’s probably hiding from you. Go on to bed. I’ll keep an eye out for her.”
“As you wish.” Hammonds turned away, but then turned back. “One more thing, Mr. Garrett. I could swear Esmerelda wasn’t alone.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“She wasn’t alone? Someone was with Esmerelda?” Fear spiked through Slade’s guts.
“Well, perhaps not with her, sir. But this someone did take off after the dog. As if he were following her.”
Suddenly, standing there in the bright moonlight, Slade was certain Hammonds wasn’t seeing things. Too much detail for him to be wrong. And what had he just told his men? Investigate everything. Slade looked over to the next property and applied suspicious logic to the circumstances.
If Esmerelda was running ahead of this someone, then she hadn’t been chasing him off Woodbridge Pond. That was good. But it also meant that someone here had escaped the notice of any and all his sentries and was now at Cloister Point. Now, who would be bounding after Esmerelda at this hour? Olivia? No, he’d certainly proved himself an ass there once. Then who? Everyone else was too old. Except for—Slade inhaled sharply. “Hammonds, what did this someone look like?”
Hammonds shook his head. “Why, I don’t know. I gained only a fleeting impression, sir. I could be completely wrong, but—”
“You’re not wrong. All our lives could be at stake, Hammonds. Now, think. What did this someone look like?”
“Um, er—a boy! That’s it, sir. A slender young man. In dark clothes. Running very fast, sir. Very fast. Like a greyhound.”
Slade settled his hands at his waist, thinking. Like a greyhound. Why did that sound familiar? Then he realized he’d said it. But who had he said it about? Son of a bitch. Hannah. Slade felt the life force drain right out of him. He bent forward, putting his hands on his knees.
“I say, sir, are you all right?”
Slade looked up at Hammonds. “I may never be all right again.” He then straightened up.
Hammonds remained silent, as if he knew Slade needed to think this through. But all Slade could think was It’s her. In a man’s clothes. Who else would be so bold? He’d kill her. He’d go get her, make sure she was unharmed, and then he would kill her. She was Isabel all over again—you couldn’t trust her ever to be where she said she would be. Or where you told her to stay.
Another thought leapt to the forefront of Slade’s feverishly working brain. “What are you doing out here looking for Esmerelda? I told Isabel to keep her in her room.”
Hammonds resettled the blanket around his shoulders and clutched at it with both hands. “Indeed, you did. But Mrs. Garrett had other plans.”
Certain his hair stood on end under his Stetson, Slade pulled himself up to his full height. “What the hell did you just say?”
Hammonds took two giant steps back. “I said Mrs. Garrett had other plans—”
“For the evening. I heard you. What other plans?”
Hammonds assumed his butler pose, managing to look imperious, even in his nightshirt and with his knobby knees. “I assure you, sir, that the lady of the house does not consult me as to her plans.”
Had the entire household absconded the minute he stepped outside? Was his word not law in his own home? Slade turned his head to sight on Cloister Point. Apparently not. Because if Hannah Wilton Lawless Garrett and Isabel Winifred Cummings Garrett were not this minute at Cloister Point, then he was a stripe-assed zebra. He looked back at his butler. “Son of a bitch.”
Hammonds breathed in through his nose, enough to puff his chest out. “I beg your pardon!”
But Slade heard the man’s protest on the run. He had to get there in time. He just had to. His heart pumping as fast as his legs, he sped toward the hedges that fronted the iron bars. Had to get to Hannah. Had to get to Isabel. He scratched and shoved his way through the shrubs, only to have his footing give way in knee-twisting suddenness. Cursing and clutching at the iron fence, Slade scrambled for even footing.
“Hammonds,” Slade called over his shoulder. “Go find Bekins. Tell him I’m going to Cloister Point and that I said I can handle this. Tell him to stay at his post and keep the other men at theirs. This could be a trap or a distraction. If it is, I don’t want Woodbridge Pond exposed. You got all that?”
“Yes, sir. I’m on my way. You can count on me.”
Well, that’s one, then. As Hammonds sped off, Slade, still clutching at two iron bars, looked down over his shoulder. Just as he’d suspected. A hole. A big hole. Big enough for Esmerelda. Big enough for Hannah. But not for him.
He’d kill them, that’s all there was to it. Gritting his teeth, he faced his immediate enemy. The fence. How best to get around it—or over it? He knew, from childhood years of looking up at it, that each bar was topped with a spear-shaped tip. If he tried to go over the top, one slip of his hand or foot and he would be impaled. In frustrated rage, he shook the fence, but succeeded only in rattling his own teeth.
Breathing hard, Slade tried to jiggle individual bars within his reach, checking for a possible loose one. Just one. That’s all he needed. Who the hell were the Wilton-Humeses trying to keep out, anyway? But he knew—his father. His drunken, enraged father, bent on forcing himself on a defenseless girl.
Was he his father’s son? He saw himself threatening Hannah at Cloister Point—in her mother’s room. And thought of the depth of his love for her now. How would he behave if she rejected him? Would he react any less violently?
Slade’s head slumped against the cold iron bars of reality. His breath clouded in front of his face. If he could forgive his father, it would be because he now understood what it meant to love. And possibly to lose. Raising his head, he looked across the grounds to the Cloister Point mansion. This fence, erected to keep his father out, wouldn’t keep him out. Because the difference between him and his father was that he wasn’t trying to hurt but to save.
Using his righteous anger to fuel his body, he crouched down like a mountain cat and filled his lungs with icy air. With a mighty effort, he vaulted up and up. Gripping the top horizontal railing between two spearheads, and swinging his legs over, he was on Wilton-Humes soil in one smooth leap. Resettling his Stetson and his pistols, he loped off toward the lighted room at the back of the mansion.
As he ran, each step echoed with but one thought—I’ll kill them, I’ll kill them. And he didn’t know exactly who he meant—Cyrus and Patience, or Hannah and Isabel. Maybe all four of them. Slade ignored his burning lungs, his labored breathing, his cramping legs. To slow down now could mean their deaths. Later he could be tired. But not now. Had to reach Hannah.
His eyes watering, his cheeks stinging with cold, Slade slowed only when he neared the mansion itself. The light from within spilled like a waterfall onto the lawn outside. Slade knew whom he’d see when he looked in. Hannah, Isabel, Cyrus, and Patience. He feared only what they’d be doing. Fighting in a pitched battle? Lying in pools of blood?
He swiped a hand under his nose and sucked in air through his open mouth. His first instinct was to kick open the French doors and burst into the room, guns blazing. And may
be get them all killed since he didn’t know the situation inside. He gritted his teeth in frustration. Dammit! Only that afternoon he’d cursed his own slowness to action, his tendency to think through every possibility, to weigh every option, before making a move.
And now, when it came right down to life or death, he had to rely on those same traits. The very ones of his which had seen no less than eight people dead in the past three months. How then could he save, in the next few moments, the two people he loved most in the world?
Images of Isabel and Hannah popped into his head. Immediately, a surge of pure instinct, pure emotion, welled up in him. Hell, yes, he could. Look out, Cyrus, you son of a bitch, I’m coming for you. Borrowing on every primitive instinct in his soul, Slade curled a lip and went into a crouching run alongside the white stone wall of Cloister Point, right up to the window. His back braced against the wall, he edged to his left, closer and closer to the French doors.
So far, no thumping and bumping or yells and hoarse cries assailed his ears. Only night sounds, the wind in the trees, the hooting of an owl. So, either he was in time or he was too late. Either way, Cyrus Wilton-Humes would die tonight. Slade reached for his twin pistols in their harness straps. His cold fingers fumbled slightly as he drew them out. Cocking each one, he held them up and ready. Pushing his hat to the back of his head, he peeked around the stone corner to look inside.
Tea. Isabel’s having tea with Cyrus and Patience. She’s having tea. Stunned into forgetting himself, Slade stepped into plain view and froze. Guns raised, he stood framed in the rectangular, many-paned glass of the closed doors. Just then, Isabel, the only one of the threesome who sat facing the doors, glanced up and saw him. She jerked back in her chair, her eyes went completely round, and she threw her teacup and saucer to the carpet. Cyrus and Patience jumped up. Now was his chance. Slade reached for the outside latch.
And someone caught him sideways in a full body blow. His Stetson and guns somersaulted with him down the wooded and sloped ground. He rolled and cursed and clutched at the earth … grabbed at a low branch … scratched for a handhold … dug for a toehold. And realized that whoever’d hit him was following him down. Finally, he lay at rest, on his back, in a depression at the slope’s end. Stunned, blinking, he lay there, trying to digest what had just happened. Hannah. Isabel. He had to get to them.
Slade came straight up, only to be knocked back onto the bone-jarringly hard ground. His attacker pressed into him, lying on his chest. Beyond enraged, past murderous, Slade gritted his teeth and curled his hands around the man’s … furry neck? What the hell? He felt further. Esmerelda! Slade pitched over onto his side, dislodging the mastiff at the same time he grabbed for her collar, scrambled to his feet, and kept a firm hand on her, lest she run off again. His voice no more than a hiss, he scolded, “What are you doing over here?”
Esmerelda woofed, jumping at him and nearly succeeding in knocking him to his knees. Damned dog was strong as an ox. Slade kept a death-grip on her collar and got right in her face. “Essie, you big horse, this is no time to play.”
Essie sounded a low growl in her chest, the first one Slade had ever heard from her. Surprised, he pulled back, and then realized she was trying to look back the way she’d come. She then set up a wrenching, twisting fight. Slade’s grip on her slipped. The mastiff took off in a mad tear, clambering effortlessly up the slope. Slade caught intermittent sight of her as she ran into and out of the moonlight. She finally disappeared around the back of the mansion. Could it be that Hannah was in that direction? Or was he just plain nuts for thinking the dog understood what was at stake here?
Only one way to find out. Slade quickly climbed up the hill after her. He peeked again into the parlor. Patience still had her back to him. Cyrus wasn’t in his chair. And that damned Isabel was sitting there, all composed and again sipping tea as if she were the Queen of England.
He waited until she next looked up and then caught her gaze. This time she remained cool and collected, never giving a thing away. Slade gestured, trying to signal What’s going on? Isabel made as if to smooth her hair but then stabbed her finger off to her right. Frowning, Slade stretched and craned, doing his level best to see what she meant. No good. Whoever or whatever she wanted him to see was blocked by the room’s corners and his restricted angle.
He then heard a hoarse cry. From inside the mansion. From inside the room where Isabel and Cyrus and Patience were. No—from where Patience and Isabel were. Where the hell was Cyrus? Tensing, straightening up, Slade narrowed his eyes, listening. The low cry sounded again. A mewling, feminine sound. Slade looked directly at his grandmother, and saw the wrenching fear in her eyes. Then, it came to him—another person was still missing from this little tableau. Hannah.
Slade cast his gaze to the building’s corner. Esmerelda’d gone that way. And Isabel pointed that way. Suddenly sure he had no time to look for his guns—as if he could find them in the tangled undergrowth of shrubs and trees all about, Slade slipped away from the doors and slouched around to the back of the mansion. Aha. A long, narrow window with a view into the room.
And outside with him stood Esmerelda, staring into it with an intensity that was almost human. Gone from her was all sign of playfulness. Gone was the puppy. In its place was a full-grown and deadly hunter, every muscle tensed, every sense honed. Sighting on Slade, she backed off a step, stared accusingly up at him—as if to say What took you so long?
A chill that had nothing to do with the deepening cold of the night slipped over Slade’s skin. He hated like hell all this delay, all this skulking around outside. He wanted to be inside and dealing with that bastard Cyrus and Patience for the last time. Slade moved until he could see into the room.
What he was looking at suddenly registered. Bile rose to a gorge at the back of his throat. He clutched at the cold stones of Cloister Point to keep from staggering to his knees. He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. Nor could he save both Isabel and Hannah. He’d have to choose.
* * *
Bound to a chair in front of a narrow window and across the room from Isabel, Hannah tested the ropes that cut into her wrists. But even those slight movements brought her wincing pain from the lump on her head. That damned Cyrus. Who’d taught him how to hog-tie a critter? Thinking of critters, Hannah realized she no longer heard Esmerelda at her back. Had she perhaps gone home? Maybe she’d be seen coming from here and would raise suspicions about the goings-on here.
And what goings-on they were. Hannah again saw herself shooing Esmerelda once she entered Cloister Point through the tall window in Cyrus’s office. She’d no more than put both feet inside when the door opened and in walked her great-uncle. He’d been as startled as she was. And had proven to be a lot stronger than he looked. In the ensuing struggle, he’d hit her over the head with a paperweight. And that was the last she remembered until she’d come to and found herself hog-tied to this spindly old chair.
Hannah rocked her weight, feeling the chair’s loose joints give some. Interesting. Frowning from the throb in her head, she tipped her tongue over her split and swollen lip. The slightly metallic taste of blood slid down her throat when she swallowed. She looked up when Cyrus approached her. And figured she had nothing left to lose. “Kill me if you want. You won’t get away with it. Slade will come after you.”
Stopping in front of her, Cyrus tucked one of her Peacemakers into his waistband. And then slapped her face, snapping her head to the right. “I told you to shut up, Lawless bitch!”
Despite the shooting pain in her jaw, and the ringing in her ears, Hannah raised her head, sighting on Isabel when she heard the older woman’s gasp and her coldly threatening voice. “Leave her be, you monster. My grandson will tear you limb from limb when he gets here.”
Cyrus rounded on her. “I have every right to—”
“You have no rights. None,” Isabel raged, effectively shutting him up. She then turned on Patience, who sat facing her—and who aimed the oth
er Peacemaker at her heart. “As for you, Patience Wilton-Humes, you either use that peashooter or put it away. Don’t think for a moment you can frighten me with a gun.” She calmly, with steady hands, lifted her teacup and saucer.
A smug smile cragged Patience’s face. “Oh? Try getting up, my dear. See how far you get. I think it would be especially fitting to kill you with one of Hannah’s own guns.” She looked over at her husband. “Cyrus, why are you letting her talk to me like that? What sort of husband are you?”
Hannah, still numb and blinking, nevertheless watched with a degree of satisfaction as Cyrus’s face reddened. He strode stiff-legged to the empty chair next to his wife and sat, leaning forward to glare a threat at Isabel. When he spoke, his voice was the whining snarl of a coward with a gun. “You keep a civil tongue in your head. And I have every right to deal with her”—he pointed at Hannah—“as I see fit. I caught her red-handed in my office, trying to rob me. My own brother’s child—breaking into my home.”
“I’ll not listen to this drivel.”
“You will listen!” Cyrus screeched, sending spittle flying. “Patience and I, out of the goodness of our hearts, intended to show you our evidence of your grandson’s guilt in all these murders, so you’d understand and could protect yourself from him. You could be next, Isabel—for your money. He’d do anything for money—even marry Hannah, a woman he hates, to keep her money.”
“No! You’re lying!” Hannah jerked about in the chair and tore at her bonds, wanting to scratch her great-uncle’s eyes out. And hoping to shake the chair apart so she could get to the peashooter in her pants pocket.
Cyrus sniggered evilly at Hannah. “You think I’m lying? Oh, it was him. Not us. We killed no one. Slade had Catherine killed, you know.”
Hannah exploded with a rage that nearly toppled her chair. A hoarse yell tore from her throat. “Don’t you ever speak my mother’s name.”
Hannah's Promise Page 31
