The Bastard

by Julie Kriss

  But Ronnie didn’t lead me into the room. Instead, she said, “Dylan came here without you. What’s going on?”

  Panic squeezed my rib cage. “He decided I was safer at the hotel, that’s all.”

  “That’s bullshit, Madison.” The words were harsh, but her hand squeezed mine. “When I called him earlier, you were in the shower.”

  Oh, God. She knew. She knew.

  “He said you two were a thing,” Ronnie continued. “He told me it wasn’t casual. That it was serious. At least to him.”

  He’d said that? It hurt all over again. I was glad we were in darkness because my expression would have given everything away—how I felt, how devastated I was. “Ronnie, it isn’t—it isn’t casual to me, either.”

  “Then what happened? Because something obviously did.”

  I forced the words out. “I kept a file on him. It was part of the job for Hank. We had investigators tracking Dylan, reporting on his movements. Taking pictures. Collecting personal information.” It hurt to say it, but I did it. “He found the file. Actually, his mother paid off my assistant for it and sent it to him.”

  I heard Ronnie inhale. “Charlene has always been a nightmare. She’s a drunk, too. Dylan has his faults, but I can’t blame him for wanting to get away from her. It sounds like something she’d do.”

  “Yeah, well, that isn’t everything she sent. She also sent him a confidential memo from my partners, congratulating me on getting him to sign the papers and forfeit the estate. And giving me a bonus for it. One I didn’t ask for.”

  Ronnie was quiet.

  I thought he must have told her; maybe he hadn’t. Well, I was the estate’s lawyer, and it was time to break the news. “He isn’t taking the estate, Ronnie. He signed the papers. He’s releasing his claim on everything.”

  Ronnie’s voice was soft. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because I told him to. I advised him.” I felt my face heat. “We were getting close, and I persuaded him. But I really felt it was the right thing for him to do. I still believe that.” I swallowed. “The thing is, the partners didn’t tell me I’d get a bonus for getting him to sign.”

  “Oh, no,” Ronnie said.

  “He’s angry. Very angry. I told him the bonus was a surprise, that it wasn’t my idea, but…”

  “Good lord.” Ronnie sighed. “Okay, I can see that. I can see why he’s upset. But he’ll get over it. If he’s really serious about you, he’ll forgive you.”

  I didn’t say anything. Because those were the key words, weren’t they? If he’s really serious about you. And I didn’t know that. Not at all.

  Even though he’d said the words to his sister, a woman he hadn’t been close to in years.

  Even though, in all of those old, dirty emails I shouldn’t have read, he’d never once said that he was serious about another woman.

  He’d said it about me. And then he’d walked away.

  “I came here to help,” I told Ronnie, desperate to change the subject. “Is there something I can do?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. You don’t happen to have a paramedic in your purse, would you?”

  My heart tripped. “Why? Is someone hurt?”

  “We have a little girl here, Julia. She’s ten. She has asthma. The dark and the storm are frightening her and making it worse. She’s with her mother, and she has an inhaler, but she probably shouldn’t be here. She’s starting to panic. What if she has a full-out attack?”

  “I’ll take them,” I said. “You’re right, she should probably be in a hospital for observation, just in case. How far is the nearest hospital?”

  “It’s probably forty-five minutes. Faster if you speed.”

  I felt my spine stiffen with resolve. “I can do it, but we need to leave now. Right now. It’s still driveable out there, but maybe not for long.” I could feel Ronnie hesitate. “Ronnie, if we don’t leave now, it could be hours before we can go. And if there are trees or power lines down over the roads after this storm, it could be even longer. Paramedics are going to be overwhelmed as it is.”

  “Okay,” Ronnie said. “You’re right. Okay. Take them. But be quick. And for God’s sake, be safe.”

  The first twenty minutes went just fine. Both Julia and her mother sat in the back seat of my sort-of-rented car while I drove as fast as I safely could. Julia’s mother’s name was Jenny, and she sat with her arms around her daughter, inhaler at the ready as Julia sat quietly and tried not to cry.

  The sky got darker and the wind felt like it might actually tilt the car. I’d never felt anything like it. Don’t panic, Maddy. Don’t panic.

  But Julia wasn’t fooled. “Are we going to make it?” she asked. “We aren’t going to make it.”

  “Hush, sweetie,” Jenny said, rubbing her daughter’s arms. “We’ll be just fine, don’t you worry.”

  But Julia twisted away from her mother and looked out the back window. “Mom, look! It’s a tornado!”

  I glanced in my rearview mirror and nearly drove off the road. There was a funnel cloud a few miles behind us. It was pitch black and huge, and the way it moved looked strangely alive, as if it was somehow sentient. I’d never seen anything so terrifying, and so weirdly almost beautiful, in my life.

  And it was behind us. At The King’s Land.

  There was a tornado at The King’s Land.

  I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t panic. I had a little girl in the car with me who was already on the verge of an asthma attack. I forced myself to look away from the rearview and keep driving, edging the gas a little harder. There weren’t even any houses or other structures along this stretch of road, nowhere to pull over and hide. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, but keep driving and get the hell away from the tornado seemed like a good bet.

  “Go faster, Maddy,” Jenny said. She, too, was fighting to keep calm, but I could hear the panic in her voice.

  “I’m on it,” I said.

  And I thought it might be fine. There was no one else on the road, at least until we got to the main highway. There might be traffic there. But if I could take back roads to get to the hospital, maybe we could—

  Dylan, I thought. Take cover, Dylan. Please. Please.

  Panic tried to rise in my throat again. Ronnie, Sabrina, Bea, Clayton, Garrett…they were all still there. The house was big and sturdy and they were all probably fine. But probably wasn’t good enough. That tornado was terrifying.

  Please be okay, Dylan. Please.

  The wind blasted the car again under flashes of lightning, and the thought crossed my mind that the people I’d left in the house might be safer than we were, tornado or no tornado. Couldn’t tornadoes flip cars? Or had I only seen that in movies? Jesus, law school didn’t prepare you for this kind of thing.

  If we could just get to the hospital. It was a little bit farther—

  Julia screamed.

  Something was coming at us. A dark shadow that formed into a tree branch—a huge one, heading for the windshield. I turned the wheel to try and avoid it and felt the back tires slip on the gravel at the side of the road. Then the branch hit the car with a sickening crack. Julia and Jenny screamed, and the car spun off the road into the ditch.

  For a second there was silence except for the pounding of rain and the screaming of the wind. My shoulder ached where the seatbelt had cut into it, my jaw ached, and I was sitting tilted at an angle with the branch on the windshield in front of my face, but otherwise I was alive. “Is everyone okay?” I called out, unbuckling my seatbelt and trying to turn in my seat.

  “We’re all right, I think,” Jenny said. I could hear Julia’s heavy breathing. I turned and saw them both in the back seat, tilted at the same crazy angle, Jenny’s arms around Julia. “Maybe we should—”

  There was another crash, and we all screamed—me, too, this time. Something big and heavy hit the car. I looked out the window to see it was a shed—literally someone’s garden shed, picked up from God knew how far away and flung by the wind. N
ow it sat lodged against our tilted car, wedged into the passenger-side door. The driver’s side, I realized, was flush against the dirt and grass of the ditch, which meant we couldn’t get out.

  There was a thin wheezing sound from the back. I turned back to see Jenny putting the inhaler to her daughter’s mouth. Julia was pale and still, her eyes wide with panic, her chest moving as she fought to breathe.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Jenny said softly. “Just breathe. We’re all safe. It’s okay.”

  I reached back and took Julia’s hand, holding it and stroking it. It was ice cold. Jesus, how had this happened? I’d woken up this morning in my condo in LA, packing to go to the airport to go to the wedding of the year. And now, here I was.

  I dug out my cell phone and saw, miraculously, that it had a single bar. I dialed Dylan.

  He answered almost immediately, and I almost wept to hear his voice. “Maddy?”

  “Dylan, are you all right? I’m in a car by the side of the road. Highway 2, I think. I crashed into a ditch, but we’re all okay. Where are you?”

  But there was nothing on the other end. The signal was dead.

  I put the phone down and squeezed Julia’s cold hand as she breathed in, out, in again. “It’s okay,” I told her softly, adding my voice to her mother’s. “We’re going to wait it out here. The storm’s going to pass over us, and then we’ll get out and go to the hospital. Just hold on, honey. Breathe and hold on.”

  I listened to the thin sound of her breathing, the soft sound of Jenny talking to her daughter, and hoped to hell I was right. Hoped that Dylan had heard me. Hoped that something, anything, would get us out of here.

  25

  DYLAN

  Later, I wondered how long the whole thing took. Ten minutes? Twenty? In some ways it felt like seconds, and in other ways it felt like a year.

  The King’s Land stables, fortunately, were built like a fortress. Hank’s prized horses were worth a lot of money, and he valued them more than he valued most of the people he met. So we sheltered in the overhang beneath the loft as the tornado blasted through and the horses kicked up a fuss in their stalls. Luckily Bea and the stable hands had bedded the horses down properly, including hoods over their eyes, so they wouldn’t panic and hurt themselves. We heard something smash against the outside of the stable, and a ripping noise that was probably shingles coming off the roof. A disembodied fence hurtled past the doorway and disappeared. The sound was almost deafening.

  And then it stopped.

  We looked at each other for a long minute after the silence fell. The light was still dark and yellowish purple, the wind was still whistling, but the waterfall-like roar was gone. The tornado had moved on. Bea, Garrett, Clayton, and I all exchanged a look, all of us thinking the same thing.

  “The house,” Bea said.

  We stood and sprinted out of the stables toward the house. There was debris everywhere: shingles, broken fences, heavy branches, planks of wood. The shed around the generator was demolished, though the generator itself was still in place. I could see broken windows on the ranch house, and one of the back doors was ripped off. Please let everyone be okay.

  Maddy. Where is Maddy?

  I was going to make sure everyone in the house was all right. And then I was going to fucking find her.

  “Ronnie!” Clayton tore through the broken back door, past the soaked entry hall and into the ballroom. The lights were out again—so much for all of our work digging.

  Ronnie came from the dark ballroom and threw herself into Clayton’s arms. Sabrina was right behind her, launching herself at Garrett. It was touching—even Bea looked moved. I brushed past everyone and checked the ballroom, where everyone had waited out the tornado. The house had held, and everyone was fine.

  I left the ballroom and strode toward the front door. I heard footsteps behind me. “Dylan! Where are you going?”

  It was Ronnie. “I’m going back to the hotel,” I told her. “Maddy called me. I have to get her.”

  “She called you?” Ronnie put a hand on my arm to stop me. “Dylan, she’s not at the hotel. She came here. She took one of the guests and her daughter to the hospital. The daughter has asthma and was starting to panic. When did she call you?”

  “Right before the tornado hit.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair. Jesus—Maddy had been on the road, unprotected, trying to help. What a fucking fool I’d been, leaving her alone. “The signal cut out, but I heard her voice. Tell me where she went—the exact route.”

  Ronnie looked pale. “Maybe she’s fine. Maybe they made it and she was just calling to check on you.”

  I looked at her. We both knew the odds were that wasn’t the truth. I felt it in my gut, a screaming instinct that something was wrong. That with every minute that ticked by, it was going to go more and more wrong.

  “Tell me the route,” I said to her again.

  “At least take Garrett with you. He’s the sheriff. If someone needs help, maybe he can help them.”

  “Ronnie. Tell me where she went.”

  She bit her lip, and then she told me. What roads were the shortest route to the hospital—the way Maddy would have taken. I thanked her, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and took off for my car.

  I tried dialing Maddy’s number over and over, but the signal was out. I pulled onto the road, avoiding the debris and fallen branches that strewed the driveway, and followed Maddy’s trail. In my rearview mirror, I saw a big SUV pull out of the driveway behind me—Garrett, probably. I wasn’t going to shake him, and that was fine with me. If he wanted to follow and help me out, I could use it.

  It took us nearly an hour, picking our way down first one road and then another. We had to weave through the debris, and three times we had to stop entirely and haul tree branches from the road. We had to drive on the shoulder at one point to avoid fallen power lines. There were a few cars out, people trying to collect their loved ones or start the cleanup. I still dialed Maddy’s phone over and over, but the cell towers must have been damaged, because nothing went through.

  The longer it took, the more I panicked. She was hurt somewhere—I didn’t know how I knew it, but I knew it. With every minute that spun out, I could feel her getting farther from me. If she was in pain, or unconscious, the clock was ticking. I needed to find her.

  I was soaked and filthy from the storm, and in the hot, close air that followed as the storm cells broke up I felt sweat coating my back. Garrett worked tirelessly alongside me, helping move debris off the road, reassuring people that he was the sheriff and everything would be fine. His dress pants and button-down shirt, which were the remnants of his wedding-guest clothes, were completely ruined, his dress shoes were coated in mud, and he was as soaked in sweat as I was. Still, we followed Maddy’s route, searching.

  “What the hell is that?” Garrett had pulled up beside me in his SUV as we made our way down the two-lane blacktop, our windows rolled down so we could shout at each other. I followed where he was pointing and saw a garden shed lying in a ditch. There was something beneath it.

  When I got closer, I saw it was a car, crashed into the ditch, the doors pinned shut by its angle to the ground and the shed on top of it.

  I’d never seen that car before.

  Maddy, all my instincts said.

  I stopped the car in the middle of the road and got out, not bothering to close the door behind me. I splashed into the muddy ditch and approached the car. “There’s someone inside!” I shouted up at Garrett. “I can hear voices!”

  Someone was shouting inside the car; a fist knocked on a window. Garrett and I got into position and pushed on the shed, trying to haul it off. It wouldn’t move.

  “Again!” Garrett shouted.

  We pushed again, sweating and straining, and I quietly thanked Providence that I’d started this mission with a former football quarterback who was probably the strongest guy at The King’s Land. We pushed again, and again, while people shouted inside the car and the hot post-storm sun beat
down on our backs.

  Finally, the shed budged. We rocked it back and forth, then tilted it and slid it off the car. The passenger door was buckled, but I yanked it hard and it finally opened.

  Maddy was there.

  She was pale, disheveled, sweaty, and she had a bruise on her forehead. She had tear stains on her cheeks. But it was Maddy. All of her, alive and whole and breathing. I pulled her up and into my arms and she wrapped herself around me, sobbing. I held her like I’d never let her go.

  Over her shoulder, I watched Garrett pull a woman and a young girl out of the car, the girl with an inhaler in her hand. “Are you okay?” I said to Maddy. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she said, not loosening her grip on me. “I’m bruised, but nothing’s broken. I’m so happy to see you.” Her voice broke on the last word.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said against her neck, inhaling the warm scent of her skin. “Maddy, I am so fucking sorry.” God, what if something had happened to her? I’d spend the rest of my life feeling nothing but sorry. I had come so close.

  “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I should have told you about the file. I’ll give the bonus back and—”

  “Forget it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” I loosened my grip and looked at her face, cradling her jaw gently in my hands. “Nothing matters except that you’re okay.” I kissed her, long and hard, and she kissed me back, her arms winding around my neck, her hands going into my hair.

  When she broke the kiss she said, “We couldn’t get out of there. We couldn’t call anyone. If you hadn’t gotten here…” She stopped, like the words wouldn’t come.

  I stroked her back. “Of course I came for you,” I said. “I’d come for you anywhere. I’d never fucking stop until I found you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, though she didn’t seem inclined to let me go. “Is everyone at the ranch okay?”

  “Everyone is fine. Medieval kings had nothing on Hank. That place could probably withstand an army.”