Cara couldn’t speak. A terrible weight was squeezing her chest, driving all the air from her body. She looked at the lemonade glass, her head pounding. “No.”
“Yes, Cara. I worked out all the details about six months ago. It was Costello who gave me the idea.” She smiled very elegantly, the perfect smile that Washington reporters had seen for years. “And then those terrible threatening letters began to arrive at your office.”
Cara struggled to her feet. “A-Amanda, you didn’t. Costello is a criminal. You can’t know what you’re saying.”
The old woman laughed tightly. “I know exactly what I’m saying. It’s all your fault, after all. If you hadn’t been so selfish, you’d have seen your duty sooner, and none of this would have been necessary. But you aren’t feeling so well, are you? What a pity.”
Sophy gripped the envelope, shivering.
Trust your heart, Summer had told her yesterday, while the surf rumbled in the distance. Sophy thought about her ballet class and about Summer’s words, while she held the colored envelope, her body shaking.
Something was wrong. She felt the way she’d felt those other times, when bad things were about to happen. She’d never been wrong so far.
She looked around at the quiet house, filled with the sudden knowledge that her mother was in danger. Maybe they all were.
Trust your heart, Summer had told her.
Sophy found her backpack and dug inside it.
Apple-cinnamon lip balm. Two Scrunchies. Half of a Snickers bar. Hello Kitty bag. Hello Kitty two-way radio.
Her heart began to pound louder. She took a deep breath.
Trust your heart.
She opened the screen door, then closed it gently with both hands, careful not to let the frame bang. Gripping the radio, the one she and Audra used to play with for hours before Audra started acting so grown-up, Sophy flipped on the power button.
“Audra, can you hear me? Please, Auddie, it’s Sophy. You have to come now.”
“Right here looks good.” Tate pointed toward the stream, silver in the clear morning light.
“But I left my fishing stuff near the horses.”
“Don’t worry, Bud will bring everything down.” Tate took Audra’s arm. “Besides, we’ve got all morning. Let’s go see what’s biting.”
chapter 37
Audra, can you hear me?” Sophy gripped the handset, running toward the stables. “Is anyone here?”
Tears streaked her face as she ran past the empty stalls. “Auddie, please, please hear me. Mom and I need you.”
No one answered.
“Here are some pills to move things along,” Amanda said coldly. “Fifteen should do the job. Probably even six or seven would work.”
“Amanda, you can’t mean what you’re saying.”
“Shut up for once. You’re not in a courtroom now.” Tate Winslow’s elegant mother, dignified in a gray silk jacket and skirt, pulled a bottle from her pocket. “I’ve thought it all out.”
Dizzy, Cara stumbled back toward the door, only to find Amanda moving to cut her off. “Tate wouldn’t want this,” Cara whispered. “He’ll hate you.”
“His career means everything to him—and to me. I won’t let one silly woman ruin all that he’s worked for. I’m only glad I finally realized how dangerous you are.”
Cara closed her eyes, trying to focus. No, none of it made sense. Amanda wasn’t rational.
She clutched her stomach as another wave of nausea hit. Something in the lemonade, she realized. The pain came again, bending her double.
Amanda pursed her lips as she unscrewed the top of the bottle. “The girls are absolutely wonderful, even if you do persist in coddling them beyond permission. But I’ll see to it that they’re given some spine. No more pampering. They’ll go off to the best schools in the East, since Tate and I won’t have much time for them. Once the news of your suicide from a drug overdose hits the papers, he’s going to be terribly busy doing damage control. But I’ll make certain he looks heroic. A sad man hoodwinked by an aggressive and unstable woman. His female demographics should skew right through the roof,” she added gravely. “All you have to do is swallow a few pills. As a matter of fact, you might be the final thing that puts him into the White House.”
“Keep your hands off my girls,” Cara said hoarsely. “You’re s-sick, Amanda. You’re twisted.”
“Actually, you are the one who is sick. The nausea can be quite awful, I understand.”
With trembling steps Cara wobbled toward the door. She had to get help, but the phone was downstairs. She’d never make it that far.
“Nasty, right to the end. A good prosecutor and a wretched choice for a wife.” In the sunlight, Amanda’s manicured nails looked like perfect drops of blood as she poured a handful of pills into her palm. “I suppose I should call Patrick to help me with this part.”
Cara tried to focus. “Patrick Flanagan? Patrick, our chef?”
“Didn’t you know? Patrick has been working for Richard Costello for a long time now. I’m afraid he hates you greatly, my love.”
Summer’s lacerated wrists were on fire.
Dust flew up in angry brown sheets, and then the truck tilted sharply, slamming her back against the door frame.
Not panda, she realized.
Not a panda at all.
She knew now what name Underhill had tried to give them, but it was too late to help. Gabe threw his body over the seat—over Underhill and over her—to protect them, and there was a loud BOOM! like overhead thunder and she was tossed straight forward, glass clawing at her head.
Then there was only pain and a flat wall of darkness sweeping down around her.
“Auddie, where are you?”
The handset crackled against Sophy’s ear. “I’m right here. Why are you shouting, Sophy? You’re scaring all the fish.”
Sophy almost dropped the radio in her panic. “S-something’s wrong, Auddie. You’ve got to come back to the house right away. Have them call the police.”
“What are you talking about? Sophy, if this is a joke—”
“It’s not, Auddie. I saw something and it was horrible. Mommy’s in danger, and you have to come here now. Hurry, and be sure to bring the others with you.”
“What do you mean? Why—”
“I have go back now. Hurry.”
Sophy shoved the radio back in her pocket. She found what she’d been searching for, then raced back through the stables.
A strange car was parked at the back of the house now.
Sophy didn’t question the instinct that made her zigzag through the trees and enter quietly from the small side porch, where no one would see her.
The phone was ringing downstairs, but Cara could barely hear it. She sank onto her knees, holding her stomach as more cramps hit. Amanda’s hands blurred in front of her, shoving her onto the floor.
Downstairs the phone stopped ringing.
Cara thought of her girls. She refused to fail them. She wouldn’t miss their driving tests and proms, their graduations and beautiful weddings.
Her vision was getting worse, and sharp nails dug at her mouth, trying to work the big capsules past her locked teeth. Cara shook her head, fighting hard, but she was losing strength fast.
She remembered there had been something bitter in the lemonade, something that didn’t taste like pulp. Amanda’s shadow fell over her.
Amanda.
As she wobbled back to her feet, Sophy ran into the room. Cara tried to protest, but her daughter dug in her pocket and pushed Amanda back against the wall.
There was something small and gray in Sophy’s hands, Cara realized. Cats? But Amanda was desperately allergic to cats. They made her skin break out and her throat swell up. Sophy knew that.
Of course. Smart, brave Sophy was frightening Amanda with two of the stable cats, defending her mother. As she crawled across the floor, Cara heard Amanda cough, shouting at Sophy. Cara gripped Amanda’s legs and held on tight, forcing the old woman t
o drop her hands.
One by one the pills scattered, hitting the floor.
Downstairs the phone began to ring again and there were loud footsteps on the porch, followed by a man’s voice, tense and angry. Patrick, here in Wyoming?
The front door banged hard and Cara threw up in waves of torment that seemed to go on and on. Sophy pressed close, burrowing against her while the cats meowed between them.
Cara pitched forward, her body shaking. She didn’t hear Sophy cry out or call her name. She didn’t even feel Tate pick her up, cradle her head, and carry her carefully down the stairs.
The sirens were deafening.
The noise barely registered with Izzy. Considering the kind of work he did, he had seen all manner of deaths. He’d watched men gurgle away their lives from throat wounds, choking on their own blood. He’d seen men rub their eyes, only to find that their faces had been shot away. He’d even spent his own private stretch of time in hell, beginning on a perfect summer day in Thailand many years before. The scars he still carried served to remind him how men could stoop to acts of violence that no animal would commit.
He watched a team of men with stretchers carefully lift Summer’s body off the front of the mangled truck, where the village women had found her. No one in authority was saying much, despite all his questions, and Izzy’s training as a medic told him that Summer’s condition would be touch and go.
Thank God, he’d been able to trace them through Gabe’s backup cell phone.
He turned and looked at Gabe. The man was still recovering from a HALO jump that by all rights should have killed him, and since that hadn’t done the job, the damn SEAL had to get himself thrown around inside a runaway truck.
And on top of everything else, Izzy couldn’t reach Tate Winslow or Cara O’Connor at the ranch in Wyoming.
Izzy punched another number on his phone as two medical techs passed him carrying another stretcher to the crash site for Gabe, who had blocked Summer’s impact with his own body. Flung across the dashboard, he had twisted hard, one shoulder pinned under the steering wheel while his knee punched right through the rusted front dashboard.
One of the medics whispered that he would never walk again. Seeing the unnatural angle of Gabe’s knee and two inches of exposed bone, Izzy knew it was a grim possibility.
In the distance a chopper droned closer. About damned time, Izzy thought. He had pulled a whole lot of strings to arrange fast transport across the border to a U.S. facility where Gabe and Summer would receive expert care.
As the big bird thundered in, Izzy stood motionless, squinting into the dust and wishing like hell that he could do something more to help.
But he was fresh out of miracles, so he stabbed his cell phone and tried Tate Winslow in Wyoming one more time.
chapter 38
Tate stood on the porch shouting into his cell phone as Bud roared up in his big pickup. They’d take the fastest route to Laramie, where the ER staff had been notified to expect them, with a possible diagnosis of poisoning.
Tate hadn’t believed it when Audra ran along the river, shouting at him, her face white as chalk. He’d ridden with her back to the house, convinced it was some kind of a joke, but then he’d seen Cara, curled up on the floor, fighting to breathe.
With Bud’s help, he lifted Cara into the backseat while the girls got in front. Tate covered Cara gently with a blanket, desperate to do something, anything at all, to help her. She was too pale, her body shaking, her breath labored.
Suddenly everything he’d accepted and dreamed about seemed to slide away from him. If what Sophy said was true, and his mother had truly argued with Cara, then tried to give her some kind of pills . . .
Amanda was headstrong and painfully determined when she had a goal in mind, but Tate couldn’t believe she would hurt Cara or the girls. She had told Tate once that Cara was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and she valued the strength of family as much as he had, even if she had been quick to calculate the political points a family would score in a campaign. “Being happily married with two adorable children never hurt a man who wants to be president of the greatest country on earth,” she had told him confidently.
Impossible to think of his mother snapping completely, turning into a murderer.
Tate closed his eyes. The truth was that he hadn’t spent much time with her in the last year. His brother had mentioned that she had some health issues, but they’d been minor, according to Greg, mainly a problem with one of her medications. But that, too, had been resolved, and just last week Amanda had assured Tate that she felt better than she had at thirty.
The truck pitched and swayed along the bumpy drive, dust kicking up in an angry cloud. Cara’s eyes closed and her head lolled.
Tate felt as if his whole world had tilted off course. The girls looked almost as bad as he felt.
Leaning forward, he put his arms around Audra, then Sophy. “I thought it was a joke. Dear God, I was so sure.” He closed his eyes and worked to pull himself together. He owed the girls that much.
He owed Cara that much.
“She’s going to be fine, you two. The people at the hospital have everything ready for us.” He struggled a moment, then forced a smile, the strong, confident kind that he used to forge coalitions and build grassroots assent.
Neither Audra nor Sophy responded.
Tate frowned at a sudden thought. “Sophy, honey, did you see where Grandma Amanda went? Did you hear a car?”
Sophy gave him an odd look, and for a moment her eyes were a stranger’s eyes. “I heard her leave, Uncle Tate. I think I heard her car. I—I can’t remember.” Her lip started to tremble as she looked down at her mother. “Patrick was there, but he left, too.”
“Patrick, your chef, here at the ranch? Well, never mind. I’m sure my mother went to get help.” Tate tried to put the best spin on matters as he glanced at the rearview mirror and met Bud’s eyes. It was like a kick in the chest when his ranch foreman frowned and shook his head.
So it was true. Bud had seen something Tate hadn’t. How long had Amanda been planning this, hating the woman he loved?
Wind churned across the road, scattering leaves and dirt over the windshield, so they drove blind.
If he lost Cara, nothing would matter. Tate choked the thought down like ashes. No way was he going to lose her. He’d badger and bribe every specialist in the country until someone found a way to help. Then he’d badger and harass Cara until she got well, just because she would be sick of seeing his face all day, every day. And he’d damned well take care of her girls until she was strong enough to take care of them herself.
It was the least he could do. Even if she hated him after this, hated the thing his mother had tried to do.
With Cara in his lap, he gripped Audra’s hand, pulling Sophy against his shoulder, and stared out at the roiling dust, trying to think about life, not death.
Dirt blocked the road, making the Mercedes skid wildly.
Amanda stared at the cloud for a moment, forgetting why she was here. Then she remembered.
Because of her, the beautiful, scheming woman who had stolen her son and destroyed his future—what would have been Tate’s and Amanda’s magnificent future together.
She was glad she had let Patrick drive. Her nerves were shot and she was still having trouble breathing.
He slanted her a questioning look. “Did you do it? Was she frightened?”
Amanda shuddered. “Sophy came, but I’m sure Cara got the message.”
Patrick slapped the wheel happily. “Better and better. Her own daughter sees her terror. That’s perfect.”
“Don’t be coarse, Patrick.”
“Shut up, Amanda. Business is business. So did she agree to help out with the appeal? Will she get that forensic evidence we need?”
“Not exactly.” Cara had been curled up on the floor struggling to breathe when Amanda had left. With any luck she would soon be dead. But Patrick and his vicious employer didn’t pla
n on losing their inside informer. Their goal was her complete compliance, not her death.
The poison had been Amanda’s revelation. She had to free her son from his obsession with Cara before the woman distracted him from his crucial political mission. It was Amanda’s simple duty as a mother.
“What did she say?”
“Not much. She was too . . . upset.”
Patrick turned, glaring at her. “You did something, didn’t you? What was it, old woman?” Patrick gripped her arm. “Tell me, damn you.”
“I did something I’ve been thinking of for months.” Amanda felt a ragged laugh escape, then another. “You never knew. You thought you would use me, Patrick, but I used you.”
Amanda stopped suddenly. She had been a certified beauty for fifty years, and she was still held to be the yardstick for charm and elegance. Now it was all crashing to an end.
“Forget about Cara and drive,” she said acidly. Her head was aching and she couldn’t think straight. Every detail had been meticulously arranged, from the contact in Mexico and the threatening letters to the kidnapping at the clinic when the wretched nanny and Gabe Morgan had checked in. No doubt both of them were dead by now. A pity, since Gabe had always been a respectful boy, but Costello’s men would have seen to that.
Just as Cara should have been dead by now, thanks to the ground seeds Amanda had mixed in the lemonade pulp. The botanist at the National Arboretum had described their action very thoroughly while giving Amanda’s garden club a tour six months ago.
She remembered his discussion of toxic glycoproteins, whatever those were, but all that really mattered were the small scarlet seeds, which concentrated the main toxin of the plants. The botanist had assured his fascinated audience that even one seed well-chewed could cause fatal poisoning.
Amanda had used five seeds, taken from plants scattered about the gardens of her sprawling estate back in South Carolina. The same plants now grew in Cara’s backyard, thanks to Amanda. Of course, Tate wouldn’t care to make public the sordid details of Cara’s suicide, so it would be termed an accidental overdose, possibly influenced by Cara’s fear of scandal, resulting from the discovery of her visit to Los Reyes Clinic.
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