Taylor had always considered herself a true artist.
Sure, she had gone to college to study graphic design, and sure, she had segued into interior decorating. But for all that she had besmirched her talent with good jobs that made gobs of money, she hugged close a strong sense of superiority. Deep inside, she had believed that if she flung away the trappings of success and became a full-time artist, her talent would change the world.
So to celebrate the crashing destruction of her second engagement, she had flown to Salt Lake City, rented a vehicle, and driven north along the Wasatch Range. She stopped to sketch every vista, expecting that sensitive, brilliant, expressive art would form beneath her fingers ……
No. Not once. Not a hint of genius, of uplifting emotion or self-knowledge or glory or pain. All these years of believing in herself, and this … this was it?
Drawn by the conviction that if she got home, she would rediscover her muse, she drove north, into Idaho. In Sun Valley, she rented a room, spent the night, and now here she was, heart pounding as she pulled into an isolated picnic area. She backed the Cherokee into a parking spot hidden by brush and trees. She grabbed a bottle of water, her waist pack, and her drawing pad, and climbed out. She followed a trail that wound through the trees, looking for the one spot she wished, believed, hoped, would reignite her vision.
In less than a mile, the forest ended and a wide, green meadow opened its arms to her, and she recognized this place. This, far more than the ranch, was home. Here her father had taught her to camp, to hike, to hunt. Of all her early life, those were the moments she treasured.
Taylor climbed up on one of the smooth, massive black basalt boulders abandoned by the glaciers. To her left and her right, as far as she could see, forbidding and majestic pinnacles pierced the pale blue of the August sky. To capture the grandeur of the Sawtooth Mountains required bold-hued oil paints done on a large canvas by a master.
All they had was her.
But she was here, and she longed to pay tribute to the forces of the earth.
Opening her sketch pad, she took up her charcoal pencil and gave her soul over to the vista before her.
When she had finished, she pulled back and studied her achievement.
In high school, her art teacher had told her anyone could draw a mountain, but a true artist depicted the soul of the mountain and gave the viewer a sense of glorious austerity or forbidding heights or searing cold. A true artist created not art, but feelings: longing, terror, love. Most of all, Taylor’s art teacher warned her against making mountains look like ice cream cones.
Taylor could state with great assurance the mountains she had sketched did not look like ice cream cones.
They looked like ingrown toenails.
She rifled through her sketch pad, looking at each and every one of her drawings. How had she reduced the imperious majesty and eternal grandeur of the western mountains to such a disgusting human condition? She had dreamed of and planned for this, imagined her artistic talent would blossom in the place so long cherished in her childhood memories. Instead, she was a failure, such a failure that she was almost relieved when she heard a car bouncing along the washboard gravel road behind her. She shut her drawing tablet, slid off the rock, and headed into a stand of pines.
Not that she needed to hide. She had as much right to be here as anyone. But she was a woman alone. The car probably contained a rancher or some tourists, but wild game attracted out-of-season hunters, old gold claims dotted the creeks, and longtime residents carried guns. Up here, it was better to be safe than sorry.
When a black Mercedes came around the bend, hitting every rut as if it was a personal challenge, she grinned.
Rich tourists. She knew the type, city folks who could not believe that every road in America wasn’t paved for their convenience. She wondered how far they would go before the washboards defeated them, or before they destroyed their car’s oil pan on a protruding rock.
They passed out of sight behind a boulder as big as a house, where the road cut through the meadow, and there the sound of the engine cut out.
Probably they had a picnic lunch. They’d dine and head back …
She glanced at her watch. Two-thirty. Pretty soon, she needed to return to her rental Cherokee, too. It was a good two-plus-hours drive back to town. But first …… she started walking deeper into the woods, looking for something less imposing to sketch. A tree, maybe. Or a bug.
On the road, two doors slammed.
One man spoke, coldly, clearly: “Get him out of the trunk.”
CHAPTER TWO
Taylor stopped.
Him? Out of the trunk?
She didn’t like this guy’s tone. She didn’t like his words.
Who, or what, was in the trunk?
“Do you think this is far enough?” The other man sounded itchy, nervous.
She started walking again. None of her business ……
“How the hell much farther do you want to drive on that miserable crapfest of a trail? Jimmy said to bring him up here, find some place lonely, finish him, and dump the body—”
She froze.
“Isn’t this lonely enough for you?”
“I guess—”
A thump.
“Yes!”
Finish him? Dump the body?
She felt disoriented. Birds were twittering. Above her, massive Douglas fir trees wrapped the heavens in their branches and sang a song to the wind.
And someone within her earshot was talking about … dumping the body?
“Then that’s what we’re going to do,” the first guy said. “You want to argue with Jimmy?”
“No. No,” the other guy stammered. “Not that scary bastard.”
Some guy named Jimmy had hired these guys to ……
The trunk latch opened with barely a sound.
A child’s scream filled the air.
This could not be happening. Taylor could not be up here, alone in the most peaceful place on earth, trying to get back her artistic mojo, and bear witness to a murder. A child’s murder.
The second man said, “Jesus Christ, he hurled all over the trunk. I’m going to have to take this to the car detailers to get it cleaned up.”
“No, you’re not. How are you going to explain barf in the trunk? Tell them we were hauling a kid in there? Clean it yourself.” The first guy had a baritone voice, and when he rolled out the orders, he did it with authority.
Above the voices, the child’s wail became sobbing, punctuated by gasps for air.
Taylor did not want to be here.
But she was.
Chills ran up her arms, and she felt like hurling, too.
She left the protection of the trees and moved quietly into place behind the boulder.
She was safe here. She was. The boulder was as big as a house. Dense. Tall. Rolled into place by some ice age glacier.
She was safe.
She was a fool.
With her back against the rough stone, she slid and looked, slid and looked. Finally the car came into view.
And the men.
And the little boy.
And the guns.
Pistols, big pistols, held with casual familiarity in the men’s hands.
One guy was bulky and narrow-eyed. He was in charge.
One was thin and muttering. He held the boy by the scruff of the neck and shook him like a terrier with a rat.
The boy … the boy was about eight, white-faced, dark-haired, covered with vomit. Terrified.
Taylor was terrified, too. Her hands trembled. Her knees shook. Her heart thundered in her ears.
But she could still hear the casual slap Mr. Skinny gave the boy.
“Shut up,” he said.
The boy sobbed more softly.
She looked again. She recognized the big guy. Seamore “Dash” Roberts, running back, Miami Dolphins, big scandal, jail time, a career that barely survived in arena football … yeah.
The other guy wasn’t any
body. He was just, you know, sweaty.
Both guys wore suits. Up here. In the land of ranchers, Ford trucks, tourists, and the occasional tree-hugger. So these men in the suits were out of place. But they didn’t care. Because they were here to kill the boy and get out.
Good. Good. She could ID these guys … when she got down to the police department. After they’d murdered that little boy.
“Where do you want to do it?” Mr. Skinny asked.
Dash glanced around.
Taylor flattened herself against the rock.
“There, by that tree stump.” He pointed. “That way we can prop him up. He’ll face the road and when McManus shows up, he’ll see him right away.”
“Let him search.” Mr. Skinny laughed.
The boy’s crying gave a hitch.
She glanced again.
He was terrified. Yes, he was. But he was also eyeing the men, looking around at his surroundings, like he knew he had to make a run for it. Like he knew he had to save himself.
“Christ’s sake, think about it.” Dash again, snappy and scornful. “There are wild animals up here. Wolves. Coyotes. We hide the body, they’ll drag it away and eat it. Jimmy will be furious. He’s paying, and he wants the most bang for his buck. Shock. Horror. All that crap.”
“He really wants to get this dude’s attention, doesn’t he?”
“You don’t want to get on Jimmy’s wrong side. He knows how to handle business.”
The child shivered convulsively. He wore a school uniform. A school uniform, for shit’s sake, with slacks, a pressed shirt and a tie. He was old enough to know he was going to die, and young enough not really to understand.
Well. Who did understand? She didn’t. She wished she could help him. But there was no way. She wasn’t carrying a gun. She couldn’t just run at these guys, guys who were obviously professional hit men, and save the kid. All she would do was die, too. That wouldn’t help the boy. She could do nothing but watch helplessly.
Even as she thought that, she was quietly, relentlessly tearing the sheets out of her drawing tablet. They were eight-by-eleven, good-sized sheets of paper with whipped cream clouds and ingrown toenail mountains.
She didn’t have a plan.
Or rather—it was a stupid plan.
But the wind was blowing. The stand of trees was no more than twenty yards away. If she ran fast enough and dodged quickly enough, she could get away. And she couldn’t stand to live the rest of her life knowing she didn’t make even the most feeble attempt to save a child from murder by two professional killers.
Stupid plan. So stupid. She was going to get herself killed.
She heard her father’s voice in her head. Taylor, you can’t outrun a bullet.
She knew it. She really did. But the boy’s crying was getting louder again, the men more silent. They were getting down to business, which was to murder the child and pose him so that guy, McManus, saw him as soon as he drove up the road.
Shock. Horror. All that crap.
When she had freed a dozen sheets of paper, she put the tablet on the ground and stepped on it. Holding three sheets high above her head like unformed paper airplanes, she let the wind catch them, heard them flap, took a breath—and released them.
About the Author
CHRISTINA DODD’s fifty novels have been translated into twenty-five languages, featured by Doubleday Book Club, and recorded on Books on Tape for the Blind. They have won Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart and RITA Awards, and have been called the year’s best by Library Journal. Dodd herself has been a clue in the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle. With more than fifteen million copies of her books in print, her legions of fans always know that when they pick up a Christina Dodd novel, they’ve found, as Karen Robards writes, “an absolute thrill ride of a book.”
Enter Christina’s worlds and join her FREE mailing list for news, exclusive excerpts, and book sales at her Web site, at www.christinadodd.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
Also by Christina Dodd
Virtue Falls
The Listener
Candle in the Wind
Treasure of the Sun
Castles in the Air
Priceless
Greatest Lover in All England
Move Heaven and Earth
Once a Knight
Outrageous
A Knight to Remember
That Scandalous Evening
The Runaway Princess
Someday My Prince
Rules of Surrender
Rules of Engagement
Rules of Attraction
In My Wildest Dreams
Lost in Your Arms
A Well Pleasured Lady
My Favorite Bride
Scandalous Again
Just the Way You Are
One Kiss from You
Almost Like Being in Love
A Well Favored Gentleman
Some Enchanted Evening
Close to You
The Barefoot Princess
Dangerous Ladies
Trouble in High Heels
The Prince Kidnaps a Bride
Tongue in Chic
My Fair Temptress
Scent of Darkness
Touch of Darkness
Thigh High
Into the Shadow
Into the Flame
Danger in a Red Dress
Storm of Visions
Storm of Shadows
In Bed with the Duke
Chains of Ice
Chains of Fire
Taken by the Prince
Secrets at Bella Terra
Revenge at Bella Terra
Betrayal
The Smuggler’s Captive Bride
Last Night
Kidnapped
Wilder
Wild Texas Rose
Stone Angel
Lady in Black
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Teaser
About the Author
Also by Christina Dodd
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these novels are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE RELATIVES. Copyright © 2015 by Christina Dodd. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover designed by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs by Shutterstock
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
e-ISBN 9781466885288
First e-Book Edition: March 2015
The Relatives: A Virtue Falls Story Page 5
