Judgement By Fire

by O'Connell, Glenys

  Lauren got out and walked around the vehicle to see how badly she was stuck. Silently, she cursed her decision to take a shortcut home on the back roads, because the front end of the truck was comfortably lodged right in the snow bank. Underneath the snow, no doubt, there would be soft ground to suck at the tires once she started trying to get out.

  On a sudden inspiration, she rummaged in the truck cab in hopes of finding a mobile phone or a car phone. After all, Jon had installed a new millennium state of the art CD player, why not some telecommunications? But she was out of luck. Standing at the rear of the cab, her shoulder aching and her wrist throbbing, Lauren had to fight back tears as she realized how serious the situation was and that she was in it alone. There were no houses or other buildings in sight, and the only habitation she remembered passing had been a good five miles back. The road didn’t look exactly well-traveled, either. She was on her own.

  Carefully, hampered by the pain in her wrist and shoulder, Lauren started the truck and began rocking it gently backwards and forwards using the manual transmission and crossing her fingers the strain wouldn’t burn the gears out. She gave a victory whoop as the tires begin to bite at the far end of a reverse swing, and with a roar the big vehicle whipped backwards onto the road. Safe now, Lauren sat with her head down on the steering wheel, trembling in every muscle with effort and anxiety.

  Once the worst of the shock effect had worn off and she was on the open road again, anger began to take its place. Did the idiot driving the other vehicle not see what had happened? Didn’t he understand how dangerous such silly games were? Seared into Lauren’s mind was the insignia of Jon’s company she had identified as the Jeep sped by. One of the company vehicles had run her off the road, and whoever had trashed her studio had pinned Jon Rush’s business card to the slashed canvas on her easel.

  Yet, over and over again, everyone, Jon, Chief Ohmer, Warren Dillon, even Paul Howard, had kept telling her there seemed to be no connection between what had had happened to her and Rush Co. And she had believed it; although she’d been unable to think of anyone she might have injured sufficiently to spark this kind of retaliation.

  Now, after the brush with the Rush Co. Jeep, she had to look carefully at the whole situation because it was obvious there was a connection between the company and the things that were happening to her. She remembered both Mary Wilson and Warren Dillon admitting that there had been a series of crises at the company.

  Lauren was sure there was a link between them and the events that had so disrupted her own life.

  The incident on the road was hardly enough to be a murder attempt. Serious though it was, it wasn’t likely that there would have been deadly consequences—at which thought her throbbing wrist and shoulder protested—because she had not been going very fast and the other vehicle had only clipped her wing, pushing her into the side but not really forcing her off the road over a cliff, or anything equally murderous.

  Not like the attack on poor Pippa Williams, Lauren thought, pleased to see that home was in sight. Then another thought put butterflies into her stomach.

  Oh, Good Lord! The wing! Did you think to check what kind of damage was done to Jon’s ‘baby’? Shrieked the voice in Lauren’s head. This time she was easily able to quell it.

  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about Jon’s precious baby!”

  Another idea struck her like a punch in the chest. Her only real connection to Rush Co. was her activities with the ABC committee. Would Jon be angry enough at the interference with his corporate plans to play these deadly games? Another equally frightening though popped into her mind. Probably no one else, other than Mary Wilson and Warren Dillon, knew it was Lauren, not Jon, behind the wheel of the very distinctive truck. What if someone, some disgruntled employee with an axe to grind with Rush himself, had seen the vehicle, assumed Jon was driving, and had taken the opportunity to run him off the road?

  Lauren’s mouth went dry and her heart was thumping loudly in her ears. What if someone was trying to hurt or kill Jon? Motivated by fear, she pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator and the big vehicle leapt forward in response. Somehow, she must warn find Jon and warn him of the danger he was in.

  Chapter Ten

  Jon had driven out of Toronto as though the devil himself was on his tail. He’d hated leaving Lauren, especially after the passionate night they’d shared, but had thought her in safe hands with Warren. Then all this mess had come up with poor Pippa Williams and Jon had admired Lauren’s courage in insisting that Warren return to Pippa’s bedside while she carried on to the studio alone.

  Admired it, yes, but had been furious about it at the same time. In fact, he’d probably have a few words to say to Warren about the matter, but when he’d called the house Mary had informed him that he’d just missed Warren and that Lauren had been gone only a few minutes herself. Given the situation, it was probably unfair to criticize his chief of security, but the thought of Lauren alone and possibly at the mercy of the person who had ransacked her studio with such shocking hatred put his stomach into knots of anxiety.

  Then there was the attack on Pippa. For a start, it certainly wasn’t an accident—the old woman who’d witnessed the whole event from her wheelchair at a second floor apartment window had been very definite that the dark-colored Jeep-type vehicle had suddenly started up from the curbside and driven straight at Pippa as she crossed the street from her late bus.

  Pippa had suffered serious injuries but the doctors seemed to think she would pull through. As the truck had rushed at her, it seemed she’d tried to jump clear but had slipped on the ice. The impetus of trying to get away had meant that she’d taken the impact against her hip instead of her whole body and she’d been thrown, landing in a pile of recently ploughed, soft snow. Nevertheless, she was still unconscious in hospital with a policewoman at her bedside and no one was sure when, or even if, she would properly regain consciousness.

  The meeting he was committed to that morning had paled into insignificance when Warren’s second in command had called him about the hit and run. He’d had to finish it anyway, and the details had seemed to drag on interminably. When he’d phoned his home to discover that Lauren had already left—alone—the knot had settled in his stomach and he’d been unable to shake it.

  As luck would have it, he needed to be in West River to finesse some of the details of setting up an information office in a mobile vehicle to give out details of the West River project. His cousin Stephen, head of Avalon Hospitality, should have been carrying out this task but it seemed he hadn’t been in the office for a couple of days and wasn’t responding to calls at his home. His secretary had even gone around to the exclusive condo development where Stephen lived, fearing her boss was sick. Stephen was nowhere to be found.

  It wasn’t the first time his cousin had taken off on his own like this and Jon couldn’t help feeling irritated that Stephen should take his duties so lightly. The whole West River project was in a delicate state, public-relations wise, and it needed someone at the top to stroke local anxieties and get the ball rolling again.

  Although he’d made the decision to go himself rather than sending one of his executive board, Jon was finding it hard to focus on the business at hand. He admitted to himself that he’d had an alternative agenda for his decision. Something as mundane as the opening of a new multi-million-dollar hotel complex held little interest for him this morning. All he wanted to do was to see Lauren.

  To add to his irritation, he’d come out into the company underground car park to find that the company Jeep he’d been driving for the past few days was gone from the spot where he’d parked it. However, the keys had been still in another similar vehicle and he’d signed that out even though the young mechanic on duty had protested that it was just returned and hadn’t been checked over. The young employee had insisted he didn’t know who’d taken the vehicle Jon had been driving, pointing out that it hadn’t been properly signed out. Nevertheless, impressed t
o be helping out the boss, the young mechanic had quickly completed the paperwork on the other vehicle and Jon was soon headed for West River.

  He kept to the main highways for the extra speed they afforded and made good time to West River and Haverford Castle.

  At first, he’d been a little dismayed at meeting Paul Howard at Lauren’s house, but he’d been more than a little impressed at the way her friends and neighbors had rallied round. With the aid of a cleaning team he’d had sent in from Rush. Co. offices, they’d emptied the studio, scrubbed it from top to bottom, and replaced the damaged furniture and fittings right down to a coffee-maker, with donated ones from their homes. It didn’t look quite as cozy as originally, but Paul pointed out that it wouldn’t take Lauren long to stamp her individual tastes on it.

  “We know she didn’t have any insurance—not many artists can afford things like that, although Lauren’s work is selling well now and I think she’d soon be out of the red,” Paul had said, offering Jon a can of soda while he himself popped a cold beer. “You’re driving,” he’d added pointedly as Jon raised a questioning eyebrow.

  The other man had made it plain that he no longer held any hostility towards Jon, explaining that the situation with Lauren had overridden any anxieties he’d had about fighting the Rush Co. proposals for Haverford Castle.

  So it had been easy for Jon to start talking to the older man, confiding in him the anxieties about the incidents which had dogged the company over the past few months and which seemed to be escalating. He found Paul to be a sharp listener with the incisive mind that his legal training had honed aiding him to cut to the core of the problems. Paul Howard’s face took on a worried frown as Jon explained how he and Warren had concluded that there must be some link between last night’s attempt on Pippa, Pippa’s own earlier urgent request to see the security chief, and the attack on Lauren’s studio.

  “So many of the things initially looked like accidents or errors. Even the hit-and-run—Pippa was wearing a dark coat, it was late at night, and the streetlights aren’t great at that point. If the old lady hadn’t been watching from her apartment window or Pippa doesn’t regain consciousness, then it could have been written off as another accident.

  “To my mind, that points to a lot of intelligence behind everything.” Jon finished morosely, “Obviously, there must be some connection between all the events involving Rush Co., but for the life of me I can’t see where Lauren fits into all this. In addition, trashing her studio is very much out of the pattern. So far we haven’t been able to come up with a thread that goes through everything.”

  “But it has to be someone within the company, someone with a privileged position. Someone close enough to you to know your movements and to hold you responsible for whatever’s wrong with his life,” Paul said.

  Jon winced as the other man unwittingly put into words the thoughts that had nibbled at the edges of his own consciousness since Warren himself had hinted at the same scenario.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t honestly see how Lauren is tied into all this, either.” The older man concluded.

  “I can handle having someone come after me, or after the company. I’d have found them eventually and dealt with it. But coming after my staff, and…and Lauren. If something should happen to her…” Jon’s voice was almost a whisper, as if he didn’t dare bring such thoughts out aloud into the light of day, but Paul heard, and nodded. Crumpling the drink can, he tossed it into a box of garbage that had been taken from Lauren’s house. That was when he saw the sorry remains of the antique grandfather clock.

  “That was Lauren’s most prized possession, after her painting stuff,” Paul said. “It’s little more than matchsticks now. I’d thought of trying to get it fixed up for her, but if you look at it, there’s just no way.”

  Feeling sick at the sight of the sad wreckage, Jon brought up a question that had been pushing little darts of unease into his mind since Warren had raised the subject the previous night. “Has Lauren mentioned anyone by the name of Steve to you? Or maybe someone who was calling her a lot?”

  Paul rubbed his chin where an uncharacteristic growth of stubble gave testimony to the stress he was under, with Lucy just out of hospital and Lauren possibly in danger.

  “I don’t know, although she was pretty tense and tired, as though something was on her mind and interfering with her sleep. Let me think, though. Lucy said something about Lauren meeting a man in Toronto at an exhibition she was taking part in. Someone she saw a few times, but….how did Lucy put it? He had good taste because he liked Lauren’s work, but there was—that’s it. There was no spark between them!”

  Jon was startled at the sudden shaft of jealousy that burned through him. Lauren was seeing someone else. Was that her reason for taking so long to get back from Toronto? Jon checked his watch—he’d been here half-an-hour’ Surely Lauren, with twenty minutes head start on him and leaving from the farm, which was a good hour closer to West River, should have arrived by now.

  What if she’d called in to see this other man? This man with good taste?

  There was no spark, though, his little voice reminded him, but that didn’t stop the tightening tension that filled him. So it was with mixed emotions of pleasure and trepidation that he saw Lauren pull into the laneway, although the fact that she was driving his own beautifully restored l950’s truck certainly came as a shock!

  He wanted to rush to the vehicle, pull her from the cab and kiss her thoroughly, leaving his mark on her for the entire world to see. He carefully clamped down on those primitive cave-man feelings, but not before he’d seen the quick grin that had passed over Paul Howard’s face—the old guy knew what he was thinking!

  * * *

  On the rest of the drive home, Lauren kept remembering her own sick surety that Jon was the subject of the urgent phone message Warren Dillon had received in Jon’s kitchen. Now she wondered if that bolt of anxiety hadn’t been some kind of psychic warning, especially when coupled with the attack on her as she drove home. It seemed obvious that whoever had pushed her off the road had mistakenly believed Jon was driving this special and distinctive vehicle and that he was the target of such dangerous intent.

  She was sickened at the memory of the cavalier salute from the other vehicle’s horn as it sped away, and sensed that the incident had been intended as a warning of worse to come. Tension made her grasp the steering wheel tightly as she sped towards her cottage and an opportunity to warn Jon of the danger he was in. If only she wasn’t too late!

  By the time she pulled into the Haverford Castle access road and her own cottage came into view, her nerves were strung more tightly than a concert pitch harp, her shoulder was throbbing and her wrist already swollen right down past the knuckles of her fingers. But it wasn’t pain that made Lauren slam on the brakes and dive out of the truck; it was the sight of Jon casually perched atop Lauren’s own picnic table, deep in conversation with Paul. Parked at a slant was his big black Jeep with the Rush Co. insignia emblazoned on its side and scrape marks on its driver’s side just ahead of the front wheel well!

  Seeing the marks, knowing that the vehicle that drove her off the road must bear some evidence of the collision, Lauren felt faint for possibly only the second time in her life. Pain that had nothing at all to do with her physical injuries seared through her. The deep well of trust within her had been hit by lightning bolts of betrayal.

  “Lauren! Good to see you home. Wait until you see how we’ve fixed the place up!” Paul called to her cheerfully from where he stood on the other side of Jon’s vehicle.

  Lauren ignored him as she stared pointedly first at the plainly visible scrape marks on Jon’s Jeep, then at Jon.

  Jon followed her gaze, the beginnings of a welcoming smile on his face. He’d been looking forward to seeing her since the moment he’d left the warmth of their tousled bed that morning, leaving her love-sated and deeply asleep. If she’d stirred at all as he dressed, he knew he’d have climbed right back into that bed, despi
te the fact that he had an early meeting to attend.

  Now he wanted to take her in his arms, kiss her deeply to welcome her back. When he saw the look on her face, something seemed to shrivel inside him as warning alarms went off in his mind.

  “Lauren, what’s the matter? Are you ill? My God, you’re white as a sheet!” Jon made as if to embrace her, but she shook off his arms with a gesture of contempt.

  “How could you ask how I am? You left me there in a snow bank without even a backward glance! What if I’d not been able to get out? Or been hurt more seriously? What kind of stupid games are you playing, Jon Rush?” She found the strength to demand.

  She’d have given the world to simply settle into his arms, but it seemed glaringly obvious that he’d been the one to force her off the road; in which case, his embrace was hardly a safe harbor.

  “What is she talking about? Who left you in a snow bank, Lauren? Good God, child, what have you done to your hand?” Paul’s eyes widened as he took in the angry red swelling. Jon was ominously silent as Lauren glared at him.

  “I came in the back way, on the shortcut from the 401, and about ten miles away from here someone in a big black Jeep with the Rush Co. logo on the side forced me off the road. I skidded into a snow bank, wrenched my shoulder and sprained my wrist—and it was only by the grace of God that I was able to get out. Otherwise I’d still be there, freezing my butt off, because there’s not another house for miles around to get help. Now, tell me how many Rush Co. Jeeps like that are around here today?

  Paul’s shocked eyes went first to Lauren’s hectic coloring, then locked on Jon’s face, but the other man’s look was inscrutable. Paul’s look of query was met with an angry silence.