by Alyssa Kress
Maybe Griffith was right.
She remembered how jumpy she'd felt on the last day of camp, just before Deirdre Marshal had called. She remembered the fear of being too happy, the fear that something horrible was about to happen. And then Deirdre had called and it had seemed as though Kate's fear had been well-justified.
Maybe too well-justified.
Kate stood up from the table. Leaving the accountant's report there, she walked out of the house.
Was she afraid to be happy? Afraid lightning would strike her for living and thriving when her brother was cold and buried in the ground?
Kate kept walking. She paused on her front stoop, wondering where to take her restless feet, then jogged down the steps, turned right and strode toward the barn.
A ride, yes. That always helped clear her brain.
Kate greeted Sugar with less of the affection and focus she normally gave the mare. Sugar seemed to understand her mistress meant business and stood patiently while Kate saddled and bridled her. Only half concentrating on her actions, Kate swung into the saddle and guided the buckskin mare toward the upstream trail.
Was she afraid to be happy? Was Griffith right about that?
On her horse, Kate grimaced. He'd been right about at least one thing. She should have gone inside the construction trailer when he'd invited her. She should have taken a look at the plans he'd laid out there. If she was so certain Griffith was going to build a big housing project, using water diverted from the top of the mountain, then why had she been afraid to look?
Kate didn't like the answers that occurred to her. Had she been afraid the plans showed no housing project at all, or at least one that didn't involve a new stream of water from the top of the hill? Maybe she'd been afraid of finding out Griffith truly loved her, and that he was every bit the hero and good guy she'd been waiting all her life to meet.
Sugar stopped and bobbed her head up and down. Kate realized she'd pulled up on the reins, stopping the horse. Meanwhile, a rock the size of a basketball settled in her stomach.
She should have gone inside that trailer. She should have looked at Griffith's blueprints.
Instead of hiding, she should have faced the truth. Did she, in fact, have terrible taste in men? Or could she manage to live a happily fulfilled life with a good one?
Seeing what was inside the trailer could have answered the question.
And still could, Kate thought, turning her horse around. It was time to go find out the truth.
~~~
Traffic had been delightfully light coming out of L.A. Deirdre didn't rue one minute of the three-hour drive as, just a little after seven, she approached the Blaine Development trailer set along Mineral Road.
Griffith would be annoyed she'd driven out with Alternate E despite his orders not to, but she wasn't afraid of Griffith. Besides, if she wanted to take a therapeutic drive out into the country, she could. And it had definitely felt therapeutic to leave Los Angeles, to take a physical departure from her emotional mess there.
She was honest enough to admit it was a mess. Yes, her brain had decided everything was over with Ricky, but her heart had yet to receive the message. Her heart wanted to pick up the phone every time the bastard called.
Deirdre hummed in puzzlement as she got closer to the trailer. Though it was nearly dark enough to use headlights, no lights could be seen inside the trailer. Had Griffith already left?
No. She was relieved to see his company pickup truck parked in the packed dirt to one side of the trailer.
But as Deirdre pulled her own car to park beside the pickup, she could see that something was wrong with the other vehicle. In the gathering dusk, she got out of her car, closed the door, and took a closer look.
The tires of the pickup had been slashed.
Fear spiked through Deirdre. She took an automatic step back and darted a look around the desert landscape. It was impossible to see if anyone hid amid the big bunchy bushes that dotted the valley floor.
With her heart now punching her chest, Deirdre whirled and strode swiftly toward the trailer. She didn't know whether to be alarmed or relieved that the door had been left unlocked. Barely breathing, she turned the knob, and pushed the door open a crack.
"Griffith?" she called.
There was no answer. Was he in there, injured? Deirdre wouldn't allow herself to imagine anything worse. She pushed the door open all the way. It was dark inside. "Griffith?" she called again, fumbling for and then finding the light switch.
No lights came on.
Uttering some thoroughly unladylike curses, Deirdre stepped back, thought an instant, and then went back to her car. After fumbling with the door handle, and then the glove compartment's push-button operation, she retrieved a penlight from behind her Acura owner's manual.
All the while her heart pounded like a pile driver. Griffith had been kidnapped once before, and beaten badly. Why hadn't they taken that into consideration? He shouldn't have been out here alone. Simon Grolier... A shiver snaked up Deirdre's back simply from thinking about Griffith's business rival and his too-wise eyes.
Penlight in hand, she ran back to the trailer. "Griffith?" She flashed the light around the interior of the trailer.
No crumpled body entered the beam of her light, no pool of blood, no knife embedded in flesh. As far as Deirdre could tell, the trailer was empty and undisturbed. Well, undisturbed except for the fact the power was out, Griffith was missing, and the tires of his only way out of there had been slashed. Deirdre's heart picked up its heavy rhythm again.
Somehow, she'd never imagined she would become involved in the dangerous intrigue surrounding her boss. And here, naïve, complacent...stupid, she'd driven straight into it.
On the other hand, perhaps it was a good thing she was here, Deirdre thought as her penlight picked out the telephone. If she hadn't come, there'd be no one to call for help.
Drawing in a steadying breath, she walked into the trailer and toward the phone, only to discover when she lifted the thing that it was dead.
"Damn it!" But of course it was dead. Whoever had cut the power had also cut the phone lines.
Deirdre blundered for her purse, nearly dropping the penlight in the process. She managed to find her cell phone, pressed it on, and wondered if they had 911 service out here. She soon found they had no service at all. She couldn't get a signal.
"Hell and damn," Deirdre muttered, hitting the end button. Now, what?
As if in answer to her unspoken question, the sound of tires crunching over gravel came from outside. A car. Deirdre stood in the trailer, frozen, as a door slammed and feet came toward the trailer. Heavy, male feet if her petrified brain was hearing correctly.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Deirdre looked around wildly, wondering where she could hide. But there was nowhere to hide. Besides, the feet were on the steps. The door was opening.
Not knowing what else to do, Deirdre directed her penlight straight at the door, thinking to blind, at least temporarily, whoever appeared.
The door opened, a man stepped inside, and Deirdre's penlight stabbed into the face of Ricky Ascensios.
~~~
Griffith's flashlight found a tree split by some long-past lightning strike, and his panic eased. In fact, he felt like celebrating. He remembered that tree. He'd seen it on the way down the hill in the bus last August. Apparently he'd managed to find his way past the place where the east road and the west one converged.
And he hadn't succumbed to vertigo or fear in the process. He couldn't. Kate needed him. What would under ordinary circumstances have been impossible, was turning out to be possible. He was finding his way up the hill.
Yes, it was turning out to be possible, until Griffith rounded the next bend in the trail and came face to face with the bore of a serious-looking firearm.
Griffith stopped dead. His gaze went past the muzzle of the rifle to the man holding it. Thanks to years of training himself to memorize faces and names, he knew exactly who the man was, though he
'd only seen him twice, and only briefly at that.
"Bert," Griffith said, in as casual a voice as he could muster. Somehow, he avoided clearing his throat. "Um, do we have a problem here?"
"Yeah," Bert LeBow replied. "We got a problem." The man who lived in the shack at the foot of the mountain lifted the rifle sight to his face. "But I'm just about ta take care of it."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"Ricky!" The sheer force of Deirdre's relief caused her to drop her penlight. Never had she been as happy to see a person in her entire life. "What are you doing here?"
"Deirdre?" Only the lower half of Ricky's face was now lit, showing a baffled expression. "I was going to ask you the same thing." He made a pass over the light switch by the door.
"The power is out," Deirdre told him. "The phones, too. And the tires on Griffith's truck are slashed."
"Griffith." Ricky opened the door to the trailer wider, letting in what little light from the day was left. "Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Christ," Ricky said. There was an odd note in his voice. Deirdre had been terrified by the state in which she'd found everything, but Ricky sounded...suspicious. "He asked me to meet him here," Ricky said. "Claimed he wanted to show me some plans for the camp."
"He asked you to come?" Deirdre picked up her penlight and shut it off. With the door open, she could see Ricky just fine; his intelligent brown eyes, the lock of dark hair that always fell over his forehead. "He didn't mention that to me."
"Obviously not." Ricky's well-sculpted lips twisted. "Or you wouldn't be here." He paused. "What reason did he give for making you drive all the way out?"
"What? Oh, he didn't. In fact, he ordered me specifically not to drive out here, but I..." Deirdre's voice trailed off as the thought flashing in her head matched the expression on Ricky's face. "You don't think — ?"
"That he intended both of us to come out here and run into each other?" Ricky's smile broadened. "Hey, you know the guy better than I do. What do you think?"
Eyes wide, Deirdre shook her head. "Oh, my goodness." Her boss was sufficiently devious to have done such a thing, even going so far as to trick her into doing the opposite of what he'd ordered. "But cutting the power, and the phone..."
"A perfect way to make sure we had to spend some time alone together, and wouldn't be interrupted."
The scheme was, in fact, sounding a lot like something Griffith might do, in his new, semi-sweet persona. "The tires on his truck," Deirdre argued.
"You got me there." Standing in the doorway, Ricky turned to survey the damage to the Blaine Development pickup. "Griffith doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd go around destroying company property."
"True." Deidre came closer to the door. "Except that recently... Well, recently the bottom line hasn't made much impact on Griffith." She nodded toward the flat tires. "He might think such a flamboyant gesture would add an element of drama."
"Something to, uh, spice up the proceedings?"
Deirdre sighed. "Griffith has been rather rooting for you."
Still looking toward the truck, Ricky chuckled softly. "Fat lot of good that's doing me."
Deirdre crossed her arms over her chest. The terrified beat of her heart was transforming into something just as scared, but in a wholly different way. Maybe Griffith had planned the mishaps. Maybe there was nothing dire or dreadful going on with him.
On the other hand, here she was in the middle of nowhere with Ricky; handsome, vital Ricky, and feeling extremely vulnerable to him standing there looking all...beautiful. "This was a dirty trick of Griffith's," she remarked, with force.
Ricky turned to face her. Deirdre was struck by the pain in his eyes. Never, she realized, had she seen Ricky in pain. Never had he showed her that emotion. Even when he'd asked her out for that 'last date,' he'd kept his dignity.
"Yeah," he agreed with Deirdre. "It was plenty dirty, but I can't say I'm sorry Griffith's giving me a chance to have my say to you, Deed."
Her shoulders rose and tensed. "You already had your chance."
"I know. And I blew it. Totally. Don't you think I know that by now?" Ricky was looking more pained by the second. "Having you doggedly refuse to answer even one of my twenty-seven phone calls sent a clear message."
"But you think I should give you another chance." Deirdre had to stick to her guns here, not become a doormat.
"I can't tell you what you should or shouldn't do, I only know what I got wrong." A rough laugh escaped him. "I refused to admit how much you meant to me. How much I — " His face went through several agonized expressions before he admitted, "I was stupid. And scared."
Deirdre gripped her upper arms with her fingers. Inside she started shaking. Oh, this was worse than she'd feared. He was...opening himself up, inviting her in. She did her best to stand her ground. "Scared?" she asked, skeptical.
"Yeah." Ricky passed a hand across his forehead and turned to squint across the parking lot. "As a kid I learned it was dangerous to love people or, worse yet, need them. My parents were never...there for me. So I thought in order to succeed I was supposed to go through life utterly self-sufficient." Ricky stopped and shook his head. "But I think now...maybe that isn't possible — or even good. I do need." The dying light of day outlined the muscles in Ricky's strong neck as he swallowed. "I need you, Deirdre."
Deirdre's throat burned. Oh, God, he'd done it. Got through. Of course he had. His honesty — his vulnerability — slipped through her defenses like an expertly wielded sword. "Ricky," Deirdre whispered.
His head turned quickly. His expression turned satisfyingly astonished before his arms spread wide to catch her.
Ricky's arms were just closing around Deirdre, protective, male, and loving, when the report of a large firearm echoed across the valley.
~~~
Kate wasn't disturbed by the growing dusk. Sugar was an intelligent animal and she had the trail down the hill memorized. Her only worry was that Griffith might have left the construction trailer, either driving back to L.A. or stopping in San Luis Obispo for the night.
She was just wishing she'd unsaddled the mare and taken her car down the hill when Kate caught the glimmer of a light, a definitely man-made light, coming from between the branches of sumac covering the hill. She pulled her horse to a stop and squinted over the brush. There. Another flicker. The way the flicker went back and forth, disappeared, and then went back and forth again led Kate to believe it was created by a flashlight, wielded by a person on foot.
A cold finger went up her spine. It was suspicious for anyone to be hiking these meandering trails in the dark, but the finger on her spine was more than suspicion. It was dead certainty. Something was wrong.
With her heart pounding, she slipped off Sugar and wrapped the reins around the branch of a big sumac. Then, after a brief hesitation, during which pride lost and caution won, she tugged her satellite phone out of her saddlebag and dialled the number for the sheriff's office. It was the sort of number a camp director had memorized. Speaking softly to Rita, the operator, Kate explained she'd like a patrol to come check out a situation on her hill. She explained about the flashlight and apologized for a fuss over a mere hunch.
"No apology necessary," Rita told Kate. "I'll have someone out there within an hour."
Not for an hour? Kate silently groaned as she ended the call. She saw the light flash once again, closer now. She didn't think she had an hour. No, the finger on her spine told her something bad was happening now.
Kate shoved the phone into her belt, went to Sugar's muzzle and explained she was taking a little walk. She then started off on foot and very, very quietly, crept down the trail.
It was because she was taking such care not to make a noise that, fifty yards down the trail, Kate was able to hear voices. She stopped in her tracks. Barely breathing, she strained to listen. Unfortunately, she couldn't make out a word. But with a chill of dread, she recognized one of the voices as Griffith's.
What was going on? A
nd why was she so certain it was bad?
Since Kate couldn't see the flashlight now, the voices had to be around a bend in the trail. Telling herself that nobody could actually hear the thunderous pounding of her heart, Kate quietly edged closer.
"...don't see how I'm a problem," Griffith was saying. He sounded eerily calm. "Um, maybe you could enlighten me."
Kate heard Bert LeBow's voice next, low and rusty. "I think you know how you're a problem, mister Blaine. But I'll humor you. Long about last July I ran into one o' your engineers while I was out squirrel huntin.' He was nosin' around up above the camp, by the head of the stream. He was ever so excited to tell me all about your big plans."
"Ah," Griffith said. "The stream. That's right. It goes by your cabin, doesn't it?"
"You thought you could take my water, but you can't. You won't."
Kate could hear Bert's voice tighten. The chill along her back spread to her chest. The stream, running past Bert's house... It had never occurred to her. Bert depended on that water even more than she did. He couldn't afford to move somewhere else, particularly once the value of his cabin dropped because it had no water supply.
Griffith's voice went very soft. "You're the one who kidnapped me in August."
"Warn't too difficult." Bert audibly preened. "Your company address was on the Internet, which the lady at the lib'ary in Taft looked up for us. She even got us a pitcher of you, from a magazine article. Joe got his truck outta hock and we drove to LA. Easy. Camped outside your office and followed you home." Bert let out a breath. "You didn't even look to one side or the other when you got out o' that elevator. Never even saw us comin.'"
"No," Griffith agreed. "I didn't."
"That farm tranquilizer Micky got me was supposed to kill you," Bert complained. "'S why we dumped you at the camp. Ta make it look like Kate did it. She had as much reason as us to want you dead."
"Yes," Griffith said. "It was a good plan."
"'Cept it didn't work." Bert sounded bitter. "You didn't die. Coulda knocked me over with a feather when I saw you up at the camp, alive as day and cozyin' up to Kate."
