King's Ransom

by Sharon Sala

  King nodded in agreement and the look of peace and pleasure that suffused his face was noticeable when Shockey mentioned home.

  “Home is the Double M Ranch southeast of Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. We raise a few cows, enough feed for them to get by, and once in a while, drill an oil well or two. But most of that was my father’s love. Mine are the horses.”

  Shockey didn’t raise an eyebrow, but he made a silent note to himself to do some more checking on this big man. Drill an oil well or two, he thought to himself with a grin. Oilmen were a breed alone. They were big gamblers, used to taking chances, but so were the horsebreeders.

  “You race ’em?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “No,” King answered, and the light in his dark eyes gave away his deep love for the land and the horses that ran on it. “I raise them and sell them. And they’re Arabians, not racehorses.”

  Arabians! That was a costly enterprise. Shockey knew he would certainly check into this man’s background. He didn’t know much about the business, but he suspected this man could probably buy or sell just about whatever he chose. There was an air about him. And that name…King. Hell of a name to stick on a man. He seemed to be doing okay with it, though. Didn’t let it intimidate him at all. Shockey interrupted his own rambling thoughts and said, “Yeah, well, that’s just about all I need here. When Ramirez is through, you’re pretty much free to go.”

  “I’ll need to go to Jesse’s home before we leave to get some of her things. Is there a problem with that?” King asked, uncertain about disturbing a crime scene.

  Shockey shook his head. “Just let me know when you want to go and I’ll meet you there. It’s not pretty. You’ll need to be prepared. I guess she’ll want to clean it up before she moves. Not many people will stay in a home where something like that has happened to them. Not many can.”

  King was taken aback. He hadn’t even thought that far ahead. Shockey’s words gave him something more to digest.

  Shockey spoke briefly to Ramirez and frowned at the picture emerging on the flat white surface of artist’s paper.

  King watched Shockey leave and felt like he’d just been sized up and found lacking. He didn’t think he would ever like him personally, but suspected Shockey was very good at his job.

  Ramirez finally finished with a promise to let King have several copies of the sketch to take back home with him.

  “I didn’t remember much more,” Jesse said morosely, fidgeting with the sheet covering her legs. “It all happened so fast, I just didn’t concentrate on what he looked like as much as getting the knife and getting away from him.”

  “You did all you could, Jess,” King said, watching her face for signs of stress. “More than most.”

  The ordeal had been very trying for her. She’d had to go over and over every phase of the attack while helping the artist, and more than once had broken down in tears at a particularly traumatic point. His heart ached for her.

  She shrugged and sighed, slumping down into the muddled pile of bedcovers, and tried with little success to brush the hair away from her face and neck. There wasn’t a lot one could do with both hands bandaged. Someone had to help her bathe, go to the bathroom, brush her teeth, eat. There was virtually nothing Jesse could do for herself at this point, and she was frustrated beyond belief.

  King watched her for a moment and then offered a suggestion.

  “Jesse, would you like me to brush your hair? I know the nurses help you all they can, but most of their grooming is hit and miss. I guess they’re just too busy for more.”

  The offer was a welcome one. And, with a bit of twisting and rearranging, King was soon giving her tousled hair a new look.

  The brush bit through her hair, digging through the tangles all the way to her scalp. It felt wonderful. King’s husky voice and the long, soothing strokes relaxed Jesse as nothing else possibly could. She groaned aloud in pleasure and closed her eyes at the almost sensual feel of the deep, repetitive strokes.

  “That feels absolutely wonderful,” Jesse whispered, and opened her eyes to see King watching her in the small mirror opposite her bed. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he had a most interesting expression on his face. She smiled to herself as she thought, He looks like he’s just seen a ghost. Then she decided, Maybe he didn’t see a ghost. Maybe he just saw a stranger.

  Jesse knew King was used to seeing her as the gangly twelve-year-old child, desolate in the face of her father’s death, and then as a late-blooming teenager, self-conscious of a maturing figure, and with no one to explain life’s mysteries except a very kindly housekeeper thrust in the role of mother. He had never seen her as Jesse LeBeau, the woman. It was about time.

  King was dumbstruck. He’d accidentally caught a glimpse of Jesse’s face in the mirror as he worked, and the sight of her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted in sensual delight as the brush bit into her scalp, her head tilted back, resting against his chest as he brushed, had made another, more intimate thought pop into his head. It startled him that he’d ever considered it. It made King realize he didn’t even know this woman. He knew who she’d been. He just didn’t know who she’d become. King couldn’t get the idea out of his head that she would look exactly like that as someone made love to her. That thought followed with an instant flash that he didn’t want anyone putting that look on her face but him. Guilt, shock, and a bit of intrigue flowed through him and his hands stilled, forgetting why he held the hairbrush, or why Jesse was propped up against him. He just stood and stared at her image in the mirror, unaware that Jesse was staring back.

  Her slow, teasing drawl broke the silent staring match, and King’s face flushed a dark red as she spoke.

  “You’re very good with your hands,” she said, knowing that he was going to take it the wrong way. She’d seen the way he was looking at her. She also knew it was going to embarrass him and she delighted in the flush it produced.

  “Uh, yeah. I guess so,” he mumbled, trying to get off on a different subject. “I should be,” he said. “I do most of the brood mares’ grooming myself.”

  Jesse’s eyebrows shot up, tickled beyond words that he’d just claimed his expertise with a brush lay entirely in his skill of horse grooming. Not the most recommending thing he could have said in reference to Jesse’s hair. Her delight echoed in the room while King’s face got redder and redder, as he realized what he’d just said.

  “You little witch,” he growled, knowing Jesse had been teasing him. He wasn’t sure just how much he’d revealed of his thoughts, but she’d been sharp enough to pick up on some of them. He didn’t care that she was laughing at his expense. The pleasure he got from hearing her laugh at all was worth it.

  “Sorry,” Jesse said, as she finally caught her breath between giggles. “But you were asking for it. Horses indeed!”

  King smiled back, allowing her to enjoy that much of his faux pas. Thank God she hadn’t picked up on the rest of it.

  Little did he realize, but Jesse knew exactly, or so nearly that it didn’t matter, what he’d been thinking. She wasn’t dreading going back to Oklahoma with him. Maybe it was finally time.

  * * *

  The blue van turned off the street into a narrow, tree-lined driveway leading to Lynch’s place. The driver silently cursed the day he’d decided to let Lynch handle the kidnapping. It had been so simple. No one was to get hurt, everyone was going to get rich, and Jesse LeBeau would be turned safely loose later. King McCandless would be a less wealthy man, but that would have been okay with the driver. It wasn’t fair how some people had so much money and others, like him, never had enough. To make matters worse, it had cost the driver a pretty penny to get Lynch patched up and not have it reported to the police.

  The driver stopped in front of a small, run-down duplex partially hidden behind a row of oversized lilac bushes. The leaves on the bushes were limp and dusty, suffering in the July temperatures from lack of water and care, just like the whole area. The shabby surroundings
fit the driver’s idea of where Lynch would live. He looked in disgust at the house, and then back at the pitiful excuse for a man dozing in his passenger seat, slamming his fists against the steering wheel in frustration and shouting.

  “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty! Get out of my sight and stay indoors until you’re healed. Your stupid face, vague though the rendering may be, was plastered all over the news this evening. Even I recognized you. All you need to telegraph your part in this disaster is to venture outside plastered with bandages and stitches.”

  Lynch stared, his doze disturbed by the driver’s vehemence. He looked around in surprise, noted the familiar house, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, thought that he was glad to be here.

  “I’ll be in touch,” the driver snarled. “So don’t get any ideas about leaving town. We’re not through with each other just yet.”

  Lynch nodded, opened the door, and very carefully lowered himself and his duffle bag from the van. He hurt in so many places, he couldn’t have argued to save his soul. Besides, he knew he’d bungled enough already. The least he could do was keep his mouth shut. He knew this man well enough to know that his looks belied his true nature. He was very dangerous.

  He watched the driver try to maneuver the van out of the narrow drive without the aid of a rearview mirror. He had to back out the same way he’d come in and wasn’t doing a very good job. A small, wilting bunch of marigolds went under the wheels of the van and a piece of an overgrown hedge with it. He saw the driver’s mouth moving at a very fast pace and knew he was probably cursing him and everything in sight. Therefore, he decided to remove himself from sight and lessen the number of things upon which the driver could vent his fury.

  He entered the duplex, shutting himself away from the eyes of the world.

  * * *

  Maggie was putting the finishing touches to Jesse’s old room, anxious to have her last chick back in the nest, if only for a while. She frowned as she heard the sounds of a car coming down the graveled driveway. She knew without looking that it was Duncan. He always drove too fast. He did everything fast. Even life was lived at fast-forward. Maggie personally thought that he missed the best life had to offer because he never took time to look for the little things. Maggie did her best to hide her disapproval of Andrew McCandless’s younger brother. However, she suspected Duncan was all too aware of her opinions.

  Duncan had only been ten when his beloved older brother, Andrew, became a father. From the first, he’d resented the child. King! The very name had burned a brand of hate in his heart. And then when Shirley, Andrew’s wife, died less than a year later from a fall off a horse, King drew even more attention. Orphan indeed! What did they think he was? His parents had been dead so long he could barely remember what they looked like. Andrew was the only parent he acknowledged. Duncan fostered the antagonism and hate with a subversive skill. None, save possibly Maggie, knew just how deeply he resented being the McCandless that didn’t count.

  Maggie sighed loudly as she heard him enter the house with his usual lack of manners. He didn’t live here anymore and as far as she was concerned, family or not, he should knock.

  “Maggie? Anybody?” Duncan called, turning around in the hallway, trying to locate some member of the family. He saw himself in the hall mirror as he turned, and lifted his hand to pat a lock of hair back into place. The act was unconscious. He was good-looking and knew it. Except for the ten years separating them, he and King could have passed for twins.

  Maggie came down the hallway in time to see Duncan’s act of vanity. That figures, she thought, and then answered Duncan before he could call out again.

  “Here,” she said, and found herself swinging about the room, lifted off her feet in his exuberance.

  “Where is everybody?” he said, as he twirled Maggie around and then planted a kiss on her cheek. He put her back on firm ground with a tweek of her face.

  “Stop it, you fool,” Maggie spluttered, trying to pull her dress and apron back into place. She didn’t even want to think how her hair must look. Its usually neat bun was probably coming apart at the seams.

  “Maggie, love, you like it and you know it,” he teased, and then repeated his question. “Where’s King? I need to talk to him.”

  Duncan watched an odd expression come and go in the elderly housekeeper’s eyes and knew something was wrong.

  “What?” he coaxed.

  “King’s not here,” she said, and started toward the back of the house to the kitchen, confident that he would follow. He wouldn’t leave until he got what he came for and that was usually money. Also, Maggie was more at home there, and she wanted to be on familiar territory when she broke the news about Jesse. Duncan wasn’t going to take this well.

  She suspected Duncan had always been attracted to Jesse, especially after she’d turned twenty-one. That’s when she’d inherited the bulk of her father’s estate that had been held in trust. There were shares in producing oil wells, a refinery, a goodly portion of the land of one of the newer Tulsa suburbs; the list went on and on. Michael LeBeau had not believed in banks. He’d invested nearly everything he made and, when he died, had been richer on paper than in the bank. Nevertheless, it had made Jesse a well-to-do woman. It just hadn’t seemed to matter. She had continued her college studies and graduated from Tulsa University with a degree in education. It had delighted Andrew, but he didn’t think for a minute that she would ever put it to use. He’d died believing Jesse’s world would always be in order.

  Maggie lifted a large bowl down from one of the cabinets and began to assemble the ingredients necessary for double fudge chocolate cake. It was Jesse’s favorite.

  “Maggie,” Duncan persisted, “where is King, if he’s not here?” He sighed to himself and resisted the urge to shout. She was so infuriating. She knew what he wanted. Why didn’t she just come out and tell him? Everybody treated him like a fool. If they only knew, he was nobody’s fool.

  “We got a call. Jesse’s been hurt. She’s…” but she wasn’t allowed to finish her sentence.

  “Hurt?” he shouted. “Why wasn’t I notified? What happened? Was it a car accident? What? Dammit, woman, talk. Don’t I count for anything around here?” He grabbed Maggie roughly by the shoulders and shook her.

  “You weren’t notified because, as usual, you weren’t home,” Maggie said, and shrugged out of his tight grasp. “And…it wasn’t an accident. Someone tried to kill her.”

  The look on Duncan’s face surprised Maggie. Tears came to his eyes and his mouth worked, trying to speak past the emotion that threatened to choke him. He finally pulled himself together and wiped a hand roughly across his face. He reached blindly behind him and, when he felt the wooden back of the kitchen chair, lowered himself carefully into the seat as if his legs would no longer hold him.

  “Kill her?” he mumbled. “No…no, not kill her. How bad is she hurt? Is she…disfigured in any way?”

  Maggie gasped aloud at his lack of sensitivity and then frowned. That would matter most to someone of his caliber. She refused to answer him until he looked up with a pitiful expression on his face. She reluctantly relented.

  “King called about two hours ago,” she said, continuing to measure ingredients into the mixing bowl. She had to keep herself busy, too. She was too horrified by what had happened to her girl to let herself stop and think of the implications until she actually held Jesse in her hands. “I don’t think she’s hurt too badly. She had some severe lacerations on her hands and some bruising on her face, but other than that, I believe she’s okay.”

  “Thank God!” he whispered aloud, and buried his face in his hands. “If her injuries are minimal, then we must be thankful that she is alive. I’m just so glad she’s still the same.”

  “I doubt she’ll ever be the same,” Maggie snapped, and began stirring vigorously. She had to do something to keep her hands off this man. He made her so mad.

  Duncan got slowly to his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets.
He began backing out of the kitchen, bidding Maggie goodbye as he continued his crawfish exit.

  “I’ll call you later to check on Jesse. Maybe I’ll go see her as soon as she’s able to go home.”

  “She’s not going home. King is bringing her here,” Maggie said.

  “Here? Wonderful,” Duncan said, his attitude of dejection changing by the minute. “I’ll just give them time to settle in, and then I’ll be over. Cheer her up and all. It’ll be great to see her again.”

  “You better call first,” Maggie warned, but her words bounced off the front door. Duncan McCandless was gone. He’d disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared.

  She shook her head, dismissing the futility of trying to make him into something he was not. His brother Andrew had been the only one with any sense. King was following in his father’s footsteps, but for some reason, Duncan McCandless just hadn’t figured out how to grow up.

  CHAPTER 3

  King spent his nights with Jesse on a cot furnished by the nursing staff, going back to the hotel every day just to shower and change. He wanted to be at the hospital for her, as much for her protection as for her peace of mind. The intruder who’d attacked Jesse was still unapprehended. He’d simply vanished. The few leads the police received went nowhere. No hospital, no medical facility of any kind in the entire state, had reported a man with the kind of injuries Jesse had inflicted. The police had begun to talk of the possibility of the perpetrator lying dead and still undetected. However, neither King nor Captain Shockey agreed with that theory. They believed he was out there somewhere, hiding, biding his time.

  King had been reluctant to leave Jesse for even a short time until one of her friends from school heard of her attack. She started coming by every day after her summer classes were dismissed. Her name was Sheila. King liked her and could see why Jesse liked her, too. She was short and blond, funny and forthright, and best of all, she made Jesse smile. Everyone else skirted around Jesse’s attack. They were afraid to say the wrong thing—afraid that what they said would hurt her feelings or bring back bad memories. But not Sheila. She was the best thing that could have happened at this point in Jesse’s life. It did King good to hear Sheila’s anecdotes and her suppositions of the probable nightmares Jesse’s intruder was having, too. Sheila’s nonsense was closer to the truth than they could have imagined. Lynch’s days and nights were pure hell.