by J. R. Ward
"That's what people tell me." Lane crossed his arms over his chest. "I'll take a lie detector test. I'll swear on a Bible--hell, they should check under her fingernails. They won't find any part of me on her--or in her. I didn't touch her, Sam."
"She says she has a witness."
"Ha! In her dreams. Hell, she must have done it to herself--"
"It's a maid? Someone named Tiffany?"
Lane recoiled. "Maid? Tiff--wait, you mean, with a 'p-h-a-n-i-i?'"
He pictured the one with the towels, who'd introduced herself to him with that look in her eye.
Samuel T. shrugged. "I don't know how she spells it. I'm getting this on the QT from Mitch. But the woman says she overheard you and Chantal fighting, and you were threatening to, and I quote, 'beat the shit out of her.'"
"I never said that!"
"You were standing in the second-floor hallway, and the maid walked in on the conversation."
"She's lying--" Lane stopped and shook his head, the memory coming back. "Wait, no, no. Not about--no, I said that because Chantal disrespected Miss Aurora. I was pissed off at her. I didn't mean it literally."
Samuel T. looked down at the cuts on his arms. "I'm going to be honest here. You seem to have a lot of convenient answers--"
"It's the truth! I'm not making this shit up!"
"Listen, I don't want to fight with you--"
"Samuel T.," he said in a level voice. "Have you ever known me to get violent. Especially toward a woman?"
Samuel T. stared at him for a long time. Then the guy put his palms out. "No, no, I haven't known you to be like that--and I want to believe you, I really do. But even if everything you're telling me is the God's honest, we have two problems here, a legal one and a PR one. The legality stuff will take care of itself assuming Lizzie will vouch for you, and there's no forensic proof on Chantal's body or yours. The PR problem? That is going to be so much harder to handle. This is big news, Lane--especially if you're right and your father is having a kid with your wife. Hell, this is nationwide news--and you've got to know that the press never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. And even though it shouldn't, this kind of scandal will have an effect on things like stock prices and the perceived value of the products your family's company sells. I'm not saying this is right, but it is reality. You are the Bradford Bourbon Company. Your family is the Bradford Bourbon Company. I might have been able to erase your sister's trip through the system, but this one . . . I can't un-ring this bell. It's already on the local news."
Lane paced around the man's front hall. Then he looked over at his buddy. "Speaking of my family, do you have any bourbon in this house?"
"Always. And I only serve the best so it's Bradford."
Lane thought of Mack and the fact that the stills had been shut down. And then of his father . . . and everything the man had done.
"We'll see for how much longer," Lane muttered.
FORTY-THREE
Six hours later, as Lane sat in an interrogation room down at the county jailhouse, he tried Lizzie's cell phone for the sixth time--and decided that she must have found out about the situation. Maybe someone had called her? Or maybe she'd turned on her radio, after all? She didn't have a television.
Hell, maybe somebody had put up a neon sign in downtown Charlemont and she could see it all the way in Indiana.
"We're almost done here," Samuel T. said as he came back in the stark grey room. "The good news is that you've been downgraded to a person of interest, but things are going to be in limbo until the investigation is concluded. At least you can go home now, though, and there's no mug shot."
Lane ended the call and rubbed his aching eyes. They'd given him his phone and his wallet back about fifteen minutes ago, and the first thing he'd done was try to get ahold of Lizzie again.
Given the way he'd left her house, there was no scenario where she wouldn't have picked up his call if she'd wanted to speak with him.
Clearly, she had no interest in hearing his side of things.
"How much longer?" he said as he rubbed his aching head. "Can I leave now?"
"Almost. They're just checking with the DA--who happens to be a hunting buddy of mine." Samuel T. sat down. "I know it's politically incorrect, but thank God the old boys' network is alive and well in this town--or you'd be getting strip searched right now."
"You're a miracle worker," Lane said numbly.
"It helps that Chantal's story had some holes in it. She obviously was operating on her own when she came up with this bright idea. Who the hell takes a bath right after they're attacked--and is careful to clean under her broken manicure? Makes no damn sense. And then there was the happy little fact that she called both the paper and two TV stations--from her ER bed."
"Told you." He checked his phone in case Lizzie had called back and he'd somehow not heard the ring. "She's ruining my life, that one."
"Not if I have anything to do with it."
Lane tried Lizzie a seventh time. Put the phone back down. "What did she look like? You know, Chantal. When she got to the hospital."
"You sure you want to see the photographs?"
"Yeah, I need to know how bad it is."
Samuel T. got up again. "I'll see what I can do."
As the interrogation room door opened and shut once more, Lane fiddled with his phone. He thought about sending a text, but doubted that was going to make any difference at all.
Unbelievable. He literally could not believe this was happening to him again--same two women, same vocabulary . . . as for the outcome?
He was shit terrified he knew the answer to that one already: Lizzie had locked him out once. Clearly, this was the way she intended to handle him again.
Samuel T. came back ten minutes later with a manila envelope. "Here you go."
Lane took the thing and opened the flap. Sliding out four glossies, he frowned at the top one.
Two black eyes. Bruises on the sides of her face. Ligature marks around her throat.
"This is bad," he said roughly. "Jesus . . ."
There was no love lost for him when it came to Chantal, but he didn't like to see anyone in this condition--especially a woman. And no, he thought, there was no chance she had done this to herself. Someone must have hit her--repeatedly and hard.
Had she paid somebody? he wondered.
The second and third photos were close-ups. The fourth was--
Lane went back to the third one. Leaning in close, he studied a detail of her cheek--a cut in her skin under her eye.
Suddenly, he dropped the images on the table and sat back, closing his lids.
"What?" Samuel T. asked.
It was a long while before he could speak. But eventually, he turned the photo around and pointed to the bleeding cut on Chantal's skin. "My father did this to her."
"How do you know?"
With god-awful clarity, Lane remembered once again that terrible New Year's night, back when he'd been a kid and his older brother had taken a beating for the rest of them. "When he used to hit Edward, his signet ring would leave the exact same mark. My father hit her back handed, across the face . . . the gold makes the cut."
Samuel T. cursed under his breath. "Are you serious?"
"Dead. Serious."
"Hold on, let me bring the investigator back in. They're going to want to know about this."
*
As Lizzie drove in to work at the crack of dawn, she couldn't help thinking about the trip in from a couple of days ago, when that ambulance had passed her and proceeded up Easterly's hill.
She had the same feeling of foreboding now. And the same dread at seeing Lane.
No radio today on her commute. She didn't want to run the risk of the local NPR station cutting in with the big news that one of Charlemont's most prominent men had put his pregnant wife in the hospital. Further details about the situation weren't going to change the story, and she was feeling badly enough already.
Proceeding past the BFE main entrance, she
went down to the staff road and traveled by the fields and the greenhouses, up to the parking lot. Thanks to her coming in so early, there was no one else around, not even Gary McAdams.
She'd planned it that way.
On autopilot, she turned off her truck and reached across for her purse. "Crap."
She'd left the thing at home. Which meant no sunglasses, no sunscreen, no hat.
Whatever. She wasn't driving back now.
And it was probably a good thing that she didn't have her phone. Lane hadn't stopped calling her--as early as four a.m. this morning he'd still been ringing her.
The walk up to the back door of Easterly took her a good long time, and she told herself it was a simple case of exhaustion. After Greta had finally left her house around one a.m., she had stayed up to watch the sunrise over the wreck in her front yard.
Nice little metaphor for her life.
Entering through the kitchen, she found Miss Aurora at the big stove. "Good morning," she said in what she hoped was a halfway normal voice. "Have you seen Mr. Harris?"
Miss Aurora flipped the eggs in her skillet with a spatula. "He's in his suite of rooms. I had no family orders this morning, so I'm making this for you and me and anyone else who's around. I'll have it in the break room in ten."
"I'm so sorry. I have to--"
"See you in there."
Lizzie took a deep breath. "I'll try to make it."
"You do that." Miss Aurora looked over her shoulder, her black eyes gleaming. "Otherwise, I'm going to have to come find you and talk to you about how you shouldn't believe everything you hear or read."
Ducking her eyes, Lizzie pushed her way out of the kitchen and went across to Mr. Harris's door. Before she knocked on it, she glanced back at Rosalinda's. A CMP seal had been put on the panels, and caution tape had been run between the jambs.
Yet another crime scene in the house, she thought. Wonder what Chantal's bedroom looked like.
The butler opened his door and jumped back. "Miss King?"
Lizzie shook herself. "Oh, sorry. Listen, I need to speak with you."
Mr. Harris frowned, but something about her affect must have reached through his haughty attitude. "Do come in."
Predictably, the decor was proper English, all kinds of leather-bound books, antique chairs, and garnet-colored Orientals filling out the space. Beyond the sitting area, there was a galley kitchen, and similar to Miss Aurora's quarters, on the far side there was a closed door she guessed led to his bedroom and bath.
It smelled good, lemony and clean, not stuffy.
"I'm giving my notice," she said abruptly. "Two weeks. I would have told Rosalinda, but . . ."
Mr. Harris stared at her for a moment; then he went over and sat behind a carved desk that had paperwork but no computer on it. "This is a surprise."
"It's in my contract. I only have to give two weeks."
"May I ask why?"
"Just a change of focus. I've been thinking about it for a while."
"Have you." He steepled his hands. "So this has nothing to do with the reports that came out last night?"
"I'm very sorry that the family is having to deal with such ugliness."
Mr. Harris cocked a brow. "Is there nothing I can do to convince you to stay?"
"My mind is made up, but thank you."
She left it at that, returning to the hall and shutting the door behind her. Standing by herself, she blinked away tears, tilting her head back while praying that her nose didn't start to run.
Of all the ways she had imagined leaving Easterly, it had never been like this. But there was no going back. She had come to her decision to quit with Greta while they had polished off a half gallon of chocolate chip ice cream, in between her first crying jag and her second.
At the end of the day, she didn't actually believe that Lane could have hurt Chantal like that--it just didn't seem possible. But that wasn't the point.
It didn't even matter whether or not the woman was pregnant--or whose it was if she were having a baby.
The simple truth was that after nearly a decade with the family, Lizzie had come to realize that they were different from her in a fundamental way--and not because the Bradfords had more money than she would see in several lifetimes. The thing was, where she came from, people got married and had children; they contributed to their 401ks; and they went on one family vacation a year, to a place like Disney or Sandals. They paid their taxes on time, and celebrated marriages and births with potlucks, and they didn't cheat on their wives or their husbands.
They lived dignified, modest lives unmarked by the kind of crazy drama that went on with the Bradfords.
And the thing was, as much as she was attracted to Lane--hell, maybe she was drawn to the very insanity that also repelled her--she simply didn't have the energy or the wherewithal to keep going with him in any capacity. She fell too hard, too fast for him--and just as before, what he brought to her life was nothing but a pit in her stomach, more sleepless nights . . . and a feeling of profound depression.
Some risk pools you couldn't volunteer for. Whether it was certain cancers, or bad accidents, or other kinds of tragedies, you couldn't always reduce your chances of getting hurt--because you were alive and that was the reality for all the living things on the planet.
Other problems, issues and dangers, however, you were free to step out of, step away from--and when you were a responsible adult, who wanted to lead a halfway healthy existence, it was incumbant upon you to take care of yourself, protect yourself . . . nurture yourself.
Clearly, she couldn't be trusted to keep her head on straight around Lane Baldwine, so she was going to solve the problem of her lack of self-control . . . with a lack of proximity.
Time to leave.
Like an addict who was going cold turkey, she was just taking off--and no, she didn't want to talk to him about any of it. That just seemed like a junkie wanting to enter into a deep-and-meaningful with a syringe of heroin. Undoubtedly, Lane was going to have his side of things, but no matter what that was, it couldn't change the fact that her heart was broken all over again and her decision to quit her job was not subject to negotiation.
And now . . . she was going to do her best to get on with her day.
Heading down to the greenhouses, she went into the first one she got to and was more than ready to work on the seedlings--which were now not seedlings at all. But before she went over to the supply station to gather her pruning shears, she stopped and took out her phone.
What she did next took no more than a moment.
And was probably a stupid thing to do.
But she transferred seventeen thousand, four hundred, eighty-six dollars, and seventy-nine cents from her savings . . . to her mortgage account.
Paying off her farm.
Yeah, it was likely not the smartest move, considering she would be selling the thing. Pride, however, made the transaction necessary. Pride, and a sense that she needed to feel that she had achieved the goal she had started with when she'd bought the place.
She had always wanted something that was her own in the world, a home that she established and paid for and maintained without help from anyone else.
The fact that she now didn't owe a red cent on the land was a counterbalance to everything else she was feeling.
Proof positive that she hadn't completely failed to look after herself.
*
Lane returned to Easterly as soon as he was released.
Well, minus the trip back out to Samuel T.'s to pick up his Porsche.
He entered his family's property via the back way, driving past the fields and the greenhouses for two reasons. One, because there was press at the main gates; and two, because he wanted to see whether Lizzie was on site.
She was. Her maroon farm truck was parked in the lot along with the other vehicles of the staff.
"Damn it," he exhaled.
Continuing up to the garages, he parked his car under the magnolia tree and went direct
ly to the rear entrance of the business center. After he entered the code Edward had had him use, he yanked open the door and stalked his way to the reception area, passing those offices, that conference room, that dining room.
Men and women in suits looked up in alarm, but he ignored them.
He didn't stop until he was inside the glass office of his father's assistant. "I'm going in to see him now."
"Mr. Baldwine, you can't--"
"The hell I can't."
"Mr. Baldwine, he's--"
Lane threw the door open and--
Pulled up short. His father was not behind that desk.
"Mr. Baldwine, we don't know where he is."
Lane glanced over his shoulder. "What?"
"Your father . . . he was supposed to be traveling this morning, but he never showed up at the airport. The pilot waited for an hour."
"You called the house, of course."
"And his cell phone." The woman put her hand over her mouth. "He's never done this before. No one has seen him in the mansion."
"Shit."
Dear Lord, now what?
As Lane bolted out of there, the assistant's voice called after him, "Please tell him to call me?"
Back in the morning sunshine, he fell into a flat-out run for Easterly's kitchen entrance. Busting through, he ran past the stainless-steel counters and punched open the door into the staff hallway. He took the back stairs two at a time, nearly plowing into a maid who was vacuuming her way to the second floor.
Down the hall. Past his room. Past Chantal's.
To his father's.
Lane skidded to a halt in front of the door, and thought that he really wasn't ready to have a Rosalinda, Part II, with his own father--but not because he didn't want to see the dead body of one of his parents.
No, it was more because if the man was going to need a coffin, Lane was going to damn well be the one who put that bastard's head on the tufted pillow.
Lane threw things open. "Father," he barked. "Where are you."
Marching in, he listened for a response and then shut the door behind himself--just in case the man was alive: He was going to hurt the sonofabitch, heaven help him, but he was so going to hurt him.
Chantal might be a slut and a liar, but a woman should never be hit. No matter the circumstance.
"Where the fuck are you," he demanded as he opened up the bathroom.
When he didn't find the man hanging in the glass shower enclosure, he doubled back and went into the wardrobe room.
