chapter 37
Audra, can you hear me?” Sophy gripped the handset, running toward the stables. “Is anyone here?”
Tears streaked her face as she ran past the empty stalls. “Auddie, please, please hear me. Mom and I need you.”
No one answered.
“Here are some pills to move things along,” Amanda said coldly. “Fifteen should do the job. Probably even six or seven would work.”
“Amanda, you can’t mean what you’re saying.”
“Shut up for once. You’re not in a courtroom now.” Tate Winslow’s elegant mother, dignified in a gray silk jacket and skirt, pulled a bottle from her pocket. “I’ve thought it all out.”
Dizzy, Cara stumbled back toward the door, only to find Amanda moving to cut her off. “Tate wouldn’t want this,” Cara whispered. “He’ll hate you.”
“His career means everything to him—and to me. I won’t let one silly woman ruin all that he’s worked for. I’m only glad I finally realized how dangerous you are.”
Cara closed her eyes, trying to focus. No, none of it made sense. Amanda wasn’t rational.
She clutched her stomach as another wave of nausea hit. Something in the lemonade, she realized. The pain came again, bending her double.
Amanda pursed her lips as she unscrewed the top of the bottle. “The girls are absolutely wonderful, even if you do persist in coddling them beyond permission. But I’ll see to it that they’re given some spine. No more pampering. They’ll go off to the best schools in the East, since Tate and I won’t have much time for them. Once the news of your suicide from a drug overdose hits the papers, he’s going to be terribly busy doing damage control. But I’ll make certain he looks heroic. A sad man hoodwinked by an aggressive and unstable woman. His female demographics should skew right through the roof,” she added gravely. “All you have to do is swallow a few pills. As a matter of fact, you might be the final thing that puts him into the White House.”
“Keep your hands off my girls,” Cara said hoarsely. “You’re s-sick, Amanda. You’re twisted.”
“Actually, you are the one who is sick. The nausea can be quite awful, I understand.”
With trembling steps Cara wobbled toward the door. She had to get help, but the phone was downstairs. She’d never make it that far.
“Nasty, right to the end. A good prosecutor and a wretched choice for a wife.” In the sunlight, Amanda’s manicured nails looked like perfect drops of blood as she poured a handful of pills into her palm. “I suppose I should call Patrick to help me with this part.”
Cara tried to focus. “Patrick Flanagan? Patrick, our chef?”
“Didn’t you know? Patrick has been working for Richard Costello for a long time now. I’m afraid he hates you greatly, my love.”
Summer’s lacerated wrists were on fire.
Dust flew up in angry brown sheets, and then the truck tilted sharply, slamming her back against the door frame.
Not panda, she realized.
Not a panda at all.
She knew now what name Underhill had tried to give them, but it was too late to help. Gabe threw his body over the seat—over Underhill and over her—to protect them, and there was a loud BOOM! like overhead thunder and she was tossed straight forward, glass clawing at her head.
Then there was only pain and a flat wall of darkness sweeping down around her.
“Auddie, where are you?”
The handset crackled against Sophy’s ear. “I’m right here. Why are you shouting, Sophy? You’re scaring all the fish.”
Sophy almost dropped the radio in her panic. “S-something’s wrong, Auddie. You’ve got to come back to the house right away. Have them call the police.”
“What are you talking about? Sophy, if this is a joke—”
“It’s not, Auddie. I saw something and it was horrible. Mommy’s in danger, and you have to come here now. Hurry, and be sure to bring the others with you.”
“What do you mean? Why—”
“I have go back now. Hurry.”
Sophy shoved the radio back in her pocket. She found what she’d been searching for, then raced back through the stables.
A strange car was parked at the back of the house now.
Sophy didn’t question the instinct that made her zigzag through the trees and enter quietly from the small side porch, where no one would see her.
The phone was ringing downstairs, but Cara could barely hear it. She sank onto her knees, holding her stomach as more cramps hit. Amanda’s hands blurred in front of her, shoving her onto the floor.
Downstairs the phone stopped ringing.
Cara thought of her girls. She refused to fail them. She wouldn’t miss their driving tests and proms, their graduations and beautiful weddings.
Her vision was getting worse, and sharp nails dug at her mouth, trying to work the big capsules past her locked teeth. Cara shook her head, fighting hard, but she was losing strength fast.
She remembered there had been something bitter in the lemonade, something that didn’t taste like pulp. Amanda’s shadow fell over her.
Amanda.
As she wobbled back to her feet, Sophy ran into the room. Cara tried to protest, but her daughter dug in her pocket and pushed Amanda back against the wall.
There was something small and gray in Sophy’s hands, Cara realized. Cats? But Amanda was desperately allergic to cats. They made her skin break out and her throat swell up. Sophy knew that.
Of course. Smart, brave Sophy was frightening Amanda with two of the stable cats, defending her mother. As she crawled across the floor, Cara heard Amanda cough, shouting at Sophy. Cara gripped Amanda’s legs and held on tight, forcing the old woman to drop her hands.
One by one the pills scattered, hitting the floor.
Downstairs the phone began to ring again and there were loud footsteps on the porch, followed by a man’s voice, tense and angry. Patrick, here in Wyoming?
The front door banged hard and Cara threw up in waves of torment that seemed to go on and on. Sophy pressed close, burrowing against her while the cats meowed between them.
Cara pitched forward, her body shaking. She didn’t hear Sophy cry out or call her name. She didn’t even feel Tate pick her up, cradle her head, and carry her carefully down the stairs.
The sirens were deafening.
The noise barely registered with Izzy. Considering the kind of work he did, he had seen all manner of deaths. He’d watched men gurgle away their lives from throat wounds, choking on their own blood. He’d seen men rub their eyes, only to find that their faces had been shot away. He’d even spent his own private stretch of time in hell, beginning on a perfect summer day in Thailand many years before. The scars he still carried served to remind him how men could stoop to acts of violence that no animal would commit.
He watched a team of men with stretchers carefully lift Summer’s body off the front of the mangled truck, where the village women had found her. No one in authority was saying much, despite all his questions, and Izzy’s training as a medic told him that Summer’s condition would be touch and go.
Thank God, he’d been able to trace them through Gabe’s backup cell phone.
He turned and looked at Gabe. The man was still recovering from a HALO jump that by all rights should have killed him, and since that hadn’t done the job, the damn SEAL had to get himself thrown around inside a runaway truck.
And on top of everything else, Izzy couldn’t reach Tate Winslow or Cara O’Connor at the ranch in Wyoming.
Izzy punched another number on his phone as two medical techs passed him carrying another stretcher to the crash site for Gabe, who had blocked Summer’s impact with his own body. Flung across the dashboard, he had twisted hard, one shoulder pinned under the steering wheel while his knee punched right through the rusted front dashboard.
One of the medics whispered that he would never walk again. Seeing the unnatural angle of Gabe’s knee and two inches of exposed bone, Izzy knew it was a grim possibility.
In the distance a chopper droned closer. About damned time, Izzy thought. He had pulled a whole lot of strings to arrange fast transport across the border to a U.S. facility where Gabe and Summer would receive expert care.
As the big bird thundered in, Izzy stood motionless, squinting into the dust and wishing like hell that he could do something more to help.
But he was fresh out of miracles, so he stabbed his cell phone and tried Tate Winslow in Wyoming one more time.