скачать книгу бесплатно
“You’re just tellin’ me t’beat it, that’s all. He can’t blame you for that.”
“Oh, can’t he?” Good jobs were hard to find out in the country. A job at Fleetfoot Farm was golden. “But you’re not going.”
“Not till it’s over, I’m not.”
“Look, Mrs. Colton, I’m real sorry, but—” the guard grabbed her arm and hustled her toward the pickup’s door “—get out of here, will you? Please, ma’am? It’s my job if you don’t.”
“Ouch, dammit, lemme go!” Even a week before, if Randall had dared lay a finger on her, he’d never have worked again in the bluegrass. Now she was fair game for anyone. The door scraped her shins as he yanked it open. He grabbed her waist and tossed her up on the seat. “You son of a bitch!” She slapped his hands aside.
He shut the door carefully on her, then held it shut, onehanded, while he stooped for her fallen hat. She gave up pushing and rolled down the window. “Bastard!” The tears that had been threatening all day brimmed and overflowed. Her face burned with the shame of it. She didn’t cry easily or often. Never before strangers.
“Ma‘am, I’m real sorry, but y’know, you started it all.”
“Ha!” She rubbed her nose and glared past his shoulder. Stephen hadn’t missed the show. Thank God she was too far away to see him grinning! He who laughs last... It was a phrase he’d always been fond of, trailing it off with a little smirk and a shrug.
“I don’t blame you for wanting your own back,” Randall was saying, brushing off her hat. “Lot of us had a good laugh when we heard what you’d done.”
Maybe the guards and the house staff had. But not her people, the grooms and the trainers and the exercise boys down in the stables. They weren’t amused. She’d met a groom on the streets of Lexington yesterday and he’d spat at her feet.
“Serves him right, I say. But he’s a hard one and they say he never forgets if you cross him. I was you, I wouldn’t hang around here. I’d want some miles between.” He offered her the hat with a pleading smile.
It was good advice. Advice she’d already given herself. She’d only stopped to say goodbye, and now there was no one left by the grave but her husband.
A word that wouldn’t apply much longer.
She took the Stetson, saw the muddy bootmark on its brim—well, damn—and sat blinking frantically. Don’t be such a stupid crybaby! She dropped it on the seat and started the truck.
“Where’re you headed for, ma‘am, if y’don’t mind my asking?”
“Texas, where else?” This kid’s had enough of the high life. Her sister would be waiting for her in Houston, with that big old terry-cloth robe she always loaned Susannah when she came calling, and endless cups of hot chocolate. They’d stay up talking all night, and Saskia wouldn’t judge.
She couldn’t get back to Texas soon enough. Careful not to look toward the distant watcher, Susannah set her eyes on the open road and drove.
CHAPTER SIX
JUNE IN KENTUCKY. Beyond those towering, wrought-iron gates, Fleetfoot Farm looked like a slice of paradise. More than a square mile of prime bluegrass, according to Tag’s guidebook. Hill upon hill of lush emerald green—bluegrass wasn’t really blue, so go figure—stitched with white board fences. Flashes of chestnut and bay as thoroughbred yearlings chased each other around a distant pasture. A shady avenue lined in century-old sycamores, rising toward a glimpse of far-off roofs, which would be Colton’s antebellum manor.
So it was her upcoming expulsion from this Eden that Susannah had been avenging when she brought him Payback to ruin. To have risen this high, then to lose it. Tag could almost feel pity for the lying little bitch.
Almost. Has he ever been raced? Gullible fool, had he really asked that?
Few times, she’d drawled, and looked him straight in the eye. God, she must have been laughing fit to burst!
A heavyset guard paused in the open door of the gatehouse. Piggy eyes moved over Tag’s rusting and battered vehicle, an ex state police car he’d recently bought at auction. Its big V-8 engine burned oil and sucked gas at an awesome rate, but as long as you fed the monster, at least it still had some speed. The guard swaggered over to its window, his smile dismissing both man and car. “You here for the tour?” A driver of a heap like this might be allowed to press his nose to the glass, catch a peek of heaven, was the unspoken assumption, but he’d have no real business with the high and mighty.
“Yep.” Tag dragged his own eyes away from the gun on the man’s hip—more firepower than he’d have expected out here in the country—as he mustered a smile. Smiling was his best disguise these days. Since January, not a single gossip rag or network newscast had caught the infamous Dr. Taggart with a smile on his face. “The tour.”
Like many of the big racing stables and stud farms of the bluegrass, Fleetfoot Farm opened its barns and grounds to its admiring public in the summer months. And the only way he could hope to gain admittance to Susannah’s ex’s estate was if he was disguised as a lowly tourist.
Because in six months of trying, Tag hadn’t managed a meeting with Stephen Colton face-to-face. Nor had he even talked to the elusive bastard over the phone. But for the few glimpses he’d had of the man on TV, his signature on the blizzard of lawsuits that drifted down on Tag’s head, his endless army of legal minions, Colton might have been a figment of Tag’s worst nightmare. An invisible hand dealing cards of misfortune.
And it was you dragged me into the game, Susannah. But for you, I’d still be—He blinked as the guard thumped his fender.
“...the bus, mister,” he growled, apparently repeating his words. “See it?” He jerked a thumb at the gates. Beyond them, halfway along the tunnel of trees, a tour bus chugged uphill. Trailed by three cars and a van, it rounded a bend and disappeared. “Follow that bus. Stay right at the first and second forks in the drive, then you’ll see the parking lot Just stay with the tour, y’hear?”
Was it branded on his forehead that he was different? Dangerous? Did he look what he felt, lean and angry, like a coyote who’d missed his rabbit three days running? Tag showed his teeth in what he hoped passed for a smile, nodded and steered his beater through the massive green gates, swinging open in electrified silence.
Halfway through, the car died. Twisting the key, he swore and pumped hard on the gas—blue smoke blatted out the back. Time for another quart of oil. He bucketed on through the gap without looking toward the guard, who’d be grinning. Blast this wreck! Blast the woman who’d brought him to this!
He’d lost his beloved pickup, the first and only new wheels he’d ever owned in his life, in the second month of the disaster. He’d sold it to pay his mounting legal fees, since his lawyer had known better than to work for him on credit. But not to worry, Atkins had assured him each time he handed Tag another bill. Come his day in court, it would be obvious to even the densest jury that Tag was innocent of any wrongdoing. He’d operated in good faith, believing Susannah’s assertion that she was the owner. Colton could sue, but he’d never win.
Yeah, and the meek shall inherit the earth.
Whatever advice Tag had been buying, Colton obviously had bought better. Or maybe he’d simply known how the game was played. Because each time Tag’s lawyer prepared a painstaking defense encompassing hours of depositions, reams of paperwork, phone calls, assistants, charges, countercharges and consultations, the suit would be dropped at the last possible instant. Leaving Tag with more bills to pay.
He’d scramble to meet those debts—then a new lawsuit would loom over the horizon, winnable in the end, ruinous in the desperate meantime. And even knowing the score, Tag had to respond to charges, no matter how ridiculous. You couldn’t ignore a lawsuit. Death by law. A slow, nibbling death.
So I don’t play that game anymore. No more depending on lawyers. On anyone but himself. It was the way he’d grown up, after all, on the streets of South Boston. In the years since, he’d tried his best to play by society’s rules—and he’d gotten both hands smashed in a drawer for his efforts. From now on it was back to his own rules.
Round the bend he came to a fork in the road. The righthand choice followed the shoulder of the hill, curving gently around the unseen manor. The track and stables would be at its back, he supposed.
Tag chose the left fork, which burrowed into a glossy dark wall of rhododendrons, then burst out the other side into sunlight. Across a lawn smooth and wide as a golf course, beyond a spouting fountain encircled by red roses, the white columns and tall chimneys of Fleetfoot Farm reached for the sky. Tara north. My old Kentucky home, be it ever so humble.
He parked on the raked gravel sweep before the portico, feeling as if a hundred eyes watched him from the French windows to either side of the door. After all his months of trying to make contact, surely it couldn’t be this easy? Where was Colton’s wall of lawyers, his bodyguards, his secretaries?
The door knocker was a polished bronze horseshoe, mounted curve-down to hold the luck. What must it be like to be born lucky, a fourth-generation millionaire? To never once in your life have gone to bed hungry, wondering how you’d pay the rent? Did Colton have a clue how the other half lived? Two savage knocks and the door swung silently open.
“Yes, sir?” Except for the drawl, the speaker might have been snatched from Central Casting. The perfect English butler. Silvery hair, crisp white sleeves, a black waistcoat and trousers. No doubt he’d been polishing the sterling when interrupted. Eyes fixed respectfully on Tag’s face, though Tag was sure his best suit had been noted and found wanting.
Go ahead, tell me to apply at the back door, pal. But this one was too old to punch. “I’d like to see Mr. Colton, please.” Please let him be home.
There was no guarantee. In the first weeks of the scandal Tag, along with everyone else in America—had learned more than he’d ever wanted to know about the reclusive millionaire, thanks to the tabloids. Colton had his own jet, another house on a private island off Miami, inherited rights to the finest salmon fishing in Scotland. If his horses were racing in Europe this week he’d be there to collect the trophies. If not, he might be off shopping for broodmares in Japan or gambling in the Bahamas.
“Whom may I say is calling?”
By God, was it possible? “The name’s Taggart. R. D. Taggart.”
“Ah.” The butler didn’t pull an Uzi out of the porcelain urn to the left of the door, but his eyelids quivered. Trained in the very best butlering schools. “Yes, sir.”
Tag kept his face relaxed, his hands in view. Don’t call the cops, old man. I just want to talk.
The butler pulled a chain and a gold pocket watch slid into his palm. He consulted it with pursed lips. “Mr. Colton will have finished his barn rounds, I b’lieve. You might try down at the office.”
An elegant dodge while he called for reinforcements? Or the truth? Tag was tempted to shove past him and find out. But once he’d crossed the line into open belligetience, there’d be no going back. So he thanked the man, then followed his directions to the office, which turned out to be an entire building, painted white, trimmed in forest green to match the gigantic barns that dotted the hills beyond the manor.
A receptionist, blond and beautiful, was just cradling her phone when he found her on the second floor. “Yes, Dr. Taggart?”
So much for surprises. “To see Mr. Colton, please.”
“Of course, but I’m afraid he’s in a meeting. If you’d care to sit over there? And could I bring you a cup of coffee?”
So easy, so civilized, this reception, he thought, taking a seat. It felt all wrong. All these bitter months, though he’d boxed only shadows, he’d still sensed the presence of an enemy casting that shadow. Someone derisive...intelligent... merciless. Could that all have been his own paranoia? Colton’s ignorance of what was really happening to Tag’s life? An unfortunate misunderstanding blown up into a legal vendetta, like the classic case of two spouses who wanted a friendly divorce, but ended in a bankrupting brawl, thanks to their lawyers? As he sipped Colton’s excellent coffee, for the first time in months Tag allowed himself the barest of hopes. Perhaps a truce might yet be reached.
An hour passed and the hope cooled with the coffee. “How much longer do you think he’ll be?”
The blonde gave him a sunny smile. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”
Half an hour later he asked, “Where’s this meeting taking place?”
Her blue-shadowed eyes flicked to the mahogany doors on her left. She smiled. “I’m sure they’re almost done. More coffee?”
He’d give it another fifteen minutes, not a minute longer. Tag prowled from a Palladian window overlooking a broodmare paddock—spring foals butting their dams in the udder or loping alongside them on comically spindly legs—back to blond-and-beautiful’s desk. She looked more anxious each time he made the circuit. He turned from the window at fourteen minutes to find her whispering into her phone.
So give it five more.
The double doors opened at minute nineteen and another blonde stepped through, this one at least ten years older than the receptionist. Polished to a metallic gleam. Soft lips, hard green eyes. She approached with hand extended. “Dr. Taggart? Claire De Soto, Mr. Colton’s assistant. If you’d come through to my office?”
She led him to a corner room. DeSoto had pull, apparently. She put some effort into the hospitality, insisting he take the most comfortable armchair, offering him a mint julep, which he refused. “Now how may we help you, Dr. Taggart?”
“By getting me Colton.” He was out of patience. Smelling rats.
She lifted a plucked eyebrow. “He’ll need to know in regards to what before seeing you, Dr. Taggart. So...?”
So talk or get out, huh? All right. I want my life back. “I’d...like to know what he wants. These lawsuits...they aren’t going to bring back Payback’s—” million dollar balls “—his potency. There’s no way I can give that back to him. And it doesn’t look like Colton needs my money.” Tag glanced wryly to one side. Through the window on the right, he could see a half-mile exercise track in the distance. In the foreground, a groom led a prancing colt across a courtyard. “So what does your boss want from me?”
Tag had apologized last winter, in a letter passed from his lawyer to Colton’s. There’d been no acknowledgment. Still, he’d be happy to apologize for a second time. Because if Payback was the best horse Colton had ever bred, then Tag could sympathize with the man’s outrage. His disappointment. The stud had been much more than an oat-burning money machine. He would have been the foundation of all Colton’s hopes for future generations of wonder horses.
Tag sincerely regretted the part he’d been tricked into playing in blasting those hopes. But surely Colton could see that Susannah had screwed them both. “If it’s an apology he wants...”
“I’m sure he’ll tell you.”
That was all that Tag wanted or needed. To meet Colton face-to-face, without lawyers or tape recorders. Without witnesses. So that he could hear the man out, try one last time to apologize.
And then explain to him calmly and clearly where they were headed if they couldn’t reach a truce. If Colton couldn’t back off, wouldn’t back off, then Tag would have to kill him. It was as simple as that. I want my life back. And I don’t mean to live it looking over my shoulder.
But you didn’t make that kind of threat to lawyers or assistants, then ask them to please pass it on to the boss. Statements like that might be a basic man-to-man truth, but in the eyes of the law, they constituted assault. Seventeen years ago Tag had spent a summer behind bars, and that was enough for one lifetime.
“Is there anything else you need from Mr. Colton?”
One thing. “Susannah Mack’s address.” Her divorce had become final two months ago, he’d learned from the gossip rags, shortly after the charge of horse theft had been dropped. That was the last mention of her he’d been able to find anywhere. The bitch had dropped off the face of the earth. Gone to ground in Texas, maybe? Or some place much fancier? Wherever, she’d be enjoying her pay-off in the unbreachable seclusion that only big money could buy, he supposed. Because the tabloids also noted that, though the terms of her divorce had been settled privately, they were said to be exceedingly generous. Ten million was the figure whispered most often.
Whatever amount Colton had paid her to go away, Tag figured at least half of it was his.
“Oh...” DeSoto hadn’t expected that one. “I see.” She rose. “Well. If you’ll wait one minute, Dr. Taggart...” She shut the door behind her.
One minute turned into ten. Twenty. Enough. Tag stood, and standing, glanced up at the far corner above the chair that DeSoto had chosen.
The lens of a camera gazed blankly back at him. Hair prickled at the nape of his neck. A security camera within an office? Aimed at the window, surely? He turned. No, aimed at his chair. “You son of a bitch!” Had he been watching all this time?
“Dr. Taggart?” DeSoto stood in the doorway, an odd little smile curving her lips. “Mr. Colton won’t be able to see you today, after all.”
Two hours on ice. Suckered into hoping again. And all for what? For the same reason children pulled wings off flies—because they could?
And, clever boy, Colton had used women to do his petty work. Much as Tag needed to punch somebody, he didn’t punch women. “Where is he?”
“Why, there he is now!” DeSoto nodded at the window. “He must have stepped out the back.”
Out in the courtyard between the office and the nearest barn, a man stood by the door of a red Ferrari convertible, looking up. Gold wire rims, impeccable seersucker suit. As their eyes locked, Colton grinned, waved jauntily, got in the car.
Tag started for the door, the roar of a big engine reaching him faintly through the glass. He swept DeSoto out the exit before him, then swung to look back. As he’d thought, she couldn’t have seen Colton from where she’d been standing. A setup from start to finish. “Where’s he going?” And by God, she’d tell him!
Out in the corridor, DeSoto smiled demurely from beyond a wall of muscle—two guards built like linebackers, each with a hand resting on a bolstered gun. “Would you show Dr. Taggart to his car, please, Peterson?”
Tag wanted a fight so badly, he could taste its blood in his mouth.
The smile on the larger guard widened. He rocked on his heels. Come on then, his eyes invited. You and me.
With pleasure! Tag took a step forward—and saw beyond his mark another camera, tucked up in a far corner of the hallway. If he fought these two, he’d be fighting for Colton’ s entertainment. And if he lost, Colton would see him beaten. Tag pulled in a shaking breath. I play by my rules, you bastard, not yours.
“Thank you,” he said, and no two words had ever come harder.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY ESCORTED HIM in smirking silence to his car, then tailgated him all the way to the front gates, the grill of their outsized pickup filling his rearview mirror with glinting chrome. Swearing helplessly, Tag gunned his engine as he shot through the gates, but the truck was faster. “Crap!” His head snapped backward as they bumped him. “That’s it.” He swerved to the shoulder and stopped. “You want a fight, you got it.”
As Tag stepped out, the driver popped the truck into reverse. With the shotgun rider waving cheerily through the windshield, it roared backward down the road, past the gates, then shot forward and through. The gates closed behind it. The truck tootled farewell as it vanished up the avenue of trees.
Bastards, bullies, thugs! Somebody’s going to pay for this! Someday, somehow... But not today. He glared at the white board fences extending either side of the entry. Electrified, naturally. So-o-o... “Later.”
Fingers clenched on the steering wheel, he headed back toward Lexington. What now, what now? And using what for money? He had four hundred left in cash, the remains of his final paycheck from the dog pound in Buffalo. That job had ended three days ago, when the pound had run out of funding for his position. Third job that had fallen out from under him in the past six months.
When that final, dreary attempt to get on with his career aborted, something had snapped. Never mind the lawyers, he’d thought. He’d deal with Colton himself. Reach a truce somehow, then ask for Susannah’s address. No reason her ex should protect her, he’d figured.
He’d figured wrong every which way, regarding Colton. Petty bastard.
A horn sounded behind him and his teeth snapped together. Didn’t they know when to back off? The truck behind, Fleetfoot green like the guards’ truck but smaller, beeped again. “All right then, dammit!” He pulled over, climbed out and stalked back to where the truck had stopped on the shoulder behind him.
The driver didn’t step out to meet him. A small, stocky man. Sandy hair, pug nose, Irish face. Shrewd gray eyes studied Tag through his rolled-up window.
“What d’you want?” The guy looked too short to make a satisfying opponent, though Tag knew well enough from his Boston years how fierce the Irish could be.
The window rolled down an inch. “I heard you might be looking for Susannah.”
Yes! “Who’s asking?”
“I’m a trainer back at Fleetfoot. Friend of her and Brady.”
Brady? An image of a silver flask skated across his mind—that Brady? “Who told you I was looking?” He was in no mood to trust, but still, to get his hands on Susannah...
