Dangerous (29 page)

Patricia looked stunned.

“Did you kill somebody?” Winnie asked, shocked.

Pat rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake, I must be getting paranoid.” She took a big sip of her drink. “My husband’s gallivanting all over Texas with a high-school cheerleader, with carloads of media trying to catch him in the act for their next big political scandal. Will’s moldy retainer is threatening a minister. My stepmother…what in the world is the matter with you?”

“Sorry. I just never heard of anybody threatening a minister,” she said with a laugh. “Our minister is bald and sixty and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He came and sat with my father when he was dying.” She was shocked to hear Pat talking about a moldy retainer making threats.

“It does sound strange, doesn’t it?” Pat wondered. She took another drink. “He said the man was drawing things he shouldn’t. Now I ask you, what in the world does that mean?”

“Beats me,” Winnie said carelessly. She grinned. “What are you going to do about the cheerleader?” she asked.

Pat blinked. “Do about her?”

Winnie propped her chin in her hand. “If it were me, I’d go see her folks.”

Pat cleared her throat and took another swallow. A big one. “Not if you had a husband with employees like Jay Copper, you wouldn’t.”

“Oh, what could he do? Threaten you?”

Pat looked down into her drink. She took another swallow. And another. She blinked. “There was a girl, once,” she said dully. “Like the cheerleader. She came to one of our parties. I caught Will with her. She was drugged out of her mind. She didn’t even know what was happening. I made him send her home. He told Jay to drive her.” She took another drink.

“I heard about that from a police officer back home,” Winnie said. She frowned. “Her dad got a new Jaguar and all the charges were dropped, right?”

Pat shook her head. “This one never made it back to her house. They found her…” She stopped suddenly. She looked at Winnie with a terrified expression. “You mustn’t ever tell anyone I said that, especially your husband. Promise me!”

“Okay, I promise,” Winnie said, mentally crossing her fingers. She was so shocked she could hardly manage to put on an act. Jay Copper! Not Hank Sanders, but the old moldy family retainer had gone with the girl who was later found dead. “I don’t understand why.”

“Just never mind.” She put down the drink. “Me and my big mouth! I’ve been scared to death for years, kept secluded, watched to make sure I never said anything…!”

Winnie put a hand over hers. “I would never do anything to put your life in danger,” she said earnestly. “I mean that.”

Pat relaxed. “Thanks.” She grimaced. “I can’t talk to anybody. My husband has me followed everywhere I go. I’m forever looking over my shoulder.” She glanced behind her and froze.

Winnie turned. There was a man in a suit wearing dark glasses, standing beside a dark sedan.

“Do you know him?” Winnie asked.

“No.”

“He’s probably just waiting on a client,” Winnie said gently. “You have to loosen up! You’re getting paranoid. Honestly. Your husband likes young girls. That makes him a rake, but it doesn’t make him a murderer.”

Pat looked into her eyes. “Do you think so?” she asked anxiously.

“Of course I do!”

Pat put her face in her hands. “I drink too much. I talk too much. I’ll end up in a river somewhere myself one day.”

“Now you really sound paranoid. We should get moving. If you sit here, that alcohol is going to do a number on you. Come on. Shops are waiting!”

Pat laughed. “I guess so.” She stood up. “You’re really nice,” she said. “I’ve only known you from parties, and you always seemed to stand in a corner while Boone and Clark did all the socializing. How are they, by the way?”

“Boone just got married to my best friend. They’re very happy.”

“And Clark?”

She shook her head. “Clark is mixed up with one wild girl after another. This new one seems to be different, though. She’s a librarian.”

Patricia smiled. “I’d have liked to have brothers and sisters.”

“You can have Clark,” Winnie offered.

The other woman swiped at her. “No, thanks. I’m happy as I am.”

They walked away from the shop. The man in the suit pulled out a cell phone and started punching in numbers.

W
INNIE WAS FRIGHTENED
about what she’d learned, but she put on a happy face and wandered all over Nassau with Pat. It was dark when they drove up in front of Winnie’s beach house.

“Well, the lights are on,” Winnie said. “Maybe he’s still there.”

“You have to stop fighting with him,” Pat advised.

“No. You stop fighting a man like that, and he’ll walk all over you,” Winnie replied firmly. “I’m not anybody’s carpet.”

Pat shook her head. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to know each other sooner.”

Winnie looked back at her. “Me, too.” She grinned. “But better late than never.”

Pat looked sad. “No. It won’t be like that.” Suddenly she turned up the car radio and grabbed Winnie’s arm, pulling her closer. Her eyes were wild. She spoke into Winnie’s ear. “Listen, if I’m not here tomorrow, he’ll probably send me to Oklahoma, to his family’s old home place,” she said quickly. “Jay Copper is there, and I’m scared of what he might do. He’ll know I spoke to you… Your husband has a ranch near there. Find an excuse to go there with your husband. Find me. Will you do that?”

“Why…?”

The jangling of Pat’s cell phone made her start and cry out. She grabbed it up and opened it, turning down the radio at the same time. “Yes?” Her face paled. She gnawed her lower lip. “Yes. Yes, I will. Right now? Very…very well.” She hung up. Her face was tragic. “I have to go.” She leaned closer. “Remember what I said!”

Winnie jumped out of the car. Pat drove off without another word.

W
HEN SHE WALKED
in the door, Kilraven was waiting. He was standing in the hall, all business.

“Pack,” he said quickly. “I’ve got a Learjet on the way to pick us up. We’re going to Oklahoma.”

“You heard us!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, and so did someone else.” He turned away. “We’ll be lucky if she lives long enough to get there.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned. “The car was bugged.”

“By you?” she asked hopefully.

“Yes. And probably by her husband’s old family retainer. Give me your purse.”

She handed it over without a thought. He opened it and turned the contents out onto the coffee table.

“Is it bugged?” she asked, worried.

He stood erect and his eyes were blazing. “Where are your birth control pills?” he asked coldly.

Her heart jumped up into her throat. She’d fallen right into the trap. It didn’t take ESP to know that he’d already tossed her room. She sat down with a hard sigh. “They’re still in the drawer next to the bed in your guest room. In the rush to the airport, I forgot them.”

He didn’t say a word.

She looked up at him. “Yes, I know the risk is exponential if you miss one.” She glared at him. “But I didn’t expect to be tossed onto a bed and ravished after you promised me nothing would happen!”

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’m a man,” he bit off.

She sighed. “Oh, yes, you are!” she said with such feeling that his pose of indignation was threatened. He turned away.

“We have to beat her to Oklahoma,” he said.

“Will they try to kill her, you think?”

He nodded. “Too many people have already died trying to cover up what happened.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I think so,” he said. “A lot of it is theory, but I’ve been adding up what I know. And I spoke with your mother on the phone a few minutes ago. She filled in a few more blank spaces. Pack, and I’ll lay it out for you on the way to the airport.”

H
E DID, SUCCINCTLY
. “The senator had a party and invited one of his conquests, a little girl barely in her teens who’d put on plenty of makeup and stuffed her sweater and pretended to be in college. He drugged her and had fun with her, up until his wife caught him. He protested, but by then the girl came to and realized what he’d done, and started yelling about prosecution and told him her true age. He told Jay Copper to take her home. So he did, but with a detour so that he could enjoy her himself. The senator wasn’t the only man who liked young girls in the house. She fought, he subdued her, and somewhere in the struggle she died.”

“Oh, brother,” she said heavily.

“So then Copper had to cover it up. He faked an automobile accident, destroyed her body so that she wouldn’t be recognized and went about his business. The senator was probably horrified when he knew what his right-hand man had done, but he couldn’t afford a scandal—he’d just been elected state senator and he had a much higher office in his sights. He saw a whole new world of financial stability opening up for him. The girl would have cost him his career. He wasn’t having it ruined by some teen who threatened to go to the news media.”

“But, your little girl,” she began.

His jaw clenched. “Monica used to go with a boy who worked for Senator Sanders. He and Hank were friends. Hank told him what happened, and he told Monica. I didn’t know it at the time, not until today, when your mother dug it out of a closed file and called me on my cell phone to tell me about it. Monica’s ex-boyfriend was killed, but before he died, he spoke with a detective and said he had information about the death of a teenager who’d been disfigured to cover up her identity.”

“Oh, no,” she said, because she realized where this was going.

“That’s right. Hank figured that if Monica knew the truth, she might talk. So he sent a couple of men over, maybe Jay Copper included, to make sure she didn’t. My daughter was there with her. She wasn’t a target, she was just in the way.” He bit his lower lip. “They didn’t count on the Jacobsville victim falling in love, getting religion and talking to a minister.”

“If Marquez hadn’t gone to the media about the minister, he’d be dead, too.”

“No doubt about it.”

“Pat told me that a moldy old family retainer was threatening a minister who was drawing pictures he shouldn’t. Not much guesswork involved in figuring out who, or why,” she said.

“Yes. I phoned Jon and told him to get a tail on the minister, just in case.”

“Good for you.” She shook her head. “All those people, all dead, because of a teenager who woke up too soon and had to be silenced.”

“Yes. The worst of it was they didn’t find out who the girl really was until three years after she was killed. Her parents were dead by then. They’d thought their daughter was kidnapped. They joined support groups and pestered the police to find her. Then, they died in a horrendous automobile accident in a snowstorm in Colorado, before they could learn the truth.”

She closed her eyes. “Dear God. And he got away with it.”

“No, he didn’t,” Kilraven said in the coldest voice she’d ever heard.

“But there are no witnesses left,” she argued. “If they can silence the senator’s wife…”

“That’s why we’re going to Oklahoma,” he said. “They aren’t silencing her.”

Her dark eyes glittered with feeling. “They should put the senator and his brother away for a hundred years!”

“I’m all for that. But there’s a very real possibility that the senator had no idea what his brother planned to do.”

“That’s chilling. But he tried to stop the investigation.”

“He was protecting his brother,” he said. He sighed. “I’d do the same for Jon.” He glanced at her. “You’d do it for Boone, or Clark or Matt.”

She nodded. “What about my uncle? How is he tied into this, do you know?”

He shook his head. “He probably knew someone in the chain, but he didn’t know anything specific enough to make him a target. The only connection we have is the thermos. And that could turn out to be a blind alley. He might have loaned it to the murder victim.”

“I like Pat,” she said. “I hope we can save her.” She glanced at him. “Couldn’t you call the FBI?”

“And tell them what? That we have a possible murder? I didn’t get tape, Winnie. It’s your word against the senator’s best attorneys. He’d sue the hell out of the Bureau if I brought Jon in on it.” He didn’t add that he knew Garon Grier had been seen with Hank Sanders just recently. That was still a puzzle to him.

She ground her teeth together. “You’re a spy! Don’t you know other spies who could help?”

He chuckled. “I’m not a spy. I’m an intelligence operative.”

“Semantics!” she argued.

He pursed his lips. “I don’t think anyone inside the law could do us much good. However, I do know a few people outside it.”

“Maybe the senator’s evil brother does, too.”

“No. These are good guys. I ought to know,” he added as he started punching numbers into his cell phone. “I trained every damned one of them. Hello? Put Rourke on the line.”

I
T WAS A ROLLER-COASTER
ride for Winnie, who’d never dreamed that she’d be caught up in a murder investigation that put her own life on the line. It was exciting, just the same.

They landed at the Lawton-Fort Sill Regional Airport. Kilraven, too impatient to wait for one of the ranch hands to drive to town and get them, rented a Lincoln and they drove to the ranch at what she termed warp speeds, to Kilraven’s amusement.

It was a surprise to Winnie, who was used to their own large ranch holdings. Now she understood why Kilraven found it so easy to fit in at society parties. The ranch, Raven’s Pride, was built like a Spanish hacienda with many graceful arches sheltering a long, wide front porch. It was so big that it filled the horizon as they approached it. The pastures were fenced and those leading down the half mile of paved road to the ranch itself were white, spotless. On each side of the road, beautiful purebred Black Angus cattle grazed on fresh bales of hay. Their drinking water was in heated containers.

“It’s amazing,” Winnie said, staring out the window. “It makes our ranch look like a toy one!”

He chuckled. “It’s been here for over a hundred and fifty years,” he told her. “I’ll tell you the history one day. It has to do with ravens who actually called wolves to sites of carrion, so they could get to the good parts after the wolves did the dirty work. Jon and I can’t bear to part with it, although we don’t spend much time here. We have a competent manager and submanagers in charge of routine operations.”