Die in Plain Sight (35 page)

Savoy Ranch

Late Tuesday afternoon

T
he guard at the south gate had seen Ian and Lacey before. He checked off their names and opened the guardhouse window. Rain lashed in.

“’Evening,” he said. “Mr. Forrest isn’t back from the club yet, but the housekeeper is expecting you.”

“Which Mr. Forrest?” Ian asked, ignoring the rain coming in through his own open window.

“Ward. He left here about an hour ago. Were you expecting his son?”

“That’s who we talked to.”

“Then I’m sure he’ll be along soon.”

Lacey leaned across Ian to look at the guard. She didn’t have to lean far. Though there were only two people in the front seat, she’d slid over to sit thigh to thigh with Ian.

“We didn’t drive all the way out here because we like sight-seeing in the rain,” she said to the guard. “We were told that we would be able to
see the Forrest family art collection. Did either Mr. Forrest say when he’d be back?”

“No, but I’m sure the housekeeper knows.”

Lacey started to object.

The guard kept talking. “Drive slow and watch the road where it climbs up the side of the canyon onto the bluff top. Ward told me the bluff was losing some stones with all the rain.”

Ian ran up the window and drove onto ranch land. The windshield wipers worked hard to keep up with the rain. Muddy water washed from the high side of the asphalt to the low and gathered in puddles everywhere. Though sealed, it still wasn’t much of a road.

Lacey grabbed the dashboard. “The guard isn’t really needed. These bumps could knock you cold. How far is the house?”

“Couple miles.”

She looked at the water-slicked, storm-stripped sycamores growing up from the dry riverbed to their left. “No wonder the road’s coming apart. Rain like this sent Noah running to his workshop. Wonder if the riverbed will stay dry.”

“It’s a long way from the mountains.”

“And that matters how?”

“Runoff.”

Lacey glanced at Ian. She didn’t need his terse conversation to tell her that he was in a bad mood. “Is this a general or a specific mad?”

He cut a sideways look at her, downshifted, and gave his attention back to the road. “General.”

In the heavy rain, the truck’s headlights made little more than a vague blur on the dark pavement. The tires bit through the water and occasional skim of mud without slipping. Even so, Ian stopped, put the truck in neutral, and switched into four-wheel drive. Better to do it now than stall out in mud on the side of a hill later.

“You want to talk about your general mad?” she asked.

Ian reached for the four-wheel drive gearshift on the floor and let out the clutch. The old truck groaned and took the road like a great turtle—slow but sure.

“We’ve talked about it,” he said.

“And our conclusion was…?”

“We’re fucked.”

“Did we enjoy it?” she shot back.

Despite his mood, Ian smiled. “We sure did.”

The road narrowed to one lane with occasional turnouts so two vehicles could get past each other. It didn’t follow the dry streambed. Instead, the road snaked alongside the bluff that rose on the north side. The rain lifted for a moment, then poured down with renewed enthusiasm. Somewhere to the west there must have been an opening in the clouds, because sun stabbed through the rain in rich flashes of gold. It made driving a misery.

The sun sank beneath rain as the road started upward in a series of twisting, tight turns that reflected its origins in horse-and-buggy days. Instead of gutters, water was hustled off the road by giving the pavement a slant up on the bluff side and down over the growing drop off on the driver’s side. Sheets of dirty water sluiced across the road, shot through with occasional tongues of mud. The higher they climbed, the more muddy the road got.

“You’d think they’d maintain it better,” Lacey said, bracing herself on the dashboard again.

Ian didn’t answer.

The downhill side of the road was scalloped from old slides where chunks of the shoulder had slid off into the riverbed. The uphill side had mounds of mud and pebbles that had drooled down the bluff and piled up at the pavement, making the road even narrower. As soon as someone dropped a ’dozer blade across the road next spring, it would be fine. Until then it would be lousy.

Remembering the guard’s warning, Ian kicked on the high beams. They didn’t do much. It was the time of day that wasn’t light or dark, when distances were tricky to judge even when it wasn’t raining.

“If you see any rocks—” Ian began.

The windshield exploded.

Lacey’s scream drowned out the flat
crack
of a gun.

A rifle,
Ian thought as he fought the waves of darkness sweeping over him.
A fucking turkey shoot

Even as his vision went black, he tried to yank the steering wheel so that the truck would turn away from the drop off, but it was too late. Everything was slipping through his hands.

Lacey grabbed the wheel and tried to keep the truck on the road.
There was a sharp
crack!
The truck jerked and bucked and sagged down on her side and began crabbing, tires fighting for traction. The rear wheels were already off the road, dragging everything down with them as they sank. Tires spun independently, spraying water and mud in rooster tails toward the riverbed a hundred feet below. It wasn’t a straight drop, but it was a steep one.

The truck shuddered backward toward the void.

The left front tire caught traction. The truck stopped sliding and started vibrating with a horrible grinding sound. For an instant Lacey thought it would hold in place, but the downhill weight was too much. The truck quivered backward. She yanked open her seat belt and Ian’s.

And then she felt it all sliding away.

“Ian!” She dragged him toward the passenger door, taking advantage of the angle of the seat. “We’ve got to get out before the truck goes over!”

He might have groaned. She couldn’t hear much above the sound of the engine. Then his head rolled and she saw his face.

That’s not blood on him. It can’t be. I won’t
let
it be

She kicked open the door and half fell out onto the road, pulling Ian after her. She didn’t feel the slam of the hard surface on her shoulder or the drenching chill of the rainwater sluicing over her. All she felt was the shudder and wrench of her breathing.

And Ian’s.

He’s alive. Oh, God, he’s alive

Behind her, the truck groaned and jerked and then simply disappeared. The crash and bang of metal told her that the truck was tumbling faster and faster, gaining velocity with every second.

From the corner of her eye she saw movement. A man was sliding down the bluff toward them. Relief swept through her—help was on the way. Then she saw the outline of the rifle and knew that it wasn’t a rock that had broken the windshield or the sound of a tire exploding that she had heard. Someone had tried to kill them.

Now he was coming down to finish the job.

Hide. We have to hide

There was no cover on the road. No way to haul Ian up the bluff. Nowhere to go but down.

She took it.

Ian shook his head and began struggling against the hands pulling at
him. With the strength of pure adrenaline overdrive, Lacey shoved against him, taking both of them into the only safety she could find. When he felt the ground give way, he knew what was coming. He grabbed her and wrapped her close, trying to protect her as they went rolling and tumbling and sliding down the bluff into the darkness below until they slammed up against something bigger than they were and stopped moving.

Ian groaned. The first wave of dizziness had passed, leaving in its wake the nausea and blurred vision of a concussion. He’d had worse ones before. He could function if he had to. And his instincts were screaming at him that he had to. He tried to remember how he’d ended up in the rain with Lacey underneath him, but he couldn’t.

Then he did.

“Lacey,” he said in a low, urgent rasp against her ear. “Are you hurt?”

“Breath—knocked—out. That’s—all.”

“Did you see who was shooting at us?”

“A man.”

“Only one?”

“Don’t—know.”

The agony that knifed through Ian’s right arm when he shifted to draw his gun told him he had at least a sprained wrist and more likely a fracture. Either way, his right hand wasn’t any good. He flexed his feet. Everything moved. The pins in his old ankle injury had held.

From above them came the sound of rolling dirt and pebbles, a curse, and then silence except for the rain. The light was fading, but it was still good enough for the man to see them.

Lacey wondered if she would feel the bullet that killed her.

“If I move, he’ll see it,” Ian said against her ear. “Can you get my gun out of the holster?”

Hidden from the killer by Ian’s wide shoulders, Lacey reached inside his ripped, muddy jacket and fumbled with the harness. Her fingers were cold, scraped, numb, and shaking. “Why doesn’t he just shoot us?”

“Bullet holes are hard to explain. A wreck on a dark rainy afternoon isn’t.”

Earth and pebbles and water rolled down the hill to them.

“Hurry if you can,” he breathed.

“I’ve got it, but I can’t see the safety,” she whispered raggedly. “Can’t feel it. Too cold.”

“Put the butt in my left hand.”

She pushed the cold metal against his palm, waited for him to take off the safety for her, and tried not to think about the sounds coming down the hill.

“Can you see him without moving?” Ian asked against her ear.

She didn’t want to look. She looked anyway, careful to move barely at all. “He’s about a third of the way down the hill, angling toward us from my left.”

Too far to risk it
. Ian breathed warmth over her ear as he put his lips against it. “Lie still. No matter what.”

Rain poured down in cold, relentless sheets.

The man came closer, slipped, and cursed. “Hey, you two all right?”

Lacey didn’t move. Neither did Ian.

Soft, sucking sounds came, boots slogging and sliding through mud.

She locked her teeth against the scream clawing at her throat. Everything in her rebelled at lying motionless, helpless, while a killer approached to make sure they were dead.

A rock thumped into Ian’s back. Another one clipped his ear. He felt the tension in Lacey’s body and wanted to reassure her, but it was too late. The killer was too close, all options closed except one.

He rolled over firing and kept on firing until the gun was empty.

At first nothing happened. Then the man spun, jerked like a marionette, and flopped facedown in the dirt, all strings cut.

Without taking his eyes off the fallen man, Ian released the empty magazine, braced his gun upside down between his knees, and yanked a fresh magazine from the holder on his belt. Ignoring the rain and his dirty fingers, he reloaded with his left hand.

“Stay here,” he said.

“You need more than one hand.”

Numbly she followed him across forty feet of slippery hillside to the place where a man lay facedown, his arms flung limply above his head as though he’d grabbed at something that gave way, letting him fall. The hands were empty.

Ian crouched and jammed the muzzle of his gun behind the man’s ear.
A groan answered, and an instinctive jerk away from whatever was causing pain.

“He’s still alive,” Ian said, disgusted. “I never could shoot worth a damn left-handed.”

Lacey let out a breath that she hadn’t been aware of holding. “He’s got a rifle somewhere.”

“It’s off to the left. Don’t touch it. Bastard probably has a shell in the chamber.”

With a careless yank, Ian rolled the man over and shoved the gun muzzle hard under his chin. Beneath a coating of mud, blood, and rain, Ward Forrest stared up at the man he’d tried to kill.

Savoy Hotel

Late Tuesday night

W
ith an unconscious sigh of relief that she was finally going to get a long, hot shower, Lacey unlocked the hotel room. Ian beat her to the door handle.

“After me, remember?” he said.

She just stared at him. Like her, he had disinfected scrapes and clean bandages wherever the doctors had found blood. He had dried mud just about everywhere else. If she hadn’t been so tired that she was light-headed, she might have found his looks amusing. But she was that tired and she wasn’t laughing.

“It’s over,” she said raggedly. “Ward Forrest is out cold in the hospital with a deputy baby-sitting him. You’ve got a broken wrist, and the sheriff has your gun and it’s over.”

Ian smiled at her. He could have pointed out the reasons that he felt like the other shoe hadn’t dropped, but all he said was “Humor me.”

“Ha, ha. You’re humored.”

But she let him go in first.

When he got back, she was leaning against the door frame, her eyes closed. Smiling, he tucked a wild, muddy curl behind her ear. Her eyes flew open.

“You want to shower before bed?” he asked.

“I’d take a bath, but I’m afraid I’d slide under and drown.” Then she remembered the brutal painting and grimaced.

“Don’t think about it,” he said, kissing the corner of her mouth.

She nuzzled against him for a moment. “I feel like I dropped through reality into an alternate universe and I’m still trying to find my balance. Things look the same but they aren’t. People try to kill you and your grandfather is a forger and maybe a murderer who appeared full grown at forty with no childhood and the cops look at you like you’re a nutcase because you defended yourself against a nutcase and then they all but arrest you because you didn’t get yourself killed and—”

He kissed her until she stopped thinking about it. “Go take that shower, darling.”

“Alone?”

He held up his right arm. “The cast might be advertised as waterproof, but it isn’t proof against what we’d do together in that shower.”

“If you shower after me, I can’t guarantee I’ll be awake when you’re finished.”

“I love a challenge.”

Ian watched her walk to the bathroom and told himself he was doing the right thing. She looked pale, fragile, with dark rings of exhaustion around her beautiful brown eyes. The last thing she needed was a romp in the sheets. And when he caught a look at himself in the sitting room mirror, he was surprised she’d even suggested it. His beard-shadowed, dirty, scraped, and bruised face would have made a great poster for a movie called
He Came from the Dead

The phone rang. He gave it the kind of look reserved for things that stick to your shoe, but answered it. Maybe Ward had come to after the surgery and was feeling chatty.

“Yeah?” he answered, not caring if he sounded rough. It was how he felt.

“This is the front desk. Sorry for bothering you so late, but a Mr. Quinn urgently wants to see Ms. Quinn.”

Ian heard the shower running full force, looked at the time, and wondered how Lacey’s dad had found out about the wreck.

“Send him up.”

Ian was just drying his face when he heard the knock on the door. He went, checked out the spy hole, and then checked it out again.

The other shoe had just dropped. Hard.

With a soundless whistle, he opened the door. “Come on in, Mr. Quinn. I’ve got a lot of questions for you.”