Lone Star Lonely (25 page)

This time it would be permanent.

“You know, in some primitive cultures it was
common to send a man’s wife to the grave with him. I don’t imagine
they always went without…assistance, either.” Phillip grinned at
her, and she knew he was insane. But not with any true mental
illness. Just with greed. A greed she still didn’t understand.

Surrounding his second-floor garage apartment
was a catwalk. A narrow redwood deck that bordered Phillip’s living
quarters on all four sides. It was connected to an outside
staircase that led to the ground. There were indoor stairs, as
well, so he could go directly from his apartment to the spacious
four-car garage below if need be.

They stood now on the catwalk, Kirsten
clinging to the rail and battling dizziness, Phillip clinging to
Kirsten.

And all of a sudden a voice came from
below.

“You’d best stop right where you are, Carr.
And let the lady go.”

Phillip clenched her tighter, reflexively
pulling her flush to his chest like a shield as he searched for the
owner of that voice.

“Adam?” Kirsten cried. “Adam! Be careful, he
has a gun!” She tried to see him on the ground below but barely
caught a glimpse of his strong body before Phillip tugged her away
from the railing.

His hand clapped over her mouth, silencing
her. He pressed his back to the wall and eased toward the door. But
when he did it was flung open, and Wes Brand stood there looking
dark and menacing. He’d come up from the garage, Kirsten
realized.

“Do what my brother says, pal,” Wes said
softly. He had a bowie knife in his hand and a steely glint in his
eyes. “Let her go.”

Phillip jerked backward, tugging her around a
corner. The outside stairs came into view. But at the bottom of
them stood another Brand. Big, blond Ben, coming slowly upward.

Trapped. Phillip had to let her go now. There
was no way out for him. He was trapped.

Or was he?

Phillip pulled her with him again, rounding
another corner. She glimpsed more people on the ground. Lash and
Jessi and Penny. And before anyone could guess what Phillip was
going to do, he yanked open a window and dived back inside,
carrying her with him. They hit the floor hard and rolled. She
heard Garrett’s voice from outside shouting, “They’re back in the
apartment!” She heard the door crash open as someone, probably Wes,
charged inside. But Phillip was already springing to his feet,
tugging her through a door, locking it behind him and then hauling
her up a steep, dark set of stairs that led to the A-shaped attic
above the apartment.

Dust. Cobwebs. Utter darkness. They might
have thought to place men in the garage below, on the ground and on
the stairs, but the Brands would not have thought of this.

Phillip hauled her through the trapdoor at
the top of the attic stairs, then slammed the trapdoor down. He
tugged her farther. Moving backward across the attic all the way to
the far wall, watching that trapdoor all the way.

His back reached the far wall, and Kirsten
glimpsed the last set of rickety steps, these so steep they seemed
more like a ladder than a stairway. They had to lead to the roof.
There was nowhere else to go. And then she realized…they went to
the widow’s walk, at the very peak. Her knees went weak at the
thought of the height.

At that same moment the trapdoor rose
upward.

Adam’s head poked through.

“Oh, God, Adam….” It was so good just to see
his face. She felt it had been forever, when in fact it had been
only a couple of hours since he’d left her. She was weak, dizzy,
hurting, and yet overwhelmed at this chance to look into his blue
eyes once more.

“Are you okay?” Adam asked her.

She nodded. “Adam, I—”

“Shut up!” Phillip’s gun pressed hard to
Kirsten’s sternum, right between her breasts, barrel slanted
upward. If he squeezed the trigger just then, she thought,
terrified, the bullet would rip an inclining path of hell from her
chest to her throat and probably exit through the back of her head.
She wouldn’t stand a chance.

“You just get back down there,” Phillip said
to Adam. “You just go, or I’ll have to kill her.”

“Now, you know I can’t do that.” Adam came
very slowly up, holding up both hands, making no threatening
gestures. “I’m unarmed, see?”

“I don’t give a damn! Get out or I’ll kill
her now. Is that what you want?”

“Now, what good is that gonna do you,
Phillip? Huh? It won’t get you Cowan’s fortune. Not with so many
witnesses here to testify that it was murder.”

“I don’t care. I don’t care! And you
shouldn’t either, Brand. Don’t you know what she did? Don’t you
know she’s the one who killed your parents? I was there, I saw
it!”

“I know. I know. But that was an accident.”
He took a step closer. “She was a kid. And it was a long time ago,
Phil.”

“If I were you, I’d want her to die for that.
I’d want her to pay.”

“Oh, she’s paid.” Adam found Kirsten’s eyes,
held them with his. “She’s paid in spades for something that was
never her fault to begin with.”

She blinked as pain rose up to engulf
her.

“You…you can forgive her for what she
did?”

“Of course I can,” Adam said, still holding
her eyes, his own gleaming. “See, I’ve got no choice there,
Phillip. I love her. Always have.”

Kirsten’s knees buckled. She slid downward,
but Phillip yanked her upright again. Tears flooded her eyes, and
she parted her lips to speak, to tell Adam how much she loved him,
how sorry she was. But no sound came from her lips. She couldn’t
even feel them. The pills. The electrocution. She wasn’t even going
to be conscious for much longer. She couldn’t speak. But she clung
to Adam with her eyes and prayed he could see her feelings in them.
She tried to mouth the words
I love you. I’m sorry.

He nodded almost imperceptibly, sending her
the same unspoken message in return. “Listen, Carr—” Adam
began.

“Don’t call me that!”

Adam went silent. Kirsten tried to fight her
way through the fog in her brain to understanding. “B-but it’s your
name,” she whispered, surprised to hear the rasp come from her
lips. A moment ago she’d tried to speak and had been unable to. Now
words were coming out without her permission.

“It’s not my name!” Phillip said. “My name is
Cowan. Cowan, dammit, but Joseph would never acknowledge that. He
would never give me my due. I thought you would, Kirsten. I really
thought you would. But you couldn’t, could you? You’re just like
her.”

She blinked.
Just like who?
She was
never certain if she spoke the words aloud or just thought them
inside her own mind.

“You hate me like she did. God, you even look
just like her. That’s why Joseph had to have you, you know. That’s
why he started this whole damned scheme. Because of what she did to
him.”

Adam came up the rest of the way, slowly
lowering the trapdoor, his eyes on Kirsten’s briefly, as if to
reassure her.

“She said she loved him, and then she left
him,” Phillip went on. “And six months later she left me on his
doorstep. But he wouldn’t claim me as his own. No, not Joe Cowan.
He named me Carr, said when I grew up I could be his driver. Big
joke. Big effing joke. But I never laughed. He sent me off to be
raised by strangers, my beloved father. While my mother went to the
next man on her list and married him. But it didn’t matter, she
left him, too. The second he had his first heart attack. The second
she realized he wasn’t perfect. No man could ever be good enough
for our mother, could he, Kirsten?”

Kirsten’s head was buzzing. Adam came closer,
using Phillip’s distraction to his advantage.

“I wish I’d been the baby she’d kept, instead
of you, Kirsten. I really do. I wish she had stayed with Joseph and
raised me the way she should have. None of this would have happened
if you’d never been born.”

The light flashed on in her brain, and it was
blinding. For just a moment the shock cut through the drugs and the
pain. “My God, are you talking about my mother?”

“Our mother.” Phillip smiled sickly.
“Sis.”

Then he jerked his head and his gun toward
Adam. “Stop it! Stop trying to get closer!”

Adam froze, hands high. “Look, we can talk
this out. You don’t want to do this, Phillip. You don’t want to
hurt your own sister.”

“She hates me! Just like our mother did!”
Phillip shrieked. His gun barrel jammed up into the soft underside
of her chin now, his hand trembling violently as he backed up the
steep stairs, pulling her with him. All that lived at the top was
the widow’s walk. Three stories up. Sweet heaven.

“Joseph told me all the things you used to
say about me, Kirsten. How you called me a bastard. How you swore
you’d get everything he had and throw me out without a dime once he
was gone. He told me everything!”

“He lied to you, Phillip,” Kirsten whispered,
fighting hard to stay cognizant, to cling to the ability to speak.
“He lied. He was a liar, you know that. I didn’t even know you were
my…I didn’t even know.”

Phillip shook his head. “At least he let me
live here. Gave me a decent job. A home. At least he was my friend.
That’s more than you ever were.”

“He was never anyone’s friend, Phillip,” Adam
said.

“He was the only one I had.” Tears streamed
down Phillip’s cheeks now. “He was my father. You don’t have any
idea how much it hurt when he made me kill him.”

“Then why did you do it?” Adam asked, his
voice accusing. He was getting desperate to stop Phillip. Kirsten
could see it in his eyes. The closer they got to the door at the
top, the one that opened directly onto the widow’s walk, the more
distressed Adam looked.

“He made me,” Phillip moaned. “He had a gun
pointed at me, and he put another one in my hand, laid the barrel
up against his forehead and kept telling me to do it. Said he’d
kill me if I didn’t. Called me a weakling and a coward and a
fatherless bastard. Said I was so worthless even my own mother
hadn’t wanted me. Told me the only way I’d ever have anything in my
life was if I did what he said, exactly as he said. Pull the
trigger, take his gun, leave the other one. He just kept going and
going, and then he lifted his own gun to my head and said he’d
count to three, and when he got there one of us was going to be on
the floor dead. I was crying. I was pleading with him. But he kept
counting. When he got to three, I…I did it. I shot him. I shot him.
I shot him
.”

Sobs racked the man. The gun jerked against
Kirsten’s throat, and it hurt like hell. Phillip shoved the
trapdoor open and started up through. She felt a soft breeze, warm
sunlight. She blinked in the brightness.

Phillip kicked the door shut after they
passed through, and then he stood on top of it, to prevent Adam
from coming up. He was still crying.

She could hear Adam scrambling up from
inside, hear his frantic efforts to shove the door open. Phillip
bounced with the force of Adam’s blows from beneath the door.

“I did everything just the way he said I
should,” Phillip went on. Talking to her, or to himself, or maybe
to God. She wasn’t sure anymore. “I took the gun he’d been
holding…and I wiped all the prints off the one I had shot him with.
And then I left it lying there beside him. And I went away. All
that was left was to kill you, Kirsten. He said if I did it right,
if it looked like an accident or a suicide, I’d get everything. All
his money. Everything.”

She looked up at him. At the line of his jaw,
the crook in his nose. Her brother. Her mother’s son. And Joseph’s.
The enormity of it rocked her. She’d known about her mother’s
pregnancy by another man. Heard her mother talk about getting rid
of the child. And she’d always been aware of her father’s hatred
for Joseph Cowan. But she’d never put it all together until
now.

It shook her to the marrow. But her own
impending death shook her even more.

“It’s over now, Phillip. Killing me now will
do you no good.”

“You rejected me,” he said. “Just like she
did. You never once acknowledged me as your brother, not in all the
time you and Joseph lived in that house. You barely even spoke to
me.”

“I didn’t know–”

“I don’t have any reason to live now, but I’m
damned well not leaving you behind to collect the millions that
should have been mine.”

“Let us both live,” she whispered. “And I’ll
share it with you.”

He stared down into her eyes, and for a long
moment, seemed to be thinking. Then he shook his head. “They know
now. About Joseph. And Hawkins. They’ll put me in prison for that.
It doesn’t matter.” He glanced down, and she was compelled by some
masochistic impulse to do the same. The ground seemed a mile away,
and it spun lazily below. He leaned closer to the rail.

“Why did you kill Hawkins?” she asked in
desperation.

Phillip stilled again. “He drew up the will.
And he figured out that I was the one who killed Joseph and guessed
I planned to kill you, too.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t going to
at first, you know. I was just going to let you go to prison. You
wouldn’t have inherited a thing then. I would have gotten it all.
But you had to run away. You had to snoop. You and that Adam Brand.
And I couldn’t risk letting you live, because you might have found
out the truth.”

She nodded. “You didn’t want to kill me.
Because I’m your sister. Your blood, Phillip. You still don’t want
to hurt me. I know you don’t.”

“I don’t have any choice now.” He blinked at
her, his moist brown eyes looking like the eyes of a wounded child.
“You rejected me.”

“Joseph never told me,” she said again,
enunciating each word. “He never told me, Phillip, I swear!”

“I don’t believe you.”

He lunged forward, but taking them to the
railing forced him to remove his weight from the trapdoor. Adam
burst up through. Elliot shouted from below, and Kirsten was
shocked to see him scaling the steep roof, feet slipping, finding a
hold as he risked his life.