Shades of Twilight (39 page)

"I think living here was Lanette's decision, hers and Gloria's."

"Probably, but Greg could have said no. I don't know about Brock. I've always liked him, but I didn't expect him to be a moocher."

"Brock has a plan," Roanna explained, and unexpectedly a faint smile touched her pale lips.

"He's living here so he can save as much money as possible before he gets married. He's going to build his own house. He and his fiancde have already had an architect draw up the blueprints."

Webb stared at her mouth, enchanted by that tiny, spontaneous smile. He hadn't had to coax that one out of her.

"Well, at least that's a plan," he grumbled to hide his reaction.

"Gloria and Harlan are in their seventies; I'm not going to make them move. They can live here the rest of their lives if they want."

"I know you don't want the house crammed with relatives," she said.

"I'll be moving out, too-"

"You aren't going anywhere," he interrupted harshly, rising to his feet.

She looked at him in bewilderment.

"This is your home, damn it. Did you think I was trying to tell you to get out?" He couldn't keep the anger out of his voice, not just at the thought of her leaving, but that she had thought he would want her to.

"I'm just a distant cousin, too," she reminded him.

"How would it look for us to be living here together, even with Gloria and Harlan here? It's different now, because the house is so full, but when the others move out people will gossip if I don't, too. You'll want to get married again someday, and-"

"This is your home," he repeated, grinding his teeth together in an effort to keep his voice down.

"If one of us has to move out, I will."

"You can't do that," she said, shocked.

"Davencourt will be yours. It wouldn't be right for you to leave just so I'll have a place to stay."

"Haven't you ever thought that it should be yours?" he snapped, goaded beyond endurance.

"You're the Davenport. Don't you resent the hell out of me for being here?"

"No. Yes." She watched him for a moment, her eyes shadowed and unreadable as the words lay between them.

"I don't resent you, but I envy you, because Davencourt is going to be yours. You were raised with that promise. You shaped your life around taking care of this family, this house. Because of that, you've earned it, and it should be yours. I knew when I went to find you in Arizona that Lucinda would change her will, giving everything to you again; we discussed it beforehand. But even though I envy you, I've never thought of Davencourt as mine. It's been home since I was seven years old, but it wasn't mine. It was Lucinda's, and soon it'll be yours."

She sighed, and gingerly rested her head back against the chair.

"I have a degree in business administration, but I got it only because Lucinda needed help. I've never been interested in business and finance, while you thrive on it. The only kind of work I've ever wanted to do is train horses. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in business meetings; you take that part of it, and welcome to it. I won't be left destitute, and you know it. I have my own inheritance."

He opened his mouth and she held up her hand to stop him.

"I'm not finished. When I'm no longer needed here" She paused, and he knew she was thinking of Lucinda's death, as he did. It was always there, looming in their future whether they could bring themselves to speak openly of it or not.

"VFhen it's over, I'm going to set up my own stables, my own house. For the first time something will belong to me, and no one else will ever be able to take it away."

Webb's fists clenched. Her gaze was very clear, yet somehow distant, as if she, looked back at all the things and people that had been taken from her when she'd been too young and helpless to have any control over her life: her parents, her home, the very center of her existence. Her selfesteem had been systematically stripped from her by Jessie, with Lucinda's unknowing assistance. But she had had him 277

as her bulwark until he, too, had turned from her, and since then Roanna had allowed herself to have no one, to care for nothing. She had in effect put herself in dormancy. While her life was on hold she had devoted herself to Lucinda, but that time was coming to an end.

When Lucinda died, Roanna planned to leave.

He glued down at her. Everyone else wanted Davencourt, and they weren't entitled to it.
 
Roanna was legitimately entitled to it, and she didnt want it. She wanted to leave.

He was so pissed off that he decided he'd better go back to his room before he really lost his temper, something she wasn't in any shape to endure and that he didn't want to do anyway, He stalked to the door, but paused there for the last word.

"We'll work all that out later," he said.

"But you are not moving out of this house."

It was the day of Lucinda's welcome-home party for him, and as Webb drove home he wondered how big of a disaster it would be. He didn't care, but it would disturb Lucinda a great deal if things didn't go exactly as she had planned. From what he'd experienced that afternoon, things weren't looking good.

It hadn't been much, not even a confrontation, but as a barometer of public sentiment it had been fairly accurate. He'd had lunch at the Painted Lady with the chairman of the agricultural commission, and the comments of the two women behind him had been easily overheard.

"He certainly has a lot of brass on his face," one of the women had said. She hadn't raised her voice, but neither had she lowered it enough to ensure she couldn't be heard.

"If he thinks ten years is long enough for us to forget what happened ... Well, he has another think coming."

"Lucinda Davenport never could see any fault in her favorites," the other woman commented.

Webb had looked across at the commissioner's face, which was turning dark red as the man studiously applied himself to his lunch and pretended he couldn't hear a thing.

"You'd think even the Davenports would balk at trying to force a murderer down our throats," the first woman said.

Webb's eyes had narrowed, but he hadn't turned around and confronted the women. Suspected murderer or not, he'd been raised to be a southern gentleman, and that meant he wouldn't deliberately embarrass the ladies in public. If men had been saying the same things he would have reacted differently, but not only were the two verbal snipers female, they were rather elderly, from the sound of their voices. Let them talk; his hide was tough enough to take it.

But the social matriarchs wielded a lot of power, and if they all felt the same way, Lucinda's party would be ruined. He didn't care for himself; if people didn't want to do business with him, fine, he'd find someone who did. But Lucinda would be both hurt and disappointed, and blame herself for not defending him ten years ago. For her sake, he hoped The windshield shattered, spraying Webb with tiny bits of glass. Something hot hummed by his ear, but he didn't have time to worry about it. His reflexive dodge had jerked the steering wheel in his hand, and the right wheels of the car bumped violently as the car veered onto the shoulder of the road. Grimly he fought for control, trying to ease the car back onto the pavement before he hit a hole or a culvert that would send him careening into the ditch. He was effectively blinded by the shattered windshield, which had held together but turned white with a thick webbing of fractures. A rock, he thought, though the truck in front of him had been far enough away that he wouldn't have expected the tires to throw a rock that far. Maybe a bird, but he would have seen something that big.

He got all four wheels back onto the pavement, and the car's handling smoothed. Automatically he braked, looking out the relatively undamaged right side of the windshield in an effort to judge his distance to the shoulder of the road and whether or not he would have enough room to pull off. He was almost to the side road that led to Davencourt's

private road. If he could rez, be as much traffic The windshield shattered
 
right. Part of the broken glass sag, diamond bits held together by the

the glass from splintering. Rock, heft, Someone was shooting at him. Quickly he leaned forward and punch with his fist, tearing it down so he could seL then he pushed the gas pedal to the floor. He rocketed forward, the force jerking him back in the seat. If he stopped and gave the shooter a stationary target, he'd be dead, but it was damn hard to make an accurate shot at someone going eighty-five miles an hour.

Remembering that hot humming he'd heard just beside his right ear after the first shot, he made a rough estimate of the trajectory of the first bullet and mentally placed the gunman on a high bank just past the cutoff for the side road. He was almost to the road now, and if he turned onto it, the gunman would have a broadside shot at him. Webb kept the gas pedal down and roared past the cutoff, then past the thickly wooded pasture road where Beshears thought the burglar had hidden his car Webb narrowed his eyes against the whistling wind and stood on the brakes, spinning the steering wheel as he threw the car into a state-trooper-turnaround, a maneuver he'd mastered when he'd been a wild-ass teenager running this same road, with its long, flat straightaway. Smoke boiled from his tires as they left rubber on the pavement. Another car blew past him, horn blaring. His car rocked and skidded, then straightened out with its hood pointing back in the direction from which he'd come. This was a four-lane divided highway, so that meant he was going the wrong way, against traffic. Two cars were headed straight toward him. He hit the gas again.

He reached the pasture road just before he would have collided head-on with one of those cars, and took the turn on two wheels. He braked immediately and threw the

transmission into park. He jumped out of the car before it stopped rocking, dodging into the thick cover to the side and leaving the car to block the exit from the pasture road, just in ease this was where the shooter had left his car. Was it the same man who had broken into the house, or coincidence? Anyone who used this highway on a regular basis, which was thousands of people, could have noticed the pasture road. It looked like it was a hunting road leading up into the woods, but the trees and bushes cleared out after about a quarter of a mile and opened up onto a wide field that butted up against Davencourt land.

"Fuck coincidence," he whispered to himself as he weaved his way silently through the trees, taking advantage of the natural cover to keep anyone from getting a clear shot at him.

He didn't know what he'd do if he came face-to-face with someone carrying a hunting rifle while he himself was barehanded, but he didn't intend for that to happen. His had been a fairly typical rural upbringing in spite of, or perhaps because of, the advantage of living at Davencourt. Lucinda and Yvonne had made certain he fit in with his classmates, and the people he'd be dealing with the rest of his life. He'd hunted squirrel and deer and possum, learning early how to slip through thick woods without making a sound, how to stalk game that had eyes and ears a lot better than his. The rustlers who had taken his cattle and hightailed it into Mexico had found out how good he was at tracking and at not being seen if he didn't want to be. If the gunman was in here, he'd find him, and the man wouldn't know he was anywhere around until it was too late.

There was no other vehicle parked on the pasture road. Once he'd established that, Webb hunkered down and listened to the sounds around him. Five minutes later, he knew that he was stalking the wind. No one was there. If he'd figured the trajectory correctly, then the shooter had taken another route off that high bank.

He stood up and walked back to his car. He looked at the demolished windshield, with those two small holes punched in it, and got seriously pissed off. Those had been good shots; either one or both of them could have killed him if the angle of fire had been corrected just a hair. He opened the door and leaned in, examining the seats. There was a ragged hole in the back of the driver's headrest, just about an inch from where his right ear had been. The bullet had had enough power, even after going through the windshield, to completely pierce the seat and make an exit hole in the back windshield. The second bullet had torn a hole in the back seat where it entered.

He picked up the cellular phone, flipped it open, and called Carl Beshears.

Carl drove out without lights or sirens, at Webb's request. He didn't even bring a deputy with him.

"Keep it quiet," Webb had said.

"The fewer people who know about this, the better."

Now Carl walked around the car, looking at every detail.

"Damn, Webb," he finally said.

"Someone's got a real hardon for you."

"Tough. I'm not in the mood to get fucked."

Carl cast a quick look at Webb. There was a cold, dangerous look on his face, an expression that boded ill for anyone who crossed him. Everyone knew Webb Taant had a temper, but this wasn't temper: this was something else, something deliberate and ruthless.

"Got any ideas?" he asked.

"You've been back in town what a week and a half? You're making enemies real fast, serious ones.

"I think it s the same man who broke into the house," Webb said, "Interesting theory." Carl thought about it, stroking his jaw.