Smoketree (19 page)

“And you used Smoketree as a red herring.” My voice felt rusty in my throat. “It was you behind everything. The threats. You had Harper’s horses killed, the barn burned, you’ve even undermined Nathan’s health.” I looked at him. “Did you know that? He’s probably on his way to the hospital because of you.”

“Drew Stanford’s dead,” Brandon said calmly. “I’d say Reynolds is lucky.”

“Don’t you care?” I asked. “They’re going to kill me, Brandon.”

Rashid’s hand was clasping my arm again. “It is time we left.”

He pulled me to my feet. “Brandon!” I cried, trying to break through to his conscience. “Are you just going to let them take me?”

Oliver stood, gesturing imperatively. “Get her out of here! I want nothing to do with this. I wanted a plain business deal, no violence. Get her out of here. I don’t want to be connected.”

I opened my mouth to shout at him but Rashid jerked me around and shoved me down the steps. My choice was to walk down them or fall down them. I walked.

It was cold outside. I shook steadily now, but it was from more than just the temperature. I was scared to death.

Rashid, still holding my arm, pushed me toward two parked cars in the lot beside the lodge. I stumbled, slipping in a patch of snow, and felt my stomach roll with nausea.

The door closed behind us, banging noisily. Footsteps followed. Snow and gravel crunched beneath my feet; a shrill whinny pierced the air and I thought instantly of Preacher, poor maligned Preacher, who had killed no one at all and now was left to wander in the forest.

Quick pain flashed in my head. And a sound like a backfire—or a shot—cracked through the trees. I felt grit and gravel biting into the flesh of my face and hands; the snap of ice crackling beneath me. The chill wetness soaked my sweater and jeans and crept through to dampen my skin. I shivered once, from head to toe.

I realized, belatedly, that I lay on the ground in an awkward sprawl. Face down, one arm caught beneath me and the other behind my back. Free of Rashid, and someone was shouting at me.

“Kelly!” the voice called. “Get up from there! Run!”

Elliot Fitch.
Elliot Fitch ?

I rolled sideways, came onto my knees and stayed there, stunned by more than Elliot’s voice. There was a body next to me. Rashid. Blood seeped through his hair to pool in the slushy snow.

“Kelly!” Elliot shouted again.
“Get the hell out of here!”

I tried. I started to push myself upward, ready to run, but a hand came around my arm and yanked me off-balance.

“Okay,” Brandon said, “you’re coming with me.”

John Oliver babbled something from behind us and I realized he was refusing, somewhat incoherently—again—to involve himself. He slammed the lodge door behind him as he dove inside the building. I assumed Brandon would follow, taking me with him, but we didn’t go. He hauled me under the sundeck and pulled me down by a bench I could hardly see in the darkness.

I caught a glimpse of the man called Frenchie as he ran across the flat toward a stand of trees as more shots were fired. He ran in a zigzag pattern, hunched over, providing a fleet, limited target. I looked back at Rashid’s body and swallowed heavily, hoping I wouldn’t be sick. At least not yet.

“Elliot Fitch,” I heard Brandon mutter. “Who the hell
is
he?”

“A cop?” I wondered aloud.

“I doubt it,” Brandon said grimly. “More like an agent. Well, here’s hoping he cares enough about you to let me keep you alive.” His hand tightened on my arm. “Be a good hostage, okay?”

I made a fruitless attempt to twist out of his grasp and succeeded only in hurting my arm. Brandon, unamused, reached out a fist and chopped me along the side of my jaw, slamming my head into the bench. I bit my lip and tasted blood.

“This is not a game,” Brandon hissed. “This is not a movie. This is
real
. If you try that again I’ll knock you out and carry you.”

He moved forward into a crouch, dragging me around to stand in front of him. He twisted both arms behind my back, imprisoning them with one broad hand. “Fitch!” he shouted. “You want her dead? Come for me, then. You want her alive?
Back off!
Got that?”

There were no answering shouts from the trees. Brandon was not armed, I knew, but he was very strong. And I did not doubt he would use me to further his escape. Even if it meant killing me. He had already murdered Drew.

“We’re going now,” he said grimly. “If you fall I’ll drag you. Now
move
.”

I moved. We ran awkwardly toward the control room by the chair lift, and no one fired shots. I wondered where Elliot was. I wondered
who
he was.

Dark chairs swung in a rectangular turn as they swept around the end of the cable tower and headed back up the mountain. They creaked and trembled as they passed over the cogwheels, empty silhouettes in the moonlit darkness.

A bent form stumbled around the building as we reached it and crouched down. I fell away from it, felt Brandon’s grasp tighten on me, then recognized the man called Frenchie. He was gasping. He was bleeding. I thought he was probably dying.

Brandon cursed. “Rashid; now you. They’re good.”

“Very good,” Frenchie agreed. “I think they have the advantage.”

“You turned the lift on?”

“I thought I would take it to the mountaintop,” the Arab said, one hand pressed against his chest. “Now I don’t think I can reach the chairs.”

Brandon shifted so he knelt next to the wounded man, still holding me by both wrists. “Give me your gun.”

“I still have need of it.”

“
Give
it to me!” Impatient, Brandon swung a fist and knocked the injured man unconscious, dropping him onto his side. He fumbled inside his jacket a moment, then came up with the gun. “Move, Kelly. To the lift.”

He dragged me to my feet and pushed me toward the moving chairs. Boards thudded beneath my feet as a chair swept by directly in front of me. A bullet pinged off the massive cable support tower no more than five feet away.

Brandon cursed and shoved me over so that we faced the on-coming chair. I turned automatically; it smacked the backs of my thighs and scooped me up awkwardly.

I teetered on the edge of the seat, grasping at the center pole of the double chair as Brandon scrambled aboard beside me. He thrust one arm against my chest and pushed, shoving me against the padded back of the chair.

The chair sagged beneath our weight but kept moving, though I was dragging one of my feet along the wooden ramp. Then the ramp dropped away and the chair swung gently upward, beginning its steady, measured ascent.

Brandon placed the muzzle of the gun against my left ear. “Go ahead and jump,” he urged. “I think it would probably kill you.”

I glanced down. Already we had risen sixty feet or so, gaining altitude with every moment. We were too high to risk a leap from the chair. Had there been packed snow beneath us, maybe—but there wasn’t. Just cold, hard ground.

I swallowed and wet my lips, trying to speak normally. “Brandon—let me go when we reach the top. What harm would it do?”

“Shut up!” The muzzle was hard and cold against my ear. “I don’t need your chatter.” He peered ahead to make out the dark bulk of the mountain looming over us. The chair rattled and vibrated upward. “We’ll hike down and go into town—rent a car there. I’ll keep you for a while, just to make sure I’ve got insurance.”

“That’s called kidnapping,” I pointed out. “Why make things worse?”

He laughed a trifle wildly. “Good God, Kelly, I’ve already killed two men. Do you think a kidnapping charge would make much difference?”

“Two,” I echoed. “
Two
men? Brandon—what are you talking about?”

He looked at me. In the moonlight his face was just a shape, a pale shape with black holes for nose and mouth and eyes. “Tucker,” he said. “Who else?”

The night closed in on me. Even the full moon and the stars did not shed enough light. I stared into his dim face. “No.”

“It was arranged, Kelly.” His voice was quiet, inflexible, perfectly controlled. “Surely you can see that.”

“No.” It was the only word in my vocabulary. I could think of no other that expressed my feelings.

“It wasn’t meant for you,” he went on. “I set it up for Tucker, meaning to make certain you stayed behind—but you were adamant. Even when I tried to talk you into staying. Remember?” He looked at me expectantly. “I caught you at the door as you were leaving. I said you should let him go by himself. Remember?” He shook his head. “But you went anyway. It was the one thing I hadn’t planned on.”

Remember? Of course I remembered. I had spent the past six months remembering the scenes preceding the accident, as well as the accident itself, and its aftermath.

Tucker, drunk. Strangely angry-drunk. I had tried to soothe him, telling him not to make a scene. He hadn’t made one, not really, but he had said we were leaving. That was all. We were leaving. I couldn’t disagree; the party was spoiled for me with Tucker in such a state, and I hadn’t wanted to go in the first place. Our evenings together were special. But we had gone, because Brandon was his friend, and Brandon was the host, and Brandon expected him.

And then Brandon had killed him.

“I had no choice, Kelly. He knew.”

The chair swung beneath us. I clung to it with my free hand—he held the other one, and it was numb from the strength of his grip. I stopped shivering because what he had said removed all response from me save numb shock.

“No choice?” I echoed.

“He found out,” Brandon said briefly. “He learned about the arrangement I had with Newton, and how the arms sale would go down. I don’t know how—maybe he just stumbled onto it. But he threatened to tell my father if I didn’t call it off.” He looked at me steadily, and his voice took on a funny, impassive, explanatory note. “You weren’t supposed to get into that car. Really. I didn’t want you hurt.”

“My God, Brandon—” I stared at him. “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” he agreed grimly. “It was a last resort. I didn’t want to. I warned him it was too rough for him. Damn it, do you think I
wanted
to set him up? Tucker was my friend!”

I tried to jerk my arm out of his grasp. I failed, but I didn’t really care. I was too angry to care what he did to me. “You bastard! I hope Elliot Fitch puts a bullet through your brain!”

“He wouldn’t listen to me,” Brandon declared. “I tried to talk him out of it. I tried to buy him off. I even tried blackmail—I threatened to make sure he never worked for our studio again.” He shook his head. “It didn’t work. He was too damned determined to end the whole thing, no matter what I offered.” His teeth showed briefly. “An idealistic man, our Tucker.”

“You should have known,” I said blankly. “You couldn’t push Tucker. He always went the other way.”

“I tried something else,” Brandon admitted. “You.”

I stared at him.

“Jazzmine,” he explained. “You didn’t know Walkerton owned Jazzmine Cosmetics, did you?”

“Jazzmine? No—”

“I told Tucker if he went to my father or did anything else to shut us down, I’d have your contract cancelled. I’d see to it you never worked for Jazzmine—or any other cosmetics firm—ever again. Can’t you see it? The huge hunt for the new Jazzmine Girl. Kelly Clayton would have been finished for good.” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have been that hard.” My head jostled on a rubbery neck as the chair ground over the cogwheels. “Oh God—”

“Tucker was furious,” he said reminiscently. “He even threatened to kill me, but I told him to save the dramatics; he did it better on the screen. I knew he couldn’t do it. He didn’t have it in him.”

I shivered convulsively.

“I didn’t want to.” He didn’t sound a bit sorry, just puzzled that he hadn’t found the key to unlock Tucker’s integrity. “Oliver pressured me to do
something
, so finally I arranged the accident. I made sure he would meet a car coming the other way on a rainy canyon road, and then I made sure he was angry enough to drink too much. It wasn’t that difficult. Do you remember how angry he was, and how he kept pouring the booze down?”

I remembered. It had been very unlike Tucker.

“Well,” Brandon said, “it worked.”

I stared dry-eyed into the darkness. “Tucker,” I said, “and Drew.” I paused. “Now me?”

“I don’t want to,” he said gently. “I really don’t. But if I have to—” He paused. “Just do as I tell you. Don’t be stubborn, like Tucker. Okay?”

Like Tucker. Who was dead. And Drew, who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like me.

The chair ground its way upward, jiggling and rattling as it passed over the cogwheels at each tower. I sat against the padded back and stared into the darkness, trying to gauge the distance to the top of the mountain. It rose above us in the moonlight: a white-flanked, conical peak surrounded by lesser slopes, all clothed in black trees. The moon, round and full, rose above the peak like a cyclopean eye.

We would have to get off the moving chair. Lift ramps were designed for skis, not feet and, if I were lucky, Brandon might handle the unorthodox unloading awkwardly. I had a chance.

We ground endlessly on toward the midway point, passing signs advising beginners and intermediates to prepare to unload. A small wooden shack stood at our left overlooking the liftline. Rope netting extended outward from the ramp as a safety feature, designed to catch the clumsy skier who unloaded prematurely. Normally the ramp, snow-packed, provided an easy exit from the chairs. But now the raw wood gleamed in the moonlight, lying some five feet below my dangling legs.

A rumbling, jerky motion in the cable startled us both. The chair stopped abruptly, swinging just over the safety net. Brandon wrenched himself around and stared down the mountain, but there was nothing to see. We hung helplessly, suspended three feet from the edge of the ramp.

“We’ll have to jump for it,” Brandon said briefly, turning around again. “We’ll have to try and hit the ramp from here. ”

I gaped at him. “Are you crazy? I can’t make that jump from here!”

“Of course, if you managed to break your neck you’d be off my hands…”