A Week From Sunday (36 page)

“When Charles Moore died, I thought she would be smart enough to know she needed a protector to take his place. It didn’t occur to me that she’d become irrational. All my planning and the risk I took to do away with Charles was for naught!”

With the speed of the bullet that had wounded him, realization came to Quinn.
The bastard killed Adrianna’s father!

“What . . . what did you say?” he finally managed to ask.

“I suppose she told you about her father’s passing,” Richard said flippantly as he came out from behind the bar to stand before Quinn, the gun held menacingly before him. “What a tragedy. Even with all of his maladies, it was certainly quite a shock to her to find he’d expired in his sleep.”

“Why?” Quinn asked. “Why would you do it?”

“Because he had what I wanted,” Richard spat. “I was as much the reason for his success as he was, yet he received all of the accolades! Soon, I realized that with my hands on his money and his daughter, all of my dreams would come true. In his weakened state, it was a simple matter of getting him to sign his name here and there, making me the executor of his estate. Before the ink was even dry, he had made himself expendable.”

Quinn’s belly burned with ire and contempt. Through clenched teeth, he cursed at the man who was a threat to the woman he loved.

“You no-good, dirty son of a bitch!”

“All I had to do was place a pillow over his face one morning to get the job done,” Richard said with pride. “Perhaps I erred in underestimating Adrianna’s feelings for poor Charles, the old goat. You’d think she’d have been thrilled to have been released from the burden of caring for him.”

Like a wild animal suddenly released from the cage in which it had been imprisoned, Quinn leapt off the floor and threw himself at Richard Pope. The pain that coursed through his body was no more than a gentle breeze, his only thoughts centered on getting his hands around the bastard’s neck and squeezing the life from him! But, with surprising quickness, Richard lashed out, striking him on the side of his face with his pistol. He slumped to the floor, held awake only by the most tenuous of threads.

“I should kill you for the very audacity!” Richard fumed. “But a quick death is too good for a cur like you! Better for you to burn with this flea-infested hellhole you’re so proud of!”

As he lay facedown on the floor, blood spilling from the cut on his cheekbone, Quinn could hear what was going on around him. The sounds came in a hurry; Richard’s gun settling on the bar’s counter, the rustling of cloth, and then the striking of a match.

What came next was the roaring of flames.

Chapter 30

A
DRIANNA RAN TO
the Whipsaw as fast as her legs would carry her. When she’d peered through the glass and seen Richard behind the bar, she’d known her premonition of danger had been well-founded. Stealthily, she opened the door in time to hear him say,
“All I had to do was place a pillow over his face . . .”

Oh my God . . . Richard killed my father!

Adrianna stood in the doorway, frozen in horror. What she saw now paralyzed her: Richard with a gun in his hand, Quinn on the floor in a pool of blood, flames inching toward him. Bright crimson and dark orange flames licked up the walls as if they were starving men in search of food. New fires broke out everywhere a drop of alcohol had spread, until it seemed to cover every inch of the Whipsaw. Thick smoke began to billow upward. Through it all, the intense heat grew, threatening to consume everything it could reach.

She’d listened to it all, every sick and twisted nuance of Richard’s vile plan to take her father’s life and gain his fortune. With every word of his confession, her heart had ached with a pain she’d never have been able to imagine. Yet she’d been unable to find her voice, her only visible emotion the hot tears that blurred her vision and streaked down her face.

“. . . thrilled to have been released from the burden of caring for him.”

Even when Quinn had risen to his feet and charged at Richard, receiving a pistol-whipping for his efforts, she still couldn’t move. For an instant, she wondered if it wasn’t a dream, that she’d bumped her head when she’d fallen down the stairs with Lola, and that she’d wake up to find that none of it was real. But she knew this wasn’t a nightmare.

“You bastard!” she screamed. “You heartless bastard!”

Richard turned to face her, a look of utter shock crossing his heavy face. “Adrianna, my dear . . .” he sputtered. “What . . . what in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

“I heard everything you said, you no good son of a bitch!” she screamed with fury she’d never known before. She rushed at Richard, paying no heed to the gun he still clutched in his hand, and began to pound her fists against his chest. “I hate you!”

Her last words seemed to do far more harm to the older man than her futile punches. With his free hand, he began to grab at her wrists, his brow furrowed with concern. “Stop this at once, dear Adrianna! It is not becoming a woman of your station!”

Adrianna couldn’t hear a word he was saying. Between the thick smoke and the tears that flooded her eyes, she could scarcely even see him. Still, she kept on hitting him. Her mind was consumed with what Richard had done to her; he had murdered her father, stolen the fortune her family had amassed, wounded Quinn, and hounded her from the moment she’d left Shreveport. Enough was enough!

“I’ll kill you!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you for what you’ve done!”

Richard’s hand flashed out with the speed of a serpent, striking her squarely in the mouth. The blow was sharp and painful enough to drive her from her feet, and she crashed to the floor a few feet away from Quinn. When she looked up at Richard, he glared back at her with eyes full of contempt.

“You have no one but yourself to blame for that, my dear,” he chastised her coldly. “We will have to work on your manners. A woman such as you must know her proper limits.”

As she listened to Richard, all around her the fire grew like a thing possessed. Flames licked at most of the tables and chairs and covered the long bar like a blanket. Ten feet away from her, the piano had begun to burn, smoke billowing from the closed lid. Even the seat where she had sat no more than a few hours earlier was in flames.

Turning on her side, she stared over to where Quinn lay. Dark blood seeped from a wound on his leg and oozed from a cut in his cheek that was surrounded by purple bruises. Even through the heat and smoke, she could see that he was gazing at her, a worried look in his eyes.

“Get . . . get out . . . of here,” he pleaded.

“I won’t leave you!”

Bang! Suddenly, the thundering clap of a gunshot split the wooden floor between them as it exploded in a shower of splinters. Adrianna was startled; even with the roar of the fire, the noise had been deafening. When she turned to Richard, she saw the gun in his hand.

“Don’t speak to him!” the older man ordered, his face a twisted mask of anger. “I won’t stand for you defying me! A good wife would never defy her husband!”

Richard’s words were more than Adrianna could bear. He’d spoken to her in such a way after her father’s funeral, assuming that love and marriage were things that were not earned but simply ordained. What she had found in Lee’s Point was the opposite: love was something that grew between two people, no matter their differences or upbringing.

Defiantly, she sat up, straightened her back and stared at Richard. “I am not your wife, and I never will be! I wouldn’t marry you if you were the only man left in the whole country!”

“Don’t say such things, dear Adrianna,” Richard fumed. Her words had shaken his confidence, and his grip tightened on the pistol. “You’re not in your right mind. This man has corrupted you.”

“This man has done nothing but care for me from the moment he met me!” she argued, tears streaming down her face. “He’s given me something that you could never give, no matter how much money you spent! He’s given me love, and I have given it to him in return! If there’s anyone that I am going to marry, it’ll be Quinn Baxter, not you!”

As the mirror above the bar exploded from the heat, glass shards raining to the floor, Richard’s sanity shattered with it. Like a rabid dog, he crossed the space between himself and Adrianna in an instant. Bending down to her, he began to slap her face and shoulders, one blow harder than the one before.

“You ungrateful wench!” he bellowed between blows. “After all that I have done for you! After all that I wished to give you, you have the audacity to speak to me in such a way! I’ll make you regret that you ever said a one of those words to me!”

There was nothing that Adrianna could do to stop Richard from hitting her. She tried to raise her hands, but he brushed them aside like they were nothing but blades of grass. With every slap stinging her face, she grew weaker. If he didn’t stop soon, she knew she would fall unconscious and be at his mercy.
But what can I possibly do to stop him?

As if in answer to her unspoken question, movement to her left caught her eye. She’d hardly had time even to notice before Quinn suddenly lurched up off the floor and slammed into Richard’s side, driving him away from her. The force of the blow drove the gun out of the older man’s hand, and it skittered across the burning floor.

“Leave her the hell alone!” Quinn shouted.

“Quinn!” Adrianna yelled with a mixture of fear and joy.

Even in his weakened condition, Quinn was still in far better physical shape than Richard. Although his bullet-riddled leg made it hard for him to move, he stayed close to his foe. He threw a hard left to the Richard’s midriff and then followed it up with a straight right that slammed flush against his nose, buckling his knees. Richard tried to answer with a feeble punch of his own, but Quinn merely swatted the blow away before throwing a left hook that cracked Richard’s jaw. Still, he didn’t go down.

“I’ll . . . I’ll kill . . . you . . .” Richard spat out of a blood-drenched mouth.

“You can try,” Quinn answered. With all the strength he had left, Quinn threw a right uppercut that barreled into the man’s chin with the force of a runaway locomotive. The blow seemed to lift Richard off his feet and he crashed to the floor flat on his back.

Adrianna gasped at the sight. All around them, the fire had begun to rage out of control. Fire crawled its way up the walls, tearing at the roof. The windows at the front of the tavern burst like ripe fruit, adding their noise to the cacophony of destruction. Beams and boards cracked and groaned, threatening to give way. Blistering heat seemed to radiate down to her very bones. With Richard now vanquished, the danger suddenly seemed even greater.

Quinn turned and hurried back to her, bending down to embrace her. His dirty, bloodied face loomed above her as he smothered her with kisses. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m all right,” she tried to reassure him, even though her face throbbed in pain, and her leg ached from her encounter with Rueben and Lola. “But we need to get out of here before it’s—”

Before she could say one more word, another gunshot rang out, as strong as if a bolt of lightning had landed mere feet away. Quinn flew past her to land on the floor, his hand grasping agonizingly at his shoulder. In less time than it would have taken her to blink, crimson blood spurted between his fingers and raced down his elbow to the floor below. He’d been shot yet again!

“Quinn!” she screamed.

The only answer he gave her was to hiss painfully between his teeth, “Get out of here.”

She spun around to see Richard standing near the bar, his suit rumpled and his face a bloody wreck. In his hand was the pistol. Quinn’s blow had knocked him down right next to his fallen weapon!

“That will be enough!” he raged through crimson teeth.

“Richard!” Adrianna pleaded, suddenly fearful that the older man would shoot Quinn again. “Don’t do it, Richard! Please don’t hurt him!”

“What makes you think I’m not going to just shoot the both of you?” Richard snarled. “After all I’ve done for you, I can’t believe that you’d rush to him, you ungrateful little bitch! If this is the life that you have chosen,” Richard barked, swinging his arms open to the burning Whipsaw, “then you do not deserve the generous gifts that I have offered you. I will give you just what you deserve . . . a painful death!”

With that, time seemed to stand still. Adrianna clutched at her chest as Richard raised the gun and leveled it at her. She expected the crack of the pistol, expected its murderous bullet finding its target in her heart, but another crack exploded across the dying tavern. Directly above Richard, a support beam that crossed the high room gave way, one of its ends entirely eaten through by the raging inferno that the man from Shreveport had ignited. Nearly as thick as a man’s chest, the flaming beam crashed to the earth. Richard did not even have time to look up before the weight struck him and drove him to the floor. He screamed for only an instant before the noise, and he himself, were consumed by the out-of-control fire.

It took Adrianna only a moment to regain her composure. She hurried to Quinn. He looked up at her through tightly squinted eyes, his hand never leaving the wound on his shoulder.

“Oh, Quinn!” she cried. “We have to get out of here!”

Billowing black smoke curled around them as other beams began to give way, crashing onto the bar floor. They had only a matter of minutes, maybe no more than seconds, to get out before they too would share the fate that had befallen Richard.