Cold Hearted (34 page)

“I want you two to go with the deputies,” she told them. “They’ll take y’all home. I’ll follow in the truck.”

Jordan gladly did as Maleah suggested, relieved to have a police escort. But her relief was short-lived. When they arrived back at the entrance to the estate, they found not only more news people in their cars, trucks, and vans, but a small crowd of what she assumed were curiosity seekers. The deputy driving stopped in the middle of the road and the other deputy got out and shouted orders to the horde assembled in the road, along the road, and even across the road. Some people were actually standing in the shallow ditch. A few of the onlookers carried binoculars.

Clearing all the vehicles out of the way took at least ten minutes, but eventually, they unblocked the route to the entrance. One deputy remained at the gate with the Powell agent while the other eased the patrol car up to the entrance, and then gave the signal for the Powell agent to open the gate. The minute he did, the deputy sped through and onto the drive, but not before some idiot threw himself onto the hood. With his face pressing against the windshield, he glared at Jordan and shouted a string of damnations. As the gates closed behind the car, the deputy stopped, got out and peeled the man off the hood.

“Murderess! Whore! Infidel!” he shouted. “There is a special place in hell for women like you.”

The deputy handcuffed the man, marched him to the guardhouse, and handed him over to the other deputy.

Rene draped her arm around Jordan’s shoulders. “Don’t let what he was saying bother you. He’s obviously crazy.”

“Yes, but there are people who aren’t crazy who think the way he does. And there are others who believed in my innocence before today, who will now condemn me, just as they’ll condemn Dan and Devon.”

“Then they’re cold, heartless bastards. They have no right to judge you. Your arrangement with Dan and Devon was nobody’s business. You three were happy with the way things were.”

“Were we?”

Jordan hadn’t realized she had voiced her thought until Rene stared at her, obviously surprised by her comment.

Thinking back over the past few years, Jordan admitted to herself that she had not been happy. Not really. Nor had Devon and Dan. They had each settled for less than they should have. She had escaped into a bogus marriage believing it could protect her from ever being hurt again. Devon had loved Dan enough to give him what he’d wanted — a secret love affair and a marriage to Jordan that had been in name only. In the beginning, their arrangement had seemed quite logical and it had worked for all of them. But only for a while. Their having a child together, her undergoing artificial insemination, her being pregnant with Devon’s baby, had been a mutual decision, one they all thought would cement the cracks in their unique three-way relationship.

Rene didn’t say a word; she simply sat there in the backseat of the patrol car and kept her arm around Jordan’s shoulders. By the time the deputy drove up in front of the house, Maleah was right behind them in the Navigator. Before either vehicle came to a full stop, the residents of Price Manor swarmed around them.

Jordan emerged to arms reaching for her and voices clamoring their concern. She hugged Tammy, who had shoved her way to the forefront, then came Roselynne and then Darlene, each in need of comfort and reassurance.

“How long have you been here?” Jordan asked Darlene.

“I got here before the hordes descended,” Darlene replied. “Oh, my dear girl, are you truly all right? Just when we thought things were finally getting better, this had to happen.”

“I’m fine or I will be. I just want to go inside, get a stiff drink and pull myself together.”

“Yes, of course. Just know that I’m here and I’m staying. I won’t leave you again no matter what you say.”

Maleah came up behind Jordan, curved her hand over Jordan’s shoulder and said, “I want y’all to step back and give Jordan a little breathing room. I’m sure she’ll want to see y’all again later, but right now, I’m taking her inside where she can catch her breath.”

Grateful to have Maleah as a buffer between her and her loved ones, Jordan allowed the Powell agent to lead her into the house.

“Would you like to go up to your room or—”

“I wasn’t joking about that stiff drink,” Jordan said.

Tobias and Vadonna stood in the foyer, both staring at Jordan, each obviously concerned. She turned to them and smiled.

“Miss Jordan, if there’s anything Vadonna or I can do for you…” Tobias said.

“Thank you. The only thing I need right now is some time alone. And, Tobias, would you bring me a bottle of that fig vodka I like so much? I’ll be in my study.”

“A whole bottle, ma’am?”

“Yes, the whole bottle.”

His eyes widened, but he nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

While the others entered the foyer and watched her as she escaped down the hall and into her study, Jordan realized that only Maleah’s hard glare kept her distressed family at bay.

Half an hour and several drinks later, Jordan had spoken to Devon, who was an absolute basket case. She hated that he was there in Bethesda, all alone, when the news of his true relationship with Dan became public knowledge.

“Just stay put for the time being. Hole up there in the townhouse until you hear from me. I’ll arrange with Powell’s to send an agent to D.C. to escort you home.”

“Who would have done such a thing? Only a handful of people knew the truth about Dan and me.”

“As much as I hate to even think it, we both know it was someone in the family.”

After a lengthy conversation with Devon, she sat quietly, trying to make sense of what had happened, and not just what had happened today with the vicious story in The Chatterbox, but with the events in her past as well.

Just as she was considering pouring herself another drink and dulling her senses even more with alcohol, someone knocked on the locked study door.

“Yes?”

“It’s Maleah.”

When she stood, she realized she was slightly tipsy. Steadying herself, she walked to the door, unlocked it, and said, “If it’s bad news, I don’t want to hear it.”

“One off Powell’s helicopters has just landed in the south field behind the house,” Maleah said. “Rick Carson has come back.”

Jordan couldn’t breathe for a couple of seconds. Every cell in her body responded to the thought of her seeing Rick again.

“If you’d like, I’ll go with you to meet him.”

“Yes, I’d like that very much,” Jordan said.

The helicopter created a thunderous roar and a rotating wind surge that flattened the grass and swayed the nearby bushes and treetops. Maleah and Jordan watched from a distance as Rick landed the chopper in a wide open field on the Price estate. Sunlight danced off the blades as they slowed and finally stopped. The quiet stillness of the green meadow, the only sounds those of nature, seemed all the more pronounced once the chopper engine shut off. Jordan raised her hand as a visor to block the blinding sun. The chopper door swung open and Rick emerged.

Jordan’s heartbeat accelerated with anticipation.

She wanted to run to him. She didn’t. Instead, with Maleah at her side, she walked briskly toward Rick as he threw up his hand and waved at them.

With her thoughts centered on Rick’s return, on what it would mean to have him back in her life, Jordan didn’t hear, see, or sense anything else. Her entire being was centered on this one moment and this one man.

And then, without warning, the distinctive resonance of a rifle shot rang out, terrifyingly clear. Before Jordan had a chance to react, Maleah shoved her forward behind a clump of tall bushes and then onto the ground, coming down over her like a protective shield. It took Jordan half a minute to realize that someone had shot at them and a full minute to realize that she had screamed.

Maleah grunted. “Are you all right?”

“I — I think so.”

“Stay down,” Maleah told her.

Jordan felt something wet and sticky dripping onto her neck. She managed to maneuver her hand up so that she could run her fingers over the substance. She looked at her fingertips and gasped when she saw that they were smeared with something red. Oh, God. She had blood on her fingers, blood she had wiped off her neck. Had she been hit? She hadn’t felt the impact of a bullet entering her body.

“You two all right?” Rick shouted.

“Jordan’s okay,” Maleah replied. “But I’m hit.”

“Stay put,” Rick told her.

“You’ve been shot?” Jordan asked her bodyguard, who at that precise moment was literally protecting Jordan’s body with her own.

“It’s a shoulder wound,” Maleah said. “It won’t kill me.”

Jordan managed to turn her head just enough to peer through the bushes and get a glimpse of Rick, gun in hand, carefully canvassing the area as he made his way toward them.

Fully expecting to hear more gunfire, Jordan uttered a prayer.
Please, God, don’t let the shooter fire again
.

With her pulse pounding rapidly, the sound drowning out everything else, all sense of time and place distorted by fear, she wasn’t sure how long it took Rick to reach them. He hunched down, reached out, and hauled Maleah away from Jordan. When Maleah rolled over onto her side, Jordan did the same, so the two faced each other. It was then that she saw the hole in Maleah’s blood-soaked blouse. She clamped her teeth together to keep from crying out.

“Did you see where the shot came from?” Rick asked as he visually examined Maleah’s wounded shoulder.

“From the left,” Maleah told him. “Left, into the woods, and a little in front of where we were, not from behind.”

“We need to get you to the hospital.” Still holding his gun in his right hand, he used his left hand to pull his cell phone from his pocket. He hit a pre-programmed number. “Yeah, Maleah’s been shot. Put in an emergency call and get some men over to the field where I landed the chopper ASAP.”

Jordan watched as Rick ripped apart Maleah’s blouse and checked the entry wound, then looked for an exit wound. He frowned. “The bullet went straight through, but it left a hell of a mess.”

She grunted. “Yeah, and it hurts, too.”

Rick grinned at her, then still holding the gun, shrugged off his jacket and tossed it to Jordan. “Fold this into a thick, compressed square and use it to apply pressure to Maleah’s shoulder. We need to stop the bleeding.”

Silent and dazed, Jordan followed his instructions.

He glanced at her. “How are you holding up, honey?”

She couldn’t manage to speak, so she simply nodded.

“Help’s on the way,” he told them, but his attention was focused elsewhere. He watched and listened, apparently preparing for a second attack.

“Don’t pass out on me,” Maleah told Jordan. “You’re white as a sheet.”

“I — I’m okay. Just — just worried about you.”

Maleah grimaced. “It’s probably not as bad as it looks.”

If only she could stop trembling, but she couldn’t. Jordan knew without anyone saying it — the bullet Maleah took had been meant for her.
She
had been the target, not her bodyguard.

Jordan had wanted to go to the hospital with Maleah, but Rick had quickly nixed the idea. He knew that Jordan was concerned, that she cared, that she felt responsible for what had happened to her bodyguard; but her staying put was the safest course of action.

“You’ll be easier to protect, here, inside the house,” he had explained. “Since we have no idea who the shooter was or what his or her motive was, you’ll need twenty-four/seven personal protection. I’m taking over as your bodyguard and the only time you’ll be alone is in the bathroom. Got that!”

When he had landed the Powell Agency helicopter, he’d been anticipating seeing Jordan again. Although he’d done his level best to put her out of his mind the past nine days, she had never been far from his thoughts. The rifle shot had rung out only moments after he left the chopper, and in that defining moment, all that had mattered to him was Jordan.

Once they arrived back at the house, he’d had a hell of a time keeping Jordan’s leeches off her. He supposed thinking of family and close friends as bloodsucking sycophants said something about his view of the world. A negative view. Even if they all truly loved Jordan and their concern for her well-being was genuine, why didn’t they realize that they were drawing the life out of her with their need for constant reassurance? Why couldn’t they see that their concerns were self-centered, that each of them was imagining what would happen to her without Jordan?

Once they had convinced everyone that Jordan was unharmed and simply needed some breathing room, he took her to her study, which seemed to be where she felt the most comfortable. He closed the plantation shutters and ushered her away from the windows.

“Sit down. I’ll get you a drink.”

“No. I don’t want to sit down and I don’t want a drink.” She looked at him. “I had several drinks earlier. I want a clear head right now.”

“You’re trembling.”

“I know. I can’t help it. I guess realizing that someone actually tried to kill me shook me up just a little.”

“Jordan…” When he reached out to her, she sidestepped him, avoiding his touch.

“Don’t try to convince me that whoever shot Maleah wasn’t aiming at me.”

“I won’t,” he said. “Whoever shot Maleah may have been aiming at you. But if they wanted to kill you, they weren’t much of a shooter. They not only missed you, but they didn’t fatally wound Maleah.”

“Thank God.”

“Yes, thank God. And thank Maleah’s quick action.”

“She saved my life.”

“Possibly.”

“What do you mean possibly?”

“Come on, honey, sit down before you fall down.” He reached for her and once again she avoided him. “You look like you might pass out any minute now.”

“I’ll sit down like a good little girl, if you’ll tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Agreed.”

She chose one of the chairs instead of the sofa. Had she chosen the sofa to prevent him from sitting beside her? Why didn’t she want him to touch her? Was she angry with him or afraid she’d fall apart in his arms?