Gambling on a Secret (41 page)

“Zack Cartwright.”

“Bingo. I owe my sister. And in many ways, I owe Zack.”

She raised a questioning brow.

He sipped the soda and shrugged. “If Tracy hadn’t called you about your newspaper ad, I wouldn’t’ve applied for the job.” Dylan placed a soft kiss on her temple and grinned lopsidedly. “And as they say–the rest is history.

“And Zack?”

After Dylan sat beside her at an empty table, he said, “He helped me remember my time in the Army wasn’t all bad.”

A few moments later, he led her onto the dance floor. She hadn’t danced in years.

The band, led by Zack’s younger brother Logan, broke into an old Alabama love song. She stumbled over the stiletto heels of her strappy sandals, but Dylan supported her and surprised her at his skill as he led into a two-step. Relaxing in his arms, she got caught up in their love feeling so right, just as the lyrics suggested.

His warm breath fanned over the side of her face. “I think I’ve finally found a country song I like. It’s definitely giving me some ideas.”

She pulled away and looked up into his desire-darkened eyes, and got some interesting ideas herself.

The song ended and the band shattered the mood by breaking into Charlie Daniels’s
The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

They moved off the dance floor as the dancers lined up for a line-dance. She looked around for Tracy and found her over by the edge of the room talking with Zack, who said something and Tracy laughed. Oh, yeah, they had plenty of sparks to start a fire if given enough kindling.

Before they got back to their table, she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.

She left the bathroom at the end of a long dimly lit corridor. The muted revelry of the party seemed so far way, as a dream on the peripheral of her conscience. On the opposite side of the hall was a darkened coatroom. A glass door barred an exit at the end of the hallway.

Curiously, she peered through the glass into the darkness. A halo of dim light from the streetlight disappeared in the shadows of the thick woods bordering the employee parking lot. The full moon glimmered off the calm water of Gambler’s Lake.

A shuffling sound came from behind her.

What was that? She turned around and shivered. From the doorway of the coatroom, Leon stepped out of the darkness hatless and with a lock of hair hanging over his forehead. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, and his beard had come in dark and thick. The insane gleam in his brown eyes shook her to her core. Knowing someone would hear her, she opened her mouth to scream. He pulled a handgun with a silencer on the end from behind him.

“Hello, Charli.” He pointed the gun at her with the ease of someone used to handling firearms. “I wouldn’t do anything stupid if I were you.”

Swallowing the scream, she held out her hands in front of her and pressed herself into the corner. “Why are you here?”

His sickly smile never reached his arctic eyes. “I came back to get the two things I can take away from Dylan.” Leon paused, and her heart sank into the depths of her boiling stomach. “You and your bastard.”

“You’re crazy. I’ll never go with you.”

Definitely the wrong thing to say to a madman. He lost the smile and bore down on her, grabbed her by the hair and yanked her around so her back came up against his chest, hard. She cried out, but choked down the yelp when he shoved the gun next to her temple.
Oh, God, he’s going to shoot me.

“Either alive or dead, it doesn’t matter to me how I take those things away.”

“Please,” she pleaded between sobs, trying to fend off the nausea twisting her belly. “Don’t hurt me.”

She shuddered as his hot breath fanned over her bare shoulder. “As long as you do as I tell you, I won’t.”

Giving a jerky nod, she swallowed the bile in her throat. “I’ll cooperate.”

“I always knew you were a smart girl.”

Determined to buy as much time as possible, she asked, “Why do you hate Dylan so much?”

His chuckle grated on her nerves like sandpaper over delicate silk, snagging, ripping. “Because my father preferred him over me.”

“You mean because Jason Ferguson willed Oak Springs to him.”

Leon tugged on her hair hard enough to bring tears of pain to her eyes. The gun nozzle dug into her temple as he growled next to her ear, “That’s part of it. We’re leaving. Open the door.”

* * * *

While Dylan waited for Charli, Tracy and Zack came to the table. Zack sat next to him and Tracy settled next to Zack.

“Where’s Charli?” Tracy asked and sipped from a glass of Zinfandel.

He wondered the same thing himself and glanced at his watch. “She went to the ladies’ room, but it was a while ago.”

A teenage boy, dressed in the white kitchen help uniform, ran into the middle of the ballroom. Over the band’s loud rendition of Little Texas’s
God Blessed Texas
and the chatter of over two hundred people, he yelled, “Is the sheriff here?”

“Over here.” Zack stood and waited for the kid to run over to the table. “What’s going on?”

“I was coming from the kitchen when I heard a noise down the hallway to the bathrooms.” The boy gestured wildly with his hands as he spoke in a breathless rush. “When I looked, I saw a man grab a lady back there. It looked like he had a gun and was fixin’ to go out the back door.”

Dylan was out of his seat, ready to bolt.

“Let’s go,” Zack said. As they ran through the crowd, he pulled out his cellphone and pushed a key. “Dawn. Leon Ferguson was possibly spotted at the Country Club, armed and considered dangerous. He may have Charli Monroe. Call in the Rangers and the highway patrol to block every road out of the county. Send backup. I’m in pursuit”

At the doorway out into the lobby, Dylan stopped and took a breath. He had to get a game plan. Zack paused and glanced at him.

“If the bastard harms a single hair on her head, I’m killing him, Zack.”

“That’s why I’m making you a temporary deputy. More paperwork is involved if you kill him, but I can possibly keep your ass out of prison.”

He nodded his appreciation.

Zack looked around. “Here’s the plan. You’re good with the sneaking up on the enemy. So, you follow. Think, Dylan. Don’t let the emotion get ahead of reason.”

“Got it.”

He pulled a Glock from a shoulder holster under his vest. “I’ll circle around the back of the building in the cover of the trees.”

Dylan nodded again and headed through the door. Zack almost barreled into him when he turned abruptly. “Zack, there’s something you should know. Charli’s pregnant.”

“We’ll get to her, Dylan.” Zack patted him on the shoulder; the action was strangely comforting. “Now, let’s go, Captain.”

Zack sprinted for the outer exit. Adrenaline made Dylan drunk as he turned and rushed down the hallway leading to the bathrooms and the employee exit. His heart kicked into his throat like a caged mustang as his mind galloped in a hundred maddening directions. By the time he reached the door, he corralled the stray thoughts and tried to tame his wild heart.

Taking a breath, he was startled to smell the faint scent of peaches. Charli had been here only minutes ago. He slowly opened the door to slip out into the darkness, his instinct, honed by years of training, taking over.

He saw movement between the parked cars and pressed himself into the shadow of the wall. Behind Charli, Leon pushed her toward the trees next to the parking lot with a pistol held to the back of her head.

Crouching, Dylan rushed across the open driving lane and hid by a pickup.

Leon pushed Charli behind a car.

“Where are you taking me?” Charli’s voice rung with fear.

“Someplace far away. Hope you like the tropics, Bambi.”

With his heart beating painfully in his chest, he sprinted on silent feet toward the woman he loved and the lunatic threatening to take her away. He stepped on a wayward twig, the unwelcome snap warning Leon of his presence. Cursing his luck, he awaited the consequence of his misstep.

Leon dragged Charli around by the hair. For one terrifying moment, he thought Leon would shoot her.

“Let her go.” Dylan fisted his hands by his side. If he’d been able to get a little closer, he could’ve overpowered Leon from behind. But with a gun on Charli, he didn’t dare move.

“Dylan!” Charli screamed.

“If it’s not GI Joe. Some hero. You’re nothing but a fuck-up. You aren’t getting what you want this time.”

“What’s your plan, Ferguson? Kidnapping Charli?” He didn’t give a rat’s ass what was going on in Ferguson’s crazy head, but the longer he kept him talking, the better chance he had of getting Charli away from him. As he held his hands out from his sides, he took a tentative step toward Leon, coming out from behind a car. “This is between you and me. Leave Charli out of it.”

Leon turned the gun on him.

Dylan let out the breath he’d been holding.

Charli screamed his name again.

“You’re right.” Leon sneered. “This is between you and me. But I think I’ll keep the little whore anyway. Ever since you moved back here, you’ve weaseled your way into getting what should’ve been mine.”

“Where’s the will, Leon?”

Ferguson chortled humorlessly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

So, he hadn’t destroyed it.

“Other than Oak Springs, what else have I supposedly taken?” He caught a flash of Zack’s white shirt as he weaved his way through the woods behind Leon. Dylan glanced at Charli, trying to reassure her with his eyes. Leon held her against him by her hair. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle, and she looked as if she’d puke any minute.

“You don’t know?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“My own father threw you in my face! He wished I’d turned out like you.”

He kept his surprise out of his expression and voice. Sure, he’d spent a few lazy summers when he was a teenager with Jock, wallowing in their common dislike of Madeline Ferguson, but he didn’t understand Leon’s assertion. “Why would Jock Blackwell care about me?”

Ferguson’s eyes widened and he jerked his head to the side. “So, you figured it out. Or did the son-of-a-bitch tell you when you and he were all buddy-buddy, how he got my mother pregnant? He married her only to dump her for Colleen Stryker before I was even born. Then happily signed the damned adoption papers to give me to that pompous asshole Jason Ferguson.”

What the hell did Leon mean by him and Jock being buddies? Jock had tolerated him catching snakes out of the lake to torment Maddie, and told him how proud he was of him for joining the Army. Jock had done a tour in Vietnam. He sympathized with him when Jason Ferguson left Oak Springs to Leon. Colleen was the mother of Jock’s eldest illegitimate son. The fact Maddie Ferguson had legally wed Jock came as a shock. But why would Jock sign his son away?

No wonder the oil wells were capped, whether Maddie’s father, Jason Ferguson or Jock Blackwell had ordered it. The significance of the action wasn’t lost on him.

Leon snarled, “He denied me for years, saying I was really Jason’s bastard.”

“Was your plan to reopen the oil wells?” He risked a glance behind Leon and Charli. In the combination of moonlight and streetlight, he saw Zack hunker down behind a car with his Glock gripped in a two-handed aim over the hood. He knew Zack couldn’t risk taking a shot. If Leon moved or if his aim was off, Charli could be hit, or even Dylan. He had to make Leon angry enough to come after him. “Is that why Jock destroyed his will? He didn’t want you getting any richer off the oil under his land.”

He was close enough to watch anger contort Leon’s features, his eyes burning with a crazy fire. “He intended to split the place up between his bastards. Told me I was never the son he wanted. None of us were, but he felt I deserved less than them. They at least carried his name. I swore I’d contest his will. After all, I’m his only legitimate son.”

Light from overhead glittered on the sweat beading on his forehead. “He told me he never wanted me to get my hands on his land.” He shifted his feet and snorted. “The Fergusons weren’t getting richer from the oil reserve under his land.”

“So, Jock destroyed the will.” He risked another glance at Zack.

“The fucking prick cheated me out of what should have been mine! That’s why I killed him.”

Jock had been deemed delusional years before his death. Some folks in town claimed he had bipolar disorder and refused to take his medication as he got older. No one was surprised or questioned his death as being anything but accidental. Jock had supposedly died after falling from a horse. A head injury. But now, as Leon became increasingly irrational, a new possibility played out on the stage of his mind.

Jock and Leon had gone riding together, but only Leon returned to the stable. Then another more frightening scenario sprang up in his thoughts. “Did you kill my grandfather, Leon, after you forged his will?”

Leon laughed bitterly. “No, I didn’t have to. He died on his own.”

* * * *

Charli remembered Leon’s threats from the night he’d called. How could she not remember his admission of murdering Jock Blackwell? She knew in her heart Leon would kill Dylan and steal her away. Nausea threatened to spill the bile bubbling in her stomach, and her mind raced with her possible fate.