Rivals (59 page)

Chance straightened, lowering his racket, muscles relaxing, the wind drawing in and out of him deep and even. He looked at his opponent lying sprawled on the squash court floor. Slowly, tiredly, he pushed to his feet and glanced at Chance, shaking his head.

“That's it. I've had it,” he said, admitting defeat. “Man, I don't know who you're mad at, but you're out for blood.”

The image of Flame came to Chance's mind, proud and strong, the flare of icy defiance in her green eyes. He dropped his glance and turned away to get his towel. “Hard day at the office, I guess.”

“I guess,” came the answering echo of full agreement. “Remind me never to play you at the end of the day again.”

His mouth moved in a semblance of a smile as Chance scooped up his towel from the corner and rubbed it over his face and neck, letting its thickness sop up the sweat. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the movement of the door to the court swinging open and turned, in absent curiosity. When Sam walked in, Chance checked the downward stroke of the towel along his neck, an alertness coursing through him, then continued to wipe at the perspiration.

“What's up?” he asked.

But Sam glanced at the trainer. Taking the hint, the man lifted his towel in a parting salute and headed for the door. “See ya.”

Chance lifted his head in an acknowledging nod, then brought his full attention to bear on Sam, noting immediately Sam's unwillingness to meet his gaze. “What happened?”

“I was three hours late.” Grimness and guilt moved over his boyish features. “She's locked up the Crowder's mortgage. The bank said she was there this morning to sign all the papers.”

“Damn that woman,” he swore in frustration, throwing back his head to glare at the ceiling and bringing his hands to rest on his hips, the racket against his side.

“I thought we had her when we managed to buy those two parcels this last weekend, but they aren't vital to her project. We needed the Crowder piece,” Sam said, his glance finally seeking Chance's eyes. “She's won, hasn't she?”

“Not if I can help it.” He pulled the towel from his neck. “Get Donovan on the phone and tell him to get the jet ready. I'm flying to Washington tonight and push for an approval on our dam myself.”

“It's no good.” Sam shook his head, then explained. “I talked to Molly before I came over here. That's how I knew where you were. Fred called to say he'd heard from Zorinsky. Morgan's Walk has been listed on the National Registry for Historic Places. He says there's no way you're going to get an approval now.”

This time Chance said nothing. He stood there silent and staring, his mind racing. She'd blocked him.

Sam shifted uneasily. “Do you want me to wait?”

“No.” His voice was hard and flat. “I have some thinking to do.”

Sam hesitated then left him standing alone in the court.

44

D
arkness
pressed its black hands against the library windows. Flame held the telephone firmly to her ear and waited for that voice to finish its threat, an anger like ice freezing her motionless. When a faint
click
signaled the connection was broken, she hung up and pushed the rewind button on the tape recorder she'd hooked to the phone. There was a quick whir of the tape, then a snap as the machine shut itself off. She played back the message, making sure she'd recorded all of it, then rewound the tape, and picked up the phone again, dialing the number in her address book.

“Yes? Stuart.”

That hard, impatient voice belonged to Chance. She smiled coldly. “Isn't it amazing? You must have been sitting on top of the phone to answer it so quickly. Or maybe you just finished making a call.”

“Flame?” Surprise ringed his voice.

“You didn't expect to hear from me, did you?” she murmured smoothly. “I thought I could call and tell you I know exactly what you're doing. But it isn't going to work, so you can stop making your threatening calls. You aren't going to get Morgan's Walk even if you succeed in killing me. I've seen to that.”

“Kill you? What are you talking about? What calls?”

Her smile widened. “I didn't expect you to admit anything. After all, you were the one who told me I should have bluffed and pretended I didn't know what you were talking about.”

“Dammit, I don't know,” came the angry retort. “What threats? What calls?”

“Maybe this will refresh your memory.” She held the telephone to the tape recorder and played the message for him, a slight shiver of dread breaking through her control as the alien-sounding voice spoke in its flat monotone: “Your luck has run out. I will stop you for good.”

“My God, that voice—what is it?”

“It certainly isn't yours, is it?” she retorted. “And much safer than trying to disguise your own. But it isn't going to save you. The police will receive a copy of this tape. They know about the other attempts on my life. And if anything happens to me now, Chance, the police will come directly to you. And I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you'll never get Morgan's Walk.” She paused slightly, recalling the message. “You aren't going to stop me for good. I'm going to stop you.”

She hung up, surprised to discover that her hand was trembling. She gripped it for a minute, then ejected the tape from the recorder and took an envelope and a sheet of paper from the desk drawer. Not letting her mind think, she swiveled her chair around and slipped the paper into the portable typewriter she'd brought with her. With an eerie detachment, Flame noted the pertinent details: the time of the threat, its content, her subsequent call to Chance, and her current action. She took the paper out of the typewriter, signed and dated it, then slipped it along with the tape into the envelope and sealed it shut.

With an odd feeling of finality, she laid the envelope aside and leaned back in the chair, gazing at the portrait of Kell Morgan above the mantel. “I promise you,” she murmured, “a Stuart will never have Morgan's Walk.”

She felt flat, drained, no emotion left. She'd fought so hard against believing Chance would want to harm her that finally accepting it had taken everything out of her. She realized that, deep down, she'd actually believed that he'd cared for her, despite his deception and trickery. But he hadn't. She knew that now. The last illusion of his love was gone.

She continued to stare at the painting. “It was the same for you as well, wasn't it?” she realized. “Ann didn't love you either. And, like me, you ended up alone in this house. Your parents had died years before, and you'd driven Christopher away with your pain and hatred the same as I—” She closed her eyes, a tightness gripping her throat. “The same as I drove Malcom away with mine.”

My God, what had she become? A cold, bitter woman, obsessed with revenge. She remember the Crowder family and the daughter's determination to keep their land—and her own fierce determination to get it from them. Malcom was right—she had become ruthless and vindictive. She hated Chance, but was she any different from him?

It was funny, she felt dead already—beyond feeling, beyond caring. There were things she should be doing, but they seemed unimportant as she sat and stared at the portrait.

The dull bonging of the grandfather clock in the foyer, chiming the hour, finally aroused her. She sat up and rubbed a hand across her forehead, then picked up the report from Karl that she'd been reading when the phone had rung. But she couldn't seem to concentrate on it.

From the rear of the house came a creaking sound, like the hinges of a door squeaking. Flame paused, listening for an instant, then dismissed the noise as the normal groans of an old house. But it heightened her sense of hearing, making her conscious of a dozen other sounds—from the loud thudding of her heart to the soft whisper of the paper in her hand.

When something rustled in a bush outside, she started at the noise. There was a face in the window! Chance. In shock, she stared into the glowering blue of his eyes, the expression on his hard, lean face lined with impatience and anger. Then she saw the gun in his hand. Her glance flew to the portrait above the mantel and saw the fear in Kell Morgan's eyes. She looked back at Chance. He shouted at her and pushed at the window, but the thick glass muffled his voice.

The report forgotten, she grabbed the phone and tried to reach Charlie at the bunkhouse, but there was no dial tone. She beat at the disconnect switch. It was no use. The line was dead. As she scrambled out of the chair, he pounded at the window, trying to get in. Her legs felt like leaden weights, and the desk seemed to grow bigger and wider as she tried to run from behind it and get to the doors.

He yelled, this time loud enough that she could hear, “Flame, no!!!”

She faltered no more than a split second to glance at him, then turned back to the hall doors. A figure, clad all in black, blocked the opening, a gun in her hand. Flame had that one glimpse, then something slammed into her. Dimly she heard an explosion and the crash of breaking glass as she fell down…down…down…into a swirling black abyss.

45

S
trong
fingers squeezed her hand, the warmth of them penetrating, causing her to stir. She surfaced slowly as if wakening from a deep sleep. She opened her heavy eyes, focusing them on the figure of a man standing next to the hospital bed.

“Ellery, I thought—” She had a fuzzy memory…that figure in black…the gun…Chance had tried to kill her. She was in the hospital. She remembered a nurse smiling over her and saying she was out of surgery, that she was going to be fine. She looked at the IV bottle on the stand beside her bed, a tube running to her hand, then frowned at Ellery. “How did you get here?”

“Ben called Malcom, and Malcom called me. I caught the red-eye flight, and here I am.” His usually cynical mouth curved into a tender smile. “You gave us quite a scare, but you're going to make it. The bullet nicked an artery, but no vital organs. You lost a lot of that San Francisco blue blood, but the doctor tells me you'll probably be up and around in a couple days.”

“Did they…did they arrest Chance?” She forced the question out, needing to know yet not wanting to.

“Chance?” An eyebrow lifted in momentary bewilderment. “Why should they?” His expression took on a wryly gentle look. “Or is it a crime in Oklahoma for someone to save your life? Because, my dear, if it wasn't for Stuart you would have bled to death before the ambulance got there.”

“But—” She frowned, trying to make sense of this. “He was there, Ellery. He had a gun. I saw him.”

“Poor Flame.” Affectionately he gripped her hand a little tighter, a pitying light in his eyes. “You thought he was in it with her, didn't you? He wasn't. He was there to stop her.”

“Her?” Her confusion deepened as she searched his face, wanting to believe him, yet afraid. “Who are you talking about?”

Her mind raced. Was it the Matthews woman—or Maxine? But if it was true that Chance had come to stop one of them, then how would he have known of her intent…unless he had plotted with her? Could it have been Lucianna? But why would she want her dead? Chance didn't love her,…did he? There was so much fragile hope in those two little words that Flame felt the aching start all over again. If it was true he'd saved her, didn't that mean he still cared? Oh, God, she wanted him to.

“I'm talking about Stuart's secretary, Molly Malone,” Ellery replied, his voice again marked with gentleness.

“Molly?” Shock splintered through her, followed by even more confusion. “Buy why? Why would she want to kill me? I never did anything to her.”

“Not to her—to Stuart.”

She breathed in sharply at his answer, the memory instantly flashing into her mind of Chance saying, “Molly's the closest you'll come to a mother-in-law”—and Sam's remark that Chance was the sun in her life and her world revolved around him, that his enemies were her enemies.

Ellery went on. “From what I understand, she believed that Morgan's Walk rightfully belonged to Stuart—and by eliminating you, she'd be rectifying the situation. And, at the same time, she'd be preventing another Morgan woman from hurting him anymore.”

“Like Hattie,” she murmured and pressed her head back against the pillow to stare at the ceiling, the sting of tears burning her eyes.

She remembered Hattie's hatred for him—and the number of times Ben Canon had told her she sounded just like Hattie. She recalled the one occasion Chance had talked about his childhood—the day of Hattie's funeral—telling her how cruel Hattie had been to him, and how it hadn't made any difference to her that his mother was a Morgan; he carried the Stuart name, so she hated him. And her own reaction had been bitter scorn.

“I've made such a mess of things, Ellery. Just look what I became.” She gazed at him through the wash of tears and tightened her hold on his hand. “It makes me wonder why he bothered to stop her.” She tried to smile at her question, but the quivering of her chin made it a futile attempt. “How did he even find out what she planned to do?”

“Evidently you called him and played some sort of tape that sounded like a talking computer his company recently acquired for a blind office worker. First he tried to reach Molly to ask her about it, then came out to Morgan's Walk. When he discovered her car parked a half mile down the lane…” Ellery paused, smiled crookedly. “Actually the whole thing sounds like a Dashiell Hammett novella.”

She made another feeble attempt at a smile. “I guess it does.”

He squeezed her hand. “They told me I could only stay for a couple minutes. I'm afraid my time's up.”

“You'll come back?”

“Tonight, after you've had some rest.” He lifted her hand and pressed her fingers against his lips, then hesitated, holding her gaze. “Stuart's outside. In fact, the nurses tell me he's been camped out there ever since they wheeled you back from surgery. He wants to see you.”