The Rivals (4 page)

“I can ask at the garage who you are,” Drew pointed out. “Or at the sheriff's office.”

Sarah shuddered at the thought of Drew making inquiries about her in town. “My name's Sarah Barndollar,” she said, glaring at him. “Don't ask about me. Don't try to contact me. I don't want to see you again.”

By then, she had her coat on but couldn't get the zipper to work.

Drew stepped in front of her and moved her trembling hands away, then slowly and surely inserted the two sides of the zipper together and pulled it up to her chin. He tucked the stray hairs behind her ears, then leaned forward and gently brushed her lips with his.

“It was nice meeting you, Sarah Barndollar.”

Sarah waited for him to say that he planned to pursue her, that he wasn't going to let her get away. He didn't say anything of the sort. He was letting her walk out of his life, exactly the way you'd expect a man to be glad to see the backside of a one-night stand.

“Good-bye,” she said. She barely managed to keep herself from thanking him. For the pleasure. For making her feel beautiful. For making her feel like a desirable woman again.

Sarah turned on her heel, yanked open the door and let herself out into the cold.

 

Libby paced the confines of her chinked log cabin wearing cowboy boots that echoed on the hardwood floor. She glanced at her watch, appalled to see it was 9:03, and still no word from Kate. She'd finally called the police around eight-thirty, feeling more and more frantic as she listened to the dispatcher's calm demeanor as she wrote down answers to a seemingly endless list of questions she asked.

Libby crossed back and forth past North, who sat on the saddle-brown leather couch, one booted foot crossed over the other, sipping a mug of coffee.

“Sit down and take a load off, Libby,” North said.

Libby scowled at her brother. “If I want to worry, I'll worry!”

Libby stopped and listened. The Teton County Sheriff's Office was dispatching someone to get a picture of Kate to send out over the Internet to nearby law enforcement offices and to ask more questions about her daughter's disappearance. “Is that someone at the door?” she asked.

“The dogs would have heard if it was,” North replied.

Libby realized he was right. Her two sleek redbone coonhounds lay on the braided rug in front of the roaring fire she'd built in the rock fireplace, following her with watchful eyes, their tails thumping each time she passed. Her twelve-year-old bluetick hound stayed on her heels as she paced.

Libby turned to North and demanded, “Why would she do it? Kate knows better. Leaving school without permission, flying halfway across the country on a whim, not waiting for me to pick her up at the airport. She knows how dangerous it is to hitchhike!”

The younger of the redbone hounds rose to its feet, stretched, and whined. Libby crossed to the dog, rubbed its smooth red shoulder, ran a hand over floppy ears that fell below the dog's jaw, and said, “It's all right, Snoopy. Lie down.”

The dog hesitated, then settled back on its haunches. But his large brown eyes remained riveted on her.

Libby's gaze blurred with tears as she stared at the hound. Snoopy was a silly name for a hunting dog, but Kate had taken one look at the puppy, with its long ears and sorrowful eyes, and despite its all-over red color, said, “He reminds me of Charlie Brown's Snoopy.” Snoopy he'd become. The last time Libby had gone hunting in the mountains, Snoopy had treed a snarling, full-grown mountain lion.

Libby dropped onto her knees beside the bluetick hound, whose graying muzzle settled into her lap. She stroked the dog's coarse, speckled black-and-white coat and said, “We'll go looking for her, Magnum, I promise you, if she doesn't show up soon.”

A moment later, Libby was on her feet pacing again, railing against her absent daughter. “What was she doing in a bar in the first place? She's not old enough to drink!”

Libby had gone into town with Kate's picture, showing it in every bar in Jackson, including the touristladen cowboy bars. She'd been to the Silver Dollar Bar at the historic Wort Hotel, with its two thousand silver dollars laminated into the bar, the Shady Lady at the Snow King Resort, the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar with its saddles for bar stools, the Cadillac Grill, and the Stagecoach Bar in Wilson, on the chance that Kate might have stopped in one of them.

When she got no results, she headed to Teton Village, the ski resort outside of town. Where she got a hit.

When she stuck Kate's picture under the nose of the bartender at the Mangy Moose, he said, “Sure. Stunner like that, long black hair and those silvery gray eyes, you notice her. She was in here when I started my shift, around four. Left with some man.”

“What man?” Libby demanded.

“Haven't seen him in here before,” the bartender said. “Doesn't mean he isn't a regular. I just started working here a couple weeks ago.”

Jackson Hole was a resort town, and the hired help came and went as quickly as the tourists. The perennially young bartenders and waitresses worked long enough to earn the money for a season ski pass, then disappeared to the black diamond slopes. The transient town had an infinitesimally small local population—less than ten thousand—but ten times that many passed through during the summer on their way to Yellowstone National Park, a mere hour's drive away.

“What did the man who left with this girl look like?” Libby asked, holding the picture of Kate in front of his face.

The bartender shrugged. “Six feet maybe. Brown hair, maybe brown eyes, I don't know. Wearing ski clothes like everybody else.”

Libby realized the bartender's description probably fit half the men in town. “Was there anything different about the man with my daughter, anything that would help us find him?”

The bartender frowned in concentration. “He was good looking. Clean shaven.” He shook his head. “Sorry. He was just a normal guy.”

Normal. Except that he might have been a kidnapper, Libby thought, as her stomach clenched with fear. Though she'd persisted, the bartender hadn't been able to remember anything else.

As she paced her living room, Libby didn't let herself think the worst. It was too frightening.

There wasn't much breaking news in a small town like Jackson, and the
Jackson Hole News and Guide
had reminded everyone—when the most recent young woman had gone missing three months ago—of the girl who'd disappeared fifteen months ago, and the girl who'd been found shot to death in the mountains.

“Why didn't Kate just come home and wait here for me?” Libby wailed. “Why would she go to a bar, of all places?” Libby couldn't help thinking of the phone message Kate had left for her. Now she saw all sorts of sinister possibilities. What kind of trouble was Kate in? Was her disappearance related to her desperate message?

“Why did I have to be gone at just this time?” she said to her brother. “Why couldn't I have driven faster?”

Which reminded Libby of her nearly catastrophic accident on the road south of Jackson. No, she couldn't have driven any faster than she had. But that didn't make her feel any better. She glanced at her watch. “It's nearly nine-fifteen. She would have called by now if she could.”

North set his coffee cup on the table beside his chair. “Kate's a Grayhawk. She knows how to handle herself when the chips are down.”

“I'll bet the mothers of those other two girls thought the same thing.” Libby had a bad feeling, deep in her gut, that wouldn't go away.

North pounded a fist into the palm of his other hand and said, “When she shows up—and I think she will—that sonofabitch who was with her at the Mangy Moose is going to answer to me.”

Snoopy was up and headed for the door a half second before the knock sounded. Doc and Magnum joined him, nearly tripping Libby as she crossed in front of them to get to the door.

Libby reached for the doorknob with her heart in her throat, hoping against hope that it was Kate, or if not her, that the police would have some word of her whereabouts. At the same time she was terrified that it might be someone coming to tell her Kate had been hurt in an accident—or that they'd found her body dumped beside the road.

Libby put a hand over her pounding heart and opened the door. And gasped when she saw who stood there.

“May I come in?”

Libby didn't move. Couldn't move.

A second later, North was standing by her side, his body wired tight as a bowstring. “You can say whatever you have to say from right there, Blackthorne.”

Libby stared at Clay Blackthorne, whose gaze had never left hers. His gray eyes were as ruthless and remote as they'd been since the day she betrayed him, his cheekbones chiseled, his jaw square and determined. He had crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes and his black hair showed gray at the temples, but his powerful shoulders were still broad, and at six feet four, he towered almost a foot above her.

He looked imposing in a long black cashmere coat. He unbuttoned it to reveal a tailored Armani tuxedo jacket and a crisp white tux shirt with the tie gone, open at the throat to reveal a thatch of dark hair. Black tuxedo trousers with a satin stripe along the side emphasized his long legs. His patent leather shoes looked out of place in her log home. Clay had come from a world of power brokers and politics. He didn't belong here.

“You must have been at a party,” Libby blurted.

“At the British Embassy,” Clay confirmed. “With Dad and Ren and Jocelyn.”

Libby looked behind him, as though expecting to see Clay's father Blackjack, his second wife Ren, and Clay's late wife's sister Jocelyn Montrose on her doorstep. “Where are they?” she asked.

“I came alone.”

“What are you doing here?” Libby said.

“Has Kate shown up?”

Libby shook her head. “No. What are you doing here?” she repeated. “Why did you come? How did you get here so fast?”

“You called me a little over four hours ago and said our daughter was missing,” Clay said. “I'm here to make sure she's found.”

“We don't need your help,” North said.

“She's my daughter,” Clay said.

“I told you not to come,” North said.

Libby turned to North. “You talked to Clay?”

“He called here while they were doing the preflight check on his jet. You were out showing Kate's picture around.” North turned to Clay and said, “Now get the hell off—”

Libby turned on North and said, “This is my house. I'll decide who's welcome here.”

North grabbed his Stetson and sheepskin coat from the antler rack behind her and said, “Call me when he's gone.” He shoved past Clay, who held his ground, resulting in the inevitable collision of two hard-muscled male shoulders.

Libby's jaw clenched. North had taken up the gauntlet against the Blackthornes and carried it every bit as fervently as their father. Ordinarily, Libby would have sided with her brother. She wished she could hate Clay. But what had happened between them had been entirely her fault.

She stepped back and said, “Come in.”

Clay gave each of the three hounds a pat and a word of greeting as he entered. He took off his coat and hung it on the antler coatrack, then discarded his tux jacket before turning to her. “What's being done to find Kate?”

Libby bristled. “The presumption being that I'm incapable of handling the situation.”

“I didn't say that,” Clay replied with irritating equanimity. “I just want to know what's going on.”

Libby was itching for a fight, but she knew better than to provoke Clay. He didn't fight fair, and he fought to win.

“I'm waiting for someone to show up from the Teton County Sheriff's Office,” Libby said. “Kate was seen leaving the Mangy Moose with a man who hasn't been identified.”

Clay slipped the gold cuff links from his starched cuffs and dropped them into his pants pocket, then rolled up his sleeves, revealing strong, veined forearms. He looked like a man who spent his days manhandling barbed wire, but as attorney general of the United States, Clay only exerted his muscle figuratively.

His current job was only a stepping stone, Libby knew. Clay had been groomed all his life for higher office. He would likely go from Washington to the governor's mansion in Texas, where his father owned an empire called the Bitter Creek Cattle Company, with a ranch the size of a small northeastern state. From the governor's mansion, it was a short step to the White House

The fact that Clay had gotten a sixteen-year-old pregnant when he was twenty-seven might very well put those aspirations in jeopardy. Which was why Kate's relationship to him had remained a secret.

Libby wondered why Clay would risk coming here at a time like this. There was liable to be news coverage of Kate's disappearance, since she was King Grayhawk's granddaughter. If Clay was here, someone might ask what his connection was to the Grayhawk family, who were known adversaries, politically and otherwise, of the Blackthornes.

Clay's visits with his unacknowledged daughter at his ranch in Jackson had been done in a way that kept their true relationship a secret from the outside world. To maintain the deception, Kate had never addressed her father as Dad or Daddy or Father or Pop. He was simply Mr. Blackthorne. Or when they were alone, Clay.

“What was Kate doing in a bar?” Clay asked. “She's not old enough to drink.”

“When did that ever stop a determined teenager?” Libby retorted. “There's no reason for you to be here. I'm handling the situation.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“I thought Kate might have called you when she couldn't reach me about whatever was troubling her. And I thought you should know your daughter was missing.”

“If I'm not mistaken, she'd only been out of touch a couple of hours when you called. Why did you think something had happened to her?”