King's Ransom (4 page)

"I'll need
to go to Jesse's home before we leave to get some of her things. Is there a
problem with that?" King asked, uncertain about disturbing a crime scene.

Shockey shook his
head. "Just let me know when you want to go and I'll meet you there. It's
not pretty. You'll need to be prepared. I guess she'll want to clean it up
before she moves. Not many people will stay in a home where something like that
has happened to them. Not many can."

King was taken
aback. He hadn't even thought that far ahead. Shockey's words gave him
something more to digest.

Shockey spoke
briefly to Ramirez and frowned at the picture emerging on the flat white
surface of artist's paper.

King watched Shockey
leave and felt like he'd just been sized up and found lacking. He didn't think
he would ever like him personally, but suspected Shockey was very good at his
job.

Ramirez finally
finished with a promise to let King have several copies of the sketch to take
back home with him.

"I didn't
remember much more," Jesse said morosely, fidgeting with the sheet
covering her legs. "It all happened so fast, I just didn't concentrate on
what he looked like as much as getting the knife and getting away from
him."

"You did all
you could, Jess," King said, watching her face for signs of stress.
"More than most."

The ordeal had
been very trying for her. She'd had to go over and over every phase of the
attack while helping the artist, and more than once had broken down in tears at
a particularly traumatic point. His heart ached for her.

She shrugged and
sighed, slumping down into the muddled pile of bedcovers, and tried with little
success to brush the hair away from her face and neck. There wasn't a lot one
could do with both hands bandaged. Someone had to help her bathe, go to the
bathroom, brush her teeth, eat. There was virtually nothing Jesse could do for
herself at this point, and she was frustrated beyond belief.

King watched her
for a moment and then offered a suggestion.

"Jesse,
would you like for me to brush your hair? I know the nurses help you all they
can, but most of their grooming is hit and miss. I guess they're just too busy
for more."

The offer was a
welcome one. And, with a bit of twisting and rearranging, King was soon giving
her tousled hair a new look.

The brush bit
through her hair, digging through the tangles all the way to her scalp. It felt
wonderful. King's husky voice and the long, soothing strokes relaxed Jesse as
nothing else possibly could. She groaned aloud in pleasure and closed her eyes
at the almost sensual feel of the deep, repetitive strokes.

"That feels
absolutely wonderful," Jesse whispered, and opened her eyes to see King
watching her in the small mirror opposite her bed. She couldn't tell what he
was thinking, but he had a most interesting expression on his face. She smiled
to herself as she thought,
He looks like he's just seen a ghost.
Then she decided,
Maybe
he didn't see a ghost. Maybe he just saw a stranger.

Jesse knew King
was used to seeing her as the gangly twelve-year-old child, desolate in the
face of her father's death, and then as a late-blooming teenager,
self-conscious of a maturing figure, and with no one to explain life's
mysteries except a very kindly housekeeper thrust in the role of mother. He
had never seen her as Jesse LeBeau, the woman. It was about time.

King was
dumbstruck. He'd accidentally caught a glimpse of Jesse's face in the mirror as
he worked, and the sight of her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted in
sensual delight as the brush bit into her scalp, her head tilted back, resting
against his chest as he brushed, had made another, more intimate thought pop
into his head. It startled him that he'd even considered it. It made King
realize he didn't even know this woman. He knew who she'd been. He just didn't
know who she'd become. King couldn't get the idea out of his head that she
would look exactly like that as someone made love to her. That thought followed
with an instant flash that he didn't want anyone putting that look on her face
but him. Guilt, shock, and a bit of intrigue flowed through him and his hands
stilled, forgetting why he held the hairbrush, or why Jesse was propped up
against him.

He just stood and
stared at her image in the mirror, unaware that Jesse was staring back.

Her slow, teasing
drawl broke the silent staring match, and King's face flushed a dark red as she
spoke.

"You're very
good with your hands," she said, knowing that he was going to take it the wrong
way. She'd seen the way he was looking at her. She also knew it was going to
embarrass him and she delighted in the flush it produced.

"Uh, yeah. I
guess so," he mumbled, trying to get off on a different subject. "I
should be," he said. "I do most of the brood mares' grooming
myself."

Jesse's eyebrows
shot up, tickled beyond words that he'd just claimed his expertise with a brush
lay entirely in his skill of horse grooming. Not the most recommending thing
he could have said in reference to Jesse's hair. Her delight echoed in the room
while King's face got redder and redder, as he realized what he'd just said.

"You little
witch," he growled, knowing Jesse had been teasing him. He wasn't sure
just how much he'd revealed of his thoughts, but she'd been sharp enough to
pick up on some of them. He didn't care that she was laughing at his expense.
The pleasure he got from hearing her laugh at all was worth it.

"Sorry,"
Jesse said, as she finally caught her breath between giggles. "But you were
asking for it. Horses indeed!"

King smiled back,
allowing her to enjoy that much of his faux pas. Thank God she hadn't picked up
on the rest of it.

Little did he
realize, but Jesse knew exactly, or so nearly that it didn't matter, what he'd
been thinking.

She wasn't
dreading going back to
Oklahoma
with him. Maybe it was finally time.

The blue van
turned off the street into a narrow, tree-lined driveway leading to Lynch's
place. The driver silently cursed the day he'd decided to let Lynch handle the
kidnapping. It had been so simple. No one was to get hurt, everyone was going
to get rich, and Jesse LeBeau would be turned safely loose later. King
McCandless would be a less wealthy man, but that would have been okay with the
driver. It wasn't fair how some people had so much money and others, like him,
never had enough. To make matters worse, it had cost the driver a pretty penny
to get Lynch patched up and not have it reported to the police.

The driver
stopped in front of a small, run-down duplex partially hidden behind a row of
oversized lilac bushes. The leaves on the bushes were limp and dusty, suffering
in the July temperatures from lack of water and care, just like the whole area.
The shabby surroundings fit the driver's idea of where Lynch would live. He
looked in disgust at the house, and then back at the pitiful excuse for a man
dozing in his passenger seat, slamming his fists against the steering wheel in
frustration and shouting,

"Wake up,
Sleeping Beauty! Get out of my sight and stay indoors until you're healed. Your
stupid face, vague though the rendering may be, was plastered all over the news
this evening. Even I recognized you. All you need to telegraph your part in
this disaster is to venture outside plastered with bandages and stitches."

Lynch started,
his doze disturbed by the driver's vehemence. He looked around in surprise,
noted the familiar house, and for the first time in longer than he could
remember, thought that he was glad to be here.

"I'll be in
touch," the driver snarled. "So don't get any ideas about leaving
town. We're not through with each other just yet.''

Lynch nodded,
opened the door, and very carefully lowered himself and his duffle bag from the
van. He hurt in so many places, he couldn't have argued to save his soul. Besides,
he knew he'd bungled enough already. The least he could do was keep his mouth
shut. He knew this man well enough to know that his looks belied his true
nature. He was very dangerous.

He watched the
driver try to maneuver the van out of the narrow drive without the aid of a
rearview mirror. He had to back out the same way he'd come in and wasn't doing
a very good job. A small, wilting bunch of marigolds went under the wheels of
the van and a piece of an overgrown hedge with it. He saw the driver's mouth
moving at a very fast pace and knew he was probably cursing him and everything
in sight. Therefore, he decided to remove himself from sight and lessen the
number of things upon which the driver could vent his fury.

He entered the
duplex, shutting himself away from the eyes of the world.

Maggie was
putting the finishing touches to Jesse's old room, anxious to have her last
chick back in the nest, if only for a while. She frowned as she heard the
sounds of a car coming down the graveled driveway. She knew without looking
that it was
Duncan
.
He always drove too fast. He did everything fast. Even life was lived at
fast-forward. Maggie personally thought that he missed the best life had to
offer because he never took time to look for the little things. Maggie did her
best to hide her disapproval of Andrew McCandless's younger brother. However,
she suspected
Duncan
was all too aware of her opinions.

Duncan
had only been
ten when his beloved older brother, Andrew, became a father. From the first,
he'd resented the child. King! The very name had burned a brand of hate in his
heart. And then when Shirley, Andrew's wife, died less than a year later from a
fall off a horse, King drew even more attention. Orphan indeed! What did they
think he was? His parents had been dead so long he could barely remember what
they looked like. Andrew was the only parent he acknowledged.
Duncan
fostered the antagonism and hate with
a subversive skill. None, save possibly Maggie, knew just how deeply he
resented being the McCandless that didn't count.

Maggie sighed
loudly as she heard him enter the house with his usual lack of manners. He
didn't live here anymore and as far as she was concerned, family or not, he
should knock.

"Maggie?
Anybody?"
Duncan
called, turning around in the hallway, trying to locate some member of the family.
He saw himself in the hall mirror as he turned, and lifted his hand to pat a
lock of hair back into place. The act was unconscious. He was good-looking and
knew it. Except for the ten years separating them, he and King could have
passed for twins.

Maggie came down
the hallway in time to see
Duncan
's
act of vanity.
That figures,
she thought, and then answered
Duncan
before he could
call out again.

"Here,"
she said, and found herself swinging about the room, lifted off her feet in his
exuberance.

"Where is
everybody?" he said, as he twirled Maggie around and then planted a kiss
on her cheek. He put her back on firm ground with a tweek of her face.

"Stop it,
you fool," Maggie spluttered, trying to pull her dress and apron back into
place. She didn't even want to think how her hair must look. Its usually neat
bun was probably coming apart at the seams.

"Maggie,
love, you like it and you know it," he teased, and then repeated his
question. "Where's King? I need to talk to him."

Duncan
watched an odd
expression come and go in the elderly housekeeper's eyes and knew something was
wrong.

"What?"
he coaxed.

"King's not
here," she said, and started toward the back of the house to the kitchen,
confident that he would follow. He wouldn't leave until he got what he came for
and that was usually money. Also, Maggie was more at home there, and she wanted
to be on familiar territory when she broke the news about Jesse.
Duncan
wasn't going to
take this well.

She suspected
Duncan
had always been
attracted to Jesse, especially after she'd turned twenty-one. That's when she'd
inherited the bulk of her father's estate that had been held in trust. There
were shares in producing oil wells, a refinery, a goodly portion of the land of
one of the newer
Tulsa
suburbs; the list went on and on. Michael LeBeau had not believed in banks.
He'd invested nearly everything he made and, when he died, had been richer on
paper than in the bank. Nevertheless, it had made Jesse a well-to-do woman. It
just hadn't seemed to matter. She had continued her college studies and
graduated from
Tulsa
University
with a degree
in education. It had delighted Andrew, but he didn't think for a minute that
she would ever put it to use. He'd died believing Jesse's world would always be
in order.