The Black Sheep and the Hidden Beauty (33 page)

R
afe rolled over and laid his arm across his bed. His empty bed. He came wide awake instantly, though it took him a second or two longer to process why he'd been so alarmed when sleeping alone was the norm for him. His subconscious had already adapted to having Elena by his side. Except, at the moment, she wasn't.

He looked to the bathroom, but no light shone. He slid his feet off the bed and stood, trying not to panic, despite what his gut was telling him. Then he noticed his shirt wasn't lying on the floor, and smiled. Picturing her in his kitchen, wearing nothing more than his shirt, made him happy. It was going to be a difficult day at best. So perhaps starting it off with some alone time wasn't such a bad idea.

He stuck his head in his office, but there were no lights flashing, indicating incoming messages. So he wandered out to the kitchen, already formulating his plan for getting her back into his bed for a little while longer.

Only the kitchen was dark.

As was the rest of the pool house. Without wasting another second, he moved swiftly and silently back to his bedroom, checked the bathroom, then immediately got dressed. He noted her overalls gone from the floor, and prayed like hell she'd just decided to get some air.

Exiting the house, he saw right away that she wasn't around the pool area. He looked down to the barns, the beginnings of sunrise casting it in an otherworldly glow. No sign of movement down there. Then he looked out to the far barn and realized she'd probably run home to get a change of clothes and maybe shower in her own place. He could understand her need for that, but he planned to make her aware, in no uncertain terms, that he really didn't want her traipsing around alone, even on Dalton Downs property, until they resolved this. More than likely he'd meet her heading back; still, a note would have been nice.

By the time he made it to the barn, he was running. His instincts were on full alert and he wasn't taking any chances. Her ladder was down, but he didn't allow himself to feel any relief until he laid eyes on her. He took the rungs two at a time, calling out her name.

No response.
Please let her be in the shower.

She wasn't. But she'd clearly changed clothes, as he found his shirt and her overalls on the floor by her closet. There had been no sign of a struggle, nothing looked out of place. He couldn't even take time to register her personal space and take in whatever else it might have revealed about her.

He all but leapt off the ladder and raced to the back paddock. Nothing. He slapped his pocket to get his phone and realized he'd left it in the pool house in his panic to find her. Panic was not a normal state for him. Ever. He needed to calm down, think rationally.

He went back to the ladder, and started to look around for clues, but his racing in and back out had scuffed the dirt floor fairly well. Dammit! The dirt was so hard-packed it likely wouldn't have told him much, but if there had been another set of footprints…

He raced back to the paddock, where the ground was much softer, and his heart skipped several beats when he found the proof. Proof he really didn't want to see. He'd rather be pissed off at her negligence than scared shitless. But there they were, two sets of footprints. Smaller…likely Elena's. And larger. Clearly a man. But which man?

He tracked the prints out of the paddock and a few steps toward the trees, but the dirt quickly gave way to grass, and it was still too dark to see any impressions. It looked as if they'd walked off into the woods.

He swung around, looking back in the direction of the main house. It would be supremely foolish to race off with no form of communication on him. But time might be of the essence, and if anything happened to her because he'd wasted critical minutes retracing his steps, he'd never forgive himself. Torn, he realized that until it grew lighter, there would be no way to track through the trees, and the grove was wide enough, and dense enough, that they could have gone anywhere.

Most likely, though, they'd gone to the edge of the property boundary, which was fenced with rail and both electric and sensory wire, but wouldn't be impossible to circumvent. Plus, it was just another fifty yards or so through another stand of trees, then over a ravine, to the main road.

It was the likeliest route, so that was the one he took. He could figure out where they'd gone over—or under—it after he got there.

It wasn't until he reached the fence line that he realized he was also unarmed. Christ, he was losing it. The fence was intact and the wire hot, so either they were still on the property, or whoever did this had figured out how to circumvent it. Going under the fence was the likeliest route, but digging in Virginia's hard clay and rocky ground was difficult and unlikely to get done quickly or without triggering the sensor wire.

He had no tools for either. Shit, he had no fucking tools of any kind, except his mind, and that had clearly deserted him the first time he'd laid eyes on Elena.

He turned and headed back to the house, taking a beating on his forearms and face as he raced through the trees as fast as he could. Less than fifteen minutes later, he was armed and on the road heading out of Dalton Downs. He stopped at the end of the property lane and dialed up Mac.

He picked up immediately. “What's going on?”

“Everything. Elena is gone, and I don't know who has her, but I do know they've left the property. Fence line outside the apple grove beyond the far paddock.”

“How'd they do that without tripping the sensor wires?”

“Beats me—”

“Unless they had help. Or planned this together. You've got to at least consider—”

“Someone took her, Mac. The footprints show it was a man, and that she was walking a few paces ahead of him. Right in front of him. I don't think they were playing follow the leader.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly. Nothing going on there?”

“Not a peep.”

Rafe fell silent and willed himself to think clearly, but found it more of a struggle than it had ever been before. Sick with worry, literally nauseous with it, he fought to rein in the panic. “What about Charlotte Oaks? What have you heard from down there?”

“Nothing. I sent him in to do quick reconnaissance, but nothing out of the ordinary to report. The rebuilding is well under way and the bigger buildings mostly complete, but nothing looked out of the ordinary. No sense of anything awry that he could tell, but he'll know more when he can get in there and listen to the general buzz from the workers, see if anything is being bandied about.”

“We don't have that much time. What is your gut on that?”

“I think Dalton and here at Kenny's are the two hot spots. We've got someone in place down there if we need him. My next suggestion for today was to scope out all the spreads between the two places, start looking to where Kenny might have taken his herd. Nothing popped on him at all? Nothing suspicious?”

“Zip. Elena didn't really know who he'd gotten close with, neighbor-wise, since moving up here. She doesn't spend much actual time with him. He's more old family friend than current confidante.”

“No way to track who he's talked to?”

“I was going to dig into phone records today. It was too late to do anything about it last night.” He thought about that, then said, “I can't go back in there and just sit and pound keys, Mac. She's out there, going through God knows what. We have to figure this out, dammit! Where the hell is she?”

“If we find the horse, we find her. And vice versa. The most common link is, obviously, Kenny. And Rafe, I know you swear she couldn't be in on this, but—”

“If I'm wrong, I have to live with it, okay? But whoever walked her out didn't do it holding her hand. So we handle this as a hostile abduction.” Just saying that out loud almost had him throwing up. “We need the fucking helicopter. I tried to raise Finn last night, every which way I could. Nothing. So he's either in so deep he can't risk the communication, or—”

“Let's not go there. One of our tribe is already in danger.”

Our tribe
. “Thank you,” Rafe said, never so sincere.

“I push because I have to, for you, and for her. But I know better than anyone where you are right now, and you have my word we'll do whatever it takes.”

“I owe you.”

“Shut up. Now listen, I talked to Kate, picked her brain to see if she'd ever had any conversation with Elena about who she might still be in contact with besides Kenny, who could have inadvertently blabbed something, but she said Elena stayed pretty private about herself.”

“She told no one.”

“I understand, but now, with her gone, maybe we should check all the same, run her phone records, see if there has been any contact with anyone. Maybe we should check at Charlotte Oaks, too. Anything to give us a lead, a connection. If it's not Kenny, then I don't know where else to look. We could contact her old boss, use some story, and see what he might know about who her friends were.”

“If this is related to anything or anyone down there, it could trigger—”

“She's already gone, Rafe—I don't think we can afford to play it safe. Maybe someone there knows something, anything, that might give us a lead as to who is doing this. She was there long enough. Someone might have a clue about friends, where she liked to hang out, who with. It's a start.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” He was tapping his foot in rapid-fire succession, hardly able to sit still. He realized now how it must have been for Elena all day yesterday, wanting to race across the countryside to hunt down her horse, but not knowing where to start.

He was staring at the main road, and had no idea which way to turn. It was hours to Kenny's in one direction, and double that distance to Charlotte Oaks in the other. “Call our standby pilots and get me a damn helicopter. I'll head back to the house and start making calls. I want a bird on the platform before the sun clears the horizon.”

“Done.”

“D
rive,” JuanCarlo said from the passenger seat.

Elena was behind the wheel of a beige Charlotte Oaks pickup truck, with a madman next to her, pointing a gun at her head. And absolutely no idea where to take him. Gripping the wheel with both hands, she looked directly at him, and tried like hell not to look at the gun. “I don't care if you want the baby, JuanCarlo. It's yours. I just want my horse back. So you have to believe me when I say, if I knew where she was, I'd take you to her. I thought you took her. Or whoever was doing this—I didn't know it was you. The only thing I can figure is that Kenny panicked for some reason and moved her. But I don't know where. I don't know his friends or contacts. We can start with the closest farms, but—”

He jabbed the gun at her. “Liar! Don't lie to me!” He was yelling now, and sounded more unhinged than he had since his surprise appearance. That scared her almost as much as the gun.

“I'm not lying, JuanCarlo. I don't want to die. I don't want Springer to die. It's why I took her away.”

“You tried to cheat the Vondervans and all of Charlotte Oaks, so you cannot be trusted.” His voice was calmer, but his eyes were still too bright.

“I didn't breed her on purpose. It happened by accident. I saw your truck out there that first night and rode her out, hoping I could talk you into letting me see Geronimo. But no one was there—you were up at the main stables because of that injured horse. So I let myself in. I didn't know my mare had come into season early, and when I let myself into Geronimo's stall—”

“Are you mad? Why in the hell would you do something so foolish? You know better than that. I don't believe you'd be that stupid.”

“I
was
that stupid. And I panicked. I took her back to her barn and was trying to figure out what to do. I would have told Gene, I would have done the right thing, but then everything went to hell when the explosion happened.”

He said nothing, apparently taking in her explanation, then, “You stayed. After. Why?”

“I was praying she wasn't pregnant—then it would all be moot. I couldn't come forward because there was talk of arson and I was afraid they'd think I'd done it because I was out there, and because of what happened. I couldn't risk that. When I found out she was pregnant, I decided to leave. I'd already decided to anyway, even before Geronimo came.”

“I knew nothing of this—you hadn't given your notice or discussed it with me.” He jabbed the gun at her. “Don't play me for a fool.”

“I wasn't going anywhere at Charlotte Oaks, JuanCarlo. You know that—you're the one who promoted people over me. Not that I would have done anything because of that,” she hastened to add. “I just knew I wasn't going to reach my goals there. I hadn't worked out where to go yet, so I hadn't talked to you. Then everything happened and I wanted to be gone before she started to be obviously pregnant.”

He fell silent again.

It occurred to her that he hadn't accused her of setting the fire to cover her tracks. Which told her one of two things: either he had set the fire, or he knew who had.

“How—how did you find out? About the baby?”

“It doesn't matter how I found out.”

“Maybe it will help me figure out where she might be.”

He didn't argue with her this time, or call her a liar, which she took as a sign of progress. If she could get him talking, keep him talking, the more she learned, the better chance she had at finding her way out.

He waited so long, she thought he was going to refuse, but in the end, he said, “It was your own employer who gave you up.”

“Kate?”

“No,” he sneered. “Your boyfriend.”

So, it had been Rafe's snooping that had tipped them off. It didn't matter now. Nothing mattered except staying alive.

“It surprised me,” he went on, his tone one of disgust. “I didn't think you were like the rest. Whores, tramps.”

“Who are ‘the rest'?” she asked before she could think better of it.

“None of your goddamn business!” he barked, reminding her how close to that unbalanced edge he was at all times.

“I—okay. I'm sorry. And I'm not sleeping with my boss. He has nothing to do with my job. I'm not planning on staying on here, so there is no ladder for me to climb. I want back in the race world, just as soon as—”

“You sell that baby to the highest bidder.”

“No,” she said flatly. “I could hardly do that without revealing my role that night.”

“So what was your plan? To keep it, raise it, train it to race, then tell the world?”

She'd never once thought of doing that, but no one else would believe that. It was a logical assumption. “No, I'd have found a way to get him or her back to Gene. But that was going to be between me and him.”

He snorted. “Fuck Gene. Why give it to a man who doesn't care what he does, who he hurts?”

“Because he owned Geronimo.”

“No. No, he did not.” He said this quietly. Too quietly.

She wasn't sure how to proceed without setting him off.

“Drive,” he said again. “It is too risky to sit here with the sun coming up. I don't care what direction you go, but go.”

His flat tone—and the gun—brooked no argument. She'd been half hoping that if she kept him talking long enough, Rafe, or someone from the farm, would come by and see her sitting in the cab of the truck. She pulled out and headed in the general direction of Kenny's. It was the only connection she had right now.

“Who…who would I contact, then?” she asked after they'd been on the road for a few miles. “About the baby, I mean. Who is the rightful owner?”

“It doesn't matter,” he said, in that strangely calm way. “You will not be contacting anyone.”

Ever again
—the words her mind heard tacked on to that, and tried not to let sheer terror seize her once again.

“What are you going to do with the baby, then?” she asked, hoping if she deferred to him as the clear and rightful owner, that would put him at ease.

“None of your concern. It is the only thing to do to make it right, so there will be no discussion.”

“Make what right?” She glanced over at him, at the gun, and looked quickly back to the road.
Pretend you're just driving, pretend there is no gun on you, just talk.
“Maybe there is some other way.”

“There is no other way!” he screamed suddenly, making her jump. “Don't you think I've tried everything?”

“I'm—I'm sure you have,” she said as calmly and reassuringly as she could. She'd always thought of him as a very smart, very focused man. Never once had she thought him crazy, or even close to it. She couldn't imagine what had sent him to the edge, but her bet was that it was a woman. He'd alluded to tramps and whores. It was all she had to go on.

He'd said he wanted to make things right, which meant he was on the outs with someone. Maybe it was something else entirely, but she was betting that someone was the woman in question. “Are you getting the baby back to give to the person who owns it?”

Just asking the question made some of the pieces click into place. Before she could control the reaction, she looked over at him, surprise clearly on her face. Clearly, because he immediately noted it.

“Do not think you understand anything about this!” he roared, waving the gun again.

She looked immediately back to the road, but her hands and legs were shaking now. She was on to something here, but it was obvious that it was that very something—or someone—who'd driven him over the edge. Which meant she had to tread very, very carefully. In all her years dealing with highly strung, half-ton beasts, she'd never questioned her skills, or underestimated their power. She tried to reach for that same balance here.

Which was hard, when her opponent was so very clearly unbalanced.

“I know what it's like to care about someone,” she said carefully. “I know what it's like to want them to care back. It's the best feeling in the world and I know I'd want to do anything to have it.” She thought about Rafe, about the things he'd said to her, the way he'd made love to her, and then had to shove that away when it made her eyes burn and her throat begin to close over. At least she'd had that much, she told herself. At least she'd experienced the beginnings of something powerful.

“You know nothing,” he told her. “Betrayal, lies, that is what you know!”

“If you explain, I'll help you.”

He barked a mad laugh at that. “Tramps, whores. I wouldn't be so foolish as to ever trust another one.”

“You said I was different from them,” she said, recalling his comment, clinging to the hope she was on the right track with it. “I
am
different, JuanCarlo. If I wasn't, I'd have tried that tactic to get ahead at Charlotte Oaks. You know I never did. I never once used that to gain any leverage. I have too much pride for that. You know that about me. It's why I was leaving, because I would never stoop to that. I earn my way fair and square, not on my back. Never that way.”

He seemed to think that over, but only said, “Just drive. Quietly. I need peace now.”

Elena was happy to give it to him. She needed to think this out a little. All along she'd assumed Gene was the rightful owner of Geronimo, and de facto owner of his offspring, as she hadn't paid for stud. Now she was thinking that a Vondervan was indeed the rightful owner…but that Vondervan wasn't Gene. It was Kami.

She forced herself not to glance over at JuanCarlo. She thought about the argument between the Vondervans that he'd told his assistant about, who then blabbed it where she could overhear. She remembered thinking at the time that she was surprised JuanCarlo had gossiped that to anyone, given Gene's obsession with public image, and JuanCarlo's loyalty to his boss. But she'd just assumed JuanCarlo was closer friends with his assistant than she'd realized. Now she wondered if that hadn't been a calculated bit of backroom talking on his part, knowing full well word would get out.

But what would he have to gain by that? A hope that word would spread, as good gossip does, that the supposedly perfect Vondervan union wasn't so perfect? And the reason he'd want the schism made public? Maybe Kami wouldn't leave Gene for him. Maybe it was an affair that had gotten out of hand, with one party wanting more than the other could give. Or maybe his advances had been thwarted, so he was just trying to create trouble for her. Maybe there had never even been a fight. His anger toward the opposite gender suggested he'd been thwarted one way or the other.

But why would he want the baby? She assumed he meant to give it to Kami. As a peace offering? Had his airing of their dirty laundry—real or fabricated—caused her trouble he was now regretting? She remembered the report stating there had been divorce papers filed, but that had been before Geronimo had died, and the Vondervans were still together. She debated tipping her hand, asking him straight out about Kami, mentioning that she'd filed papers, perhaps add her vote of confidence that maybe it was just a matter of time, and see what that got her. But it was a huge risk.

Of course, making amends didn't usually work all that well when the person was willing to kill in order to make them.

Crimes of passion. It was the only thing that explained his extreme behavior. Only he'd taken the heat-of-the-moment reaction and nursed it into a full-blown obsession. Maybe Kami had seen that in him. Maybe he'd always been unbalanced in that way. Elena had been telling the truth about avoiding socializing with her coworkers, so it was a side of him she wouldn't have witnessed, first-or secondhand, as she hadn't been one to even hang out with the crowd.

A county sign caught her attention. She hadn't realized how long they'd been on the road, but they were only one county away from Kenny's place. Another forty-five minutes or so, and she'd be there.

She could only pray Mac was still there, and would know what to do. She hated putting him at risk, but as a former cop, he was her best bet for survival. It was a risk she had to take.

She wondered what Rafe was thinking right now. She doubted he was still asleep. She had no idea how he'd read her sudden disappearance, but she could only hope that he'd at least realized she hadn't left of her own free will. If that was the case, he might well have pulled Mac from Kenny's place. She tried not to let that thought sink what little hope she'd built up. Of course, JuanCarlo might not let her get past Kenny's main gate, but she'd deal with that when they got there. He didn't seem to be paying real close attention to the direction they were heading. She'd have to make sure he stayed that way.

To that end, she risked speaking to him again. “Do you…do you hope that by giving her the baby, it will make things right between you?”

“It can never be right,” he said, then seemed to realize what he'd revealed and retreated back to his sulking mood. “I told you, I need peace.” He settled back in his seat, seemingly more interested in whatever thoughts were going through his twisted mind, than her. She noticed, peripherally, that the gun was now resting on his thigh. Still aimed at her, but carelessly so.