Madison scooted off to the country store to “check out the galoshes,” she said with a bright smile that took the edge off her sarcasm. Lucy headed for the post office to mail a batch of brochures for her adventure travel company. Requests from her Web site were up. Business was good to excellent. She was getting her bearings, making a place for herself and her children. It took time, that was all.
“The Widow Swift,” she said under her breath. “Damn.”
She wished she could shake it off with a laugh, but she couldn’t. She was thirty-eight, and Colin had been dead for three years. She knew she was a widow. But she didn’t want it to define her. She didn’t know what she wanted to define her, but not that.
The village was quiet in the mid-July heat, not even a breeze stirring in the huge, old sugar maples on the sliver of a town common. The country store, the post office, the hardware store and two bed-and-breakfasts—that was it. Manchester, a few miles to the northwest, offered considerably more in the way of shopping and things to do, but Lucy had no intention of letting her daughter drive that far with a two-week-old learner’s permit. It wasn’t necessarily that Madison wasn’t ready for traffic and busy streets. Lucy wasn’t ready.
When she finished at the post office, she automatically approached the driver’s side of her all-wheel-drive station wagon. Their “Vermont car,” Madison called it with a touch of derision. She wanted a Jetta. She wanted the city.
With a groan, Lucy remembered her daughter was driving. Fifteen was so young. She went around to the passenger’s side, surprised Madison wasn’t already back behind the wheel. Driving was all that stood between her daughter and abject boredom this summer. Even the prospect of leaving for Wyoming the next day hadn’t perked her up. Nothing would, Lucy realized, except getting her way about spending a semester in Washington with her grandfather.
Wyoming. Lucy shook her head. Now that was madness.
She plopped onto the sun-heated passenger seat and debated canceling the trip. Madison had already voiced objections about going. And her twelve-year-old son, J.T., would rather stay home and dig worms. The purported reason for heading to Jackson Hole was to meet with several western guides. But that was ridiculous, Lucy thought. Her company specialized in northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes and was in the process of putting together a winter trip to Costa Rica where her parents had retired to run a hostel. She had all she could handle now. Opening up to Montana and Wyoming would just be spreading herself too thin.
The real reason she was going to Wyoming, she knew, was Sebastian Redwing and the promise she’d made to Colin.
But that was ridiculous, too. An overreaction—if not pure stupidity—on her part to a few weird incidents.
Lucy sank back against her seat, feeling something under her—probably a pen or a lipstick, or one of J.T.’s toys. She fished it out.
She gasped at the warm, solid length of metal in her hand.
A bullet.
She resisted a sudden urge to fling it out the window. What if it went off? She shuddered, staring at her palm. It wasn’t an empty shell. It was a live round. Big, weighty.
Someone had left a damn bullet on her car seat.
The car windows were open. She and Madison hadn’t locked up. Anyone could have walked by, dropped the bullet through the passenger window and kept on going.
Lucy’s hand shook. Not again. Damn it, not again. She forced herself to take slow, controlled breaths. She knew adventure travel—canoeing, kayaking, hiking, basic first aid. She could plan every detail of inventive, multifaceted, multi-sport trips and do just fine.
She didn’t know bullets.
She didn’t want to know bullets.
Madison trotted out of the country store with several other teenagers, swinging her car keys as if she’d been driving for years. The girls were laughing and chatting, and even as Lucy slid the bullet into her shorts pocket, she thought, Yes, Madison, you do have friends. Since school had let out, her daughter had been making a point of being miserable, if only to press her case for Washington.
She jumped into the driver’s seat. “Saddle up, Mom. We’re ready to roll.”
Lucy didn’t mention the bullet. This wasn’t her children’s problem, it was hers. She preferred to cling to the belief that she wasn’t the victim of deliberate harassment. The incidents she’d endured over the past week were random, innocent, meaningless. They weren’t related. They weren’t a campaign of intimidation against her.
The first had occurred on Sunday evening, when she’d found a dining room window open, the curtains billowing in the summer breeze. It was a window she never opened. Madison and J.T. wouldn’t bother. But Lucy had dismissed the incident, until the next night when the phone rang just before dawn, the caller breathing at her groggy hello, then hanging up. Too weird, she’d thought.
Then on Tuesday, while checking the mailbox at the end of her driveway, she’d had the distinct sense she was being watched. Something had alerted her—the snapping of a twig, the crunching of gravel. It wasn’t, she was certain, her imagination.
The next morning, the feeling was there again, while she was sweeping the back steps, and ten minutes later, she’d found one of her tomato plants sitting on the front porch. It had been ripped out of the ground.
Now, today, the bullet on her car seat.
Maybe she was in denial, but she didn’t believe there was enough to take to the police. Individually, each incident could have an innocent explanation—her kids, their friends, her staff, stress. How could she prove someone was watching her? She’d sound like a nut.
And if she went to the police, Lucy knew what would happen. They would notify Washington. Washington would feel compelled to come to Vermont and investigate. And so much for her low-profile life.
It wasn’t that no one in town knew her father-in-law was Jack Swift, a powerful United States senator. Everyone knew. But she’d never made it an issue.
She was his only son’s widow; Madison and J.T. were his only grandchildren. Jack would take charge. He would insist the Capitol Police conduct a thorough investigation and make sure his family wasn’t drawing fire because of him.
Lucy couldn’t imagine why anyone going after Jack would slip a bullet onto his widowed daughter-in-law’s car seat. It made no sense. No. She was safe. Her children were safe. This was just…bizarre.
“Mom?”
Madison had started the engine and backed out onto the main road without Lucy noticing, much less providing comment and instruction. “You’re doing great. My mind’s wandering, that’s all.”
“What’s wrong? Is it my driving?”
“No, of course not.”
“Because I can get someone else to drive with me. It doesn’t have to be you, if I make you nervous.”
“You don’t make me nervous. I’m fine. Just keep your eyes on the road.”
“I am.”
Madison had a death grip on the steering wheel. Lucy realized she’d scared her daughter, who noticed everything. “Madison. You’re driving. You can’t allow yourself to get distracted.”
“I know. It’s you.”
It was her. Lucy took a breath. She could feel the weight of the bullet in her pocket. What if it had worked its way under the seat and J.T. had found it? She shut off the stream of what-if scenarios. She’d learned from hard experience to stick with what was, which was difficult enough to absorb.
“Never mind me and drive.”
Madison huffed, annoyed now. With her blue eyes and coppery hair, her introspective temperament and unbridled ambition, she was so like her father. Even Madison’s two-week-old driving