And, clever boy, Colton had used women to do his petty work. Much as Tag needed to punch somebody, he didn’t punch women. “Where is he?”
“Why, there he is now!” DeSoto nodded at the window. “He must have stepped out the back.”
Out in the courtyard between the office and the nearest barn, a man stood by the door of a red Ferrari convertible, looking up. Gold wire rims, impeccable seersucker suit. As their eyes locked, Colton grinned, waved jauntily, got in the car.
Tag started for the door, the roar of a big engine reaching him faintly through the glass. He swept DeSoto out the exit before him, then swung to look back. As he’d thought, she couldn’t have seen Colton from where she’d been standing. A setup from start to finish. “Where’s he going?” And by God, she’d tell him!
Out in the corridor, DeSoto smiled demurely from beyond a wall of muscle—two guards built like linebackers, each with a hand resting on a bolstered gun. “Would you show Dr. Taggart to his car, please, Peterson?”
Tag wanted a fight so badly, he could taste its blood in his mouth.
The smile on the larger guard widened. He rocked on his heels. Come on then, his eyes invited. You and me.
With pleasure! Tag took a step forward—and saw beyond his mark another camera, tucked up in a far corner of the hallway. If he fought these two, he’d be fighting for Colton’ s entertainment. And if he lost, Colton would see him beaten. Tag pulled in a shaking breath. I play by my rules, you bastard, not yours.
“Thank you,” he said, and no two words had ever come harder.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY ESCORTED HIM in smirking silence to his car, then tailgated him all the way to the front gates, the grill of their outsized pickup filling his rearview mirror with glinting chrome. Swearing helplessly, Tag gunned his engine as he shot through the gates, but the truck was faster. “Crap!” His head snapped backward as they bumped him. “That’s it.” He swerved to the shoulder and stopped. “You want a fight, you got it.”
As Tag stepped out, the driver popped the truck into reverse. With the shotgun rider waving cheerily through the windshield, it roared backward down the road, past the gates, then shot forward and through. The gates closed behind it. The truck tootled farewell as it vanished up the avenue of trees.
Bastards, bullies, thugs! Somebody’s going to pay for this! Someday, somehow... But not today. He glared at the white board fences extending either side of the entry. Electrified, naturally. So-o-o... “Later.”
Fingers clenched on the steering wheel, he headed back toward Lexington. What now, what now? And using what for money? He had four hundred left in cash, the remains of his final paycheck from the dog pound in Buffalo. That job had ended three days ago, when the pound had run out of funding for his position. Third job that had fallen out from under him in the past six months.
When that final, dreary attempt to get on with his career aborted, something had snapped. Never mind the lawyers, he’d thought. He’d deal with Colton himself. Reach a truce somehow, then ask for Susannah’s address. No reason her ex should protect her, he’d figured.
He’d figured wrong every which way, regarding Colton. Petty bastard.
A horn sounded behind him and his teeth snapped together. Didn’t they know when to back off? The truck behind, Fleetfoot green like the guards’ truck but smaller, beeped again. “All right then, dammit!” He pulled over, climbed out and stalked back to where the truck had stopped on the shoulder behind him.
The driver didn’t step out to meet him. A small, stocky man. Sandy hair, pug nose, Irish face. Shrewd gray eyes studied Tag through his rolled-up window.
“What d’you want?” The guy looked too short to make a satisfying opponent, though Tag knew well enough from his Boston years how fierce the Irish could be.
The window rolled down an inch. “I heard you might be looking for Susannah.”
Yes! “Who’s asking?”
“I’m a trainer back at Fleetfoot. Friend of her and Brady.”
Brady? An image of a silver flask skated across his mind—that Brady? “Who told you I was looking?” He was in no mood to trust, but still, to get his hands on Susannah...
The window rolled the rest of the way down and the trainer grinned. “Ah, they sneeze up at the big house, we’re wiping our noses in minutes down in the barns.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I can’t stop long. If anybody sees me—”
“So you know where she is?” Don’t look too eager. If this guy was her friend, he wouldn’t want to send her trouble.
“Yeah, d’you mean to go see her?”
He must believe, as the rest of the world did, that Tag and Susannah had been conspirators. The sleaziest tabloids had even speculated they were lovers, supposing this was how she’d recruited him for the dirty deed. “Thought I might look her up,” he said casually. “But I haven’t heard from her in a few weeks and I was afraid she might have moved on.”
“She has that.” The trainer checked the road behind them again. “Look, I have this message from Brady, but I don’t trust the mail. It’s got to be delivered personal, put straight into her hand. And I can’t get away myself.”
“Be happy to take it.” Finally, finally, something was going his way. “Where’d you say she was?”
“Southwestern Colorado. Little town outside of Cortez. Dawson, it’s called.” The Irishman drew a crumpled envelope from a back pocket. “Here’s the message.” His fingers tightened on one corner as Tag took hold. “I have your word you’ll deliver it to her? To Susannah and no one else?”
“You got it, pal.” He might stick it in her sexy little ear, but she’d get it, all right.
The trainer nodded and let go. “Makes no sense to me, but I guess she’ll know what to do with it. Tell her I found it tucked inside his hatband, the one he wore that night. I was thinking I’d see her at the funeral, but—”
“Brady’s dead?”
The gray eyes narrowed. “Deader than doomails. Fell down some stairs last January. Didn’t you know?”
“No, I...” Think fast. This guy could still contact her, warn her that her hideout was blown. “That was a crazy time for me,” Tag improvised. To put it mildly. “Guess she didn’t want to bother me with it.” Thoughtful Susannah. “I’m very sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah, just about broke my heart, it did.” The trainer started his engine. “Well, I can’t be stopping. Give Susannah my best, will you?”
“Will do.” For the first time in six months, Tag’s smile was genuine as he waved farewell. Nothing but the very, very best for little Susannah!
MESSAGE FROM A DEAD MAN. Lurking in a booth in the far corner of Moe’s Truckstop outside Dawson, Colorado, waiting for a grilled cheese sandwich he didn’t want, Tag drew Brady’s message from its envelope. Unfolding the smudged strip of paper, he studied the penciled scrawl for the fiftieth time in the past three days.
For the fiftieth time, it read as pure gibberish. Was it possible that Brady, owner of a whiskey flask, could have been a raving drunk? That might account for this nonsense and might also, come to think of it, explain his fatal fall. The words were scribbled with blithe abandon or possibly haste, t’s uncrossed, spacing ragged.
Susie, what we were talking about. Decided it might come in handy for leverage. Got it, but couldn’t make it to your car. If you get this, the honey’s where...
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