Retreat (39 page)

    
She looked over at him as he stared
straight out the window.

    
“What are you doing?” she asked him. Her
voice sounded groggy. Her head felt heavy and her eyes wanted to close in the
bright sunlight.

    
He looked over at her and wrinkled his
nose. “You look like shit. Clean yourself up.”

    
He reached into the backseat and pulled out
a red satchel that went with the luggage set she’d abandoned when she left Tulsa. He threw it onto
her lap. “One week away and look at yourself,” he scoffed. “I told you that you
couldn’t make it on your own.”

    
She stared blankly at her bag.

    
“Clean yourself up!” he yelled, startling
her.

    
“You don’t have to yell,” she said, a fresh
wave of pain pulsing through her temples. “And you didn’t answer my question.
What are you doing?”

    
“Don’t you dare get smart with me you
little bitch,” he said.

    
“I don’t know who the hell you think you
are,” she said as forcefully as she could manage under the circumstances. “But
you can stop talking to me like that right now. I don’t know what the hell you
knocked me out with but when this shit wears off you’d better believe I’m going
to kick your ass.” She heard him laugh at her as she closed her eyes. He
sounded far away.

    
“Aren’t you just full of fire,” he smirked.

    
She strained to open her eyes and look at
him. “I’ve had about all I’m going to take out of you after the scene in Tulsa.”

    
She paused, reaching for more strength.
“And what’s the hell is the big idea telling Jon you raped me?”

    
He snickered. “He told you I said that? I
knew that would get to him.”

    
“How could you do this to me?” she asked.
“How could you set me up like that to marry you? God, I trusted you, David.”

    
“It really wasn’t all that hard,” he said,
seemingly smug that he’d reeled her in. “I knew Jon cared about you, but he
cared about his reputation more. So I paid off your loony sister to go break up
your little party down in Fort Worth.
I knew Griffin
wouldn’t stand around and let you embarrass him.”

    
My God, Clara thought. He’d caused it all.
“You paid Rebecca?”

    
“There’s one in every family, Clara, who’d
be more than willing to throw the rest of the bloodline under the bus.” His
laugh made Clara’s stomach grow queasy.

    
“Rebecca was much easier than you, Clara.
All I had to do was dangle a little cash in front of her and she sold you out
in a heartbeat.”

    
“How did you find her?” Clara asked. That
was what bothered her the most, wondering how he’d ever connected with her.

    
“You of all people should know what kind of
information money can buy. And sell for that matter,” David patronized. “You’d
be amazed at the interesting group of lowlifes she aligned herself with.”

    
Clara didn’t say anything. She wondered if
Rebecca knew how easily she’d been used.

    
“Did you get my pictures?” he asked,
averting his eyes from the road for a moment to leer at her.

    
“Which ones?” she asked, crossing her arms
self-consciously.

    
He chortled. God she hated him.

    
“On your computer. I haven’t had a chance
to blow up the ones that Rebecca took yet. Although she told me they were good.
I’ll have to add them to my collection.”

    
“Jon was right. You’re one sick bastard,”
Clara said, staring straight ahead.

    
“I used those pictures, with little boxes
in all the right places of course, in my new advertising campaign for Tipsy
Tops. As of yesterday you are the star of billboards, newspaper ads and web
banners all over Oklahoma.”

    
Her jaw dropped and she narrowed her eyes
at him. “You did not do that,” she said.

    
“Yes, darling, I did. If you’d have opened
the gift I sent you at the bungalow you’d know that by now.”

    
“That’s an invasion of privacy,” Clara
said, glad now that she hadn’t opened the package. “It’s slander. Libel.
Something. You can’t just use photographs of me for personal gain without my
permission.”

    
“Funny, I definitely remember having your
signature on all the required paperwork,” he said, pretending to think about
it. He glanced at her. “I just scanned it in from all those checks you signed
buying yourself pretty little things out of my wallet.”

    
“So what’s your big plan now?” she asked,
completely disgusted.

    
“We’re going to go to wait.”

    
“For what?” she asked.

    
“For Jon to come after you.”

    
Her heart sank.

    
This really all had been about David’s
vendetta against Jon. “He won’t know where to look,” she said. “So you might as
well just let me go.”

    
He laughed. “Nice try. It won’t take him
long to figure out where I’m taking you.”

    
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

    
“Back to that run down shack of yours.”

    
Sure enough they were heading out toward
the lake. Clara’s heart ached as they passed by the familiar surroundings, so
many wonderful memories now tainted by his very presence in his big Cadillac.
She peered around the car and realized it wasn’t even his. The upholstery was
the wrong color. His was black. This was beige. He must have rented the same
car he drove at home. She closed her eyes.

    
A few minutes later she heard the familiar
crunch of gravel under the tires as David pulled his car up along the side of
the bungalow and parked. He flung his door open and was at her side before she
could sit up straight.

    
“What are you going to do when he gets
here?” she asked as David pulled her from the car and marched her up the front
steps. Her legs felt weak beneath her.

    
“Kill him.”

    
Clara swallowed hard.

    
David pulled a key out of his pocket and
slid it into the lock.

    
“Where did you get that?” she asked him.
 

    
“I’ve had it for months. I have copies of
all your keys. Thought they might come in handy.” He pushed the door open and
shoved her inside. She fell to her knees on the floor in front of the door.

    
“Get up,” he said, sounding disgusted.

    
Clara glared at him over her shoulder as
she stood and walked over to Grammy’s loveseat. She caught a glimpse of herself
in the glass that covered the picture above the fireplace. The right side of
her face looked swollen and dark. Her hair was wildly out of place, probably
from being dragged through the woods.

    
“You never cleaned yourself up,” David
said, noticing her stealing a glance at herself. He smirked. “Do you want me to
do it for you?”

    
“Don’t you touch me,” she said, pushing his
hand away as he came toward her.

    
He shrugged and backed away, taking a seat
across from her in Grammy’s chair. He unbuttoned his shirt and revealed a
holster strapped across his shoulder. He pulled out a large handgun and checked
to see if it was loaded.

    
Clara watched him. She’d never seen him
handle a gun before. He looked very comfortable with it.

    
She kept her eye on the gun as she spoke.
“If you really wanted to kill Jon you had all the opportunity in the world to
take him out up at the retreat,” she said.

    
“I want to do it here,” he declared. Clara
was amazed that she used to share a bed with the stranger that now sat across
from her.

    
“Why?” she asked.

    
“Because I want you to watch him fall,”
David said disdainfully. “To see the cocksure Jon Griffin stumble and bleed out
all over your dear old grandmother’s floor.”

    
“I’m not going to let you do this,” Clara
said, reaching for the crystal lamp on the coffee table beside her. He noticed
her movement and jumped up, grabbing her arm and pulling it back.

    
“Don’t be stupid,” he hissed, squeezing her
arm until the circulation nearly stopped.
 
“Or I’ll have to kill you first.”

    
“Go ahead,” she said, turning her eyes to
meet his. She could feel his breath on her face as he held her there. “If you
kill Jon I won’t want to live anyway.”

    
His lips twisted into a smile. “That’s
good,” he said, dropping both his hands away from her and using his hip to bump
her over so he could sit down beside her on the loveseat. “It will make your
suicide seem all the more convincing.”

    
“You’re going to set me up?” she asked,
incredulous. “You’ll never get away with it. Too many people know about you.”

    
“Who? Rebecca?” he laughed. “Who’s going to
believe her? I have to tell you I was royally pissed when I realized she stole
that kid on her way up here. That wasn’t part of the plan. But it was
brilliant, really. It made you take her in much faster than if she’d been on
her own and now no one will believe a word she says because she’s a kidnapper.
It’s brilliant!”

    
“You sent her here?” Clara asked. “David,
why the hell can’t you just let this rest?”

    
“She was supposed to do the set up,” he
said as if he hadn’t heard her. “She was supposed to kill Griffin but make it look like you did it and
then killed yourself out on the trail.”

    
“She agreed to that?” Clara asked, still
finding it hard to believe that Rebecca had fallen so far.

    
“She likes money. And there was a whole
pile of it waiting for her at the end of this thing. And, even better, she
absolutely despises you. But she blew it. The kid was a distraction and you
kept running off and not following the agenda. She called me last night in a
complete panic. So I decided to come up here and take matters into my own
hands.”

    
“So why not do it there in the woods? Why
drag me all the way back here?” she asked.

    
“There were cops swarming in there. I had
to get out,” David said, shrugging his shoulders as if this was his normal mode
of operation. “This is better anyway. I can just imagine how nuts Jonny Boy is
right about now between you going missing and Bill.”

    
She fixed her gaze at him sitting next to
her on the loveseat.

    
“What about my dad?” she asked warily.

    
“I told Rebecca to take care of him for me
if she found out you weren’t going to be on the hike this morning,” he said
menacingly. “I had a feeling you’d run off again, seeing how you can’t seem to
keep your pants on when Griffin
is around. This seemed like a good way to get rid of Bill and make you pay,
too. Let’s just say he won’t be making it back off that mountain.”

    
Clara sat frozen in her seat.

    
“Don’t you want to know why?” David asked,
patting her knee. She pulled it away from his hand.

    
She didn’t say anything. Her head was
spinning. She prayed her father could talk Rebecca down. He’d always been good
with her even when she was downright rotten. Please let him be able to do it
one last time, she thought.

    
“Are you still with me there?” David asked,
grabbing her chin and yanking her face so she was looking at him. Her neck
ripped through with pain. He moved her head up and down forcefully with his
hand. “Say yes, little Clara.”

    
She closed her eyes. He was so awful.

    
“Bill is going to die because I want his
company. Just like Jon wanted my father’s. Your flaky mother won’t be able to
say no to my offer, not that she’ll know it’s coming from me. I have a third
party already planted inside.”

    
“Who?” Clara asked, her eyes growing as
wide as they could. Her voice sounded muffled because he was still squeezing
her chin.

    
He dropped his hand. “Mark,” he said.

    
“The new CFO?”