The Bourbon Kings #1 (44 page)

Lizzie hung up and tossed her phone back into her purse. Then it was a case of hunch over the wheel, hold on tight … and pray that some idiot show-off in an SUV didn’t run her off the road.

Things got even worse, fast.

And jeez, after a day as long as the one she had put in, the last thing she needed were torrential bands of water that cut her visuals down to five feet, along with teeth-rattling thunder and lightning, but the weather seemed determined to parallel what was going on at Easterly—almost as if the drama at the house was affecting even the weather.

Okay, that was hyperbole.

But still.

It took her five hundred years to reach her exit. And then another seven or eight to get to her driveway. Meanwhile, the storm had turned into storm
S
—with a big capital “S” on the end: Lightning crackled and
sizzled, seeming to target her car, and thunder roared, and she got pelted with a round of hail you could have hit out of Fenway Park. White-knuckled, frankly pissed, worried about Lane, and sore all over, when she finally made it to her home, she was a hot mess of—

The finger of God.

That was the only thing she could think of.

One moment, she was just about to pull into her spot by her house. The next? A jagged bolt of lightning licked out of the sky—and nailed her big, beautiful tree right at the top.

Sparks flew like it was the Fourth of July.

And she screamed, “No!” as she hit the brakes.

The Yaris’s tires were iffy on dry pavement. On a wet, muddy dirt road? It was greased-pig time.

And that was how she learned Lane was already at her house.

Because she plowed right into the back of his Porsche.

L
ane had been sitting at Lizzie’s kitchen table reading BBC financial reports for about two hours when the storm hit. As the first wave of rain and noise and flashing rumbled through the house, he didn’t bother to look up from her laptop, even as the old-fashioned glass in the windows rattled and the roof beams creaked.

The volumes and volumes of data were overwhelming.

And he was panicked that he only understood a fraction of it all.

Then again, it had been pretty damn naive of him to think he could get a handle on his father’s dealings with any kind of alacrity. Aside from the crushing numbers of files, he just didn’t have the extensive accounting background that was going to be required to sort everything out.

Thank God Edward had been prepared for something like this, setting up those shadow accounts and passcodes and emails. Without all that, it would have been impossible to export the information without triggering some internal alert.

Maybe that would still happen, though.

He didn’t know how much time they had before their father tweaked to the fact that there had been a major leak.

Taking a break, he sat back and rubbed his eyes—and that was when the second wave of storms hit. And whether it was the forced TO thanks to his burning retinas, or the fact that this T-cell really was kicking it up huge, he became very aware that Lizzie’s home was suddenly under siege.

Getting to his feet, he went around and shut all the open windows, downstairs and up. As he jogged from room to room, lightning strobed in crazy bursts, casting fast, hard shadows over Lizzie’s floorboards, her furniture, her piano. With the sky nearly dark as midnight and all the jagged licks nailing the farmland, he felt as though he were in a war zone.

He’d forgotten how rough these eastward-moving spring storms could be, the collisions of hot and cold fronts given free rein over the miles and miles of flat, tilled fields in the midwest.

Back on the first floor, he glanced out at the front porch and cursed. The wicker rockers and side tables were milling around, animated into nervous agitation by the countervailing gusts of wind.

When he went to open the door, the heavy weight blew in at the slightest turn of the knob, and he had to drag things shut behind himself as he stepped out. Grabbing hold of anything he came in contact with, he moved Lizzie’s stuff around the corner of the porch, out of the worst of the gale.

He was coming back around to tackle the final lounge chair when he saw headlights turn in off the main road. It had to be her—and he was glad she was home. He’d meant to call, text … send up smoke signals or a homing pigeon, but his head had been locked in a—

Everything happened in a weird combination of slo-mo and speed of sound: The blast of lightning that came out of the sky right above the house. The explosion of noise and the bomb burst of illumination.

That tree limb that was the size of an I beam cracking free of the trunk and falling to the ground.

Right as Lizzie pulled up under it.

The crunching sound of metal getting crushed stopped his heart in his chest.

“Lizzie!” he screamed as he went airborne off the porch.

Rain pelted him in the face, and the wind was like a pack of dogs tearing at his clothes, but he bolted across the puddled ground at a dead run.

Death comes in threes.

“No!” he hollered into the storm. “Nooooo!”

The Yaris had crumpled under the weight, its roof mashed down flat, its hood caved in—and his own life flashed through his mind as he skidded to a halt in his bare feet. Branches with bright green, new spring leaves were everywhere, compromising his vision as much as the rain and the wind—and still lightning flashed and thunder carried on as if nothing important had happened.

“Lizzie!”

He dove into the wet mess of the leaves, clawing to get through, get around, get over. Even with all the wind, he could smell the gasoline, the oil, and hear the hiss of an engine that had been mortally wounded.

Maybe all the damp would stop a fire from igniting?

Lane changed tactics and began to climb up and over—until he worked his way around and onto the front of the car. Finally, he felt something slick and wet under his hands, and he knocked on it, wanting her to know he was there. “Lizzie, I’m going to get you out!”

With frantic jerks, he tore through the leaves and branches—until he found the spidered, bowed-out glass of the front windshield. The panel was still intact—but that didn’t last long. Squeezing up a fist, he punched through and all but shoved himself into the opening.

Lizzie was laying sideways, her head in the passenger seat, her arms flopping around as if she were trying to orient herself. Both air bags had blown, and the chalky dryness in the air was at odds with the storm’s tremendous humidity.

“Lizzie!”

At least she was moving.

Shit.
There was no way he could get any of the doors opened. He was going to have to pull her out.

Reaching forward, he touched her face. “Lizzie?”

Her eyes were fluttering, and there was blood on her forehead. “Lane …
?”

“I got you. I’m going to get you out. Are you hurt? Your neck? Your back?”

“I’m sorry I hit … your car …”

He closed his eyes for a split second, and said a prayer. Then he snapped back into action. “I’m going to have to drag you out.”

Fighting his way further into the interior, he somehow managed to reach the seat belt release, and then he grabbed ahold of her upper arms—

And stopped.

“Lizzie? Listen to me—are you sure you’re not hurt? Can you move your arms and legs?” When she didn’t reply, he felt a fresh surge of alarm. “Lizzie? Lizzie!”

B
ack in Charlemont, Edward was not paying any attention to how his remaining horse did in the Derby. He wasn’t even at the track.

No, he was trying on a new role.

Stalker.

Sitting behind the wheel of a Red & Black Stables truck, he glanced through the passenger window at the enormous brick mansion he was parked in front of.

Built in the early 1900s, the great Georgian pile was even larger than Easterly—which had been the point. The Suttons had been the interloping upstarts for almost a century at that point, and as that family’s fortune finally overtook the Bradfords’, they had constructed the house as a trophy to their triumph. With some twenty or thirty bedrooms and a village of staff quarters under its massive roof, the manse was nearly a city unto itself—on the second-best rise in town with the second-best view of the river and the second-best garden.

But yes, they had Easterly beat on size.

Just as the Sutton Distillery Corporation was bigger by thirds than the BBC.

Edward shook his head and glanced at the crappy watch he’d taken to wearing. If Sutton stayed true to her usual schedule, it would not be long now.

At least nobody in a uniform with a barking German shepherd at his side was harassing him to leave. Sutton Smythe’s family estate had security that was every bit as tight as Easterly’s, but he had two things going for him. One was the logo on his vehicle: the R&B trademark was like a royal warrant, and even if he had been a serial killer parked in the downtown lobby of the courthouse, there was every possibility that the police would leave him alone with that thing in place. The second gimme he had in his favor was the Derby. Undoubtedly, everyone was still talking about the race, settling up bets, reliving the glory.

Soon. She would be home soon.

After Lane had gotten him back to the farm, he had taken some of his meds and had a drink. Then he had reread the mortgage papers … and lasted about ten more minutes before he’d picked up Sutton’s evening purse and limped out to one of his trucks.

Moe and Shelby and the rest of the stablehands were down at the track with the trainers and the horses. As he’d driven off, he’d thought it was a shame to waste the peace and quiet at the farm—but this was something he needed to handle in person.

Rain began to fall, first as a few drops; then as a drizzle.

He checked his watch again.

Thirteen minutes. He was betting she would be home in thirteen minutes: Whereas most of the two hundred thousand people at Steeple-hill Downs were going to enjoy a long trek back to wherever they had left their cars, followed by a further gridlock as they attempted to get on the highway, folks like the Bradfords and the Suttons had police escorts that got them in and out the back ways fast.

And he was right.

Some twelve minutes and a number of seconds later, one of the Sutton
family’s black Mulsannes pulled up in front of the house, the driver popping out from behind the wheel and triggering an umbrella as he went to the rear door. A second security man did the same on the other side.

Sutton’s father emerged first and needed the arm of his chauffeur to get to the house.

Sutton, on the other hand, uncoiled slowly from the vehicle, her eyes trained on his truck. After speaking with the driver, she took the umbrella from the man and walked over, heedless that she was ruining her high-heeled shoes.

Edward put the window down as she approached—and tried to ignore the scent of her perfume as she came up to him.

“Get in,” he said without sparing her a glance.

“Edward—”

“As if I’m going to discuss what you signed with my father in your own house? Or even in your front yard?”

She let out a very unlady-like curse and then marched around the front of the truck. With a grunt, he tried to reach over as a gentleman should and open her door, but she got there first—and besides, his body wouldn’t let him stretch that far.

As she settled into the seat, she froze as she saw her purse.

Putting the truck in gear, he muttered, “I figured you’d want your driver’s license back.”

“I have to be at the ball in forty-five minutes,” she said as he started down her hill.

“You hate going to those things.”

“I have a date.”

“Do you. Congratulations.” A quick fantasy of kidnapping her and keeping her from going at all played out in a very Lifetime Movie sort of way—said fantasy culminating in her going Stockholm syndrome and falling in love with her captor. “Who is he?”

“None of your business.”

Edward took a left and just kept driving. “So you’re lying.”

“Check the society pages tomorrow morning,” she countered in a bored tone. “You can read all about it.”

“I don’t get the
Charlemont Courier Journal
anymore.”

“Look, Edward—”

“What the
hell
are you doing? Mortgaging my goddamn house?”

Even though he wasn’t looking at her, he could feel her icy stare nailing him in the face. “Number one, your father approached me. And number two, if you take that tone with me again, I’ll foreclose just on principle.”

Edward shot a glare in her direction. “How could you do that? Are you really that greedy?”

“The interest rate is more than fair! And would you have preferred he go to a bank, where it would be recorded for the public? I’m going to keep everything private, assuming the payments are made.”

He jabbed a finger at the documents on the seat between them. “I want you to make that go away.”

“You are not a party to this, Edward. And apparently your father needs the money or he wouldn’t have come to me.”

“That is my mother’s house!”