The Rivals (17 page)

“We're sinking!” Ryan cried.

“Push us free!” Brooke yelled at Nate.

“I'm trying! It's not working!”

“Don't lose the flashlights,” Brooke said. “We're going to need them when we get to the island.”

“How are we going to—” Nate railed.

“We'll have to swim,” Brooke interrupted.

“I'll sink with these boots on,” Nate said.

“Take them off,” Brook said briskly. “Your coat, too. Tie the strings of your shoes together and loop them around your neck.”

“There's no time. We're sinking!” Nate protested.

“Do it!” Brooke was yanking her winter hiking boots off, tying the strings together, then slipping them around her neck and removing her coat, which she dropped on the floor of the canoe. Then she did the same for Ryan. “Nate, you're going to have to help Ryan. Ready, Ryan?”

“I'm scared,” Ryan said.

“Don't worry,” Brooke said. “Nate's a strong swimmer, and so am I. We won't let anything happen to you.”

“The shore looks a long way off,” Ryan said.

“It's not as far as it looks,” Brooke said.

“Shit, shit, shit! This water's cold as a witch's tit,” Nate complained as he eased into the water.

“Suck it up and swim,” Brooke shot back as the canoe slid away into the icy depths. Nate was older, but Brooke believed she had a lot more common sense than her brother. She understood how dangerous their situation truly was. She'd seen
Titanic
enough times to know that you could freeze to death pretty quickly in water this cold.

She kicked as hard as she could for shore, urging Ryan to kick, too. Nate swam with Ryan secured in a rescuer's grasp, but the current quickly swept them downstream. Fortunately, they were caught in an eddy that was carrying them toward shore.

“I'm cold, Brooke,” her younger brother gasped.

“Keep swimming!” she said. “Don't you dare stop. And hang onto those flashlights!”

They were still twenty feet from shore when Brooke realized she probably wasn't going to make it. She could barely lift her arms.

“Keep going,” she told Nate.

“Let's stay together,” Nate said.

“I can't keep up with you,” she told Nate. She met his gaze in the moonlight and saw the despair there. She could hear his teeth chattering. “Please. Go,” she told him. “I'll be right behind you.”

“I'll come back for you as soon as I get Ryan to dry land,” Nate promised.

“I'll be right behind you,” she lied. “Head straight across Bear Island for one of the houses. They can call Mom to come get you.”

“To come get
us
,” Nate corrected. “Don't give up, Brooke. I'll be right back. I promise.”

She could hear him swimming, but with the moonlit shadows on the water, she wasn't sure where he was. She thought about yelling for help, but there was no one to hear. Then she realized she would feel pretty dumb if it turned out there was somebody there to rescue her, and she hadn't opened her mouth to make a sound. She could no longer lift her arms out of the water, and her feet felt like they weighed a hundred pounds.

Brooke took a deep breath and shouted, “Help! Somebody. Anybody! I'm here in the water. Help me, please!” She started sinking and choked on a swallow of icy water.

“I'm drowning!” she cried, terrified. “Heellllp!”

But no one answered. Not even Nate or Ryan.

Drew felt his gut churning as he drove away from Sarah's house. He must be pretty desperate to suggest Sarah's missing husband was buried on Bear Island. With the mountains and valleys and forests around Jackson Hole, there were a million better places to hide a body. The girl whose body had been found had been buried a long way from town.

But a grown man's dead weight was a lot heavier to cart around. Maybe whoever was running this blackmail and murder scheme had buried Tom Barndollar's body in the most convenient spot, knowing that if other bodies were discovered far away, no one would ever think to look on Bear Island.

The problem was Tom's missing truck. Men had left home with less. The missing truck gave Tom mobility. The missing truck meant Tom might not be dead, that, despite having a wife and kids he supposedly loved, he'd flown into the wind.

Which made Drew's proposed moonlight venture seem all the more absurd.

Drew snorted in disgust. Talk about a fool for love. Here he was making up scenarios that would free Sarah for a real relationship with him, when he knew damn well he wasn't going to commit himself to someone who had three kids. Hell, one kid would have been too many. He knew better than to think he could be a good parent. He didn't have a role model for the job, and at thirty-five, he was too old to learn.

He found himself turning left instead of right, heading down the road that led home, instead of the road that led to Bear Island. He couldn't help thinking, as he rode down what was normally a pitch-black road, that the moon was certainly right for a nighttime adventure. It was bright enough that he could see the rolled bales of hay in the field beneath a shallow layer of snow.

As he pulled his Porsche into the four-car garage, he noticed the small fishing boat on its trailer at the far end of the garage. Next to it sat his repaired pickup.

Drew lingered in his Porsche long enough for the garage lights to go out automatically. He fought a battle with himself in the dark. It was a wild-goose chase, plain and simple, just as Sarah had said. It was no more than forty degrees out there, although that was warmer than it sounded, since there was little or no humidity in Jackson.

How did he expect to find anything, anyway, when the island was a morass of vegetation? He was going to spend a lot of time and energy tramping around in the cold and the dark and feel like a prize idiot when he was done.

Drew got out of his Porsche and headed into the darkened house. He made straight for the living room without turning on a light in the kitchen. He turned on a lamp with an antler base near a modern wet bar, then proceeded to fix himself a drink. He found some aged scotch, poured it into a crystal tumbler along with some ice, and crossed to the chair by the fireplace.

The housekeeper had removed the ashes and laid a new fire, and Drew struck a match to the kindling before settling into the studded leather chair that was a part of his family history. It sagged in the seat where so many of his powerful forebears had sat their rumps. Drew had known for many years that no descendant of his was going to occupy this chair.

Not that he hadn't imagined what it might be like to have kids of his own. The problem was, a man needed a woman to bear his children. But he'd seen what an angry, unhappy, discontented woman could do to innocent kids. He wasn't going to subject any child of his to that kind of hell.

An image formed in his mind of Ryan reaching out to Sarah, who picked him up, despite the fact he was too heavy for her. Of Sarah rescuing Nate from jail and hugging him to her, before she meted out punishment that was neither cruel nor abusive.

Drew was much more familiar with scenes like the one with Brooke curved protectively around her younger brother on the couch, waiting for a parent who was late coming home. But Sarah's appearance hadn't been the cause of even more fear. Brooke had seemed relieved to see her mother.

Drew realized suddenly that what he'd feared for so many years was not his own ability to love his children, but that the woman he chose to love might not love his children.

Sarah would love any child of hers…and yours.

So maybe there were some women who could love their children—any children—wholeheartedly. Maybe there were some women it was safe to love.

The sound of the phone ringing startled him. Who could be calling him? Sarah?

Drew leapt for the phone, aware of the surge in his pulse at the thought that Sarah might be on the other end of the line. He didn't want to care for her, didn't want to find himself falling down that well of vulnerability. But he couldn't seem to stop himself. He picked up the phone, his heart pounding in his chest, but before he could say a word, he heard Jackson Blackthorne on the line.

“I just got a call from a friend of mine,” Blackjack said. “Is it true? Was Clay found in bed with a young woman who'd been strangled?”

“Yes, it's true,” Drew said. “He called me—”

“Why wasn't I informed immediately?”

“Clay didn't want—”

“I don't give a damn what Clay thinks he wants,” Blackjack said. “I'll be there in the morning.”

In the background, Drew could hear Blackjack's wife Ren asking for the phone. A moment later he heard her voice.

“Drew? Is Clay all right?”

“He's fine, Mrs. Blackthorne.” He was surprised that she sounded so genuinely concerned. Clay was Blackjack's son, not hers.

“What about that poor young woman's family?” Ren asked. “What's being done for them?”

“I don't know,” Drew admitted. He hadn't even thought about the girl's family.

“Would you please find out what you can?” Ren said. “I'd like to visit them tomorrow.”

“You're coming here?”

“Of course we're coming,” Ren said.

A moment later, Blackjack was on the phone again. “You tell that son of mine I'll have him out of there by morning.”

“Tomorrow's Sunday,” Drew reminded him.

“I don't give a damn what day it is,” Blackjack said. “Clay will be out of jail tomorrow morning or I'll know the reason why.”

Drew found himself holding a phone that had been disconnected. He set it down quietly.

He'd never known his father. The man had sired him and moved on. He wasn't sure he envied Clay his father. His cousin had been forced to fight all his life to be his own man. Blackjack had stepped right in to solve his son's problems without giving Clay the opportunity to solve them on his own. Drew would have hated that sort of interference in his life.

That was simply another example of how hard it was to be a parent. There were a thousand things you needed to learn. When to step in and when to step away. When help was wanted and appreciated and when it would only be resented. Parenting was a quagmire. Drew couldn't understand why so many people stepped into it. Maybe it was like quicksand. It didn't look as dangerous as it was.

Sarah seemed to have a handle on it. As much as any parent could.

Which brought him full circle to the decision about whether or not to go back out into the cold to look for a body on Bear Island.

“Hell,” Drew muttered. Someone had been out on Bear Island the same night a young woman was murdered. He owed it to Clay, and to himself, to at least check it out.

He headed into the kitchen, set his glass on the counter and grabbed his coat from the rack on his way back to the garage. He opened two of the four garage doors, drove his pickup out and backed it up to hitch it to the boat trailer.

Forgotten Valley bordered the confluence of the Gros Ventre River with a tributary of the Snake that was navigable. Drew simply drove to the ramp built on his property and launched the fishing boat. He'd done enough adventuring on the river with Clay when he was younger that he knew where he was going. The small boat engine was surprisingly quiet as he headed upstream in the moonlight.

Few of the homes that bordered the river were lit. Drew knew it was more a case of people not being in residence than of people being asleep. It was a sad truth that most of those who could afford to own homes in Jackson Hole didn't live in them year-round.

Drew was as guilty as the rest, even though he believed that, with its majestic Grand Tetons, its forests of pine and spruce and aspen, and its abundance of wildlife, Jackson Hole was one of the most beautiful places in the world to live.

It was also the kind of place that gave you too much time alone with your thoughts.

Drew still hadn't figured out what to do with the rest of his life. He wasn't sorry to be wealthy, but it gave him almost too many options. He had no interest in doubling or tripling his money. He had no interest in a life of leisure. He wanted to do work that was satisfying and fulfilling and made the world a better place. Being a lawyer had filled that role until now.

But he wasn't sure he wanted to go back to the cutthroat world of large law firm practice. There had to be something else that he would enjoy as much—or more. He just hadn't found it yet.

Drew saw the outlines of Bear Island ahead on his left and wondered where he ought to go ashore. He'd kept an eye out, but so far he hadn't seen anyone else crazy enough to be on the river at this hour of the night, not even the police.

He looked for some sign of life in the houses that were connected to the island, and saw lights on in the one where the murder had occurred earlier in the evening. He guessed the police were still working the scene. The last thing he wanted to do was get caught trespassing.

Drew heard splashing ahead and wondered if he was going to have to deal with a moose that had decided to swim the river. The dopey-looking animals, which could weigh as much as a thousand pounds, were surprisingly aggressive. Or maybe an elk had wandered from the reserve on the north end of town and decided to take a moonlight swim.

Drew was smiling at the image he'd conjured when he heard an honest-to-God shout for help. A female shout for help. He turned up the power on the tiny boat engine as far as it would go and raced toward the sound.

All he could think was that the bad guys needed to dispose of another female. The one female he knew they had was Kate Grayhawk.

“I'm coming, Kate!” he shouted. “Hold on!”

“I'm drowning,” he heard in the distance. “Heeelllp!”

As he rounded a bend in the river, Drew saw someone splashing in the water not more than twenty feet from shore. As he headed in the girl's direction, he saw her head slip beneath the surface. “Hey!” he shouted. “I'm here!”

He saw the head bob up again and wasn't sure whether she'd heard him or not. He brought the aluminum boat as close to her as he could get, then leaned over and caught hold of her shirt.

Wet hair covered her face, and he couldn't see who it was he'd dragged over the edge of the boat and into his arms. “Kate?” he said anxiously, shoving her hair back. “Is it you?”

Then the moonlight hit the girl's face, and he recognized her. “Brooke? What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Nate,” she gasped. “And Ryan. Did you see them?”

“They're in the water, too?” he asked, searching the river in both directions and then the shoreline.

“Our canoe sank,” she said, her teeth chattering. “Nate and Ryan were swimming ahead of me.”

“I don't see them. We'd better call for help.” He reached into his coat and realized he'd been in such a hurry, he hadn't brought his cell phone. He started to swear, remembered she was only fifteen, and bit back the profanity. He grabbed an old wool picnic blanket in the stern and wrapped it around the shivering girl.

“Do you think they made it to shore?” she asked.

“We'll have to find that out after I get you someplace where you can get warm,” Drew said, turning the boat toward the opposite shore, where there were homes with a phone.

“No!” she said grabbing his arm. “We have to go look for them. They'll be scared. Nate might go back into the water looking for me. He'll freeze and drown.”

Drew hesitated only a moment before he turned the boat back around and grounded it against the shoreline. He jumped out and tied it off. “You stay here,” he said. “I'll take a quick look around. If I don't see them, we're outta here.”

“I'm coming,” Brooke said, clambering over the side of the boat onto the island.

“No, you'll be—”

“I'll be warmer moving around than sitting here in the cold,” she said.

She was right, and if he had an eye on her, he could make sure nothing bad happened to her. “Let's go,” he said. “Stay with me.”

They were already deep in the underbrush before he realized he hadn't brought a flashlight. “I thought we'd have more light,” he muttered.

“That's why we brought flashlights,” Brooke said.

“Your brothers have flashlights?”

“If Ryan didn't lose them in the water.”

Drew peered ahead through the tangled undergrowth, hoping to see a beam of light. “We'll never find them in this stuff.”

“I told them to head for the houses on the other side of the island,” Brooke said.

“I thought you said Nate would head back into the water.”

“If he didn't come back looking for me,” Brooke said somberly, “it's because he couldn't.”

Drew remembered the man with the flashlight Clay had seen earlier that night on the island. He didn't want to think about what might have happened to the two boys, assuming they'd actually made it to shore. “Can you walk any faster?”

“Walk as fast as you want,” Brooke said. “I'll keep up.”

Drew abruptly put a hand out to stop her, and said, “Shh.” He pointed in the direction of a bobbing red light. “Someone's coming.”

He heard Brooke draw breath to shout and clamped a hand over her mouth. In her ear he whispered, “Wait until we see who it is.”

She looked up at him with frightened eyes, the whites reflecting in the moonlight. She nodded, and he let her go.