Raising The Stakes

“Let go of the shirt, Kitteridge,” he said softly. “Right now, or you won’t be able to use that hand for a month.”

Kitteridge stared at him through eyes flat with pain and rage. After a minute, he smiled. It made him look like a Halloween mask designed to scare the pants off kids who had seen one horror movie too many.

“Sure. No harm meant.”

Kitteridge dropped his hand to the table. Gray let him settle his shoulders back against the cracked vinyl of the banquette.

“Guess we got ourselves off to a poor start, Baron. It’s just that I don’t like somebody comin’ around, askin’ about my wife without me knowin’ what’s up.”

Gray nodded. He could still feel his blood pumping hot and fast through his veins but he was here for information and beating the stupid son of a bitch across from him to a pulp wasn’t the way to get it.

“Yeah. Okay. I understand, but you need to understand my position. I’m legally charged with seeing to it that your wife gets what’s coming to her.”

“Trust me, Baron. I want her to get what’s comin’ to her, too.”

Harman saw the lawyer’s eyes narrow. Stupid, he told himself, stupid, stupid. He had to watch what he said around this slick bastard. The guy wasn’t from around here. He was from a big city, Phoenix or L.A. or even someplace on the East Coast. He wasn’t as easy as he looked, either. He had a lazy smile, clean fingernails, a way of talking that made him sound as if he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he also had an iron grip and a hardness to him that had been a surprise. And what in hell was this talk about that bitch, Dawn, and some kind of inheritance?

He still had trouble saying Dawn’s name, even thinking it, without wanting to put his fist through the wall. Goddamn slut, taking off in the middle of the night, walking out on him as if she had the right to do whatever she wanted. He should have slapped her around more often. That would have kept her in line, same as it had done for her mama.

And all these damn fool questions about Dawn’s grandfather. She’d never talked about a grandfather. Hell, she hadn’t talked about her own mama much, never mind anybody else, and now, from out of nowhere, she had a grandpa who had left her money? Hot damn, that was something to think about. Some dead presidents would go a long way toward making up for what the bitch had done to him, leaving him with an empty bed, leaving him to cook and clean for himself, stealing his son even though he’d been able to see, even four years back, that the kid was going to grow up soft, like his mother.

Well, he’d have changed that. He’d still change it, when he found Dawn. And he would. He’d always intended to; he’d be damned if he’d let her think she could get away with walking out on him. But now, if there was money on the line, there was more reason than ever to find his sweet wife.

If she had money coming, it belonged to him. A man had the right to be king in his home. Dawn had never understood that but she would, once he got her back. He’d bring her home to the mountain, beat the crap out of her and the kid, too, until they both understood he was the one law in their lives.

He lifted his coffee cup, took a sip of the rapidly cooling liquid and did his best to conjure up a smile.

“Dawn’s going to be real upset when she finds out you was here and she wasn’t.”

Gray nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“‘Course, there ain’t no real problem. You probably got some papers for her to sign, right?”

Gray gave another nod, more noncommittal than the first.

“Well, you can leave ‘em with me. I’ll see to it she puts her name where she ought to and mails them to you.”

“Yeah. Well, I wish I could do that, Kitteridge, but the law…” Gray leaned forward and flashed a man-to-man smile. “As long as we’re being honest, I have to tell you that I talked with some people around town.”

Kitteridge’s eyes turned cold. “People ought to learn to keep their mouths shut.”

“They seem to think your wife left quite a while ago.”

“If she did, it ain’t nobody’s business but mine.”

“You’re wrong. It’s my business. I mean, this inheritance…” Gray sighed. “Well, that’s a pity.”

“I’m here,” Kitteridge said sharply. “And I’m her husband. Whatever’s comin’ to her should come to me. That’s only right.”

“I agree,” Gray said pleasantly, “but the law…”

The law, Harman thought. The goddamn law. What he ought to do was drag this son of a bitch attorney out of his seat, do it fast, before he knew what was happening, and beat the crap out of him—but that wouldn’t get him what he wanted. The question was, what would? The thing to do was calm down and think. What would soften up a hotshot lawyer? A little hearts and flowers, maybe. Yeah. A sad story, complete with violins. That might just do it.

“Okay,” Harman said. He wrapped his hands around his cup and looked down into its murky depths. “I’m gonna tell you the truth, Baron. I don’t talk about it much ‘cause it near to kills me to do it, but my wife run out and left me four years back.”

“Ah. That’s rough.”

“It is, for a fact.” Harman lifted wounded eyes, locked them on Gray’s. “She was everythin’ for me, you know? I loved her like I never loved another woman. But she weren’t no good. She catted around, paid no mind to her wifely obligations or to our son.”

That did it. He saw the lawyer’s eyes go dark.

“She had a child?” he said.

Harman pulled a sad face. “Oh, yeah. A little boy. Sweetest thing you can imagine, but she didn’t give no more thought to the kid than she did to me.”

“You mean, she didn’t take the boy with her when she left you?”

Harman didn’t even blink. “No.” Violins, sad stories and a leap to abandoned babies the lawyer had taken all by himself. Fine. Whatever would work. “You can see why I don’t talk about it much.”

Oh, and it was working. Baron was nodding in agreement, clearly thinking bad thoughts about a woman who had slept around and dumped her kid. Well, the sleeping around part was surely the truth, and there wasn’t a way in hell Baron would ever find out she’d taken the boy with her.

Harman took out his wallet. “See this?” He took out a dog-eared photo of a woman with a baby in her arms and pushed it across the table. “That’s what she left behind. That innocent babe. Boy’s seven now an’ there’s times he still wakes up in the middle of the night, cryin’ for his mama.”

It was the perfect touch. The lawyer was staring at the picture as if it was the Madonna and child.

“Yeah.” The attorney cleared his throat. “So, where is she? Where’d she go?”

“If I knew, don’t you think I’d have brought her back?” Harman’s mouth twisted. “Teach her a lesson for walkin’ out on me?” He saw the way Baron’s head came up. Dammit. He’d overplayed his hand. “I mean, I’d tell her how much she hurt me. How I still love her. How I miss her. How I ‘spect her to keep the promises she made when we was married, is what I’m saying.”

“The bottom line is that you don’t know where she is, do you, Kitteridge? That’s what I’m saying.”

Harman smiled slyly. “I don’t, no. But I bet a hotshot lawyer like you got ways to find her.”

“Maybe, but I’ll need your help.”

“Anythin’ I can do, you just ask.”

“You said she catted around. How about the names of some of the men she slept with?”

“Don’t actually got names. She was sneaky.”

“Well, how about places she’d been and liked, that she might have gone back to?”

“She never went nowhere. Not that I wouldn’t have taken her, if she’d been a good woman, but—”

“Places she talked about visiting,” Gray said impatiently. “Nothing? Come on, man. Think. Didn’t she ever look at a picture in a magazine or someplace on TV and say how much she’d like to go there?”

“If she spent time on such things, she was smart enough not to let me know. Wastin’ time makes the devil happy.”

Gray started to answer, thought better of it and, instead, took his wallet from his back pocket. Coming here had been pointless. He’d wasted two days and he didn’t know anything more about where to look for Dawn than when he’d started. The only thing he’d learned was that her husband was the shithead Ballard said he was, and that Dawn wasn’t much better. She’d slept around, run off, abandoned her child… So much for the lure of Nora Lincoln’s sad eyes and defiant chin, or for the fact that he’d thought he’d seen those same eyes, that same chin, in the photo Harman had shown him.

“Well, thanks for your time, Kitteridge.” Gray dropped a five-dollar bill on the table. “I’ll give you my card. If you think of anything that might shed some light on your wife’s whereabouts…”

“Wait just a damn minute, Mr. Lawyer.”

Gray looked up. Kitteridge flashed a smile as phony as the wood graining in the plastic tabletop.

“I mean, you ain’t just gonna run off, are you? Now that I told you about my wife, surely you can tell me what her grandpa left her, right?” Harman looked around, then hunched his shoulders and bent over the table. “It’s only right and proper I should know. For the sake of my son, you understand?”

Gray had an answer ready but he made it look as if he didn’t. “Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose it’s okay, all things considered.”

Harman licked his lips. “How much?”

“He didn’t leave her money.”

“He didn’t… Ah. I got it. He left her a house, right? What do you call it, real estate?”

Gray tried to look soulful. “No,” he said, “no real estate. Actually your wife’s grandfather died broke.” Was it a lie? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. But the answer would defuse Harman’s curiosity. That was what counted.

“Broke?” Harman’s eyes narrowed. “Give me a break, Baron. You want me to believe you come here to tell my wife her grandpa didn’t leave her nothin’?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, you did. You just told me the old man died broke.”

“But he did leave her something. A music box.” That part had come to him just this morning. He thought it sounded pretty good.

Harman’s face was a blank. “You’re shittin’ me.”

“I guess it had sentimental value to him. It’s a nice music box, actually. Walnut, with mother of pearl inlay and a revolving dancer on the—”

“You want me to think you come all the way here to tell my wife she inherited a music box?” Harman said in a soft, ominous voice. “I guess you think I’m pretty stupid.”

“I don’t have any opinion of you,” Gray said pleasantly, lying through his teeth as he got to his feet. “You’re right about one thing, though. Given a choice, I sure wouldn’t have come all the way here but, as my client’s representative, I’m obligated to fulfill his wishes. He stipulated that I was to locate his granddaughter and give her the box. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, Kitteridge. I’d love to have told you your wife was sitting on a fortune. Unfortunately, she’s not.”

Harman wanted to lunge over the table and stomp the crap out of the smart-ass city attorney. Instead he curled his hands into fists in his lap. It was the only way he could manage to smile.

“Well, that’s somethin’, ain’t it? And here I was, feelin’ good for my Dawn, thinkin’ she was comin’ into easy times. It just goes to show, you never do know, ain’t that right?” He stood up, put out his hand. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Baron. Good luck, findin’ my wife.”

“Yeah. Same to you.”

“You get any word, you’ll let me know, right? My boy and I sure do miss her.”

“I will.” Gray took a card from his wallet and handed it to Kitteridge. “I wonder… Could I have that photo?”

“Photo?”

“Of your wife and son. It might help me identify her, if I find her.”

Harman smiled. “I’d like to help you, but it’s the only picture I got to remind me of her. It’s very valuable to me, if you know what I mean.”

The lawyer wasn’t dumb. He dug a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and Harman handed over the photo.

“I can use the money to buy somethin’ nice for the boy,” he said somberly. “You take care now, Mr. Baron. These roads can be slippery in the rain.”

He waited until the door closed after the attorney. Then he sank down on the banquette.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. Did the man really think he’d fallen for that lie about a music box, or that he’d bought him off with a hundred bucks? There was lots more to this story. Nobody, especially not a lawyer from—Harman glared at the card—from New York City, came all this distance to tell a woman her grandpa had left her a wind-up toy.

Dawn had come into money, and probably one hell of a lot of it.

Harman got to his feet, walked to the counter and slid onto a stool. “Gimme two eggs,” he said to the waitress, “over easy. Bacon. Flapjacks.” He leaned toward her. “And more coffee, only it better not be this crap from the bottom of the pot, you understand?”

The girl damn near clicked her heels, which was just as it should be. The bible said it best. A woman was meant to obey. Wives, especially. And what a wife possessed belonged to her husband. Her body. Her spawn. All her earthly possessions.

Harman scowled as the waitress put a cup in front of him.

Dawn was coming into an inheritance, and it was only right and proper he was there to take care of it for her, and to take care of the boy, too, see he was raised up proper. It was time to find the bitch and put her four years of loose living at an end.

* * *

Outside, in the parking lot, Gray got behind the wheel of the rental car and drove a couple of miles north before he pulled onto the shoulder of the road, took out his cell phone and dialed Jack Ballard.

“Jack? Gray Baron here. I just met with Harman Kitteridge. Oh, yeah. He’s just what his rap sheet suggests. Mean. And stupid as the day is long, except when he thinks he smells money. Nope. He hasn’t a clue as to where Dawn is. Trust me, Jack. I had him salivating. If he knew, he’d have—You did?” Gray smiled and gave the steering wheel a light tap with his fist. “Las Vegas, huh? Terrific. Too bad you didn’t call me. I’d have been able to skip my scintillating meeting with Kitter—Oh. Did you? Well, I was in a diner at the ass end of nowhere, which is probably why your call wouldn’t go through. In fact, I’m losing you now. Jack? Jack…”

The line went dead. Gray put the phone into his pocket, felt something papery and took out the photo of Dawn Lincoln Kitteridge. She didn’t look much like a woman who would walk out on a man and a child, but that only went to show you how misleading a picture could be. He had a photo of his own mother tucked away at the bottom of a drawer. He’d found it years ago, when he was ten or eleven, and she hadn’t looked like a woman who would have done those things, either…but she had.

Gray checked his mirror, did a U-turn, sped straight through Queen City and headed south, to Flagstaff and the airport. Forget staying on for a few days. Ballard had found the woman. He’d fly home, put things on hold for a week, then fly to Vegas and check out Dawn Kitteridge, though it wouldn’t take much checking before he’d know what to tell Jonas. How much doubt could there be as to the morals of a woman who slept around and then deserted her son, and never mind the way she looked in that photo.

He knew all about women like that. His own mother had slept her way through Brazos Springs before she’d walked away, left him behind and never once looked back.

Gray stepped down hard on the gas. Soon, very soon, he’d be able to put this entire incident behind him and get on with his own life.

CHAPTER FOUR

Las Vegas, Nevada

DAWN’S alarm was set for six but when she opened her eyes, the bright green numbers on the clock’s face read 5:03.

Her heart pounded as she sat up and looked around her tiny bedroom. What had awakened her? Footsteps? A voice? The sound of someone outside the window? She held her breath and listened but she couldn’t hear anything. Nothing but silence.

She exhaled and fell back against the pillows with relief. That was what had awakened her. Not a noise. The silence. The AC had shut off. The unit was old and noisy. It died with startling regularity and when it did, the lack of sound was like an assault on her eardrums.

Even after four years, she still couldn’t decide what was better, noises that startled you or silence that shook you. No, that wasn’t true. You could get accustomed to noise. Silence was different. If it was too quiet, you started to hear things. A creak that might be a footstep. A tap that might mean someone was at the window. A whisper that could be a voice you prayed you’d never hear again…

“Stop it,” she said, and she sat up and tossed the covers aside.

The creaks were from the floorboards. Her apartment had been carved out of the first floor parlor and maid’s room of an old house, old by Vegas standards, anyway. The only thing tapping at the window was the branch of the indigo bush. She probably should have lopped the branch off when it first started growing toward the house, just as Cassie had suggested, but she was happy letting the Indigo go its own way.

She’d had to plead with the landlord to let her plant it. The woman had looked at her as if she was crazy but she’d finally said yeah, okay, you want an indigo bush? You buy it, plant it, take care of it, you can have it. Dawn had done all that and provided the tough little shrub with the nurturing it needed to gain a foothold, and it had thrived.

The Indigo had the right to grow in any direction it wanted. So did every living thing on the planet.

As for hearing that voice, Harman’s voice, well, it was better to be alert than complacent. Every now and then, she’d see some half-buried item in the paper about a woman who had run from a husband or a boyfriend, been found by him and beaten senseless. Or killed. And even as she’d feel pain for that poor, faceless woman, Dawn would know that what she’d just read was a reminder. She’d have to spend the rest of her life being careful, never letting down her guard, never forgetting that Harman was still out there, hating her because she’d done the unthinkable.

She’d defied him. Worse, she’d left him. That was the worst sin of all.

Her husband had owned a dog when she’d married him, a scared, skinny hound that made the mistake of creeping to her for comfort one day after Harman kicked it. Enraged, he’d beaten the poor thing half-senseless and when it ran away, he’d gone after it, dragged it back to the mountain and shot it.

“Bad enough it weren’t loyal to me,” he’d said, while she’d sobbed and begged him to spare the dog’s life. “What’s mine stays mine till I say otherwise. You got that, bitch?”

She should have left him then, but where would she have gone? She had no money, no job skills. Her mother was dead and even if she’d been alive, Orianna had never been able to help herself when a man abused her. How would she have helped her daughter?

Dawn swung her feet to the floor. What was wrong with her this morning? She hadn’t wasted this much time thinking about Harman in months. It was one thing to be cautious, another thing to be paranoid. Besides, thinking about him, worrying about what he might or might not do, only gave back some of the power he’d once wielded over her. She’d learned that sitting through some counseling sessions at the women’s shelter in Phoenix, the second stop in her flight four years back.

“Remember,” the counselor had said, “the best way to break with the past is to take control of your life. Educate yourself. Make plans. Learn to be independent. You are a whole person, no matter what your abuser wants you to think.”

Dawn had done all that. The proof was in what was going to happen today, her very first day on her own at her new job. That’s what she’d think about, not Harman.

The new job was going to be a challenge, but she was up to it. Keir thought so. Cassie did, too. Even Mary O’Connell had given her a wink a couple of days ago, when she’d breezed past the Special Services office where Dawn was standing at Jean’s shoulder, listening while she phoned to arrange for the Desert Song’s private jet to pick up a VIP and fly him from Boston to Vegas.

“Good luck,” Mrs. O’Connell had said softly, which had to mean that even the Duchess was aware she’d taken a more responsible position but then, not much that went on at the Song escaped the Duchess’s attention, even during the months she’d been ill.

“Thank you,” Dawn had replied, and the Duchess had smiled in that way of hers that made you feel as if she really cared about you.

Dawn laid out her clothes for the day. She ran her hand lightly over the blue jacket and beige skirt she’d bought with part of the clothing allowance that went with her new position. She just hoped she’d live up to everybody’s expectations.

“You’re going to be great at this,” Cassie kept saying. Keir had pretty much told her the same thing when he’d interviewed her. By then, she’d already passed the other hurdles: a clean employment record at the Song, votes of approval from Becky, who headed up Special Services, but Keir had the final say and what he’d said was, yes, the job was hers.

“You’re good with people,” he’d told her. “I think you’re going to be an excellent addition to the Special Services staff.”

Remembering, Dawn let out a breath. She hoped he was right. She really, really wanted this job. Better pay, which she sorely needed. Better hours, which she needed, too, and a bonus she’d never mentioned to anyone but Cassie.

She’d never really liked dealing cards, even though she’d been good at it. She had quick hands, she didn’t get ruffled. It was just that it always felt, well, wrong to be part of a process that separated people from their money, even in the classy area where she’d worked, the casino-within-a-casino at Desert Song, the high stakes tables where most of the players could easily lose tens of thousands of dollars without blinking.

“It’s just wrong,” she’d told Cassie one night over takeout Chinese.

Cassie put down her chopsticks and stared at her. “What’s wrong about it?”

“I don’t know. It just is.”

“That’s nuts,” Cassie replied bluntly. “What, are you gonna worry about jerks who have money to throw away?”

“I know,” Dawn said, “but—”

“But you grew up poor, like me.”

“Well, yes. But that’s not all of it. I mean, I know it’s their money. It’s just that it seems so—so—”

“Wong,” Cassie said, so deadpan that Dawn couldn’t help laughing. Cassie had sighed, then dug back into her shrimp with lobster sauce. “You are such a Goody Two-Shoes. Sometimes I wonder what you’re doing in Sin City.”

Hiding, that was what. Of course, Cassie didn’t know that. Nobody did.

Dawn stepped into the shower and lifted her face to the spray. She turned around slowly, let the water beat down on her hair, then worked in a dollop of shampoo.

Hiding right out in the open, because this was the perfect place for it. Las Vegas was always crowded. Phoenix hadn’t been this jammed with people, or even Los Angeles, and certainly not Santa Fe. Heaven knew she’d been in all of them in the days when Orianna bounced from town to town. She’d never seen streets more packed than the Vegas Strip or crowds any more dense than the ones that jammed the casinos. And there was a bonus. Harman wouldn’t come here. Calling Las Vegas “Sin City” was Cassie’s idea of a joke, but her husband would surely believe the devil walked these streets. He’d never come here unless he somehow learned where she was…

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” Dawn said briskly, and shut off the water.

Why waste any part of this exciting morning on a part of her life that was over and done with? She had to dry her hair, put on makeup, dress…but first, she’d begin her day the way she always did, with a call to the Rocking Horse Ranch so she could say good morning to her baby. Her son. The love of her life, the one good thing, the only good thing, Harman had ever given her.