Chapter Two
Cassidy Jones walked out of the main house, down the path to the guest house where she was staying. The winter day was chilly, but being a Texan, she enjoyed the break from the relentless summer heat.
As she neared the front door, her mind returned to the scene in the study and her brief encounter with Beau Reese. She had wondered when she would meet him.
The senator had told her that although his son lived in Dallas, just a little over an hour’s drive away, they rarely saw each other.
Cassidy knew who he was. Everyone in Texas knew Beaumont Reese, a former top-ranked pro-am race car driver. Her dad and her brothers, Brandon and Shawn, had watched him race on TV. Close to Beau’s age, her brothers both had man-crushes on him.
Beau, who was no longer racing, was now co-owner of Texas American Enterprises. Along with his business partner, Lincoln Cain, he ran a billion-dollar corporation.
Cassidy had Googled him, read everything she could find on him. Thirty-five years old, never married, dated women for a few weeks at a time but didn’t seem to get seriously involved.
He was a highly respected businessman who ran the marketing side of the company with a talent that helped make it the success it was today. She’d been impressed to learn he donated heavily to charity, especially organizations for children like the Make-A-Wish Foundation and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Several articles mentioned he had been a troubled teen. His juvenile arrest records had been sealed, but Beau spoke openly about his past and gave his money and time to encourage teens with problems.
According to what she’d read, something had happened at the end of Beau’s senior year that had turned his life around, and though he never talked about it, speculation was that the arrest for armed robbery with his best friend and later business partner had been the catalyst. While Cain served a two-year sentence, Beau attended the University of Texas at Austin and pulled in top grades—a big change from his unimpressive record in high school.
He had graduated with honors, but a few months later, tragedy had struck when his beloved grandfather, the late Morgan Hamilton, his mother’s father, had died, leaving several million to his grandson.
Beau had used the money wisely. Reese had hired Cain, who turned out to have a serious knack for getting things done, and along with Beau’s marketing skills, they had built one of the most successful corporations in Texas.
Cassidy knew all about Beau Reese. Still, she hadn’t been prepared for the utter beauty of the man.
Several inches over six feet, with wavy jet-black hair, brilliant blue eyes, and lean-muscled, V-shaped body, Beau was a definite heartthrob. If it hadn’t been for the hard set of his features and the scar running from the bottom of his ear along his jaw, he might have looked like a pretty boy.
Instead he looked like every woman’s dark, midnight fantasy. Minus the contempt for her she read in those incredible blue eyes, she might have felt a twinge of attraction herself. Apparently just being associated with his father was enough to garner his disdain.
Opening the door to the guest house, Cassidy crossed the living room she had set up as an office, arriving at the laptop on the walnut desk against the wall. Like the main residence, the guest house was done in an elegant, traditional motif, with a burgundy overstuffed sofa and chairs in front of a white-manteled fireplace, and a bedroom with a four-poster bed.
The former senator still occasionally entertained VIPs, and when he did, he did it in style. The guest house gave her a place to stay while she was in Pleasant Hill.
Cassidy had only met the senator last week, only officially started working for him last Friday. But the job as his personal assistant wasn’t real. It was merely a cover, a way to explain her presence at his home.
As a private investigator with a Dallas agency called Maximum Security, Cassidy had been hired to look into concerns the senator had about his personal safety.
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” he had said during their interview last week. “I don’t think my life is in danger and I don’t want that kind of negative publicity. But I think I’m being followed. Someone has been asking questions. I want to know who it is and why it’s happening. I want to know what the hell is going on.”
Cassidy had assured the senator that she could find out.
“I’ve got enemies,” he had said. “Every politician has. I’ll give you some names, people I’d like you to check into.”
“I can do that,” she said. “Digging is my specialty. It’s what I do best.” She wasn’t the kind of PI who carried a pistol and ran around chasing criminals the way they did in the movies—not that she didn’t own a gun and know how to use it. But so far she had never needed a weapon on the job.
The senator had been satisfied with her qualifications and Cassidy had accepted the task. They had come up with a plan that would put her in Pleasant Hill and give her time to figure out if his suspicions were correct and he was facing some sort of problem.
She wondered what the senator and his son had been fighting about. She’d heard them arguing clear down the hall, Beau’s voice on the edge of outright fury, his father’s carefully controlled but clearly unhappy.
She’d find out. She intended to do the job she was hired for, and to do that she would have to delve into every aspect of the senator’s life.
She thought of the handsome older man and bit back a smile. She had a hunch he had chosen her because she was a woman, someone he believed he could control. Cassidy had taken the job because she thought he might actually be in danger.
She was good at what she did and she intended to find out what was going on. If his safety was in jeopardy, she would advise him to hire a bodyguard while she found the person or persons who posed the threat.
She would start by finding out what the trouble was between father and son. Cassidy sat down at the computer and went to work.
* * *
It was his second trip to Pleasant Hill in the last two days, the most time Beau had spent in his hometown since his mother died.
The heart attack that had killed Miriam Reese six years ago had struck completely out of the blue. His father and mother were estranged. His mother had been an absentee parent just like his dad, so making the arrangements to bury her had mostly been a duty, an obligation rather than a deeply emotional event.
It occurred to him he felt more for his unborn half sister than he felt for either of his parents.
The front door was unlocked, which wasn’t uncommon in a town the size of Pleasant Hill. But as Beau turned the knob and stepped into the entry, the house seemed strangely silent, the ticking of the grandfather clock louder than usual, the air oddly dense.
He had phoned his father a little over an hour ago and reminded him he’d be driving out from Dallas with the custody papers. Though Beau had done his best to keep the disapproval out of his voice, he wasn’t sure he had succeeded.
“Dad!” he called out as he walked through the entry toward the hall, the paperwork tucked under his arm. “It’s Beau!” Getting no answer, he headed down the corridor toward the study, noticed the door standing slightly ajar.
Steeling himself, hoping his father hadn’t figured a way to turn the situation to his advantage or changed his mind, he rapped lightly, then shoved the door open.
His father wasn’t sitting at the big rosewood desk or in his favorite overstuffed chair next to the fireplace. Beau started to turn away when an odd gurgling sound sent the hairs up on the back of his neck.
“Dad!” At the opposite end of the desk, a prone figure lay on the carpet in a spreading pool of blood. “Dad!” His father’s eyes were closed, his face as gray as ash. The handle of a letter opener protruded from the middle of his chest.
“Dad!” Dropping the papers, Beau raced to his father’s side. Blood oozed from the wound and ran onto the hardwood floor. He had to stop the bleeding and he had to do it now! He hesitated, praying he wouldn’t make things worse, then with no other option, grabbed the handle of the letter opener, jerked it out, gripped the front of his dad’s white shirt and ripped it open.
“Oh, my God! What are you—”
Blood poured out of the wound as Beau clamped his hands over the gaping hole, pressing down hard, desperate to stop the flow of blood. “Call 9-1-1! Hurry, he’s been stabbed! Hurry!”
The woman, Cassidy Jones, didn’t pause, just pulled her cell out of the pocket of her slacks and hurriedly punched in the number. He heard her rattle off the address, give the dispatcher the name of the victim and say he had been stabbed.
Beau’s hand shook as he checked for a pulse, found none. The wound was catastrophic, a stab wound straight to the heart. No way could his father survive it.
Cassidy ended the call, ran over and knelt on the floor beside him.
“Here, use this to seal the hole.” She seemed amazingly in control as she handed him a credit card, then ran to the wet bar and grabbed a towel, folded it into a pad, rushed back and handed it over. Beau pressed the towel over the credit card on top of the wound, all the while knowing his father was already dead or within moments of dying.
He checked again for a pulse. Shook his head, feeling an unexpected rush of grief. “His heart isn’t beating. Whoever stabbed him knew exactly where to bury the blade.” And compressions would only make it worse.
Cassidy reached down to check for herself, pressing her fingers in exactly the right spot on the side of his father’s neck. She had to know it was hopeless, just as he did, must have known Stewart Reese was dead.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Beau studied his father’s face. Pain had turned his usually handsome features haggard and slack, so he looked nothing like the athletic older man who kept himself so fit and trim.
Sorrow slid through him, making his chest clamp down. Or maybe it was sadness for the kind of man his father was, the kind who’d wound up the victim of a killer.
“Just hold on,” Cassidy said to him. “The ambulance should be here any minute.”
His mind went blank until the sound of a siren sliced into his consciousness. Cassidy hurried off to let the EMTs into the house, and a few moments later they appeared in the study.
“You need to give us some room, Mr. Reese,” one of them said gently, a skinny kid who seemed to know what he was doing. Beau backed away and Cassidy followed. He felt her eyes on him, assessing him with speculation—or was it suspicion?
It didn’t take long for the EMTs to have his father loaded onto a gurney and rolling down the hall, back outside to the ambulance. Beau strode along behind them, Cassidy trailing in his wake.
It occurred to him that she could be the killer. The timing felt wrong and her shocked reaction seemed genuine, but it was possible. His gaze returned to his father and the thought slid away.
As he climbed into the ambulance and sat down beside his dad, he flicked a last glance at the house. If Cassidy Jones hadn’t done it, who had? Had the killer still been inside when Beau arrived? How had he escaped? What was his motive?
The ambulance roared down the road, sirens wailing, blowing through intersections, weaving in and out between cars, careening around corners. All the way to the hospital Beau held his father’s hand. It was the closest he had ever felt to his dad.
His throat closed up. When he was young, there were times he had wished his father dead, but that had been long ago. For years they had simply coexisted, neither intruding into the other’s world. Now his dad lay dead or dying and Beau wanted answers.
The ambulance turned again and Pleasant Hill Memorial loomed ahead. The vehicle slammed to a stop in front of the emergency entrance and the back doors banged open.
After what seemed an eternity but was only a very short time, Stewart Beaumont Reese was pronounced dead on arrival.