Chapter Twenty-Three
Beau paced the floor outside the intensive care unit of the Presbyterian Hospital in Kaufman. He thought of the crash and felt sick to his stomach.
He’d driven home from the office, thought Cassidy might get there ahead of him, but when he arrived, the Lambo wasn’t parked in the garage.
He’d tried her cell, but it had gone straight to voicemail. He purposely hadn’t called her earlier, determined to give her some space. He understood what she was going through, figured she’d feel better by the time she got home.
He had just begun to worry when the police called. They said there’d been an accident, that the victim was a woman named Cassidy Maryann Jones. She was in intensive care at the Presbyterian Hospital in Kaufman. That was all they knew.
He’d been frantic. He’d called the hospital but he wasn’t immediate family so they wouldn’t tell him much. He’d driven the Ferrari the forty miles to Kaufman like a madman, phoned Linc on the way—he had no idea why—and told him what had happened.
His friend’s deep baritone had calmed him a little. “Take it easy,” Linc had said. “You’ll find out what happened when you get there. Carly and I are staying in Dallas this week so we aren’t that far away. We’ll meet you there.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m okay.”
“We’ll see you there.” The line went dead.
Beau’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. He should have known his friends wouldn’t let him handle this alone.
The evening traffic and the heavy rain forced him to slow down. He’d considered taking the helicopter, but making the arrangements, then meeting the chopper, would have taken as much time as driving, and he preferred just getting on the road.
The minutes dragged past. By the time he arrived, his stomach was tied in knots. He pushed through the doors of the two-story brick building, strode up to the reception counter, and asked for a patient named Cassidy Jones who had been in a car accident.
Behind the counter, a gray-haired receptionist with reading glasses perched on her nose checked the name on her computer. “The patient is in intensive care. Take the elevator up to the second floor. Check in at the nursing station. Someone there will tell you where to go.”
He turned and started walking, skipped the elevator, and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. When he arrived, he went straight to the nursing station, spoke to a nurse in green scrubs with short auburn hair.
“I’m here to see a patient named Cassidy Jones. They said she was on this floor.”
“She’s here. The doctor is in with her now. What’s your relationship to the patient?”
“I’m . . .” A friend didn’t sound right. Cassidy was way more than that. They might not let him see her if he was only a friend, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to pretend to be her brother. “I’m her fiancé,” he said. “Can you tell me her condition?”
“She’s listed as stable. That’s all I know. As I said, the doctor is in with her now. He’ll talk to you as soon as he comes out. There’s a waiting room down the hall.”
Beau thanked her and headed in that direction. There was no one else in the room when he pushed through the door, but he couldn’t make himself sit down. He swallowed, replaying the day in his head, wishing he hadn’t let her borrow the car. He’d been sure she could handle it. She’d driven the Lamborghini before and hadn’t had any problems.
What if she’d died? What if he’d gotten her killed?
His eyes burned. He pressed his thumbs into the sockets and rubbed them. He remembered the crash at Le Mans, remembered lying in the hospital bed, waiting to find out if his friend had survived the crash. Remembered the terrible moment he’d found out Joe Markham had died.
His breath hitched. He sank down on a blue vinyl sofa, elbows on his knees, his head dropping into his hands. He didn’t pray often, but he said a prayer for Cassidy, hoped it would somehow help.
His head jerked up when the door swung open and Cain and Carly walked into the waiting room. At six-foot five, two hundred twenty pounds of solid muscle, Linc seemed to take up all the space in the room. Carly was blond and pretty, strong and competent, the perfect match for his best friend.
She walked over to Beau, sat down next to him, put an arm around his shoulders, didn’t say a word.
“How is she?” Linc asked.
“Stable. That’s all I know.” He blew out a breath. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let her drive the car. It was raining. Sometimes a powerful car like that can get away from you. I just . . . today was the day her mother died. I wanted to cheer her up.”
Linc sat down in a chair and leaned toward him. “It’s too early to blame yourself, Beau. You don’t know what actually happened.”
His throat felt tight. He didn’t care what had happened. He just wanted Cassidy to be okay.
The door opened again and a pair of uniformed police officers walked into the waiting room, one older, with a fringe of light brown hair, the other young and dark, probably Latino.
“Beaumont Hamilton Reese?” the older cop asked.
Beau came up from the sofa. “I’m Beau Reese.”
“You’re the registered owner of the Lamborghini involved in the accident?”
“That . . . that’s right. Cassidy borrowed it for the day. Do you know if she’s okay?”
“The doctor’s still in with her.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” Beau asked.
The officer pulled a notepad out of his pocket and checked his notes. “Apparently a farmer was working outside his barn when the car went off the road. He called 9-1-1, then went to see what he could do. She was unconscious, but he could tell she was breathing. The car was upright so he decided to wait for the ambulance.”
Beau tried not to think of Cassidy, strapped in and unconscious, surrounded by darkness in the middle of a muddy field.
The officer studied his notes, looked back at Beau. “The first officers on the scene thought it was a single car accident. Driver missed a tricky turn on a slick road in the rain. But now that they’ve had a chance to examine the site more closely, it doesn’t look like that’s what happened.”
Beau frowned. “What do you mean?”
“It looks like the Lamborghini was hit from behind. The driver of the other car wasn’t paying attention or maybe he was drunk. We don’t know. The Lamborghini spun out, slid sideways, and was T-boned by the car behind. Looks like the vehicle slammed directly into the passenger side door. The Lamborghini flipped and rolled a couple of times. The accident happened on a curve, so the car landed in the field beyond. The ground had softened with the rain, which helped.”
“The farmer didn’t see the accident,” the Latino cop added; Rodriguez was printed on his name tag. “He just saw the vehicle go into the field. He was there when the police and ambulance arrived.”
Beau thought of Cassidy inside the spinning car, the vehicle completely out of control. He knew what a crash that bad felt like, knew the fear.
A wave of nausea hit him. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
“Sure, no problem.”
He sank down on the vinyl sofa, leaned back and raked his hands through his hair. A thought struck. “What happened to the driver of the other vehicle?”
“The car, a white Chevy pickup, was found abandoned a few miles down the road. Turned out to be stolen, reported a couple years ago. No sign of the driver.”
A chill went down his spine. “The driver fled the scene?”
“That’s right. Car was stolen. Like I said, he may have been drunk. We don’t know. We’ve got no description so we can’t put out a BOLO.”
The knot returned to Beau’s stomach. The police believed it was an accident, but Beau now knew it wasn’t. Cassidy had been a target. It was the second attempt on her life in the last few days. Someone was trying to kill her.
He thought of her hooked up to some machine in intensive care, and prayed whoever had done it hadn’t succeeded.
* * *
Cassidy opened her eyes. A bag of fluid hung next to the bed, dripping liquid through a needle into her arm. A heart monitor beeped a steady rhythm. That, at least, ought to be good news. But her head was banging as if her brain was trying to escape her skull, and her eyelids weighed a thousand pounds. She reached up, touched the bandage on her forehead with a shaky hand.
She was in the hospital. She was injured but still breathing. The final moments of the crash came flooding back. The pickup slamming into the side of the car; the Lamborghini flying through the air, spinning, rolling, landing in a muddy field. She didn’t remember anything after that.
Her mind went to Beau and she tried to imagine what she would say to him. The door was pushed open even as the thought formed, and there he was, so handsome and dear her heart squeezed. His face was lined with worry, his black hair mussed, his gorgeous blue eyes intense.
“Cassidy . . .” He walked toward her, took hold of her hand, and brought it to his lips. “You’re going to be okay, honey. You’ve got a concussion, some bruised ribs, cuts and scratches, but they’ve moved you out of intensive care into a private room. The doctor says you’re going to be all right.”
Her eyes burned. Tears welled that she couldn’t stop. “I ruined your beautiful car. I wrecked the Lamborghini. I’m so sorry, Beau.”
His jaw went iron hard, stretching the narrow scar down the side of his face. “You think I care about the car? I don’t give a fuck about the goddamn car! I can buy ten more Lamborghinis if I want them. All I care about is you, baby. I was so worried.” He swallowed, glanced away. “I’m just so glad you’re going to be okay.” He bent and softly kissed her lips. “You just get well, okay? Don’t you worry for a second about the frigging car.”
She tried to smile, but her lips barely curved. “He was trying to kill me, Beau.”
He nodded, looked grim. “Yeah, I figured that out.”
The pounding in her head worsened. Her eyes felt gritty, the lids heavy. “The first time . . . the hit-and-run? I thought it was an accident. But it . . . wasn’t. We need to tell the . . . police.”
“I’ll talk to Briscoe, bring him up to speed. We’ll figure this out.”
She moistened her lips, which felt dry as cotton. Her mind was just as fuzzy. “I’m not . . . not sure telling them is going to change anything.”
He squeezed her hand. “We can talk about it later.” His worried gaze remained on hers. “The police found your phone. Do you want me to call your dad and your brothers?”
“No . . . please don’t. If I’m going to be okay . . . there’s no need for them to . . . worry.”
“You sure?”
She moved her head in a nod. The pounding increased and she bit back a groan.
He bent and kissed her cheek. “You need to get some sleep. I’ll be right here if you need me.”
She relaxed. Beau was there. She didn’t have to worry. She let her eyelids drift closed. Tomorrow she would feel better, be able to think more clearly. Find a way to keep from getting killed.
As she started to edge into sleep, a final thought occurred. If someone wanted her dead, maybe they wanted Beau dead, too. She had to warn him, tell him before it was too late. But even as the idea took root, it drifted away, her mind sliding into the sweet, pain-free darkness that she had been in before.
* * *
Beau looked up to see Linc and Carly standing in the doorway of Cassidy’s hospital room. He walked over to join them.
“You spending the night?” Linc asked, though it wasn’t really a question.
“I want to be here if she wakes up. The doctor says her memory might be fuzzy for a day or two.”
“She got lucky,” Linc said. “A concussion, a few bruised ribs, some lacerations. Could have been a whole lot worse.”
“I’m glad she was in the Lamborghini. It’s built around a carbon fiber monocoque. You know, like a Formula One race car. The driver’s in a cage so the weaker parts of the car break first. It allows the energy from the crash to disperse.”
“So the rest of the car fails before the cage breaks up.”
“Yeah,” Beau said, his gaze going to the pale form lying in the bed. “The doctor says they want to make sure the concussion isn’t worse than it appears. No swelling on the brain, nothing like that. She might need to stay another day or two, but if she seems okay in the morning, there’s a chance they’ll release her.”
Linc nodded. He clamped a big hand on Beau’s shoulder. “Listen, we need to talk. Carly’s going to stay here while we grab a cup of coffee.”
Beau flicked a last glance at Cassidy, then forced himself to move toward the door. They walked out into the hall and made their way down the corridor to the cafeteria, passing doctors in white coats and nurses in scrubs, hearing the rattle of carts going in and out of hospital rooms. The acrid smell of ammonia burned his nostrils.
As they walked into the cafeteria, weary visitors and family members, some trying to keep their kids under control, wandered among the staff, heading for the food lines or just there for coffee and a break from their worries.
Beau and Linc each grabbed a coffee and made their way over to a table.
“Looks like you’ve got a problem,” Linc said, taking a seat across from him.
“Yeah.” His friend was no dummy. Two accidents, both nearly fatal, weren’t accidents at all. Beau took a sip of his coffee, set the paper cup down on the table. “If this wasn’t an accident, the hit-and-run wasn’t either.”
“Someone tried to kill her. You got any idea who it is?”
“We’ve been digging around, turning up a lot of dirt on a lot of people. One of them’s a guy named Malcolm Vaughn. Ever heard of him?”
“I’ve met him. Owns a company called Equity Advance. Makes high-risk, big-money loans.”
“That’s him,” Beau said.
“I don’t know much about him, other than he donates heavily to charity. Gives him a chance to rub elbows with the Dallas elite, drum up business. He was at the Dallas Art Gala last year.”
“You and I were both there, but I didn’t know who he was back then.”
Linc took a sip of his coffee. “So what’s your plan?”
Beau leaned back in his chair, blew out a tired breath. “Take Cassidy off the case. Get her out of town, somewhere she’ll be safe.”
“You could take her out to the ranch. Carly and I are picking out stuff for the new house, so we’re staying in the apartment. We’ll be in the city for the next two weeks, which leaves the ranch house empty. And Josh is close by if you need him.”
Beau remembered the way he’d felt when he’d found out Cassidy had been in a car accident. Terrified she might die. Sick with dread, his stomach knotted, his emotions in turmoil. He was in too deep. The last thing he needed was to spend more time with Cassidy. He needed to distance himself. Protect himself.
But he couldn’t let Cassidy down. If she was killed because of him . . .
He closed his eyes for a moment to clear the unwanted thoughts. “Whoever went after her tried to make it look like an accident. I don’t think they’ll come straight at her. Maybe I could talk to Vaughn, see if I can convince him to back off, leave Cassidy alone.”
His phone rang just then. He dug it out, saw the blocked caller ID, pressed the phone against his ear. “Reese.”
“What the hell’s going on? I just got a call from the office. Chase said he heard about the wreck on the news. Tell me Cassidy’s okay.”
“Maddox. Good of you to call.” There was a faint edge in his voice. He wondered how Maddox had gotten this number, but it didn’t seem to be much of a secret anymore. “Cassidy’s banged up, got a concussion, but she’s going to be all right.”
“She was with me at the office just a few hours earlier, met me there looking for intel on Malcolm Vaughn.”
“Did she find any?”
“Vaughn’s smooth. He’s a businessman on the surface, but ruthless underneath. He’s a bad dude to have for an enemy. That’s what I told her. What happened wasn’t an accident—you get that, right?”
“I get it. Trying to figure out what to do about it.”
“Get her out of town, take her somewhere safe—or I will.”
Beau straightened. “I’ll take care of Cassidy.”
“You better. I just got into Phoenix, but I’ll come back if you need my help.”
“Good to know,” Beau said darkly, not happy to find out Cassidy had gone to see Maddox without telling him about it. He tamped down a fresh surge of jealousy that was completely unlike him. “You find out anything that could help us?”
“I told her about Vaughn’s man, Clifford Jennings. He takes care of things for Vaughn. If Vaughn wanted Cassidy dead, Jennings is the guy who’d make the arrangements. That’s all I know. If I hear anything more I’ll call you.”
“Appreciate it.”
“She’s a good lady, Beau. Keep her safe.”
The words hit him hard. “I will,” he said gruffly, and no matter the emotional toll he’d have to pay, he meant it. He wasn’t letting anyone hurt Cassidy again.
He hung up the phone and turned back to Linc. “That was Jason Maddox. He’s a PI and bail enforcement. Works with Cassidy at Maximum Security. He’s afraid they’ll come after her again.”
“You realize it might not just be Cassidy they’re after.”
“I’ve considered it.” He was no dummy, either. “I think they figure if my PI is out of the way, I’ll give up the search.”
“Will you?”
“My father is dead. Nothing is going to bring him back. I won’t risk getting Cassidy killed, too.”
“Now you’re being smart. The trouble is, it might be too late.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve considered that, too.”
“I realize you’ve been off the streets for a while—we both left that life behind years ago. But knowing how to handle yourself isn’t something you forget. You still got that old Browning forty-five you used to shoot out at the dump when we were kids?”
Beau smiled faintly at the memory of their high school days. The smile faded as his mind shifted to the attempted robbery, the two years Linc had spent in prison, while Beau’s dad had been able to wipe his underage record clean.
“I traded the Browning a few years back for a Glock seventeen. Haven’t been on the shooting range for a while.”
“Good weapon. As I recall, you used to be a crack shot.”
Beau didn’t deny it. When he took on a challenge, he didn’t stop till he’d mastered it. Same with martial arts. Same with racing cars. “You think I should start carrying?”
“You’ve got a concealed permit, right? Wouldn’t hurt to be prepared. Figure out what’s going on. Arm yourself and take care of your woman.”
A muscle jerked in Beau’s cheek. “She isn’t my woman.”
“Isn’t she? I saw you in that hospital room. I’ve known you too long, bro. Don’t kid yourself.”
Beau made no reply. He’d brought Cassidy into this mess. Until it was finished, she was his responsibility. There was no changing that. But when it was over, it was over. There was no changing that, either.
He pushed up from his chair. “I need to get back.”
Linc stood up, too. “Think about what I said, and if you need anything, just ask.”
Whatever happened, Beau knew Linc would be there for him. If the situation were reversed, he’d be there for Linc. It had been that way since high school, and that hadn’t changed.
As they walked back down the hall, worry dogged him. He needed to get Cassidy somewhere safe.
Beau had a bad feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy.
* * *
Clifford Jennings stood on the opposite side of the desk from his boss. Mal Vaughn wasn’t happy at the moment.
He looked down at the society page of the Thursday Dallas Morning News spread open in front of him. Vaughn picked it up and started reading.
“‘A Lamborghini owned by former Texas race-car driver Beaumont Reese, valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, was involved in an unsolved two-car collision on Wednesday evening outside Kaufman.’”
Vaughn flicked Cliff a dark look over the top of the paper, started reading again. “‘The female driver of the borrowed vehicle, identified as Cassidy Maryann Jones, was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment and released the following day. Police are searching for the driver of a white Chevy pickup found a few miles away. According to authorities, the man, who fled the scene, is wanted for questioning in the accident. Both Reese and Ms. Jones, a Dallas private investigator, refused to comment on the incident.’”
Vaughn flicked the paper, carefully closed it, folded it, and set it down on top of his desk. “You said you could handle this. It doesn’t look handled to me.”
“The guy I hired is reliable. I don’t know what went wrong. Whatever happened, he’ll take care of it.”
“You think Reese and Jones will believe the attempt was an accident?”
Not after the first time, which his boss didn’t know about. Cliff knew better than to lie. “No. Franco botched his first effort, too. I’ll talk to him, see if he can come up with something that’ll work.”
Vaughn’s mouth thinned. “Don’t bother. He’s out. I don’t have time for second-raters. Call The Spear. He’s a professional. He’ll get it done.”
“The Spear doesn’t take multiple jobs this close together in the same area—it’s too high risk. He’s already made an exception. He won’t do it again.”
“Make it worth his while. Offer him double his normal fee, more if you have to. Pay him enough, and he’ll take care of it. Or should I say them. This has gotten out of hand. I can’t risk Reese and Jones finding something that could lead back to the client.”
Cliff didn’t argue. Client meant investor. He had no idea who Vaughn’s investors were and he didn’t want to know.
Turning, he walked out of the office. He’d make the call, phone the number of the throwaway used by the professional hit man who called himself The Spear. Cliff had never set eyes on the man, had only heard his voice, distorted by a digital synthesizer. There was no guarantee the man would pick up, but Cliff fervently prayed he would.
If he took the job, the hit would get done, but not without plenty of preparation. It was the way the man worked, the reason he was so successful. The reason he charged a small fortune.
Cliff wondered about Vaughn’s motives. Jess Milford had gotten what he deserved, coming to Cliff about the arson, threatening to tell the police what he’d found out if he didn’t get paid. But the senator had been one of Vaughn’s customers, a borrower who always repaid his debts, in one form or another.
Cliff wondered what Stewart Reese had done to get himself killed.