Breaking Free. Лорет Энн Уайт

to her—”

      “Doesn’t mean she pulled the trigger! It’s just not logical to think an eighty-year-old is going to sneak out of her house late at night to go kill her neighbor in someone else’s barn miles away. And there’s no way in hell Louisa—a woman everyone knows loves horses more than people, and who owes her livelihood to the industry—would burn someone else’s Thoroughbreds.” Frustration burned into her eyes, making them crackle deep emerald against her tired complexion, and all Dylan could think about was sex.

      “What else do you have on her?” she demanded.

      “Megan, we have a witness placing her at Lochlain Racing shortly before the blaze broke out. The description of the slate-gray Holden seen fleeing the arson scene matches her truck. The soil in her Holden’s tires was also a match to Lochlain soil. The courts had been about to rule in Whittleson’s favor on the Lake Dingo ownership issue. Phone records show Louisa called Whittleson’s mobile at Sydney airport just before he was due to board a plane for a safari in Kenya. Then he mysteriously abandoned that flight to head to Lochlain, where he was killed in the barn. With her gun. A weapon she used to shoot him before.”

      Her brows drew low. “Oh, and tell me why she might have lured Sam to Lochlain Racing?”

      Dylan had no idea. It didn’t make sense. Yet.

      However, Whittleson’s phone records showed he’d placed a call to his son Daniel, the head trainer at Lochlain, just prior to receiving Louisa’s call at the airport. The incoming call before that had come from Whittleson’s lawyer, who later confirmed he’d called his client to let him know the lake-ownership issue was likely going to come down in Whittleson’s favor. Whittleson could conceivably have tried to call his son with this good news, and upon getting Daniel’s voice mail, decided to abandon the safari and drive to Lochlain to tell him personally. It was, after all, news that would save Whittleson Stud, which had meant absolutely everything to the debtridden sixty-one-year-old. Life had finally been on the upturn for the Whittlesons the night Sam was murdered.

      “You’re not her lawyer, Megan,” Dylan said quietly. “And I really am not at liberty to discuss the investigation further with you.”

      “Damn you,” she muttered in exasperation. “For a moment there I…I thought…” She dragged her hand through her hair, and Dylan noticed she was shaking. “I don’t know what I thought. That maybe you were a nice guy, or…something.”

      Her words cut deeper than he should allow them. “I’m a cop, Megan. Just doing my job.”

      Her jaw tensed with sudden resolve. “Robert D’Angelo will be here within a few hours,” she said, eyes searing into his. “And I’ll tell him how you pressured Louisa in that interrogation room, without the benefit of her legal counsel. It was obvious she wasn’t well. That fact was caught on your own interview tape. You totally disregarded the fact she is eighty years old—elderly—and thus vulnerable. You precipitated her heart attack, Sergeant. You nearly killed her.” Megan’s voice was clear and firm. “And if you continue to pursue this case against my aunt, I can guarantee D’Angelo will take you down for it.”

      Something very personal, and very hot flickered through Dylan. “Is that what you want, Megan, to take me down?”

      She swallowed, something reciprocal flickering darkly in her eyes. “What I want,” she whispered, “is for you to stay away from my aunt. You heard what Dr. Burgess said. She needs to relax. I don’t want you going in there and giving her another heart attack and actually killing her this time.”

      He stepped closer, a combative anger beginning to hum deep in his gut as he bent close to her ear, lowering his voice to make sure he was out of anyone’s earshot except hers. “Seeing as you’ve taken the gloves off, Ms. Stafford, I have to admit I’m asking myself who’d benefit if she did kick the bucket? Or is it a bit too soon for you and your brother? Is that why you want me to drop this case, so you and Patrick have a bit more time to kowtow to the grande dame before she cashes in?”

      “Oh, that is low.”

      She was so close, he could smell her, kiss her if he dared, and she was making him hot enough to do it. “If you didn’t come for the inheritance, Megan,” he said, his voice thick, low, “then why are you really both here out of the blue?”

      She blushed, eyes flickering.

      And Dylan knew a liar when he saw one.

      He’d stomached his fair share in police interrogation rooms, and her reaction made his heart turn cold, his unbidden lust for her simply hardening his resolve to win this one.

      “How much do you really know about your aunt, anyway?” he said, watching her eyes closely, waiting for them to give her away again, trying to ignore the faint scent of sun lotion that lingered on her skin, reminding him of family summers at Bateman’s Bay, of happier times. “Because I suspect I know Louisa a helluva lot better than you do, Megan Stafford. I know just what she is capable of. I’ve seen the Thoroughbred set close ranks around their own. I’ve seen her and D’Angelo’s father buy ‘justice’ before.”

      He’d seen it thirty years ago, when he was eight years old, and his brother Liam eleven. It had been the incident that tore his family to shreds, forcing them from their modest home in the Hunter.

      It was what had ultimately made Dylan become a cop. And now that he was back, now that it was within his power, he was not about to let her kind get away with murder—again.

      “If you want to be a part of the Fairchild team, if you want to take me down personally, then, Megan, you and I are going to be at war.”

      He turned and headed for the doors, heart thudding. He needed to focus. He needed to cut Megan from his mind. She’d already proven an emotional distraction he couldn’t afford right now. His priority was to find officers he could rotate on twenty-four-hour guard outside Louisa’s door, and he knew it was going to be an issue. He couldn’t use Peebles. He was a probationary cop. It was against protocol.

      His phone rang as he reached the hospital doors. He unhooked it from his belt, snapped it open. “Hastings,” he barked.

      It was an officer at the Scone station. He said a Scone patrol officer had picked up Heidi on her bike. She’d had an accident, but she was fine.

      Dylan froze on the spot. “Where is she?”

      “We took her home.”

      Confusion spiraled through his brain. Heidi was supposed to have been at home, asleep. “What happened?”

      “She was cycling along a dark section of Burumby Road a couple of hours ago when an oncoming sedan swerved to avoid a wallaby, running her bike into a ditch. The vehicle didn’t hit her, but she’s quite shaken up. The driver called it in, tried to help her. He was worried about a young girl that age being out alone at night on that stretch of road.”

      White-cold fear and anger lanced through Dylan.

      He shot a look at Megan, who was watching him intently from the nurses’ station. And he felt suddenly, inexplicably, naked. Vulnerable.

      Furious.

      With himself. With her. With everything.

      He hadn’t realized just how much he’d needed to talk, to lean on someone with his family issues. She had made him feel that need.

      And suddenly her compassion, her interest, the way she’d drawn him out, felt deceptive. Deceitful. He felt cheated. Lured.

      He spun on his boot heels and stormed through the hospital doors into the pale dawn, the threads of his life unraveling at his feet.

      Be damned if he was going to let the Fairchild clan take him down again.

      He wasn’t going to lose what little control he still had left over his family.

      Over himself.

      This time his family would not run. He would stand up and fight. And this time there would be