Judgement By Fire (29 page)

            Moments after Paul,
Lucy Howard arrived, dropping to her knees and pulling Lauren into her arms.

“I thought we’d
agreed you’d stay in the car,” her husband grumbled gruffly, but the look she
gave him was enough to end the complaint.

            “He locked—locked the
door on me—he locked me in there to die,” Lauren sobbed against Lucy’s
shoulder.

Tilting his
fingers under her chin, Jon looked at her soot stained face, saw the bruises
and the blood smeared and caked around her a swollen nose, and thought she had
never looked more beautiful or more precious to him.

The murderous
rage which had been hovering in his heart swelled to enormous proportions,
almost choking him.

“Wallace, or
Rush, or whatever we should call him, must have been watching the cottage,
waiting for his opportunity,” Ohmer speculated as he listened to the final
pieces of the puzzle which Lauren and Jon supplied. “But where has he taken off
to now?”

Jon, still
crouched on the grass holding Lauren’s hand while Lucy rocked the younger woman
gently, had no idea where his cousin was. Nevertheless, he would find him. The
ties of family loyalty had fallen away, scorched to ashes by the flames of the
rage that blazed in him.

*
* *

He should be
making good his escape and moving on to the second part of the plan; Jon’s own
death. But he was mesmerized by the scene before him. He had to watch, had to
see the results of everything so far, deserved to see the agony on his cousin’s
face when he saw what had come to pass.

Jon Rush’s
punishment. A judgment by fire.

Stephen raised
the binoculars to his eyes, certain that the confusion that reigned would hold
everyone’s attention for some time. A bitter victory smile hovered on his lips
as he watched Jon race to the cottage. Too late, too late. Poor Lauren. Despite
everything, I hope she didn’t suffer too much.

Then his breath
caught in a sob of denial. Jon was staggering from the cottage, supporting a
staggering, soot-blackened figure—Lauren! There was no mistaking her. Stephen
watched in horror as Lauren sank to the ground and paramedics tended her.
Lauren was still alive!

 With greater
horror and growing anger and hatred, he watched as she struggled to sit up and
clutched at Jon. He saw her friends gather around to hug her protectively.

She should be
dead! How could this have gone so wrong? The watching man swallowed angry bile
as he stared at the knot of people, his face cast in orange from the death
flames of the cottage. Hot tears spilled from his eyes and ran in unchecked
down his face.

*
* *

“Surely, if
someone had been hanging around watching Lauren, he’d have been seen?” Lucy bit
her bottom lip to hold back the tears that sprang to her eyes when she looked
at her friend’s bruised and bloody face and hands and heard her ragged
breathing.

“Oh, God,
Lauren—I feel so bad about all this,” Paul stuttered. “There must have been
something, some clue…I feel as though I left you all alone to face this.”

“Paul,” Lauren
croaked though smoke-stained vocal cords, reaching for her friend’s hand. “I
won’t have you even think of blaming yourself. None of us could have guessed
what was going to happen.”

As she spoke the
last words she looked straight at Jon, the message in her eyes clear. She
didn’t blame him for what had happened.

But Jon blamed
himself. He loved this woman and had nearly caused her death. Hiding his
anguish, he rose to his feet, reluctantly released Lauren from his arms and
into Lucy’s maternally protective embrace.

Paul Howard
uttered a colorful curse.

Pointing towards
the woods, he cursed again.

“Look! I’ve seen
that reflection before but didn’t twig to what it was! Someone’s been watching
with binoculars—and they’re still there!”

The others
looked in the direction of his pointing finger, just in time to see the setting
sun flash red like blood on something glittering at the edge of the woods.

Jon muttered an
oath, knowing what he must do. Lauren read his face and her face went white
with fear.

Another Rush Co.
Jeep ploughed onto the scene and Warren Dillon jumped out, hitting the ground
at a run as he rushed towards the group backlit in the eerie orange glow of the
dying flames from the studio.

“My God!” he
breathed, taking in Lauren’s soot-stained and battered face.

“Stephen,” Jon
stated curtly, “and he’s still out there.”

Before anyone
could stop him, Jon set off at an angry run towards the spot in the woods where
they had seen the flash of light on glass.

“Rush! You’re in
no frame of mind to go after this man! This is our job,” Chief Ohmer roared,
but his words met empty air as Jon continued his headlong dash for the woods.

Ohmer threw out curt
instructions to his officers as Warren Dillon threw off his heavy parka and
prepared to follow his boss.

“Warren, I have
to go, too.” Lauren’s voice was so faint he scarcely heard what she said.
Nevertheless, he knew, from looking at her face, that she meant it. He shook
his head.

“This isn’t
going to be any place for you. We don’t know what might happen, or if Stephen
is armed, or … anything.” Warren knew Stephen owned a handgun and was probably
carrying it now. And Jon was unarmed and filled with a terrible rage. He
touched his own licensed handgun in its snug shoulder holster, nodded at Ohmer,
and started after Jon.

Lauren was
flooded with manic energy. Shrugging off the arms that tried to hold her back,
she grasped Lucy’s hands in hers and looked into her friend’s eyes.

“Lucy, I’m going
to go after them. I have to, if my strength holds out. I want you to stay here
with Paul. You’ve been through too much and I want you, for once in your life,
to just stay put!”

The other woman
looked about to argue, but she saw the look in Lauren’s eyes and her mouth
snapped shut. Paul put his arm around his wife and nodded to Lauren.

“Just make sure
you come back here—don’t go getting in the way of any stray bullets,” he said
gruffly.

Lauren swallowed
past the lump in her throat, swiped the wet tears from her swollen eyes, and
set off at a shaky lope in the wake of the others. Already the police officers,
given their orders, were moving stealthily into the woods.

“If you see that
man of yours, you tell him not to take the law into his own hands,” Chief Ohmer
murmured as Lauren jogged past him. “And stay out of the way!” She glanced at
him, but didn’t answer. Already the breath was tearing raggedly in her chest.
Her lungs, punished by the sooty smoke of the studio, gasped in complaint at
this new outrage.

Jon stopped at
the edge of the woods, trying to get his bearings. Freshly broken twigs pointed
out the direction of the watcher’s sudden, guilty flight. Jon had no difficulty
following the trail. Every now and again he stopped, his head cocked to listen.
Over the thunder of his heart pounding out his fury, he could hear a stealthy
scrambling in the undergrowth ahead of him. From behind, he heard the sound of
pursuit and twice he thought he heard Lauren’s voice calling him, but he was
now the hunter and his mind was totally focused on his quarry.

What a thing to
come to pass! That Jon Rush, great believer in family loyalty, should be
hunting his own cousin through the backwoods of a nowhere place, which was
scarcely a dot on the map, with murder in his heart.

His mind flashed
back suddenly to the terrifying ordeal in the Persian Gulf, his squad pinned
down under enemy fire during Desert Storm, repelling ongoing enemy attacks. The
only thought was to kill, to kill in order to stay alive. That experience, even
more than his father’s death, had made Jon quit his promising army career.

The scene today
was very different from those miles of shifting sand dunes and dry, barren
mountains, but the sheer fury and desperation in his heart was the same.
Distracted by these thoughts and memories, Jon had stopped on the rim of a
slope-sided crater in the woods left by a small landslide that years ago had
sprinkled boulders and small, uprooted pines all along its downward path.
Behind him, he heard crashing sounds and knew that Warren and the police were
close behind.

He was sure,
too, that he heard Lauren calling his name. At the sound, small threads of
sanity began to weave their way back into his mind. Pulling a gasping breath
back into his chest, he tried to clear his head. This was not the way to
proceed. He should leave it to the police!

But just as he
turned, searching the woods for signs of the others he knew were behind him,
the breath was knocked from his body as a heavy shape barreled into him. He’d
dropped his guard and in those few seconds Stephen had taken the advantage and
crept up on him.

The two men
struggled, grunting, and gasping, exchanging blows as they rolled together down
the steep slope. The skeletons of dead pines tore at them and sharp boulders
cut and bruised, loose rocks sliding down with the two struggling figures. Both
men hit bottom and lay winded, panting in each other’s arms like lovers in a
sick parody of the aftermath of the act of love.

Stephen
recovered first, pushing his advantage of surprise. He struggled to his knees,
pinning Jon to the rough, rocky ground, gun held loosely in his hand, his eyes
made wild with the fury of hatred.

“Now,
Cousin,”
he spat the word out, “How does it feel to be the loser? How does it feel to
know that everything you ever had is about to be taken from you?”

Jon was silent
for a few seconds, unable to answer the madness that glittered in his cousin’s
eyes.

“Stephen,” he
said slowly, “I don’t know what this is about…”

Stephen’s harsh
laughter rang through the clearing and crows, silenced by the sudden noisy
intrusion, took to the air with a grim squawking.

“No, the irony
is, you probably don’t know. So wrapped up in your own perfection!” Stephen’s
voice was harsh with the pent-up hatred in his soul. “Your father cheated mine
out of his rights to the company. It killed my mother. Did you know that? Your
holier than thou, good ol’ boy father was responsible for the death of my
mother. She died from hardship and sorrow.  My Dad…couldn’t live without her…”

“Your father
drank himself to death!”

“Because
your
cheating, lying father had destroyed everybody he’d ever loved! And took
them both from me!” For just a moment Stephen looked like the small, scared boy
he had been when Jon’s father had first brought him back to the family home after
the funeral. The child’s vulnerable look was soon eclipsed by the hatred that
filled the adult.

“All I ever
wanted was to make something of my life, to have something for myself, not to
live on the handouts of my rich cousin. Did you know that people laughed at me,
that they never gave me credit for anything I did at the company? Everything
was dismissed as being easily come by because I was the boss’s family.”

“So you decided
to prove your worth by stealing?” Jon ground out, trying to stall any further
moves by Stephen while he studied the terrain, hoping to find something that
would give him an advantage over the man who knelt on his chest, gun aimed at
his head.

*
* *

            Lauren had arrived at
the scene just moments after Warren and several police officers; all the lawmen
were concealed behind rocks and trees overlooking the grim hollow where the
deadly scene was being played out below them. With shocked eyes, she saw they
had all drawn their guns but were helpless to take action because the two men
below were so tightly entwined.

Mutely, she
appealed to Warren, but he pulled her down beside him, shaking his head. Lauren
pressed close against the rocky hillside, heedless of the sharp stones and
scrub thorn tearing cruelly at her bare skin as she witnessed the terrible
scene below her.

*
* *

“Yes, I stole!
But it was money that should have rightfully been mine!” Stephen exclaimed.
“And I was using it to build something of my own, so that I could leave Rush
Co. and all its rottenness behind! I wasn’t hurting anyone—but then things went
wrong. My side of the family never had the luck that yours had!”

“You weren’t
hurting anyone? What about Pippa Williams? What about Lauren Stephens?”

“That came
later when I realized it was all going wrong. They deserved everything! They
betrayed me! Pippa was going to tell your good buddy Warren Dillon about the
problems she’d found.”

“And Lauren?”
Jon’s voice filled with angry menace, but Stephen didn’t notice.

“Lauren was
meant for me. She was so beautiful…but she was twisted. Just like them all! The
moment she met you, she knew you were the richer prize and she dropped me like
I was dirt so that she could whore with you! It’s your fault, Jon! You, with
your greed and power—you destroy everything you touch! That’s why Lauren had to
die—so that you would know what it was like to lose everything and know that
you were responsible! And now,
Cousin,
it’s your turn!”