Night of Shadows (15 page)

"Why…you. Why didn't tell me
you were awake? You are no gentleman, sir!"

Melinda tried to pull away, but Mac
reached over and grabbed her. He took her in his arms and kissed her lips
softly. "There's more where that came from — after we get out of
this."

Mac released her and climbed to his
feet, surprisingly agile after having just been smashed over the head. Like a
caged animal, he examined every nook, every corner of the room.

"We're in deep trouble,"
he announced.

Melinda stayed seated where she was
on the floor, as he peered down at her with exasperation.

"You know," he said with
exaggerated patience. "I thought there was no way you could mess things up
this time. I guess I underestimated you."

"Maybe," Melinda said,
feeling slightly defensive. "And maybe it's time you told me everything — like
you should have from the beginning."

"I didn't know what was going
on — not until Preston came back from Ruidoso. I wanted to tell you then,
believe me, but…"

He didn't get the chance to finish.
At that moment, the door was flung open. Two of their captors, accompanied by
Roy Finch, entered the building. Mac tensed up as though ready to fight his way
out. But they all held guns.

Melinda had to force herself not to
cringe away at her first close-up sight of Roy Finch, who towered above his two
comrades. He was smiling pleasantly enough. But a sadistic glint in his wideset
gray eyes sent shivers up her spine. He gazed down at her, assessing her.

"So, at last, we finally meet
in person," he said. "I can't say it's a pleasure. I should have
finished you off in Ruidoso."

"So it was you in the
car," Melinda said dully.

"Driving the car. It was quite
careless of me to miss like that."

"But..why try to kill me?"
Melinda asked.

"You were prying into my past. And
you found out I had a record. If something like that got out, it could cause
problems between me and my new business associates. Connie is one hundred
percent loyal to me, you know. And she was very concerned. I guess you didn't
know your sister's two friends work for me now. I often have — guests — that
need entertaining. The girls are paid well."

"They're
prostitutes
?"

"I prefer the term
escorts." Finch shifted his gaze to Mac. "You weren't buying any of
it, though, were you? And Debbie tried so hard to make you happy."

"She wasn't my type," Mac
said dryly.

Finch just laughed, and looked back
down at Melinda. "And I suppose this little wildcat
is
your type?
Well, I'll say one thing. You and your sister both seem to have a real talent for
interfering in things that are none of your damned business. Bad habits like
that tend to be fatal."

Though icy fear made Melinda want
to stay cringing on the floor, pride forced her to climb to her feet to meet
her oppressor eye-to-eye. Mac reached down to help her up, and put his arm
protectively around her.

"What have you done to
Joan?" Melinda demanded.

Finch lowered his gun, though the
two men behind him stood ready with theirs. "Don't worry. We kept her
alive. We thought she might add some — extra motivation — for Preston to do as
he was told."

"Preston
knew
this?"
Melinda felt outrage growing, until Mac squeezed her shoulders.

"He found out in Ruidoso,"
Mac said quietly.

"That's right," Finch
agreed. "He was trying to weasel out on our little arrangement even before
I grabbed your sister. But he didn't know we had her for sure until I told him
at the track."

"I saw his face while he was
talking to you that day," Melinda said. "I swear, if you've hurt Joan
— "

"Relax," Finch interrupted
with a tone of false congeniality. "She's fine. In fact, you'll be seeing
her soon. She'll be brought here to join you while we decide what to do with
the three of you."

"Hasn't that been decided
already?" Mac asked grimly.

Finch clucked his tongue and shook
his head disapprovingly. "That's very crude of you to ask, McClure. And
here I was trying to spare the little lady's feelings."

"Just tell us," Melinda
said angrily.

"Well, if you must know."
Finch appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. "An airplane accident is
so messy. And a terrible waste of an expensive machine. But it's such a
convenient way to get rid of multiple bodies without a bunch of nosy questions
being asked later."

"A plane crash," Mac
repeated dully.

 "Don't worry. You won't feel a
thing when it happens. You'll all be alive, but unconscious, when we put you on
the plane. Wesley, my backup pilot, happens to be a very good parachutist. He'll
bail out when he reaches open desert. In the wreckage, it'll look like Preston
was the pilot. We don't want any screw-ups with the coroner about time of
death, so we have to keep you all alive until Preston gets back."

When Mac and Melinda fell into a
horrified silence, Finch smiled gleefully.

"What? No more questions? Well,
I'm sure you'll want to know the rest of the story since you won't be around
later to hear it."

Finch exchanged a few laughs with
his henchmen, causing chills to go up Melinda's spine.

"So here's how it goes. We'll
plant a story about how Preston found out his wife was hiding from him in
Phoenix following a lover's quarrel. They had a touching reconciliation when
they talked it over on the phone. And then the McClure brothers, accompanied by
Joan's loving sister, borrowed my plane I so generously loaned to them to fly
out and pick Joan up. And on the way back home — well, such a tragedy."

"Can we go to the funeral,
boss?" One of the gunmen derisively called out the question.

Finch grinned malevolently. "Of
course. We'll all go. And I'll even send a funeral wreath. A neighborly thing
to do, don't you think? I have papers in the works with Preston to buy out and
take over Sacramento Ranch in the event he can't pay off his debts to me. So, in
the end, it'll all be mine. Black Gold. Everything."

Melinda felt Mac's arm squeeze
tighter around her as Roy Finch turned a hate-filled gaze on him.

"I understand why this woman was
found snooping around. She's been nothing but trouble from the start. But you,
McClure? What are you doing here?" He gave Mac a sharp look. "Your
brother didn't say anything to you about tonight's plans, did he?"

"I was curious about the
plane," Mac said. "I've always been curious about that plane. This
time, I wanted to see where it landed."

"It always lands on my
property, McClure — private property. I could have you both shot for
trespassing, you know."

Finch threw back his head and
laughed at his own joke. Then, he grew serious.

"Did you know your brother
always rode out to meet the plane?"

"It wasn't too hard to figure
out."

Finch laughed again. "But you
didn't want to know that much about it, did you, McClure? You knew your brother
was doing something wrong, and that's why you didn't ask too many questions. It
was convenient for you to look the other way. Just like moving out here was so
convenient for me. Your brother's a fine pilot, you know. And a skilled
veterinarian. I'm always looking for talent like that in my organization."

Finch began, vulture-like, to circle
around Mac and Melinda as he continued talking, as though enjoying the stinging
revelations he was revealing to Preston's brother. His shadow moved around the
wall with him, wavering in the light of the candle Mac still held.

"Preston was a fool from the
very start," Roy said mockingly. "When we met up in the service, it
started with the card games. Innocent little card games, leading to thousands
of dollars of debt. Preston was weak. He just couldn't help himself. After I
was discharged, he looked me up here in the states. Did you know that, McClure?
I didn't go after him. He came after me because he still wanted in on the
action — big action, with the high rollers. I gave it to him, all right. I gave
it to him good. Now he owes me big. I bailed out your ranch for you, McClure — paid
off all those debts your little brother ran up. Didn't you wonder where Preston
came up with all that money, all of a sudden like that?"

"Of course I did!" Mac
retorted between gritted teeth.

Melinda reached over to grab Mac's
hand and squeeze, trying to calm him.

"You don't like hearing this, do
you?" Finch sounded amused.

Then Finch turned abruptly toward Melinda,
reached out, and grabbed her chin. He squeezed until she felt aching pain. She
could tell by his soulless eyes that he wanted to hurt her much worse, but it
didn't suit his current plans.

"Then you  —  and your sister  —
 ruined everything!"

Finch released his grip, then
slapped Melinda hard across the cheek and almost knocked her to the ground. One
of Finch's gunmen jabbed his weapon hard against Mac's back to keep him from jumping
to her defense.

Finch, shaking his hand as though it
hurt from the blow, stepped back from them both as though to put a safe
distance between him and Mac. His hate-filled eyes stayed fixed on Melinda.

"Even Preston didn't know where
I had those horses hidden until you went snooping around on my property. And
then I was afraid you would go around blabbing about what you saw. So you
forced my hand. We had to kill all those animals and bury them. Did you know
that?"

Melinda grew nauseous at the thought
of those magnificent, lively young horses being slaughtered along with what she
had deduced were their surrogate mothers.

"Well," Finch continued.
"I suppose it doesn't matter now. Joan had turned Preston against me
anyway. And once he runs this one last errand for me, it'll all be over. I'll take
over the McClure ranch. And then I'll be legitimate. Respectable. And a very,
very rich man."

At that moment, the door was flung
open. And Melinda saw a sight that made her cry out with joy. A man walked in,
half-dragging a bedraggled and very confused looking young woman. Melinda ran
over and wrapped her sister in a hug that she wanted to last forever.

"Oh, Joannie," she
sobbed. "You're alive."

"Melinda?" Joan, too, was
crying.

"Isn't this touching?"
Finch asked sarcastically.

"There's one thing I can't
figure out," Mac said stoically, as the sisters stepped apart.
"Sammy. Why did you kill him?"

Joan turned defiantly toward Finch. "You
killed Sammy?"

"My dear young lady, you left
us no choice. You drove out to the ranch that day, full of all those threats.
And you were stupid enough to tell us that you shared your suspicions with your
lover."

"Sammy wasn't my lover! He was
my friend!"

"So you say."

"You're an idiot!" Joan
spat. "I told you I didn't know anything. Not really. I just wanted you to
leave Preston alone. That's all. All I saw were some papers — just some papers
about bloodlines you'd given to Preston. They seemed important, but I didn't
know what they meant. I made copies, and I gave a set to Sammy for safekeeping.
That's all he had, all he knew."

"But that was enough,"
Finch said. "Maybe you thought you were only bluffing. But the truth is,
those papers were faked. And I didn't need anyone taking a closer look. My
animals are — and were — much, much better than the records say. You saw that,
didn't you, Melinda?"

"Ringers," Mac mumbled.

"Figured it out, did you,
McClure?" Finch looked enormously self-satisfied. "I thought it was
brilliant, myself. I had to lay the groundwork first. That took some
time."

"So you pretended to be a horse
buyer," Mac said.

"Well, sometimes I actually did
buy a horse or two." Finch's shadow continued to trail him as he walked
slowly around the storage room, hands behind his back. "As you know, I
entertained a lot of wealthy people who owned some of the best quarter horse
stock in the nation. I visited their ranches, too. Eventually I made a lot of personal
connections — including well paid insiders."

"Like Preston?" Melinda
asked.

"Oh, Preston was much more than
an insider. He was crucial to the entire operation. I had a good idea from my
connections of the kind of horses I wanted in my inventory. So then I would
send Preston to fly out alone to some of the area's major breeding ranches. He
would usually land during the night at a private air strip nearby. And someone
well placed would meet him to help him do his work — taking sperm from the best
sires, and embryos from the best mares. Horse thievery without even having to
take the horse. And without the owner ever knowing something priceless had been
stolen."

"That's despicable," Mac
growled.

 "You think so? But it's all so
civilized. We even had a colt out there from your cherished Black Gold, McClure.
I insisted Preston do it. After all, Black Gold is the best."