Part 38 (2/2)

”I'm only interested in the villain,” I said. ”Can you point me in a direction?” He tried to laugh, but didn't have the energy for it. ”Sure. Go into the hall of mirrors and take a left.” ”A girl is dead, Trey. Erin Seabright's been kidnapped. It's not a game.” ”No. It's more like a movie.” ”If you know something, now's the time to tell it.” ”Honey,” he said, staring out at the water. ”If I knew anything, I wouldn't be where I am today.” He walked away from me then, got in his convertible, and drove slowly away. I watched him go, thinking I had been wrong at the start of this, when I had said everything led back to Jade. Everything led back to Trey Hughes-the land deal with Seabright, Erin getting the job with Jade, Stellar. All of it came back to Trey.

And so, the big money question was: was he at the center of the storm because he was the storm, or had

the storm blown up around him? Trey had an eye for the girls. That was no secret. And scandal was his middle name. G.o.d knew howmany affairs he'd had in his lifetime. He'd had an affair with Stella Berne while Michael was his trainer.He'd been with her the night his mother died. It wasn't hard to imagine him having his eye on Erin. Butkidnapping? And what about Jill Morone?

I couldn't imagine any of it. I didn't want to. Monte Hughes III, my first big crush.

I know your father. I've had occasion to call on his services over the years.

What the h.e.l.l had he meant by that? Why would he have needed the services of a defense attorney the caliber of my father? And how would I find out? Call my father after all these years of bitter silence and ask him?

So, Dad, never mind that I defied you at every turn and dumped my education to become a cop. And never mind that you were always a lousy, distant, uninvolved parent, disappointed in me for the simple fact that I was not a child of your own making. Water under the bridge. Tell me why Trey Hughes has needed your esteemed expertise.

My father and I hadn't spoken in a decade. It wasn't going to happen now.

I wondered if Landry had interviewed Trey. I wondered if he'd run his name through the system as a matter of routine. But Landry hadn't asked me any questions about Trey Hughes, only about Jade.

I went to my car and climbed in to sit and wait. Paris would be getting on Hughes' gray soon. Trey would come back to the barn after for the postmortem of the ride. And when he left the show grounds afterward, I would be behind him.

Trey Hughes had just become the center of the universe. It all revolved around him. I was going to find out why.

Trey Hughes never came back to Don Jade's barn. I waited in my car, checking my watch it seemed every three minutes as the time ticked on toward six.

Javier led the gray, draped in a Lucky Dog cooler, away from the barn and came back leading Park Lane. Paris and Jane Lennox returned in the golf cart, then Lennox climbed into a gold Cadillac and drove away.

I checked my watch again: 5:43.

At another show grounds some few miles away, Landry and his team from Robbery/Homicide would be in place, waiting for the kidnappers to show.

I wanted to be there to see how the drop played out, but knew I wouldn't be allowed anywhere near the place. I wanted to know where Jade and Van Zandt were, what they were doing, who was watching them. I wanted to know where Trey Hughes had gone. I wanted people reporting these facts to me. I wanted to be running the case.

The old rush of adrenaline was there, speeding up my metabolism, making me feel a hum of electricity running just under my skin. Making me feel alive.

Paris emerged from the barn in street clothes, climbed into a money-green Infiniti, and drove toward the truck exit. I started my car and followed, leaving a pickup truck between us. She took a left on Pierson and we began winding through the outskirts of Wellington, pa.s.sing through Binks Forest.

Molly would be in the Seabright house, tucked away in a corner like a mouse, eyes wide, ears open, breath held, waiting desperately for any word of Erin and what had happened at the ransom drop.

I wish I could have been there for her, as much as for myself.

I hung back as Paris brought her car to a stop at Southern-a busy east-west drag that led to Palm Beach one way or the rural county the other. She crossed to the Loxahatchee side of the road and continued down B Road, into the wooded darkness.

I kept my eyes on the Infiniti's taillights, very aware that we were traveling in the direction of Equestrian Estates.

A creepy sense of deja vu crawled down my back. The last time I'd driven these side roads at night, I'd been a narcotics detective. The Golam brothers' trailer wasn't far away.

The Infiniti's brake lights came on. No blinker.

I slowed and checked my rearview as headlights glared through my back window. My heart rate picked up a beat.

I didn't like having someone behind me. This was not a heavily traveled road. No one came out here unless they had to, unless they lived here or worked at a nursery or a mulch-grinding place.

I was revisited by the sick feeling I'd gotten in the pit of my stomach that morning when Van Zandt had shown up at the farm and I had thought I was alone with him.

Until later, he had said when he kissed my cheek.

Ahead of me, Paris had turned in at a driveway. I went past, catching a quick glimpse. Like most of the places out this way, the house was a seventies vintage ranch style with a jungle for a yard. The garage door went up and the Infiniti rolled inside.

Why would she live out here? I wondered. Jade had a good business. Paris should have been making decent money. Enough that she could have lived in Wellington near the show grounds, enough to afford

an apartment in one of the many complexes that catered to riders.

It was one thing to stick the grooms out here in the sticks. Rent was cheap-relatively speaking. But Paris Montgomery with her money-green Infiniti and her emerald and diamond heirloom ring?

The lights in the rearview brightened as the car behind me closed the distance between us.

Abruptly, I hit the brakes and turned hard right onto another side road. But it wasn't a road at all. It was

a cul-de-sac ringed by several freshly cleared lots. My lights caught on the frame skeleton of a new home.

The headlights turned into the cul-de-sac behind me.

I gunned the engine around the curve of the drive, beating it back toward the main road, then hit the

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