Jack sighed. "I'm afraid that's an impossibility at this point, miss. I do need you for a very specific purpose, you see, and I won't be able to let you go until. I have what I need."
"And what purpose would that be?" Hope asked, although she wasn't at all sure she wanted to know.
"Well, let's just say I needed to do something to stop your father, Miss Stillwater. From what I've come to understand, he holds nothing in this world dearer than his daughter, which is just as it should be. I respect a man like Jacob Stillwater. Respect him more than ninety-nine percent of the fools I'm forced to do business with daily." He threw a dark glance at the sniffling Sadie. "Your father's a man of commitment and values."
"I'm surprised you're able to respect something of which you have no personal knowledge, Mr. Fletcher."
Surprise flickered across his large features at her jibe before they settled into a cold mask.
Gone in an instant was the facade of a sweet-tongued southern gentleman. He raised his hand and something slipped and dangled between his fingers.
Hope clenched her teeth when she saw what it was—the silver locket her father had given her before she went on her European tour. Inside of it were two photographs—one of her mother, Virginia Stillwater, when she was a young woman of nineteen and one of Hope at the very same age. Their likenesses were striking enough to make them look like twins.
Hope prized it above all her possessions and rarely removed the locket from her neck.
Seeing it dangling beneath fat fingers decorated with dozens of tacky diamonds made her so angry she lurched up on the bed, her restraints bringing her up short.
"Give that back, you foul creature! You have no right to touch it."
Jack grinned and made a tut-tutting noise as though she were a two-year-old behaving poorly. "I'm going to keep this necklace. I think it'll bring me luck. You may not know it, young lady, but I was an avid, yet distant admirer of your mother. Beautiful, passionate woman. How your dried-up excuse for a father ever managed S; to win her is beyond my understanding."
He ignored Hope's hissing sound of fury as he examined the swaying locket.
"The thing you don't understand is that I have a way of life here, little lady. It may not be to your father's liking. It may not be to yours. But that's just something you'll both have to live with, the way I see it. Last I checked, God never elected you and your holier-than-thou father to be the judges of everyone else on this planet." "You're right.
Something much higher than you or I will stand in judgment, Mr. Fletcher. But until that day, I'm going to keep right on trying to stop individuals such as yourself who prey on the weak and innocent to feed your insatiable greed. My father feels the same way and will continue to do so no matter what you have planned for me," Hope bluffed. In truth she knew her father would be decimated if Jack continued to hold her captive or killed her, but she'd never let Jack know that.
Jack's dark brows rose in wry amusement, but Hope sensed his anger beneath the surface—a cold, dangerous kind of fury.
"I can see you've learned the skill of speechmaking from your daddy, Miss Stillwater."
He chuckled as he idly reached into his white suit jacket. Hope's ire rose because she believed he was pocketing her locket. Instead he withdrew something larger from his jacket, something that Hope couldn't quite see. "The thing of it is," Jack continued,
"speechmaking will do you about as much good in the Sweet Lash as being a drunkard, drug-using, loudmouthed whore."
Hope never had the opportunity to be frightened before it happened. Neither did Sadie, which she had reason to be thankful for later.
Jack almost casually grabbed Sadie's hair, pulling her head back and exposing her throat.
He reached around her neck. Hope leaned up as far as she could go, ignoring the pain that throbbed at the back of her head. She watched in puzzlement as a scarlet band grew around Sadie's throat.
Jack let go and Sadie dropped to her knees heavily.
When Hope recognized that the gurgling sounds she heard were Sadie choking on her life's blood as it spilled out of her, horror flashed through her like a blinding white light.
"No," Hope cried as she pulled so wildly at the restraints that the bed creaked in protest.
Sadie's body made a muffled thumping noise on the floor as she fell. Hope's terror magnified when she realized she no longer heard the woman trying fruitlessly to draw air from a severed windpipe. She looked up at Jack, who watched the dying woman with the detachment one might afford a swatted fly. "Help her. Damn you, help her!"
Diamond Jack Fletcher's image wavered before her gaze, but she was still able to make him out as he stepped back and used a handkerchief to carefully wipe off the blade of his knife.
"My deepest sympathies for distressing you, Miss Stillwater, but Sadie had to go. She couldn't keep quiet once she caught a whiff of whiskey, and never mind what she turned into when someone put some morphine in her veins. You heard how mean she could get.
Her mouth turned her into a real liability for a man like me ... a man with secrets of the Stillwater caliber."
Hope's eyelids began to close as the room spun dizzily. She knew she was about to lose consciousness—whether from the blow to her head or sheer horror, she didn't know—but she managed to stay awake long enough to see Diamond Jack bow slightly to her in a parody of gallantry before he exited the room.
TEN