Where There's Smoke

“Your father didn’t need my love. He got it from whores all over the world. And he flaunted them in my face. He was with one the day you were born.” She drew herself up and took several labored breaths.

“The only good thing that came out of my marriage to Clark Tackett Junior was your brother.”

“Saint Clark,” Key said with a sneer. “Maybe he wasn’t as saintly as you think. Tonight I was talking about him with his former mistress. Seems Dr. Mallory blames Clark for packing her and her family off to Central America and getting them shot. She asked me to take her down there and help bring back her daughter’s remains. Ain’t that a bitch?”

“You aren’t considering it, are you?” Janellen looked at him aghast.

“Why shouldn’t I? Her money’s green.”

“There’s still a revolution going on down there. People are being slaughtered every day.”

Although he’d responded to Janellen, his eyes never left Jody. “Dr. Mallory thinks we Tacketts owe her this. In exchange for my services, she’s agreed to leave Eden Pass and never come back.”

“You are not to do it, do you understand me?” Jody’s voice quivered with wrath.

“Even if it means ridding us of Lara Mallory?”

“You can’t trust her to keep her word. Under no circumstances are you to even consider going to Central America with her.”

He placed his hand over his heart. “Why, Mother, your concern for my safety is touching.”

“I don’t give a goddamn about your safety. My only concern is to protect the remaining shreds of Clark’s reputation. If you go anywhere with that whore, you deserve no better than to get your damn-fool head blown off.”

Janellen covered a gasp with her hand and sank back into her chair.

“Why don’t you go ahead and say it, Jody?” Key shouted. “If you can’t have Clark, you’d just as soon see me dead, too.”

Jody swept up her pack of cigarettes and lighter, turned, and marched from the dining room.

For the longest time his rigid arms braced him against the back of his chair. His knuckles turned white against the polished oak, as though at any second he might pick up the chair and heave it through the dining room window.

Until she spoke, he’d forgotten that Janellen was there. “What you said was so… so horrible, Mama was too angry to refute you.”

He looked at her bleakly. The muscles in his arms relaxed, and his hands dropped to his sides. Turning on his heel, he started for the door. “You’re wrong, Janellen. She didn’t refute me because I spoke the truth.”

The lamp on the nightstand came on. Lara woke up instantly and rolled toward the light, then sprang to a sitting position, her heart in her throat. “What are you doing in here? How’d you get in?”

“I picked the lock on the back door,” Key replied. “You forgot to change the code on your alarm.”

His eyes were drawn down to her bare breasts. Lara, still trying to orient herself, didn’t scramble for cover. His gaze remained fixed on her for several moments. Then, swearing softly, he snatched up the robe lying across the foot of her bed and tossed it to her.

“Put that on. We need to talk.”

Still dazed from awakening to find him in her bedroom, she followed his instructions without argument. She sat on the edge of the bed.

Key paced along the footboard, gnawing on his lower lip. Suddenly he stopped and looked at her. “We’d never get clearance to land. Have you thought of that?”

She was muzzy from the abrupt manner in which she’d been awakened. “No. I mean, yes.” She drew a head-clearing breath and pushed her hair off her face. “No, we’d never get clearance to land, and yes, of course I’ve given it a lot of thought.”

“Well?”

“I’ve got a map marking a private landing strip.”

“A WAC?”

“A what?”

“A World Aeronautical Chart. A map specifically for pilots.”