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By the time the fasten-your-seat-belt light blinked off a few minutes later, Hank's breathing was slow and steady.
Her thoughts in a jumble, she reached for her briefcase. She needed work to distract her from the lusty heat building in her belly, and lower. Work always took her total concentration.
She grabbed the folder labeled Haverstan Limited. The company name was all she'd been able to find in the real estate records filed after Mrs. Hunihan and the rest of her neighbors had agreed to sell. The deal was set to close in another week, but only if she agreed to sell too. Flipping through the sheaf of papers inside, she grabbed one at random. The Nebraska Secretary of State's Office logo, an identifiable if not overly creative outline of the state, stretched across the top of the page. According to the state, Haverstan's CEO was one Robert Reynolds of Stickland, Nebraska.
The problem? Robert Reynolds was dead and had been for about ten years.
A reporter with the local weekly newspaper in Stickland had e-mailed her a copy of Reynolds' obit. He'd lived a good life, raised corn and a trio of daughters until he’d dropped dead of a massive heart attack at the age of sixty-six while shopping for a new combine at John Deere.
The estate attorney in her wondered if he'd gotten everything squared away before he'd died. Many farmers didn't, they expected to work their land until they hit ninety. Most were wrong.
Checking out the sleeping Hank from the corner of her eye, she wondered if she could get him to do a DMV search for Robert Reynolds to see if another lived in Stickland. Only two thousand three hundred and forty-one people lived in the tiny farming community as of the last census, meaning the chances of two unrelated Robert Reynoldses living in the same small town were pretty slim.
Hank shifted in his seat and laid his head down on her shoulder. She bobbed her arm, trying to dislodge him, but he didn't budge.
“Stop moving.” He smacked his lips together. “I promise not to drool.” Snuggling in, he never opened his eyes.
His weight pressed against her, solid and unyielding. Claustrophobia should have set in, the fear of being trapped clawing at her. Instead, his body warmed her and calmed her nerves. It felt good. Too good. Shit, she couldn't even scoot by him in the plane without getting hot and bothered. If she enlisted his help in this mess, she'd be another notch on his bedpost within a week. Then she'd have to stop avoiding her childless future and face it head on.
Not yet. Beth chose to put the pain into a little box and shut it away. Someday, maybe.
Tossing the page onto the file folder spread open on the tray table, she harrumphed in frustration. Using her unhampered left arm, she pulled another page free of the file.
Her heart stopped.
A yellow note covered in unfamiliar handwriting was stuck to the corner of the paper.
I'm begging you. Sell. It's gone too far to stop. There's no other way. Please, before it's too late!
The cramped words were scrawled across the two-inch-by-two-inch note, written in blue ink with an unfamiliar heavy hand that had broken through the bright paper on the exclamation point's dot. Peeling it from right to left, she eased the note away from the larger page. Her hand shook as she held it up. Heart hammering, she tried to push down her growing panic.
Who?
When?
How?
She didn’t have a single answer.
That was it. She needed Hank's help. She didn't have a choice.
But she did have a little time. Three days to be exact; the length of the conference. As soon as she was back home, she'd ask for Hank’s help. Even if it was out of his jurisdiction, he'd know what to do.
Decision made, her breathing mellowed. After all, nothing was going to happen to her while she was in Vegas.
Chapter Eight
Success was only a dead girl away.
A woman, really, but to Sarah Jane Hunihan, they were all just girls yet to be turned into cynical bitches by fate's cruel sense of humor.
Alone in a bathroom at Las Vegas’ Paris Casino, Sarah Jane allowed herself a moment to let her well-maintained facade slip. Sliding down the gold cap of her mauve lipstick until it clicked, she smacked her lips together with a little pop. Glancing at the ornate, gilded bathroom mirror, Sarah Jane adjusted the upturned flip at the end of her steel-gray bob.
She'd had the cut forever and refused to give it up. Every time she looked in the mirror it was a reminder of her former self. Her weak self.
Let the world think she was a silly old woman obsessed with stamping, scrapbooks and church bake sales, it made getting away with things so much easier. For twenty-two years, she'd craved revenge. When the Lakota announced they were building a reservation casino, her plans for retribution fell into place.
Straightening her spine, just starting to develop a curve, she strode to the bathroom door. Decades ago, she’d transformed herself from that simpering secretary Ed Webster ruined.
