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“Ugh.” She rolled down her window and let the warm air inside. It was all so frustrating. She eased off the gas as she rounded a curve and came across a flatbed truck stacked high with bales of hay, bits of straw flying and swirling from the truck. Reed had suggested she quit to concentrate on her books, which would make sense considering the fact that she was pregnant, but she couldn’t let the reporting gig go. She loved being a reporter, always on the edge of the news, ready to charge into any situation. There was an electricity to it that made her feel alive.
Still, she didn’t have to think too far back to the whole Blondell O’Henry case to remember how her investigation had almost cost Reed his job.
Doubts assailed her. Of course they did. But damn it, she was going to do this. And he’d weather the storm. He always did.
But she wouldn’t worry about that now and drove past sodden fields where cattle, sinking deep into mud, were trying to graze. Less than a mile later, the pastures gave way to Channing Vineyards. Acre upon acre of grapevines lined the road and wound upward on a small hill. Atop the knoll, a huge brick and white pillared home, a replica of Jefferson’s domed Monticello, stood. Nikki barely noticed the house because her eyes caught a glint of silver just as a sleek sports car shot through the open wrought iron gate and she had to slam on her brakes.
Her Honda screeched, sliding a bit as the BMW convertible sped past, the driver in sunglasses, his blond hair flying, not a glance in her direction as he hit the gas and the engine roared.
“Hey!” she yelled as he flew by, but of course he didn’t hear her. “Jerk-wad!”
Jacob Channing.
He was the owner of these vineyards, a man she’d met on more than one occasion and had even interviewed when his vineyard had hosted the mayor’s last fundraiser. He’d smiled at her, that thousand-watt grin, his eyes narrowing. “I remember you. You’re Andrew’s little sister, right? A shame about him,” he’d said, bringing up her older brother. “We went to school together, you know, before . . .”
He hadn’t continued, but the remark had endeared him to her at the time.
Now, though, the fact that he’d nearly killed her changed her opinion.
Handsome, athletic and wealthy, and one of Savannah’s most eligible bachelors, Jacob was a man as comfortable in black tie as he was dressed in hunting camouflage.
“Get a grip,” she told herself, trying to control her anger, while her heart thudded, her pulse in the stratosphere. She had to focus.
Her heart still thudding, she tamped down her anger and kept driving, hoping beyond hope that she wouldn’t run into Reed.
She sent up a quick prayer that she would be able to investigate before her husband found out, because, of course, he would.
And then all hell would break out.
Oh, well. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t been through all this before. She and Reed, they’d manage.
Right?
But now it’s not just the two of you. Remember? She smiled and cast a quick glance into the rearview mirror. Her green eyes sparkled at the thought of her pregnancy. After suffering two heartbreaking miscarriages, she was now ten weeks pregnant, the furthest she’d ever carried a child, and she couldn’t—wouldn’t—do anything to hurt her chances of carrying this precious life to term.
So she’d be super careful.
But really, her kind of investigating didn’t have to be physical.
But she caught a glimmer of indecision in her gaze and looked back to the road ahead. She was getting close to the lane leading to the old estate.
It’s now or never.
* * *
Reed eyed the basement of the old Beaumont mansion from the bottom step. Now the place was crawling with cops. Photos were being snapped, measurements taken, the area swept for fingerprints and trace evidence, the bodies pulled from their resting place under the medical examiner’s watchful eye. He and Morrisette moved between the crates, boxes and piles of junk, careful not to touch anything.
“Find anything else in there?” she asked one of the crime scene investigators as they made their way to the opening in the wall where the bodies had been discovered.
“Who is that? Morrisette? You’re standing in my shot.”
Morrisette and Reed backed up a step.
“Great. Now, could you give us a second?” Tanisha Seville, the videographer, was peering through the lens of her camera, focusing on the entrance to the crypt. “Damn.” To an assistant standing near a huge lamp, “Any way you can get more light in here? All I’ve got are shadows. It’s like a damned dungeon in there.”
Reed agreed.
Morrisette said, “We’re just checking to see if you discovered anything else.”
