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Eighteen
Max saton the sofa with Abby’s feet in his lap, the fire crackling in the living room’s stone fireplace. It was quiet, the terrace doors closed against the chill, the TV off, Abby long sinceasleep.
He’d drawn a bath for her when they got home from the morgue and then ducked into his office to bring Nico up to speed. He didn’t know what he’d expected from the other man, but after a long pause Nico’s voice had come hard and cold across theline.
Draper willpay.
Max had never been more sure it was true. There was no doubt in Nico’s voice, no bravado ormachismo.
It was a statement offact.
Apromise.
He’d kept an eye on Abby in the tub while calling the funeral home she’d chosen to arrange for the pickup of her father’s body. Max was worried about her, worried about the hollowness in her cheeks and the shadows under her eyes, the stillness that had replaced her energy andmovement.
There had been no directives from Abby’s father regarding his wishes in the event of his death. She'd chosen cremation and a simple service generously hosted by the owners of the ranch where he’dworked.
After her bath, Max had set her up on the couch with the fire and a blanket. He made pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and her favorite cream sauce, then made a show of eating his own food while she picked athers.
Taking care of her was a relief, both because it gave him a way to feel useful and because it had allowed him to push aside the cold wasteland that had opened up inside him when they’d been talking to the pathologist at themorgue.
Now Abby was asleep, stretched out on her back, and Max couldn’t run from his thoughtsanymore.
And if he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, why were there no lacerations on his face, his arms? At the speed he was traveling, he likely would have been thrown from the car, or at the very least, thrown around inside thecar.
Max had thought immediately of his father when Doctor Kowalski had explained the inconsistency. His father had also died in a car accident on a dark desert road. He hadn’t had any alcohol in his system — that had been a special touch just for Abby — but there weresimilarities.
Max’s father had been stone cold sober when he’d run off the road on a straight stretch that a twelve-year-old could have driven. But like Abby’s dad, he’d been found without aseatbelt.
The windshield had broken, which had caused enough injury to Donald Cartwright’s face that his lack of a seatbelt was plausible to thepolice.
But it had never been plausible to Max, because his father had always worn a seatbelt. Max used to tease him about it. His father put it on if he moved the car from one parking space to another and left it on when he cut the engine to wait for Max before he was old enough todrive.
That his father would be driving through the desert at one in the morning without a seatbelt had been the biggest of all of Max’s questions about the night his fatherdied.
In the end, the autopsy report had indicated a heart attack — enough reason for his father to drive off the road when there was no evidence anyone had been around — and the lacerations on his father’s face had supported the finding that he hadn’t been wearing aseatbelt.
His father had been in good physical health, but after Jason’s takeover of Cartwright Holdings, he’d been depressed. He had been sixty-four years old at the time of his death, old enough that recent stress could have contributed to a heart attack in an otherwise healthyman.
But the seatbelt had never sat right withMax.
And now he knewwhy.
Now new questions pushed at his consciousness. Had his father really had a heart attack? Or had he been given something to make it look like a heart attack in the same way Abby’s father had been force-fed alcohol? Had his father been conscious when he went off the road? Had he been aware that someone was orchestrating hisdeath?
Had he been in pain? Had he beenafraid?
Max pushed the questions down, grateful for the weight of Abby’s feet on his lap. Grateful for the necessity of taking care of her, seeing her though the next few days and all that would entail. Grateful for the desire that remained to build a future withher.
Because without her, there was a good chance he would be on his way to the Tangier, heavily armed and determined to shoot his way into Jason’s suite, even at the expense of his ownlife.
He forced himself to call on the patience he’d cultivated under Nico’s tutelage. Acting on his desire to eviscerate Jason in the moment would be a mistake. This was when patience counted — when you wanted to toss off its binds, throw caution to the wind, and rage and rage andrage.
The ringing of his phone pulled him back to the present. He slid Abby’s feet off his lap and stood, pulling the phone from his pocket and looking at thedisplay.
Unknown.
He hurried onto the terrace before the ring could wake Abby, stepping outside and shutting the door to thehouse.
