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“I...guess she’s right.”
His lips curled in distaste, Alex leveled a look of pure disdain at Zach. “Then maybe you shouldn’t come around here anymore.”
“Alexander Hathaway!”
Zach and Alex looked up in unison toward the open screen door, where Dana stood in a thin robe wrapped around her and a look of horror on her face.
“You need to apologize to Mr. Forrester at once, do you hear me? You know better than to talk to any adult that way!”
“Then maybe you’d better talk to your boyfriend, and find out what he’s doing with that little girl,” Alex sneered. “Because Katie says he wasn’t married to her mom and she sure doesn’t think he’s her dad.”
* * * *
COMMUTING WAS CERTAINLY a challenge in Colorado ranch country.
In Dallas, everything was convenient...and anonymous, if need be. With over a million people in the city, it was easy to blend in.
Here, he’d had to stay in a run-down motel off Interstate 25 to be less obvious, registered as someone called Alberto Marquez, then drive well over an hour just to observe his target.
Not that it wasn’t worth his time. Now he knew where Zach shopped, when he usually came and went. How often he visited that pretty little neighbor.
It had almost become a game, drifting through town, then cruising out on that highway past Zach’s place, hoping to catch a glimpse of his quarry. Forrester usually looked edgy, hyperalert. As if he knew he was being watched. Maybe he was even starting to feel some real fear.
But the e-mail threats and surveillance weren’t enough. With Janet dead, it was time for the next step. With every passing day his impatience grew.
Safe behind his keyboard, he’d once managed the finances of a cocaine trafficking operation that brought millions of dollars into the family’s coffers. He’d once been a wealthy man.
The man who had ended all of that deserved to die.
Smiling to himself, he turned off the headlights of his car. He drove slowly down the long lane to the little blue house, his right-side tires on the grassy edge to limit the noise, then eased the car around so it faced the highway again.
From a nearby hill he’d watched the gray SUV leave earlier in the evening. By three o’clock in the morning he knew the guy wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
Perfect planning. He opened his car door and stepped out into the cool night air.
But he hadn’t planned on geese.
Squawking, flapping their huge wings, their long necks and beaks extended like vicious snakes, they burst out of the shadows behind the house with enough noise and confusion to wake the dead. Held back by the fence around the backyard, they beat their wings against the barrier, frustrated at their inability to attack.
From somewhere behind them came the bloodcurdling scream of...a woman?
His heart jerked straight up and lodged in his throat, quivering like a beached jellyfish, as he waited, frozen.
Surely every last person in Fossil Hill had heard those noisy geese. Maybe Forrester had doubled back. Maybe he’d launch out of the little house with his guns blazing.
Seconds ticked by. Minutes.
Nothing happened.
As he scanned the area, a ragged white form, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, seemed to rise out of the darkness down by the barn.
Horror rushed through him as he focused on the mutilated paper target of a male figure. Hundreds of holes had pierced the paper—almost all dead center.
Until now it had almost seemed like a game. The chase provided an exhilarating sense of power, an almost intimate pleasure. But this was no game. It would be a duel for life and death, and Zach would be the one who went down.
It was time to deliver the final threat.
The house would make a pretty bonfire, out here on this endless, empty prairie. Too bad nobody would see it go up in flames.
