Beyond Danger
Beau could hardly believe it. His father was sixty years old! The girl sitting across from him in a booth
at the Pleasant Hill Café looked like a teenager. A very pregnant teenager.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Missy,” Beau Reese
said. “You don’t have to worry about
anything from now on. I’ll make sure
everything is taken care of from here on out.”
“He bought me presents,” the girl said, dabbing a Kleenex
against the tears in her blue eyes. “He
told me how pretty I was, how much he liked being with me. I thought he loved me.”
Fat chance of that,
Beau thought. His dad had never loved
anyone but himself. True, his father, a
former Texas
state senator, was still a handsome man, one who stayed in shape and looked
twenty years younger. Didn’t make the
situation any better.
“How old are you, Missy?”
“Nineteen.”
At least she was over the age of consent. That was something, not much.
Beau shoved a hand through his wavy black hair and took a
steadying breath. He thought of the DNA
test folded up and tucked into the pocket of his shirt. He had always wanted a baby brother or sister. Now at the age of thirty five, he was finally
going to have one.
Beau felt a surge of protectiveness toward the young woman
carrying his father’s child.
He looked over to where she sat hunched over next to her
mother on the opposite side of the pink vinyl booth. “Everybody makes mistakes, Missy. You picked the wrong guy, that’s all. Doesn’t mean you won’t have a great kid.”
For the first time since he’d arrived, Missy managed a
tentative smile. “Thank you for saying
that.”
Beau returned the smile.
“I’m going to have a baby sister.
I promise she won’t have to worry about a thing from the day she’s born
into this world.” Hell, he was worth
more than half a billion dollars. He
would see the child had everything she ever wanted.
When Missy’s lips trembled, her mother scooted out of the
booth. “I think she’s had enough for
today. This is all very hard on her and
I don’t want her getting overly tired.”
Josie reached for her daughter’s hand.
“Let’s go home, honey. You’ll
feel better after a nap.”
Beau got up, too, leaned over and brushed a kiss on Missy’s
cheek. “You both have my number. If you need anything, call me. Okay?”
Missy swallowed.
“Okay.”
“Thank you, Beau,” Josie said. “I should have called you sooner. I should have known you’d help us.”
“I’ll have my assistant send you a check right away. You’ll have money to take care of expenses
and buy the things you need. After that,
I’ll have a draft sent to Missy every month.”
Josie’s eyes teared up.
“I didn’t know how I was going to manage the bills all by myself. Thank you again, Beau.”
He just nodded. “Keep
me up to date on her condition.”
“I will,” Josie said.
Beau watched the women head for the door, the bell ringing
as Josie shoved it open and she and Missy walked out of the café.
Leaving money on the table for his coffee, he followed the
women out the door, his temper slowing climbing toward the boiling point, as it
had been after he’d first received Josie’s call.
His father should be the one handling Missy’s
pregnancy. He’d had months to step up
and do the right thing. Beau figured he
never would.
As he crossed the sidewalk and opened the door of his dark
blue Ferrari, his temper cranked up another notch. By the time the car was roaring along the
road to his father’s house, his fury was simmering, bubbling just below the
surface.
Unconsciously his foot pressed harder on the gas, urging the
car down the two-lane road at well over eighty miles an hour. With too many tickets in Howler County
Making the turn into Country Club Estates, he jammed on the
brakes and the car slid to a stop in front of the house. The white, two-story home he’d been raised in
oozed Southern charm, the row of columns out front mimicking an old-style
plantation.
Climbing out of the Ferrari, one of his favorite vehicles, he
pounded up the front steps and crossed the porch. The housekeeper had Mondays and Tuesdays off
so he used his key to let himself into the entry.
On this chilly, end-of-January day, the ceiling fans,
usually rotating throughout the five-thousand square-foot residence, hadn’t
been turned on, leaving the interior strangely silent, the air oddly dense. The ticking of the ornate grandfather clock
in the living room seemed louder than it usually did.
“Dad! It’s Beau! Where are you?” When he didn’t get an answer, he strode down
the hall toward the study. He had phoned
his father on the way over. Though he’d
done his best to keep the anger out of his voice, he wasn’t sure he had
succeeded. Maybe his father had left to
avoid him.
“Dad!” Still no answer. Beau continued down the hall, his footsteps
echoing in the quiet. As he reached the
study, he noticed the door standing slightly ajar. Steeling himself for the confrontation ahead,
he clamped down on his temper, rapped firmly, then shoved the door open.
His father wasn’t sitting at the big rosewood desk or in his
favorite overstuffed chair next to the fireplace. Beau started to turn away when an odd
gurgling sound sent the hairs up on the back of his neck.
“Dad!” At the opposite
end of the desk, Beau spotted a prone figure lying on the floor in a spreading
pool of blood. “Dad!” His father’s eyes were closed, his face as
gray as ash. The handle of a letter
opener protruded from the middle of his chest.
Beau raced to his father’s side. “Dad!”
Blood oozed from the wound in his chest and streamed onto the hardwood floor. He had to stop the bleeding and he had to do
it now!
He hesitated, praying he wouldn’t make it worse, then with
no other option, grabbed the handle of the letter opener, jerked it out,
gripped the front of his dad’s white shirt and ripped it open.
“Oh, my God! What are
you--”
Beau glanced up. “Call
9-1-1! Hurry, he’s been stabbed! Hurry!”
The woman, a shapely brunette named Cassidy Jones, his
father’s recently hired personal assistant, didn’t pause, just pulled her cell
out of her pocket and hurriedly punched in the number. He heard her rattle off the address, give the
dispatcher the name of the victim and said he had been stabbed.
Beau’s hand shook as he checked for a pulse, found
none. The wound was catastrophic, a stab
wound straight to the heart. No way
could his father survive it.
Cassidy ended the call, ran over and knelt on the floor
beside him.
“Here, use this to seal the hole.” She seemed amazingly in control as she handed
him a credit card then ran to the wet bar and grabbed a towel, folded it into a
pad, rushed back and handed it over.
Beau pressed the towel over the credit card on top of the hole, all the
while knowing his father was already dead or within moments of dying.
He checked again for a pulse. Shook his head, feeling an unexpected rush of
grief. “His heart isn’t beating. Whoever stabbed him knew exactly where to
bury the blade.” And compressions would
only make it worse.
Cassidy reached down to check for herself, pressing her
fingers in exactly the right spot on the side of his father’s neck. She had to know it was hopeless, just as he
did, must have known Stewart Reese was dead.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Beau studied his father’s face. Pain had turned his usually handsome features
haggard and slack, nothing like the athletic older man who kept himself so fit
and trim.
Sorrow slid through him, making his chest clamp down. Or maybe it was sadness for the kind of man his
father was, the kind who had wound up the victim of a killer.
“Just hold on,” Cassidy said to him. “The ambulance should be here any minute.”
His mind went blank until the sound of a siren sliced into
his conscious. Cassidy hurried off to
let the EMTs into the house and a few moments later they appeared in the
study.
“You need to give us some room, Mr. Reese,” one of them said
gently, a skinny kid who looked like he knew what he was doing.
Beau backed away and Cassidy followed. He felt her eyes on him, assessing him with
speculation--or was it suspicion?
It didn’t take long for the EMTs to have his father loaded
onto a gurney and rolling down the hall, back outside to the ambulance. Beau strode along behind them, Cassidy
trailing in his wake.
It occurred to him that she could be the killer. But somehow the timing seemed wrong and her
reaction seemed genuine. The thought
slid away.
As he climbed into the ambulance and sat down beside his dad,
he flicked a last glance at the house.
If Cassidy Jones hadn’t done it, who had? Had the killer still been inside when Beau
arrived? How had he escaped? What was his motive?
The ambulance roared down the road, sirens wailing, blowing
through intersections, weaving in and out between cars, careening around
corners. All the way to the hospital
Beau held his father’s hand. It was the
closest he had ever felt to his dad.
The ambulance turned again and Pleasant Hill Memorial loomed
ahead. The vehicle slammed to a stop in
front of the emergency entrance and the back doors banged open.
After what seemed an eternity but was only a very few minutes,
Beau’s father, Stewart Beaumont Reese, was pronounced Dead On Arrival.
Beau’s throat closed up.
There were times as a boy he had wished his father dead, but that had
been years ago.
Now his dad was gone and Beau wanted answers. He vowed whatever it took, for no matter how
long, he wouldn’t stop until he found the man who had murdered his father.
Beyond Danger is Beau’s story. Mega-rich, black-haired, and blue-eyed, Beau is gorgeous to look at, and flashy. He was an amateur race car driver, sort of a Texas Paul Newman, before he left the racing circuit. Beau loves fast cars and fast women.
He is also wanted for murder.
That’s where private investigator, Cassidy Jones, comes in. She’s smart and she’s no pushover, exactly the woman for Beau. Best of all, she’s determined to prove his innocence.
New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin brings page-turning suspense to a tale of secrets and passions turned deadly . . .
Texas mogul Beau Reese is furious. All six feet three obscenely wealthy, good-looking inches of him. His sixty-year-old father, Stewart, a former state senator no less, has impregnated a teenager. Barely able to contain his anger, Beau is in for another surprise. It appears that Stewart has moved an entirely different woman into the house . . .
Beau assumes that stunning Cassidy Jones is his father’s mistress. At least she’s of age. But those concerns take a sudden backseat when he finds Stewart in a pool of blood on the floor of his study—and Cassidy walks in to find Beau with his hand on the murder weapon.
The shocks just keep coming. Someone was following Stewart, and Cassidy is the detective hired to find out who and why. Now she’ll have to find his killer instead. Her gut tells her it wasn’t Beau. And Beau’s instincts tell him it wasn’t Cassidy. Determined to track down the truth, they form an uneasy alliance—one that will bring them closer to each other—closer to danger and beyond . . .
Texas mogul Beau Reese is furious. All six feet three obscenely wealthy, good-looking inches of him. His sixty-year-old father, Stewart, a former state senator no less, has impregnated a teenager. Barely able to contain his anger, Beau is in for another surprise. It appears that Stewart has moved an entirely different woman into the house . . .
Beau assumes that stunning Cassidy Jones is his father’s mistress. At least she’s of age. But those concerns take a sudden backseat when he finds Stewart in a pool of blood on the floor of his study—and Cassidy walks in to find Beau with his hand on the murder weapon.
The shocks just keep coming. Someone was following Stewart, and Cassidy is the detective hired to find out who and why. Now she’ll have to find his killer instead. Her gut tells her it wasn’t Beau. And Beau’s instincts tell him it wasn’t Cassidy. Determined to track down the truth, they form an uneasy alliance—one that will bring them closer to each other—closer to danger and beyond . . .
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