was waiting for Beau in his office. As Beau stepped in and closed the door, Mason turned from where he stood at the window looking out.
“You have the best view in the entire building,” he said in answer to Beau’s unasked question as to what he was doing in the boss’s office. Mason knew him too well, anticipating that he would come back here rather than go to that huge empty house alone.
“It’s not a bad view,” Bonner agreed, even though he knew the view had nothing to do with why Mason was waiting for him.
“Is everything all right?” Mason asked as he moved to the bar to make them both a drink as he always did.
Beau took a seat behind his desk. Mason had lived down the road and been like family since they were kids, both going their own ways for a while, but ending up back in Texas. Beau had offered his old friend a job and Mason, who was as smart as anyone when it came to money, had taken it.
“Why wouldn’t everything be all right?” Beau asked, wondering what Mason had heard.
“Dixie?” Mason asked, turning from the bar with a glass in each hand.
Bonner took the Scotch Mason offered him. He didn’t need any more to drink today but he never turned down Scotch—especially the good stuff he kept stocked in his office.
He was tired, worn out and discouraged. This wasn’t the way it should have been. He was rich, damn it. He’d always thought that once he had enough money all his troubles would just fade away. Even those from the past.
“Dixie?” he repeated, pretending he didn’t know what Mason was getting at.
“She up to her usual?” Mason asked.
So Mason had heard. “I’m afraid so, but I have it covered.” He downed the drink, avoiding his friend’s gaze as he let the alcohol warm him to his toes.
“If there’s anything I can do….”
Mason had been running interference for him since they were kids. His friend seemed to be waiting for Beau to tell him what was really going on.
Not this time. “It’s a family matter.”
Mason winced as if Beau had hit him and Beau realized belatedly that he’d hurt his feelings. “You know what I mean. Just my daughter being Dixie.” Beau put down his glass and rubbed his temples, feeling a headache coming on.
Chance would find Dixie and, with any luck, she would be flying home in time for Christmas. He would talk to her. Explain everything. Dixie was smart. She could be made to understand.
Then they would have a nice Christmas like a normal family. But even as he thought it, Beauregard Bonner knew the chance of having a normal Christmas was out of his grasp. Dixie had made certain of that.
CHANCE WATCHED THE CAR behind him coming up fast. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Dixie’s expression as she turned in her seat to look back again.
“How many people did you say were after you?” he asked as the dark gray SUV bore down on them.
Not surprisingly, she didn’t answer, but he noticed that she’d slid down again in the seat as if she didn’t want to be seen.
He swore, determined to get her somewhere and to get the truth out of her. More and more he was convinced the earlier scene at the museum had been staged, that the guys in the black car were in on whatever was going on and that he was a pawn in all this. So who was in the dark gray SUV?
The driver closed the distance and Chance saw what appeared to be a single occupant in the car.
He still held out hope that the driver might not even be someone interested in them at all. Maybe even someone who didn’t want to run them off the road or shoot at them. Could be just some kid driving his parents’ SUV too fast.
Unfortunately he’d seen the way Dixie acted after spotting the vehicle the first time. The SUV filled his rearview mirror just an instant before he heard the blare of the horn and the driver roared around him, pulling alongside as if to pass on the two-lane. But, of course, didn’t.
“Get down!” Chance yelled to Dixie as he braced himself for some defensive driving if not some defensive ducking in anticipation of the barrel end of a weapon pointed in his direction.
Instead the driver was waving frantically for him to pull over.
Was the guy nuts?
The driver laid on his horn