The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings #2) - J. R. Ward Page 0,27

portfolio? What about—”

“We’re sixty-eight million in the hole right now. Personally. And I think it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Samuel T. blinked. Then he held out his empty glass. “I beg of you, may I have some more?”

Lane refilled the guy and then helped himself again. “I’ve got a buddy of mine here from New York trying to figure it out. Jeff Stern, you remember him from U.Va.”

“Good guy. Couldn’t hold his liquor like a Southerner, but other than that, he was okay.”

“He’s upstairs weeding through the company financials, trying to figure out how bad it all is. It would be a mistake for us to assume that my father hasn’t misappropriated almost everything. After all, about a year ago, he had my mother declared incompetent and took over her trusts—God only knows whether there’s anything left anywhere.”

Samuel T. shook his head for a while. “Do you want me to be sympathetic or tell you what I’m honestly thinking?”

“Honest. Always be honest.”

“It’s too bad your father wasn’t murdered.”

“I beg your pardon? Although not that I’m arguing with you—and I wish I’d been the one to do it.”

“Under most policies, suicide won’t let you collect, but if someone killed him? As long as none of the beneficiaries did it, the money would be yours.”

Lane laughed. He couldn’t help it. “You know, this is not the first time I’ve thought fondly of homicide when it came to that man—”

From out front, a horrible scream cut through the morning like a gunshot.

“What the hell is that?” Samuel T. barked as they both jumped to their feet.

NINE

“—Scheisse! Meine Güte, ein Finger! Ein Finger—”

As Lane bolted out of the house with Samuel T. tight on his heels, bourbon splashed from his rocks glass, and he ended up tossing the stuff into the bushes as he leaped off the stone steps. Over on the right, Lizzie was crouched above a hole that had been dug in the ivy bed, one hand planted in the earth, the other shoving her partner back as Greta continued yelling and pointing in German.

“What’s wrong?” Lane said as he came running.

“It’s a …” Lizzie took off her floppy hat and looked up at him. “Lane … we have a problem here.”

“What is—”

“It’s a finger.” Lizzie nodded to the raw patch in the ivy. “I think that’s a finger.”

Lane shook his head, as if maybe that would help what she’d said make sense. And then both his knees cracked as he got down on his haunches. Leaning in for a closer look into the shallow hole—

Holy … shit. It was a finger. A human finger.

The skin was marked with dirt, but you could see that the digit was still intact all the way around—and the thing was fat, like it had swollen up since it had been cut off or … torn off, or whatever. The nail was even across the top and the same flat white as the flesh, and the base, where it had been severed from its hand, was a clean slice, the meat inside gray, the pale circular dot on the bottom the bone.

But none of that was what really interested him.

The heavy gold ring that was on it was the issue.

“That’s my father’s signet ring,” he said in a flat tone.

“Oh … shit,” Samuel T. whispered. “Ask and ye shall receive.”

Lane patted his pocket and took out his phone, but then didn’t dial anything.

Instead, he looked up, up, up … and saw his mother’s bedroom window directly above where the finger had been buried in the dirt. As Lizzie’s hand went to his shoulder and squeezed, Lane glanced at her.

Keeping his eyes locked with hers, he addressed his lawyer with the obvious. “We need to call the police, right?”

As Gin and Richard Pford came out into the sunshine, Samuel T. put his palm up. “You two, back in the house.”

Gin glared at the man. “What’s going on?”

Lane nodded. He didn’t care if his sister saw, but this was not anything Pford needed exposure to. He was not to be trusted. “Richard, please take her back inside.”

“Lane?” When Gin went to step down, at least her fiancé caught her arm. “Lane, what is it?”

“I’ll be right in and I’ll explain things.” Which would be a stretch—because he had no clue what the hell was going on. “Richard, please.”

Pford started to pull her back inside, but Gin broke free and ran across the lawn in her high heels. As she came up and looked in the hole, an expression