Fatal Distraction Read online

  Measure twice, cut once, his father had often said.

  Handling the unanticipated events as they occurred was the other challenge.

  Tonight he had parked his rent-a-wreck about a mile from the cabin, keys in the ignition. He’d rented the small black truck yesterday from a cut-rate rental company using cash and a fake driver’s license. Then he drove to the airport and parked in the long term lot. Earlier today, he’d taken a cab to the airport and picked up the truck. It waited at an abandoned ranch, safely stowed in one of the empty outbuildings, embassy parked nose toward the door inside the building for a hasty departure at the end of the night’s work.

  He patted the zippered pocket resting on the right hip of the smooth-fitting black slacks. Two small, disposable lighters made a comfortable bump in his silhouette. He’d stashed three small cans of accelerant in a corner of the horse barn two days ago where he knew they wouldn’t been seen or disturbed until he was ready for them.

  The distance from the cabin to the barn where Jake and five other horses were stabled was exactly 165 yards. He could easily run that distance in well under two minutes, but he didn’t think he’d have to. He didn’t expect anyone to give chase.

  For the next few moments, he mentally reviewed his plans for the rest of the evening. He’d walked the route in the daylight and he knew every inch of the terrain. He’d been in the barn many times. He could almost feel the dirt floor covered in hay, smell the horse manure. An unconscious nod: He felt fully prepared, almost as if he’d done the job already.

  Measure twice, cut once.

  He stood, reached overhead, and entwined his gloved fingers, stretched up, bent over at the waist and stretched down in front, then once on each side before returning to an upright position. He took a deep breath, held it a few seconds, and then released it slowly. Yes, he was ready. He listened once more to the quiet, just to be sure.

  “Time to go.”

  He loped easily along the hard-packed dirt driveway, shuffling his feet as he moved to disturb his footprints. The drought had made the dirt as dry as flour. His footfalls, the breeze, and the confusion he expected once the fire was discovered should effectively cover his tracks.

  He glanced behind to be sure he hadn’t left a clear print. While he was slightly off balance, his left foot landed hard on a large stone and his foot slipped wide. He stumbled to right himself, but his weight was not properly distributed. He fell.

  He stayed down on all fours in the dirt driveway, steadying himself, gauging the new pain he felt in his ankle. After a few moments, he got up on his knees, used his gloved hands to disturb the imprint of his body in the sandy gravel, then knocked the dust off his gloves and tried to stand.

  The pain in left foot and ankle sharpened and he gasped despite himself.

  “Damn,” he murmured louder than he’d meant to.

  He put his weight on the foot again and the pain shot up his calf.

  He sat down on the ground and felt the foot and ankle through his clothes. Not broken. He rubbed the foot and ankle with firm pressure until he found the exact spot where it hurt. He winced as tears sprang to his eyes.

  Now what?

  He couldn’t abort the mission. Tonight was his last chance. He’d prepared too long and hard for this. It had to be now.

  He considered his options.

  He wasn’t far from his destination. He’d come more than half the distance already. He could still put the plan in motion.

  The problem would be getting away clean afterward. Could he travel more than a mile back to the truck on this ankle?

  Suck it up. He wiped the area around him with his gloved hands, then pushed himself upright putting most of his weight on his right leg. Once standing, he dusted himself off before he tried to put weight on his left foot and ankle again. It hurt, but he could bear it.

  He moved toward the barn, a bit more slowly, more carefully, limping on the left side.

  You should have been more careful to start with, he thought.

  But it was too late to change that.

  Kind of evens up the odds for Oliver, doesn’t it?

  When he reached the barn, he’d begun to perspire. His hands felt slick inside the gloves and he felt the trickle of sweat run down his sides.

  He went around to the small door in the back, farthest from the main ranch house. He knew it would be unlocked. It always was.

  There was no need to lock doors in Thornberry.

  He entered the barn and passed along the back of the building until he reached the corner where he’d stored the small cans of gasoline and three rolls of paper towel. He didn’t need much. Everything was so dry already that the fire should easily spread through the hay stacked inside and out, once he got it going.

  The barn had been rebuilt to withstand hurricane force winds, but it was a wooden structure. It should burn fairly quickly. The breeze would help. Extra gasoline stored outside for the farm vehicles might explode nicely, too, when he opened the containers.

  He looked around in the darkness for a stick or something he could use to lean on as he worked, to take his weight off his left ankle. He found a shovel used to muck out the stalls and picked it up. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

  The entire leg throbbed. But he couldn’t turn back. He had plenty of time. He’d get it done.

  Jake, the stallion that had belonged to Eric Sullivan, whinnied a bit when he poured the gasoline near his stall. All six of the horses smelled the fumes before he started the fire. They moved, pawed the ground, and bobbed their heads. They sensed him, knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. They whinnied louder. He had to hurry.

  Three of the barn’s windows were open. He considered closing them, but decided the additional oxygen would only help the fires’ growth and extend Jake’s life. He couldn’t have Jake die too soon from smoke inhalation; he wanted Oliver to hear Jake’s cries as long as the horse continued to breathe. He left the windows open.

  He soaked the rolls of paper towels with gasoline, emptied the three small cans around the stalls and tossed the cans into the corner. He knew they’d be found, but he didn’t care. There was no way the cans could be tied back to him.

  Leaning heavily on the shovel, he unzipped the pocket of his slacks and pulled out the first of the two lighters. The second one was for insurance. He didn’t expect to use it. He’d filed the safety latches off both of them and rigged them so that once they flickered to life, they would continue to burn.

  He struggled to the main door, the one closest to the ranch house, the one he expected Oliver to use if he made it this far. He pushed the door solidly toward the doorjamb, shoved the deadbolt into its resting place and turned the lock in the handle.

  He considered wedging something into the deadbolt to secure it further. He looked around for a stick or a metal handle or anything else that would work. When he didn’t find the right tool, he decided to skip that spur-of-the-moment idea.

  Improvising was rarely wise.

  Standing back away from the gasoline-soaked paper towels and the three small piles of kindling he’d prepared when he stashed the accelerant, he tried to roll the striker on the lighter with his gloved thumb.

  He’d practiced this, too, but now, he couldn’t make it work. He pulled out the second lighter and tried to light it with the same results.

  After several attempts, he jerked off the glove and tried again. The flame fired and continued to burn, just as he’d rehearsed.

  He lit the other two fires using the same method.

  After starting the last fire, he wiped the striker to eliminate any print that might otherwise survive and pulled his glove back on.

  He tossed the lighter down into the kindling and watched the fire catch in a quick poof, then grow rapidly.

  All three fires acting together would not only support a more impressive conflagration, they would provide obvious evidence of multiple points of origin which the local fire inspector would clearly recognize as arson. Perfect.

/>   He’d made the mistake of making things too complicated in other projects; sometimes, they missed the message. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

  Then he turned, pressed the self-locking mechanism on the back door, limped outside and pulled it closed.

  He stood outside the door for a few moments until he heard the horses’ rising panic. Then he rolled his shoulders and relaxed a bit.

  He felt comfortable that the fires had begun to produce the smoke and flames that would kill Jake and the others unless Oliver could save them first. An unlikely outcome, he knew.

  Once the fires were burning strong and he was confident they wouldn’t die out, he made his way gingerly to the old live oak tree he’d chosen for this purpose.

  Struggling more than he’d expected, he was too warm from exertion and the flowing adrenaline, but he couldn’t remove any of his clothing. He needed to blend into the inky darkness.

  Using his right leg, both hands and his left knee for leverage, he managed to climb up into the crotch of the tree, where he pulled the goggles onto his eyes and settled into the sticky heat of the night to watch.

  Chapter Five

  Thornberry, Florida

  Thursday 7:45 p.m.

  OLIVER FLIPPED THE PHONE closed and tossed it aside in frustration. Helen was right. He should be at the ball tonight. He should be next to her when she announced her candidacy for the Senate.

  He’d always been there for her, taken care of her, protected her. They’d always been such a strong team.

  He cursed and slapped the desktop. How had this happened? How had he become such a burden?

  He had no energy anymore. He’d asked the doctors why he felt so tired all the time, but they didn’t know.

  Or if they knew they refused to tell him the truth. He suspected cancer. His father had died of cancer and so had his mother. Oliver had expected cancer and had planned for it.

  He’d never dreamt that he’d be shot in the chest. Nor had he anticipated the stroke that followed. But he should have recovered fully from both events, the doctors said. Long before now.

  Events. That’s what the doctors called each insult to his body.

  The gunshot should have killed him. The 9mm bullet, shot at such close range, had nicked his heart, and he should have died then, been buried with Eric.

  But he hadn’t.

  Quick-thinking doctors and talented surgeons had saved him for the stroke that followed four days later and from which he’d spent the last three years struggling to recover.

  These days his body was stronger. He could take care of himself again. Take his own showers, shave, handle his toilet activities alone.

  He had a bit of residual aphasia that frustrated him, trouble comprehending others and expressing what he wanted to say. Sometimes his speech was slurred, but with effort he could make people understand him.

  He limped a bit on his left leg when he was tired. And he carried his useless left hand in his pocket.

  But he’d survived.

  Most days, he couldn’t say whether his survival was a blessing or a curse.

  Ben Fleming told him his feelings were normal.

  “Just talk it out, Oliver,” Ben said, over and over again. “Relive it until you can detach from the pain.”

  But talking things over made Oliver feel worse, not better. He wanted to forget, to move on, not to wallow in the misery that began in the early morning hours when he’d first heard about Eric’s crash and had continued relentlessly for the past three years.

  With every day that Eric’s killer remained at large, Oliver felt he’d failed his son. He’d failed his wife.

  The only thing that made Oliver feel slightly better was to be here, at home on the ranch.

  After all this time, with no real improvement in his mental state and his physical recovery so much slower than he’d hoped, Oliver had made up his mind.

  He planned to die with dignity, to get out of Helen’s way so that she could run for the senate and fulfill her ambitions.

  He’d planned to kill himself tonight, before she returned from Tallahassee. He’d finished his farewell letter moments before she called.

  But now he realized that he couldn’t go through with it, not when she would almost surely be the one to find his body tomorrow. He couldn’t add to her grief that way.

  She didn’t deserve to be hurt any more.

  Helen would make a magnificent senator. He’d told her so numerous times and he’d written it in his farewell.

  Oliver believed Helen was the best person for every job she accepted. He knew she’d be as great for the country as she had been for the state.

  Oliver had always supported Helen’s plans.

  If only he could move aside; he was holding her back.

  “I’m so tired,” he’d told Ben during their session this afternoon.

  “It’s just the meds,” Ben assured him. “They make you sleepy. I’ll check with your doctor and see if he can give you something else.”

  But Oliver knew it wasn’t the medication at all. He’d tried several different anti-depressants before this one, and they were all the same. He’d actually stopped taking them a while ago, but he hadn’t told Ben.

  He’d given up; he was ready to go.

  He would miss the ranch, though. He loved the ranch and always had.

  Oliver was born in this ranch house, in the bedroom where he still slept. His father was born here, and his grandfather before him.

  Things were different then, of course.

  But the land had always been a part of him and he wanted to return to it. He expected to be buried in the cemetery on the property where his parents were buried. Where his son was buried.

  Oliver often wondered how his life and Helen’s would have been different if Eric had lived. Eric would be nineteen now, off to college. Maybe he’d have a girlfriend already.

  After all, Oliver had loved Helen when he was nineteen.

  If Eric had lived, would Helen have been different? Less ambitious? More?

  He didn’t know. And it didn’t matter anymore. Eric was dead. He, Oliver, would be dead soon. One way or another. If he couldn’t muster the courage to kill himself, another stroke would take him.

  Oliver picked up his pen and wrote a few more lines in the journal he’d kept every day of his life since long before he’d met Helen. God, he’d been young then. Only fifteen. But he knew right from the beginning that Helen was the girl for him, even though she was only thirteen herself.

  To this day, he remembered with perfect clarity the moment he’d first seen his wife to be.

  A cool March morning, and he’d rushed out of the house as usual, eager to feed Maggie, his filly. Oliver had fancied himself a young cowboy, like a hero from a Louis L’Amour novel. He knew cowboys didn’t make much money, but someday he figured he’d write stories like L’Amour himself, earn enough money to support his father’s struggling ranch to keep his dad from selling to developers.

  Several weeks ago, Oliver told Ben Fleming about that morning, the one that changed his life forever.

  “I rode Maggie down to the creek behind Todd’s cabin. I slipped off Maggie’s back, threw her reins over a branch, and moved to the rock I sat on every morning to watch the sunrise.”

  Ben was one of the people who could understand Oliver’s tortured speech. Oliver liked talking to him, partly because no repetition was necessary.

  “Then what did you do?” Ben asked.

  Oliver brandished his lopsided grin. “What I did every day. I took out my pad and my pencil and refined the fictional world that I thought would save the ranch and make me famous.”

  Ben didn’t laugh at him. Ben always listened seriously, accepting Oliver’s words as if they were gifts.

  Back then, the day he met Helen, Oliver breathed in the heavy sweet scent of jasmine and wondered how L’Amour would describe it. He remembered trying to find the right words.

  “I heard a sound. I looked up and saw a girl, maybe younge
r than me, maybe older. She was tall, so it was hard to tell. She wore jeans and a blue denim jacket, and her brown hair was gathered in a single braid that fell to the middle of her back. When she turned toward me, the rosy glow of early sunrise bathed her plain, freckled face, softening the edges of her jaw and caressing her cheek. The sight of her literally took my breath away. She heard me gasp. She turned and faced me . . . .” Oliver stopped there, remembering the moment he realized he knew her.

  “Helen,” Ben said.

  Oliver laughed again, a little self-conscious. “Yeah. Just Helen Carter. The kid who lived with her uncle on the next ranch over.”

  He’d known her all her life. Yet until that day he’d never truly seen her.

  On that morning she had been transformed, and he would forever associate his beautiful Helen with the fresh, clean scent of jasmine.

  “Love at first sight, then?” Ben asked. “She stole your heart back then, and in all these years, you’ve never wanted to be with anyone else?”

  Oliver knew it sounded dumb. Men didn’t feel like that about women these days. Men were worldly now, more experienced. But here Oliver was, at the end of his life, and he still wanted only Helen; loved only her, desired exclusively his wife of twenty-five years.

  “What kind of a sap does that make me?” Oliver had laughed out loud for the first time in several months.

  The sound of it surprised them both, and Ben laughed with him.

  As he sat at his desk tonight, thinking about leaving Helen forever, their first meeting and laughing with Ben about his enduring love for his wife washed over him anew.

  He remained lost in his memories until something jarred him back to the present.

  He shook his head and tried to make sense of whatever it was that had roused him.

  That’s when Oliver heard the cries, not human, but animal. They came from outside. The horses in the barn.

  What could have stirred them so? Normally they were quiet at night.

  Without thinking, he picked up the house phone and speed-dialed Todd Dale. His friend Todd was the manager of the ranch and took care of the horses. Oliver couldn’t do it himself anymore. No strength. Just getting up and walking was more than he could manage without his cane.