Black Canyon Conspiracy

“You can’t give up,” Sophie said. “Giving up means he wins—that the lies he’s told about you are true.”

She opened her eyes again and forced herself to sit up straight and look at her sister. “Then, what do we do?”

“We do what we can to help with the investigation,” Sophie said. “We talk to people, find out what they know.”

“Who do we talk to?” Her one contact on the case, Alan Milbanks, was dead.

“Why don’t we start with Phil? We’ll find out if Prentice paid him to tell the press those lies about you.”

The last person Lauren wanted to see was her ex-husband, but Sophie’s reasoning made sense. Talking to Phil was a smart and relatively safe place to start. “All right,” she said. “We’ll talk to him.”

“Do you know where he’s staying?”

She took out her phone and scrolled through her list of contacts until she found the address of the rehab facility in Grand Junction where Phil was staying. She read it off to Sophie.

“Great. We can be there in an hour.” She punched the address into her GPS. “Why don’t you take a nap while I drive? I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Lauren closed her eyes again and tried to get more comfortable in her seat. If only she’d wake up from her nap to find the past few months had been nothing but a nightmare—not the awful reality she had to keep surviving.

* * *

LATER THAT AFTERNOON Marco trained the high-powered binoculars on Richard Prentice’s mansion. The gray stone castle, complete with crenellated towers and a fake drawbridge, was the billionaire’s way of giving the finger to the county officials who had thwarted his plans to sell the park in-holding to them at inflated prices. The castle blocked a park visitor’s best view of the Curecanti Needle, a famous rock formation. Now, instead of marveling at the beauty of nature, visitors standing at the Pioneer Point overlook in the park saw this monstrosity.

“See anything?” Rand asked, crouched next to Marco on a rocky outcropping of land just across the boundary line from Prentice’s ranch.

“Nope.” He swung the binoculars to the left and focused on two muscular men in desert camo, who lounged against a tricked-out black Jeep. One of the men had an AR-15 casually slung over one shoulder. “The troops are taking it easy,” Marco said.

Rand grunted. “Their boss is probably feeling pretty secure since the grand jury let him off the hook.”

“Something tells me insecurity isn’t one of Prentice’s problems, ever.” He shifted the binoculars farther to the left, to the pile of rubble that marked the entrance to the mine where Lauren had been held. No telling what other illegal booty had been stored in the maze of tunnels. Prentice had been worried enough to order his men to set off explosives and collapse the mine, almost trapping Lauren and her rescuers inside.

Rand must have been thinking about that night, too. “Why didn’t the grand jury believe Lauren when she told them what he’d done to her?” he asked.

“People are afraid of mental illness. Prentice and his experts played on that fear.”

“What about you?”

Marco lowered the binoculars and stared at his friend. “Are you asking if I’m afraid of Lauren?”

“Not afraid, but do you worry about getting involved with someone who’s dealing with something like this?”

He shifted his backpack from his shoulder and stowed the binoculars. “I don’t lose sleep worrying about it.”

“Sophie told me you volunteered to be her bodyguard. I thought maybe it was because you were interested in her. You know, romantically.”

Marco zipped up the pack and shrugged back into it. “She needs protecting. I can protect her. That’s all.” That was all there could ever be between him and Lauren Starling.

“So you’re just above all those messy emotions the rest of us mortals have to deal with,” Rand said.

“I don’t have time for them.” Those “messy emotions” brought complications and distractions he didn’t want or need. He turned back to the view of Prentice’s castle. “We have a job to do.”

Rand stiffened and put a hand on the pistol at his side. “What’s that noise?”

The low whine, like the humming of a large mosquito, grew louder. Marco looked around, then up, and spotted what at first looked like a toy plane or one of those radio-controlled aircraft hobbyists flew. “I think it’s a drone,” he said as the craft hovered over them.

Rand scowled at the intruder. “Is it armed?”

“No, but I think it’s spotted us.”

“The captain said Prentice had one of these. What do you think it’s doing?”

Marco trained the binoculars on the craft. “It looks as if there’s a camera attached to the underside, so I’d say it’s taking pictures.”

“Pictures of what?”

“Of us. Evidence that we’re harassing the poor little rich guy.”

“Nothing wrong with being rich.” Rand gave a big, cheesy smile and waved up at the drone.

Marco lowered the binoculars, resisting the urge to make an obscene gesture at the camera. “No, but there’s a lot wrong with being a jerk.” And a jerk who used a beautiful, vulnerable woman in his sick games had to be stopped.

Chapter Five (#ulink_6eab92b9-531b-5f4d-8f8e-36a53682c802)

The low-slung cedar and stone buildings of the Dayspring Wellness Center looked more like an exclusive vacation resort than a medical facility. Fountains and flowers dotted the lavish landscaping, and the few people Lauren and Sophie saw once they’d left their car in the parking lot were tanned and casually dressed as if on their way to a tennis game or setting out to hike in the nearby hills.

“Maybe we should look into checking in here,” Sophie said as they made their way up a paved walkway lined with brilliant blooming flowers. “This is way nicer than our apartment. And we wouldn’t have to cook or clean.”

Lauren stopped before a signpost with markers pointing toward the dining room, gym, pool and treatment rooms. “This all must cost a fortune.”

“Then, how is Phil paying for it? Wasn’t he hassling you for money before you disappeared?”

“He wanted me to increase his support payments.” Because Lauren had earned more money than Phil, an actor with a small theater company, the court had ordered her to pay him support after their divorce. “But I haven’t given him any money in months.” While Prentice had held her captive, she hadn’t had access to her bank accounts, then she hadn’t been working, recovering from her ordeal. Now that she’d been fired, no telling when she’d be able to pay him.

Then again, not having access to her money had forced him to admit that his drug habit had gotten out of hand, and he had to seek help. When the Rangers had questioned him about her disappearance, he’d been living in a fleabag motel on the edge of town. “Maybe his girlfriend came into money.” When they’d divorced, Phil had been seeing an actress he worked with.

“Maybe Richard Prentice is footing the bill,” Sophie said. “In exchange for a few ‘favors.’”

“I don’t know.”

They headed to a building marked Welcome Center. “We’re here to see Phillip Starling,” Lauren said.

The receptionist consulted her computer. “He’s in Pod A.” She indicated a map on the desk in front of her. “Follow this walkway around back and you’ll see the groups of cottages are labeled. He’s probably in the courtyard. We encourage our guests to spend as much time as possible out of doors, enjoying nature.”

Lauren thanked her and they headed down the walk she’d indicated. “What’s the difference between a patient and a guest?” Lauren asked.

“Maybe a couple thousand dollars a day?” Sophie guessed.

They found Pod A and walked under a stone archway into a courtyard with padded loungers and shaded tables arranged around a gurgling fountain. Phil, his back to them, sat at one of the tables, talking with a young woman who stood beside a cart next to the table.