Proof of Innocence: Yesterday's Lies / Devil's Gambit

Tory stepped out of the Blazer and looked past the few graying buildings with broken windows and rotting timbers. Her gaze wandered past the small group of paddocks that had been used to hold the purebred Quarter Horses as well as their not-so-blue-blooded counterparts. Five years before, this small parcel of land had been the center of a horse swindle and insurance scam so large and intricate that it had become a statewide scandal. Now it was nothing more than a neglected, rather rocky, useless few acres of pine and sagebrush with a remarkable view. In the distance to the east, barely discernible to the naked eye were the outbuildings and main house of the Lazy W. From her viewpoint on the ridge, Tory could make out the gray house, the barn, toolshed and stables. Closer to the mountains she saw the spring-fed lake on the northwestern corner of the Lazy W. The green and gold grassland near the lake was dotted with grazing cattle.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Trask said.

Tory jerked her head around and found that he was staring at her. The vibrant intensity of his gaze made her heartbeat quicken. “What?”

“This.” He gestured to the buildings and paddocks of the ridge with one hand before pushing his hat off his head and wiping an accumulation of sweat off his brow.

“It gives me the creeps,” she admitted, hugging her arms around her breasts and frowning.

“Too many ghosts live here?”

“Something like that.”

Trask smiled irreverently. His brown hair ruffled in the wind. “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said with a mysterious glint in his eyes.

“Oh?”

“This place gives me the creeps, too.”

Tory laughed in spite of herself. If nothing else, Trask still knew how to charm her out of her fears. “You’d better be careful, senator,” she teased. “Admitting something like that could ruin your public image.”

Trask’s smile widened into an affable slightly off-center grin that softened the square angle of his jaw. “I’ve done a lot of things that could ruin my public image.” His gaze slid suggestively down her throat to the swell of her breasts. “And I imagine that I’ll do a few more.”

Oh, Trask, if only I could trust you, she thought as she caught the seductive glint in his eyes and her pulse continued to throb traitorously. She forced her eyes away from him and back to the ranch.

“I wish we could just forget all this, you know,” she said, still staring at the cattle moving around the clear blue lake.

“Maybe we can.”

“How?”

“If it turns out to be a prank.”

“And how will you know?” she asked, turning to face him again.

He shook his head. “I’ve just got to play it by ear, Tory; try my best and then...”

“And then, what? If you don’t find anything here today, which you won’t, what will you do? Go to the sheriff?”

“Maybe.”

“But?”

“Maybe I’ll wait and see what happens.”

That sounded encouraging, but she felt a small stab of disappointment touch her heart. “In Washington?”

“Probably.”

She didn’t reply. Though she knew he was studying her reaction, she tried to hide her feelings. That she wanted him to stay in Sinclair was more than foolish, it was downright stupid, she thought angrily. The man had sent her father to jail, for God’s sake. And now that Calvin was dead, Trask was back looking for another innocent victim. As she walked toward the largest of the buildings Tory told herself over and over again that she hated Trask McFadden; that she had only accompanied him up here to get rid of him once and for all, and that she would never think of him again once he had returned to Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, she knew that all of her excuses were lies to herself. She still loved Trask as passionately and as blindly as she had on the bleak night he had left her to chase down, confront and condemn her father.

“It would help me if I knew what I was looking for,” she said.

“Anything that you think looks out of place. We can start over here,” he suggested, pointing to the largest of the three buildings. “This was used as the stables.” Digging his boots into the dry ground, her pushed with his shoulder against the door and it creaked open on rusty hinges.

Tory walked inside the musty structure. Cobwebs hung from the exposed rafters and everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. Shovels, rakes, an ax and pick were pushed into one corner on the dirt floor. Other tools and extra fence posts leaned against the walls. The two windows were covered with dust and the dried carcasses of dead insects, letting only feeble light into the building. Tory’s skin prickled with dread. Something about the abandoned barn didn’t feel right and she had the uneasy sensation that she was trespassing. Maybe Trask was right; all the ghosts of the past seemed to reside on the hilly slopes of the ridge.

Trask walked over to the corner between the two windows and lifted an old bridle off the wall. The leather reins were stiff in his fingers and the bit had rusted. For the first time since receiving the anonymous letter he considered ignoring it. The brittle leather in his hands seemed to make it clear that all he was doing was bringing back to life a scandal that should remain dead and buried.

He saw the accusations in Tory’s wide eyes. God, he hadn’t been able to make conversation with her at all; they’d both been too tense and at each other’s throats. Confronting the sins of the past had been harder than he’d imagined; but that was probably because of the woman involved. He couldn’t seem to get Victoria Wilson out of his system, no matter how hard he tried, and though he’d told himself she was trouble, even an adversary, he kept coming back for more.

In the past five years Trask’s need of her hadn’t diminished, if anything it had become more passionate and persistent than before. Silently calling himself the worst kind of fool, he looked away from Tory’s face and continued his inspection of the barn.

Once his inspection of the stable area had been accomplished, he surveyed a small shed, which, he surmised, must have been used for feed and supplies. Nothing.

The last building was little more than a lean-to of two small, dirty rooms. One room had served as observation post; from the single window there was a view of the road and the Lazy W far below. The other slightly larger room was for general use. An old army cot was still folded in the corner. Newspapers, now yellowed, littered the floor, the pipe for the wood stove had broken near the roof line and the few scraps of paper that were still in the building were old wrappers from processed food.

Tory watched as Trask went over the floor of the cabin inch by inch. She looked in every nook and cranny and found nothing of interest. Finally, tired and feeling as if the entire afternoon had been a total waste of time, she walked outside to the small porch near the single door of the shanty.

Leaning against one of the rough cedar posts, she stared down the hills, through the pines to the buildings of the Lazy W. Her home. Trask had single-handedly destroyed it once before—was she up here helping do the very same thing all over again? History has a way of repeating itself, she thought to herself and smiled cynically at her own stupidity for still caring about a man who would as soon use her as love her.

Trask’s boots scraped against the floorboards and he came out to the porch. She didn’t turn around but knew that he was standing directly behind her. The warmth of his breath fanned her hair. For one breathless instant she thought that his strong arms might encircle her waist.

“So what did you find, senator?” she asked, breaking the tense silence.

“Nothing,” he replied.

The “I told you so” she wanted to flaunt in his face died within her. When she turned to face him, Tory noticed that Trask suddenly looked older than his thirty-six years. The brackets near the corners of his mouth had become deep grooves.

“Go ahead, say it,” he said, as if reading her mind.

She let out a disgusted breath of air. “I think we’re both too old for those kinds of games, don’t you?”

He leaned against the building and crossed his arms over his chest. “So the little girl has grown up.”

“I wasn’t a little girl,” she protested. “I was twenty-two...”

“Going on fifteen.”

“That’s not nice, senator.”

“Face it, Tory,” he said softly. “You’d been to college, sure, and you’d worked on the ranch, but in a lot of ways—” he touched her lightly on the nape of her neck with one long familiar finger, her skin quivered beneath his touch “—you were an innocent.”

She angled her head up defiantly. “Just because I hadn’t known a lot of men,” she began to argue.

“That wasn’t it, and you know it,” Trask said, his fingers stopping the teasing motion near her collar. “I was talking about the way you looked up to your father, the fact that you couldn’t make a decision without him, your dependency on him.”

“I respected my father, if that’s what you mean.”