The Black Sheep And the Princess. Donna Kauffman

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СКАЧАТЬ mostly to himself, as he reread the article. “Why would Kate do something so stupid for a place she hated?”

      “We were teenagers the last time we saw either her or Shelby,” Rafe needlessly reminded him. “Who knows what’s gone on since then. I’m surprised we never heard about Louisa dying, though. She really climbed the social register over the years.”

      Mac wasn’t. Unless it was case related, he didn’t read the society columns, much less follow the Town and Country set of Washington or New York. Hell, he’d been surprised when the Sutherlands’ secretary had tracked down Donny Mac’s long-lost son a decade ago to tell him his father had died. Mac had been on the force in those days and not impossible to find, even though he hadn’t spoken to his father since the day he’d left home.

      He wouldn’t have thought they’d go to the trouble to locate the camp handyman’s next-of-kin. Though by the time they had, his father was already in the ground, courtesy of the state. Mac had handled the requisite legal and financial details, such as they were, over the phone, and paid someone else to handle whatever was left. He’d never gone back. He had no regrets. Then, or now.

      Rafe and Finn figured into the only memories from his past that he’d bothered to keep alive. If not for those ten weeks spent with them every summer, Frank probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to try and blow him to smithereens today because he’d have long since been dead.

      “Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding gruff even to his own ears. Stupid to get emotional over something that had nothing to do with his life anymore, and hadn’t since the day he’d turned eighteen. Doubly stupid to let Kate Sutherland still have any effect on him at all.

      “Hard to believe she would swap her entire inheritance with Shelby’s for a place she’d barely stepped foot in back then,” Rafe said, cleaning the rest of the muck off his shoe. “Hell, you’d think they’d be in a race to see who could sell it to the highest bidder and split the profits.”

      “Says here Kate plans to turn it into a therapy facility for disabled kids,” Mac read, still not quite believing his eyes.

      “No shit? Well, I don’t know. I guess people can change, but you’ll pardon me if I don’t see Katherine Sutherland as benefactor to the needy and underprivileged, any more than her mother was. Hell, your father was as close to charity as the woman ever came, and she worked his ass into the ground.”

      Only because Rafe had been there, and only because he’d suffered as much, if not more, at the hands of his own past, was he comfortable speaking so frankly. But Mac wasn’t thinking about his father, or Louisa, or any of that.

      He was too busy staring at the picture and thinking about Kate. Even though they’d been teenagers when they’d last laid eyes on Louisa Sutherland’s only daughter, and almost two decades had since past, Rafe was probably right in his assessment about people changing. But then Rafe had never had much patience for Kate, the unflappable, unapproachable, and most certainly unattainable sleek, blond princess of their youth. Mac had pretended the same indifference, but the truth was he’d spent many a fevered night dreaming about her…and hating himself for it. She represented everything he both envied and abhorred. But that didn’t stop him from sporting an almost constant, raging hard-on every time she swung through camp. The grainy black-and-white newspaper photo proved that the ensuing years had done little to diminish her impact on him.

      “Did you see that part about the developers sniffing around? What do you want to bet this is all some kind of scam to pull one over on some investment group or something? I wouldn’t put it past either one of them.”

      Mac’s attention caught on the last line. Despite several episodes of vandalism and rumors of an attempted buyout by resort developers, Ms. Sutherland hopes to open her camp as scheduled next spring.

      “Maybe Shelby,” Mac said. Kate’s stepbrother had always been a creepy little weasel. Mac doubted any amount of time would have ground that out of him. “Kate might have been a little stuck up, but I doubt—”

      “A little?” Rafe let out a harsh laugh, then stopped abruptly and tilted his head.

      Sirens were closing in.

      “Your colleagues are about to show up and we’re standing here in broad daylight with our thumbs up our collective asses. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

      Rafe tried to take the paper away from him again, but Mac stuffed it in his pocket and took off along the edge of the decaying pier, Rafe right beside him, both of them moving swiftly toward the abandoned sugar refinery where they’d stashed their car from sight.

      Mac knew he should let the whole thing go, but his mind was already working, analyzing. It was the cop in him, or so he told himself. But something about that story didn’t add up. As much as he hated to admit it, Rafe might be right; it might all be some scam, a way to get out of paying estate taxes or something. He wouldn’t put it past Shelby. And yet, his detective instincts said otherwise. And what was that part about the vandalism? Where did that come into play?

      Rafe reached the car first and jumped in behind the wheel. Mac was still shutting the passenger door as they swung around the back side of the lot and edged out into traffic, two blocks away from the scene of what was now a crime.

      “Wonder what Finn will think of this latest twist.”

      Mac realized Rafe was talking about the Fortenberry case, not the sudden reappearance of Kate Sutherland. “Finn will think we should figure out where the hell Frank is hiding, pin the bomb-happy asshole to the nearest wall, get Mr. Fortenberry’s ashes back, then get the hell out of here and back to Virginia.”

      Rafe maneuvered through traffic heading toward the interstate. As the silence stretched out, he finally said, “It’s that last part that’s bugging you, isn’t it?”

      Mac pretended not to understand. “Going back to Virginia? Or getting our hands on an urn full of dead guy? Because I’ve grown to like Virginia. And dead guys don’t bug me much. It’s the ones who are still alive and shooting at me I have a problem with.”

      Another few minutes passed; then Rafe sighed and said, “You know, I can handle the rest of this cluster. Finn should be done with the Thomason deal, so he’ll find someone to help me or come up himself. He’d be the first one to tell you to go check this out. Why don’t you just—”

      “Why don’t you just mind your own goddamn business, okay?” Mac kept his gaze firmly forward. Rafe knew him far too well. Which, most of the time, was a good thing, since it had saved his ass on more than one occasion. At the moment, however, he’d be more than happy to toss his best friend right into the Hudson if it meant shutting him up about Winnimocca, Kate Sutherland, and anything having to do with their collective past.

      Rafe drove on in silence, letting Mac stew.

      “No one asked for our help,” he finally bit out. “And I doubt it would be welcome.”

      “Probably not,” Rafe said, far too agreeably. “But you and I both know you won’t be worth a damn until you at least dig some on this. No one says you have to see her.”

      Mac cast a quick glance at his partner and caught the slight lift at the corner of his mouth. Son of a bitch. He’d probably known all along what effect Kate really had on him. Of course, Rafe had been the first one to explain what they were looking at when Mac had discovered his father’s stash of Penthouse magazines, too. They couldn’t have been much older than nine at the time.

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