Archer craned his neck to look up at Sasha again. “You and Carla planned this for a long time, didn’t you, Sasha? Whose idea was it?”
“Why don’t you just keep guessing?”
Ruth said, “Of course it had to be you, Sasha, to access Mr. Navarro’s passcodes, give them to Carla to empty the accounts.”
Archer said in a surprisingly emotionless voice, “This is all on me. I trusted you, Sasha. You never asked me about the codes and I never used them around you. So, what did you do? Drug me? Hide a video camera in my office? And Carla broke the encryption on my flash drive? I know she could, she’s that good.”
Sasha gave him a full-bodied sneer. “It wasn’t difficult, Archer. It would have been over by now if not for your blasted brother. But I can still get out of here.” Sasha threw the roll of duct tape over to Ruth. “You will duct-tape the pregnant one’s hands and ankles.”
Ruth said, “But once I get her all trussed up, how can she duct-tape me?”
“I’ll tell you what to do after that. Do it now!”
Archer heard her voice shaking. He said slowly, “I thought it was Carla, even though we’d built the company together. But not you, Sasha, I never would have suspected you. I guess there’s no bigger mark than a grieving man, especially for a beautiful young woman who pretends to adore him.”
“This wasn’t about you, Archer. You were only a tool. And by the by, you were really quite tolerable, for the most part.”
Archer looked over at Ruth taping Sherlock’s ankles, saw her pull a small gun from Sherlock’s ankle holster. But how to get it into Sherlock’s hand? Archer jerked his neck away from the knife, shoved his feet against the bed, and slammed his shoulder against Sasha.
“No!” Sasha jumped back. She looked mad, out of control. She raised the knife over Archer’s chest. Ruth grabbed her Glock and fired, a clean shot in Sasha’s right arm. Sasha screamed and the knife went flying. Sherlock grabbed the knife and sawed through the duct tape while Ruth bent over Sasha. “Listen tome, little girl, press your hand as hard as you can against the wound. Come on, do it, or you’ll bleed to death. Don’t you dare cry, press!”
But Sasha was rocking back and forth, crying. Now free, Sherlock grabbed one of Sasha’s tops and wrapped it tight around Sasha’s arm and pressed Sasha’s hand to the cloth. “Get yourself together. Press and keep pressing, hard. We’ll get you help.”
Ruth cut the duct tape from Archer’s ankles and wrists with Sasha’s knife and helped him to his feet. He rubbed feeling back into his hands, stomped his feet. He didn’t look down at his wife, but at Ruth and Sherlock. “Thank you both.”
He turned finally to look at his wife, still crying, tears seeping beneath her closed eyes, pressing the pink shirt he’d bought for her in Paris to her arm. He picked up the knife she’d stuck against his neck, looked at his blood on the tip, tossed it on the bed. He looked down at her again, said in a dispassionate voice, “I loved you, and I believed in my heart you loved me, as you well know. You saved me from the grinding depression I felt after Celia died, made me look forward rather than backward to what I’d lost. Your timing was perfect—my seduction, our marriage, and the honeymoon, when the time was right to see me blamed for what you and Carla had done.
“I see now Tash wasn’t happy, and I ignored it, because I needed you so much. I’ll never forgive myself for that. I’m going to make it up to him. If not for my son and that wonderful little girl Autumn and my brother—” He swallowed.
Sherlock said, “It’s over now, Mr. Navarro. We’ll take Sasha to a doctor, get her patched up enough to fly, and get you both back to Philadelphia.”
Sasha turned to Sherlock, stared at her with hate-filled eyes. “If you hadn’t come so damn early, I would have gotten away.”
“Didn’t work out for you, did it, Sasha?”
Chapter Sixty-One
Darlington Hall
Wednesday morning
Elizabeth ate one of Mrs. Gamble’s famous walnut muffins, warm from the oven, while she listened to her father and mother speaking low to each other. Since they’d come, they no longer sat at each end of the table, the whole table apart, but really a continent apart. Rome sat beside her, seemingly busy with a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, but knowing him as she did, she didn’t doubt he heard everything, was aware of even Benbett and Cook speaking over by the dome-covered trays on the eighteenth-century sideboard.
The earl took a sip of coffee, set his cup in its exquisite saucer, and said to her, “Elizabeth, your mother started visiting Tommy soon after you left, and I raised no objections, though I knew almost certainly he would disappoint her yet again. It’s now over three months and I accept from both you and your mother that he’s clean. I cannot forget Tommy helped us by providing you the alarm to install in the Bentley for your mother and connected to the police station.” The earl paused, drew a deep breath. “I’ve given Tommy’s situation a great deal of thought, of course, and now both of you have agreed, I am willing to meet with him. If he is remorseful, and he stays free of drugs long enough to convince me, I will consider askinghim to start work with us at the bank. A newcomer’s position, of course, at the very bottom rung of the ladder, but I hope he would welcome it. Perhaps in time, he might prove he deserves more of his inheritance.” He looked to his right, to Millicent’s face, now brimming with hope. “But I must be certain in my own mind, all right, Millicent?”
Millicent hugged her husband. To Elizabeth’s pleasure, he pulled her close and softly kissed her hair.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Near Baggley-Cliff
Wednesday
Even with the wipers going full power, rain bulleted against the windshield, blurring the world outside their rented car, but Elizabeth didn’t mind. She was ebullient, so enthusiastic and happy she couldn’t stop talking. “Rome, it’s been so long, I guess I wouldn’t allow myself to believe it would ever happen, Father agreeing to meet with Tommy and giving him another chance. There’s hope now, nothing certain, but hope. I’m so looking forward to seeing him, telling him the good news. Mother told me she wouldn’t call him, she’d let me tell him.” She ran her fingers over Rome’s raincoat, swallowed. He turned to look at her, saw tears sheening her eyes. “At breakfast, Rome, did you see how Father was sitting next to my mom? How he hugged her? Do you think perhaps they—Rome, watch out for that dog! Okay, he made it across the road.”
“I promise I saw it all. Now I’ve got to focus, Elizabeth. I can barely see the road, and where is that freaking center line? My lifeline? When we left the Hall it was only sprinkling, but now look at it—raining so hard it’s like the sky’s split open.
He strained to see a road sign. “Okay, only another two kilometers and we’ll be in Baggley-Cliff. I remember this stretch—lots of curves and side roads. I’ll try not to land in one of those ditches and drown us.”
