Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

She cast her eyes down.

Knowing what that signified, he grimaced. “Ask yourself why he’s latched on to you, Bellamy.”

“Why do you think he has?”

“He wants to trump all of us. What better way to get the last laugh than by taking you to bed?” As though the thought of that caused him grief, he sighed and closed his eyes. Several moments ticked by before he reopened them. “Talk to the detective.”

“Dale Moody?”

“Start with him. I watched him during Strickland’s trial. He was a troubled man. Find out why.” He squeezed her hand again. “Will you do this for me?”

She made him the only promise she could. “I’ll do my best.”

“You always have.” He reached up and touched her cheek with fingers the color and texture of parchment. “You always strived to please. You wanted everyone to be happy. I think you even married a man you didn’t love only because you knew Olivia and I approved of him.”

“Water under the bridge, Daddy.”

“Don’t let me off the hook so easily. I didn’t consider your happiness nearly as often as you considered mine. You sort of got obscured by the tragedy of Susan, which preoccupied Olivia and me through Strickland’s trial. Then we became so wrapped up in rebuilding our lives, I fear we viewed the big picture, and didn’t pay enough attention to what was right in front of us.”

“Daddy, I never felt obscured or overlooked. I swear. I was shy. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.” She patted his hand. “You were there anytime I needed you, and I always knew you loved me.”

She wanted to throw herself over him, to hold on tight, and beg him not to leave her. When he was gone, she wouldn’t have any blood relatives left, and knowing that filled her with despair and a terrifying sense of finality.

But she wouldn’t add a display of childish fears and sorrow to his own suffering. He wasn’t choosing to die. He didn’t want to leave Olivia, or her, or life itself. The best demonstration of her love would be to make his passing as peaceful as possible.

“If I do this,” she said softly, “I can’t stay here with you.”

“I want you here. But it’s more important to me that you find out if they punished the right man, and you haven’t got much time.”

By way of a pledge, she kissed his forehead again. “I understand, Daddy. You want peace. You need to know.”

He held her near him for a moment longer and whispered, “So do you.”

Dent took a bite of his jalapeño and Jack cheese omelet and washed it down with a sip of coffee. “Do you plan on telling me, or what?”

Seated across from him, Bellamy situated the paper napkin in her lap and used her fork to rearrange the food on her plate, which he noticed she’d barely touched. Throughout the meal, she’d avoided making eye contact with him, and the tension in the IHOP booth was palpable. He’d decided to address it.

“Tell you what?” she asked.

“Why you’re giving me the silent treatment. On the flight home, you said no more than three words.”

“The headset was uncomfortable.”

“It didn’t seem to bother you on the flight down.”

“Well, it was hurting my ears on the flight back. Besides, I didn’t want to distract you. It was an unfamiliar cockpit, remember?”

“Thanks. I appreciate the safety precaution. But since we landed, in fact since we left the hospital in Houston, you’ve been noticeably incommunicado. Of course, I’m merely your chauffeur.” The remark finally earned him eye contact.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Figure it out.”

“You volunteered to fly me down there, Dent.”

“No I didn’t. Gall volunteered me.”

“You didn’t have to agree to it.”

“But I did. Gladly. Which begs the question of why you treated me like a leper once we got there.”

Her face turned bright pink, indicating to him that she knew exactly why he was a bit hacked. She’d emerged from the ICU looking wounded and miserable, and, when he’d pushed himself away from the wall of the corridor where he’d been waiting, she’d walked straight to him.

By instinct, his arms had closed around her to provide a comforting hug, but when he touched her, she’d gone as rigid as a two-by-four. He’d dropped his arms, and she’d left him to join Olivia, who was standing nearby quietly weeping into a tissue. Since leaving that ICU, Bellamy had kept her distance.

Not that he cared. But it pissed him off all the same, especially after the way she’d cozied up to him last night and then had left him wanting. And because he still was. Wanting.

“If I didn’t fawn over you,” she said snidely, “it could be because my mind is on something else. Like, that may be the last time I see my dad alive. Something preoccupying like that.”

Shit . Now he felt like a heel for deliberately provoking her. Being a nice guy was work, and he obviously had a long way to go before he got it right. “Considering the way of things, my complaining was selfish. I’m sorry.”

She made a dismissive motion with her shoulder.

“Did you two have an emotional parting?”

She nodded.

“Then why’d you part?”

“What?”

“If he’s that near death, why’d you leave? I figured I would be flying back alone, that you would stay in Houston so you could be there with him when he died. Why were you in such a hurry to get back to Austin tonight?”

She picked up a french fry, but returned it to her plate without eating it. “We had a sobering conversation.”

He gave her a pointed look.

“About matters that are private.”

“Hmm.” But he continued to hold her gaze.

Finally she said, “He advised me not to trust you.”

So much for trying to be a nice guy. He speared a sausage link, taking his anger out on it. “Howard Lyston’s dying words, and they’re about me. I’m flattered.”

“It wasn’t only about you. He asked me to do something for him.”

“Pick out his burial suit?”

She glared at him.

“It’s gotta be something that urgent or you’d still be down there.”

She fumed for several more seconds, then turned her head away and looked through the window out across the parking lot of the restaurant. When she came back to him, she said, “Before he dies, Daddy wants to know for certain that Allen Strickland was the man who killed Susan.”

Reading his startled expression, she said, “Yes, you heard right.” She then recounted the conversation with her father.

When she finished, Dent frowned. “He’s had doubts about Strickland’s guilt all these years?”

“It seems so.”

“And he raises the question now? Now . When he’s on his deathbed? Jesus!” Frankly, he thought laying this burden on Bellamy at this particular time was a shitty thing for her father to do, but he edited the way he expressed his opinion. “He’s given you an awfully tall order. Does he realize that?”

“He said I needed to know the truth, too. Basically, when you think about it, he’s only asked me to do what I was already doing.”

Yes, but failing herself was one thing. Failing her dying father was quite another. Dent didn’t express that opinion at all, because he was certain Bellamy had already thought of it. That would explain why she looked like she’d been beaten with the chain that she was now using to tow the weight of the world.

He tried to wash down his resentment toward Howard Lyston with a sip of ice water. “Okay, what’s your next move?”

With a weary gesture, she pushed back a strand of hair. “Daddy suggested I talk with Dale Moody.”

“I can’t believe I’m agreeing with him about anything, but Moody’s a good choice.”