Loreth Anne White - Breaking Free

Dear Reader,

There’s something special about being involved in a continuity like THOROUGHBRED LEGACY—a sense of something bigger, richer. And this one spans the globe.

From the bluegrass of Kentucky to the vineyards of California, from England to the Middle East and now to Australia’s stud-farm capital, the Upper Hunter Valley. Here, a clash of values pits a single-dad cop who just wants to hold on to his family and his home against the wealthy Thoroughbred-racing set, and the heroine in particular.

But no matter where in the world we may be, or who we are, the concept of home is a universal one. And a powerful one.

My characters might start by squaring off hotly over an interrogation table, but when they finally start working as a team, they’ll realize they all want the same thing.

A sense of true family. Love. A home.

I hope you enjoy their journey.

And I’d love you to stop by my Web site—a small window into my own home—

Loreth Anne White

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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As a child in Africa, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Loreth said a spy…or a psychologist, or maybe a marine biologist, an archaeologist or a lawyer. Instead she fell in love, traveled the world and had a baby. When she looked up again she was back in Africa, writing and editing news and features for a large chain of community newspapers. But those childhood dreams never died. It took another decade, another baby and a move across continents before the lightbulb finally went on. She didn’t have to grow up. She could be them all—the spy, the psychologist and all the rest—through her characters. She sat down to pen her first novel…and fell in love.

She currently lives with her husband, two daughters and their cats in a ski-resort town in the rugged Coast Mountains of British Columbia, where there is no shortage of inspiration for larger-than-life characters and adventure.

Readers can find out more about Loreth at her Web site, www.lorethannewhite.com.

To Gillian Murphy,

who breathed life into the Hunter Valley,

and who did it with characteristic Aussie humor and flair.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Hands tense on the wheel, Detective Sergeant Dylan Hastings drove his squad car along the undulating ribbon of tar that bisected miles of brittle-dry stud farm acreage dotted with stands of tall eucalyptus.

He was going to arrest Louisa Fairchild, the grande dame of the Australian Thoroughbred racing scene, a woman who thought she was above it all, who figured Commonwealth justice was the best money could buy.

Dylan was about to show her different.

This time.

Because he’d seen Louisa buy “justice” before—when he was just eight years old. It had changed his life forever.

It had made him become a cop.

It had made Dylan determined to fight for justice for all—not just the stinking rich.

He turned off the Hunter Valley highway, heading for Fairchild’s nine-hundred-acre estate along the Hunter River. The route passed several miles of vineyards. It was March, and autumn colors quivered, brittle on the vines, metal windmills turning lazily in the hot wind. Here and there horses ran wild over the drought-brown hills, tails held high, frisky in the hot, smoke-tinged breeze.

It was all seemingly calm despite the political tensions simmering in Sydney, yet the ominous ochre haze over the blue hills of Koongorra Tops spoke of a different kind of threat.

The constant whispering reminder of bushfire smoldering in deep gullies just beyond the ridge across the Hunter River didn’t bode well for a valley coming off a long, hard summer of unseasonable drought.

The homicide and arson case at Lochlain Racing, coming on top of these already tinderbox conditions, had left the town of Pepper Flats and the surrounding community wire-tense and baying for blood. The fire at the stud farm had been ugly. Real ugly. And the community wanted someone to pay.

Soon.

Dylan was about to make Louisa Fairchild do just that. Still, like the smoldering hotspots across the Hunter, a small coal of doubt flickered quiet and deep inside Dylan. He knew he didn’t have enough to officially charge her. Yet.

But his superintendent had issued the order to bring her in ASAP.

A gas bomb had detonated in the Sydney central business district less than two hours ago—part of the APEC protests. It had gone off just as the U.S. President was landing at Sydney International for the leaders’ portion of the Summit. The U.S. Secretary of State was already in town, at her hotel, where a second device had been primed to detonate simultaneously.

Techs had managed to defuse that one, but the death toll from nerve gas in the first explosion had already hit thirtytwo and was climbing fast. The New South Wales police force had received threats from one of the radical protest groups that there were more bombs out there. Riots were now erupting, and part of Sydney had been quarantined. According to Superintendent Matt Caruthers—Hunter Valley Land Area Commander—the Australian Prime Minister was about to go on air to declare a state of emergency.

Caruthers had also informed Dylan that the Prime Minister was calling in the military, and that the NSW police commissioner had ordered the majority of the state police force to the capital ASAP—including just about every officer in the Hunter Valley Land Area Command. The homicide team working the Sam Whittleson–Lochlain arson case had also been recalled.

All that remained in the Upper Hunter was a skeleton staff for rotational patrol.

Dylan had been left to twist solo in the dry wind until the APEC dust settled.

This arrest was unorthodox. Everything about it.

And Louisa’s lawyers were going to be all over it.

But Caruthers was worried Louisa Fairchild would use this very opportunity to slip through the cracks. She was already a flight risk, and so far, everything the homicide squad had found to date pointed right at her.

She had the motive, opportunity and means to shoot Sam Whittleson, her sixty-one-year-old neighbor and owner of Whittleson Stud, whose charred remains had been found at Lochlain the night of the fire.

Louisa and Sam had been fighting like dogs over rights to Lake Dingo for the last two years. The lake straddled their estates, but the farm boundaries themselves were in dispute, and Louisa had already shot and injured her neighbor over the water issue ten months ago. She’d shot Sam in her library, with her Smith & Wesson .38. He’d survived, but there were witnesses who’d heard Louisa say she “should have killed the bugger properly the first time.”