hands. 'He's in the kitchenette, fixing himself a cup of instant coffee.'
'Then he's blocking the only door out of here!' she panted. 'I'm trapped!'
Cole didn't bother to comment on that. 'Don't panic yet,' he warned because she looked crazy with fear. 'I'll close my door, and he won't come in here or see you.'
'I have to get back to the house!'
'Cole?' Charles called out. 'Do you want some coffee?'
'No. No thanks,' Cole answered, already backing toward the door, using his body to block any view Charles might have of his room and the half-naked, wild-eyed woman standing in the middle of it, clutching her shirt to her bosom.
He left her there, closing the door behind him, and walked, barefooted and barechested into the kitchenette, where Charles had just finished stirring instant coffee into a cup of hot tap water. 'Well,' the older man said, looking at Cole with an expectant smile, 'what do you think of the polo pony?'
'Not bad,' Cole said; then he forced himself to come up with a lame joke. 'I don't know how well he plays polo, but as a horse, he's a fine-looking animal.' The polo pony was only a few stalls away from the doorway into Cole's room, and Cole was instinctively afraid that Jessica was going to try to bolt from the scene of her attempted crime and probably get herself caught in the process. 'You might want to have a look at the chestnut mare's foreleg,' he suggested, walking deliberately toward the far end of the stable.
Charles looked up in concern and instantly followed Cole down the wide hallway. 'What's wrong with her leg?'
'She hurt it when she took a jump yesterday.'
'Who was riding her?' Charles asked, all his sympathies with the splendid hunter-jumper whom he often preferred to ride.
'Barbara,' Cole said.
'That figures,' Hayward said with a disgusted grimace. 'I try not to be impatient with Barb, but so far, she's not good at anything she does. Except talking on the telephone about boys. She does that very well.'
Without replying, Cole opened the heavy oak stall door, and Charles followed him inside. Handing Cole his cup of coffee he bent down to personally inspect the big mare's bandaged leg. 'Not too swollen,' he said. 'That liniment you mix smells like hell, but it does a great job. I still think you should become a vet,' he added, straightening much more quickly than Cole would have liked and giving the mare a farewell pat. 'I've never seen a man who had a better way with animals.'
'They wouldn't be nearly as fond of me if I were shoving worming tubes down their noses,' Cole said with a distracted glance down the hallway. His breath caught as Jessica's face appeared in the doorway of his room; then she made a wild dash across the hallway, holding her red-and-white top over her bare breasts. Cole swung around to block Charles Hayward from leaving the stall, and in the process he hit the coffee mug against the man's arm and sent coffee spewing over hay and trickling down Charles's shirt.
'What the—' Hayward began; then he choked off his startled exclamation and began brushing at the drops.
'I'm sorry,' Cole said.
'That's okay, I'll get another one. Why don't you put our new resident on a longer line and see how he goes. I only spent a half hour looking him over in Memphis in a stall because that was all the time I had.' He peered at Cole, who'd started to turn, and said, 'Is anything wrong? You seem a little edgy tonight.'
Cole shook his head in the negative and followed him down the hallway, actually beginning to believe that Jessica had made a safe escape and nothing worse would come of her antics tonight. His relief came a moment too soon. 'That's odd,' Charles Hayward said as he passed Cole's room. 'I distinctly saw you close that door behind you tonight when you came out of your room.'
'It probably swung open on its own—' Cole began, but his voice trailed off as Hayward came to a sudden halt, a puzzled smile still on his lips, his eyes riveted on something in Cole's room.
'I gather you were entertaining, and I interrupted,' Hayward said. 'And now the young lady's run off or in hiding—'
Cole's gaze followed his to the lacy white bra on the floor near Cole's rumpled bed, but before he could react, the older man had noticed something much more damning than the bra, and his expression went from startled, to accusing, to furious. 'Aren't those my wineglasses?' he demanded; then he stepped forward and jerked the bottle of wine up to see its label. 'And this is Jessica's favorite—'
'I borrowed it—' Cole began. 'No, I stole it—' he said, trying to prevent the inevitable even as Hayward stalked toward the rear doorway of the stable, peering toward the flash of white racing toward the back door of the house.
'You son of a bitch!' Hayward exploded as he whirled and swung with his right arm, his fist connecting with Cole's jaw with stunning force. 'You fucking bastard!'
Momentarily free of imminent discovery, Jessica fled to the house and up the stairs to her room, but when she peeked out the window, she saw her husband moving at an infuriated half-run from the stable toward the house. 'Oh, my God,' she breathed, quaking in terror as her comfortable life began to shatter around her. 'What'll I do—?' she whispered, looking wildly around the dark room for some way to avoid disaster.
Down the hall, Barbara turned her stereo up another notch, and inspiration struck.
'Barbara!' Jessica cried, racing into her startled daughter's room and slamming and locking the door behind her.
Barbara looked up from the magazine she was reading, her expression first startled and then alarmed. 'Mom— what's wrong?'
'You have to help me, darling. Just do what I tell you, and don't ask questions. I'll make it worth your while—
Chapter 10
'Good afternoon, Mr. Harrison. And, congratulations,' the guard called as Cole's limousine passed through the main entrance of Unified Industries' ultramodern fifty-acre campus not far from Ross Perot's E-Systems. A smooth four-lane drive meandered through a gently rolling landscape dotted with trees, past a massive fountain and man-made lake. In fine weather, employees who worked in the seven sprawling, mirrored-glass buildings that were linked together by enclosed crosswalks frequently gathered there to eat their lunch.
The limo glided past Unified's administration building and continued past the research laboratories, where three men in white lab coats were engaged in a lively debate as they approached the front door. The limo finally rolled to a stop in front of a discreet sign at the curb that said 'Executive Offices.'
'Congratulations, Mr. Harrison,' the receptionist said as Cole stepped out of the elevator on the sixth floor.
Cole replied with a brief, preoccupied nod and continued through the executive reception area, which was separated from the offices by a tall teak-paneled wall bearing the corporation's insignia. There, visitors with appointments waited in luxurious comfort on pale green leather sofas, surrounded by a sea of thick oriental carpeting dotted with graceful mahogany tables and accent pieces inlaid with mother-of-pearl or trimmed with brass.
Oblivious to the restrained splendor of the reception area, Cole turned to the right behind the teak-paneled wall and continued down the carpeted hallway toward his office, only vaguely aware that the place was unnaturally silent.
As Cole passed by the main conference room, Dick Rowse, the head of advertising and public relations, stopped him. 'Cole, could you come in here a moment?'
As soon as Cole stepped into the crowded room, champagne corks began popping, and forty employees burst into applause in honor of the corporation's latest coup—the acquisition of a profitable electronics firm with fat government contracts to sweeten their balance sheet and a new computer chip that was in the testing phase. Cushman Electronics, owned by two brothers, Kendall and Prentice Cushman, had been the object of hostile
