dumped Chad, and wondered if Van Zandt or someone like him might have made her promises, then broken them in the most terrible way. And I wondered again if all these terrible possibilities had been made possible by Bruce Seabright.
Erin hadn't fit his idea of the perfect daughter, and now she was out of his way. If she turned up dead, would he feel a moment's guilt? If she never turned up at all, would he feel a second's responsibility? Or would he be pleased for a job well done?
I thought about my own father and wondered if he would have been relieved to have his ungrateful daughter simply disappear. Probably. I had loudly opposed everything he was, everything he stood for. I'd thumbed my nose at him and taken up a profession putting away the people he defended in court, the people who provided for the lifestyle I'd grown up in. Then again, maybe I had disappeared for him. I hadn't seen or spoken to him in years. For all I knew, I had ceased to exist in his mind.
At least my father hadn't set me up for doom. That had been my own doing entirely.
If Bruce had set Erin up with Trey Hughes, and Hughes had set her up with Jade, and via Jade she had been exposed to Van Zandt, Erin had never really had any say in her destiny. The irony was that she had thought she was gaining independence, taking control of her life. But the longer she was missing, the longer the odds were she would come out of this with a life at all.
By the time Sean had finished showing Tino, Sean's coach had arrived to teach him, leaving me to see Van Zandt off the property.
'Do you think your client from Virginia will be interested?' I asked.
'Lorinda Carlton?' He gave the Continental shrug. 'I will tell her to be, so she will be,' he said. The word of Van Zandt, amen. 'She's not a talented rider, but she has a hundred thousand dollars to spend. All I have to do is convince her this horse is her destiny and everyone will live happily ever after.'
Except the woman who bought a horse she couldn't handle. Then Van Zandt would convince her to sell that one and buy another. He would make money on both deals, and the cycle would begin again.
'You shouldn't reveal your trade secrets,' I said. 'You'll disillusion me.'
'You are a very smart woman, Elle. You know the ways of this horse world. It's a hard business. People are not always nice. But I take care of my clients. I am loyal to them and I expect them to be loyal to me. Lorinda trusts me. She gives me the use of her townhouse while I am here for the season. See how grateful my friends are to me?'
'That's one word for it,' I said dryly.
And he would blithely betray the trust of his grateful friend so he could foster a more lucrative relationship with Sean Avadon. He told me without batting an eye, as if it were nothing to him, and in the next breath he spoke of loyalty as if he were the poster boy for personal virtue.
'Are you free for dinner, Elle?' he asked. 'I'll take you to The Players. We can talk about what kind of horse I want for you.'
I found the suggestion revolting. I was exhausted and in pain and fed up to my eyeballs with this nauseating character and his bipolar mood swings. I wanted to do what Irina had done, jump on him and pummel him and call him every vile name I could think of. Instead, I said, 'Not tonight, Z. I have a headache.'
He looked hurt and angry again. 'I am not a monster. I have integrity. I have character. People in this business, they get angry, they spread rumors. You should know better than to believe them.'
I held up a hand. 'Stop. Just stop, will you? Jesus. I'm tired. My head hurts. I want to spend my evening in the Jacuzzi with no one talking at me. As impossible as this might be for you to grasp, it's not about you.'
He didn't believe that, but he changed tack at least. He stood straighter and nodded to himself. 'You will see, Elle Stevens. I will do for you. I will make you a champion,' he said. 'You will see what kind of man I am.'
In the end, that was the one prophecy he made that actually came true.
14
Jill stood in front of the cheap full-length mirror wearing nothing but makeup, a black lace bra, and a thong. She turned this way and that, practicing her various looks. Shy, coy, sexy. She liked sexy best. It went with the bra.
The bra was too small by a couple of sizes and dug into her sides, but it made her boobs look all the bigger, which she thought was a good thing. Like the women in Hustler, her tits seemed to swell up out of the cups. She could easily imagine Jade burying his face in her cleavage. The idea gave her a tingle between her legs, which drew her attention to the thong.
It also was too small for her, the skinny little straps cutting into the fat on her hips. Pubic hair sprouted out on either side of the scrap of black lace at the front. She twisted around and looked at her butt, bare and white, wide and dimpled. She didn't like the way the thong felt going up her crack, but she thought she'd better get used to it. The thong was sexy. Men went for a thong. She just wished that bitch Erin hadn't been so fucking skinny. Maybe if the thong was for a normal-sized person it wouldn't be so uncomfortable.
Oh, well. It was free. And it kind of turned her on that it belonged to someone else. She was taking Erin's place-in the barn, in the world. With Erin gone, Jill could be the flirty one. Jill could be the clever one.
But she would still be in the shadow of Paris Montgomery.
That cunt.
Jill scowled at the reminder. It was not a pretty reflection that looked back at her.
She hated Paris. She hated her smile, hated her big eyes, hated her blond hair. She hated Paris more than she had hated Erin. And she had hated the two of them together more than anything. Together they had been like the popular girls in school: too cool to be friends with someone like Jill, full of private jokes and catty looks. At least she didn't have to put up with that shit anymore. But there was still Paris.
Men fell all over themselves for Paris. She could get anybody to do anything for her. Nobody seemed to see that she was just a big phony. Everyone thought she was so funny and sweet and nice. She wasn't nice at all. When people weren't looking she was bossy and bitchy and mean. She was always making snide remarks about Jill eating too much and Jill needing to exercise and Jill not knowing how to dress.
Jill looked at herself head to toe in the mirror and suddenly saw exactly what Paris Montgomery saw. Not a sexy woman in sexy lingerie, but a fat face with small, piggy eyes and a sour, downturned mouth; arms inflated with fat; fat legs with dimpled knees; a body she hated so much she often fantasized taking a knife and slicing off big slabs of it. Ugly and pathetic in her stolen, too-small underwear.
Tears squeezed out of her eyes and her face turned mottled red. It wasn't her fault she was fat. Her mother had let that happen when she was a kid. So she couldn't help it now that she ate the wrong things. And it wasn't her fault she didn't exercise. She was tired at the end of the day-never mind that bitch Paris was always accusing her of not working hard enough.
Why would she work any harder for Paris? Paris didn't give her any incentive to work hard, so if she wasn't getting as much done as Paris wanted, it was Paris's fault. And it wasn't her fault she didn't have nice clothes. She didn't get paid enough to buy nice things. She had to shoplift to get nice things. And she deserved them as much as anybody-more, really, considering people were so mean to her.
Well, she would show Paris Montgomery, she thought, digging through the pile of clothes tangled in the sheets of the unmade bed. She was going to take Paris Montgomery's place, just like she'd taken Erin's place.
Jill knew she could be just as good a rider as Paris if only someone would give her the chance. She had never had a good enough horse, that was all. Her father had bought her a crummy, cheap Appaloosa to ride. How was she supposed to get anywhere in the jumping world on that? She had once written a letter to her mother's brother to see if he wouldn't buy her a real horse. She couldn't see why he wouldn't. He was rich, after all. What was seventy or eighty thousand dollars to him? But she had never heard a thing from him. Cheap bastard.
She'd show him too. She'd show everybody. She was going to be rich, and she was going to ride the best horses and go to the Olympics. She had it all planned. All she needed was a break, and she knew right where she was going to get it.
She pulled a see-through white stretch lace blouse out of the pile of clothes Erin had left behind. Jill had claimed the stuff for herself. Why not? It wasn't even stealing if the other person just left it. She struggled into the
