keep calling on the hour, every hour, till we connect.” No use giving his own number, since the line was jammed with crank callers.
That done, and maybe a call was all it would take to straighten this nightmare out, Tag headed back to his clinic.
Where Carol Anne’s car was no longer parked in front of the building. Gone home to lunch, he supposed. But like piranhas gathering, the number of reporters had increased. They turned as one when he parked, beamed as they recognized him, but rather than rushing to meet him, they held their ground by his front door.
As Tag reached the steps, he saw why. A burly stranger was screwing something into the clinic’s doorjamb—a steel hasp. “You! What d’you think you’re doing?” He jabbed an elbow in someone’s ribs, shoved another aside, gained the top step—just as a second man snapped a padlock in place.
Locking him out of his own clinic! For a roaring moment, the world went bloodred. Tag grabbed the lock man’s collar with both hands. “You bastard!” He hauled him up on tiptoe.
“I wouldn’t!” squeaked the man. His helper loomed at Tag’s shoulder. Laying a hand on Tag’s biceps, he dug in stubby fingers and breathed meaningfully in his ear, “I really wouldn’t, Dr. Taggart. You’ve got trouble enough already.”
So what’s a little more? Still, Tag let go of .Squeaky. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing, locking my—”
The other man—a lawyer, who else would wear a threepiece suit in this town?—shook his head. “Not anymore, it isn’t. Dr. Higgins sold out.”
Sold out? Tag stood, sucking for a breath that wouldn’t come. Sold, just like that? That fast? “To...to whom?” But that was obvious. How many millionaires had he pissed off this week?
“The FYA Corporation of Delaware.”
Colton’s cover. Had to be. “Higgins didn’t own it all to sell! I own—”
“One-fifth of the goodwill—and none of the property. Yes, we know that. And you’re welcome to take your share of the patients and practice anywhere else in this town, or any town you please.”
Right, practice small-animal medicine without a clinic? Without supplies, instruments, exam rooms, a phone? Using what for money in the meantime?
Higgins’s accountant had divided the business that way for some arcane tax reason that Tag had never bothered to follow. The deal had required that Tag first buy the clinic’s patients, its goodwill, while he rented use of the facilities from Higgins. Once he owned a hundred percent of the goodwill, they’d agreed that then he’d start buying the property, using his share of monthly earnings to do so, while the old man phased out of the business. In five years he’d have owned it all.
The lawyer turned to his heavy. “Leo, if I may have that box?” The thug scooped up a box that had been sitting on the stoop by his size fourteen feet and passed it over. The lawyer presented it with a tiny smile. “We cleaned out your desk for you. And your diplomas. When you wish to pick up your share of the patient files, and one-fifth of the Rolodex, then please call my office.” He placed a business card on top of the box Tag had automatically accepted. “We’ll be keeping the books for a few weeks while they’re audited. But once that’s done, then—”
“Sure.” Oblivious to the flashes going off as cameras recorded the awful moment, Tag watched the pair go. Just like that, they could chop him off at the knees?
He could feel a howl rising in his throat. Could see himself tossing the box aside—all that remained of his hopes in one pathetic box?—and hurling himself on the departing shyster’s back. Dragging him down. Ripping and tearing and gouging as he’d learned long ago on the street....
What d’you think this is for, Taggart my man? Knuckles gently rapping his forehead. Tag blinked, the words drifting back over the years one more time when he needed them. Jake talking, the big young counselor at the reform school, been-there smile, words that could cut through Tag’s rage when no one else could reach him. You use that to think with, kid. It’s not decoration. Fists are for fools and losers, and that’s not you, Taggart.
So Tag drew a breath and nodded to someone not there. Fists jammed in his pockets, he stood by his padlocked door while the cameras probed his face. While his bright future drove away in a shiny blue BMW. Blinking hard, he looked up at the lowering sky. Once upon a time, he wouldn’t have been able to resist a car like that. But he was somebody else now.
At least, as long as they’d let him be, he was.
A flake of snow drifted down...then another. Winter.
CHAPTER FIVE
A PHONE CALL to Carol Anne, Tag told himself, as he strode up the walk to his cottage. Remind her to feed the stray tomcat while he was away. Presumably Higgins could get her past that padlock. Then throw together a couple of days’ change of clothes. It might take that long in Boston to find the right lawyer.
Once he’d hired his big-city shark, he’d worry about shark feed. Somewhere in Boston he’d find a jeweler to buy Susannah’s ring. Because if Colton had given her that rock, it wasn’t zirconium. With any luck—if there was any luck left anywhere in the world—he’d get enough to pay his lawyer. And no, Susannah, I won’t be sending you back your change, care of Fleetfoot Farm. Her bill was higher than she’d dreamed and mounting by the minute.
And if he couldn’t salvage his career, then her ring would be just the first installment on all she owed him.
A letter was taped to his front door. Tag took it inside with him, ripped it open, then wadded it as he cursed aloud. A notice from the FYA Corporation, terminating his tenancy in their cottage, effective a month from today. Teeth clenched till they ached, he stalked to his TV. He’d set the VCR to record the noon news before he left the house that morning.
The twelve o’clock lead came as no surprise. The cameras showed Susannah Colton, sometime earlier that morning, coming down the Boston courthouse steps with a grimlooking suit—her lawyer, according to the voice-over. Besieged on all sides by reporters, she looked tiny and dog tired. More teenager than woman in her jeans and a man’s leather bomber jacket that hung down to her slim thighs.
Tag growled as he recognized it, but still, something twisted inside. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday when he met her. She’d spent the night in jail, after all?
The newscaster confirmed it as reporters blocked the couple’s way. With one arm draped protectively around her shoulders, seeming almost to hold her up, Susannah’s lawyer was doing the talking. As for his client, a night in a cell seemed to have knocked the stuffing, all that Texas grit and sass, out of her. She looked fragile, stunned. Less like a desperado horse thief or a vindictive wife than a scared little owl, staring out from shelter with those wide, haunted eyes and her feathers all ruffled.
A woman having second thoughts was what she looked like, and unpleasant ones. A little revenge seemed like a good idea at the time, huh, Tex? But now she was realizing. Bit off more than you could chew, did you, darlin’?
Or maybe she only needed a good night’s sleep to regain her spunk—and her spite. Looking at Susannah, Tax had missed most of the lawyer’s statement. He rewound the tape and this time focused on her designated knight.
“Mrs. Colton has no statement at this time,” that gentleman said grandly if predictably.
The surrounding pack resumed their yelping. Susannah put her head down and allowed her companion to steer her to a waiting car. The anchorman switched back to the studio.
He interviewed an expert on equine insurance, who hemmed and hawed and finally hazarded a guess that Lloyd’s of London would decline to pay out on Payback’s policy because, one, the horse had not been killed but only altered, and two, that horrendous act had been instigated not by some crazed outsider but by Stephen Colton’s own lawful wedded wife.
Tag attempted a whistle, but his lips were too dry.