Samuel T. put himself between Gin and Richard.

“You two are getting an annulment.” Samuel T. looked at her. “I will file the papers tomorrow on your behalf.” He looked at Pford. “You will grant this without contest. There will be no financial obligations for you. You’re free, and so is she, provided you do not retaliate in any way, and that includes behind the scenes with the BBC. Do you agree?”

There was a pause as Pford didn’t respond.

Lane was about to start yelling, when Samuel T. took a gun and put it underneath Pford’s chin. “Do. You. Agree.”

As the man’s eyes popped, Richard nodded as if his life depended on it.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes,” Pford stammered.

“Good.” Samuel T. didn’t lower the weapon. “And I’m throwing a private order of protection in there for good measure. You get within one hundred feet of her, and her brother and I are coming after you. You won’t know when or where or how, but he and I will make things extremely mortal for you. Do you understand? This is not something to test, trust me.”

When Pford nodded again, Samuel T. eased back and disappeared the weapon.

“Go,” Lane said to the sonofabitch. “I don’t want to see you on the property again. I’ll have your things returned to you—”

“I’m keeping the ring,” Gin interjected. “I get to keep the ring.”

As Samuel T. seemed to wince, Lane got up in Pford’s space again. “The ring is hers. No conversation. You got it?”

“Yes,” Richard said.

“You keep this to yourself and stay away from her, and there will be no problems for anybody. It will be like nothing ever happened.”

“Yes.”

“Now get the fuck out of here.”

As Richard walked off toward the Bentley, Lane watched him until Pford was in his car and back on the road proper, driving away. Then he turned around. Samuel T. had an arm around Gin, and she was up against him, but they both had run out of gas, their shell-shocked expressions the kind of thing that was going to take a while to dissipate.

Shit, his sister’s wounds needed to be dealt with.

Lane took out his phone. “We can’t take her to a hospital. And she can’t go up to the house, the police are there.”

Samuel T. blinked. “Why?”

“Long story.” He went into his contacts and hit send on a local number. “I want you to put her in your SUV and take her where I tell you to—hey, hi, how’re you—what? I sound weird, huh? Well, there’s a reason for that. Listen, I need you to do a favor for me. . . .”

Max waited in his cottage on staff row for the worst of the storm to pass and then he carried his saddlebags out to his Harley. The rain was still falling, but not nearly as bad, and what the fuck did he care? He had ridden wet loads of times, and it had never killed him: He had his waterproof chaps to put on, and his leather jacket was impervious to all kinds of weather.

Strapping the bags to either side of the seat, he was glad that no one had messed with his bike when he’d had to leave it outside that bar. As he’d Uber’d it back to the beer joint at four in the afternoon, he’d had no clue what he was going to do if the thing was jacked up or just plain gone.

Lucked out again, though. He’d come home on the Harley just fine and packed up his things—only to get waylaid by the storm.

Forced to chill out, he’d passed some of the time in the shower because he didn’t know when he’d have a chance to get his next one, and then he’d eaten everything that had been in the refrigerator and the cupboards—also on the theory that he didn’t know when and where his next meal was coming from, either.

Now, as he measured the sky, he figured he’d head west, because according to radar, the storms were moving east and there was nothing behind them. If he could make it to St. Louis, that would be great. He could bunk down somewhere cheap and decide what he felt like doing from there—

Straightening, he frowned and looked to the staff road. A fully blacked-out SUV was coming up the rise at quite a clip, and the Range Rover slowed as it approached him.

When the thing turned in and stopped behind his bike, he put his hands up and went into full-blown no-way. “Hey! I’m leaving—”

Samuel Theodore Lodge got out, and the guy did not look right. Wait, was that blood all over his clothes? “No, you’re not going anywhere.”

“Look, man, I don’t have time for whatever this is—”

The passenger side opened, and as Max saw what got out, he forgot about his bike and his shit and his travel plans for a moment. “What the fuck, Gin.”

His sister was covered in blood, limping and in a ruined, stained silk dress that had probably been peach at one point. Now it was a Pollock painting.

“We need to go inside,” Samuel T. said as he put an arm around the woman and helped her toward the open door. “She needs a doctor.”

“So why isn’t she going to a goddamn hospital?”

They didn’t answer him. They just went into the cottage—as, next door, Gary McAdams came out of the identical unit, got in his four-by-four truck, and went roaring off down the staff road.

“What the hell is going on here?” Max asked absolutely nobody.

He glanced over at his cottage’s open door, and thought . . . whatever, he didn’t have to stay. All he needed were his wallet and his keys, and both were just sitting on the counter in the galley kitchen. There was nothing under that roof that was his, and no reason for him to stay a moment longer, even if his sister looked like she’d been in a car accident.

He had never wanted to come to Charlemont, and now that Lane knew the secret, Max had basically done his job: Someone else in the family was aware of the truth, and hell, Lane was getting a reputation for being pretty fricking reasonable. So no doubt, the guy would find the right time and the right words . . . and get Max off the hook.

It was fine to go.

Really. It was absolutely fine.

With a curse, Max marched into the little house and headed directly past where his sister was collapsed on the couch with Samuel T. bent over and pressing a dish towel to her head.

He got his keys and his wallet. Oh, right, his jacket and chaps. Where were they?

“You’re leaving,” Samuel T. snapped. “Seriously. You’re going now?”

“Looks like you’re taking care of everything. Besides, I’ve got somewhere I have to be.”

“Your sister was almost killed just now.”

“Well, she’s still breathing, isn’t she.”

Before Samuel T. and he really got into it, Max went farther in to the little kitchen and picked his jacket and chaps up from the back of a chair—

“I could lose my medical license for this.”

At the sound of a female voice he knew all too well, Max had to close his eyes. Maybe he’d just imagined it. Yeah, that had to be it. Surely, the one woman he had not wanted to see wasn’t—

He pivoted around.

Well, hell. Tanesha Nyce, the preacher’s daughter, was standing in the open doorway, her white coat and hospital scrubs doing absolutely nothing to disguise her perfect body, her makeup-free face and simple haircut just as he remembered them, her beauty still as arresting as it always had been.

“Oh . . . hi, Maxwell,” she said as she noticed him, too.

But then she was all business, focusing on Gin. “What the hell happened to you?”

Keep on going, Max told himself. You just keep right on working your plan—which is to get as far away from Easterly and these people as you can get.

Nothing good was going to come if he stayed.

Nothing.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Gin looked over to the door of the staff cottage as Tanesha Nyce arrived—and even through Gin’s haze, she could tell the doctor was not happy. And that bad mood got even worse as the other woman looked at Gin.

“Here,” Samuel T. said. “Hold this.”

For a second, Gin wasn’t clear on whom he was speaking to. But then he lifted her arm and put her hand on the towel he was pressing against her forehead.

“Thank you,” she whispered.