Breaking Free (Thoroughbred Legacy #10)

  Thoroughbred Legacy

  The stakes are high.

  Scandal has hit the Australian branch of the Preston family. Find out what it will take to return this horse-racing dynasty to the winner’s circle!

  Available December 2008

  #9 Darci’s Pride by Jenna Mills

  Six years ago, Tyler Preston’s passion nearly cost him everything. Now he’s rebuilt his stables and his reputation, only to find the woman he once loved walking back into his life.

  #10 Breaking Free by Loreth Anne White

  Aussie cop Dylan Hastings believes in things that are real. Family. Integrity. Justice. In his experience, the wrong woman can destroy it all. So when Megan Stafford comes to town, he knows trouble’s not far behind.

  #11 An Indecent Proposal by Margot Early

  Widowed, penniless and desperate, Bronwyn Davies came to Fairchild Acres looking for work—and to confront her son’s real father. This time she’ll show her lover exactly what she’s made of…and what he’s been missing!

  #12 The Secret Heiress by Bethany Campbell

  After her mother’s dying confession, Marie walks away from her life and her career…only to find herself next door to racing-world royalty. Wealthy Andrew Preston may make Marie feel like Cinderella, but she knows men like Andrew don’t fall for women like her.…

  Available as ebooks at www.eHarlequin.com

  #1 Flirting with Trouble by Elizabeth Bevarly

  #2 Biding Her Time by Wendy Warren

  #3 Picture of Perfection by Kristin Gabriel

  #4 Something to Talk About by Joanne Rock

  #5 Millions to Spare by Barbara Dunlop

  #6 Courting Disaster by Kathleen O’Reilly

  #7 Who’s Cheatin’ Who? by Maggie Price

  #8 A Lady’s Luck by Ken Casper

  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—and drop me a comment at www.lorethannewhite.com.

  Loreth Anne White

  BREAKING FREE

  Loreth Anne White

  LORETH ANNE WHITE

  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.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter One

  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 thirty-two 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 A
SAP—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.”

  That was a death threat in Dylan’s book.

  And now Sam Whittleson was properly dead.

  The first shooting had never gone to trial, a fact that irked the hell out of local cops, including him. Louisa Fairchild with her overpriced lawyers and swanky PR team had claimed self-defense, wangling a deal with Whittleson’s legal counsel that saw Whittleson dropping charges against Louisa for fear of being prosecuted for trespassing and assault himself.

  But the homicide team now had witnesses who’d seen Louisa Fairchild’s dark-gray Holden fleeing Lochlain the night of the blaze and murder. The soil in the tires of her truck confirmed she had been there.

  And the fire-damaged murder weapon had finally been recovered from the crime-scene rubble—a Smith & Wesson .38. The gun was currently being processed by forensics techs, and a serial number should be legible before the day was out, which meant the weapon could be traced.

  Quite possibly right back to Louisa Fairchild.

  Dylan would have been happier to have known for a fact the murder weapon belonged to Louisa.

  Instead he’d been sent in prematurely. To squeeze her, bring her in for questioning, rattle her cage, find anything that would allow the NSW police enough to hold her for trial while they built their case.

  Right. And who was going to take the fall if the weapon wasn’t hers, if the charges didn’t stick?

  Dylan pinched the bridge of his nose.

  He could see himself going down as the scapegoat on this one. Once those APEC stories started dying back from national headlines, this was going to be the news.

  A small fist of tension curled in his gut as he caught sight of the bronze-and-red Fairchild logo emblazoned on massive stone pillars flanking the entrance to the estate. Dylan’s jaw tightened as he signaled to the guard his intent to enter and swung into a driveway lined for almost a mile with mature jacarandas that knitted branches in a canopy over the hard-packed dirt.

  On either side of him white fencing trailed across acres of dry grassland that was being cut to the quick for fear of bushfire, the tractors boiling soft clouds of dust that blew like spindrift. But as he neared the manor house and saw sprinklers shooting long white staccato arcs over lush emerald-green lawns and vibrant flower beds, Dylan’s acrimony bit deeper.

  Louisa Fairchild defied even the drought.

  There were severe irrigation restrictions on the river. She was likely pumping water from Lake Dingo which belonged, allegedly, to a dead man.

  A man she might have killed. For this very water. For the stud farm she was still trying to snatch out from under his family.

  Dylan reminded himself to bury his personal hatred of Louisa Fairchild. It could cost him down the road if his animosity got in the way of her arrest.

  The mobile phone on his belt buzzed as he pulled into the circular gravel driveway.

  He reached for it, checked caller ID. Heidi. Probably calling to pester him about that party she was desperate to go to tonight. Or the private art school in Sydney she suddenly so passionately wanted to attend.

  Dylan let the call flip to voice mail, feeling the tension in his gut wind tighter as he pulled to a stop.

  His kid might be as fickle as the wind, but she’d also had a rough ride lately, nearly losing her own horse in the Lochlain fire. Yet no matter how Dylan tried to help, Heidi was throwing up barriers, acting out, making additional demands. She’d just have to wait until he got home tonight, because right now he had a potential career-breaker on his hands.

  And Heidi wasn’t going to have a future if this case ended up taking him down.

  He got out of the squad car, adjusted his gun belt, and put on his hat. It was unusually hot for an autumn evening. He squinted into the haze, waiting for backup from the neighboring Scone station to arrive.

  He’d asked for a female cop to help him execute the warrant. What he’d gotten was Ron Peebles, a probationary constable on the job for all of three weeks.

  Already things were going sideways, Dylan thought as he watched a plume of dust rise behind the squad car approaching in the distance.

  Constable Peebles drew up alongside Dylan’s vehicle, got out, his movements taut. It was the young rookie’s first arrest and it showed.

  “Ready?” Dylan said.

  Dry gum leaves clattered suddenly in a gust of hot wind, and a flock of lorikeets burst from the branches in an explosion of color as they took flight and darted through the sprinklers.

  Peebles tensed, cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m ready,” he said, looking everything but.

  Boots crunching over the gravel driveway, they made their way to the entrance of the massive stone-and-stucco mansion, built ten years ago. Dylan still remembered the old house. He’d played on this farm as a kid with his brother Liam and their friend Henry. That was many years back, before Liam had been murdered.

  He climbed the stairs to the door, chest tightening.

  He glanced at Peebles standing slightly to the side of the door, feet planted square, hand near his weapon. Peebles nodded.

  Dylan rang the bell.

  A great booming clang resounded inside the house, and the door swung open, two blue heelers barreling out.

  “Officer Hastings?” Louisa’s housekeeper, Geraldine Lipton, regarded them with a frown.

  “G’day, Mrs. Lipton,” he said. “Is Miss Fairchild in?”

  Her eyes darted to Peebles, then back to Dylan, hand tightening on the brass doorknob as she pulled the door slightly closed. “Miss Fairchild is busy riding,” she said tersely. “And then she’ll be busy packing. She leaves for London tomorrow.”

  Dylan flashed Peebles a look—a definite flight risk. “It’s important we speak to her immediately, ma’am,” he said.

  The pinkness of irritability reached up Mrs. Lipton’s neck and into her cheeks. “Why don’t you wait in the library, officers?” she said curtly. “I’ll see if Miss Fairchild can meet with you.”

  Dylan removed his hat as they followed the stout housekeeper in her starched navy-and-white uniform through a vaulted hallway decorated with broad-leafed plants, sleek sculptures and breezy rattan furniture. The decor had been redone since Dylan had been here last winter. It looked cold to him. But then they didn’t pay him to pick out color swatches and match drapes. That was his ex’s department.

  The thought of Sally shot a familiar jolt of annoyance through him that compounded his feeling of ill will toward Louisa, the past suddenly crowding in on him.

  Mrs. Lipton threw open a set of solid old jarrah-wood doors, ushering the two men into the library of polished wood, leather furniture, antique tomes, old art and a general aura of established wealth.

  Dylan immediately eyed the
elaborate, glassed-in gun collection beyond the fireplace. If Louisa’s Smith & Wesson was in that cabinet he was going to have a problem. It would mean the pistol they had in the lab belonged to someone else.

  Again, he cursed that he’d been forced to move prematurely. He needed the serial number on that murder weapon.

  “Can I send for some tea while you wait?” The housekeeper’s voice remained tight.

  “No. Thank you,” Dylan said, striding into the vast room where Sam Whittleson had come damn near to getting himself shot to death the first time.