The Best Way to Lose Read Free

bad, Trace.”
    “I figured that.” There was a slow swing of his gaze to the road ahead of the patrol car. “But you’re wrong about the river. It’s taught me some things. I roll with the flow nowinstead of fighting it every inch of the way. I discovered I don’t get caught in quite so many eddies and undercurrents that way.” The corners of his mouth lifted in a lazy movement as he slid a sleepy glance at the driver.
    “Glad to hear it.” Digger nodded in an approving fashion. “Wisdom doesn’t come with age. If you don’t have it now, you never will. You must be—what—” He measured Trace with a quick glance, trying to put the years together. “Thirty-four? Thirty-five?”
    “Thirty-five.”
    “It’s about time you got smart,” Digger stated. “Being a wild fool when you’re young—well, that’s to be expected. But when you’re older, hell, you’re just an old fool.”
    “Like my father?” It was softly suggested, a hint of challenge in its very quietness. But Trace was looking out the windshield when Digger glanced in his direction, and he spoke again before Digger had to come up with an adequate response or ignore the comment. “I heard Elliot was playing tennis when he had the attack. I suppose his wife was with him.” There was a slight narrowing of his gaze as he looked at some distant point down the road.
    “No. I talked to Cassie. It seems Elliot had jogged over to Booth Carlton’s place for a game of tennis early this morning. Mrs. Santee was just sitting down to breakfast when Booth’s youngest son, Field, came over to fetch her. They arrived at the hospital about the same time the ambulance got there with Elliot.” The officer shook his head with wonderingconfusion. “Always exercising, your daddy was. Always pushing himself to keep that young-looking body of his. He pushed himself too hard this time.”
    “He always had to compete—and he always had to win.” The recollection tugged the corners of Trace’s mouth downward with a faint grimness.
    It seemed his relationship with Elliot Santee had always been one of rivalry—competing with each other for his mother’s affections when she was alive, then shifting to other fields until Trace had dropped out of the game somewhere around the age of fifteen. For a long while he had believed he’d outgrown that competitive urge—until the last few years, when it had welled strong within him again.
    “Maybe I shouldn’t say it…” Digger paused to draw in a deep breath. “… but your daddy never played any game unless he was damned sure he could win it before it started. He never did like bucking the odds. And the odds aren’t too good for him this time.”
    Before Trace entered the private waiting room off the Intensive Care Unit, he met the doctor attending his father and cornered him to obtain the full particulars. He pressed for substantiated answers until he got them, indifferent to the doctor’s irritation at his persistence.
    When he entered the waiting room, he wasmet by the auburn-haired Sandra Kay Austin, only a few years older than himself. Glancing at the handful of people in the room, he noticed that most of them were somewhere around their forties. As his father grew older his circle of close friends had grown younger.
    “Trace, I’m so glad you’re here.” Sandra Kay clutched at his arm when he slung his duffel bag into an out-of-the-way corner. The level of her voice dropped to a conspiratorial pitch. “Paul and I can’t stay any longer. We sent the boys over to his mother’s, but they’re going out tonight and we simply have to get home. But I just didn’t want to leave Pilar here alone. She needs someone with her at a time like this. You’ll look after her, won’t you?”
    “Yes, I will.” He nodded stiffly.
    “I knew you wouldn’t be a rat about this,” she declared with a relieved smile, indifferent to the backhanded insult she’d just delivered by implying that he was capable of