From #1 New York Times bestselling author and “masterful storyteller” ( USA TODAY ) Sandra Brown—a sexy, sultry, family-based thriller set in a small southern town. When her younger brother, Danny, commits suicide, Sayre Lynch breaks her vow never to return to her Louisiana hometown, and gets drawn back into her tyrannical father’s web. He and her older brother—who control the town’s sole industry, an iron foundry—are as corrupt as ever. Worse, they have hired a shrewd and disarming new lawyer, Beck Merchant…a man with his own agenda. When the police determine that Danny’s suicide was actually a homicide, Sayre must battle her family—and her passionate feelings for Beck—as she confronts a powder keg of old hatreds, past crimes, and a surprising plan of revenge. "A masterful storyteller." -- USA Today "[Sandra Brown] carefully crafts tales that keep readers on the edge of their seats." -- USA Today "Ingenious storytelling...top-notch." -- The Roanoke Times Sandra Brown is the author of seventy-three New York Times bestsellers. She has published over eighty novels and has upwards of eighty million copies of her books in print worldwide. Her work has been translated into thirty-five languages. Four books have been adapted for film. She lives in Texas. White Hot By Sandra Brown Pocket Copyright © 2005 Sandra Brown All right reserved. ISBN: 9780743466769 Chapter Two The highway was barely recognizable. Countless times, Sayre Lynch had driven this stretch of road between New Orleans International Airport and Destiny. But traveling it today was like doing so for the first time. In the name of progress, landmarks that had made the area distinct had been obscured or obliterated. Rural Louisiana's charm had been sacrificed to gaudy commercialism. Little that was quaint or picturesque had survived the onslaught. She could have been in Anywhere, USA. Fast-food franchises now occupied the spots where once had been mom-and-pop cafes. Homemade meat pies and muffaletta sandwiches had been replaced with buckets of wings and Value Meals. Hand-painted signs had given way to neon. Menus scribbled daily on chalkboards had been supplanted by disembodied voices at drive-through windows. During the ten years she had been away, trees draped with Spanish moss had been bulldozed to allow for additional highway construction. This expansion had diminished the vastness and mystery of the swamps that flanked the road. The dense marshes were now ribboned with entrance and exit ramps jammed with semis and minivans. Until now Sayre hadn't realized the depth of her homesickness. But these substantial changes in the landscape made her nostalgic for the way things had been. She longed for the mingled aromas of cayenne and filé. She would like to hear again the patois of the people who served up Cajun dishes that took more than three minutes to prepare. While superhighways made for faster travel, she wished for the roadway she had known, the one lined with trees that grew so close to it the branches overlapped to cover it like a canopy and cast lacy patterns of shadow on the asphalt. She longed for the times she could drive with the windows down and, rather than choking on motor exhaust, inhale the soft air that was perfumed with honeysuckle and magnolia and the seminal scent of the swamp. The changes that had come about in the past decade were jarring to her senses and an affront to her memories of the place in which she'd grown up. But then, she supposed that the changes in herself were equally drastic, although perhaps not as apparent. The last time she'd driven this road, she'd been traveling in the opposite direction, away from Destiny. That day, the farther she got from home, the lighter she felt, as though she were molting layers of negativity along the way. Today she was returning, and her dread was as heavy as chain mail. Homesickness for the area, no matter how acute, would never have brought her back. Only her brother Danny's death could have compelled her to return. Apparently he had withstood Huff and Chris for as long as he could and had escaped them in the only manner he'd felt was open to him. Fittingly, as she approached the outskirts of Destiny, she saw the smokestacks first. They jutted belligerently above the town, large and black and ugly. Smoke billowed from them today as on every other day of the year. It would have been too costly and inefficient to have shut down the furnaces, even in observance of Danny's demise. Knowing Huff, it probably hadn't even occurred to him to make this concession to his youngest child. The billboard marking the city limit read "Welcome to Destiny, Home of Hoyle Enterprises." As though that's something to boast, she thought. Quite the contrary. Iron pipe casting had made Huff rich, but it was a bloodstained wealth. She navigated the streets of town which she had first explored on bicycle. Later she'd learned to drive on them. Then as a teen she had cru