“I told you Jo—would get you. You thought you were so damn smart, fucking her and me at the same time. But I was smarter—than both of you.”
There was a grunt and hoarse curses.
“Damn you, Ted. You weigh a ton. Pick up your feet.”
Cain put his mouth right against Christy’s ear. When he spoke, his voice was a bare thread of sound. “Hutton’s talking to himself.”
She nodded.
“I want the son of a bitch alive,” Cain said. “Just in case Danner has any doubts.”
She nodded again.
“Stay here.”
She didn’t nod.
“Damn it, Red.”
She kissed the hand covering her mouth and looked at him with steady eyes.
“Then at least stay here long enough to cover my climb,” Cain said.
She nodded.
Slowly he slid his hand away from her mouth.
“Stay safe, love,” he whispered.
Then he turned away and began climbing toward the alcove with smooth, powerful motions.
Chapter 55
Christy pulled the heavy pistol from her waistband, thumbed the hammer back into the fully cocked position, braced her elbows on a boulder, and took up a two-handed shooting stance. The muzzle of the pistol was aimed right at the point where Hutton would appear for his climb back down to the truck far below.
Phrases from Hutton’s dialogue with the dead drifted across the rubble slope.
“…kill her…vicious succubus…threaten me…”
Cain never paused. He moved steadily and carefully, a predator on the stalk, testing each rock to make sure it wouldn’t move and make a noise.
Hutton’s voice became fainter and fainter until finally it died away beneath the whisper of the wind. Apparently he was dragging Autry all the way to the back of the alcove.
The memory of stone shifting just a bit and a timber snapping echoed in Christy’s mind. She wondered if the report of Hutton’s little pistol had further undermined whatever was holding the massive wedge of sandstone in place.
Cain reached the sill and lay back against the wall, listening intently. He eased his head up, took a fast look, and ducked back down. After a long count of ten, he looked again, more thoroughly, his eyes probing the shadows.
He raised his hand.
Slowly Christy lowered the hammer on the pistol. She scrambled as quietly as she could up the rocks, following the route he’d taken. When she reached his side, she was breathing hard.
He pointed to his eyes, to her, and to the sill. Cautiously she raised her head until she could look into the alcove.
Hutton had managed to drag Autry halfway back to the frail supports bracing the sandstone flake. Now he was standing with his hands on his hips, catching his breath and staring down at the dead man.
“There really was no other choice,” Hutton said. “I couldn’t trust you not to tell. I couldn’t trust anyone. If you talked…”
Hutton breathed heavily.
“Well, it just couldn’t happen. I’m not like other people. I can’t go to jail. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t make sense. I’m worth a hundred like you.”
Hutton’s voice was matter-of-fact, the voice of someone pointing out that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Nothing unusual. Everyone knew that was the way it worked. A simple fact of life.
Or death.
A chill seeped through Christy. For the first time she truly understood how terribly thin the line was between complete self-absorption and clinical madness. Hutton and Jo-Jo had been perfectly matched in more than their physical beauty. They believed they were the center of the universe. They believed they were too special for the rules that governed other lives. Rules were for the little people, the ugly people.
The flyover people in the flyover states.
Bending down, Hutton grabbed Autry’s feet again. “Time to go. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
With a grunt and a heave, Hutton resumed dragging Autry far back into the alcove.
Cain touched Christy’s shoulder, drawing her away from the view of the alcove. He held his mouth so close to her ear she could feel his breath.
“He’ll be out of sight in about thirty seconds. I’m going in after him.”
Frantically she shook her head.
“It’s all right,” Cain said. “I’ve been watching him. He hasn’t had time to reload. In any case, no shooting. Back in the alcove, even Hutton’s little pocket pistol could bring the works down on my head.”
Before she could say anything, Cain went over the sill and landed soundlessly inside the alcove. Heart hammering frantically, she watched him ghost forward.
“Ciao, babe.” Hutton’s voice echoed eerily inside the alcove. “Say hello to Jo and the Sisters for me.”
In the silence that followed, a piece of debris rolled underneath Cain’s foot. The sound was shockingly loud. Hutton spun around just as Cain ducked behind a ruined wall. Hutton saw nothing but a flicker of shadow flowing over darker shadow.
“Jo?” he called uneasily.
Nothing answered but the ageless silence of the alcove.
Hutton reached into his pocket. With the motions of a man performing a familiar task, he reloaded the small pistol.
“Jo? That you, babe? You want to play some more naughty games?”
A throttled scream ached in Christy’s throat. Every step Hutton took brought him closer to the instant when he would discover Cain crouched and helpless behind the wall.
She pulled the heavy pistol from beneath her jacket. She sensed as much as saw the sharp, negative motion of Cain’s head. She knew what he was afraid of, stone hanging by a thread, aching to fall.
But it might not.
If Hutton saw Cain, there wouldn’t be any maybe or might. Cain would die. Before she let that happen, she would pull the trigger and take her chances on the ceiling coming down.
Tilting her head back, she spoke to the rock hanging overhead. “Peter,” she called huskily.
The single word bounced off the red sandstone, echoing around the alcove until it was impossible to say which direction the call had come from.
“Peter…”
Christy used the second call to disguise the muted, distinctive snick and slide of steel as she cocked Danner’s gun and circled to the left, trying to draw Hutton’s attention away from the place where Cain crouched.
“Jo!” Hutton looked around wildly but didn’t see anything. “Where are you? How did you find me?”
“I’ll always be able to find you,” she said in a low, throaty voice. “Just like lightning always finds the ground.”
The voice came from a different place. Christy was still circling to the side, trying to lure Hutton away from Cain’s hiding place.
“But you’re dead,” Hutton said in exasperation. “Ted followed you. He watched you walk to my plane. He punched the button, and ten minutes later you were toast.”
“Yes, I’m dead.”
The voice came from a different quarter. Hutton turned, tracking the sound.
“But you always liked demons, didn’t you?” she asked huskily. “Well, here I am, babe. Your own private demon.”
The voice was as elusive as a shadow in darkness. Hutton walked forward one step, then stopped.
“No,” he said. “What fun is it if I can’t see you?”
Slowly her finger tightened on the trigger. She hadn’t been able to lure Hutton away from Cain’s hiding place. At any moment he could be discovered.
The pistol was still in Hutton’s hand.
“I can see you,” she murmured, sliding off to the side.
But now Hutton’s pistol was tracking the teasing voice with its familiar, exciting spice of malice. He turned and took a hesitant step toward the voice.
Relief swept through Christy. If he kept turning, his back would be to Cain. All she had to do was keep moving and pray Hutton didn’t start shooting at ghosts.
“Don’t be afrai
d,” she said in a low, sultry voice, moving farther to the side. “I brought the baby powder.”
“But there’s no bathtub,” Hutton complained. “And you haven’t just banged some guy. If I can’t wash you afterward and powder you and play with you, it’s just no good, babe.”
His voice was thin, peevish, the voice of a child whose ritual had been disturbed.
Christy opened her mouth, but no words came out. She didn’t have any more ideas about how to use the fractures in Hutton’s soul against him.
Cain did.
He unwound from his crouch in a long, low tackle that knocked Hutton far back into the alcove. Flailing for balance, Hutton tripped over Autry’s corpse and fell backward. His head slammed up against one of the supporting timbers. The crack of skull meeting wood echoed in the alcove.
Hutton fell forward in an oddly graceful, boneless sprawl.
As Christy ran to Cain, he ripped the little pistol from Hutton’s hand.
“Is he—” she began.
“Just unconscious,” Cain said, cutting across her question.
“Thank God.”
He gave her an odd look. “I didn’t know you cared for good old Peter.”
She shuddered. “I don’t. He deserves to die. But you don’t deserve to be his executioner.”
The back of Cain’s fingers brushed over her cheek with surprising tenderness.
“What now?” she asked.
“Now we wake up Golden Boy and tell him all about the new designs in his future.”
“Gray bars and prison orange?” she asked, trying not to laugh. Because if she laughed, she didn’t know if she’d be able to stop short of screaming.
“More like white jackets and rubber rooms,” Cain said. “The guy is certifiably crackers.”
She shuddered. “I noticed.”
“You see a lantern anywhere? I can tell Hutton is breathing, but not much more.”
She looked around, spotted a gleam of metal in the middle of the supporting timbers, and started for it. As she bent down to pick up the lantern, a very faint glow from the deep crack in the stone over her head caught her eye. She looked up. Froze.
“Cain.”
The stark fear in her voice brought him to his feet. “What is it?”
“Oh, God. Autry—the plane—”
He punched the button, and ten minutes later you were toast.
Cain pulled Christy back and looked up into the crack.
It was crammed with dynamite, wires, and an electronic package with faintly glowing digital numbers counting off an unknown amount of time to explosion.
Autry had triggered the bomb before he died.
“Out!” Cain said.
She didn’t have any choice. His fingers were clamped around her upper arm like iron bands, forcing her through the darkness without a care for the rough ground beneath their feet. He yanked her up and over the low wall, dragged her over the pile of rubble, and rushed her across the exposed sandstone steps at a reckless pace.
On hands and knees, she scrambled through the tunnel, straightened, and dashed through the cleft, only to be brought up short by the wall at the head of the mesa. Smears of dried blood showed plainly.
He bent and held out his linked hands. “Put your foot—”
She was already doing it. He straightened and lifted his hands at the same time, boosting her up onto the plateau with enough force to send her rolling up and over the lip at the top.
As she staggered to her feet, he shot up out of the cleft, grabbed her arm, and set off at a dead run away from the mesa edge. The ground flew beneath their feet.
A sharp, dry thunder rolled through the canyon.
Moments later, the mesa answered. With a prolonged grinding roar, sandstone pulled away from the mesa edge. For a timeless moment the ceiling of the alcove hung unsupported. And then it came down, dragging a piece of the mesa with it, destroying the alcove in one crushing instant.
Hutton and Autry were dead and buried under a mountain of fractured stone.
“She Who Faces the Sun was right,” Christy said as the last rumble of shifting stone faded. “Whoever disturbs the Sisters dies.”
Chapter 56
Cain’s home
Two weeks later
The hot spring steamed and seethed gently around Christy and Cain. Overhead the Milky Way burned like a ghostly silver bridge between the undiscovered past and the unknown future.
Moki slept next to the spring in a nest of blankets that were carefully arranged to accommodate his healing wound. She reached out and eased a corner of cloth over the dog’s neck so that the chill night air was shut out. His tail wagged beneath the blankets and a long pink tongue slid over her hand.
“You’re spoiling him,” Cain said.
“Yeah. Fun, isn’t it?”
He laughed softly and pulled her through the water until she was sitting on his lap, facing him, her legs straddling his.
“Want to spoil me too?” he asked.
“What do you think I’ve been doing for the last two weeks?”
“Spoiling me thoroughly.”
“Thoroughly?”
“Addictively.”
Whatever she’d been about to say was lost in the husky sound she made as his hands slid up to her breasts.
“Have I spoiled you a little bit too?” he asked against her mouth.
“Why do you think I’ve been hanging around?”
“Moki.”
Laughing softly, she ran the tip of her tongue around Cain’s lips.
“Danner?” Cain asked, smiling.
“Wash your mouth out with soap.”
“Oh, Danner didn’t turn out so bad.”
“Was that before or after he started whitewashing Peter Hutton?”
Cain’s shrug sent currents of water stirring between Christy’s breasts. He didn’t care.
She did. “Now in the eyes of the world Hutton is a modern artiste who gave his all for his designs when God blinked and an alcove vanished,” she said bitterly.
Cain made a neutral sound.
“And Autry becomes a scorned lover who killed Jo-Jo rather than lose her to another man,” she continued.
“Don’t forget that She Who Faces the Sun also got something out of the deal.”
Christy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes. I’ll never forget her eyes when we handed her the second tortoise.”
“Like watching the sun come up twice in one day,” he agreed softly. “A little whitewash isn’t such a big price to pay for that, is it?”
A quiver of heat that owed nothing to the pool expanded through Christy as Cain’s hands moved beneath the water, slowly stroking her.
“Not a big price at all,” she admitted.
“Beats explaining to the sound-bite set that your beautiful famous sister was a thief and a would-be murderer,” he murmured against her neck, “and that Peter Hutton was a whacked-out killer with the face of a Greek god.”
“And that Danner was a fool?”
“So was Jo-Jo. Flyboy spent every last cent of their money.” Cain shrugged again, sending currents stirring. “We’re all fools, one way or another.”
“You aren’t,” Christy said.
His breath came in with a soft, ripping sound as he felt her hands sliding down his torso, curling around him, savoring his naked strength. Blindly his right hand searched along the edge of the pool until he found the foil packet he’d left on a rock.
“Oh, I’m a plenty big fool,” he said, “such a fool that I’m thinking of asking a woman who hates the West to marry me and live here.”
“Funny,” she said, her breath catching. “I was thinking of asking a man who hates the city to marry me and live there.”
He went still. Then he fitted his mouth to hers in a hungry kiss that was both elemental and complex. When the kiss finally ended, both of them were breathing hard. Silently he held out the tiny packet, a question in his eyes. She eased it from his fingers…
And threw it away.
Foil gleamed in the instant before it vanished beneath the black water of the hot springs.
Then she was sliding over him in a slow, sleek union that was like nothing either had ever felt before. The intimacy was stunning, perfect, hotter than the seething water.
He groaned and fought for self-control.
“Which will it be?” he asked through his teeth. “West or East?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Both,” she said against his lips. “Summer here. Winter there. I don’t have a job at the moment, but I still want to tell New York a thing or two.”
“And when it’s not summer or winter?”
She moved over him with a long, shivering sigh. “We’ll negotiate.”
“One of us will lose.”
“No. We’ll both win.”
And they did.
Praise for the novels of
Elizabeth Lowell
“This author delivers pure, undiluted excitement.”
Jayne Ann Krentz
“Romantic suspense is her true forte.”
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Lowell manages to balance the right amount of intrigue [and] romance…[Her] characters come alive.”
Columbia State
“Romance and suspense…[with] likable characters blessed with Lowell’s knack for witty and enjoyable dialogue.”
Grand Forks Herald
“Spellbinding…intrigue, passion, and danger.”
Florida Times-Union
“Lowell’s keen ear for dialogue and intuitive characterizations consistently set her a cut above most writers in this genre.”
Charlotte News & Observer
About the Author
Elisabeth Lowell‘s acclaimed suspense novels include the New York Times bestsellers Always Time to Die, Die in Plain Sight, Moving Target, Running Scared, and four books featuring the Donovan family: Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove, and Midnight in Ruby Bayou. Lowell has more than thirty million books in print. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, with whom she writes mystery novels under a pseudonym. Visit her website at www.elizabethlowell.com.
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