The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy

by Pauline Baird Jones

  The kitchen was empty.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The pungent odor of ammonia burned into the fog that Dani drifted in. She tried to get away from it. There was a reason she didn’t want to leave. A good reason. If she could just remember what it was. The smell followed her. She coughed. When she did, little spikes of pain made a headache crown for her head, digging deep into the fog.

  “Come on, Willow. Open your eyes,” a man’s voice said. It was a nice voice, gentle and filled with love. God’s voice? she wondered, remembering she was probably dead. That’s why she didn’t want to leave the fog. The Queen of Denial. She giggled.

  “Cleopatra,” she murmured. The smell stabbed into her nose again, sparking another cough. It seemed God didn’t have a sense of humor.

  “Let me be dead a little longer. I’ll get up soon. Promise.”

  She tried to roll to her side, but something or someone stopped her.

  “Open your eyes.”

  The ammonia zoomed in again. This time she jerked hard enough to do what he asked. And realized she probably wasn’t dead, unless heaven was the cab of a pickup truck. “I guess for a redneck it might be, but I was kind of hoping for something more comfortable.”

  “What are you talking about?” the voice asked.

  Not God. He would know. Whoever he was he sounded amused and a little puzzled.

  “Let me help you sit up.”

  Hands slid under her shoulders and lifted. Her head did a spin that raised a nausea echo in her stomach.

  “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”

  Hands guided hers around something circular, helped her spaghetti arms lift it to her mouth. Something cool flowed down her parched throat. It wasn’t her favorite brew, but when it hit her stomach, she did feel slightly better. Now if she could just get her brain to behave. Instead of an orderly queue of questions waiting to be asked, she had the Sesame Street segment from hell going on inside her head. Words kept spinning off in little tangents, while question marks and letters did a really lame Macarena—like Al Gore on Valium. She persisted and finally put together a sentence.

  “Am I dead?”

  “Of course you’re not dead. You’re with me. It’s the stuff I gave you. It’ll mess with your head for a bit longer, then you’ll have a little headache.”

  “A little headache?” The questions were dancing at the base of her head, right where it hurt the most. She tried to rub the spot, but her fingers were mushy. She shook her head, but that just started the dance going again. “Who are you?”

  “Spook. I’m Spook.”

  She got the dancers to move left so she could turn her head toward his voice. Pale, malleable features. Blonde hair. Blue eyes, a little tired around the rims. Narrow mouth. Sure enough it was Spook a.k.a. Dark Lord, the whacked out hit man.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “No! I love you.”

  Even the dancers stopped to think about this. “Why?”

  He grinned. He had a nice smile for a killer. “Why not?”

  “Well,” she frowned, “for one thing, you’re a hit man and I’m a romance writer.” She frowned. “I think. Whatever. It’s weird. And probably illegal.”

  He laughed. “Most things are. Don’t worry about it. We’re together, the way we were meant to be.” He lifted her hands to his mouth. At least, she thought they were her hands. They looked kind of familiar. “I won’t let anything keep us apart ever again.”

  “I have to pee,” she said.

  He grinned. “Except that.”

  * * * *

  “You aren’t the first person to under estimate Hayes,” Luke said to Matt as they drove toward the highway. “As far as I can tell, we’re only the second ones to walk away alive.”

  It didn’t help. It wasn’t his job to stay alive. It was his job to protect Dani. He hadn’t done his job. Now they had to play catch-up.

  It had been easy to find the place Hayes brought his four-wheel up behind the cabin. They even found his foot prints coming and going. Made him feel like Daniel Boone when he noted that those coming weren’t as deep as those leaving. So Hayes had followed his own MO by disabling Dani before he grabbed her. Would he continue to follow his MO and kill her? He usually moved his victims, but not this far.

  It gave him reason to hope, though a lovesick Hayes wasn’t much easier to contemplate than a murderous one. He couldn’t think about what form Hayes’ love might take. He told himself that nothing was as final as death, tried to believe it before pushing away everything but the hunt.

  His team was coming in by chopper, meeting him at the Long’s Peak ranger station where they would coordinate the search. Throughout the area, roadblocks were going up in a two hundred mile radius. The locals hadn’t liked it when he told them to search every building, to look under every rock that moved. They hadn’t like it but they agreed to do it. Big government had a long reach. Matt didn’t mind beating them with it if they could stop Hayes from leaving the area.

  He wouldn’t let himself think about what would happen if Hayes got Dani out of the area. Just like he wouldn’t let himself think about how she had looked when she asked him to get her home.

  * * * *

  Hayes had put a closed sign at the entrance of the campground before driving in. He didn’t want to be disturbed at his work. While Willow took care of her bodily functions, the sight of the pit toilet had cleared her head more than the ammonia, he thought with a grin, he unloaded their gear and moved it to a safe distance from the truck.

  Copeland was still out. Hayes had made sure Copeland would be, just as he made sure he kept the dosage below lethal. It wouldn’t be as fun to kill him this way, without him knowing who had taken him out, but he didn’t want any trouble with the bastard. Not in front of Willow. This would be her first kill. He wanted her to enjoy it.

  With luck, Copeland’s body would buy them the time they needed to make their climb, then their getaway to a new life.

  Hayes hadn’t decided where that new life would be. They would take it in stages, erase their old selves, make new ones. He did know it would be some place high. They would need a new mountain for their new life. For their new pattern. He lifted his eyes to his mountain, used his hand to block out the sun, and felt regret bit deep. She was magnificent. He would miss her.

  The door creaked and he turned as Willow came out. She was pale, a bit wobbly, but the hike would work the rest of the drug out of her veins. It had served its purposed, easing the transition between her old life and her new. Now it was time for her initiation to begin. Time to introduce her to the wonder of blood and fire. Time to introduce her to his mountain.

  “Come on, Willow.”

  Dani looked at the gentle rise to the parking lot where Spook waited for her. He looked taller from her vantage point. She knew it was the drug humming in her blood that made it possible for her to stand and look up at him without hysterics or screaming. Instead of a killer and a romance writer, they might be a normal couple out for a day in the mountains.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  Time for what? She examined the rise doubtfully. “I don’t think I can make it up there.”

  “You can,” he said. “You need to try.”

  She didn’t know why, but it was easier to do what he asked than marshal thoughts to argue with him. There was a well worn trail. She followed that, felt gravity tug at her, then give way when she topped the rise.

  “I made it.” She looked down, then at Spook. “I went up.”

  “Of course you did. You’re Willow.”

  She didn’t feel like Willow. She felt like Gumby. Even the green part. His eyes were still filled with love, but something else had moved in there while she was peeing. They had a glow like a dude in a Stephen King thriller. Didn’t Stevie boy live in Colorado, too? Unease tried to make a move, but it was hard going against Spook’s drug. The places inside her that hurt hadn’t changed. They stil
l hurt. Still felt empty. She just didn’t care. If this was how Steven felt when he drank, no wonder he kept pouring stuff down his throat. Spook’s eyes looked like Steven’s when he drank, with matching dark circles underneath. “Are you all right?”

  “I am now. Or I will be.”

  He seemed to hesitate, then he took her hands, held them against his face. Their bodies were close. Too close, Dani decided, feeling claustrophobic at his nearness. Matt up close didn’t make her feel like this. Course, Matt wasn’t a murderer. And he had that really great butt going for him.

  “It’s time for us to complete the pattern.”

  Pattern? Even through the fog she felt the intensity behind his careful words. Knew she needed a clear head. If only the dancers would finish their party. If only she had her soda. It would kick butt for her.

  “You don’t happen to have a Diet Dr. Pepper, do you?”

  “No.” A flicker of impatience altered his face before he controlled it. “You have to pay attention, Willow. I know it’s not easy, but this is important to our future.”

  What future is that? “Okay. I’ll try. It’s just my head—”

  His smile was quick and strangely charming. “I know. Let’s sit here while I explain.”

  He led her to one of the logs that bounded the parking lot. When they were seated, he pointed at the mountain rising against the stark blue of the sky. “Do you see that peak?”

  He had the same tone in his voice that Matt had when he talked about all this mountain stuff. Good old Matt. She should have jumped his bones when she had the chance. Just because she didn’t jump men’s bones, was no reason not to, was it?

  “Willow?” Spook’s voice had an edge to it.

  She looked up, squinting against the sun. “It looks high.”

  She was repeating herself, but what did one say about a mountain, for Pete’s sake?

  “It’s over fourteen thousand feet above sea level.” He took her hand.

  “That’s a lot of feet. At least, I think it is. I’m not very good at math. Too left brain for me. And they didn’t like to teach girls math when I was in high school, the sexist pigs—”

  “Willow, shut up.” His hand tightened on hers. “We have to go there.”

  Dani looked at him. “Go to high school?”

  “No. To the top of that peak. There’s a trail—”

  That got through the fog. “I don’t care if there’s a four lane highway. I don’t do fourteen thousand feet. I don’t do—”

  “Willow,” his tone was so sharp it cut through her foggy panic with the precision of a knife, a reminder he carried one and knew how to use it. “We have to do this. It’s the only way we can be together.”

  He obviously didn’t have a good grasp of motivation, if he thought that would make her want to drag her butt fourteen thousand feet above anything. She hadn’t wanted to date him before she knew he was a killer. She decided to tell him that—until she saw his eyes. They were the same as they had been in the safe house when he killed Peg.

  “That’s not the only thing we have to do.”

  Even the drug couldn’t take the edge off the chill skating down her back with razor sharp blades. “What?”

  “The Feds will come after us. I’m wanted, you know.”

  Duh. “I heard.”

  The side of his mouth lifted. “It’ll take us at least two days to do the hike, then get down and get clear. It will be easier if they think you’re dead.”

  * * * *

  The locals had just finished updating him on the search and disposition of the road blocks when he heard the chopper coming in. Matt didn’t mind cutting short the report. It was a depressingly familiar litany that could be summed up in one sentence: no one knew squat.

  “You were right, Matt,” Alice said. “When Hayes was in your apartment he found your photo album. They found it hidden in the blankets on your bed. Several photos, probably of the cabin, were missing. Rotten luck.”

  “Yeah. Get set up. I want to move as soon as we hear something.” He stared up at Long’s Peak, every cell in his body straining for action. This time he had a solid hold on impatience. His week-long pursuit of Dani had reminded him that hunting was about more than looking. It was thinking, too. Something he had let himself forget in the last few years when the criminals were stupider.

  Hayes was a thinker first. Matt could call up a state full of cops, but if he couldn’t figure out what Hayes intended to do, it didn’t matter.

  Hayes had smoked him, no question about that. His pride had taken a hit, but it wasn’t a knock-out. Hayes was good. He knew the system inside out, knew how to exploit the weaknesses of it and the men tied to it. He was always careful to do what wasn’t expected. Knowing that could help him now.

  Matt paced across the parking lot, his mind turning with everything he knew about Hayes, trying to turn knowledge into an arrow pointing where he had gone. When he ran out of parking lot, he turned around and headed the other way. If he had to wear a groove from here to China, he was going to crack the bastard’s brain. Then he was going to yank it out and stomp on it.

  * * * *

  “Please don’t do this, Spook,” Dani whispered, the words grating against her fear-dry throat as Spook arranged the limp body, then began pouring gasoline over him and the truck.

  “He’s a killer, Willow, not worthy of your concern.”

  So are you! her mind screamed. “John Donne. Every man’s death diminishes me.”

  He looked up with a quick smile. “Very good. Coleman Dowell. ‘Life is a series of diminishment’s. A lightening of self that eventually makes our own death possible.’ Do you want to live forever, Willow?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “You’re not even sure you want your life to go on, why do you care about his?”

  He hit hard. Dani looked down, trying to absorb his words without getting knocked out by them.

  “Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think I wouldn’t see the aura of death like a shadow in your eyes? Why would you sentence him to life, when you’re not sure you want it for yourself?”

  He was good. His brain, the way he could argue a point without bluster was what had drawn her to him on the boards. There was so much bluster in the world, so little thinking. She had barely held her own against him, even after sharpening her brain against his for six months. What chance did she have now, with her brain riding the drug train? She still had to try. “It’s his life, not mine. ‘At birth man is offered only one choice, the choice of his death.’ I won’t be the one to take choice away from him.”

  “I love the way your mind works,” he said, his smile tender, his eyes avid with delight. “You won’t be taking his choice. I will. For you. Because I love you. You don’t get it right now, Willow. But you will. When it’s over and your pain is gone, then you’ll understand.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him that if he loved her, he wouldn’t do it, but he was through talking. His movements brisk and business-like, he grabbed the man by the hair, pulled his head back to expose the neck and pulled his knife across the arched flesh in a horrible mimicry of a bow across the strings of a violin.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A scarlet flood gushed across Spook’s hand. He opened his hand and the man’s head thumped against the truck bed. He stared down at it with a slight smile, then knelt and wiped his blade across the white shirt before sheathing it. Nausea joined shock when he thrust his hand into the slowing gush of blood. His eyes warmed, then glowed hot as he washed his hands with it, his breath coming in short, panting gasps.

  “Other things are very well in their way, but give me Blood,”he murmured, then looked at her.

  Shock kept Dani still when he came to her and cupped her face with his bloody hands. Desire put an unholy glow in his eyes when he traced her features, the blood a lubricant between them. He followed his hands with his mouth, his tongue licking blood and skin. He murmured against her skin, “It’s coming together, just like I planned it, Willow.”

/>   His thumb penetrated her lips. She tasted the salt of blood. Her stomach heaved. She jerked away from him, draped herself across a handy boulder. Got rid of the breakfast Matt had cooked for her in a bigger hurry. It got the taste of blood out of her mouth, but didn’t leave one that was much better.

  When there was nothing left to hurl, she slid to the ground and huddled in a semi-fetal position against the boulder. It was warm from the sun. She was cold. Part of her cursed the drug that still fogged her thinking, kept her from feeling too much. The rest of her was grateful for it.

  She didn’t look at Spook. Couldn’t close her eyes. That started the instant replay. She wanted to cry, but she was too dry, too brittle. He handed her a bottle of water with a hand still dripping red, then crouched down in front of her.

  “Don’t feel bad. I threw up the first time, too. It’s part of the cleansing process.”

  She rinsed her mouth, then wiped the drips away with the back of her hand. “Pretty messy way to cleanse yourself.” Her face felt sticky and she could still smell blood. “Can I wash my face or is that part of getting cleansed?”

  “No, that was for me. I like you in red.”

  “Every guy I know likes a woman in red.” She tipped her head back and squeezed the bottle, flooding her face until the bottle was empty. This was her idea of cleansing. She used her shirt sleeve to finish the job. Tried not to look at the red streaks it left on the fabric.

  “Can you walk?”

  Dani looked at him then. Something in his face made her nod instead of shake her head. She ignored the bloody hand held out to help her stand, used the boulder instead. The boulder was her friend. She wanted to cling to it, maybe have its children. Anything but go with bloody Spook.

  He pointed up. “I want to be at the top of that hill before the timer goes off so we can see the fire.”

  Dani looked at his hill. She had to tip her head back to see the top he wanted them to reach, almost fell backwards doing it. She didn’t know a lot of math, but she did know a ninety-degree angle when she saw one. “Oh.”

  “This way, just over that rise,” Spook said, as easily as if they were out on an afternoon hike instead of a kidnapping.