Cowboy Swagger

by Joanna Wayne

  Collette felt a surge of apprehension and knew from the change in Dylan’s stance that he felt it, too.

  “Who was it?” Dylan asked.

  “Some friend of the family. He left when I told him he wasn’t on the list.”

  Collette pulled the photo from her handbag. “Is this the man?”

  The guard studied it for a good half minute before handing it back to Collette. “No. The guy I talked to was ten to fifteen years younger than this man. But that guy in the picture looks familiar.”

  Dylan hooked his thumbs in the back pockets of his jeans. “Do you have any idea where you might have seen him before?”

  “No, but I’ll give it some thought. Check with me when you finish seeing Ms. Baker.”

  “I’ll do that,” Collette said. “But if you see him, don’t let him near the patient.”

  “I’m not letting anyone near the patient unless they have proper ID and are on my list.”

  “Good man.” Dylan turned to Collette and took her hand.

  Even here, amidst all the trepidation and qualms, his touch both soothed and stirred her.

  “Call me the second you leave Eleanor’s room and I’ll meet you here.”

  “Will do.”

  She slipped the picture back in her handbag and stepped into Room 612. This time Eleanor was sitting up in bed, sipping orange juice through a straw and watching a morning news show on the television.

  Melinda was propped in a chair by the window. She jumped up and gave Collette a hug as they exchanged greetings. “Eleanor was just saying she hoped you’d stop by today.”

  “Can’t keep me away.” Collette walked to Eleanor’s bedside. “You look a bit livelier than yesterday.”

  “They took that annoying IV out of my arm and I can actually go to the bathroom instead of using a bedpan. I’m sure those things should be outlawed as an inhumane form of torture.”

  Collette fluffed Eleanor’s pillow. “Yep, you’re on the road to recovery.” Even her speech was clearer, though there were still enough meds in her to give her words a slight slur.

  “A couple more days and I’ll be ready to help your father go after the bastard who put me in the hospital,” Eleanor said.

  “How many times has Dad been up here to see you?”

  “At least two that I was conscious for. Yesterday right after you left and again in the afternoon. Thankfully, I could finally give him what he wanted.”

  “The articles?”

  “No, I finally remembered the whole attack. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “As a matter of fact, he didn’t. What did you remember?”

  “That the attacker was wearing a mask, one of the rubber ones that kids wear at Halloween. It was hideously ugly, like some creature who’d come back from the dead and was covered in mud and blood. I guess that’s why I’d blocked it from my mind.”

  Eleanor had described her attacker, and yet Collette’s father hadn’t mentioned that to her or to Dylan when he’d come calling at the ranch last night. If the man had been wearing a mask when he attacked Eleanor, then there was no way she could have recognized him, no way he’d need to come back to kill her.

  So what was the stalker doing at the hospital?

  Melinda reached for the remote and muted the television. “Your father is worried about you, too, Collette, especially with that strange alliance you’ve formed with Dylan Ledger.”

  Eleanor took the last sip of juice and set the empty carton back on her tray. “We’re all worried about you, Collette. I mean, the guy chooses you out of dozens of reporters to invite into the Ledger house.”

  “You insisted I go in.”

  “Right, and don’t think I don’t regret that. But I didn’t tell you to invite him to your house.”

  “I feel kind of responsible for all of this, too,” Melinda said. “If I’d shown up to take the pictures, you’d have never been drawn into this or even talked to Dylan Ledger.”

  And now she’d made love to him and couldn’t wait to do it again. Imagine what they’d think if they knew that.

  “Dylan had nothing to do with the attack,” she said, though she felt no real need to argue the point.

  Eleanor rolled her eyes. “You, Collette McGuire, are much too naive.”

  Collette straightened Eleanor’s sheet. “What did you tell Dad about Dylan?”

  “I just voiced my concerns.”

  “Such as?”

  “I received several threatening letters when I was investigating Helene Ledger’s murder for a series of articles I was doing.”

  “What did the letters say specifically?”

  “I don’t remember specifically. Something about keeping my nose out of the murder if I wanted to die of natural causes. You know, the usual kind of threats investigative reporters get.”

  Fortunately, she didn’t know. “I don’t see how or why you’d connect those with Dylan.”

  “He could have been trying to protect his father.”

  “His father was already in prison for the murder,” Collette reminded her.

  “But he could have known the attorney was looking into a release based on a technicality.”

  “I didn’t think investigative reporters gave credence to unproven hypotheses.”

  “Okay, I admit I have no idea who attacked me,” Eleanor admitted. “I just think you should stay away from the Ledgers.”

  Not if Collette could help it, but there was no reason to try and reason with these two now. She slid the photograph from the outside pocket of her handbag and handed it to Eleanor.

  “Have you ever seen this man before?”

  Eleanor squinted and held the picture toward the light over her bed for a clearer view. “No. Should I have?”

  “I think he could be my stalker.” Collette passed the picture to Melinda. “How about you?”

  “Never seen him before. Do you know his name?”

  “Not yet. Dad’s working on it, but for now he’s what the cops on TV call an unsub.”

  Collette visited a few more minutes. When her cell phone vibrated, she checked the ID. It was her sister-in-law. She ignored the call for now and kept chatting with Melinda and Eleanor.

  When Eleanor appeared to be growing tired, Collette said her goodbyes. Dylan wasn’t waiting, so she decided to grab a diet soda and return Alma’s phone call before calling him.

  A nurse was chatting with a couple of visitors in the hallway outside Eleanor’s room. She stopped talking long enough to point the way to the nearest refreshment room, which was just down the hall, not even out of sight of the guard on duty at Eleanor’s room.

  Collette retrieved her drink from the machine and was about to open it when the door to the room closed behind her. Before she knew what was going on, a large, misshapen hand covered her mouth and she was shoved against the drink machine.

  “Finally we meet, my precious Collette.”

  DYLAN STEPPED into the first-floor coffee shop. He scanned the area, fully alert for any sign of the Hardware Stalker, as he’d come to think of him.

  He picked up a black coffee to go at the counter, paid for it and was about to leave when a woman at the back table turned in his direction and waved. It took a second before he realized it was Abby from the diner.

  He walked over and sat down next to her. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your floured apron.”

  “I get out of that kitchen every once in a blue moon. I’m not too keen on these hospital trips, though. They’re too depressing. Just before you came in I was talking to a man whose grandson is dying from some rare disease that has no cure.”

  “That’s rough.”

  She nodded. “Especially since the insurance company won’t pay for some high-priced experimental drug that just might send the disease into remission. Poor guy. He said he was playing an option, though, and he was leaving to take care of it right then. Whatever that means.”

  “Hopefully it means the grandson will get the drug.”

  “
The man looked familiar, but he said he’d never been in my diner. Claimed he’d never even driven though Mustang Run.”

  “I hope you told him he was missing out on the best coconut pie in all of Texas.”

  “Darn right I did.”

  “So what brings you to Carlton-Hayes?” Dylan asked.

  “My neighbor had surgery last week. Not too serious. Got her gallbladder out, but she needed someone to drive her back for a checkup.”

  “And you’re the Good Samaritan?”

  She smiled at the compliment. “Better than hearing her whine about taxi fare. What brings you over from the ranch?”

  “I drove Collette McGuire to visit a friend.”

  “Oh, yes. That friend who got attacked in her house, I bet. I heard you were the one who found her.” Abby set down her cup and gave him a pat on the back. “Just returned to town and already the hero.”

  “I don’t think calling an ambulance qualifies as heroic.”

  “I bet that’s not what Collette is saying.”

  He got a strange buzz at the mention of Collette’s name, partly from an anxiety that had grown steadily stronger since they’d walked into the hospital. His prelude-to-danger instinct was on high alert.

  But he owed part of the buzz to the way Collette was burrowing inside him. Making love to her had been everything he’d imagined it would be, but instead of giving him release from the hunger that stirred at every touch, it only made the craving worse.

  He wasn’t sure if what he felt for her was love. In his lifetime he’d experienced lust and infatuation, but what he felt for Collette was on a whole new level. It would have to happen in the town where he’d always be known to some as the “murderer’s kid” and with a woman whose father he might have to settle a score with one day soon.

  If he was smart, he’d just leave town as soon as Collette was safe, before his heart got trampled into the hard Texas earth.

  His cell phone rang. The caller was Sheriff McGuire. “Excuse me for a minute, Abby. This could be important.” Or it could be more of the same garbage the sheriff had thrown at him last night.

  “We’ve identified the man from Knight’s Hardware,” McGuire said as soon as Dylan answered. “He’s got a rap sheet long enough he could use it for a blanket. Since you’re supposedly protecting Collette, I thought you should know.”

  “I appreciate that. What’s the full scoop?”

  “His name is Tommy Jo Benoit. He was never prosecuted but he was a hit man twenty years ago for the Chicago mob. He fouled up a hit and the story is the mob messed him up real bad and put him out of the business for good. The Feds kept him under observation for years, but finally dropped him as a harmless has-been.”

  “How much damage did they do to him?”

  “For starters they turned him into a steer.”

  “Ouch.”

  “They also fractured the bones in his gun hand and left him with iron plates in his head and screws in both arms. And they permanently damaged his vocal chords.”

  “Sounds like we’ve got our man.”

  “Closing in on him, anyway,” Glenn admitted. “I’ve put out an APB on him. If he’s still in the area, we’ll get him. If he’s not in the area, we’ll still get him. It just might take a while longer.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Yeah. Good work on fleshing him out.”

  The compliment left Dylan dumbstruck.

  “Take care of Collette,” the sheriff said before breaking the connection.

  That was a given.

  Abby had finished her coffee by the time he put his phone away. She stood and then sat back down as if she’d just remembered something important. “Either that guy I was telling you about has a twin brother or he lied to me.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I just remembered where I’ve seen him before—in my diner with Edna Granger.”

  Edna Granger. A local widow whose daughter was shot by McGuire. Alarm bells clamored in Dylan’s brain. “Did the man happen to have an extraordinarily raspy voice?”

  “Now how did you know that?”

  The danger instincts had been right on target. Dylan took off in a dead heat with disaster.

  COLLETTE STRUGGLED to free herself from the man’s grasp until she felt the hard barrel of a pistol pressed into the base of her skull. “Make one sound and I pull the trigger.”

  The sandpaper voice was all too familiar. They wouldn’t need to search for her stalker any longer. He’d found her.

  She shivered, and cold sweat trickled down her face.

  “Control yourself,” he ordered. “We’re going to take a short walk, Collette, just you and me. Two close friends in a hospital hallway. You will not do one thing to make anyone suspicious.”

  Adrenaline kicked in. So did hope. He wasn’t going to shoot her here. She would find a way to escape.

  He removed his hand from her mouth and let her turn so that she could see him. The gun remained lodged in the soft, fleshy spot beneath her brain.

  Dylan had called it right. The stalker and the hardware suspect were one and the same. And now Dylan was somewhere inside the hospital, waiting on her to call the second she left Eleanor’s room. Had she done that, she wouldn’t be in this predicament.

  But somehow this man would have found a way to get her. The cold, sick truth of that was in his eyes.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked him.

  “No time for talk now. Just listen. I have six bullets in this gun, and I never miss my mark. Do anything to draw attention to us and the first bullet is for you. The rest are for innocent bystanders or fools who rush to your aid.”

  “You’ll never get away with this. When the bullets are gone, they’ll kill you.”

  “They did that twenty years ago,” he whispered. “I have nothing to lose. So walk beside me quietly or you and five innocent bystanders will die. You’re too noble and pure to let that happen, Collette.”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  “I know everything about you and about your lover. There will be no silver stars for Dylan Ledger this time. No chance to be a hero.”

  The man reached over and opened the door. “Now walk.”

  The short barrel of the pistol slid from the back of her head as he went through the doorway, marching her beside him into the hallway.

  She didn’t feel the gun now, but his arm was linked with hers, and she knew the gun was close at hand. She could take her chances if it was only her, but she couldn’t risk his shooting innocent victims.

  It could be a bluff, but she couldn’t be sure. Mass murders of innocent victims had become all too frequent of late. She had to stay calm, search for a way to make a clean break, perhaps just as they reached the armed guard.

  Only they turned and went in the opposite direction down the hallway. A nurse passed them and smiled. Collette kept walking, one step at a time, a psycho dressed in a nice sports shirt and creased khakis holding on to her arm with one hand, a gun in the other hand with a bullet carrying her name.

  They turned a corner. An arrow and sign indicated they were heading toward the X-ray center. The glass doors ahead of them were marked for entrance by hospital personnel only. He surely wasn’t a doctor. Someone would notice and call security. This would all be over soon.

  Only he stopped before reaching the double doors, in front of another doorway marked Maintenance. The hallway remained empty as he pulled a key ring from his pocket and tried three keys before one fit, and the door opened.

  The man was shrewd and collected, as if he did this sort of thing every day, as if he knew he wouldn’t make a mistake. When the door opened, he shoved her inside and she nearly stumbled over a mop and pail. Her heart began to pound. Whatever this man wanted, he was not going to let her leave this room alive.

  She lunged for him, tearing at his face with the fingernails of one hand as she went for his gun. He knocked her against the wall so hard that her brain seemed to r
attle like a baby’s toy. Acute pain shot up her shoulder and once more the barrel of the gun pressed against her flesh, this time at her right temple.

  “I told you no games,” he croaked.

  Blood trickled from her mouth where she’d cracked it on the mop stick. She wiped it away with the sleeve of her cotton sweater. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

  “Right now I want you take off your clothes. All of them, but do it slowly so that I can get the full effect.”

  “Don’t rape me,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t rape me.”

  He laughed, a growling vibration from deep in his throat. “If only I could. I told you. They killed me twenty years ago.”

  “Let me go,” she pleaded.

  “I said undress. Start with the sweater.”

  “No.”

  He laughed again. “No? You are a feisty one, aren’t you?”

  “If you want to kill me, do it, but I won’t perform for you, you pervert.”

  Anger contorted his face and his eyes glazed over. “Very well, Collette. We’ll do this the quick way. It’s probably for the best anyway. Who knows when Dylan Ledger will come riding to your rescue and then I’d be forced to kill him, too. Not that I would find that offensive.” He placed the gun on the shelf at his elbow while he pulled a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket.

  It was now or never, she decided.

  Instead of going for the gun, she reached for a bottle of bleach on the shelf beside her. In one quick motion she twisted off the cap and slung the bottle at him. Unfortunately, he ducked in time to miss the most of it.

  He sputtered vile curses, but came at her with his eyes squinting from the caustic liquid. He pinned her against the wall, and his big hands closed hard around her neck.

  “Thanks for the favor. I always preferred killing slowly with my bare hands so that I could watch the victim’s faces as they realized they were dying. And you have such a pretty face, Collette.”

  She tried to fight him with her hands and feet, but her lungs were burning. She struggled for air.

  “If it helps any, you’re not dying in vain. Edna Granger will get her retribution. A daughter’s life for a daughter’s life. She’s willing to pay well for that revenge, enough to buy the drugs that may save my grandson’s life.”