Maverick Christmas

by Joanna Wayne

  He kept the phone to his ear as he ran to the car without bothering to tell Hernandez he was out of there. He didn’t hear anything else until he reached the pavement in front of police headquarters. The connection was only slightly clearer, but this time he was dead certain that the stifled voice had said die— and the voice did not belong to Chrysie.

  CHRYSIE OPENED HER eyes and then closed them again when a stabbing pain struck at both temples. “Josh?”

  “He’s not here. You can never depend on men. You should know that by now.”

  The female voice rolled through the fog in Chrysie’s head. “Luisa?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Don’t worry. I have things under control. I hate that it has to be this way, but you really should have left Jonathan when you had the chance, Cassandra. The man was beneath you. And he was exceedingly greedy.”

  Chrysie shook her head gingerly, trying to clear away the fog. Images swam in and out as if they were fish in a murky pool. Luisa. The coffee shop. Something about a picture.

  She tried to put her fingers to her aching head, but her hands wouldn’t move. She closed her eyes and drifted back into the ever-changing dream.

  “Put my baby down.”

  “Stop that, Chrysie. You’re becoming irrational, and I can’t have that. It upsets me.”

  Chrysie tried to move her hands again. She couldn’t. They were bound behind her back, and she was lying on the back seat of a moving car.

  She had to think. But her head was so foggy. Luisa must have drugged her. But how?

  The coffee.

  She swallowed past a tongue that seemed a foot thick. “Stop this car and untie me at once, Luisa.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  Her feet were tied, as well. Still, she might be able to get them up high enough to kick Luisa in the back of the head. She tried, but her body simply wouldn’t follow her commands. The drugs had turned her muscles to lead.

  This was crazy. Luisa was a respected attorney. She didn’t drug and kidnap people in broad daylight—only she had.

  “Why are you doing this, Luisa?”

  “You left me no choice.”

  “I didn’t kill Jonathan.”

  “Of course you didn’t, Cassandra. You were not even smart enough to divorce him. But someone had to get rid of him. He was running my clients off much faster than I could get new ones. And he insisted on a payback from my adoption service.”

  Adoption service. She didn’t have an adoption service. She represented clients with legal problems. A payback. Blackmail. Oh, no. This was too bizarre. Luisa surely couldn’t mean…

  “I didn’t know you had an adoption service.”

  “No, Josh would not have shared that with you. It would have put him in a bad light.”

  This was sick, so very sick. “Where did you get the babies, Luisa?”

  “I did the public a service. Taking babies from people who can’t even afford the children they already have and putting the innocent infants in the hands of people who can take care of them properly is a noble act.”

  Chrysie was stunned. With her psychological training, she should have recognized antisocial traits in Luisa long ago. There must have been signs. Jonathan must have guessed she was sick. But then, he’d been too busy cashing in on her depravities. Chrysie had never known her husband at all.

  Chrysie lay quietly, trying to get her mind clear enough so she could find a way out of this. She didn’t know what Luisa had planned for her, but she knew it would end in death. Luisa’s strength lay in the very trait that may have led to her madness: she planned every detail to perfection.

  “You’re making a mistake, Luisa. You can’t get away with this. People will find out that you’re evil, and you’ll lose your business. You’ll go to jail.”

  “You are the one who’s evil, Cassandra. Ask my stepsister’s partner. Juan Hernandez will remind you how you killed his daughter. He tells everyone how he found Maria dead after she’d talked with you.”

  Chrysie groaned. Maria Hernandez. Detective Hernandez. She’d never connected the two. But then, she’d never seen him in the role of Maria’s father. That explained his attitude problems when he’d questioned her about Jonathan’s death.

  Chrysie’s mind traveled back seven years. She’d just graduated and gone to work at a mental-health clinic near the museum district. Maria had been only sixteen. Her father had moved out. Her mother cried all the time. Her boyfriend had found someone else.

  Suicidal. The word had been all but emblazoned on her forehead. Chrysie had warned her mother, insisted she have her daughter hospitalized. She’d promised to do that.

  She hadn’t. Instead she’d shared her prescriptions, handed over a full bottle of tranquilizers. And pretty, sweet, depressed Maria took all the pills at once.

  Chrysie was drifting again. She had to fight the drugs, had to keep her thoughts on track. She couldn’t die. The girls needed her. She just needed a better handle on Luisa’s mental state, a better feel for just how delusional she’d become.

  “Where are we going, Luisa?”

  “To visit some acquaintances of mine.”

  Paid killers, no doubt. As Buckley and Rogers had been. Luisa must have had them killed, too, eliminated them because they hadn’t killed Chrysie. Fear overrode the drugs, swelled like smoke and filled her burning lungs.

  Chrysie had to work fast. Once Luisa turned her over to an assassin, it would be a hundred times harder to escape. She needed to keep Luisa talking until she decided the best way to get through to her.

  “I met two of your friends, Luisa. Mac Buckley and Sean Rogers. Were they nice men?”

  “They were thugs, actually. Very unlike the acquaintances you’ll meet today. Do you like dogs?”

  “I do. I love dogs.”

  “These are Dobermans.”

  “My roommate in college had a Doberman. He looked mean, but he was very sweet-tempered.”

  “These aren’t, but they’re very dependable. Sharp teeth. Trained to kill. And they have no fear or scruples. Just animal instincts. Killers should be like that, don’t you think? We’re almost there. If you listen, you can hear them barking.

  Chrysie tried to steel herself against the terror. If she let it take over, she’d never get out of this alive.

  You have to crawl inside their delusional world with them in order to reach them.

  It must have been her Abnormal Psych professor who’d said that, though Chrysie doubted if Dr. Lucas had ever seen a patient like Luisa.

  The car stopped and the driver’s-side door flew open. Chrysie heard the dogs, barking and growling, rattling the fence. She imagined them on top of her, their teeth biting into her and ripping her flesh from her bones.

  “Ride’s over, Cassandra.”

  She didn’t have to crawl into Luisa’s world of madness. She was there.

  JOSH DROVE LIKE a madman, flying from one lane to another, cutting people off and cursing the idiots who drove just like him and had the nerve to get in his way. There was only thing working in his favor—a very inconspicuous GPS surveillance tracking device that Grecco had installed on Luisa’s car that very morning.

  “Vehicle’s stopped.” Static followed Grecco’s voice.

  Damn! This was no time to lose his phone connection with Grecco. Josh turned up the volume on the speaker as he sped past an eighteen-wheeler.

  “Location?”

  “The road’s not marked. She may be on private property.”

  Josh gave him a freeway exit number. “How do I stand?”

  “You’re a good ten miles away.”

  Josh switched to the far left lane, then got stuck between a couple of cars doing the speed limit while everyone else was over it by at least ten miles an hour.

  “Nothing’s marked in the area where she stopped, Josh. She may be in the middle of a pasture somewhere. I’ve alerted the cops. There are two squad cars trying to pick up her tail. You’ll probably beat them up there.”

 
; He swerved around a white panel truck.

  “Good luck, Josh.”

  “Yeah, luck.” All his promises to keep Chrysie safe came down to luck. He should have leveled with her this morning, told her that he and Grecco suspected Luisa might have been the one Jonathan was blackmailing, the one who’d had him killed.

  But it had never crossed his mind that Chrysie would hook up with anyone in Houston before he had had some kind of agreement with the police. She wouldn’t have if she hadn’t heard that her monsters were dead. She wouldn’t have walked into danger if she hadn’t felt so safe.

  His exit was coming up, and traffic was backed up the length of the ramp. He hit the shoulder, not even slowing down as he squeezed through spots with no more than inches to spare. Cars honked. Drivers gave him the finger.

  Two minutes later he spied the only fork in the road in sight, a dirt path that was little more than a cow trail meandering off through an open field. There was no sign that a car had been down it, but ten minutes was long enough for the dust to settle. Ten minutes was long enough for most anything.

  God, don’t let me be too late.

  LUISA GRABBED Chrysie’s hair and started yanking her from the car. Chrysie tried to fight, but with her hands and feet tied and her coordination diminished, she was almost helpless against the determinedly deranged woman. Rocks dug into Chrysie’s back as she was dragged away from the car and to within inches of the tall chain-link fence.

  The dogs’ breath was hot on her flesh as the fierce animals threw themselves against the metal mesh, fighting to get to her. She wouldn’t live five seconds inside that fence.

  Chrysie’s heart pounded, the fear so palpable it seeped from every pore of her body. She couldn’t die. She couldn’t. The girls needed her and she loved them so very, very much.

  And there was Josh. She loved the way he smiled and teased. Loved his strength and even the way he spoiled his boys. Loved riding next to him over hills of snow in his beautiful sleigh.

  Loved that he’d tried so hard to protect her.

  Tears filled her eyes as she watched Luisa tie the end of a long rope to the gate, then carry the other end back to the car. Her plan was clear, well thought out, like all of her sick murders. She’d hold on to the rope as she started the car and jerked forward. Once the gate was open, she’d drop the rope and simply drive away.

  Chrysie could all but feel the Dobermans’ teeth tearing at her flesh. But Luisa wouldn’t be around to see her suffering, no more than she’d seen Jonathan’s death or any of the other deaths she’d ordered.

  That was it, her altered state of reality. She was never in the wrong. Stealing babies was her way of helping them. Jonathan’s weaknesses were the reason he couldn’t be allowed to live. And if Chrysie had divorced Jonathan, she wouldn’t have become involved it the plot to get rid of him.

  And Luisa didn’t kill. Paid thugs killed. Dogs killed. But never Luisa.

  Crawl inside their delusional world….

  Luisa rounded her car, rope in hand.

  Chrysie started rolling, barely propelling herself in front of the car’s tire before Luisa could pull away. For a minute she thought she’d read it wrong, believed that Luisa might just drive away and crush her beneath the wheels.

  But the minute stretched to two or three. She was certain Luisa was thinking of a way around this. Her plan had been perfect, but Chrysie had spoiled it. The car door opened and then slammed shut. Chrysie watched Luisa stamp to the front of the car.

  Before Luisa reached her, Chrysie caught a glimpse of dust flying in the distance like a whirlwind. Someone was coming and driving very fast. Possibly the owner of the dogs.

  Or Josh.

  It had to be Josh.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Chrysie?” Luisa’s voice cracked with rage.

  “If you want me dead, Luisa, you’ll have to kill me. Not the dogs but you. Run over me. Shoot me. Strangle me. But you have to do it.”

  Luisa stared at her until her eyes glazed in fury before she grabbed Chrysie by her hair and dragged her away from the tire.

  Chrysie rolled back before Luisa rounded the car. The feeling was coming back into her legs, and her coordination was drastically improving.

  “Very well, Chrysie. We’ll do this your way.”

  Luisa stamped away only to return a few seconds later holding a silver pistol and pointing it at Chrysie’s right knee. Sweat poured from Luisa’s forehead and dripped down her neck. Her hands shook. So did the gun.

  This was not the way Luisa had planned this, but still she would win. She’d shatter Chrysie’s kneecaps, and then when she pulled her away from the wheel, she wouldn’t be able to roll back. The dogs would finish her off in seconds, just in time for Josh to find her bloodied mass of flesh.

  Chrysie could not let that happen. She’d stayed alive against all odds for three years. She wouldn’t die now.

  Straining and calling on every ounce of strength she could muster, she swung her legs, slamming her taped ankles into Luisa’s legs. Luisa teetered and fell, crashing to the hard ground beside Chrysie.

  Luisa struggled to get up, but Chrysie raised her upper body enough to slam her head into Luisa’s, hitting so hard that her brain seemed to rattle against her skull.

  When her head cleared, Josh was standing over them with his size-twelve foot planted firmly on Luisa’s chest and a gun pointed at her head.

  Concern clouded his dark eyes when he turned to Chrysie. “Are you all right?”

  “I am now.”

  “You can’t do this,” Luisa said. “I have rights.”

  “Yes, you do,” Josh agreed. “You have the right to do as I say or to become the next meal for six hungry dogs.”

  JOSH GRABBED HIS JACKET from the hook by the back door. “Ok, boys. Time to pile in the car if we’re going to make it to the airport on time.”

  “Wait,” Danny called. “I have to get the present I made Jenny.”

  “It’s still two days until Christmas,” Josh reminded him.

  “I know, but I want to give it to her now.”

  “It’s just an old box with macaroni glued on it,” Davy said.

  “You’re just saying that ’cause all the macaroni fell off yours.”

  “Can I take Mandy a cookie?” Davy said. “And take Chrysie one, too, so they can have a present?”

  “Sure thing, buddy. Then we gotta rock and roll.”

  “I don’t want to be a rock,” Davy said.

  “I can’t find my reindeer horns,” Danny yelled from somewhere down the hall.

  “I’ve already got the costumes in the car. We’re all set.”

  “Why aren’t Chrysie and Mandy and Jenny spending the night with us like they used to?” Davy asked.

  That was a very good question, and one that Josh couldn’t answer. He’d stayed in Houston for three days after he’d almost lost Chrysie to the pack of wild dogs and the mad female attorney. She had come through the trauma like a trouper, which hadn’t surprised him a bit.

  The police had cleared up lots of details before he’d left, like arresting the owner of the dogs. The scumbag trained them to kill and then sold them to druggies to use against border patrol agents. Leave it to Luisa to know riffraff like that.

  Luisa was undergoing a mental evaluation and awaiting trial for numerous crimes, though she’d never admitted to doing anything wrong. She’d specifically denied setting Chrysie up to take the rap for Jonathan’s murder, but the evidence against her was pretty overwhelming. The only flaw had been Chrysie’s leaving to go to the motel that night. But then she’d returned in time for Buckley and Rogers to salvage the original plan.

  All charges had been dropped against Chrysie.

  That’s how Josh had left things.

  It had been great to get back to Montana. If he never went to Houston again, it would be too soon. There were plenty of people who loved it, but there was way too much traffic in that city for him and not nearly enough fresh air.

&nb
sp; But it wasn’t until he’d returned to Montana that he’d realized how little he and Chrysie had talked about the future. He’d just expected she’d fly back up here and they’d take up where they’d left off. Why mess with a good thing?

  It had taken a couple of short talks with Logan and one very long chat with Rachel for him to accept that women didn’t think like that.

  “I bet Chrysie likes our new car,” Danny said as he and Davy crawled into the third-row seats of their new SUV.

  “Let’s hope so,” Josh agreed. The car had been Rachel’s suggestion. A man looking to acquire a large family needed a vehicle big enough for them to all fit. Apparently it was the same with a house.

  Rachel was certain that Chrysie would have already considered and rejected the idea of moving into his one-bathroom and very crowded rustic cabin. He’d always planned to build a bigger place one day. Now he expected to start construction in the spring.

  Josh shoved his hand into his pocket for the car keys. His fingertips brushed the ring box. That was the one thing that made him a little nervous.

  The engagement ring had been Logan’s suggestion. Unfortunately his guidance didn’t go beyond that, so the proposal was strictly up to Josh. He had no idea what he’d say, but he figured it would come to him when the time was right.

  And that might just be tonight, after the Christmas pageant, when he took Chrysie and the girls back to the cabin on the Millers’ ranch. They were staying through Christmas. He and the boys were excited about that. He’d even found the perfect present for Mandy: a cuddly black Lab.

  Now all that was left was asking Chrysie to marry him and slipping that diamond ring on her finger.

  HUMPHRIES BAR AND GRILL was more crowded and far noisier than Chrysie had ever seen it. Apparently half the town showed up for the annual community Christmas pageant, and half of them must have eaten at Humphries beforehand.

  A quieter atmosphere would have suited her better. She had so much she wanted to talk about with Josh.

  “I can push together two small tables, and the six of you can squeeze around that,” the waitress said. “If you want a table for six, the wait will be about an hour.”