Gambling on a Dream

by Sara Walter Ellwood

  She heard him swallowing and could imagine the older man nodding, despite her not being able to see him. “Tilly?”

  “Yeah, got it.”

  Dawn opened her door and climbed in. “Dawn, you and Wyatt be careful.”

  “You bet.”

  Wyatt jumped in behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. “My captain will notify the FBI and send backup.”

  He backed out of the space in the parking garage. She gripped her phone in her sweaty palm as they stopped at the intersection onto the busy Dallas street. “I can’t believe this, can you?” She met his gaze as they waited for the green. “Chet has always been a bully, but God… A killer? Gene wasn’t born in Colton, but he’s been a pillar of the community since marrying Chet’s sister and buying the Quick Fill.”

  Wyatt rubbed his jaw and shook his head. “Who would have pegged Leon Ferguson as a fraud and a killer, or Jake and Brent Parker as cattle and horse thieves?” The light turned, and he rushed out onto the street. “Just shows you really never can know.”

  She rested her head on the back of the seat, sudden exhaustion threatening to drag her under. “It means you can’t trust anyone.”

  “That too.”

  * * * *

  Chet sat down in the old worn leather chair at his desk and tossed his traffic book on top of the clutter of reports and campaign posters he’d hoped to post around town. He had to get rid of Demello before the kid woke up and talked. Hell, maybe Dawn and McPherson were already speaking to him. Wyatt had passed by Chet hiding out in his favorite spot for catching speeders on Highway Six not long after he’d thrown the brick at his house. At the time, Chet had wondered if he’d been spotted when he’d run into the stretch of woods between Wyatt’s ranch and the Quinn’s place.

  He’d done some research on the date stamped on the sonogram photo he’d seen at Madison’s house. It had been taken the day Dawn was shot in a drug bust gone bad. He’d also learned McPherson had killed the shooter’s lieutenant, and his testimony put the other thug in prison for life.

  It didn’t take too much to figure out those two had probably been fuck-buddies. He didn’t care. He had every intention of using that piece of information to his advantage.

  When he heard Tilly at his desk, muttering something to himself, he narrowed his eyes on the old geezer. What was he mumbling about? “Hey, have you heard from the sheriff?

  Tilly glanced at him. “Yeah. I hung up with her a moment ago. I just can’t believe what she said.”

  He had to know what rattled Tilly so badly. “You okay, old man?”

  Tilly shook his head and leaned over his desk. “Demello woke up and told Dawn and Wyatt who stabbed him.”

  Fuck! He cleared his throat and hoped like hell his voice came out normal. “Good. Do we know who?”

  Tilly shook his head as if to clear it. “Dawn wouldn’t tell me. Said she and Wyatt were coming here.”

  Chet had to get out of here and warn Gene. The idiot. If he’d listened to Chet from the get-go, they’d be kingpins in drug trafficking between the Cotreras Cartel in Mexico and Dallas. His plan was for Gene to buy a small trucking company and run the drugs. That hadn’t been good enough for Gene. He wanted to go bigger, or so he thought. Gene had contacted an old college buddy, Lester Gilman, and bought into his trucking company, North-South Transport.

  They still had to figure out a way to keep the law off their asses, and the solution seemed to offer itself up on a platter when Zack Cartwright resigned as sheriff. Gene had assured him there’d be no way in hell the town council and mayor would appoint Dawn Madison as sheriff, despite her being Cartwright’s lieutenant. After all, Chet was the most logical choice, and if they went with seniority, Tilly Kennedy was an old fool with only two more years until retirement. Chet wasn’t as sure as Gene. Everyone knew the damned Cartwrights owned this town, and they'd always looked out for those fucking Indian bastards.

  However, Dawn’s appointment hadn’t been the only problem. When the kids they’d enlisted to deal the drugs started wanting more money and making demands, Gene insisted they had to die. Chet should have offed the dickhead before he had the chance to kill Christopher Larson. Hell, he should have gotten rid of him long before Larson had a chance to figure out the North-South truck that always stopped at the Quick Fill every Monday morning at four AM was their drug supplier. Now Chet had to save the idiot’s ass.

  Tilly said something, and he tuned into his ramblings. What did Tilly know? “…we’re to stay here. I think they’re going after whoever it is.”

  “If she knows who, surely she and Wyatt don’t think they can take them down by themselves.” Chet cleared his throat.

  Tilly took a deep breath. “I don’t think they will. Remember how they called the FBI in to watch Demello? I’m sure that’s who’ll respond. But I don’t get why she wouldn’t want us there.”

  He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the why of it or about the genuine hurt in Kennedy’s voice. Standing, he grabbed his campaign posters. “I’m sure she has her reasons. I’m taking off for lunch. See you later.”

  Tilly shook his head. “She told me to make sure everyone stays put.”

  I’m sure she did. “I’ll be back before she gets here. I’m starving, and I didn’t bring anything. Want me to bring you something back?”

  Tilly shook his head again and leaned over his desk.

  Chet had no intention of ever stepping foot in the station again. As he left by the back door, he took a deep breath to slow his pounding heart. He needed another hit of coke, but there wasn’t time for one. All of his careful planning was flying out the window. Damn that Indian bitch. If it was the last thing he did, he hoped to put a bullet in her head.

  Chapter 17

  Talon glanced at the little girl sleeping in the car seat beside him and put the old Dodge into park next to the gas pumps at the Quick Fill. He opened the door and climbed out.

  As he filled the tank with unleaded, he checked his messages. The contractor he’d met with the other day was supposed to get back to him with an estimate. When he came across an unfamiliar number, he hit the play button.

  Maggie’s voice grated over the line. The usual bitter anger he choked on when he thought of the mother of his daughter bubbled in his gut. She and the loser she was dating had gotten married before they left Vegas to meet up with the cruise ship they were going to be working on in Las Angeles. He was about to hit delete when she said, “Keep a look out for papers from a lawyer. I met with one and had custody papers drawn up. We’ve decided we want our own family someday, and well, Alonzo never took much liking to Jessie Mae. Tell her goodbye for me.”

  The click on the other end jolted him. As the meaning seeped into him, and the words she hadn’t said echoed in his brain, the old rusty knife he’d always associated with his father twisted in his heart. He glanced at the sleeping angel inside the old beat-up truck. Jessie Mae was her father’s daughter.

  The pump snapped off drawing him out of his thoughts. As he put the nozzle back into the bracket, he snagged his wallet out of his back pocket. With one more look at Jessie, he started around the front of his truck to go in and pay for the gas.

  A black pickup truck turned into the parking lot, and his sister and Wyatt jumped out. Wyatt jogged over to him with a fearsome scowl on his face. Talon spread his feet and balled his fists. What had he done now?

  “Get the hell out of here.”

  Wyatt’s words had him blinking. “I have to pay for my gas.”

  “Not today.” His old friend shook his head, and Talon followed Wyatt’s glace to Dawn who stayed by the truck with the door open. She was down in a defensive pose, and he’d bet his next meal she had her gun out.

  Talon may not have been the smartest man in town, but it didn’t take him long to figure out what was going down. “Holy shit. Gene?”

  “Yep, now get the hell out of here.”

  A shot shattered the plate glass w
indow at the front of the store. Wyatt and Talon both hit the pavement at the same time. Jessie woke up screaming when another shot rang out and hit the side of Talon’s truck above his head. His heart raced when he thought of Jessie being in possible danger, but he wasn’t able to move.

  Two more shots rang out, and he realized Dawn and Wyatt had fired this time. Wyatt got up on his haunches and yelled at Talon, “Go! We’ll cover you.”

  Two shots came from the Quick Fill, which Wyatt and Dawn answered with rounds into the building as several other cars screeched to a stop in the parking lot with blue lights flashing. Talon scurried onto his feet and bent low as he rushed around the front of the truck. He jerked the door open and jumped in. Staying low, he cranked the key and hit the gas. The old Dodge tore out of the parking lot between two FBI cars and headed down Main Street.

  Jessie’s cry rang out with fear and pain.

  He glanced at her. She had a death grip on her stuffed bear and looked toward the downed window. “It’s okay, Jessie. It’s only loud noise. It’s gonna be okay.”

  The booming and popping of gunfire from the Quick Fill sounded through the open window, and Talon hit the button to roll it up, hoping to shut some of the noise out, but the passenger side wouldn’t budge.

  An FBI car had the street blocked at the corner, and he hit the brakes. An agent pointed her gun at him as she approached the passenger side and open window of his rig. “Stay in the truck and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Talon put his hands in the air. “I’m just trying to get away. I was at the station getting gas. My sister is the sheriff.”

  She came up to the open passenger side window and looked at Jessie Mae, who’d been crying since the first shot rang out. “The kid’s been shot.”

  What? He glanced at his little girl. She hugged Bear-boo in a death grip with her left arm. His heart stopped when he shifted the raggedy stuffed bear she carried everywhere to get a good look. Blood covered her arm and entire right side. “Oh, God!”

  He leaned over to find where the blood came from. She’d been hit in the upper right arm, not far from the greenish bruise left when her mother’s high heel had kicked into her. A large hole in the side panel triggered a memory of the shot hissing above his head and hitting the truck. The bullet must have come from a powerful enough rifle to drill through the steel and glass of the downed window, hitting Jessie’s arm right above her elbow.

  The agent put her gun away and spoke into a radio she must have had attached to her jacket. “Control, this is Agent Carson. I need an ambulance stat. We have a civilian child shot in the right arm. Bleeding uncontrolled.”

  Jessie met his gaze, her eyes glassy with pain and blood loss.

  “Hold on, Jessie Mae. Help’s on the way.” His voice cracked and his heart ached. How could he have been so stupid to think the noise was the only thing causing her to cry? Why hadn’t he realized she was in pain? What kind of father did that make him?

  “Daddy, it hurts.” She held out her blood-covered Bear-Boo to him and closed her eyes.

  “Jessie!” Oh, God, no! She couldn’t die. Not now that he’d found her. His stomach flopped at the sight of her arm hanging lip. From the look of it, the bullet severed her tiny bone. He ripped at his T-shirt and pulled the bottom off to make a rag, then pressed it to the bloody wound on her right arm.

  The officer touched Jessie’s throat as if checking for a pulse. She closed her eyes for a moment and nodded. “She passed out. Probably from the pain and loss of blood.”

  He looked at the woman through clouded eyes. “She can’t die.”

  She rested her hand over his where he held the strip of cloth over the wound on Jessie’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “She won’t.”

  An eternity passed before an ambulance with a siren blaring skidded to a stop behind the FBI car, and two EMTs hopped out.

  He had to believe her.

  * * * *

  The FBI agents they had been speaking with since leaving Dallas pulled in off Main Street, and a moment later, Talon’s truck sped away, throwing up dust as it headed down the street.

  She peered through the crack between the door and the frame to aim, and caught a glimpse of a figure moving between the shelving units inside the store. As recognition smacked into her, she gasped. She shook herself, as if to rattle the shock from her head, and fired. Chet Hendricks ducked behind a shelf holding potato chips, and her bullet hit it instead, sending flying bits from the bags.

  Wyatt moved around the back of the truck to crouch behind her. “We have to end this before someone hits one of those gas pumps and blows us all to kingdom come.”

  She released the empty magazine from her gun and quickly inserted a full one. “Chet's in there.”

  Wyatt scowled. “Fucking figures. Nothing worse than a bad cop.”

  “Especially an arrogant killer.”

  She looked at the building, then glanced around. An old weathered lattice fence ran the length of the boundary between the Quick Fill and the property beside it. In the spring and summer, violet, fuchsia, and periwinkle-blue morning glories climbed the fence with an explosion of color from sunrise to noon. But now, the fence stood empty and dreary as it waited for winter. “I think I know how to get us inside.”

  He narrowed his eyes and rested his hand on her shoulder. “You aren’t going anywhere near that building. For one thing, you can barely walk, and for the second, I need you to distract them.”

  As much as she hated admitting he was right, she nodded. Her knee hurt too much from crouching, if she had to do something fast or fancy, she'd be screwed.

  “Okay.” She ignored his raised brows at her easy agreement and pointed toward the side of the building. “I know there’s a window on the side where Gene’s office is. If you go back to the street and sneak along that fence on the other side, you can break through it and get inside using the window.”

  He reached around inside the truck and pulled out a Glock from the glove box. After checking the magazine to make sure it was full, he gripped it in his left hand and his Colt in the right.

  He was sexy as sin when he looked like an old-time cowboy lawman. “Be careful in there.”

  He smiled and kissed her quick and sure. “Always. You keep shooting and make sure they don’t know the cavalry's coming.”

  She focused on firing into the windows as did the three FBI agents.

  Agent Mike Green, the agent-in-charge that she and Wyatt had been working with, knelt behind her, and she glanced back. He smiled and nodded. “What can you tell me about this place? I have two agents at the back door, but they’re taking shots and can’t get close.”

  “One of the shooters is a deputy sheriff.” The thought of Chet being a dirty cop didn’t so much surprise her as it made her angry that she hadn’t seen through him. “We can assume the other one is his brother-in-law, Gene Murphy.” She pointed toward the side of the building where she glimpsed Wyatt kicking at the fence. “Lieutenant McPherson is going to break through on the side. There’s an office window there. Our job is to keep the two shooters as busy as possible so they don’t notice him.”

  The agent nodded and touched the radio clipped to his jacket collar. “Villalobes. Come in.”

  “Villalobes here.” A Hispanic accented male voice sounded over Green’s radio.

  Green sent out orders to keep the backdoor under fire as an ambulance siren sounded down the block. She furrowed her brow and looked back at Green.

  He must have read her unspoken question because he said, “Agent Carson called an ambulance for the child in the truck that tore out of here when we arrived.”

  “The child?” Her heart fell into her stomach.

  “Yeah, the kid was hit.” Before Dawn had a chance to say a word, the agent backed away and fired a shot at the blown out hole where the window had been.

  She closed her eyes and sucked in an unsteady breath. No, God, please not Jessie Mae. Not another child
lost to drugs.

  * * * *

  Wyatt tucked the Glock into his waistband at his back and stuffed the Colt back into his shoulder holster when he came to the place in the fence outside of the window. Rot made the old lattice weak, and a few well-placed kicks made a hole big enough for him to get through. A Dumpster set to the right blocked him from the view of the two FBI agents shooting it up back there. They took return fire regularly as Gene Murphy shouted out jeers regarding the agents’ marksmanship.

  He studied the window, which thankfully was low enough to the ground that he could climb through, but it wasn’t much bigger than two feet by three feet. How the hell was he going to fit through that thing? Without thinking too much about it, he pulled out his pocketknife and cut open the wire screen. After tossing it aside and putting the knife away, he tugged on the bottom sash. It lifted easily enough.

  Removing his hat and dropping it to the dirty pavement, he sighed and shook his head. He hoped he didn’t get stuck in the thing. Wouldn’t that look good on his official record? “Here goes nothing,” he muttered to himself and lifted his leg over the sill.

  With a silent curse, he slithered into the hole, and swore again when his vest hung up on the edge. He wiggled a bit and got the rest of his body through the hole. Crouching in the dim office behind the desk, he palmed his Glock in one hand and Colt in the other, while he concentrated on the sounds of gunfire. At the door of the office, he peeked out. Gene pointed a military grade, illegal, automatic rifle over the top of an overturned candy display and fired out the back door.

  Wyatt had to find Chet for his plan to work. From behind the counter, Chet fired another assault rifle through the front window on the opposite side of the room from Wyatt. He ducked behind the door and took a deep breath. Gene was a clean shot, but Chet would prove trickier since he could take cover behind the counter.

  Who should he take out first? If he shot Chet first, Gene could get a clear shot at him. If he shot Gene, Chet could duck under the counter.