Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  “Will!” Samantha shouted, vaulting to her feet.

  Will came through the open gate, fists doubled before him, and went straight for Bryce. “You sonofabitch! Leave my wife alone, you goddamn sonofabitch!”

  His words were slurred and he swayed a little on his feet, but he zeroed in on Bryce, who was scrambling to get up on the wet tile at the pool's edge. Will took a big roundhouse swing with his left, landing a glancing blow on Bryce's small knob of a chin. Bryce went down, spitting blood, and rolled out of range.

  “Will, stop it!” Samantha cried, running at him. A part of her was mortified at his behavior, shocked at his appearance—he had stitches in his forehead and a black eye. Another part of her was elated that he cared enough to come here and make a scene. A million things flashed through her head: he loved her, he'd come to take her home, they would live happily ever after, Bryce would hate her, her opportunities for better things would vanish.

  His brain down-shifting slowly and awkwardly, Will turned toward his wife. The young woman he saw was a stranger to him. Her hair hung loose in a shimmering curtain of black silk. She wore makeup and jewelry. The faded jeans and T-shirt had been traded for something chic and silk in a copper shade that enhanced her natural coloring. She looked like a model, like some snooty bitch from the pages of fucking Vogue. Not his Sam. Too good for him. Slipping out of his reach. Wanting more than he could give her. His ex-wife . . . ex-wife . . . ex-wife . . .

  “What's the matter, Sam?” he asked, dredging up anger to mask the fear. “You don't want me busting your lover's face?”

  “He's not my—”

  “Save your breath. I know what he's after.” He turned around in an unsteady circle, raising his arms to gesture to all visible trappings of Bryce's wealth, a bitter smirk twisting his lips. “Mr. Rich Sonofabitch. He gets you, he gets a chunk of the Stars and Bars and a nice young piece of ass all in one.” He leaned into her face and gave her a blast of Jack Daniel's fumes. “Helluva deal, huh, Sam?”

  Samantha felt as if he had physically knocked her off balance. She felt as if she were tipping backward, her whole world rolling off its axis, and she threw herself at Will to save herself and to strike out at him all in one move. Her fists slammed against him.

  “You bastard! How dare you say that to me! After all you've done, after all the women!” She choked on the rage and the hurt. Tears brimmed up and spilled down her cheeks in a torrent, smearing her freshly applied mascara. “After all you've done to hurt me!”

  “Hurt you?” Will managed a caustic laugh as he tried to rub the sting out of his cheek. “Yeah, you look like you're hurting, baby. Dressed up like a goddamn fifty-dollar whore, sitting around drinkin' champagne with all your famous friends—”

  “That's enough, Rafferty,” Bryce said, circling around to stand behind Samantha. Blood leaked from a cut inside his lower lip. He fingered a tooth and winced; the cap had come loose.

  Will sneered at him. “What you gonna do, rich boy? Tell Sam here to kick my butt for you? You sure as hell can't do it. You just fuck people over with your money.”

  “Will—”

  Mary Lee moved into his field of vision. She was frowning at him. He hadn't expected to see her here. He really didn't know what he had expected as he'd roared up the mountain in Tucker's old truck. The haze from the Jack Daniel's had obscured everything but impulse. Most of the day was a vague memory shimmering like a mirage in his brain: Sam gone when he'd stumbled into the house to see her, to try to tell her—what? That he loved her? That he was scared of loving her? Didn't matter, she wasn't there, wasn't at the Moose . . . Bryce, that bastard, giving her things, making her want things . . . Pure damn wonder he made it up the mountain . . . Should have crashed . . . wished he had crashed . . .

  “Will—” Mari stepped closer and put a hand on his arm. He jerked away, snarling, feinting toward Bryce and laughing when Bryce dragged Samantha back two steps with him in retreat.

  “You want my wife? Take my wife!” he shouted, desperation twisting inside him like a whirlpool. “Take my wife, pul-leeeeeeze! Hell, I never wanted one in the first place!”

  Samantha gasped as if he'd reached out and cut her. Sobbing, she broke away from Bryce's hold and ran into the house. Bryce shook his head in disgust.

  “You're pathetic, Rafferty.”

  Will held his hands up and pretended to be afraid. “Oooooh! You nailed me that time! Have mercy!”

  Bryce glared at him. Beyond reckless, Will jumped at him, coming within inches of Bryce's nose with a jab.

  “Come on, jerk,” Will taunted, jabbing again. “Give me the satisfaction. Fight back, city boy. Let's see what you got besides money.”

  Mari watched him weave a little as he shuffled. He seemed to be having trouble focusing, as if he might be seeing multiple Bryces. She took another half step toward him and raised a hand. “Come on, Will. You've done enough damage.”

  Yeah, Willie-boy, you're the screwup. Fuck up again. It's what you do best. Anger and frustration and fear rushed through him like a fire, and he launched himself at Bryce with a wild cry.

  Bryce caught him in the nose with a right cross. The bone gave way with a sharp snap and blood gushed down like water from a fire hose. Will staggered sideways, stunned and surprised. Bryce gave him no time to regain what faculties he had. With Samantha out of sight, he grabbed a chair from poolside and swung it like a baseball bat, catching his adversary in the ribs with one blow and in the side of the knee with a second.

  At first contact with the chair Will doubled over as a pair of ribs cracked. The second strike forced his knee to buckle inward sharply and he felt something tear. He went down on the flagstone in a bloody, groaning heap. Bryce kicked him once in the belly for a final touch, the toe of his boot driving deep, driving up a good measure of whiskey and the indistinguishable remains of his lunch.

  “Get off my property, Rafferty,” Bryce said coldly. Then he turned and walked away.

  Shaken by the violence of Bryce's attack, Mari dropped down on her knees beside Will and laid a shaking hand on his shoulder. “Can you get up?”

  “Maybe.” He looked up at her—all three of her—and tried to grin through the blood and the vomit. “But you got lousy timin', Mary Lee.”

  Mary Lee frowned at him. “Come on, hotshot. I'll give you a ride—to the hospital.”

  The housekeeper rushed out onto the terrace, followed by a pair of ranch hands. Bryce nodded from the hands to Will.

  “Get him out of here. Morton, drive that piece of junk he calls a truck into town. I don't want it cluttering up my driveway.”

  Mari's head came up sharply. Morton. She pushed herself to her feet and stepped back on wobbly legs. Kendall Morton. Pigpen grown up and gone bad. He wore a dirty plaid shirt with the tails hanging out and the sleeves cut off to reveal an array of tattoos on his sinewy arms. His round face twisted in an ugly grimace as he hauled Will, flashing teeth that were varying shades of yellow and brown.

  Kendall Morton hadn't vanished at all. He was working for Evan Bryce. Oh, Christ, what next?

  “You gonna give me a lecture, Mary Lee?” Will mumbled through the wad of blood-soaked tissues he held beneath his broken nose. He sat in the passenger seat, doubled over and listing heavily to the left in a vain attempt to relieve the pain in his ribs.

  Mari pulled her gaze off the rearview mirror and shot him a look. “Why should I waste my breath? You're too drunk to listen. I doubt you'd listen anyway. You seem to have a handicap in the area of listening. Maybe you should have the doctor check the connection between your ears and your brain.”

  He started to chuckle weakly, but groaned instead as one of the Honda's wheels dipped into a pothole. Mari winced in sympathy and eased off the gas. But the sympathy took a backseat to her anger and to her fear. Those two fermented inside her like sour mash with a good dose of frustration compounding the process.

  She was beginning to understand why J.D. was so hard on Will. Will's insistence on being a rep
eat offender in the drunk, disorderly, and stupid category was enough to make her want to shake him. And she had known him only a matter of days; J.D. had put up with a lifetime of Will's shit.

  She'd had the nerve to preach to J.D. about compassion and tolerance. Maybe Will didn't deserve compassion. Maybe what he really needed was a kick in the butt. Maybe she should have been dragging him behind her car instead of letting him bleed all over the upholstery.

  Her head began to pound as she chanced another glance in the mirror. Kendall Morton followed her in the truck Will had been driving. Another hand brought up the rear of their little motorcade in one of Bryce's ranch trucks.

  What the hell was Morton doing working for Bryce? Or had he really been working for Bryce all along? Her brain buzzed with the possibilities.

  In the emergency room Dr. Larimer looked from Will to Mari and back again with an expression of extreme displeasure. He apparently preferred to see a variety of patients instead of the same cracked noggins and busted faces day in and day out. When Mari asked if they got a discount for being frequent casualties, his only reply was a grunt.

  “Bet he cracks 'em up in the doctor's lounge,” Will said, trying to grin despite the novocaine Larimer had injected around his smashed nose.

  The doctor had been called into the next examination room to deal with a more urgent case. Mari sat on a straight chair and looked up at Will, humor beyond her where Will was concerned. His eyes were clearer than they had been. He might have been close to sober; it was difficult to tell.

  “You know, I can't begin to guess what you were thinking, coming up to Bryce's place that way—”

  “Thinking? What's that?”

  “—But it was so unbelievably stupid I can't even find words to describe it.”

  He scowled at her, his eyes tearing from the novocaine.

  “Will,” Mari said, pressing her hands on her knees and leaning toward him. “Bryce doesn't screw around. He plays for keeps. You piss him off, there's no telling what he might do. The guy's got more money than God, and I really don't think he was hanging around when they passed out consciences. He has the power to ruin the Stars and Bars.”

  “Yeah, well, that's J.D.'s problem now, not mine.”

  She ground her teeth and stood up. “I'd hate to guess which one of you has the hardest head,” she grumbled, dragging a hand back through her hair. “Okay, forget Bryce. What about Samantha? Where the hell do you get off raking her over the coals?”

  “It's none of your business, Mary Lee,” he mumbled, staring down as he rubbed a bloodstain on his jeans with his thumb. “Just drop it. You don't know anything about me and Sam.”

  “I know that if I were your wife, my running around with another man would be the least of your worries, because I would have taken a club to you by now.”

  He raised his head an inch, petulance shining in his watering eyes and turning down the corners of his mouth. “Back off, Mary Lee. I got problems enough. I don't need you chewing my tail. I don't need it.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. She hauled her purse up off the floor and looped the strap over her shoulder, then started for the door, fed up to the back teeth with Rafferty men. With one hand on the knob she turned back and gave him a hard look. “What you need is to grow up.”

  J.D. leaned ahead in the saddle a little as his horse surged to the top of the knoll at the blue rock. He reined the gelding in and sat for a moment with a hand braced against the pommel, listening, watching, waiting. Sarge turned his head from side to side in a lazy arc, ears flicking at the sounds of birds.

  Del considered the blue rock the lower boundary of his territory. He maintained a diligent vigil over his space, patrolling the perimeter all hours of the day and night. He would have been ashamed of having J.D. know that. The thought weighed heavy in J.D.'s heart. Del didn't want to be a burden on the family. He saw himself as an embarrassment, less than a whole man because of the fractured state of his mind. He lived up here year-round in part to hide himself—the ugly skeleton in the family closet. He worked the summer cow camp to redeem himself.

  What else might he do for redemption?

  Memories of bits of conversations swirled and bobbed in J.D.'s belly like backed-up sewage. Del's crazy talk about his guns, the things he let slip about what he thought he saw up there at night, the way he had mistaken Mary Lee for Lucy. And he kicked himself mercilessly for the things he had said himself over the course of the last year. He had sounded off to Del about the outsiders pressing in on Rafferty land. He had vented his spleen about Lucy more than once. He had used his uncle as a sounding board, as if Del were too far gone to form his own opinions, never once thinking there might be a danger in it.

  Christ, if Del had taken all that talk to heart, he might have seen killing Lucy as a noble cause. One act of violence could have pulled him off that narrow, crumbling ledge into the void.

  J.D. didn't want it to be true. Even considering the possibility seemed a betrayal. But he couldn't keep the questions from forming or the possible answers from taking shape. Nor could he simply insulate the Stars and Bars from the outside world, as badly as he wanted to. There was no escaping society or its ambitions. They would have to fight and adapt to survive. He was responsible for the ranch and everyone on it, for their well-being and for their actions.

  Responsible.

  Will's battered, angry face came to mind and threatened to pull him down another rough road, but the sharp crack of a rifle farther up the mountain shattered the image. Heart sinking lower, J.D. nudged his horse back into motion and continued on up the trail.

  There was no sign of Del at the camp. No dogs ran out to greet him. The buckskin mare was gone out of the string in the corral. J.D. tied his horse to a rail and loosened his cinch, his gaze scanning the area the whole time for signs that Del had gone off the deep end. There were none. The place was immaculate as always. The snake curled in its cage nailed to the side of the cabin. That was hardly normal, but it was vintage Del, not out of what was ordinary for him. One of the first things his uncle had done when he moved up here was nail that cage to the cabin and stick a rattler in it.

  Some unworthy part of his brain urged J.D. to go into the cabin and look around, but he flatly refused. Del's cabin was sacrosanct; no one went in without his invitation. J.D. had always respected his uncle's privacy. He wouldn't step over that line now.

  He sat himself down on a bench in the shade alongside the equipment shed to wait. If Will hadn't gone, they would have been moving the herd that day. There wouldn't have been time or energy to ponder questions of accountability and loyalty. But Will had gone. You gave him the boot, J.D. Your own brother. And now he sat waiting to question his uncle about the possibility of his involvement in two deaths. What kind of loyalty was that? Which of his obligations held the upper hand—to do what was legally right? morally right? right in his own mind? If he pledged allegiance to the family, then how could he turn his back on Will or his suspicions on Del? If the land came first, then was he really no better than Bryce?

  He dropped his head in his hands and blew a breath out, wishing he could just snap his fingers and make it all disappear. A wish from his childhood, from the days when Tom had first taken up with Sondra, and the days when he had been blamed for Will's mistakes or punished for some minor crime against the brother he had never wanted.

  Damn foolish waste of time, wishing for things. Time, like most other factors, was not on his side. A man had to play the hand life dealt him. That was that. No whining, no slacking, no wishing for better cards.

  From somewhere down the dark corridor of wooded trail that led to the north, a hound sent up an excited howl. Then Del's black-and-tan coon dog came bounding into the yard, long ears fluttering behind him like banners. J.D. stayed where he was, looking idly down the trail. Seconds later Del burst from the thick growth east of the path. His buckskin horse exploded out of the woods like a demon erupting from another dimension, her ears pinned flat, nostrils f
laring bright pink in her dark muzzle. They came into the yard at a gallop, Del standing in the stirrups, a rifle butt pressed back into his shoulder and J.D. in his sights.

  “Jesus, Del!” J.D. shouted, vaulting up off the bench.

  Recognition struck an awful spark behind Del's eyes, beneath the metal plate that was heavy on his brain and charged with an evil current of electricity. He dropped the rifle out of position and reined the mare hard left. God damn, he'd nearly shot J.D.! He had nearly let the monsters inside him push him into pulling the trigger.

  His legs were as rubbery as sapling trees as he stepped down off his horse. He gripped his rifle by the fore end of the stock to keep his hand from shaking.

  “What the hell—” J.D. bit back the worst of what he wanted to say. Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind? He could see the shame in his uncle's downcast eyes as he turned away to tie his horse to the corral railing.

  His heart was running at a hard clip. The adrenaline that had burst through him ebbed now and his body shuddered as it receded. “You got the drop on me, pard. Guess I should have radioed ahead I was coming.”

  Del didn't comment. He flipped a rein around one of the rails. The mare had her head up and was still dancing a little from the excitement. The rest of the string abandoned J.D.'s sorrel and trotted over to their companion with their tails raised and eyes bright. Del focused on the Ruger 77, ejecting the brass-cased loads into his hand like peas from a pod.

  “I heard a shot when I was down at the blue rock. That you?”

  “Could be.”

  “What'd you get?”

  “Nothin'.”

  J.D. narrowed his eyes. “Not like you to waste a shot, Del.”

  Del turned away from him and slid the rifle into the scabbard on his saddle. “Too far out,” he mumbled. “Didn't have a clear line.”