by Harper Allen
“Because she’s Susannah Bird, and she was brought up to believe in things like marriage and vows,” Del said quietly. “And because she’s not a coward. Too bad you are, Adams.”
Tye jerked his head up and met the other man’s assessing stare. “You can call me a lot of names, Del, but that’s not one of them. What the hell am I supposed to be scared of?”
“Of losing her.” Del picked up his cowboy hat from a nearby hay bale. “You think signing a marriage certificate is the first step toward signing divorce papers. Hell, I don’t know as I blame you, what with your father’s track record and the musical-chair marriages you see out there in Hollywood. So you figure as long as you don’t marry her you’ve got a chance of holding on to her.”
He sighed. “What you never understood was that you didn’t grow up in the real world, Tye. You don’t live in the real world now. You live in La-La Land, like Connor said. Susannah’s a real woman, and she wants the real deal.”
Tye felt as if the physical confrontation that had threatened to erupt a few minutes ago between him and the man standing in front of him had actually happened, and that he’d just taken a roundhouse kick somewhere in the area of his solar plexus. He sat down heavily on a bale, for a moment unable to catch his breath.
It was true, he thought dizzily. All his big talk about not believing in marriage was just that—talk. Del was right, dammit. He was scared.
He was scared of losing her, scared of waking up one day and finding a note on the pillow next to him, scared of going back to living in a world that didn’t include Susannah Bird, that didn’t include the child she’d named after him.
He’d been so scared he’d come close to making all his fears a reality.
Sweat had popped out on his forehead, he realized shakily. He felt as if he’d been walking blindfolded toward the edge of a cliff, and had ripped the blindfold off just in time to save himself from taking that last fatal step.
“She wants you to give her away,” he said hoarsely. Slowly he got to his feet, and met Del’s keen gaze. “I guess that means I’ll have to find someone else for my best man, right?”
“I can’t walk the bride down the aisle and be standing beside a nervous groom at the same time, buddy,” Del said with a smile as he hefted a saddle with one hand and grasped his cane with the other. “You’re going to have to find—”
He broke off as the wall-mounted phone beside Tye rang shrilly. The gelding in the nearby stall whickered.
“It only comes through to the barn if no one’s picked up at the house by the third ring,” Del said testily. “I know Susannah wouldn’t answer it, and Connor’s in my study waiting for a fax he requested from the Bureau. Hit the speaker button, would you, Tye? Ten to one it’s someone trying to sell me something.”
If it was, Tye thought a second later as the operator’s nasal tones came on the line, the salesman certainly had moxie.
“Collect call for a Mr. Delbert Hawkins. Will you accept?”
“Probably not,” Del growled. “Who’s calling?”
“Collect call from West Virginia for a Mr. Hawkins, sir. The caller won’t give his—” The operator paused. When she spoke again her annoyance was audible even over the poor line. “The caller says to tell you he was a double bee. He says you’ll know what that means.”
Del’s face was ashen, Tye saw in alarm. But even as he stepped swiftly to his side to relieve him of the heavy saddle the ex-marine waved him away.
“Put—put him through, operator.”
His face was carved in grim lines as he waited for the voice on the other end to speak. Tye realized his own jaw was painfully clenched and with an effort he relaxed it…only to have it drop open in shock as Del’s mystery caller spoke, his drawling tones a masculine but tellingly similar version of his daughter’s.
“Don’t use my name, ol’ buddy. Could be there’s folks listening in on my end, and I don’t aim to give them no ammo to use against me. You know who you talkin’ to, Del?”
“I—I know who I’m talking to.” Del’s throat worked. “I was told you were dead.”
“Closest thing to it for the last fifteen years,” Daniel Bird said softly. “I didn’t want to bring any more shame on my loved ones than I had to, so I went along with the suggestion that it was best folks believed that. Who’d you hear it from?”
“From a young woman you’re going to have to do a lot of explaining to,” Del said cautiously.
“I figured her granny had passed on when the letters stopped. Thank the Lord she knew to come to you.” There was shaky relief in Bird’s voice, but almost immediately it was replaced by desperate urgency. “She’s in danger, Del. I thought I’d be out in time to tell you in person. That’s why I sent you the card—so it wouldn’t be such a shock.”
“I got it. It was one hell of a shock in itself.”
“I didn’t know no other way to warn you, and as it turned out they delayed my release date for a week, anyway. You’re going to have to look after her for me until I can get there, so listen real careful. There’s a man by the name of Jasper Scudder, means to do her harm. He’ll be getting out of the joint in a day or two, and I reckon the first thing he’ll do is go a’huntin’ for my—”
“He must have got early release.” For the first time Tye spoke. “He’s been hunting her for the better part of a year now, but his hunting days are over. Scudder’s dead.”
“No, he’s not.”
Turning quickly, Tye saw Connor standing in the doorway of the barn. Over the speaker-phone came Bird’s alarmed voice.
“Who’s there, Del? What’s this about Jasper?”
“They’re friends, old buddy,” Del reassured him. He turned to Connor. “What do you mean, Scudder’s not dead?”
“I mean it looks like that driver’s license was planted by the burned body of your former hired hand, Kevin Bradley,” Connor said heavily. “But the picture on it was a forgery. The Bureau faxed the real Jasper Scudder’s picture through to me a minute ago. This is the bastard we’ve got to watch for.”
Of course, Tye thought with leaden certainty. Connor hadn’t met the ranch’s other employee yet. Even as his fearful glance confirmed the familiar features of Paul Johnson on the photo Connor held out to Del he was racing from the barn, a terrible knowledge screaming through his mind. And when he burst into the house calling out her name, some part of him knew not to expect an answer.
I’ll hitch a ride into town with him and ask him to drop me and Danny off at the bus station….
She’d walked out of his life…and straight into the arms of her killer.
“LAST NIGHT you shot your own kin in cold blood to save my life.” Susannah tried to still the tremor in her voice. “Why didn’t you let Lyle kill me then, instead of going to the trouble of bringing me and my son out here to do the same thing?”
In the light of the gas-mantle lantern, Johnson’s—she corrected herself—Scudder’s shadow wavered fantastically against the damp stone of the cave. Again she corrected herself. It was a cavern. On their trek into it from where he’d hidden the truck he’d told her there was a difference.
“Most folks don’t know or don’t care. Me, I like to find things out. This here’s a cavern because you got to take these twisty ol’ passageways to get to it. Hellfire, Miz Bird, watch that baby’s head.”
He’d been prodding her from behind with his gun, the miner’s lamp attached to the hard hat he was wearing beaming a harsh white light over her shoulder. He hadn’t listened to her earlier pleas to leave Danny in the truck, where her son had a chance of being found.
She was going to die. She could accept that, Susannah thought as Scudder unrolled the bedroll he’d brought with him. She could even accept that he didn’t intend to kill her right away, and although her mind wanted to shy away from it, she forced herself to acknowledge the use to which her captor meant to put that same bedroll.
But she couldn’t accept that her baby was going to die, too. She wouldn’t
accept it, she told herself with numb determination. Whatever it took, she wouldn’t allow that to happen.
“I didn’t let Lyle kill you for the same reason I didn’t let myself kill you a dozen times over since you started running from me,” Scudder said. Frowning, he sat down on the bedroll before getting up again and moving it slightly to one side. “Because that wasn’t the way I planned it. Oh, me giving myself a tap on the head and then being the hero who blew him away was in my plan, although Lyle didn’t know it. I only came up with that when it looked like I needed to throw Adams and the rest off my trail for a little longer. Same with that hothead Bradley, who was only too eager to agree to meet me later last night when I let him think I was just as pissed off at Hawkins as he was.”
He shook his head. “But when you spend fifteen years with nothing else to think about, you’ve got a pretty solid idea of what you want when the time finally comes. I wanted you scared. I wanted you scared for a long time. And when I found out you were expectin’, little mama, I felt like it was Christmas and my birthday all rolled into one.”
He glanced her way, and the flat sheen of his eyes chilled her. She hugged a blanket-swathed Danny closer to her, glad that he had fallen into a light nap.
“Daniel Bird’s gonna know his daughter didn’t just die the same way his pretty wife did, but that she was in fear for months beforehand, too. And he’s going to lose the grandson he never had a chance to hold.”
Her father was alive. How many times as a little girl had she wished for exactly that? Susannah wondered. And now that she knew it was so, she wished for Daniel Bird’s sake that he really had been dead for all these years. He was due out of prison any time now, Scudder had told her. Daniel Bird would rejoin the world only to find that what remained of his share in it had been savagely destroyed by one of the men who’d torn it apart once before.
“Why’d you do my mama like you did?” The question burst from her with agonized intensity. “What did Jessica Bird ever do to you and your brother Dwight that you had to behave worse than beasts to her and then kill her?”
“She walked by us.” Lying back on the bedroll, Scudder grinned. “We were in the parking lot of a market, looking in vehicles to see if any fool woman had left her purse lying around. Dwight and me had been working the mines, but we’d been laid off for about three months by then,” he added as an aside.
“Anyway, she passed by on the way to her own car, and Dwight gave me a look. I knew he was thinking neither one of us had gotten any lovin’ from the ladies since we’d hit hard times, and here was a real sweet one purely dropped into our laps. We got to her before she started up her car, told her to drive out to the old river road, and just did what came natural. It was an accident she was killed, you know.”
He shrugged. “She tried to get away from Dwight. Slipped and hit her head on a rock. Dwight was tore up about it for a time, felt a little guilty.”
Nausea rose in her and she closed her eyes. “You were caught and put on trial,” she said, her voice a thin sliver. “And Dwight got off.”
“My little brother got off,” Scudder agreed. “I disremember all the fancy lawyer talk but there was something wrong with the evidence against him, and me they could only get on the rape. Your daddy went crazy in the courtroom.”
“But then he went home and got his gun,” Susannah said softly. “He was raised to believe in justice. When the system couldn’t deliver it he took it into his own hands, and he ended up going to prison for a longer sentence than the one his wife’s killer got.”
A corner of Danny’s blanket had slipped aside. In the act of adjusting it, Susannah felt her breath catch in her throat with alarm.
Her baby’s body temperature was falling dangerously. Already there was a coolness to his skin, and his breathing seemed shallower than it had been. She hugged him closer, her mind working furiously.
“I was raised that way, too.” Scudder hadn’t seemed to notice her distraction. “I swore I’d make him pay for killing Dwight. Figured I’d go for the old lady first and then come after his little girl. I talked a little too free about it to a cellmate, though.”
“Frank.”
The man who’d so briefly been her husband hadn’t been in time to save Granny Lacey, Susannah thought. But Frank Barrett had given his life in an attempt to protect her, as she now intended to give hers to protect the child they’d made in their one night together.
“Barrett.” Scudder exhaled. “Just my bad luck he’d bunked for a time with Daniel before transferring to the prison I was in. Seems your granny had been sending letters and pictures to her jailbird son all those years, and when Daniel became friends with Frank he showed him your photo. Some men need a dream to hang on to when they’re behind bars, and I guess you became Frank’s. When he realized I had my own dreams for you, he told me he was going to rat me out.”
He sighed. “Two packs of smokes should buy a man a hit, not a miss. At least Frank being laid up in the prison hospital gave me a head start on him when I got early release.” He closed one eye in a wink. “Clean livin’ and good behavior. The parole board figured I’d paid my debt to society.”
Without warning he got to his feet. “Party time, sweetness.”
She needed a few more minutes, Susannah thought urgently. While Scudder had been talking she’d been trying desperately to come up with a plan, and she’d finally hit upon the only course of action that had any chance of success.
Success didn’t mean she was going to leave this dank underground chamber alive, she told herself steadily. Success meant her son wouldn’t perish with her.
She wasn’t ever going to see Tye again.
She’d been holding that thought at bay since the moment Scudder had revealed his identity and she’d known she was doomed. Now Susannah let it flood over her.
A fallen angel. That was how he’d appeared to her the first time, and that was how she wanted to hold him now in her mind, she thought—glowing and burnished by the sun, radiating heat and life. Just for a second the shadows around her seemed to be touched with some warmth, some golden light.
He’d loved her. He’d loved the child he’d helped bring into the world. Like an arrow piercing her heart, terrible pain lanced through her.
Scudder made an impatient sound. “Put your little’un down, mama, and let’s get started. I fooled them all the way along the line, but more’n likely the feds have figured things out by now. Hell, even a blind sow digs up an acorn once in a while.”
He had the sin of pride, Susannah thought suddenly. Perhaps she could use it against him.
“Waylon and Lyle fooled them, you mean,” she said dismissively. She squatted down and placed Danny in the carry-cot by her feet, tucking the blankets around him with care until only his face peeked out. She ran a tender finger along one delicately perfect eyebrow, knowing it was the last time she would ever touch the son she loved more than life itself.
Then she stood up, deliberately turning her back on Scudder and peering around the floor of the cavern as if looking for a suitable spot for the carry-cot. She didn’t even look at him as she spoke.
“They were the killers, and if you hadn’t turned on your own blood kin Lyle would have gotten clean away. The law’ll be looking for you, Scudder, but you weren’t their first pick of the litter. The Lynds boys were.”
He stared flatly at her and his hand went to the butt of the gun stuck in his belt. She held her breath, hoping she hadn’t prompted him into action too soon.
“I didn’t call on Waylon and Lyle till I had to. I needed them to keep you on the run while I got myself established in the very place I knew you’d run to,” he said with quiet venom. “I told you I’d had years to work out my plan. You think I didn’t know everything there was to know about Daniel Bird when I was through, including the name of the one man he trusted completely, the man his daughter would have been told she could trust, too?”
He shrugged, and to her relief some of the hair-trigger tension
seemed to drain from him. “A place like the Double B can always use an extra hand. I got myself hired on with some forged references, and then I just sat back and waited. When Adams showed up with his story about finding and losing some woman who’d just given birth by the side of the road, I knew my waiting had paid off.”
“You heard secondhand about Danny’s birth?” Just for a moment she was diverted. “You weren’t watching from somewhere nearby?”
To her amazement, she saw that her question had shaken him, and she took the opportunity to place the carry-cot in the spot her frantic gaze had been searching for, and had finally found. In the corner by one solid wall of the cavern was a grouping of three large boulders. They were set so they enclosed a roughly triangular space, and it was inside that protected triangle that she deposited the carry-cot.
Scudder’s expression was closed. “I told you, the first I knew you’d shown up was when Adams tried to get the sheriff to mount a search for a missing woman and a baby,” he muttered, bending down to pick up the lantern. “I’ve gone by that area a dozen times since and it’s desert, without an inch of cover a man could conceal himself behind. You don’t know what you’re talking about, lady.”
“But you do, don’t you?”
Susannah heard the dawning horror in her voice. She saw an unwilling shadow of the same emotion flicker across Scudder’s set features.
“You met him, didn’t you? You met him and you sold your soul to him in return for his help, just like Vincent Rosario did,” she said tightly. “How did you know I was at Greta’s that night when even Tye and Del weren’t aware she’d taken me in? No one could have known—unless they were there in the desert, watching when she hitched up my car and drove away with me and Danny.”
She took a step toward Scudder. “Rosario said Skinwalker had come back. He said he wanted the baby—my baby. That’s the deal you made with him, isn’t it? When you’re finished here with me you’re going to hand my son over to him!”