01 Do You Believe in Magic - The Children of Merlin

by Susan Squires

  Where?Not here. Either her house or his. Either way, this old broad didn’t know shit.

  Jason fitted the silencer to the barrel of the Glock. One shot and it was done. The woman slumped forward, blood and brains splattered on the dingy beige of the motel wall.

  He stood, shaking, over the body. Wherever they were going, they had two hours’ head start on him. He was fucked. If he was lucky, the old woman might just have Hardwick punish him. He’d seen that once, and he wasn’t sure he could bear it. But the alternative was that she would use her power to.…

  Okay. Okay. If the girl was taking him to LA, could he catch them? Tremaine couldn’t fly, with that leg. So they’d be driving. That truck couldn’t do more than sixty. But a two-hour head start on a nine- or ten-hour drive? Iffy. Too many places to miss them. They’d pull off to eat or piss or something. They could be on either of two main routes into California from here.

  Would Tremaine really go home? He hadn’t been in more than a year. In which case he’d go home with the girl. That could be anywhere.

  No it wasn’t. The angles of chance and coincidence dropped into place.

  Fuck me.

  The old beat-up F250 that picked Tremaine up was there at the accident. Did it also belong to the girl Tremaine followed to the mustang sale? He’d go ask the Mexican kid what kind of a truck the girl Tremaine was waiting for drove. He was willing to bet it was an old red Ford pickup. And if that was true, he knew where she lived. Austin.

  Okay, he couldn’t cover both angles. He needed some insurance. Prentice. Where was Prentice? He flipped open his cell.

  “It’s me. Where are you?”

  “On my way to visit you. Old woman’s orders. I’m on 95 North just west of Tonopah.”

  Bad. Very bad that the old woman had sent him. But convenient that he was so close. If she had a load of horse, she wouldn’t take her trailer across the desert in September. Get over to where 395 crosses into California. You’re looking for a beat-up old F250, red. Tremaine and a girl are in it. May or may not be pulling a horse trailer. You either see them on 95, or they’ll be at the state line in about three hours. You know what to do.”

  He hated depending on someone else. But that was his only option. Prentice was a Firestarter. If anybody could handle it, he could. Weren’t car fires a bitch?

  Jason cut the ropes on the dead woman and stripped off his gloves. He wiped the gun clean of prints. It would be traced to the evidence room of the Reno police. Let them try to figure out how it got to a room in the Motel Six with a dead body. He was outta here. His hands were shaking. Gods, please let the old woman not call until he’d taken care of this.

  *****

  To Maggie’s surprise, they were out of the used car lot in under forty-five minutes, including making the sales guy move the bales of hay and her toolbox into their new purchase. Tris had threatened to beat him senseless if Maggie’s truck wasn’t in perfect condition with exactly the same mileage on it when she returned. Bad that Tris was so crude. But it kinda felt good to have someone, well, take a stand for her. This truck was more powerful than hers, but it was still a good, solid square-looking truck. None of the new “Pillsbury Doughboy” look. And it was made of metal, not plastic. It was a kissing cousin to her own truck so driving it felt natural. And she could move her seat up to where she could reach the pedals and fasten her seatbelt, while Tris had his seat pushed as far back as it would go and his foot up on the dash. Good solution, if not perfect, she had to admit.

  Tris lay back, his eyes closed. The pain pills she’d given him in the diner must have kicked in. His dark lashes brushed his scabbed cheek. She wanted to touch him while he was dead to the world and couldn’t hold it against her. She wanted to run her hand along his corded thigh and slip it over to where his inseam ran up to meet his button fly. She wanted that real bad.

  His eyelids fluttered open. She flushed and glued her gaze to the road. He pushed himself up. “How long have I been out?”

  “Half an hour maybe.”

  “Then it was right about here, wasn’t it?” he asked, peering around. Ah. The accident. The flat desert all looked the same, the road a straight arrow until it reached the mountains, sometimes raised to keep it from flooding in the spring rains. Unless you knew the mile marker, or saw the skid marks, you’d never be able to find the location again.

  “Couple miles ahead,” she said.

  “Can’t think why I didn’t see the truck.”

  She didn’t say anything about what she saw or didn’t see. She’d just lost the truck in her blind spot for a while. That was all. “You remember the actual accident?”

  He shook his head, obviously frustrated. “Doc said I’ve got short-term memory loss.”

  “Well, then how do you know you didn’t see the semi?”

  “If I’d seen the truck and you in the other lane, I’d have swerved to the right. Even if he clipped me with his outside bumper I would have landed on the south embankment, and my speed would have carried me out from the road. But I landed on the north side, close by the base of the embankment. Did you see me get hit?”

  She nodded and swallowed. She’d never forget it.

  “Where did I connect?”

  “Inside corner. You did swerve at the last minute, but by that time you wouldn’t have made it back over to the south side.”

  “Bet I flew right over your hood.”

  “I’d slammed on my brakes. But pretty near.”

  He turned to her. His eyes were filled with painful questions. “Why didn’t I see a truck as big as a Goddamned house from far enough away to do some good?”

  He was feeling like a failure somehow because he’d been hit by a callous bastard in a semi. She shook her head helplessly. She had no answers for him.

  “What are you not telling me?” His gaze was piercing.

  Oh hell. If she didn’t tell him, he’d just want to stop at the accident site. She sighed. “The skid marks from my truck were the only ones on the road.”

  “That proves my point. I didn’t see him.” His eyes squinted as he stared out the window. Was he thinking he was losing it? That it meant the other guy, who couldn’t have missed seeing him, had not even tried to keep from hitting him?

  “I should be dead. Nobody on a bike survives a head-on crash with a semi.”

  “I, uh, I think the engines cut out at the last minute.”

  “Maybe he was trying to stop.” Poor guy’s voice sounded hopeful.

  “Uh, both engines. The bike’s and the semi’s.”

  He blinked at her. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  She shrugged. It sure didn’t. “Maybe I got it wrong. It all happened so fast.”

  He hunkered down in the seat and was silent.

  She wasn’t feeling good about letting him stay in a motel tonight. She didn’t want him alone and in pain, unable to sleep for thinking about why he didn’t see the semi. What if he threw a blood clot, like the doctor said? But there was no choice. She was not taking him to Elroy’s, for so many reasons she wouldn’t recite them to herself.

  As bad as dropping him off at the Motel Six in Reno.

  Okay, then. Recite. One. Elroy. He’d be drunk for sure. Two. The outdoor-plumbing, electricity-a-few-hours-a-night shack. Three. Having him in the house, sleeping, vulnerable, brushing his teeth, cleaning himself.…

  Impossible. She’d see he was comfortable at the Shady Pines. She’d send over a meal from Jake’s. It was practically next door. A steak. He’d like that. Could he undress himself? She’d ask. And if he said he needed help.… No. Not thinking about that. Sleeping in his clothes one night wouldn’t kill him.

  But when they finally pulled into Austin, the Shady Pines had a “No Vacancy” sign out.

  What? That motel was never full. But then she remembered Tom Munsey in Jake’s saying he was renovating three rooms, helped to the decision by a burst water pipe.

  Great.

  “Guess you’re staying at Elroy’s,” she sai
d through gritted teeth as they passed the sign.

  He set his lips grimly. Wow. He must really not want to be anywhere around her. Why would he? But he’d accepted the ride. Out of necessity. I’m a necessary evil.

  Good. No involvement. It was always good not to care. Right now, she wasn’t quite as sure about that as usual.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A motel actually seemed like a safe haven. Tris couldn’t imagine spending the night under the same roof with Maggie and her father. Or rather he could. He could imagine what she’d wear to bed. Probably a tee shirt. And nothing else. He could imagine hearing her undressing in another room. He could see her slim, muscled rider’s legs and imagine them wrapped around his hips…. Shit. Apparently he’d gone from not giving a damn about women at all, straight to what probably amounted to addiction. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

  Her father would kill him if he saw the hungry look in Tris’s eyes.

  He chewed the inside of his lip as she turned the truck down an unpaved road, really just two tire tracks in the sandy dirt where the mountains flattened out into desert. The tracks wound through a dry streambed that would have to be forded in the rain. In the distance a clump of feathery gray-green Palo Verde trees clustered around a weathered and unpainted house with a corrugated iron roof and a sagging front porch. The whole shack seemed about to disappear into the gray and sandy colors around it. The roof barely supported a TV satellite dish. A windmill towered behind it, blades spinning lazily in the desert wind. That well must be their source of water way out here. A white propane tank that looked like a Tylenol pill settled out a ways from the house. A pickup, circa ’48, more rust than metal, sat on blocks next to a late ’70s station wagon with peeling white paint. No yard. But he could see a lean-to full of hay bales out back and some pipe corrals with horses milling around in them, peering over the rail toward the approaching truck. He recognized the mustangs he’d watched her gentle but there were others too, less rough looking. As they got closer, he saw the horses were much tidier than when he’d last seen them. The lean-to was freshly whitewashed and the water barrels in the corrals were painted a bright blue-green in contrast to their desert surroundings.

  Someone took care of the horse part of the property—the house, not so much.

  He caught himself wondering what his family would think of a girl who came from a house like this, a desert like this. Sere and hard. That’s what her life must be like.

  Her mouth was set in a grim line as she pulled up behind the station wagon. She cut the engine. Staring straight ahead, she said, “Don’t pay attention to Elroy. You’re my guest here.”

  “Okay.” He hoped that word wasn’t loaded with the dread he felt. He tried not to let in an ounce of judgment either. He had no right. But he saw why she wanted to be on the road.

  She took a breath before she got out of the truck. While he peeled his bad leg out and gathered his crutch, she was already around back getting his things. The air was thin here and it held a promise of cooler nights. “Can you make it into the house?” she asked. “Ground’s rough.”

  He slid out, waiting for the pain as he lowered his leg and gravity pulled at the swelling. Oh, yeah. There it was. “I’m good.” He got his crutch under his good shoulder.

  The door creaked open and slammed against the wall. The man in the doorway looked too old to be Maggie’s father. Skin hung around his scrawny neck in folds. His eyes were bloodshot and his complexion had a yellow cast. Gray hair was plastered to his balding pate and he hadn’t shaved in a week or so. But that wasn’t what stopped Tris dead in his tracks.

  Elroy had a bottle in one hand and an old Colt revolver waving in the other.

  “How dare you bring your whoring ways home, you little slut?” he hissed at Maggie.

  Tris blinked. Calling his daughter a whore? And Maggie … blushing Maggie wasn’t a slut. He saw Maggie’s eyes flash. Then she mastered herself. “It’s not what you think.”

  “You think I don’t know what you do all that time you’re away? You come home with money. Where else would someone like you get money?”

  So she supported this guy with her rodeo winnings and the proceeds from her horse dealing. And he thought she was whoring. Great dad. The revolver waved wildly with his emotion. His words were slurred. Drunk.

  No excuse.

  Maggie was speechless. “I.…”

  Tris hobbled forward. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly in any shape to indulge in a woman.” Even if he was capable of coldcocking the guy, Maggie might hate Tris for hurting him. He was trying to feel his way here, deflect the venom from her at least, and wishing like hell he had two good legs and two good arms.

  “You sayin’ you don’t want her?” The old man chuffed a bitter laugh. “Figures.”

  “This is the man who got hit by the truck, Elroy,” Maggie said. Her voice struggled for calm. “I told you about him. He’s hitching a ride to LA with me tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll bet that’s not all he’s hitching. He’ll want it for free. Someone looks like him won’t pay for it from the likes of you. You got to think of yourself, gal, like I’m trying to think of you.”

  Tris felt his blood begin to boil. How long had Maggie been taking this shit?

  “He’s paying me.” At Elroy’s shaking reaction to that statement, Maggie hastened to amend, “For the ride to LA. Just for the ride.”

  “Knowing you, you’ll be throwing yourself at him before you hit the state line. Whoring just come natural to you whether you get paid or not. But you ain’t bringin’ him in this house.”

  Tris could feel the shame pouring off Maggie. His hands balled into fists, even the one in the sling. Tris felt so helpless he wanted to yell something at someone. Instead he said, “The motel in Austin is full. I’ll pay for a night’s rest here.”

  An avaricious light gleamed in the old man’s eyes. “Hundred bucks. Cost you a hundred bucks.” He glanced back at Maggie. “Steep, but I’ll throw in the gal.”

  Tris glanced to Maggie, shocked. She gritted her teeth. “That’s enough, Elroy,” Maggie said with steel in her voice as she strode forward. Elroy waved the gun. “What I do with my body is my business, not yours. He’s not paying for a night’s rest either.” Damn. She could get hurt if the crazy old coot started shooting. Tris hopped forward on his crutch, but he was way behind Maggie. “This is my house, too. He needs help,” she continued, stepping up onto the porch. “And we’re going to help him out of the kindness of our hearts, because we’re human beings.” She grabbed the old guy’s gun and the bottle too. Tris sighed in relief.

  Elroy cringed away from her. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  “You never mean nothin’ by it, Elroy,” she said, defeat in her voice now that she’d won this round. It was only one round in a long battle, Tris guessed. “Doesn’t mean it’s right.” She glanced over to Tris and away. “Sorry you had to see this.”

  “No need to apologize to me.” The fact that she was shamed made him want to rend someone limb from limb if it couldn’t be her father.

  “You go on into your room,” she told Elroy. “I’ll get dinner after I’ve fed the horses.”

  To Tris’s amazement, Elroy kind of folded in on himself and shuffled into the house. Maggie stepped off the porch and poured the whiskey into the dust until the bottle was empty.

  “Won’t do any good. He’s probably got a dozen hidden around here.” Her tone was so bleak it hurt Tris more than his body at the moment. She tossed the bottle into an overflowing trashcan off to the side of the porch, then flipped open the revolver and let the bullets slide into her hand. Her back to him, she said, “Let me take you inside where you can sit and get your leg up. He won’t bother you now.” She sounded sort of distant. She flipped the chamber shut and put the bullets in her pocket.

  “Rather help you feed the horses.”

  She turned with a grim little smile on her lips. “Don’t think you’d be
much help.”

  “Watch, then. Moral support.”

  “Okay.” She went to where she’d dropped his shopping bags, set them on the porch with the empty gun, and motioned him to follow her around the side of the house. Tris hobbled after her on his crutch, his leg throbbing like a son of a gun. Didn’t matter. He wouldn’t leave her alone right now. And … and he wanted to be with her. There it was. Couldn’t be helped.

  The house had a back porch, too, with folding lawn chairs that had seen better days. Two plastic straps on one hung loose. She pointed to the other. “I’ll be back and forth for a while.”

  He nodded, not knowing what to say. Nothing was probably best.

  She dragged the damaged chair around and set his leg gently on it. As she was walking away she turned back abruptly. “He wasn’t always like this. My mama left us. It broke him. Not pretty, I know.” She managed a shrug, like she didn’t care.

  She forgave her father because she knew his pain. Even though he berated her. Even though the bottle had taken him nearly beyond reach. The courage that took shamed Tris. It was courage he didn’t have around his own family.

  “Guess it’s none of my business,” he said gruffly. But suddenly he wanted to make it his business. He wanted to protect her from the canker that infested her life. He’d been given a window into what made her who she was, and that was important to him. Really important.

  “Well.” She shrugged. That was all. She strode off, shoulders straight, around the front of the house. Behind him, through an open window to the shack, he heard what he thought was the old man sobbing. Hell. Maybe she was right to try to work with her father. He must have loved her mother very much, if her leaving did this to him.

  Tris heard the truck start. It appeared around the corner of the house. She backed it up to the corrals, hopped out, and retrieved two hooks with big handles from the lean-to, along with some pliers she shoved into her pocket. What was that little shed next to the lean-to? God. An outhouse. Windmill could pump water from the well. Maybe the outhouse was a just relic of times past. He looked up. No wires. Hadn’t seen any poles on the way in. Did the place even have electricity? Well, you could power just about anything on propane.