by Sandra Brown
His eyes were grainy from lack of sleep. Despite what he had told Cora, he was so hungry his stomach thought his throat had been cut. Thinking back, the last thing he’d eaten that hadn’t come wrapped in cellophane was the piece of apple pie Lucy had sliced for him yesterday afternoon.
He was suffering a burning pain between his shoulder blades caused by hunching over a desk all night charting routes for deputies who called in and reported themselves lost while trying to locate stranded motorists or other citizens in equally perilous circumstances.
He’d sat so long his joints were stiff and his arthritis was killing him. Too much coffee had left him with breath that would have brought a camel to its knees. He was in bad need of a shave and shower.
Overall, he felt like hell.
He must have looked it, too, because Sheriff Foster had ordered him to take a two-hour break. He ought to have his head examined for squandering half of it checking on Emory Lomax. Good thing Cora didn’t know that he was off on another wild goose chase based solely on gut instinct. She’d give him grief.
It wasn’t Lomax’s welfare as much as it was curiosity about the hired hand that had him dodging storm debris and speeding toward the ranch. Delray’s hired hand must have some mighty strong feelings of dislike toward Lomax to have pulled a knife on him. Or was it Anna Corbett that had sparked that much emotion from the man? Was he dealing with plain old-fashioned jealousy? If so, the romance sure had progressed quickly. Although love worked that way sometimes. Look at him and Cora.
Yeah, look at me and Cora.
He had intentionally ended their telephone conversation on a sour note. Now he felt bad about that. Pure spite had caused him to dismiss her concerns. He should call her and apologize. He’d call when he got back to town. As soon as he got back.
Returning his thoughts to the business at hand, he recalled that day at the Dairy Queen when Delray had introduced him to his new employee. He hadn’t struck Ezzy as an overly friendly, chatty sort. But he hadn’t seemed like a short-tempered hothead either.
Of course, Emory Lomax could test the patience of a saint. Like the time he had stormed into the sheriff’s office demanding that Ezzy do something about the birds that were “voiding” on his English import while it was parked in the lot reserved for bank employees.
Ezzy had listened to every feverish word of the tirade, and when Lomax finally ran out of breath, Ezzy calmly asked if he truly thought the sheriff’s office could do anything about the shitting habits of sparrows. Lomax had stamped out, leaving the deputies and office staff in hysterics.
It was in no way remarkable that the new man in town didn’t like Lomax. Few people did. Many who had applied to Lomax for a loan would probably enjoy killing him. The difference was that nobody Ezzy knew of had acted on the impulse to the extent that this man had.
But if Lomax had felt his life genuinely threatened, why hadn’t he reported the assault to the police? There’d been no such report. Ezzy had checked. Maybe the incident had been a joke between college buddies after all and the secretary had simply read it wrong.
However, no matter how it came down, you couldn’t have folks pulling knives on each other. Even in jest that was a dangerous business. That’s why he was on his way out to the Corbett place. If Lomax was paying a call on Anna Corbett and bumped into the hired hand while he was out there, and either or both of them had a heavy crush on her, you had all the makings of a combustible situation.
And dammit, he did have a gut instinct that there was more to this situation than met the eye. Call him crazy, old, and delusional, call him a fool, but he had fifty years’ experience in these matters, and something here was out of joint. At the very least it bore checking out.
Last night when he’d reported in, Foster, in a rushed and harried manner, had said, “Consider yourself deputized.” Legally, Ezzy was acting in an official capacity, although he doubted that Foster would clear him to run down a missing-person report. But what Foster didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Besides, he was still busy with the aftereffects of the storm, so why bother him with something this trivial?
For all his physical miseries, it felt good to be driving an official car again. The Lincoln had been blocked in by someone who had double-parked. When he asked if he could take a squad car on his break, the deputy pulling telephone duty had waved him out by tossing him a set of keys.
The car felt as comfy and familiar as the old flannel robe that—to Cora’s consternation—he had rescued from the Goodwill bag about a dozen times. A chance to drive a sheriff’s unit again was a valid enough reason to be on this errand. He might just as well be following up Ella Presley’s call as catching a short nap that would only make him crankier, or checking his house for storm damage that he wouldn’t know how to repair, or puzzling over the nebulous clue to the McCorkle case left to him by a dying man.
Cora would have given him grief about that, too.
* * *
Myron was close to tears.
Carl was still gone and he was getting real scared.
He was also afraid he had done something wrong.
Carl had told him to shoot anybody who came near the car.
But he had let the man in the car go past and he hadn’t shot him. The car had slowed down when it pulled up alongside the driver’s door. The man had leaned forward and looked in at him. Then he had sped up and driven off real fast before Myron got a chance to shoot him.
It panicked him to think of Carl finding out. But it panicked him even more to think that Carl wasn’t going to come back for him and that he would be alone and wouldn’t know what to do when it got dark. He would rather Carl yell at him and call him a retard than leave him.
He thought about scooting behind the wheel and driving in the direction Carl had gone. He could go find Carl. But he didn’t know the way. What if he couldn’t find him? What if Carl came back and he was gone? Then Carl would really get mad at him for not doing what he said.
So he continued to sit and sweat and guard the money.
But the next person who came by, he would shoot. Then if Carl found out about the other one, he wouldn’t get so mad.
That decision reached, Myron didn’t even whimper in fear and anxiety when he noticed the approaching car. He saw it in the exterior side mirror. He didn’t turn around and look at it, but kept his head forward. It slowed down and pulled to the shoulder behind his car. He was glad it had stopped, because he wanted to shoot somebody and make Carl proud to be his friend.
It was a police car. It was white with blue letters on the side. It had a shiny light bar across the roof. The lights weren’t on, but a car with letters on the side and lights on top represented the enemy. Carl hated cops worse than anything. Carl would be extra happy with him if he killed a cop.
The driver opened his door and got out.
“Hey, bud, you having trouble with your car?”
Myron watched him in the mirror as he started forward down the driver’s side of the car.
When he got closer, Myron could hear his footsteps in the gravel.
His finger was sweaty, but it tightened around the trigger.
“Need some help here?”
When the officer bent down and smiled at him through the open window, he raised the shotgun and fired.
* * *
Emory Lomax slipped a canister of breath spray from the breast pocket of his jacket and squirted the essence of peppermint into his mouth. He checked his reflection in the rearview mirror and was relieved to see that his recent fright hadn’t left him looking shaken.
He had slowed down to offer assistance to the passenger of the broken-down car, but when he pulled up even with it, he’d received the scare of his life. The eyes staring back at him were colorless, yet rimmed in pink. They were set in a bloodless face surrounded by hair that looked like a Halloween wig. He’d never seen anything like it, and it had scared the hell out of him.
Piss on good intentions and public relations. Even if the spoo
k were a bank customer—he didn’t think he was; who could forget that face once you’d seen it?—he wasn’t about to stop. Gunning his motor, he had gotten the hell out of there and hadn’t slowed down until he reached the gate of the Corbett ranch.
Before getting out, he smoothed down his hair and practiced his smile in the mirror. The place seemed unnaturally quiet. There was no one around. As he climbed the front steps, Emory was irritated to note that his collateral had suffered some storm damage, most notably to the barn. The house, however, seemed okay except for a broken front window.
He was about to ring the doorbell when he remembered that the electricity was probably out. He rapped the door jamb smartly three times. Immediately the door was answered by none other than the man who now topped his shit list.
Rudely, Jack said, “What are you doing here, Lomax?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I came to see Mrs. Corbett. Would you please summon her to the door?”
“She’s unavailable.”
“What does that mean, ‘unavailable’?”
“It means she’s not available. I’ll tell her you came by.”
The man’s gall was infuriating. He didn’t even have the courtesy to look him straight in the eye. Instead he was looking beyond him, his eyes darting from one side of the yard to the other. “See ya.”
He tried to close the door, but Emory stepped forward and stopped it with his hand. “Look here, Jack,” he sneered. “I’m insisting that you call Mrs. Corbett to the door.”
“She can’t see you right now. In any case, she doesn’t even want to.”
Emory blustered, “How do you know what she wants and doesn’t want? Isn’t it for her to say whether or not she wants to see me?”
“I’m saying it for her. Now go away.”
The hired hand was shooing him away like a stray dog. Emory wouldn’t stand for it. “Who the hell are you to talk down to me?”
“Look, Lomax, sometime we’ll get together over a beer and I’ll list all the reasons why I think you’re an asshole. But that’s not why I’m asking you to leave. I’m asking you to leave because it’s in your best interest to do so.”
“Is that right?”
“Believe me.”
“Well, I don’t believe you. It’s in your best interest that I leave.”
“Okay. But it’s also what Mrs. Corbett wishes.”
“ ‘Mrs. Corbett,’ ” he scoffed. “How polite. And how phony. Everybody in town knows what you do for her. You took over where the old man left off, right? Did you at least change the sheets after he died, or did you jump right in and take—”
“Shut up.”
“Or what?”
“Just go.”
“Not before I tell Mrs. Corbett that if she wants me to be nice to her, she’d better start being nice to me.” He tried to push the man aside, but he resisted. “I’m coming in.”
“I can’t let you inside.”
“Over, around, or through you, I’m coming in.” Emory was tired of being condescended to by Anna Corbett and her ranch hand. He couldn’t let them insult him like this and get away with it. If she would stoop to sleep with the likes of this cowpoke, she didn’t deserve the kid-glove treatment.
As of now, all bets were off. No more Mr. Nice Guy. He would strike back with a vengeance. He would call her note, repossess the property, hand it over to Connaught, and become a corporate hero.
He would teach the deaf broad to snub him!
But he wanted to tell her this himself, while he was angry and his resolve still fresh. Regardless of her deafness, he would make himself understood.
But first he had to get past this guy. Again Emory tried to shove him out of his way, and when he stood his ground they became engaged in an undignified struggle.
“I will not be turned away by the hired hand,” Emory panted scornfully.
He pushed against the man’s chest with all his strength and had the pleasure of seeing his face turn white with apparent agony. He stumbled backward into the entry. Seizing the opportunity, Emory barged inside.
Confusion brought him up short.
Anna was kneeling on the floor.
The kid was pinned against the wall with a gun to his head.
The guy with the gun—
Gun?!
Chapter Forty-Seven
David was terrified. He had seen a man shot to death only a few feet away from him. He was crying and it must have been loud because Carl grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him hard. “Shut up that bawling, kid. Hear me? Shut up.”
Anna reached for her son, and Carl pushed him toward her, saying, “Shut the damn kid up.”
She didn’t know what Carl had in store for her when he shoved her to her knees, because just as he did, Lomax arrived. Jack’s back had been to her, so she hadn’t been able to follow what he said, but she could tell by the way he had stood in the partially open doorway that he had tried to protect Lomax, probably by persuading him to leave. The man’s arrogance wouldn’t allow him to back down. Lomax burst through the door; Carl had killed him instantly.
David clung to her tightly, his small body racked by shudders. Jack raised his index finger vertically against his lips, asking David to please be quiet. David nodded and did his best to be manly, but he continued to hiccup sobs.
How quickly the priorities of a lifetime are rearranged, Anna thought. Since David’s birth, she had fretted over the embarrassment her impairment might cause her son. Those worries seemed trivial now. If their lives were spared, if they were allowed to go on living, what difference did it really make that she couldn’t hear?
She fervently wished she could turn back the clock. Only minutes ago they’d been naively unconcerned for the future. Now they were in danger of dying soon. Why had this happened now, just when she and Jack had found each other?
Jack. He was in tremendous pain. He must have broken a rib when he fell into the wall. He continued to hold his side, and his face was white with pain. She could tell that each breath was a gasping effort to override the agony. His lips were tense and moved unnaturally, although she could read everything he said and realized that he was attempting to speak distinctly so she could follow his dialogue with Carl.
She had also seen him spelling out the word knife, and remembered, as he obviously had, that his knife was still in David’s backpack. After marking the trees with it, David had asked if he could keep it for a while, and Jack had consented, but on the condition that he carry it sheathed and in his backpack. There it remained, in a child’s backpack covered with spotted dalmatians.
But how to get it without Carl’s seeing?
David must have dropped the backpack when Carl grabbed him as he entered the house. It, along with her photography gear and the food hamper, had all been kicked into the corner. Carl stood between it and Jack. She was closer to it, but had no more chance of retrieving it than Jack did. If he even tried, Carl would kill him. Of that she had no doubt.
Seemingly indifferent to having just taken a stranger’s life, Carl nudged the bleeding body with the toe of his shoe. “Who’s he?” Emory Lomax had landed on the floor in a supine position, his sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, his face still registering puzzlement.
“He’s dead,” Jack said. “What difference does it make to you who he was?”
“None, I guess.” He scowled at Jack. “Remember me warning you not to lie to me?”
“So?”
“So, the stiff here was more honest about the nature of your relationship with my sister-in-law.”
Anna signed, “Don’t call me that, you son of a bitch.”
“Whoa, whoa. What was that?” Laughing at her, he moved his fingers to mimic sign language. “What’d she say?”
“I don’t read sign,” Jack told him.
Carl looked skeptical, but he let it pass with an uncaring shrug. “Doesn’t matter. I can guess what she said from her expression.”
She hated that he found her so am
using. She hated that he mimicked her like cruel children had done when she was in school. But to tell him off in sign would only give him more ammunition to ridicule her. She had learned early to ignore taunts from people too stupid and insensitive to realize that when they made fun of her they only embarrassed themselves.
He was talking to Jack again. “You lied to protect the woman and kid. Sweet. Real sweet.”
“Do whatever you want with me,” Jack said to him. “I won’t even put up a fight if you’ll let them go.”
“No!” Anna shot to her feet and took a step toward Jack. Carl grabbed her arm and spun her around abruptly.
“Now where do you think you’re going? If you’re so eager to be near a man, I’m right here.” He drew her up flush against him. She didn’t flinch, only glared at him haughtily.
“What’s so special about you, hmm? You’ve got one man beating down your front door, another willing to die for you. You must be in heat is what I’m thinking. You’re putting out a scent that’s got ’em panting after you.”
He peered into her eyes more closely. “Can you understand what I’m saying? You’re one of those… what do they call them? Lip readers? Aren’t you a lip reader, sweetheart?”
She gave him a stony stare.
“I bet you’ll understand this good enough.”
He moved his hand over her breasts, then reached between her legs and groped her. Reflexively she squeezed her thighs together and slapped at his hands, which only made him laugh. His silent laughter looked obscene.
She felt his breath on her face, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of averting her head in disgust, not even when he raised his fingers beneath his nose and sniffed them. He winked lewdly. “Nice.”
She didn’t hear Jack’s approach, but she felt it a heartbeat before he barreled into Carl, who rapped his temple with the butt of the pistol. Jack collapsed. She crouched down beside him. The blow had opened a two-inch gash on the side of his head. Already it was bleeding profusely. David started crying again.