"Now. Promise me you'll stick to the plan," Sadie told her avenging-angel-of-a-cohort. "Poppy's dangerous."
Randie snorted. "To children."
"That kind of thinking can get you killed."
Randie's jaw hardened. She gazed dubiously down her voluptuous figure, which was now swathed in 14 layers of silk and cotton batting. "I thought you trusted these vests."
"Like I said, Rex swears by them." Actually, Sadie had entrusted her life to the vest on several Pinkerton assignments, but she couldn't very well tell Randie that. "The gambler, Luke Short, practically invented these vests. He was an acquaintance of mine, back in Dodge City. He once survived an assassination attempt because the silk handkerchief in his breast pocket stopped the bullet. I don't know why silk stops slugs, but it does. The batting is extra protection."
"So if the vest works, then I'm safe. Quit hen-pecking."
"The vest will protect your vital organs, but it won't protect you from a bullet in the head. Or anywhere else."
"I think you're forgetting Boo is my daughter. I should be the one to rescue her!"
Sadie was hard-pressed not to shake the woman. "Boo needs a live mother to tuck her in tonight, not a corpse to mourn on All Saints Day.
"Here, take these," Sadie added gruffly, pressing two of her detachable buttons into Randie's hand. "When one hits the ground, it makes a black cloud of smoke. It will give you camouflage if you need to run."
"What about you?"
"Oh, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Don't worry about me." Sadie spun the wheel on her Smith & Wesson. "I can hold off Poppy's hired gun until reinforcements arrive."
Randie slid a sideways glance her way. "You're not what you pretend to be, are you... Sadie?"
"Is that a crack about my sharpshooting or my singing?"
Randie's pale lips carved out a tense smile. "Let's just say, I still think you're a bitch. But I'm glad you're a bitch on my side."
"Back at ya, sister." Sadie winked. Then she drew a sobering breath. "All right. Sit tight. Marshal Wright will be here soon."
Randie nodded fretfully.
Giving the soprano's hand a fortifying squeeze, Sadie tugged her mask over her face and began slinking through the thirsty, crackling underbrush in the woods. Because the cottage sat on a hill, it would be hard to approach unseen. Nevertheless, Sadie did her best to time her movements through the open spaces to coincide with the thunder, not the lightning. Every time sky fire spat, it rent her shadow-cover and lit up the woods. Ghostly shimmers danced over leafless pecans and ancient elms; evergreens soughed mournfully in the rising wind.
Sadie gritted her teeth, tightening her fist over her gun. Halloween––in a thunderstorm—was one hell of a night to be in a cemetery. But Cass had always called her the Devil's Red-haired Daughter, hadn't he? She took comfort in that.
No lanterns or candles burned in the dilapidated shell of the caretaker's cottage. Sadie crouched for many long moments behind a crooked tombstone, studying the ruins, trying to guess where Jazi might be hidden. What looked like a smokehouse, toolshed, and root cellar were still part of the property. Heavy wood rot—or maybe termite damage—was apparent on all of the structures. Sadie suspected that anyone who dared to step foot inside the auxiliary buildings would splinter a floorboard and bust an ankle.
The main house didn't look much safer. Through narrowed eyes, she scanned the roof, then nearby trees, for signs of a sniper. If Poppy's accomplice was lying in wait with a rifle, he'd done a masterful job of hiding himself. Streaks of lightning failed to illuminate the brass receiver of a Winchester anywhere overhead.
But they did illuminate something small, round, and shimmery in the sun-cracked dirt of the drive.
Sadie caught her breath.
A pearl!
No. Three pearls. And there was a fourth! The gems and been dropped at irregular intervals as if someone had been marking a trail!
Her heart thudded against her ribs as she adjusted her eyes to the dancing sheets of light. Every time the sky brightened, she lost track of the shimmer that heralded the pearls. She gritted her teeth. Patience had never been her strong suit, and her nerves were already stretched as tight as fiddle strings. She squinted into the flickers. The pearls appeared to be heading toward...
Dear God. They were heading toward an open grave!
Cursing under her breath, Sadie crept from tree to tree, shadow to shadow. It was nerve-wracking work. She kept imagining she'd be shot in the back—or she'd find Jazi's severed head. The gruesome vision was due to the ax, jutting from the mound of dirt beside the grave. Sadie guessed the ax had been used to dig the pit, since the ground was as hard as granite, and no shovel would have cracked it.
Thirty yards.
Twenty yards.
Ten feet.
Gulping a bolstering breath, Sadie dashed for the cover of the dirt pile, which stood between her and the house. Muttering a prayer, she dared to peer around the crumbling mound to the hole. Her heart wrenched when she spied Jazi huddled in a ball inside the pit. She'd twined the cord of her gris-gris so many times through her fingers, her nails looked slightly blue. An ugly, purple bruise marred her temple.
Bastards. Goddamned bastards!
"Jazi," Sadie whispered urgently.
No response.
"Jazi!"
The feeble flutter of Jazi's shirt assured Sadie the child was alive—barely. She fought back tears of rage. She had to get Jazi out of there. But how? She couldn't lift an unconscious nine-year-old out of a six-foot trench. Not without help. She glanced wildly around the yard for some sort of ladder. Or rope.
That's when she heard the ominous hiss and rattle.
Sucking in her breath, she gazed in growing horror at the diamondback emerging from a hole in the trench. The snake was winding its way toward Jazi's inert form. In the fading light, with the viper so close to Jazi's stomach, Sadie was terrified a bullet would hit the child.
Merciful God.
She tightened her fist over the .32. Her hand trembled as she worried that a shot would alert Poppy and her accomplice. Under the circumstances, Sadie figured she didn't have much choice. She had to shoot that snake!
Clamping both hands over her gun grip, she prepared to fire.
A nerve-jangling growl rumbled from the bushes. Startled, Sadie swung her gun toward the sound. A roly-poly, ring-tailed varmint appeared, galloping toward the pit. A flash of lightning glanced off a leather collar.
Vandy!
The coon scrambled into the grave.
Sadie held her breath. Raccoons ate almost anything; she knew that much. But with Jazi's life in the balance, Sadie worried Vandy had met his match. The rattlesnake was about three feet long—a baby, by Texas standards—but the coon didn't have a lot of room to maneuver. Not with Jazi's body lying diagonally across the gravebed.
The snake lunged and missed.
Vandy proved to be as wild and canny as his forbears, despite the civilizing influence of leather collars and trout almondine. He feinted.
The snake lunged again.
The coon retreated.
Sadie's heart hammered in her ears. Vandy was luring the snake away from Jazi's body!
As the growling and hissing crescendoed, Sadie gritted her teeth and dashed sweat from her eyes. She hoped the thunder was drowning out the dance of death so Poppy wouldn't hear.
Fangs flashing, Vandy snarled and pounced.
The pit grew ominously quiet.
Her heart crawling to her throat, Sadie strained desperately to see past the inky shadows that crowded the grave. All manner of horrific visions plagued her mind.
But in the next flicker of light, she spied a long, limp form dangling from Vandy's jaws.
Air rushed from her lungs.
"Good boy," she whispered.
Vandy's ears flicked. Bright, inquisitive eyes stared up at her.
Then the coon tossed aside his meal. Hunkering down beside Jazi, Vandy rested his head on the child's heart. He
whimpered.
Sadie's eyelids prickled. Snakes were one thing. But Vandy couldn't defend Jazi from poison.
Suddenly, she noticed a blond head in the woods near Randie's hiding place. Collie was waving his rifle at her. He seemed to want her to leave the yard, to run to safety.
Hardening her jaw, Sadie shook her head. The boy was a civilian. She was a Pinkerton. Jazi's safety wasn't her only responsibility. Sadie still needed to solve her case. The time had come for her performance as Miranda Reynolds.
Drawing a fortifying breath, Sadie shoved her gun into her waistband, covered it with her vest, and stepped away from the shelter of the dirt pile. She didn't honestly believe Poppy would shoot Randie on sight. A mind as warped as Poppy's would want a verbal showdown. An opportunity to brag.
"Poppy Westerfield," she bellowed at the top of her lungs, "so help me God, if you've harmed a hair on my child's head, I'll rip out your heart and feed it to the buzzards!"
Seconds dragged by.
"Show yourself, Poppy!"
Spears of light rent the gloom. Thunder rolled, rattling the jagged panes of the cottage's windows.
That's when Sadie spied the hangman's noose, dangling from a leafless cottonwood.
Chapter 22
Every hair on Sadie's neck stood on end.
The wind was knocking the bare branches of the hanging tree together. Beneath that unsettling noose, eerie fingers of shadow splayed over a black-robed figure in a voluminous cowl.
Goosebumps scuttled down Sadie's spine.
She could see no features in the black, shadowy oval that should have been a face. But a human female lurked in there somewhere. A flesh-colored hand with red-lacquered nails gripped a gun.
Sadie rallied her nerve. "And who are you supposed to be this Halloween? My confessor?"
"Oh, it's much too late for that."
"You have a flare for the melodramatic, ghoul friend. I'll give you that."
"Impertinent whore! I am Asrael, the Angel of Death! The Regulator of God! And you shall hang for your crimes!"
"Uh-huh." Looks like Poppy needs to have a few screws tightened. "Well, I have news for you, Asrael. Angels don't poison people or abduct children."
"I do as God commands."
"Yeah?" Sadie tried to remember a passage—any passage—from her Pinkerton field manual that addressed an agent's conduct, should she be confronted by a lunatic with a gun. Sadie was pretty sure putting Poppy out of her misery wasn't legal. Or ethical. But it sure would have been well-deserved.
"I hear God says to turn the other cheek," Sadie said carefully. "To let bygones be bygones. So I'll make you a deal. Let my baby go, and we'll disappear into the wilderness like we never existed."
"Your baby?" Poppy spat. "Baron's seed belongs to me! By divine right! By all that's legal and holy! I am his wife, you blood-sucking whore!"
Right. And your brain would have to be as twisted as a pretzel to want the bastard. But Sadie figured Randie wouldn't say that—which was too bad.
"Then you must love all of Baron's children," Sadie said in her best beast-soothing voice. "That is why you celebrate the return of the angelitos tonight."
"The spirits of my babies will return tonight," Poppy conceded grudgingly. "But they won't be leaving here alone!"
"So... you poisoned Jazi?" Sadie recalled the dead plants in the Westerfield's hotel suite. Understanding dawned. "And you poisoned Baron's medicines?"
"I was careful! Chantelle poisoned Baron! Don't you read?" Poppy snapped.
"But you put something in his medicines. Something that made him sick."
"He deserved it. He was fornicating with you and half the house staff. I wanted his infidelity to stop, but I didn't want him dead."
"So you could make babies?"
"So I could live in the governor's mansion, you moron!"
Interesting.
Sadie suspected the article in the Dispatch had pushed Poppy over the edge. All these months, while using tainted medicines to keep her bull in the pasture, Poppy had never anticipated that Baron might snack on a poisoned confection, intended for his mistress.
Just another reason to question Poppy's sanity.
"I have to agree, you'd make the perfect governor's wife," Sadie lied in velvet tones. "Too bad all your plans revolve around Baron. And his health is failing."
"Baron was as healthy as a bull until you started sucking the life out of him!"
So Poppy felt spurned and decided it was payback time? Sadie was beginning to feel sorry for Randie, who'd actually had to live this nightmare. "Let me guess. You hired a henchman—somebody who doesn't have half your brains—to get rid of me at the Siren."
"I wouldn't say that," taunted a cold, cruel Midwestern accent.
Sadie sucked in her breath. Hank!
Shrouded by shadow, the outlaw leaned his shoulder against a porch pillar, a can of kerosene waiting by his boots. A match flared in the darkness. His cigarette tip brightened. When the tiny flame plummeted from his fingertips, Sadie's eyes widened. The match landed dangerously close to the kerosene... only to be rubbed out by the killer's boot toe.
She loosed a ragged breath. It was gratifying to know Hank didn't intend to torch the whole yard.
"So you're the one who hurled Greek Fire through my window," she deduced grimly. "Now that was a brilliant plan.
Too bad it went awry," she added for Poppy's benefit. "Despite all your efforts, someone found out you've been forging Baron's signature. Someone knows you've been paying assassins to get rid of his rivals. All this time, Baron has been turning a blind eye, pretending not to see—until he started getting blackmailed. Until he started fearing for his life. That's the real reason why Baron hired Cass, isn't it? To protect you and him from Hank?"
"Ridiculous," Poppy snapped. "Hank's family. Not that it's any business of yours."
"I can fend for myself, auntie."
"Of course you can, dear boy. Don't you have some corpses to cremate?"
"I thought I'd torch them all at once." Hank grinned. "Saves matches."
Sadie's scalp prickled. "Anyone I know?" she demanded with less asperity than she'd intended.
"You might say that."
He thrust his hips forward. Lightning illuminated the pair of walnut-inlaid gun butts, strapped to his hip.
Sadie's heart iced. She would have recognized that double-holstered rig anywhere.
"I don't believe it! Where's Cass?"
"They don't call me The Ventilator for nothing."
No! Sadie choked back tears. She wanted to scream. Or vomit. Or better yet, send Hank to hell.
Keep your wits about you, Sadie. You're not out of this mess yet. Think of Jazi. Save Jazi. Then you can rip off the bastard's balls...
Sadie steeled herself against her fury. Every nerve felt like it was being licked by demon fire, but she kept her teeth firmly clenched to silence the primal roar of grief. Sucking down breath after shuddering breath, she furtively touched the mechanism that operated the pistol under her cuff. The yard was nearly dark. Collie probably couldn't see Poppy in her black robe, and he didn't have a good angle to shoot Hank. Sadie couldn't count on the boy for help. That meant she would have to be smart enough, fast enough, to take out two gunmen.
She let a smoke bomb roll into her other palm.
What the hell is keeping Wright and his posse?
"What I still don't understand," she said hoarsely, stalling for time, "is why you've waited so long to teach Baron his lesson. After all, he's had other women. Lots of women."
"But you're his favorite."
"Me?" Sadie did her best to look surprised.
"Don't play dumb with me, whore. You talked him into re-writing his will. You tricked him into naming your spawn as his heir!"
Sadie supposed this wouldn't be a good time to spill the beans that Jazi wasn't really Baron's daughter.
"Baron has been on edge, that's all." Sadie struggled to put a soothing note in her voice. "He thinks someone's tryi
ng to kill him." And with good reason, apparently! "I'm sure if you sat down with him and had a heart-to-heart talk—"
"How dare you give me marriage advice, bitch! For 20 years, I've stood beside my husband! He was nothing until I taught him how to read and write the law. But then he threatened to put me in an asylum. Me! When I was finally in the family way. When I was going to have our little Barry... "
Poppy's voice broke.
Sadie tasted bile as she guessed the outcome of that confrontation. "He hit you, didn't he?" she prompted more gently. "And you miscarried."
Poppy made a small inhuman sound, like the whimper of a whipped puppy. "He never shared my bed again... "
The more agitated Poppy got, the more her gun hand quaked.
"...He wouldn't let me have another baby."
Now the six-shooter's muzzle was bobbing erratically in her fist.
"He didn't want my babies, because you gave him one, strumpet! It's all your fault that Baron doesn't love me anymore!"
Holy crap, Sadie thought. She's going to fire!
"Poppy Westerfield!" It was Randie's voice, pitched high in nigh hysteria. She'd emerged from the woods and was waving her white sleeves like a windmill. The tactic was a crazy, brazen, courageous thing to do—the best diversion she could possibly create while her .38 was out of firing range. "Satan himself couldn't keep me from you!"
Sadie took full advantage of the distraction. She threw the smoke bomb at Poppy's feet and drilled a bullet into Hank's right arm—hopefully, his gun arm.
"Run, Sadie!" she shouted at Randie in an effort to confuse Poppy further.
Poppy staggered backwards, blinded by black, sulfurous plumes. "Hank!" she screamed between coughs. "Hank, there are two of them!"
Above the outlaw's blood-curdling howls of pain, a gunshot rang out. Sadie had barely taken three steps when Poppy's bullet hit her in the back. She "oomphed," pitching forward onto rock-hard earth. Her momentum sent her somersaulting down the hill. She crashed hip-first into a tombstone, her temples pounding, her face pointed at the sky. For an endless moment, she couldn't move. She couldn't breathe.
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