Lady Killer (The Taken Book 3)

by Kathleen Creighton

  The SUV’s door opened and Lonnie Doyle got out. Hilda didn’t go trotting out, with her tail wagging, to meet him, although she knew him well from all the times he’d been there with Duncan. Instead, she sat at Brooke’s feet, close to her side, trembling a little, as if she, too, was afraid.

  “Hey, Brooke,” Lonnie said, sauntering toward her, wearing a big smile, as if he’d never made threats against her and her pet cougar, as if he had the right to still call himself her friend just because he was Duncan’s. As if he had every right to be there, on her place, which of course, he did, she reminded herself, because he was The Law.

  “Lonnie,” said Brooke, without a nod or smile.

  “Just thought I’d stop by, see how you’re doin’.” He had the grace to at least look a little awkward, although he didn’t take off his hat to be polite. Probably, she thought, because it was a big part of what gave him his authority. His power.

  “I’m doing okay.” Her hand had come to rest on Hilda’s silky head, and that gave her a small measure of comfort.

  “How’s Daniel?”

  “He’s fine. In school right now.”

  “Good…good…” His small eyes gazed past her, through the barn and off toward where the animal pens were. Where Lady was. Where Duncan had died. She saw his jaw clench.

  Before he could say anything, she asked in a flat voice, “What do you want, Lonnie?”

  His eyes flicked at her, then away, and he shifted his stance and folded his arms in a way he maybe meant to be ingratiating but somehow just felt intimidating instead. “Uh, look, Brooke, about the other day. If I came on too strong…” He coughed, and Brooke thought, My God, is he trying to apologize? Then he seemed to draw himself together, and the intimidation was back—definitely—as he went on. “Look, Dunk was my best friend—my partner. What that cat did to him. Hell, I would have shot him—”

  “Her,” Brooke corrected softly, but he didn’t seem to hear.

  “—if Al hadn’t stopped me. I’m glad he did, because I wouldn’t want to do that to the boy. To Danny. I’m sorry if I upset him. But, Brooke, you need to understand, that cat is a killer. For your own sake, and the safety of your boy, you need to let that animal go. Let animal control take it and put it down.” When she would have protested, he held up a finger, like a teacher lecturing a class of small, unruly children, and moved closer to her, hemming her in. “Look, all you need to do is read the paper, watch TV. There was that case in Florida where two cheetahs turned on their keeper, tore her up good. And then the guy in Las Vegas. What was his name? Anyway, you got no business keeping a dangerous animal like that on your place when you’ve got a kid to think about.”

  “Thank you for your concern,” Brooke said coldly. “If that’s what you came to tell me, you’ve told me. So, if you don’t mind, I really do have work to do.”

  “Look, I’m just trying to look out for you and Danny. Dunk was my best friend. It’s the least I can do.”

  She felt a dangerous impulse to laugh. But he was standing too close to her, making her feel claustrophobic and, although she couldn’t have explained why, afraid. It suddenly seemed important to placate him, and that impulse, too, brought back memories she wished she could forget.

  She drew a steadying breath. “Lonnie, that’s kind of you. But I don’t need any help. Really. I’ve been getting along fine on my own for two years. Daniel and I will be just…fine.”

  Something glittered in his little blue eyes and quivered around the corners of his mouth, and Brooke thought about what Mr. Henderson had told her, and of all the evidence and suspicion against her, and for a moment she actually thought she might throw up. She felt clammy and cold, and there was a humming in her ears. She couldn’t breathe.

  Then the spell broke, and instead of humming, she heard the growl of a car making its way up the lane. She felt warm again, and not afraid.

  “Who the hell is that?” Lonnie asked, as if he had a right to know. He was scowling, watching the gray sedan pull around and park on the other side of Brooke’s pickup.

  Brooke drew a breath that quivered with relief and a strange, unanticipated gladness. “Oh,” she said in an offhand way, “it’s just a reporter. He’s doing a story about Lady.” She folded her arms and smiled, enjoying the way Lonnie jerked back in surprise. “He’s with National Geographic, I think. Or Animal Planet—one of those.”

  His lips curled in a sneer. “Yeah? Well, if you think that’s gonna save that cat, think again. He’s a killer, and I can guarantee you the judge is gonna see it that way, too, so you tell your Animal Planet big shot he’s got until the hearing next week to get his story, because after that the cat is history. Count on it.”

  He stabbed a finger at her for emphasis as he turned and started for his vehicle, then abruptly turned back, smiling in a way that didn’t even try to be friendly. “Oh—forgot to tell you. Just thought you’d like to know, we haven’t found the tranq gun yet. Still looking for it, though.”

  Why did that sound like a threat? Brooke thought as she watched him stride away, barely acknowledging Tony as he passed him by.

  She saw Tony pause for a moment to look back at Lonnie, wondering at his rudeness, maybe. When he came on, loaded down with his cameras and bags, he caught her eye, and she saw his tough, bulldog face break into its oddly sweet smile. Once again, that peculiar warmth came over her, along with reassurance, an overwhelming sense that she was safe, now. Because he was here.

  Tony felt the animosity as he and the other man passed each other, a wave of something so tangible he could almost see it, smell it, like the smoke from a particularly nasty cigar.

  He turned to watch the deputy get into his official sheriff’s department vehicle, then continued on, frowning. But when he saw Brooke’s face, and that she looked pale and scared, there was something about that and the look in her eyes that affected him in unfamiliar ways. He considered himself a nonviolent person, one much more inclined to make love than war, but he felt a sudden surprising urge to inflict great bodily harm on the individual who had put that fear in this woman’s eyes.

  He summoned the most reassuring smile he could muster and felt a strange lifting beneath his heart when she smiled back, even though her smile didn’t reach as far as her eyes. “What’s wrong? What’s a deputy sheriff doing here?” he asked her, aware that his own bravado was equivalent to that of a nine-year-old’s, secure in the knowledge that the school-yard bully had already departed the field of battle.

  She shook her head, made a gesture, making light of it all. “Oh, that’s just Lonnie.” She took a breath. “Duncan’s partner.”

  “Ah,” said Tony. He glanced down at the dog, who was in her usual position beside Brooke, but panting lazily and gazing after the departing SUV, evidently not in the least concerned about Tony’s presence there. He was remembering what Holt had said about Duncan’s friends most likely being other cops. “He’s…a friend, then?”

  She gave a high, humorless laugh. “Not mine.”

  He could see her struggling with it, not sure whether she could trust him, afraid to say too much. But, of course, she already had told him a lot, much more than she probably realized. He was good at reading faces.

  “Gotcha,” he said, turning as if to walk on toward the barn’s wide, open entrance, as if he didn’t need her to say another word. Which, in the contrary way of people—women especially, in his experience—gave her permission to say what was on her mind.

  “They grew up together, Lonnie and Duncan,” she said as she came to walk beside him. “I swear, as long as I knew Duncan Grant, wherever he was, I could count on Lonnie not being far away. They played high school football together. Just generally raised hell together. Then they both joined the sheriff’s department and went off to learn to be cops together, which kind of surprised everyone, I think. Most people around here probably thought they’d wind up in the same jail cell—together.”

  “Stands to reason he’d take his buddy’s death hard,” sa
id Tony. “Sounds like they must have been really close.”

  She tilted her head in a thoughtful way. “Close? Yeah, they were…I guess. But the funny thing is, they didn’t always get along. Most of the time, in fact. Those two probably had more bare-knuckle brawls than any two best buddies in the state of Texas, which is saying a lot. I guess maybe they were more like brothers who didn’t see eye to eye most of the time.”

  Cain and Abel were brothers, too, Tony thought. But he said, “What about you?”

  “I never did care much for him,” she said in a diffident way, watching the ground in front of her. Then she threw him a look and a wry smile. “Can’t stand the man, if you want to know the truth. And I’m sure the feeling is mutual. Lonnie being single, I imagine he didn’t much like losing his good ol’ drinkin’ and hell-raisin’ buddy—not that I noticed Duncan’s lifestyle or priorities changed much after we got married. Or even after Daniel was born, for that matter.” She went back to looking at the ground, forehead furrowed. “That’s why I can’t understand—”

  “What?” he prompted when she paused, but she shook her head.

  “Nothing. Really.” She gave a soft, embarrassed laugh. “I can’t imagine why I’m even tellin’ you all this. Particularly after I said you couldn’t do one little bit of your story about me or Daniel. I still do mean that, by the way.” She gave him the last in a warning tone, but with a new lightness in her attitude that made it seem almost like banter.

  He looked over at her as they strolled, unhurried, down the lane between animal pens, with the dog trotting on ahead of them. Brooke had her fingertips tucked in the pockets of her jeans and her face lifted to the warm September sun. Her straight, layered, sun-streaked hair was twisted up in an artless style and fastened to the back of her head with a wide metal clip, leaving pieces sticking out and waving around her head in a way that was whimsical but oddly attractive. The camera shutter in his mind went click.

  “No story,” he said. “Just interested. What don’t you understand?”

  Again, she hesitated, then let out a surrendering breath. “Why Duncan even wanted custody of Daniel. I don’t think Lonnie understood it, either. I would think Daniel would just have gotten in his way.”

  “What about Daniel? How does he feel about it?”

  “The custody battle?” Her face was suddenly a study in anger…bitterness…pain. “He doesn’t want to live with his dad, that’s for sure.” She threw him a look and quickly added, “Oh, don’t get me wrong. Daniel loves his father. Loved.” She closed her eyes briefly, and he saw her throat struggle with a swallow. “But—” and her voice had gone harsh and soft “—he’ll never forget what that man did to me.”

  Tony didn’t want to ask, but of course he had to. “What did he do?”

  They’d reached the cougar’s high wire enclosure. Brooke halted and, with a jerky, angry gesture, lifted her hair away from her forehead to show him the white scar running into her scalp. She turned to him and tried, without success, to smile. “That’s just the one that shows.”

  Chapter 5

  Brooke wasn’t prepared for the emotions that flashed across Tony Whitehall’s rugged face. What she saw there made her feel validated, and at the same time, oddly, scared.

  “He hit you?” He asked it very softly, not looking at her now. Carefully not looking at her, she thought, and squinting slightly, as if the sight of her might hurt his eyes.

  Shaken, she tried to backpedal. Tried to laugh, make it sound like less than it was. “Damn. I guess that just gives me more of a motive to kill him, doesn’t it?”

  “It would have,” Tony said, and to her relief, his voice sounded more like his normal voice. He was looking at her again, too, and the warmth was back in his eyes. “But you divorced him instead. Seems strange you didn’t kill him back then, when you had good reason to…”

  She felt shaky, trembly inside. Wrapping her arms around herself, trying without success to stop the feeling, she looked across the compound to where Lady was lying in the shade of an oak tree, ignoring them. “I guess it’s a fairly common practice among cops.”

  “No excuse.”

  “No, but I have a feeling his dad was the same way. So maybe he didn’t know how else to be.”

  He threw her a look, angry now. “What are you doing? Apologizing for him? He beat you. The woman he’s supposed to love and protect. How can any man justify that? How can any woman put up with it? My mother would have killed my dad in a heartbeat if he’d ever laid a hand on her in anger. Guaranteed.”

  Brooke had no answer for that. After a moment she said flatly, “I guess you were lucky, weren’t you?” And she walked away, once more feeling alone.

  Tony watched her go, with the big dog trotting along beside her. He was wondering if there was some way he could take back what he’d said. Make it up to her, at least. Cut his tongue out, maybe?

  Then he felt a moment’s intense and familiar longing, thinking of his dad’s rough, gnarled cowboy’s hands, hands that had been hard as iron but never any other way but gentle when they’d touched his children or his wife. When he was home, how the kids—the little ones—used to love to climb all over him, messing up his hair, tugging his mustache, taking off his cowboy hat and putting it on their own heads…. And Mama, standing a little way off, just smiling in a quiet way. Like she was proud of him, Tony thought, even though he’d never brought home much money, for sure not enough for the eleven kids he’d given her to raise. Eleven kids that had somehow all gone to college, which he knew was mostly thanks to Mama, but still, it was his dad he missed with an ache that never seemed to get smaller, even though it had been fifteen years since the heart attack that killed him.

  “You’re a jerk, you know that?” he told himself out loud.

  But he was watching the cougar now and thinking about the job, and the fact that if he was going to be able to get any decent shots of the animal, he was pretty much going to have to go inside the compound with it. Again, he flashed back to that day when he’d come face-to-face with a wild mountain lion, and the pact he and Elena had made afterward. He could see the tear tracks on her face and could hear her whisper, “She didn’t hurt us.”

  He looked at the gate in the high chain-link fence, which was fastened with a chain but not locked. He looked at the lion, still lying on her side out there in the shade of the oak tree, gazing off into the distance. Maybe sleeping?

  Are you dreaming, Lady? Dreaming about the days when this land belonged to you, and there was no one to contest your mastery of all your surveyed?

  Ignoring him, anyway.

  Scolding himself for his cowardice—and telling himself he could always beat a hasty retreat if the cat made a move toward him—Tony closed his eyes briefly, then unhooked the chain. It made what seemed like a hellishly loud noise.

  Out in the compound, the cougar turned her head to watch him but didn’t get up.

  “Nice kitty, kitty. Nice Lady…” he said on an exhaled breath as he slowly opened the gate and slipped into the lion’s den.

  “You know what I was thinking?” Tony said to Holt after he’d told him about it that evening at the diner. “That it felt wrong, that animal having a fence around it. You know what I mean? The buffalo, the wolf, the lion and the grizzly bear—we’ve crowded them off their land, stolen it from them. Like the white man stole it from the Indians—my people.”

  Holt’s eyes had crinkled up at the corners, but he swallowed the bite of steak he was working on before he said, with exaggerated seriousness, “Your people? How much Native American are you?”

  Tony shrugged. “Okay, my mama’s about three-quarters Apache—maybe half, I don’t know—so that makes me less than half, but still. Doesn’t change what happened—to the natives or to the animals.”

  “No,” Holt said agreeably. “So, the cat didn’t attack you, I gather?”

  “Didn’t bat an eye. I was busy getting out all my equipment, and she just lay there, twitching her tail once in a whil
e. Mind you, I didn’t try to go and pet her, or anything. But she pretty much ignored me the whole time I was in the pen with her. Even rolled over on her back and put her paws in the air and squirmed around—just like a big kitty cat, you know?” He paused to shake his head and let out a breath, remembering the sense of awe he’d felt. “It was…pretty amazing.” He picked up his fork and pointed it at Holt. “And if you ask me, it makes it pretty hard to believe that animal attacked somebody. Not without some serious provocation.”

  Holt pushed his plate aside and sat back. His eyes had that Clint Eastwood glitter. “You said that deputy—Lonnie Doyle—made some threats?”

  “Sure sounded like it. I was getting my equipment out of the car at the time, so I didn’t hear everything he said, but he seems to have a real hate for that cat. And no great love for Brooke, either.” He paused, giving himself time to control his voice before he added, “She’s afraid of him, I know that.”

  “And he and Duncan Grant were best friends….” He left it dangling.

  Tony sat and looked at him for a long moment, not saying anything. Then he shook his head…made a jerky gesture of rejection. “Nah. I mean, fistfights is one thing, but to shoot a guy with a tranquilizer gun and leave him to die in a lion’s cage? I can’t see it. What possible reason would the guy have to kill his best friend?”

  “It happens,” Holt said. He leaned forward again, arms folded on the tabletop. “And when it does, it’s usually over one of two things. A woman or money.”

  “Well, it’s not a woman,” Tony said. “Not this woman, anyway.”

  “So,” said Holt, picking up his beer, “that leaves money.”

  Brooke had stopped what she was doing—raking old bedding straw out of the horses’ stalls—to watch Daniel and Tony down in the pasture. As always, Daniel was surrounded by a motley herd of animals—horses, goats and alpacas. Tony stood close by and was obviously trying to ignore the goats nibbling at his pockets and shirtsleeves, looking for treats. Hilda was off down by the creek, nosing around, looking to scare up a squirrel or a rabbit to chase. A warm September breeze was blowing, bringing with it the smell of autumn and the sound of voices.