The Thunder Rolls

by Bethany Campbell

Billie Jo sounded so sure of herself that Gordon couldn’t get his bearings. The woman had to be lying. But if she was lying, how could she sound so bitterly truthful?

  “You’re makin’ this up,” he repeated. “You tell Bubba—”

  “Gordon, you jackass, the other day, your own mama asked Martin for a will that leaves you out. And she asked about taking away your custody privileges and getting an order to keep you away from Nora and Rory. She even asked about adoption. She wants Ken Slattery to adopt your son. That’s what she thinks of you. He wants to do it, too.”

  “You’re lyin’,” Gordon insisted, but the buzz in his head had grown so loud it made him want to weep with rage and frustration. He swore. “You’re lyin’!” he almost screamed. “And you tell Bubba—”

  “Bubba’s got nothing to do with this,” Billie Jo countered, acid in her voice. “I’ve told you more than you need to know, but you get one thing straight—you leave Bubba alone. I mean it.”

  “My wife wouldn’t be in no love nest—my mother wouldn’t—there’s a kid to take care of, you lyin’—”

  “Your mother and kid are out of town. Forget that other stuff. And forget about Bubba. What’s important is that Nora’s probably in bed with Ken this minute—I’d be, if I was her.”

  Gordon’s thoughts swam drunkenly. What was the date? The middle of July or something. That really was the time Dottie usually went to visit her sister. And Rory had said something about Scout camp. And Slattery had been in the restaurant that day, too. Slattery had stood up for Nora.

  Slattery. Everybody had conspired to fool him. All this time it had been Slattery!

  “You tell Slattery—” he began, his voice ragged with warning.

  Billie Jo cut him off. She sounded angry and as if she were about to cry. “Tell him yourself, you cowardly worm. You’re just a great big nothing, Gordon Jones, and you always have been.” She slammed down the receiver.

  Gordon sat, stunned, still holding the phone in his hand.

  He felt things falling into place. Click, click, click.

  They had all lied to him and deceived him. Bubba wasn’t after Nora. It had been Ken Slattery the whole time. They’d used Bubba to throw him off the trail. Bubba had covered for Slattery. Click.

  They had all turned against him: his mother, Nora, even Rory, his own son. They had betrayed him. In treachery and secret they were working against him, as cold-bloodedly and poisonously as if they were a nest of vipers. Click.

  While he was crossing the Mexican border, risking his life and freedom to get home to them, they had played him the double cross. By fraud and hypocrisy, they were cheating him of everything and handing it to another man. Click.

  Of course. It made sense. Nora wouldn’t be attracted to a fat old toad like Bubba. But Slattery—he was another matter. Oh, those quiet men, those silent men—they were the ones you couldn’t trust. Slattery had knifed him in the back so neatly that Gordon was only now feeling the sting.

  Charlie’s contempt for Gordon had wounded him, but the contempt in Billie Jo’s voice had enraged him. And their disdain was only the tip of the iceberg. Back in Crystal Creek, he was despised and an outcast. Even his own mother, sneaking and underhanded, was trying to victimize him and make him play the fool. He knew Billie Jo was telling the truth—she’d blurted it out, then regretted it, he could tell. His own mother.

  So they thought he was nothing, did they? So they thought they could walk all over him, did they? Did they think he was too cowardly to strike back? What kind of fools were they? He’d show them. He’d show them all.

  He was filled with a rage so immense it seemed to have turned him into ice, inside and out. When he rose from the floor, he was no longer shaking.

  With a motion so deliberate it seemed calm, he tore the phone cord from the wall and tossed the phone aside. Then, swaying slightly, he went into his bedroom, where he kept his guns.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IN THE HOUSE by Lake Travis, Nora sighed and laid her head against Ken’s naked chest. She closed her eyes, sated with love and happiness. Here, with him, held in his strong arms, she felt secure and safe, for the first time in her life.

  “Are you awake?” he murmured against her hair.

  “Yes.”

  Thunder rolled in the distance, deep and echoing.

  “It’s goin’ to rain again,” Ken said.

  “I know.”

  He smiled. “It happens every time we go to bed. Do you think we cause it?”

  She laughed softly. “Maybe.”

  “We’ve invented something better’n the rain dance.”

  “Much better.”

  “All of Central Texas should be grateful.”

  “Eternally grateful.”

  He shifted in the bed so that they lay facing each other. He kissed her forehead. She ran her fingers over the gold hair that covered his chest like a breastplate. His hands moved languidly over her naked body.

  “Trouble is,” he said, “I don’t want to get out of this bed. Every time I do, I just want to get back in.”

  His touch caressed her into a dreamy, sensuous state. She wound her arms around his neck and nuzzled his throat. “Then let’s not get out. Let’s stay here.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  They stretched together like a pair of cats, then twined their legs together more intimately. Nora smiled at him. “Nobody would ever have imagined me being like this.” She kissed his chest, then his collarbone, then his chest again.

  His hands cupped her hips. “I did. I imagined it all the time.”

  “What do they call it, being like this?” Nora asked, nibbling and kissing the sharp curve of his jaw. “Is this wanton?”

  He drew her closer and shook his head. “No, sugar. This is just called being in love.” Then his lips took hers.

  “YOU CALL THIS being in love?” Billie Jo Dumont shrieked. She picked up a brass vase of artificial flowers and flung it at Bubba’s head.

  Bubba ducked, and the vase clanged against the wall, bounced, then rolled across the carpet spilling silk blossoms and plastic bittersweet. For the life of him, he couldn’t comprehend why she was so furious.

  “Now, love woozle—” Bubba said.

  “Don’t you ‘love woozle’ me,” Billie Jo fumed, putting her hands on her hips. “After the way I’ve compromised myself, the least you can do is tell me the truth.”

  Bubba had no idea what she was talking about. “Sweet thing,” he said, “I done told you the truth. The heartburn had me, that’s all.”

  “Heartburn.” Billie Jo sniffed in indignation. “That’s all?”

  Bubba straightened and hitched up his pants. He thrust his thumbs belligerently into his belt. He didn’t know what had gotten into Billie Jo. She was getting downright possessive. Possessive women made him uneasy.

  “If I say I had the heartburn, then that’s what I say,” Bubba stated with as much dignity as he could. “And I don’t see how no heartburn can compromise you.”

  “Oh!” Billie Jo cried. She fought against tears, lost the fight, then hid her eyes behind her hand, angry that Bubba was seeing her cry. “All I ask for is the truth,” she said in a choked voice. “Do you know what I went through this week? Do you know what terrible thoughts I had? After I have suffered the tortures of the damned, the very least you could do is confide in me. Then on top of everything, you let me get caught off guard and break a professional confidence. Oh!”

  Bubba’s face grew redder. He hated seeing Billie Jo cry. She was supposed to be happy and accepting, otherwise, how was he supposed to have fun with her? Back home he had one woman making him feel guilty as hell. Why on earth would he need two? Maybe he should have listened to J. T. McKinney’s lecture.

  J.T. had made Bubba feel so guilty that the only cure was a fresh dose of sin. Bubba had dared Mary’s disapproval to make this journey into town to see Billie Jo. He was finally i
n the mood for—indeed he badly needed—a happy, snuggly woman, eager to please. Instead he’d found Billie Jo in the strangest mood he’d ever seen.

  On the phone, she’d seemed fine, her old, accommodating, affectionate self. But when she’d opened the door, all had changed. What could have happened?

  She’d fallen into his arms, collapsing against his chest. “Oh, Bubba,” she’d said, “I’m so glad to see you. Are you all right? Tell me everything.”

  Bubba had held her tightly, but her words surprised him, putting him ill at ease. What was she talking about? What was he supposed to tell her? That for a week Gordon Jones had intimidated and terrorized him half-sick? That was not the sort of thing a man admitted to his mistress.

  “Tell you what?” Bubba had asked innocently, patting her bottom. “My digestion was kickin’ up, is all. You know Mary. That woman is tryin’ to kill me with rich food. Lawsy, it’s been a long week. Let’s make whoopee now and conversation later. Come on, love buns. Daddy wants to go to Mattressville.”

  Bubba had meant the invitation to sound flattering. But instead, Billie Jo was offended. She kept demanding the truth, whatever she meant by that. And she kept making angry, mysterious statements about having compromised herself because of him. What had he done?

  Bubba refused to be bullied by any woman, and he most adamantly refused to discuss Gordon Jones, because he considered the subject humiliating. J.T. had given him no sympathy. He had been so contemptuous that Bubba was even more mortified than before.

  Now, instead of visiting Mattressville, Bubba had had a vase chucked at his head, and Billie Jo was dissolving into angry, accusing tears. What good was a mistress in a bad mood? he asked himself helplessly.

  “Billie Jo,” he said, trying to placate her, “don’t go and get yourself in a state. What you need is lovin’—”

  “Is that all you think of?” Billie Jo demanded. “I can go without hearing from you for days and days—I can think every horrible sort of thought—I can jeopardize my own professional integrity—but you want to shrug it off and hide things from me, you want to use me like an object—”

  “Now, sweet thing,” Bubba pleaded, “why would I lie to you? Come back to your daddy’s arms.”

  “You’re not keeping anything from me?” Billie Jo asked, wiping her eyes and glaring at him.

  “Not one tiny thing, woozle,” Bubba said as sincerely as he could.

  “Nothing’s been bothering you but a bad case of heartburn?”

  “Not a thing, except not bein’ able to see you.”

  “You haven’t had one other teeny, tiny problem to contend with? Something you ought to share with a person you love? So she might be prepared for it?”

  “Not one,” Bubba lied. “I tell you everything, sweetie. May God strike me dead if I’ve kept one little secret from you.”

  Billie Jo gave him a long, suspicious look. Bubba inhaled and held his breath, so that his chest stuck out farther than his stomach. He lifted his chin, trying to look strong, loving and noble.

  Billie Jo kept staring at him, her look growing as flat-eyed as a snake’s.

  “Get out of here,” she said with surprising force.

  Bubba looked at her in amazement.

  “Get out,” she repeated. “Gordon called here. I know everything. How dare you lie to me?” She groped for another weapon and picked up a wooden banana from the fruit bowl on the table.

  “Now, Billie Jo,” Bubba said, but he found himself backing toward the front door. “Now angel baby darlin’—”

  “I will not be lied to.”

  “Now, baby—”

  “You will not lock me away from the rest of your life.”

  “Billie Jo—”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I have faithfully loved you and sacrificed for you, Bubba Gibson. I have all but ruined my reputation for your sake. Now I’ve even gone and violated Martin’s confidence. You say you love me—but you treat me like—like your bimbo. When things happen, you should share them, so we can face them together. You will not hold out on me.”

  “Billie Jo, I swear that I haven’t held back on one blessed thing—”

  She pitched the wooden banana at him. He raised his arms to defend himself, and the banana hit him in the left elbow, hit him surprisingly hard.

  “Out!” screamed Billie Jo. “Out! Out! Out!” She reached for a bunch of carved wooden grapes and threw them at him with all her might. Then she reached for an apple and an orange.

  Bubba fled. As he darted out the door, the wooden apple caught him between the shoulder blades. He ran all the way to his pickup truck, expecting any moment to be assassinated by an oak pineapple or the fruit bowl itself.

  Billie Jo slammed the door and dissolved into tears. All the week’s frustrations clamored within her. It would have been one thing for Bubba to come to her, at last, to take her hands in his and to confess what he had been going through this week. She would have told him that she knew, she understood, that she would stand by him, that she would be his prop and his support during this trauma.

  She would confess all about Gordon’s call and that she had, in her fervor to protect Bubba from his enemy, perhaps said more than she should have. Bubba would have comforted her and been impressed by her passion on his behalf.

  Then, perfectly open and trusting and honest and mutually comforting, they would have gone to bed and made love, no secrets between them.

  Instead, Bubba had pranced in the door with a gleam in his eye and a glib lie on his lips, and Billie Jo just couldn’t take it after her hellacious week. She erupted.

  Everything about her life pained her, and all she wanted to do was escape. She went to the bathroom, shook two sleeping pills out of her prescription bottle and washed them down with a cold swallow of water.

  Then, all the fight gone out of her, she shuffled into her bedroom and changed her clothes. She took off the cute pink and white shorts set she’d put on just for Bubba. She slipped into her frumpiest nightgown, and got into bed.

  Once in bed, she rolled over on her stomach, hugged her pillow and began to cry again. She wanted so much from Bubba, but he was willing to give so little. Had she been wrong to ask for more? Had she driven him away for good now?

  When she wasn’t sobbing over Bubba, she thought of how she’d blurted out office secrets, and how appalled Martin would be if he ever found out, and she wept harder. At last the pills took effect and she slipped into troubled sleep.

  It had never crossed her mind that all of Gordon Jones’s wrath might now be directed at Nora and Ken Slattery. She had been too involved in her own problems even to think of warning them.

  But even as Billie Jo drifted through her uneasy dreams, Gordon Jones was rolling home, vengeance on his mind.

  THE EMOTION that dominated Gordon was implacable rage. Billie Jo’s revelations had shaken his life like an earthquake. He was no longer the hero going home for his just rewards. He was the victim in a tragedy of staggering betrayals. He could not get over it: everyone had betrayed him. Everyone.

  It was past belief. Treason and treachery past bearing.

  A man who suffered such violence had no choice except to resort to violence himself. It was the only justice. It was the only right.

  Gordon had taken a handful of amphetamines back in Lubbock, not bothering to count them. Now his head buzzed like a hive of enraged bees, and the word it kept buzzing was vengeance, vengeance, vengeance.

  Slattery would be the first to feel his fury. Slattery, that coward hiding behind the smoke screen that he and Bubba Gibson had conspired to create. Slattery, who at this moment was defiling Gordon’s wife. Slattery, who schemed to rob Gordon not only of his woman, but even his son—even his mother.

  Of all the things Billie Jo had said, none cut so deeply as her statement that Dottie had gone to Martin Avery. She wanted another man to adopt Gordon’s child. She was cutting Gordon himself out of her will and her love.

  Who could have made Dottie act in such a
way? Slattery, Gordon thought with wild conviction, it had to be Slattery.

  Slattery had probably been working behind Gordon’s back to rob him of everything, spreading every sort of lie and slander.

  Well, Gordon thought, clenching his teeth, Slattery would pay. He’d pay in blood. Gordon had spent most of the trip planning the coming confrontation with Slattery, savoring it.

  He knew Slattery didn’t carry a gun, never touched one. Gordon remembered. Slattery was a distant man and a bit mysterious, and part of his mystery was his disdain for guns. That disdain had always puzzled Gordon, but now it pleased him.

  Slattery probably didn’t have the stomach for guns, that was his problem. He only had the guts to sneak around stealing another man’s wife, his son, even his very mother. Gordon would face him and show the world what a coward Slattery was.

  Gordon had brought several guns, including his semiautomatic assault rifle. If he chose, he could pick Slattery off like a bird from a telephone wire. And any number of other people as well.

  But Gordon was too much a man to do that. He would approach Slattery and throw him a gun. “Take it,” Gordon would order. “Take it and fight like a man.”

  Slattery, knowing he had no choice, would reach for the gun, but Gordon would be quicker. He would shoot Slattery down and watch with pleasure while he bled to death.

  All that Gordon hoped was that Nora would be there to see who was the real man. Then she would realize that Gordon was her proper master. And no jury in the country would convict him. Not for killing a wife stealer.

  Nora. When Gordon thought of Nora, all possible scenes beyond Slattery’s death grew vague. Perhaps she would sink to her knees, begging for mercy.

  Perhaps she would even be grateful he had saved her from a man as conniving as Slattery. He could punish her, punish her as badly as she deserved. He’d take her back at his leisure, after she’d suffered properly.

  But what if Nora didn’t fall to her knees? What if she wasn’t grateful? He supposed he’d kill her, too. Perhaps he’d have to kill everyone who had once pretended to love him.