The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  All her fault. All of this was her fault.

  George Selkirk had always been a take-charge sort of guy, and after two hours of shivering in the hayloft, listening to Royer’s snores, and to the horses snorting and farting below, he got up, pulled his Glock out of his shoulder holster, and inspected it with a sense of fond admiration that had never dwindled since he’d shelled out a serious chunk of change for the thing, back when he first got into the trade. He wasn’t the extravagant type, but a man needed good tools. The hay rustled as he got to his feet, but Royer didn’t stir. George stood over him for almost a minute, sighting in the Glock on his left temple. So easy, he thought. It would be so damn easy to rub the bastard right out, hook up with Royer’s funds in Mexico, and spend the rest of his life celebrating.

  What stopped him was the gut-deep certainty that he wouldn’t get away with it; something would go wrong if he tried, either here or at the border, and there was no room for error in this little gambit. He’d learned the hard way to listen to his instincts, way back when it would come to him ahead of time that he shouldn’t go home until he was sure the old man had passed out for the night. Three good beatings was all it took to learn that lesson. Dear old Dad had committed “suicide,” and the pain was over.

  He tucked the Glock away, patted it reverently through jacket and holster, and climbed down the ladder to the barn floor.

  The second-to-last thing George Selkirk wanted was to be caught and sent to prison—the very last was to die before his time. He was still young—forty-four—and he had a brilliant career ahead of him. So what if he was a little tired? He’d get over that. Take a vacation or something.

  The horses nickered a little as he passed on his way out, but none of them raised the alarm. He made for the house, with its gaping mouth, at the entrance to the kitchen, whistling under his breath. Mr. Young D.A. wasn’t the only one who knew his way around a computer, and Royer had made some notes while he was surfing the Web, though he probably figured a dumb thug like Selkirk wouldn’t notice.

  Well, George Selkirk noticed plenty. And he didn’t wait outside like a dog just because some suit gave the order. He’d watched Royer at work at that computer for a couple of minutes before slipping back outside to pretend he was keeping watch, like Tonto or some-goddam-body.

  He lit a cigarette, drew deeply on the smoke, coughed a couple of times, and stepped over the threshold. It was cold as all get-out inside that house, but warmer than the yard had been. George liked to think he was a guy who saw the glass as half-full, not half-empty.

  He took a look around, just to make sure he really had the place to himself, and then he went to the desk, sat down, and reached for a pencil. It was an old trick, but it usually worked, and this time was no exception. He laid the pencil on its side and rubbed the lead over the top of the notepad where Royer had scribbled, and an impression came through.

  Sheriff: Jase Stratton. A Primrose Creek address followed. After that, Royer had written, Hallie+Chance Qualtrough, with directions to the place. Damn if it wasn’t just through those woods behind the barn, George thought, turning in the chair, as if to look through the wall. He’d never been in this godforsaken hole of a town, and he’d never be there again, but he had taken the time to download some information on the place. Unlike some people he could name.

  He tore off the tracing he’d made, folded it, and tucked it into his pocket. Earlier, while Royer was playing dickhead spy, he’d walked around back and found a shed. Inside, among other useful items, he’d spotted an old pair of snowshoes. All he had to do was strap those on and follow his nose through the woods to the Qualtrough house, finish Royer’s ex-wife off good and proper, once she’d given him the evidence, use his cell phone to summon his ride, and get the hell out of Dodge. He was being paid by somebody higher up than the Golden Boy, anyhow.

  The moon was high and full, the light glittering on the snow. George, sporting the snowshoes, almost expected to see Santa’s sleigh cross the sky, pulled by eight tiny reindeer. But wait, that was Christmas. It was still only October, despite the shitty weather. Might see a witch sail past instead. He chuckled. Ma, on a broomstick, he thought.

  George continued to slog.

  He didn’t see the monster until it was too late. He didn’t hear it, either, or smell its gamey hide. But the hairs rose on the back of his neck when he took off his snowshoes to cross a gleaming silver ribbon of a creek, using an old log for a footbridge. He stopped, right in the middle, and tuned in to his surroundings.

  “Not good,” he muttered. “Not good at all.”

  An unearthly shriek rent the frigid air, and George matched it with one of his own. The snowshoes toppled into the creek and floated away downstream, giant tennis rackets swirling on top of the water. George shuffled to the other side, hoping to God that the terrible sound had not come from that direction.

  The cry sounded again, plaintive and, at the same time, fierce. George’s blood froze in his veins, and he grappled for his Glock, dropped it, scrabbled for it in the snow. Before he could straighten up again, the thing was on him with a force that knocked the wind out of him; he felt its breath on his face before it went for his throat, was deafened by its snarling screams of attack, and the last thought his brain ever processed was a single word.

  Lion.

  “What was that?” Hallie asked, sitting bolt upright in bed. “What?” Chance echoed, sounding rummy, but the .357 Magnum he’d left on the bedside table was already in his hand.

  “A scream,” she said. “I heard a scream.”

  “The cat,” Chance said. He got up, pulled on his jeans, buttoned the front. “I’d better check on the horses.”

  Hallie tossed back the covers. “I’m going with you,” she said.

  He gave her a rueful grin, shook his head, and jammed his feet into his boots. Apparently, he’d finally figured out that it was useless to argue with her.

  The barn was quiet, the horses fitful but not seriously disturbed. Still, Hallie had an uneasy feeling, a prickling sensation along the length of her spine. Lou had told her, long ago, to pay attention when she picked up vibes like that, and behave accordingly, and she frowned, looking around.

  She stepped out into the barnyard and looked up at the sky, and a motion at the edge of her vision caught her eye. She turned and watched in horror as a cougar shot across the space between Chance’s house and barn, bathed in blood and leaving a trail of crimson paw-prints in the snow.

  She started to scream, swallowed the cry in the space of a heartbeat, and stared as the animal leaped the barbed wire fence and entered the pasture, there to be swallowed whole by the night.

  “Chance!” she managed, sagging against the outside wall, one hand pressed to her heart.

  He was there in an instant, the .357 drawn and ready. “What is it?”

  She pointed to the streaks of blood in the snow. “Look,” she said. It was all she could manage at the moment, but it sufficed.

  Chance swore and went over to squat and inspect the blood. “The cougar must be wounded,” he said, and Hallie knew he was speaking more to himself than to her. He rose to his full height, followed the gruesome prints backward a little way. “Maybe it tangled with another cat, or woke up a bear.”

  “Or it killed something,” Hallie said. She wanted to throw up, and put her hand to her mouth, but willed herself to keep it together.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Chance said, lifting his gaze toward the woods that lay between his place and Jessie’s, on the other side of Primrose Creek. “If that cat made a kill, it was no rabbit, and he tore the throat out of it. Shit, he practically bathed in the blood.”

  Hallie shuddered, unaware of the cold. “Do you think we should go and look?” she asked, hoping to God he’d say no, but willing to follow him anywhere if he said yes.

  “Somebody will have to track that bastard at first light,” he said, staring into the darkness as if he could see the retreating cat. “If it’s wounded, it’
s ten times as dangerous as before.”

  “Won’t it . . . just . . . die?” Hallie asked.

  “Maybe,” Chance said, “and maybe not. If it doesn’t, and it runs across somebody’s stray cattle, or a pack of kids out sleigh-riding—”

  Hallie squeezed her eyes shut against the image, but it only grew more intense, more savage. Her stomach rolled at the pictures that rose in her mind.

  Chance put out a hand to her. “Come on,” he said, with gruff tenderness. “Let’s get in out of the weather. There’s nothing more we can do tonight.”

  All the same, when they were inside, and he’d made them both a hot toddy to take the edges off their shock, he placed a quick call to Jase’s cell phone number and reported the sighting of a blood covered mountain lion.

  “Did Jase say anything about Kiera and Kiley?” Hallie asked, more anxious about the brief separation from her daughters because of the incident. She hoped Jase was at Katie’s, protecting them all.

  “I got his voice mail,” Chance answered. They were sitting in his living room, side by side on the long leather couch, and he got up to start the fire. When he came back, he slipped an arm around her shoulders. “You really miss those two kids, don’t you?”

  She nodded, breathless with the force of her emotion, and stared into the blaze, her eyes hot with tears.

  “They’re all right,” he said quietly, “but if you’re worried, why don’t you call Katie?”

  For a moment, she actually considered the idea. Then she looked at the antique clock on the mantel piece, and saw that it was 3:25A.M. As much as she wanted reassurance, she knew Chance was right; the girls were fine, and waking Katie, maybe waking all the kids, too, was not a viable option.

  “You have a computer,” she said, moments later, remembering that he’d e-mailed her at least once, while she was at Jessie’s.

  He nodded, indicated a doorway in the heavy log wall. “That way,” he said.

  “I’ll try to access my messages,” she told him, just in case. “It might make me feel better.”

  “Go ahead,” he answered. “While you’re doing that, I’ll lock up and make us another drink. Sleep insurance.” He smiled wickedly. “Or we could make love again.”

  “Perish the thought,” Hallie said, with a weary laugh. “I’m so tired I’d never survive it.”

  He shrugged. “It was worth a try,” he said, resigned.

  She found the computer, after taking in Chance’s workspace at a glance. It was tidy to a fault, as she’d expected, and there were enough books on the shelves to stock a good-size library. Normally, she would have found them irresistible but, at the moment, she was only interested in finding out if anyone had tried to contact her via the Internet.

  It took a few minutes to get into her mailbox, and when she did, she found the usual sales pitches, and promptly deleted them. She was about to send her daughters a message, via Katie’s e-mail address, when a thought occurred to her. She opened Recently Deleted Mail and there it was, a subject line bearing Katie’s address.

  “Chance,” she whispered rawly. Then, as she read, her voice rose to a shout. “Chance!”

  He bolted into the room, with both dogs at his heels, his face white with worry, the .357 clasped in one hand. “Hallie, what—?”

  She pointed at the screen with a trembling finger. “Look. He’s here, the son of a bitch. Joel is here, in Primrose Creek. He read this e-mail, and now he knows where my children are!”

  Chance scanned the message. “Come on,” he said urgently, grasping her by the hand and dragging her to her feet.

  16

  C hance paused in the kitchen, grabbed the telephone while Hallie was dragging on her coat and boots, and promptly threw the receiver against the wall, swearing under his breath. “Line’s down,” he said. Hallie wanted to scream. “What about your cell phone?”

  “It’s in the truck. Let’s go.”

  It was hard traveling, just getting to the barn, where Chance’s truck was parked, the snow was so deep. It was stone dark out, as well, except for the starlight, which was disappearing as new clouds moved in, harbingers of another storm, perhaps even more ferocious than the last one.

  Chance started the truck, racing its powerful engine a couple of times, to hurry the warm-up process along, and then slammed it into reverse, grinding his way out of the barn. Hallie snatched up the cell phone he’d left on the dashboard and saw that the battery was dead.

  She opened the glove compartment, at Chance’s order, and rummaged until she found the charger and plugged both it and the phone into the cigarette lighter. Hallie dialed 911, listened, and then swore in furious desperation. “It’s still not working!”

  Chance held the small instrument with one hand and drove with the other, the truck careening through the deep snow, fishtailing this way and that. He pressed a series of numbers with the tip of his thumb, put the device to his ear, tossed it away.

  “Shit,” he said. “Emergency Services must have commandeered the satellite for a while, or something. This kind of snowfall can cause all kinds of problems, even up here, where we’re used to it.”

  “My children!” Hallie whispered. While she was fairly certain Joel himself wouldn’t hurt Kiera and Kiley—he loved them, in his twisted way—she couldn’t predict what his associates might do. After all, they’d killed Lou, and then Charlie Long, without any compunction at all.

  “We’ll get to them, Hallie,” Chance promised, fighting the wheel with both hands now, plowing through grille-high snow. “It won’t be easy, and it won’t be fast, but we’ll get there in time, and you have my word on that.”

  Hallie swallowed, hung on to the handle above the passenger door window, her feet braced against the floorboards. “Hurry,” she said, quite unnecessarily.

  The form of a man loomed, feet set apart, at the end of the driveway, and Hallie knew instantly who it was, despite the fact that she couldn’t see his features, or even the details of his clothing.

  “Joel,” she said. “Dear God, that’s Joel.”

  Chance brought the truck to a stop, not that he had any other choice, beyond running over another human being. Almost in a single motion he put the engine in neutral and reached back to wrench his rifle down from the rack that stretched across the back window.

  Hallie scrabbled to grab his coat, lying almost flat against the seat, and missed. “Stay there,” she heard him bark, as he left the door gaping and trudged through the knee-deep snow.

  She ignored the order, of course, sat up, and fumbled to free herself from the seat belt. The door on her side had jammed, or maybe Chance had locked it somehow, and Hallie didn’t bother trying to find the switch. She scooted over the seat and went out after him.

  The two of them, Joel and Chance, stood out in frightening relief, in the center of a shared aura of snow-speckled light from the truck’s high-beams, two man-shapes facing each other, ready to fight to the death.

  Hallie slipped, fell on the ground, got up again. Just as she rounded the front of the truck, she heard shots, a staccato plump-plump-plump and knew, as the daughter of a cop, that Joel had gunned Chance down with a revolver.

  She screamed, dropped to her knees beside Chance, who was bleeding in the snow, and only half conscious. “Take this,” he said, indicating the rifle.

  “Too late,” Joel said, taking a handful of Hallie’s hair and wrenching her to her feet. With the other, he jerked the rifle from her fingers and hurled it into the bushes, out of sight. “Looks like your cowboy ain’t too quick on the draw, ma’am.”

  “Let me go!” Hallie shrieked, flailing. Chance was lying on the ground behind her, very probably dying, and she had no time for anything or anyone, at the moment, but him.

  Joel flung her down hard, and she landed on top of Chance. She caught herself, her hands slippery with blood. “Kiss him good-bye,” her ex-husband snarled. “He’s as good as dead and so are you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hallie whispered to Chance. “Oh, God,
I’m sorry.” But she knew he couldn’t hear her. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow.

  Joel dragged her to her feet again, this time by the back of her jacket. He flung her out of the glaring light and she landed on her knees in the snow. She struggled back to her feet, turned and leaped on him, claws bared, shrieking like the mountain lion she’d heard so many times.

  He sent his elbow slamming into her face, and this time, when she fell, she didn’t get up again. She came to, a few seconds, minutes or hours later, to find herself being carried through the woods, in the direction of Jessie’s place, slung painfully over Joel’s shoulder like a sack of alfalfa pellets.

  On and on they went, through the deep snow and the trees. Hallie stayed inert, hoping to catch Joel by surprise when he finally put her down.

  When he did, he threw her backward, beside the creek. She knew immediately that the thing she’d landed on wasn’t a log or a stone, but a body. She turned, looked into a mass of gore that had once been somebody’s face, and wriggled away with a little squeal of fear and revulsion.

  “Good . . . God . . . what hap-happened?” she managed, sitting a few feet from the corpse, her hands back behind her, the snow seeping through her jeans. She was numb with cold and shock, and her brain was functioning at warp-turtle. A moment or two after she’d voiced the question, it all came back to her: the blood-drenched cat she’d seen earlier that evening, running between Chance’s house and barn. She shuddered and tried wildly to scrub the crimson from her hands with fistfuls of snow.

  Joel grabbed her wrist, wrenched her to her feet with a force that nearly pulled her shoulder out of its socket. He was seething, his eyes cold and dark, picking up reflected moonlight from the whispering waters of the creek. “You just couldn’t leave things alone, could you?” he rasped.