Cowboy to the Core

by Joanna Wayne

  “I hope so. I’m looking for my sister. She has a mental disability and wanders off sometimes and can’t find her way home again.” It was the best script she’d come up with over the course of the morning.

  “Lady, I just take the money. I don’t keep up with the customers or test their IQs.”

  “I just need to know if you’ve seen her.”

  He shrugged. “What does she look like?”

  “A lot like me except that her hair is longer, a rich auburn color and curly.”

  The guy studied her, looking more perplexed by the second. He bent over and retrieved something from beneath the counter. “Is this your sister?” he asked, slapping a snapshot down in front of her.

  The girl in the photo looked exactly like Dani, same hair, but longer. Same color. No curls. “Where did you get that?”

  “A man came in about a week ago looking for this woman. He said he’d heard she was in this part of Texas, and he seemed real desperate to find her. If you weren’t standing here telling me different, I’d swear you’re the lady in this photo. If not, you gotta be her twin.”

  Marcus picked up the photo and held it away from the glare. “Did the man say why he was looking for her?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Hardly. I see hundreds of people a day. Tall, short, every ethnic group you can name.”

  “Try to remember,” Dani pleaded.

  “If I told you anything, I’d be making it up.”

  “Did he say what the woman’s name was?” Marcus asked.

  “Helena something or other, but he said she probably wasn’t going by that. I figure she’s an old girlfriend he’s trying to hook up with again. But I don’t guess so if you say she’s your sister and that’s she’s mentally disabled.”

  “You must have caught him on the security camera when he came in and gave you the picture.” Marcus took out his wallet. “What would it take to get a look at that?”

  The clerk stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Sorry. I just work here. Management collects the film and sends it all to the home office. But if you want to give me your name and phone number, I’ll let you know if I see this woman.”

  Dani pulled her business card from her handbag. “Please give me a call if she shows.”

  “Yeah, sure. I need to wait on some customers now.”

  A woman pushed by them and set a large bottled soda and a package of chips on the counter, and the clerk went back to business as usual.

  Dani was more confused and uneasy than ever when they left the store. “That photo looked exactly me, but it isn’t. I’ve never had a blouse like that, and I haven’t worn my hair that long in years.”

  “The resemblance was striking,” Marcus agreed.

  “It’s freakish. And the man was looking for Helena,” she said, “just like in my nightmarish vision.”

  “The vision where the son of a bitch came after you,” Marcus muttered through clenched teeth.

  “I don’t get it. The photo has to be of Ella, when she weighed a little more, but it couldn’t be Kevin that was in here a week ago. He was living with Ella then.”

  “I’m almost sure it wasn’t Kevin,” Marcus said. “But I’d love to get my hands on the man and find out why he’s looking for her.”

  “The way you got your hands on Kevin Flanders and Billy Germaine?”

  “No. This time I’d take off the velvet gloves.”

  The new information was disturbing, but it didn’t change Dani’s mind about Kevin Flanders. She’d never sensed that fierce brand of evil before. If anyone involved with Ella had the heart of a killer, it had to be him.

  PETE MALLORY WATCHED the man and woman walk to the corner and cross the street going west. He didn’t buy that bull about her sister being missing. He didn’t know what her game was, but she was the same woman in the snapshot.

  Pete took care of the next customer and then reached under the counter for the second photo, the one he hadn’t shown them. The one with the man’s contact number on it.

  Ethan Marks had promised a cool five hundred dollars for information leading to his finding the woman in the snapshot. Pete punched the number into his phone. Five hundred dollars would make a payment on his car and leave money left over for a couple cases of beer.

  IT WAS PAST THE NOON HOUR and the neighborhood Mexican restaurant was practically empty. Marcus asked for the back booth, one that let him see what was going on inside and outside the restaurant. They both ordered from the lunch menu and then Dani headed to the restroom.

  Marcus took out his cell phone and punched in the number for his tech contact. No answer, but he left a message for Eduardo. He needed a list of any abandoned houses or businesses in the Old Town area—any place where Ella might be hiding out.

  The next call was to the deputy in charge of the stabbing investigation. As soon as Marcus got past the formalities with Ted, he filled him in on their morning—except for the conversation with that last convenience store clerk. He wasn’t quite ready to throw that development into the common-knowledge pool.

  “I don’t suppose the Spring Police Department has come up with any leads.”

  “Not yet,” Ted said. “I’m sure they’re as shorthanded as all the other police departments in the country, so I don’t expect any superfast results.”

  Neither did Marcus. “I’d like you to run a missing persons check to see if Ella Somerville fits any of the descriptions in the system.”

  “I can put a deputy on that this afternoon, but I think it’s a waste of time. I’m ninety-nine percent sure Kevin Flanders is our man. All I need is enough evidence to make the arrest.”

  So Dani wasn’t the only one convinced of Kevin’s guilt.

  “Remember, this is confidential information,” Ted continued. “The only reason I can tell you is that the sheriff gave you and Cutter security clearance.”

  “I realize and appreciate that. What happened with Kevin’s alibi?”

  “It has serious holes in it. Billy Germaine claims he was playing poker with him and some of his buddies.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “He was there at some point, but none of the other three guys is willing to swear that he was there the exact time of the stabbing.”

  “What about motive?”

  “That’s the holdup. We don’t have one yet. If we did, Kevin Flanders would be looking out from between narrow bars. But he’s a hothead who can fly into a rage over nothing. Everybody says that. He was sporting a few unexplained bruises and two black eyes when I questioned him today.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Did you give them to him?”

  “Me? I’m just an easygoing P.I. I can’t believe you’d even ask.”

  “Don’t mess with me, Marcus. I know what you’re capable of. But watch your step. Kevin will not be a pushover for your special ops antics.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “Make sure Ms. Baxter does the same. She has no business getting involved with Ella Somerville and no idea how dangerous messing around with a man like Kevin can get.”

  Unfortunately, that’s where Ted was wrong. Dani knew better than any of them what was at stake. She’d seen it firsthand, over and over again.

  The waitress brought their drinks. Black coffee for him. Diet soda for Dani. Five minutes later, Marcus’s anxiety started to climb. Dani should have been back from the restroom by now.

  He crossed the restaurant and pushed the door to the ladies’ restroom open a crack. “Dani.”

  No answer.

  He burst through the door. She was leaning against the sink staring into space. He called her name again, but she gave no indication that she heard him.

  She’d fallen into yet another terrifying trance.

  Chapter Twelve

  The room was little bigger than a closet, shadowed and dank and smelling of mildew and rot. She huddled in the corner, draped in a maroon bathrobe but still shiv
ering. Pieces of broken pottery were scattered about the floor, a frog’s head staring up at her.

  She pulled up her feet to clear a path for a huge rat that scurried past her. Wadded wrappers and scraps of food from the sandwich she’d had for dinner last night lay a few feet away. Black cockroaches were feeding on the fetid meat.

  The rodents and insects were the least of her worries. Pain consumed her body and her head ached to the point she could barely think. Blood oozed from the wound. She raised the water bottle to her feverish lips, and the last few drops trickled down her parched throat.

  If she didn’t get help, she was going to die. If she went back to the hospital, he’d find her and kill her. There was no way out. There really never had been.

  THE ROW OF STALLS that stretched in front of Dani slowly floated into focus. It took a few seconds more before she realized Marcus was standing beside her, steadying her with a strong arm around her shoulder.

  A woman walked into the bathroom, saw Marcus and jumped in surprise before glaring at both of them accusingly.

  “There was an emergency,” Marcus explained. “We’ll be out of your way in just a minute.”

  “I’m okay,” Dani murmured. “We can go now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded, then took a deep, shaky breath.

  He kept his arm around her as they walked back to the table, probably afraid she was still woozy. She was but not so disoriented that she didn’t know what had to be done.

  She stared at the food waiting for them on the table and her head began to swim. “I need fresh air. You eat and I’ll wait on you outside.”

  “Forget eating,” Marcus said. “Just sit tight a minute.”

  He motioned to the waitress and asked for the check, assuring her that their abrupt leaving had nothing to do with the food or service.

  “Another vision?” he asked once they were both seated in the truck.

  “Yes, but different from the others.”

  “No green dress?”

  “No, and this time it was definitely about Ella.”

  “Are you ready to talk about it?”

  “The sooner the better. There’s no time to waste.”

  IT WAS THREE HOURS and a dozen tours of ratty, abandoned buildings and warehouses later when Marcus talked Dani into stopping again to eat. This time he chose a steak house. He was running on empty. She was running on anxiety and desperation.

  Today alone was enough to make him hate these malicious visions that provided enough facts to drive Dani to action and not enough specifics to make her efforts productive. This psychic phenomena business needed some serious overhauling.

  Having your life interrupted even once a year or so by this kind of danger magnet would drive a lot of people over the edge. Dani was an extraordinary woman.

  No matter that the last vision was about Ella, Marcus was convinced that Dani was still in jeopardy and would continue to be as long as she was entangled with Ella and her would-be killer. There was about as much chance of her backing out before this was over as there was of him leaving her on her own. Basically, zero.

  Another concern had plagued him since he’d seen that snapshot in the convenience store. If that snapshot was of Ella, then at the time it was taken, she and Dani were almost identical. That bond Dani kept talking about might not be purely psychic after all.

  When the waiter came, Dani ordered the small filet mignon with a garden salad. Marcus went for the biggest sirloin on the menu with a fully loaded baked potato, a salad and some fried calamari as a starter.

  “You have a healthy appetite,” she said.

  “Always have, even in combat. It keeps your strength up. You need to eat, too, or at least try.”

  “It’s hard to look at food, much less eat it, with all these images roaming my mind. It makes me sick that I don’t know what to do, but everything is so different this time around. I know I’m supposed to help Ella, but I’m blocked at every turn.”

  “Have the visions ever been this vague and confusing before?”

  “No. Ordinarily, the visions deal with people I know, not strangers. And while I get involved in other people’s lives to a point, it’s never to this extent. I’ve never felt the intensity of fear as I did with Ella or seen the blackness of evil as I did with Kevin.”

  The waiter reappeared with their drinks, a large basket of bread and a promise that the calamari would be right out.

  Dani sipped her diet soda. “I’m totally in Ella’s life now at my own expense, and our only bond is based on the fact that she could pass as my double and a chance meeting at the Renaissance festival.”

  “Not fully by chance,” Marcus said. “You had the first vision before you’d even heard of the festival.”

  “I’ve thought of that, too. But still, Ella was a total stranger before I started having the visions.”

  “What happens if you ignore the visions?”

  Her eyes became shadowed, tumultuous depths. He reached across the table and took her hands. They were as cold as ice and trembling.

  “I’ll go through life with Ella’s blood on my hands.”

  Damn! How did he keep leading her to these dark, frightening pits when he was only trying to understand?

  The calamari arrived. The waiter served it with a flourish and an attempt to make conversation about a major pileup and resulting oil spill that occurred on I-45 that afternoon. Marcus couldn’t decide if the timing was rotten or a godsend.

  By the time the waiter walked away, Dani had regained her composure. She forked some of the calamari onto the small plate in front of her. “Sorry for sounding so morbid,” she said. “I’m just worried about Ella.”

  Once their entrées arrived, they stopped talking completely while Marcus dove into a steak that was cooked to perfection. Brown on the outside, pink in the center and so tender he barely needed his knife. Ella ate a few bites, but he got the feeling she was forcing it down.

  As soon as the hunger pangs in his stomach were appeased, Marcus’s mind went back to their conversation with the clerk in the convenience store. The snapshot he’d shown them was most likely Ella, but it looked exactly like Dani.

  What was the chance that two unrelated people could look that much alike? The thought had been haunting him for the past few hours, even as he and Dani had stalked abandoned buildings that had made it mandatory he keep up his guard every second.

  If the dagger-wielding attacker was looking for Ella, then it was more than possible he was following the same leads they were. Police reports on stolen vehicles were easy enough to track now that everything went into a computer base.

  More worrisome to him was the fact that someone had been here one week earlier looking for the woman in that snapshot.

  Who? And why?

  A niggling possibility kept skulking into his thought processes and muddying the works. Could the snapshot in the clerk’s possession have been a photo of Dani that she didn’t realize had been taken? Had Dani’s original mistaken identity been accurate? Had the man who’d attacked Ella Somerville meant to kill Dani? If so, he would have likely figured out by now that he’d made a mistake.

  He’d come after Dani in the same ruthless way he’d attacked Ella.

  The enemy diversion you have been ignoring will be the main attack. Advice straight from the unofficial serviceman’s version of Murphy’s Law.

  “I know we’ve been at this for hours,” Dani said, interrupting his thoughts. “But I’m not going to give up.”

  So they’d hit the streets and back alleys again, searching for Ella while he kept a close lookout for an assassin who just might be searching for Dani.

  MIDNIGHT CAME AND WENT with no results. They’d widened their perimeter several times, searched every structure they found that might vaguely square with Dani’s vision and the new possibilities Eduardo had called in to him just an hour ago. Hopefully Eduardo was asleep by now.

  “We’ll have to widen the perimeter again or go back and
see if we missed a possibility,” Marcus said.

  “I can’t believe Ella walked this far away from where we found the car in her condition. My feet are killing me and I’m healthy.”

  Marcus tended to agree with Dani, though the amount of time they’d spent on their feet seemed like a Sunday stroll compared to what he’d endured in BUDS training. It was watching the stress and frustration eat away at Dani that was getting to him.

  “Too bad that last vision didn’t give you a couple of street signs to go on.”

  “Since it didn’t, what do you suggest we do now?”

  “The Double M and a bed sound good,” Marcus said.

  “Later.”

  “Then I say we drive back to where the stolen car was found and give that area a closer look.”

  “I’ll buy that,” Dani said, “plus I’ll get to rest my feet while you drive.”

  He bent over. “Get on my back. I’ll piggyback you to the truck.”

  “Are you kidding? I weigh a hundred and twenty pounds.”

  “The weight of a light backpack. I’ve carried worse up steep mountains.” While avoiding enemy fire. At least they hadn’t done that—yet. “Jump aboard, baby. Your chariot awaits.”

  “You are being such a good sport about this, but you don’t have to stay with me, Marcus. I’d understand if you left me here and drove back to the Double M. One of us might as well get some sleep.”

  That was the one option that had never crossed his mind.

  THE ALLEY WHERE THE stolen car had been abandoned looked far creepier in the spooky quiet black of the wee hours of the morning than it had in the daylight. Closed shops, creaking noises that sounded like old men’s bones, a loose shutter banging when it caught a poof of wind.

  Dani leaned against the back of a building and stared at the surroundings, trying to put herself in Ella’s shoes. Sick. Afraid. Tired.

  A cat jumped on a trash can nearby, letting out a moaning cry as the lid rattled and tipped backward. A dog howled in the distance, then another. Dani watched as the cat jumped off the trash can and slinked along the side of the next building before jumping on a low window ledge.