THE HOMECOMING

by Maggie Shayne

  Still not sure who this woman was she had become—or was in the process of becoming—Jasmine left the rest room and went back to the waiting area where the Brand women were gathered. Chelsea said, "They had to take Luke down for an X-ray. He'll be back in a minute."

  "God, talk about padding the bill," Jasmine muttered. "They just X-rayed the poor man a few minutes before you all got here."

  Jessi said, "He'll be glowing in the dark if they keep this up." The others laughed. Kirsten and Penny. And the two women due to give birth at any moment, Taylor and Esmeralda.

  Frowning, Jasmine said, "Where'd all your husbands go?"

  "Had a cattle emergency out at the ranch," Chelsea said. "I'm sure they won't be long."

  "Oh." Jasmine sat down, drumming her fingers on the arm of the overstuffed chair and glancing down the hall toward X-ray.

  Then Chelsea's cell phone rang. She answered it and said, "No, Garrett's not available at the moment. This is his wife, can I take a message?" She listened, and her gaze flew to Jasmine's. "Oh, no."

  "What?" Jasmine demanded.

  Chelsea disconnected and eyed her. "Petronella's escaped. And the tapes you gave the police have vanished from the evidence room."

  "Excuse me, ladies?" a deep voice said. They turned to see the swarthy Mexican-American physician they all called Doc standing there by Luke's hospital room door. "Can someone tell me where my patient has gone?"

  "Oh, my God," Jasmine whispered. She whirled on Chelsea. "Which way did that nurse take Luke?"

  "To the elevator—I think it was going down. Why?"

  "Because X-ray is down the hall."

  Chelsea frowned, looking from the doctor to Jasmine over and over. "You mean … you think…"

  "I think Petronella somehow followed us here, and now he has Luke." Jasmine got to her feet, turned toward the elevator. "He probably even engineered that so-called emergency that got all the men out of the way."

  "Wait!" Chelsea cried. "Jasmine, where the hell are you going?"

  "I'm going after Luke!"

  Chelsea caught her, gripped her shoulder, turned her around. "Not alone, you're not. That's not the way we do things in this family, Jasmine. You can't keep behaving like this loner you used to be, because that's not who you are anymore!"

  "I'm not?" she asked, her tone impatient, even bordering on sarcastic.

  "No. You're a Brand woman now. Maybe it's not official yet, but it's inevitable, and family means more than some legal documentation, anyway. You're one of us. So is Bax. And so is Luke. And Brands don't let family handle trouble alone."

  For an instant, just an instant, she reeled at the power with which those words hit her. It was as if, suddenly, she knew it was utterly true. That was who she'd seen when she'd looked into the mirror. A woman who was part of a family. The family the child inside her had always longed for.

  She was a Brand.

  "Taylor and Esmeralda, you are far too pregnant to be on this end of things. Take care of Baxter. Have Doc show you someplace safe to hole up, and insist some security people stay with you." She tossed the cell phone to Esmeralda, who caught it, frowned at it and handed it to Taylor. "Try to contact the men and tell them what's happened."

  Doc was at the nurses' desk now, giving rapid orders. He turned and came toward Jasmine as she started for the elevator again. "An ambulance just pulled out of the lot, without its crew. And someone left this note for you at the desk."

  He handed her a sealed envelope. She tore it open and read the note inside.

  "Jasmine—If you want Luke Brand back alive, meet me when and where I say. Bring the original tapes, as I know full well those I stole were copies, and bring the boy. No one else, or your hero dies. Call this number in one hour for further instructions." It was signed GP.

  She nodded. The elevator doors slid open, and she stepped inside. "The note says I'm to come alone," she said.

  "Right," Chelsea replied. Then she, Jessi, Penny and Kirsten joined her. As the door slid closed again, Jasmine saw Taylor and Esmeralda being led down a hall by Doc, who carried a still sleepy Baxter.

  Five women got out of the elevator on the ground floor and into Chelsea's station wagon. After asking which way the stolen ambulance had gone, Jasmine drove, and Chelsea read the note aloud to the others as they sped down the highway out of El Paso.

  Kirsten smiled. "That's the good thing about small towns, you know? Not that many phone numbers. Even fewer exchanges. That one in particular belongs to a little town between El Paso and Quinn, right on the Rio Grande. It's called Deadrock, and I don't imagine it has too many public telephones."

  "Chances are this Petronella character wouldn't be using a private one. He can't know anyone from around here, can he?"

  "Doubtful," Jasmine said. "But why wouldn't he have just used his cell phone?"

  "In Deadrock?" Kirsten smiled slowly. "No reception whatsoever."

  Chelsea nodded slowly. "If he's in a motel and we call, we might get the front desk first, then we'll know where he is. Either way, I don't like the idea of waiting an hour. Why don't we call him back right now?"

  "'Cause you gave your cell phone to Taylor," Jessi said.

  Kirsten opened her designer handbag. "You think I leave home without one?" Then she frowned. "Should we call in the police on this?"

  "And risk Luke's life?" Jasmine said, quickly and sharply. She schooled her tone before continuing. "No. We can call Garrett, tell him and the others where we're heading, but I don't think we should bring in any authorities. Not yet." She looked to Chelsea, a question in her eyes.

  Chelsea nodded in agreement. "We'll handle this the way we handle every other crisis—as a family. The men will be along as fast as they can get here. But we have a head start on catching up to this maniac. I have to believe we're the best chance Luke has right now." She looked around at the other women. "So we go after him ourselves. Now. We don't wait. Agreed?"

  One by one, the Brand women nodded.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  « ^ »

  When Luke opened his eyes again, he was hurting big time. The pain was like a trail of fire, burning in his chest and his back. Hell, he couldn't even move without inducing more of it. And his legs tingled as if covered in fire ants. What the hell had happened? Where was he?

  Warily he took in his surroundings, moving only his eyes, teeth grated. Paneled walls. A simple white globe of a light fixture in the ceiling. Cheesy art on the opposite walls. A window to the left—shade drawn, curtain closed so no light could stream in. He could only see the top of it without turning his head to see more. He was not in the hospital anymore.

  And finally, a voice—from another room he thought. The scent of tobacco smoke drifted on the air.

  "I told you to call in an hour. Why are you early?" There was silence. Then, "If you can't obey simple instructions, maybe I should kill him and get the hell out of here."

  Luke strained to lift his head. The spears of pain the act sent bolting through him were almost enough to make him scream aloud. But he forced it all the same and saw through the doorway into a second room, where a man sat at a table, smoking and speaking on the telephone.

  "Fine. But this is your last chance, Jasmine. You bring the boy, and you bring the tapes, or your boyfriend here dies." He paused, flicked ashes onto the floor and nodded. "That's better. Now, there's a stretch of ground without much on it besides cactus and rock, twenty-one point five miles out of El Paso, heading west on 375. Only thing close is a billboard advertising the county fair. You know where I mean?" He nodded. "Good. That's where I'll be. Half hour. And, Jasmine? Don't bother trying to track me down through the phone number. I'll be long gone from here within minutes, and you'll only be wasting precious seconds of your boyfriend's life." He hung up the phone.

  "You don't want those tapes, Petronella," Luke said, and it was a strain to say it. His voice came out gruff and hoarse. "You don't have any need of them now. Everyone knows you're guilty."

>   He shrugged. "Knowing it and proving it are two different things."

  "You killed the guy who shot me," Luke went on.

  "That's right, I did. Killed him with his own gun. For you, though, I'm gonna use mine. It hasn't had a good workout since before I was arrested. I had to tuck it into hiding fast, to keep the cops from confiscating it." He patted his side. His jacket hid the gun from view.

  "So you've got two murder raps, and the escape charge to boot. Don't you see the tapes are of no use to you now?" Luke asked. "The only thing you can do now is run. You can never go back, even if you have the tapes."

  Petronella got to his feet and walked slowly into the room where Luke was. He smoked slowly, thoughtfully. "You're too smart for your own good, you know that?"

  "You don't want the tapes at all, do you?"

  Petronella thrust out a lower hp. "Nah. I want revenge. The bitch messed up my life, and she's gonna pay. And there ain't a thing you can do about it, being laid up like you are. You can't even get out of that bed."

  Luke wanted to leap out of the bed and nail the guy right then and there, but he could barely move. And then he thought maybe it was better to let Petronella go on believing he couldn't move at all. Even screaming pain was better than the numbness he'd felt before. But he would need every advantage.

  "You're so close to the border, you know. You could walk out of here right now, cross the Rio Grande and be in Mexico. They'd never find you there. People get lost there all the time."

  He nodded slowly. "That's the plan. Right after I off Jasmine and her scrawny kid, that's what I'll do. But first…" He reached into his jacket, pulled his gun level and aimed it at Luke. Luke tensed, preparing to lunge at the bastard with everything in him. But Petronella didn't fire. He frowned, looked at his gun, hefting it in his hand, his frown growing. "What the hell?" he asked, checking it, turning it over.

  Luke almost went limp with relief when he saw that there was no clip in the gun's hollow handle. Petronella spewed a stream of obscenities. "Dammit, I don't have freaking time for this kind of—did you do this? Where the hell is my clip?" As he spoke, he worked the action of the gun. A single bullet popped out of the chamber and landed on the floor, rolling slowly.

  One bullet.

  Luke rolled out of the bed as Petronella reached for it. He landed hard, the bullet under him. Petronella gripped his shoulder, flung him onto his back.

  Luke closed his hand around the bullet. "What's the matter, Gianni? Is it your last one?"

  "It'll have to be enough. Gimme the bullet," Petronella demanded.

  Luke lay on his back on the floor. "No freaking way."

  "You think so, huh?" Petronella picked up a booted foot and stomped down hard on Luke's chest, right over one of the bullet wounds.

  Pain hit him so hard he howled with it, but he didn't let go of the bullet. Arms crossed over his chest, he rolled onto his side, doubled in pain.

  Petronella knelt in front of him. "Give it to me!"

  Luke decked him—just poked upward and outward with a fist and all the power he could put behind it. Which wasn't a hell of a lot, he thought, but apparently it was enough to knock Petronella on his ass.

  While the man was down, Luke rolled onto his belly, dragging himself, elbow over elbow, to the small room he'd spotted. He heard Petronella swear, heard him get up, and crawled faster. His upper body crossed the threshold. Petronella stepped down on the middle of Luke's back.

  "Give me the effing bullet!"

  Luke's back arched, chin coming off the floor in response to the weight on his injured back. The bastard would cripple him! He looked at the toilet ahead of him, lifted his arm, took careful aim despite the pain racking him—and let fly.

  The small, shiny bullet flew in a perfect arc and hit the water with an anticlimactic little plop.

  Petronella kicked him in the head, and Luke saw stars as the man walked over him to the toilet, and bent to thrust his hand into the water. Luke tried to move. And found he couldn't. Not at all. More interestingly than that, he couldn't feel much of anything anymore, either.

  "Calling early didn't do a hell of a lot of good. I was hoping it was a pay phone or a motel, and someone else would answer. Someone who'd tell us where the phone was," Kirsten said after Jasmine's call to Petronella.

  They'd stopped at a phone booth as they passed, just long enough for Chelsea to jump out, rip the telephone directory from its chain and jump back into the car again. Jessi was flipping through it now as they drove.

  "I have it!" she said. "Shoot, it wasn't hard. Deadwood only takes up three pages. That number is for one of the rooms above the Deadwood Bar and Grill."

  "Which is dead opposite the direction we need to head to meet Petronella," Chelsea pointed out. "If we go back, it'll make us late."

  Jasmine shook her head. "And that could cost Luke his life. We have to make that meeting, Chelsea."

  "I agree."

  Jessi nodded hard. "Me too." All the others in the car chimed in with agreement.

  Jasmine thinned her lips. "You know as well as I do that Petronella probably won't keep his side of the bargain. Even if we do everything he wants."

  "Fortunately," Chelsea said, reaching over to give Jasmine's hand a squeeze, "we aren't going to leave that decision up to him."

  They reached the designated meeting place within minutes, since they were already nearly there. There was no significant cover around. Just a billboard, some cacti dotting the landscape, a tumbleweed here and there. "We haven't got any weapons," Kirsten said as Chelsea pulled the car to a stop along the roadside in a cloud of dust.

  "I do," Jasmine said. She tagged her gun out of her handbag.

  "Hell, we all do," Jessi put in. She got out of the station wagon, crouched down, and when she rose again, she was tossing a decent-sized rock in her hand. The others got out, too, gathered around her, nodded. "Best give one of us the gun, Jasmine," Jessi said. "He'll probably search you, if he gets the chance. Besides, we're gonna need him alive, unless he brings Luke with him."

  Jasmine closed her eyes tight. "God, Luke wasn't even supposed to be moving around much. And he missed his pain meds." It turned her stomach to think of the pain he must be in right now.

  To think of what Petronella might have done to him.

  "Luke's a Brand, Jasmine. He's tough as they come. He's gonna come through this all right," Jessi said.

  "Come on, let's find cover and weapons. Set this up right under and around that billboard. Best spot possible."

  "I don't see how we're supposed to find any cover out here," Jasmine said, squinting, shading her eyes with her hand. A cactus, a tumbleweed, the car, which he would surely search, and the billboard itself, were all she saw.

  Jessi smiled and patted her on the back. "Yeah, but you're from out of town. Come on hon. Let us show you how we do things in Texas."

  Kirsten pulled a pair of imitation calfskin gloves out of her designer bag, and slipped her hands into them. Then she walked right up to a cactus, broke off one of its arms and swung it a few times like a club, nodding in satisfaction. "Bastard's gonna wish he hadn't started up with us," she muttered.

  The half hour ticked by slower than molasses on a midwinter day. But Jasmine was ready. Following Jessi's instructions, she'd snapped a handful of tangles off the tumbleweed and brushed away all the footprints that showed anywhere. Mostly the ground here was hard packed and barren. The desert wasn't all sand, the way she'd always thought.

  Then she stood in plain sight underneath the billboard and waited.

  Finally another car pulled to a stop alongside hers. Petronella sat still for a moment, looking around, listening. Then he got out, with his gun in hand. He strode right up to Chelsea's station wagon, opened its doors, searched inside it, then, satisfied, he looked up and down the road, and finally, walked off the pavement to where Jasmine waited, under the billboard, a hot, dry breeze raking her cheeks.

  "I don't see the boy," he said.

  "I didn't see a
ny reason to bring him. You want the tapes. I want Luke. My son has nothing to do with it."

  He shrugged. "Hell, I've only got one bullet on me anyway." He lifted the gun.

  "Kill me and you won't get the tapes," she said, trying hard to hide the bolt of fear that jolted up her spine just then.

  He smiled slowly. "Tapes aren't gonna do me any good anyway, sugar."

  He smiled slowly, and his hand flexed on the gun so fast there was no time to do anything to prevent it. But only a dull click resulted when he pulled the trigger. Then Chelsea came hurtling down from the billboard where she'd been hiding—she'd had to stand on Jessi's shoulders to get hold of the sign's frame and had pulled herself up from there, clung to the back and waited for her moment. And it was perfect. She landed on top of Petronella, flattening him to the ground. He hit hard, but rolled over, flinging Chelsea off him. Kirsten leaped out from behind the one-armed cactus and smashed him in the face with her makeshift prickly club. He howled in agony, but already Jessi had shot out from where she'd been lying flat underneath the car and Penny rose up from under the tumbleweed. So when Petronella knocked Kirsten's club away and sat up with his hands to his face, it was only to get pegged by two cobble-sized stones, one from in front and one from behind.

  He never stood a chance. His head was split open and bleeding in the back, swollen and purple on the front, and his face was extremely messed up, courtesy of the cactus. He never even got back on his feet again.

  Jasmine yanked off her belt and tossed it to Jessi. Jessi knelt behind him and bound his hands. Then she tossed the gun back to Jasmine. "Your gun misfired," Jasmine said. "Mine won't. Where is Luke?"

  He shook his head. "Damned wet powder," he muttered. "You can blow me away. I'll never tell you. You can just suffer for what you did. I can guarantee you he is—and the longer it takes you to find him, the better his chances of being dead before you do." He spat.