Blue Smoke and Murder sk-4

by Elizabeth Lowell

  BEAVER TAIL RANCH

  SEPTEMBER 17

  6:38 P.M.

  Gunshots sounded above the SUV’s racing engine. Zach recognized the sound of the Colt Woodsman. The return fire was from a bigger caliber pistol.

  “Faroe!” Zach said urgently. “Is Jill on the air?”

  “No. We heard shots fired over Jill’s bug, but Red Hill had already agreed to withdraw. What’s happening?”

  “Does Red Hill have her?”

  “Negative.”

  Something burned like ice in Zach’s chest, in his gut. “Jill could be down, hurt. Tell Red Hill to get the hell out of my way.”

  “The general has already done that. Jill’s last known position was cabin four.”

  “Go!” Zach said to the driver.

  The driver didn’t bother to point out that she couldn’t go any faster.

  A set of headlights appeared, coming down the one-lane dirt road at them. Dust and grit boiled up in the lights.

  “Don’t slow down and don’t give way,” Zach said.

  Jill, talk to me. Tell me you’re alive.

  You’ve got to be alive.

  Silence came through his earphones.

  “They’re not giving way,” the driver said.

  “Put ’em in the ditch,” Zach said.

  The driver flipped on the emergency blinker and kept the accelerator pinned, hurtling through the dusk.

  The onrushing Red Hill vehicle held its course until the last possible instant, then veered off into the sage and scrub. There was a loud grinding as something metal slammed into rock. The Red Hill SUV caught air, slammed down, veered back onto the road behind Zach, and raced for the highway.

  “There’s a second vehicle somewhere,” the driver said.

  “Ignore it unless it gets in your way,” Zach said.

  “And if it does?”

  “Ram it.”

  The driver waited, but Faroe didn’t override Zach’s command.

  “Zach, you don’t have body armor,” Grace’s voice said. “Let the other ops take care of it.”

  Zach didn’t answer.

  “Zach?”

  The driver looked sideways at her passenger’s face, then looked away. Zach was in the kind of mental space where she never wanted to go.

  Headlights flared near the ranch. The second Red Hill SUV didn’t even try to play chicken-it just took off into the desert, cutting a wide arc around the St. Kilda vehicle before getting back on the dirt road and speeding toward the highway.

  An executive helicopter lifted and banked away, lights blinking, climbing fast, heading toward Las Vegas.

  The driver put the Navigator into a power slide that ended at cabin number four. While the SUV was still moving, Zach opened the door and bailed out in a hail of rocks and sand. He hit the ground running, gun at the ready.

  A shot rang out from number four. Then another.

  The scream of pain was female.

  A bulky male figure dashed out of number four and turned the corner, heading toward the back of the cottage, running hard. The gun in his hand had a surly gleam in the headlights. He held the weapon one-handed, fired the same way.

  Like the shooter in Taos.

  Bullets gouged dirt inches from Zach. He stopped and fired two closely spaced shots.

  The man jerked, reeled, and scrambled around the back of the cabin. As he ran, he dropped a spent magazine and slammed another one into the butt of his pistol.

  Zach went low through the front door of the fourth cabin, sweeping the room over his gun, remembering the driver’s words.

  She looked for a back way out. Didn’t find one.

  “Jill!” he called. “It’s Zach!”

  Silence answered.

  Gun at the ready, Zach took three gliding steps and saw the bathroom door. The breaks streaking through the cheap paint and the bullet holes like black eyes made his stomach clench.

  One kick finished what somebody else had started. The door screamed and broke away from its handle, taking the ice cream chair with it.

  The bathroom was empty.

  The toilet window gaped. Khaki shreds hung from it.

  Jill was alive.

  And so was the killer chasing her.

  88

  BEAVER TAIL RANCH

  SEPTEMBER 17

  6:40 P.M.

  Pain was a living, wild creature clawing at Jill.

  She accepted it and kept running, long legs driving hard, as wild and alive as the pain itself.

  The blood flowing down her right arm made the briefcase handle slippery and sticky at the same time. She switched hands. She thought about the gun in her belly bag.

  Not now.

  Later.

  If I’m trapped again.

  The first thing her great-aunt had taught Jill was not to waste bullets on a target she couldn’t hit. Sprinting flat out the way she was, her right hand bloody from a wicked cut, she would be lucky not to shoot herself.

  Don’t look over my shoulder.

  He’s either behind me or he isn’t.

  A shot screamed off a nearby boulder. She flinched at the spray of rock chips.

  He’s behind me.

  She kept running, turning unpredictably every few steps, like a rabbit chased by a coyote. Pain was a whip forcing her body to hold the sprint that was her best chance of saving her own life.

  She’d hoped that the other shots she’d heard had been St. Kilda arriving and taking down Ski Mask. She’d hoped, but she hadn’t expected. Even though it felt like she’d been running forever, she knew it had been only a few minutes. Three at most. Quite probably only two.

  St. Kilda hadn’t had time to arrive.

  You’re on your own.

  Keep running.

  Her heart felt like it was going to hammer out of her chest, her breath was starting to burn, but she didn’t slow down her headlong sprint. She didn’t take her concentration off the dusk-shrouded desert in front of her and the shoulder-high, brittle brush.

  The lay of the land told her there was a ravine ahead. She didn’t know where or how far.

  She only knew that that ravine was her best chance of survival.

  89

  BEAVER TAIL RANCH

  SEPTEMBER 17

  6:41 P.M.

  Zach turned and raced for the front door of the cabin, blowing through the St. Kilda ops that had followed him inside.

  “Stay here,” ordered a male op. “You don’t have body armor.”

  “Neither does she,” Zach snarled, shouldering the op aside.

  An op in the bathroom yelled, “Two people, running east. Client is first. Target is second. Too far for pistols. Bad light getting worse. Pass that rifle up here!”

  Zach kept going, increasing his stride. In the dusk-to-darkness, a rifle wasn’t going to do much good. Jill was doing the smart thing and running for cover.

  So was the killer behind her.

  From beyond the cabin, the sound of man-made thunder rolled through the twilight. Someone was shooting.

  It wasn’t a Colt Woodsman.

  The op behind Zach began shouting orders to the others.

  He ran hard, away from the back of the cabin, careful to stay just off the path of the target in case the op with the rifle got lucky. In his mind he replayed the few seconds he’d had the shooter in range.

  I hit him, but he didn’t go down.

  Son of a bitch is wearing body armor.

  A head shot would be the only fast way of killing him. And a head shot was a tough target when the man was running.

  No problem. I’ll just get close enough to shove the barrel up his ass.

  But that would take time.

  Time Jill didn’t have.

  90

  BEAVER TAIL RANCH

  SEPTEMBER 17

  6:42 P.M.

  Jill was running hard through raking, dry, shoulder-high brush when she hit the edge of the ravine. She shifted her balance in midair, twisted, and landed with a jolting
roll that made her hurt arm scream. The soft, sandy bottom of the dry creek absorbed some of the shock of her landing. The rest knocked out a lot of her breath and set her head spinning.

  Like a cornered animal, she staggered to her feet, her breath almost as rapid as her heartbeat. She could hear the crackle of brush as Ski Mask ran closer. The ragged walls of the wash were more than five feet tall. Too high for a fast escape.

  And a fast way out was the only thing that would keep her alive.

  To her left a long, pale ribbon of rocks and sand slanted up to a dry waterfall. A glance told her that the dark rocks of the fall were too far off. Every step of the way she would show up against that light sand like the target she was.

  She’d be shot to death before she reached the uncertain cover of the dry fall.

  To her right the wash took a hard turn around a rocky outcrop. She was running for it before she consciously made a decision. She didn’t know if she would find cover at the bend in the wash, or another long stretch of pale sand. But the crooked stretch of wash was the only hope she had.

  She sprinted toward the bend, her breath harsh, burning.

  A rock poked out of the darkness, tripping her, sending her flying. She landed facedown and felt black light spin down out of the sky over her. She tried to get up, knowing that the shooter could still see her.

  Her body didn’t respond.

  Fighting to breathe, Jill waited to be shot.

  91

  BEAVER TAIL RANCH

  SEPTEMBER 17

  6:42 P.M.

  With each step, Zach gained on Ski Mask. Whatever the shooter did for a living, wind sprints weren’t on his daily to-do list. As Zach closed in, he could hear the man’s breath groaning in and out. Zach couldn’t see Jill any longer. Either she’d gone to ground or she’d outrun Ski Mask.

  Zach’s earphones whispered. “The client vanished. The shooter is-shit, he just dropped into some kind of hole. Watch it, Zach!”

  He kept running for a long five count, then skidded to a stop near the edge of the hidden ravine. Against the pale sand of the river bottom he saw a bulky shadow turn toward him.

  He dropped to the ground as two shots exploded out of the ravine. The shooter was no more than fifteen feet away.

  Zach didn’t aim toward the muzzle flash. Instead, he aimed for the thighs.

  Bring him down and then finish him off.

  His gun kicked.

  The shadow cursed and went to his knees.

  More shots exploded out of the ravine. Even as Zach registered the fact that one of the shots came from a Colt Woodsman, the muscular shadow in the ravine jerked, driven backward, closer to Zach.

  “You’re dead, bitch!” the man screamed, raising his pistol to send a hail of bullets toward Jill.

  Zach didn’t know he was yelling until the shadow turned toward him. He saw the twilight gleam of eyes behind the mask and shot twice, the double tap of death.

  The shooter slammed against the far wall of the narrow ravine and bumped down to sprawl in the sand.

  Prone, Zach kept his pistol pointed at the space where the man’s head should have been.

  “Jill, it’s Zach,” he called. “Stay down until I tell you to move.”

  Nothing answered him but the echo of shots careening back from the mountains.

  “Jill!”

  Zach didn’t remember jumping into the ravine, but he was there, flashlight in one hand and weapon in the other, kicking Ski Mask’s gun away.

  Not that it mattered. Even the darkness in the bottom of the dry creek couldn’t conceal what two bullets at close range had done.

  “I’m coming in, Jill. Don’t shoot me.”

  He waited for an answer.

  All he heard was the harsh sound of his own breathing and the yammer of ops in his headset, demanding information. He ripped the headset off and let it dangle around his neck as he went toward the darkness at the bend in the streambed.

  When he saw Jill sprawled facedown against the pale sand, he went to his knees beside her. Fighting to breathe slowly, he put two fingertips against the pulse point in her neck and prayed like the choirboy he once had been.

  Be alive.

  Be alive!

  His own heart was beating too fast for him to feel if there was a pulse in her neck. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  He felt the heartbeat under his fingertips at the same instant she groaned.

  “She’s alive,” he said raggedly, replacing the headset. “Now shut up until I find out how bad she’s hurt.”

  Faroe’s snarled order stopped all communication.

  “Jill,” Zach said gently. Then more firmly. “Jill!”

  Dazed eyes opened, looking very green in the cone of the flashlight’s glare. She breathed with the gasps of someone who has had her breath knocked out. “I thought-you said-shut up.”

  “Them, not you.” He kissed her sweaty, sandy cheek. “Where do you hurt?”

  She rolled over, gasped as pain shot through her right arm, sat up, and said, “Pretty much everywhere, but it all still works after a fashion. You okay?”

  He gathered her close. “I am now.”

  92

  BEAVER TAIL RANCH

  SEPTEMBER 17

  6:46 P.M.

  Flashlight beams danced through the brush and finally came to the edge of the dry creek.

  “We’re coming in,” a male voice said through Zach’s headset.

  “Just don’t fall on us,” Zach said.

  Two St. Kilda operators jumped down the bank and landed in the sand like paratroopers.

  “Anybody need a medic?” the female op asked.

  “No,” Jill said.

  “Yes,” Zach said.

  “You told me you were okay,” Jill said instantly, running her hands over him, searching for hidden injury.

  “Not me,” he said, kissing her gritty forehead. “You.”

  “Nothing wrong with me that soap and water won’t cure.”

  Zach winced and touched his earphones. “Faroe wants me to be sure. Or it could be Lane. Their voices are getting more alike every day.”

  She leaned over the tiny mike that rested along Zach’s jaw. “I’m okay. Dirty, tired, scuffed up some, but nothing dangerous.”

  “Where’s the shooter?” one of the ops asked.

  “About forty feet up the draw,” Zach asked.

  “Dead?”

  “Oh yeah,” Zach said.

  “Know him?” the op asked.

  “No. We’ll need fingerprints. He was wearing full body armor.”

  “Gotcha. Photo ID won’t help.” The op turned and started up the dry wash.

  “Why will it take fingerprints?” Jill said.

  “Are you sure you want to know?” Zach asked.

  The sound of Velcro being stripped open told Zach that the op had found the shooter and was removing body armor.

  “That man killed Modesty,” Jill said flatly. “I have a right to know.”

  “I shot him twice in the face at pretty close range.”

  She drew a ragged breath. “Okay. A photo ID wouldn’t be much good right now. Do we know who the well-dressed dude was?”

  The remaining op switched channels, talked quietly, and turned to Jill. “The ID we ran on the DOA makes him as a Carson City lawyer.”

  Jill blinked. “What was he doing here?”

  “Good question,” the op said. “We don’t have an answer. Yet.”

  The female op’s voice carried through the darkness. “Well, hello, Harry.”

  “You recognize the shooter?” Zach called.

  “Not by his beautiful face, that’s for sure,” the op called back. “He’s got a tatt on his left pec. Susie. That was his third wife’s name.”

  “You know him?”

  “I worked for Harry ‘Score’ Glammis while I went to college. He was private eye to Hollywood’s rich and corrupt. I quit after Harry beat his wife’s lover to death and got away with it. Still has th
e scars on his knuckles. It wasn’t the first time he killed someone. Always in self-defense, of course.”

  “A real sweetheart,” Zach said.

  “Word was he had anger-management issues,” the female op said dryly, “aka ’roid rage. Looks like you solved his problem the old-fashioned way.”

  Zach let go of Jill and came to his feet.

  “Can you stand up?” he asked her.

  Wincing, she pushed to her feet, then swayed a bit.

  “You okay?” he said quickly, stepping close, ready to catch her.

  “As long as I don’t have to do another two-thousand-yard dash over broken country, I’m good.” She accepted his arm and leaned into him. “Not great. Just good enough.”

  “You’re way better than that.” Zach brushed a kiss over her bleeding lip. “Ready?”

  She started to say something, then stopped, remembering. “Have you searched all the cabins? Ski Mask-Score-said something about taking the paintings to be authenticated. I don’t think the lawyer was the art expert.”

  Zach looked at the remaining op.

  “We’re checking the cabins one by one,” the op said.

  “Find anyone?” Zach asked when the op switched back.

  “So far, two men. Their ID says they’re Ken and Lee Dunstan, son and father.”

  “What’s their excuse for being here?”

  “They say that they were working for the dead lawyer,” the op said. “The old man came here to look at some paintings for the lawyer’s client, who claims he was being extorted by one Jillian Breck. Ken Dunstan came along to keep his father company in-and I quote-‘a stressful situation.’”

  Zach said something bleak under his breath.

  “Now what?” Jill asked, looking at him.

  “The story is just plausible enough to close the case right here.”

  “I didn’t extort anyone! You know that!”

  “Yes, I know.” For all the good that does, Zach thought tiredly. “But with Glammis and that lawyer dead, we don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s over.”