Midnight Rider

by Joanna Wayne

  Here he was dying and yet he couldn’t remember a happier time.

  He wondered what Caroline would have to say about Cannon and the detective driving up to the Dry Gulch Ranch together. Too late to call her now, but he’d ask her next time she stopped by to check on him. The Bent Pine Ranch wasn’t but a few miles away. That was nothing in the country.

  R.J. looked up at the sound of rustling grass. A raccoon crawled from beneath the new azalea bushes Hadley had planted to pretty up the front yard. The creature paid no attention to him as it scurried off to hunt for dinner.

  R.J. turned and went back into the house. He was tired to the bone, but he doubted sleep would come until Cannon arrived.

  Still seemed odd that the detective was taking a vacation while her sister’s killer was on the loose. Unless...

  Unless she wasn’t actually coming for a visit but to pick up Kimmie and take her back to Houston. Cannon might have told a white lie about not having the results to the paternity test. The baby R.J. and the rest of the family were growing so attached to might not be his granddaughter at all.

  His heart felt plumb heavy at the thought. Not that he deserved another precious granddaughter after the way he’d neglected his own kids.

  He’d been a fool. No one knew that better than him. Too bad it had taken a brain tumor to get his head on straight.

  * * *

  IT WAS A few minutes after ten when Cannon turned onto a narrow back road about five miles from the last sign of civilization.

  Brit had spent the past ten minutes finally trying to explain why they were looking for an isolated farmhouse that might or might not be inhabited by ex-con Melanie Crouch.

  “So let me have this straight,” Cannon said. “You are out of your jurisdiction, working a case you have been ordered to stay out of, spying on a suspect you have no real evidence to back up your suspicion that she’s involved.”

  “You make that sound like a bad thing.”

  “Where would I get an idea like that?”

  “I can’t stay totally out of the case, and not just because I was the one attacked. No homicide detective deserving of the badge would just walk away from an officer’s responsibility. And I’m talking about my own sister’s murder and an attack on my life.

  “Besides, Melanie is a person of interest. She has to be checked out. The department is short staffed due to the money crunch. I’m in the area. It makes sense that I question Melanie, with the local sheriff’s knowledge, of course.”

  “The sheriff you haven’t contacted.”

  “Rick is taking care of that.”

  “So your partner is in on this?”

  “He knows me well enough to know I can’t loll around drinking margaritas and watching Law & Order.”

  “No, but if you get fired, you’ll have a lot of time for sipping drinks and watching TV. Can this get you fired?”

  “I won’t get fired if it goes well.”

  The chance that it might not go well was what worried Cannon. But he understood her position. He’d do the same in her place. Only, in spite of her claims, she wasn’t fully recovered. She needed a few days’ rest that he was certain she wasn’t going to get.

  Still, her business. She was cop. She could take care of herself. She didn’t need his protection. That was her job.

  So why did he feel so responsible for her now? The woman was seriously getting under his skin, that’s why. If he wasn’t careful he was going to fall harder for her than he’d ever been thrown in the arena.

  “So tell me about Melanie Crouch. What makes her a person of interest?”

  “Hers was one of the murder cases I worked after my promotion to Homicide.”

  “When was that?”

  “Three years ago, a few months after my father was murdered. He had been one of the top homicide detectives in the state before becoming the much respected chief of police. There was an outcry from the mayor on down that his killer be caught and prosecuted immediately.”

  “They must have thought you were the best person to solve the case.”

  “Either that or it was to honor my father. At any rate, I was the youngest female in Houston to ever make homicide detective.”

  “And your father’s killer?”

  “Is yet to be arrested. But I will catch him one day. I will never give up until I do.”

  The angst-ridden determination in her voice said it all. She couldn’t come to grips with having never solved her father’s murder. If she didn’t bring her sister’s murderer to justice, it was going to haunt her forever.

  Her heart and soul rested on the outcome of this case.

  She was one hell of a woman.

  “I’m assuming that Melanie Crouch has reason to have a grudge against you.”

  “Not a legitimate reason. I was only doing my job. She didn’t see it that way.”

  “So exactly what makes Melanie a person of interest?”

  “She was arrested for conspiring to kill her extremely wealthy husband. She hired an assassin to break into their house when she was out of town and kill him in his sleep.”

  “So she had the perfect alibi.”

  “In New York with two of her girlfriends.”

  “And you made the arrest?”

  “Yes, but not for several months. I’m sure she thought she was home free by then.”

  “What led you to her?”

  “I can spot fake grief a mile away. It just took time to get enough evidence on her to make the arrest.”

  “So why is she out of prison so soon after having him killed?”

  “She convinced the jury that he’d put her though months of verbal and emotional abuse. She was good at it, too. One day she had half the jury in tears, describing how he told her how stupid she was and blamed her for losing the baby she’d wanted so badly.”

  “Whatever happened to divorce?”

  “Prenups. If she filed for divorce, she got none of his wealth. If he died, she got everything. Unless, of course, she was convicted of killing him. But the jury and the judge sympathized with her and she got a very light sentence which resulted in an early parole.”

  “When was she paroled?”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  “And she has a history of hiring someone to do her dirty work so you wouldn’t have expected her to try to kill you herself.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So how does your sister fit into this?”

  “That I can’t explain, but we have to start somewhere.”

  “At ten o’clock at night?”

  “We’re only scouting tonight. We’ll save the real action until tomorrow.”

  Brit directed the beam from a pocket flashlight onto a pencil-drawn map she held in her left hand. “We should pass the shell of a mostly rotted out church in a couple of miles. The spire is still standing. Take the first left turn after that and we should see the old Crouch farmhouse about thirty yards off the road.”

  “Where did you get this information?”

  “From Melanie’s parole officer while you were finishing off your steak. Slow down to a crawl when we pass the church. I want to see if the Crouch place looks lived-in. If it’s clearly deserted, we might take a look around.”

  “Why do I feel like we’re on a witch hunt?”

  “There are no witches in Texas. Maybe a few vampires but definitely no witches.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  They reached the standing spire in under five minutes. The moon was bright enough that Cannon had no trouble seeing it or the tombstones stretched out behind it. They hadn’t passed a house in several miles. Apparently Melanie’s only neighbors were the bodies in the graveyard that stretched behind the church.

  “Did you see that?” Brit asked.

  “See what?”

  “Someone in a long white dress was walking among the graves.”

  “A vampire?”

  “I’m not kidding, Cannon.”

  “It was probably the moonlight and shadows play
ing on the old tombstones.”

  “It was a person. Turn around in Melanie’s driveway and go back.”

  He pulled into the driveway and stopped. “Even if you did see someone—even if it was Melanie—you can’t arrest her for being in a graveyard that’s right behind her house.”

  “I’m not going to arrest her. I just want to know what she’s doing out there. For all we know, she’s burying evidence like the knife that was used on me last night.”

  “Used on you by a man.”

  “So? You said yourself he could have had an accomplice. Melanie could have picked him up and driven him out here. He could be inside her house right now.”

  “Or dead and she’s digging his grave,” Cannon said, finally getting into the spirit of the hypotheses Brit was coming up with.

  A minute later, Cannon had turned around, backtracked and parked his truck in what was once a gravel driveway to the ramshackle old church.

  He reached for the pistol he kept beneath his seat. He didn’t expect to need it, but he’d take it just in case Brit’s illusion turned out to be a flesh-and-blood harbinger of death.

  One thing was for certain. If Melanie Crouch was roaming around a graveyard at night burying evidence of bodies, she would not be glad to see them.

  Chapter Ten

  The truck’s headlights cast an eerie glow over the assorted collection of cracked and faded headstones that stretched behind the decrepit church. Brit didn’t believe in ghosts, yet the scene made her skin crawl and gooseflesh popped up on her arms.

  What she had seen was no illusion though it had looked ethereal. From a distance, the woman had seemed to be floating through the grass, the moonlight painting her wild, flyaway hair in silvery highlights.

  At first sight, Brit had feared that her head trauma was dragging her brain back into the murky fog.

  But she was thinking clearly now. Logic followed that the woman roaming the ancient cemetery practically in her backyard was Melanie up to no good. Why else would she be out there at this time of night?

  The timing for their arrival couldn’t have been better. Brit didn’t need a warrant, didn’t even need to be on active duty to stop and check out something as suspicious as a woman alone in a deserted cemetery this time of night. If for no other reason, she needed to make sure the stranger wasn’t in danger.

  Captain Bradford wouldn’t buy the story, but she wasn’t here.

  “Stay in the truck and wait for me,” Brit ordered.

  “What?” Cannon quipped. “And miss all the fun? Besides, someone has to have your back.”

  “Then let’s go. But I do all the talking if we confront Melanie. And don’t pull that gun of yours. That’s a direct police order, Cannon Dalton.”

  “I won’t pull it unless the apparition in white pulls a weapon first. That’s the best I can promise.”

  “The woman I saw was no apparition. For the record, I’m as clearheaded as you at the moment.”

  “That’s not saying much. I’m starting to think that driving you away from the hospital this morning is a sign I’m downright crazy.”

  “Then stay in the truck.”

  “We’ve settled that already. Let’s go.”

  She wasn’t convinced he believed her, but he didn’t hesitate to jump out of his truck and rush around to open her door. Almost as if they were going on a moonlit stroll instead of traipsing through a neglected necropolis looking for a convicted felon who was capable of most anything—like paying someone to kill Brit and Sylvie.

  Brit ground her teeth and started walking, more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this. But as the crypts and gravestones grew closer, her nerves grew more ragged, her hands more clammy.

  She took out her penlight and shone it on the first tombstone they came to.

  James Canton Black, 1894–1935. The only love of Conscience Everett Black. His love was great. His death years too soon. Sin claimed him and took him from me.

  “No wonder this place is crumbling and uncared-for,” Cannon said. “The bodies planted here have long since returned to dust.”

  “‘Sin claimed him,’” Brit murmured. “I wonder what that means.”

  “Who knows? There were a lot of superstitions about death in the old days. There still are, I suppose.”

  Brit kept her eyes peeled for any glimpse of white as they walked among the graves. She didn’t see Melanie, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t nearby, kneeling behind one of the crumbling stone markers, watching and waiting for them to leave so that she could sneak back to her house unnoticed.

  They kept walking, listening and searching for any sight or sound that would lead them to Melanie. The wind picked up, blowing wisps of hair into Brit’s eyes almost as fast as she could push them away. The temperature seemed to be dropping by the second.

  The grass grew higher and thicker as they approached the back of the cemetery, the tombstones almost swallowed up by the overgrowth.

  Brit’s uneasiness intensified. She felt as if they were treading water, barely staying afloat in the sea of graves. The chill reached deep inside her now.

  The scrape of branches at the top of a towering pine raised the hair on the back of her neck. A rustle in the grass stole her breath. A swish of wings above her forced her to swallow an unbidden scream.

  She was determined not to let Cannon see how the setting affected her. She could deal with murders and killers on a daily basis without a twinge of dread, but a dark cemetery on the edge of civilization sent icy shivers up her spine.

  Brit’s foot caught in a vine as she sidestepped a pile of rocks that had probably once marked a grave. Cannon grabbed her arm and pulled her against him to steady her.

  An unfamiliar sensation thrummed though her blood. She fought off a crazy desire to cling to him, but instead she pulled away so fast she almost lost her balance again.

  “Are you all right?” Cannon asked.

  “Just frustrated,” she whispered, not willing to admit that his touch had stirred such cravings inside her.

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Cannon said. “You’re not going to disturb the inhabitants.”

  “I might frighten off Melanie.”

  “If she’s nearby, she’s hiding, which means she already knows we’re here.”

  “Then let’s just keep looking.”

  His fingers tangled with hers. “Your hand is as cold as ice. You’re not letting this place get to you, are you?”

  “Of course not,” she lied.

  “Maybe we should go. My guess is that if it was Melanie you saw, she escaped into the woods that border the cemetery when we drove up. She’s likely at home and snuggled into bed by now.”

  “You’re probably right, but I’m not quite ready to give up, not with so many hiding places in every direction. Besides, I keep thinking I’ll discover something here to tie her to my attack.”

  “You mean something like this?”

  Brit turned to see what he’d referred to in such an optimistic tone. Even without out her penlight, she could see well enough to realize that they were standing next to a freshly dug grave. Two gold mums rested on top of the mound of earth.

  Brit picked up the flowers. “This explains why Melanie was here. She must have left these on the freshly dug grave, a grave she either dug or had dug within the past few hours.”

  “A very small grave,” Cannon noted. “It would be impossible to fit an adult in that hole unless he was butchered into small pieces first.”

  The blossoms slipped through Brit’s fingers and fell to the ground at the sickening image. A wave of vertigo hit again, leaving her dizzy and feeling faint. The last thing she needed now was to pass out.

  But she couldn’t leave yet. “We have to dig up that grave and see if it holds evidence, like the knife my attacker had planned to kill me with last night.”

  “Don’t you think we should turn that job over to the local sheriff?”

  “If we do, chances are that Melanie will move it the
second we drive away.”

  “Then we should call the sheriff now,” Cannon said. “Depending on how deep that grave is, it could take hours to unearth whatever’s buried there without any proper tools. I think you need to get to bed.”

  He wrapped an arm around her waist protectively. This time she didn’t pull away. For the first time in recent memory she felt as much woman as cop. Hopefully it was just the concussion causing that and not her growing infatuation with Cannon.

  She stepped away from the suspicious-looking grave. Something slipped beneath her foot. She stopped to see what she’d stepped on. “It’s a shoe,” she said, stooping to pull a woman’s white leather flip-flop from the grass.

  She held it up for scrutiny in the beam of her penlight. “It looks almost new. Melanie must have slipped out of it in her hurry to get away from us.”

  “That looks like its mate,” Cannon said, pointing to a bare, rocky spot a few feet ahead of them. He hurried over to pick it up.

  “She’s a braver woman I am, if she took off through that wooded area beyond us barefoot and in the dark.”

  Anxiety hit again as Brit heard a soft footfall behind her followed by the sharp click of a gun being cocked to fire. Before Brit could reach for her weapon, the barrel of what felt like a pistol was pressed into the back of her head.

  “Hands in the air, palms open or I shoot. Ladies first.”

  * * *

  CANNON DID AS ordered and then spun around. The woman giving the orders and holding the pistol to Brit’s head was indeed dressed in a gauzy white nightgown that reached her ankles. Her face was vampire pale. Her hair was long and blond, mussed by the wind.

  But it was her eyes that let him know she was capable of pulling the trigger. They had a savage look about them, as if she were ready to punch and devour her prey. This was apparently not the way she had looked at the jury.

  “Turn around slowly, Detective,” she ordered. “Any quick move by you or your friend will get you killed.”

  Brit turned around. “You’re making a mistake, Melanie. The only thing killing me will do is send you right back to prison.”

  “Wrong. It would also give me immense satisfaction.”