by Harper Allen
“And You’re going to use me to put it right, aren’t You?” she whispered huskily. “Sorry, Lord. I should have figured it out sooner.”
She was a new mama girded with an oven mitt and armed with part of a cookstove. He was a killer, and since he’d used firearms before, she assumed he had one now. One of them was going to walk away from this and one of them wasn’t, and the odds were unfairly stacked.
Against him, Susannah thought calmly. He didn’t know that yet. Soon he would.
“My granny used to say the only thing worse’n a live skunk hanging around under the front stoop and stinkin’ up the night air was a dead one,” she said loudly. “I figure in a few minutes you’re going to be dead vermin, mister. Why don’t you come out into the open so I don’t have to worry about dragging you out from your hidey hole later on?”
“You know, lady, it doesn’t worry me a whole lot, being compared to a skunk.” From the other end of the porch the shadows gathered and became the shape of a man. He walked toward her, his pace unhurried. “They stick to their own kind, and they don’t really give a damn if the rest of the world don’t like them. But you—”
He stopped about five feet away from her, and although she couldn’t make out his features she knew he was smiling.
“You’re like a little mama rabbit. Just couldn’t resist comin’ out of your warm, safe nest and seeing what was going on. I used to catch ’em like that. Jiggle a piece of string outside of a rabbit hole and wait till one got curious.”
She saw the white glimmer of a cast on his right arm, and knew she was looking at the results of Tye’s shooting three nights ago. He took another step.
“Uh-huh. Those little rabbits, seems like they purely couldn’t help themselves. Just like you won’t be able to.”
“You’re Lyle Lynds, aren’t you?” Susannah heard the tremor in her voice, and instantly stilled it. “I saw your brother Waylon die. He wanted to kill me, too.”
She’d hoped to throw him off balance. She realized too late that instead she’d brought his anger from lazy malevolence to sharp focus.
“Right from the start I couldn’t credit how much damn grief you gave us,” he said, anger edging his tone. “Now my brother’s dead because of you and that brat of yours.”
“Your brother’s dead because he was holding a gun on me and my baby,” she retorted. “Why did Mr. Stephanopoulos have to die? Why did Paul Johnson have to, and for all I know, Jess Crawford?”
“Crawford’s the one at the gate?” Lynds gave a snort. “I wouldn’t want you to leave this old world worryin’ your pretty head about something you don’t need to. He was occupied with a diversion when I snuck onto the property, so I didn’t see any reason to kill him.”
“Thank God,” Susannah said softly. Surreptitiously she shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet. “But there’s still been too many deaths. I intend to put an end to them right now, mister.”
Even before she’d finished speaking she lunged at him, bringing the thick iron plate around in a swinging arc aimed at his head. He moved almost as quickly. She saw his right hand move clumsily toward the opened front of his jacket, saw him realize his mistake, saw him start to reach for what she guessed was a shoulder-holstered gun with his left hand.
The still-hot iron plate struck him lower than she’d meant, connecting so solidly with the side of his jaw that she felt the jarring impact running down into her shoulder socket like a numbing jolt of electricity. His head snapped sideways and again he forgot his injured arm. Involuntarily, both of his hands flew to his face and a curious, high-pitched whistling noise came from his wide-open mouth.
She’d left something on the cookstove, Susannah thought in sudden fear. It had started to burn—she could smell it.
She could smell seared flesh and hair…his flesh and hair, she realized a heartbeat later. She’d burned him. She’d caused him excruciating pain, because that whistling noise was the sound of a man trying to draw enough breath into his lungs to scream, and she’d probably branded him for life. But none of that was good enough, because she hadn’t killed him.
She’d known one of them would walk away from this. She’d known one of them wouldn’t. She saw Lynds’s left hand fumble in his jacket, and then she saw the gun he was pointing at her, heard the explosion.
Even in what little light there was she could make out the expression of total disbelief that crossed his features. And even in the near dark it was impossible to miss the neat, round hole that had suddenly bloomed in the middle of his forehead.
He fell lifelessly to the floor of the porch, his gun dropping from his limp fingers and skidding across the wooden boards. Even as Susannah turned shakily around, the lights of a vehicle being driven too fast into the yard illuminated the man standing behind her, his just-fired gun still in his hand.
Paul Johnson swayed on his feet and then steadied himself.
“That tea,” he said thickly. “I b’lieve I’ll take it sitting down at the kitchen table after all, Miz Barrett.”
Chapter Thirteen
“They say it never rains there, starshine.”
Leaning back in one of the comfortably cushioned porch chairs, Susannah lifted her face to the warmth of the midmorning sun. In her arms, Danny made an impatient movement, and contritely she switched her attention back to him.
“No, I’m not fibbing, little man. No rain, oranges growing in your backyard, and movie stars so thick on the ground a body pretty near trips over them every time she goes out for a quart of milk. What do you say? D’you think you’d like being a California baby?”
In answer, Danny reached up and grabbed on to a strand of her hair. He gave it an interested tug, and she winced.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, retrieving her hair.
Del had said this part of the porch was his favorite, Susannah mused, and she was inclined to agree. From here it was impossible to see the place where Lyle Lynds had died last night, although when she’d stepped out of the kitchen door onto the porch she’d had to walk around the thoroughly scrubbed and still-damp patch where his body had lain until Sheriff Bannerman had ordered it removed.
“Tye not back yet?” Dropping a battered leather duffel bag on the porch floor, Jess sat down in the chair beside her and gave an enormous yawn. He grinned unrepentantly at her.
“I’ll be glad to get back to the city, where folks go to bed at a decent hour,” he said wryly. “I got four hours of shut-eye. How about you?”
“Total exhaustion did the trick for me,” Susannah confessed. “I think my mind just decided to blank out everything that had happened for a few hours.”
“I wish I could have done that. Hell, I’m still going over it, wondering how I could have screwed up so badly.” Jess’s tone was uncharacteristically harsh. “If that bastard Lynds had brought his gun butt down half an inch either way, Johnson might have ended up with a whole lot worse than the mother of all headaches. And you and Danny might have ended up—” Savagely he rubbed his palm across his mouth, not finishing his sentence.
“You didn’t screw up,” she protested swiftly. “No one expected Kevin Bradley to pull off onto that side road and wait until Del and Tye had gone before returning to the ranch. Who knows what he was planning to do if you hadn’t stopped him from coming back onto the property?”
She bit her lip thoughtfully. “He never did show up in Last Chance last night, so Del’s hopeful he’s well out of the county by now. But wherever he is, he’s gone, Lyle Lynds is dead, and Danny and I are fine.”
“Thanks to Johnson.” A ghost of Jess’s familiar grin touched his features. “Would you believe he’s out with a post-hole digger right now, setting some new fence in the west quarter? He told Del he didn’t figure a little thing like a bump on the head should keep a man from doing an honest day’s work.”
“When I tried to thank him last night he didn’t want to hear it,” Susannah nodded. “He said he’d been the rankest kind of greenhorn, letting
himself get bushwacked by Lynds, and if he’d stayed out of the fight a couple more seconds he had no doubt I would have finished Lyle off by myself.”
She smiled, but then her smile faded. “That’s not true,” she said softly. “I think Lynds might have gotten off that shot he was trying for before Paul could stop him if he’d had the use of his gun hand. I’ve got Tye to thank for that.”
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Jess said lightly, squinting at the access road leading to the Double B, where a cloud of dust was rapidly approaching. “He did that on purpose,” he added, a note of wicked humor in his voice.
“Did what?” Susannah shielded her eyes with one hand, her heart leaping the way it did every time Tye came into sight. It probably always would leap, she thought helplessly.
“Rode the Harley into Last Chance for his meeting with Bannerman,” Jess said as the motorcycle made a curving swoop that brought it to a standstill beside Del’s pickup. “He knew that would chap the sherf’s butt.”
A gurgle of laughter escaped her and in her arms Danny gurgled, too, as if he appreciated Jess’s foolishness as much as she did. Maybe she had no right to laugh yet, she told herself as she heard the screen door slam and the sound of Del’s cane joining Tye’s booted footsteps, but on a God-given day like this laughter seemed just one more precious gift.
And instead of focusing on the horrors of the previous night, she preferred instead to recall the way Tye had vaulted over the porch railing and gathered her to him as he and Del had arrived just in time to see the shot that had taken Lynds down. He’d held her so tightly it had seemed as if he never wanted to let her go, Susannah remembered. It was only when the porch lights had suddenly gone on—she’d learned later that Del had reset the outside breaker that Lynds had obviously turned off—that he’d finally released her enough to gaze into her face. She’d seen the raw fear in those blue eyes, seen the harshly carved lines bracketing his mouth.
“I thought I’d lost you.” His whisper had been hoarse. “Dear God, Susannah—I thought I’d lost you.”
After the authorities had finally packed up and left and a weary-looking Del had announced his intention of trying to get some sleep before rising for morning chores, Tye had made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was spending the night in her room. During the too-few hours remaining before dawn she’d drowsily opened her eyes once or twice. Each time she had she’d realized that the man cradling her in his arms was wide awake and watching over her. When the first pink streaks of morning were painting the sky she’d awakened to find him on the edge of the bed, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else and talking in a low tone into his cell phone.
“I owe you one, Virge.” He’d seen her sleepily rub her eyes, and immediately his free hand had reached for one of hers. “Yeah, Bannerman and I seemed to have worked out our past differences. He phoned me half an hour ago, asked me if I could pull some strings and get the identification process fast-tracked.”
He’d fallen silent for a moment, and she’d seen his expression relax slightly. He’d nodded. “It’ll be good to see you again, too, buddy. Jess was saying the other day that us Double B’s should have kept in touch more closely, and he’s right. Del hasn’t heard from Gabe yet, but that’s not surprising.”
He’d rung off and turned to her with an apologetic smile. “Virgil Connor’s off assignment and I asked him to get the FBI to look into something for me. This isn’t the way I planned on waking you up, honey.”
He’d grimaced. “I hadn’t planned on taking off right away, either, but Bannerman says one of his deputies called in a report of a burned-out vehicle being found in a nearby canyon. There was a body in it, and although it’s going to take a forensics team to confirm identification, this time I think we caught a break.”
Something in his cautiously optimistic tone had alerted her. She’d scooted bolt upright in the bed, and only when she’d seen the heat flare in his gaze did she realize the demurely buttoned front of her cotton nightie was no longer demure, was, in fact, barely buttoned. Flushing, she’d drawn the two edges of the garment together. He’d smiled wryly.
He’d pulled her to him, kissed her hard on her lips, and released her. “That was to tide me over,” he’d said softly.
He’d inhaled and raked his hand through his hair with a quick frown. “A certain Jasper Scudder served time in Mount Olive Correctional with Frank. Scudder was Waylon and Lyle’s cousin. And his driver’s license was found in a wallet a few feet away from that burnt-out wreck with the body in it.”
She hadn’t let herself hope too much, Susannah thought now as Del and Tye joined her and Jess. But judging from the quick wink Del shot her as he sat down, it seemed as if Tye’s news was good.
It was. It was also unsettling.
“Virgil Connor’s on his way here, but he called me at Bannerman’s office. All preliminary findings seem to confirm that the body from the burned car is Scudder’s,” he said without preamble, as if he didn’t want to keep her in suspense any longer than necessary. “Apparently he broke his right leg years ago in prison, and the body’s skeleton shows an old break in that leg. The DNA results will clinch things when they come in, but there really wasn’t a lot of doubt in the first place.”
“He was the marksman who shot at the two of you on the Dinetah,” Del said slowly. “He would have had to be. Lyle fumbled drawing his gun with his left hand last night, so he couldn’t have managed any kind of sharpshooting the day before.”
“That’s what Bannerman and Matt Tahe figure. The Tribal Police were informed because of the likelihood that the person who tried to kill us on their land was one and the same as the body in the car. The theory is that the accident that killed him occurred shortly after he left the scene the day before yesterday.”
“So, it’s over?” Susannah’s voice shook with emotion. “After all these months it’s really over, Tye?”
His gaze met hers. “It’s really over, Suze. You can begin to live a normal life again,” he said quietly.
“Thank God,” she breathed, tightening her hold on Danny and closing her suddenly tear-filled eyes. She opened them again at his next words.
“We still don’t know why he was targeting you, honey. Now that the Bureau’s involved, Connor says the FBI wants to interview you to see if there’s any connection we’ve overlooked. They’re already in the process of pulling not only Scudder’s prison file but his complete criminal record and the transcripts of his parole hearings.”
She stared at him, confused. “But you said he was in prison with Frank. That’s the connection, Tye. We were right the first time—I wasn’t the link to the killers, Frank was. It’s obvious he and this Scudder person had a falling out of some kind when they were in the penitentiary together. Killing Frank’s wife and child was payback, like Waylon Lynds said.”
He’d been standing a few feet away from her. Now he swiftly crossed to where she was sitting, hunkering down beside her chair.
“I wish that were so, Suze,” he said softly. “But the time line’s wrong. Scudder was released a month or so before Frank’s sentence was up. The Atlantic City police confirmed only an hour ago that the driver’s license found by that body this morning was the same one produced by the person who rented the car that killed your grandmother. Scudder was after your family before you even met Frank.”
Beside her, Jess had been silent. Now he spoke. “I thought Susannah said they’d closed the file on her grandmother’s death.”
“They had.” Tye nodded. “I asked them to reopen it the day after the incident at Greta’s. I was lucky enough to be put through to the detective who’d originally worked the case, and he admitted he’d never been happy about having to shelve the file. I think he was glad of the excuse to look into it one more time.”
Susannah wasn’t listening. “But none of this makes any sense!” Even to her own ears her voice sounded thin and high. “I’ve never heard the name Jasper Scudder until today. How did he know me?
How did he know Granny Lacey? For heaven’s sakes, the man had to have had some reason to want us dead, and there wasn’t one! You just said Danny and I could live normally from now on, Tye, but what if Scudder has more relatives out there?”
“If he did, sweetheart, wouldn’t it have been logical for them to have been with Lyle last night?” Del’s tone was soothing, his words reasonable, and something in Susannah snapped. She got to her feet. When Tye stood, too, she moved away from him to confront all three men.
“I guess that is the logical way to look at it,” she said tightly. “But I’m a mother now, and if I’m supposed to choose between logical and a mother’s intuition, I’m going with the second one. Danny’s not safe yet. He might never be safe. What kind of a birthright is that to pass on to my little boy?”
“I can understand how frustrating this has to be for you, Suze.” Tye moved toward her. “But—”
“Birthright?” Del’s interjection was sharp. “Wait a minute. Tye, did Bannerman mention what the date of birth was on Scudder’s license?”
Tye shrugged. “I think he did, but I’d have to phone him to tell you what it was for sure.” There was a touch of impatience in his answer. “Why is that important?”
“Maybe it’s not,” Del said slowly. “But maybe it’s the one thing we’ve been overlooking all along. Just tell me—was he around your age or mine?”
“Yours. Maybe even a year or two older,” Tye said shortly. “I still don’t see what his age has to do with any—”
“Like I said, maybe it doesn’t mean a thing.”
Del passed a hand over his face. To her astonishment, Susannah saw a tremor run through him, and her anger vanished. In confusion she glanced at Tye and then Jess, but both men wore identically blank looks.
“Something came in the mail today.” Del reached for his cane. “With all that’s been going on, I didn’t see the need to lay this particular puzzle out on the table for the rest of you. I thought it was meant only for me, although I’m damned if I can figure it out. Now I wonder if it’s somehow tied in with everything else.”
