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by J. Carson Black

  He liked it a lot.

  GORDON STARED OUT at the beautiful Verde Valley and the distant red rocks of Sedona, and thought, It’ll work out.

  But in his heart of hearts, he was worried. The first time Gordon had met Shaun, he’d thought she was beautiful but unsettling. He hadn’t liked the way she’d looked at him, as if he were a specimen in a petri dish. If she were an owl, he’d thought, she would eat him.

  Gordon had known then that Shaun was as dangerous as nitroglycerin.

  Shaun had helped him out a few times, mostly by intimidating her prey, like the socialite who claimed Gordon had fondled her while she was sleeping. Whether he had or he hadn’t was immaterial. The woman was a hysteric, threatening to bring down the whole enchilada—the beautiful healing center he had built up from nothing. The Desert Oasis wasn’t just a business he loved. In many ways, he was the Desert Oasis. He could work a Hollywood party like nobody’s business, but he was at home here in the Arizona desert. He felt a spiritual call from the baking red rocks, the deep blue skies, the hawks and eagles that inspired him, and the very wealthy and fucked-up people who came to him for help.

  Shaun had a talk with the woman, and that was the end of that.

  Mickey Barron’s granddaughter put the fear of God into people. Usually, it was no big deal. But there were a couple of times when Gordon needed a…permanent solution, distasteful as that was. Shaun was good at what she did. She’d done a spectacular job on the Russian mobster who had threatened to kill him over a debt. Gordon would be eternally grateful to her for that one.

  And the DePaulentis situation had gone off without a hitch.

  But Gordon couldn’t help but feel that under Shaun’s cold, unruffled, professional exterior beat the heart of a lunatic.

  Chapter Twenty

  “MATERNAL” WAS NOT a term Shaun would have used for herself five months ago. In fact, she had never even thought of having children. Children slowed you down. They dulled your instincts. They were something that could be held over your head. They had to go to school, or be homeschooled. They had to be fed, clothed, entertained, cajoled, raised from mewling little creatures that were, face it, ugly. She never oohed and aahed over a baby like most women did. More often than not, she ignored them. They could do nothing for her.

  She’d been in a relationship once with a woman who’d had a little kid. The kid had been whiny, and worse, the woman had always put him first.

  But now, watching her son creep quietly over and around broken glass, seeing the concentration on his face, his hair falling over his brow, Shaun felt her heart bloom.

  From the moment she’d met him five months ago—he’d actually tried to rob her on the street one night—Shaun had felt an immediate jolt of recognition. He was like her—they were two peas in a pod. After she’d subdued him (falling just short of breaking his arm), she’d sat him down and told him the facts of life. Then she’d asked him about his family and he’d said he had none.

  Turned out that was a lie. (Jimmy was a very convincing liar.) But as their relationship deepened and he came to see her as his true mother, he admitted that he’d lived with his aunt for three years. His father was in prison, and his mother died of a drug overdose.

  Poor kid needed a real family.

  They’d been together ever since.

  The night before they left on this trip, they’d had popcorn and watched an old western. The hero stood up against the bad guys after they harassed his son, and said, “You stay away from my boy!”

  My boy.

  Now she asked him, “What do you think happened here?”

  “There was a gunfight. But where is everybody? You checked the house, right?”

  “No one there.”

  But it had been a cursory look around. She’d cleared every room in the main house, but hadn’t had a chance to do a thorough search. Just enough to know that Max Conroy was gone. “How long ago do you think this happened?”

  Jimmy screwed his eyes shut and thought about it. Looked at her. His eyes were hazel and steady. He was just like her. She experienced that quizzical bloom in her heart again.

  “I can still smell nitroglycerin.” He added, “When did they call Gordo?”

  “Don’t be disrespectful. His name is Gordon.”

  “You call him Gordo.”

  “I’m an adult.”

  “No fair.”

  “You need to concentrate.”

  He nodded. He was a serious boy, her son. He looked at the vehicles and the four bays separated by wooden posts. “He could’ve grabbed a car and escaped.” He ticked them off on his fingers: “Three cars. The old Cadillac over by the mailbox, the Saturn. And the Chevelle SS—that one’s cool. Leaves two places in the garage.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t think there was another car, though. At least not in the carport.” He leveled his gaze on Shaun. “I think there was just the Chevelle and the Saturn.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  He shrugged. “There’d be more glass. Someone would have driven over it.”

  “They called Gordon forty minutes ago. You see anything out there?”

  “No.”

  Shaun stared at the blood soaked into the concrete apron near the kitchen door. She reached down and pressed her finger into it. Dry, not even sticky. She sniffed it. Copper.

  She’d always loved that smell.

  “You think they killed him?” Jimmy said.

  Jimmy’s question echoed her own thoughts. They could have killed him by accident, panicked, and taken off. Maybe there had been another car out front. There could have been a whole caravan of them. The dirt held lots of tire tracks, all of them muddled together—too much sand. Still, they would look at the tracks and see what they could see.

  She stared at the silent hills bristling with saguaros, rocks, and mesquite. Noted the corral, the lean-to, the stock tank. The sun was at the top of its curve, and there was hardly a shadow anywhere. She kept her eyes on the scene, looking at it as if it were a tapestry. Looking for one thing out of place, one thread pulled. She saw the desert as a whole, as if she were taking a landscape photograph with her mind. Nothing registered. Closed her eyes to reorient herself, and looked again. This time Shaun looked at objects individually. The palo verde tree by the road. The lean-to. The water tank. The top of the hill. The sky. The house down the road. The house beyond that. A horse. Some calves. Two cars parked outside another house. All the way around, a panorama. Back to the bamboo surrounding the yard and the old Cadillac parked by the mailbox. Panned right and left again. Up and down.

  Closed her eyes.

  Looked at it again as a whole.

  Nothing.

  “We search the house again,” she said. “Let’s make it quick, though.”

  He could be dead in a closet.

  But no, she was sure he was still alive.

  Shaun had these feelings. They came to her almost like pronouncements. And the pronouncement she heard in her head was this: he’s alive.

  Not in good shape, maybe, but alive.

  And still worth the price on his head.

  THIS TIME, THEY found the entrance to the fallout shelter. Hard not to notice with the nuclear symbol on the door. Shaun opened the door into the small space behind the pantry and immediately saw the padlock on the trapdoor. She glanced around and saw the key on the hook. She took down the key, squatted down beside the trapdoor, and put the key in the lock. “Cover me,” she said.

  Jimmy stood at her shoulder, his gun leveled.

  She could feel his excitement.

  The lid came up.

  Two men squinted up at them.

  Another man lay propped up against the far wall. He looked to be in bad shape. His shoulder and bicep were bloody. But he glared at her. A real hard-ass. She liked how defiant he was.

  Defiance on its own was never enough, though.

  “Hello, Miss—I am so glad you found us!” said the bigger of the two fat ones. “We might have
died in here.”

  “What makes you think I care?”

  The man stepped back. He reminded her of a big fat rabbit. A big fat terrified rabbit. Except for his long, lank hair. “Please, madam, could you point that gun in another direction? This has been a difficult time for all of us. Our…friend, here, is wounded, as you can see. He’s lost a lot of blood. We’re harmless—this is our home. A bad man came to rob us, injured our friend, and left us here to die.”

  “Can I?” Jimmy asked.

  “No.”

  “Just one of them.”

  “We need them—they can tell us what happened to the movie star.” She looked at the bigger, fatter, older one. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, madam, anything you want to know. But please, can you get us out of here?”

  “I think we can do our talking from here.”

  “But our friend…”

  Shaun said to the defiant one, “Who shot you?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Ah,” said Shaun with a smile. “We have a winner.”

  IT DIDN’T TAKE long. They hauled the hard-ass out of the bomb shelter and tied him to a chair. He told them what they wanted to know quickly enough—how they had kidnapped Max Conroy and demanded a ransom, only to be turned down flat by Conroy’s wife. “Worthless piece of shit,” the hard-ass growled. “Even his wife wouldn’t bail him out.” Every other word was an expletive. Spittle formed on his lips like a rabid dog. But he talked. Shaun knew the right spots to deliver pain with very little leverage, and the moron wanted to talk anyway. He had a lot of bile to unload on just about everybody. He told them how Max got the drop on Luther and Sam P. He was less forthcoming about the gunfight in the carport and how he ended up in the bomb shelter with the other two. Embarrassed, Shaun thought. He should be. Thought he was such a tough guy, and some movie actor outwits him.

  Max Conroy went up in Shaun’s estimation. She would have to be on her toes when she found him.

  When they returned him to the bomb shelter, he flipped them the bird with his good hand.

  The only thing they debated was what to do with them next. Jimmy voted to shoot them.

  Too much, too fast, thought Shaun. “No.”

  “But why not? They’re the bad guys.”

  Shaun looked down at the three men. Two anxious faces and a rabid dog.

  “Please, madam. Let us go. Please, I beg you!”

  Shaun relented. “OK, you can have one.”

  “Why just one?”

  “Discipline,” she said. “There’s no need to kill more than one of them.”

  Why couldn’t she refuse this boy?

  He’d had his kill. It was an important milestone, but it was only one lesson of many she had to teach him.

  Maybe she just hated to deny him anything.

  Jimmy looked at her with calm eyes. Adult’s eyes. “OK. Which one?”

  “Your choice.”

  “The older fat guy is a suck-up. Maybe I should do him.”

  “No!” cried the fat man. “Please, no! Kill Corey.”

  “Which one’s Corey again?” Shaun asked.

  The older fat man jerked his thumb toward the wall. “Our friend with the bullet wound. He might not make it anyway. It would be a mercy.”

  Corey shot the fat man an ugly look. “Fuck you.”

  “Well?” Shaun said. “Which one?”

  “Please don’t kill me,” cried the younger fat one. He had a whiny voice, and for a moment, Shaun thought they should kill all three—just make a clean breast of it. But no, she had to stick to her principles. She’d given Jimmy permission to kill one, and that was what he’d have to be satisfied with.

  Time to pluck the rat out of the cage. “Well?” she said to Jimmy.

  “Can I use the forty-five?”

  Shaun removed it from her paddle holster and handed it to her boy. He hefted it. Small kid, big gun.

  “Who’s it gonna be?” asked Shaun.

  Jimmy didn’t reply.

  He just pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  GORDON COULDN’T REACH Shaun. But he was sure she was on her way back with Max in her custody.

  Everything would be all right.

  So they’d gone off the rails a little. Providing the kidnappers didn’t broadcast it to the world—and so far they had not—he could continue on with the original plan. Although it might yet put a crimp in their schedule. Max had been gone for almost three days. Who knew who he’d talked to or what he’d done during that time?

  The brainwashing techniques Gordon had used were effective, but it was not an exact science. Max had been out of Gordon’s influence for a while now, interacting with other people, trying to come to grips with the breaks in his memory. Hallucinating, probably.

  Gordon assumed Max would hallucinate a great deal, his mind coming back to one or two images, as often happened with sensory deprivation therapy taken to its extreme. It was fine if Max saw flying toasters or hot dogs in suits, but the important image, the one Gordon had planted so carefully during hypnosis, had to dominate: the image of a woman and a girl standing by a car broken down by the side of the road. That would be the trigger, in combination with the audible command, “Freeze!”

  If Gordon was completely honest with himself—and he always was—using the mother and the girl was gilding the lily. He didn’t really need to use them. The word “Freeze” should be enough. Jerry thought it was better just to stick with the command.

  Keep it simple, Gordon. That way there’s no room for ambiguity.

  Jerry should talk. He was rewriting the script every time Gordon turned around. Jerry’s constant tinkering with the story—that was the real problem. The simpler the scenario was, the better. At least the mother and little girl would reinforce the message: just one more cue to drive the point home.

  Still, Gordon was worried, which wasn’t like him. Usually he let everything roll off his back. He was basically a centered person.

  He took a walk out by the pool. The women were beautiful. Lots of starlets—did they even use that term now?—who had already lived twenty years in just two. They’d been big names for a time but now were drifting downward, which sent them into even deeper spirals. Some of them he’d pleasured. It had made some of them whole again.

  Although one or two had threatened to call the cops.

  Misunderstandings, easily smoothed over.

  Fortunately, Gordon didn’t have a license to lose. He was a self-made man, a true guru. He did not need a wall full of degrees and plaques to demonstrate his abilities—although he had them anyway. They might not be from the best schools, they might not be from real schools, but they were from the best schools money could buy.

  People were drawn to him. He was—OK, he wouldn’t say godlike, exactly—but he was a father figure. Someone pop singers and film stars and other celebrities and socialites and rudderless rich kids and middle-aged druggies could come to, could trust. That was his essence: his bigger-than-life personality, his strength, his power. His generosity.

  So when Jerry asked for help, Gordon was more than willing to help him.

  That’s what brothers did.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  TESS WAS JUST finishing her shift, which included cleaning up Pat Kerney’s typos on his reports. The first week she’d come on board he’d gotten his bid in early for them to read each other’s reports, which really meant she read his. He called them “typos,” but Tess thought they were something else. Lately, his police reports were riddled with more typos of a specific type: “thank” instead of “think,” “witch” instead of “which.” In this report he’d quoted the woman as saying, the goat “wooden stop struggling.”

  It seemed to be getting worse.

  So here she was, cleaning up his syntax while he was in the restroom. He spent a lot of time in there—his prostate.

  Bonny ducked his head into the work area Tess and Pat shared. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”r />
  She followed him into his office.

  “Close the door.”

  Bonny hitched his duty belt up a bit on his waist and set one haunch on the edge of his desk. “Everything OK?”

  “Fine,” Tess said. Thinking about Pat wanting to interview “the victim’s sun.”

  Bonny looked at her from under his grizzled eyebrows, his eyes searching. “Something wrong?”

  “Just the same old.” Tess had never been a snitch.

  “This sleepy county’s going to get a lot worse soon, what with the prison goin’ belly-up and being bought by outside interests. Things are changing around here, and there’s going to be a lot more crime to go along with the building boom.”

  “Building boom? What building boom?”

  “It’s coming, don’t you never mind. They’re adding one thousand beds to that stinkhole across town, and the governor’s making noises about all the drug cartels in this county.”

  “Drug cartels?”

  “Yeah, I know—there aren’t any. But we’re talking federal money. It’s all exaggeration to generate more revenue for the governor, but now all the counties are getting caught up in it. If I want to survive, I’ll have to play the game. I’m too old to start a new career now, and people want me to protect ’em from things that ain’t never gonna happen, at least not for many years. Which is all a roundabout way of saying that I need to make some changes around here. There are folks who aren’t crazy about my detective.”

  Tess saw Pat’s report in her mind’s eye, the one he pecked out with two fingers, typing “stinkbug” instead of “stun gun.”

  “You come from a big city, and people—some people—are clamoring for, uh, more sophistication. Pat’s retiring next year, but the election’s next year too, and that’ll be too late for me. So. Raise your right hand.”

  Tess raised her right hand.

  “You’re detective.” He added, “I can go through the whole rigmarole, but I don’t have time for that nonsense. I’m sheriff and as sheriff I can make you detective, so, tag, you’re it.”

  “What about Pat?”

  “He gets to be detective too. I figure that’s what Solomon would do. But because he’s still detective, you won’t get a raise in pay. The good news is, you can wear regular clothes. Darrell at Watson Chevy unloaded a plain-wrap on me—you can drive that now. It’s got low miles, believe it or not, so it’s a step up. Only thing it doesn’t have right now is a radio, and I figure we can get that put in this weekend.”