“Excuse me?”
“You said aliens were responsible for the cell phone blackout around here,” he reminded her.
Frank laughed. “That would be E.T.,” he said. “Sadie here drives out to the desert every night with a lawn chair and a six-pack hoping for her very own close encounter.”
“Ha-ha, very funny,” she said as she took a rag and started wiping down the already spotless bar. “I happen to like watching the desert sky. It’s beautiful, and you’d be amazed at some of the things you can see out there.”
An argument erupted behind them, and Sadie’s smile faded as her gaze shot to the table in the corner. But when Cage started to turn, she put her hand on his arm and said softly, “Nah-uh, hon. Best to mind your own business around here.”
“I find it best to do that most everywhere,” Cage said.
She nodded. “Smart man.”
Someone from the table called out her name. She and Frank exchanged a quick look before she rounded the bar and hurried over to the table.
Cage watched in the mirror as a tall, dark man with a ponytail down his back rose from the table and took Sadie’s arm. She flung off his hand and said something in Spanish, her tone furious. A chortle rose from the group, and she shot a murderous look at the whole table.
“Perros mugrientos,” she muttered as she came back over to the bar.
“Everything okay?” Cage asked.
She shrugged.
“Boyfriend trouble?”
“Husband,” she said with an apologetic smile.
Cage’s gaze dropped to her left hand.
“I don’t wear a ring,” she said. “It drives Sergio crazy.”
“From now on, take the family squabbles outside,” Frank said. “I don’t want any trouble in here.”
“You were asking for trouble the minute you agreed to let them meet here,” she warned angrily.
“Why don’t you just take the rest of the day off?” Frank said. “I can handle things here.”
Sadie glared at him. “No way. I’ll tell you the same thing I just told Sergio. I’m not leaving until I’m damn good and ready. Or until you fire me.”
“You know I’m not going to fire you,” Frank said wearily.
“Then let me stay and do my job. You won’t have any more trouble. Not from Sergio. I’ll make sure of that.” She turned to Cage with a weak smile. “Sorry about the floor show.”
He shrugged. “We’ve all got problems.”
“Another beer?”
“I need to find a phone first.”
“There’s a pay phone in the back.” She waved a hand in the general vicinity. “Need some quarters?”
“I’ve got a credit card, but thanks.”
She picked up his cell phone and slipped it into the pocket of her apron. When he lifted a questioning brow, she grinned. “Insurance, so you don’t get the bright idea of skipping out on your bill.”
“She’s only half joking,” Frank said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back. But you do realize that thing is pretty much worthless around here.”
Cage knew he was the focus of attention from the men at the table, and he sized them up as best he could from the corner of his eye as he headed toward the back. Three young Hispanics and two middle-aged Caucasians. All thugs, by the looks of them, but Cage wasn’t about to involve himself in whatever shady dealings they were plotting. All he wanted to do was get his car running and make tracks for El Paso, the sooner the better.
He located the phone and punched in a series of numbers, including his credit card number. The dark-haired man—Sergio—brushed past him on his way to the restroom. Cage caught a glimpse of a nasty-looking scar that curved around the man’s throat before he disappeared through the door.
Cage had seen a scar like that only one other time—on an ex-con who’d had his throat slashed in a prison brawl.
He stared after the man for a moment, then turned back anxiously to the phone when his party answered on the other end.
“It’s Cage.”
“¿Qué pasa, tío?” Andy Sikes drawled jovially. “You already in town?”
“No, that’s why I’m calling. I’ve run into a little trouble on the road.”
“What kind of trouble?” Andy asked suspiciously. The two men went back a long way, far enough that Andy was a little too familiar with Cage’s track record.
“My car broke down. I’m about a hundred and eighty miles from El Paso in a little Podunk place called San Miguel. Doesn’t look good about making that four o’clock meeting.”
“Damn it, Cage—”
“I know, I know, you went out on a limb to set it up for me—”
“Jumped through hoops is more like it. It’s not just your ass on the line here. If you don’t make that meeting, my boss is going to be muy ticked off, and that’s putting it mildly.”
“I hear you. But there’s nothing I can do but wait for a part. If I can get on the road within the next hour, I may still be able to make it. It’d help, though, if you’d run a little interference for me.”
“Stall, you mean.”
“Just for an hour or so.”
Andy’s exasperated sigh came through loud and clear. “I’ll do what I can, but you get your ugly hide to El Paso if you have to sprout wings out your butt and fly here.”
“I will. And I owe you one, okay?”
“No, you don’t. Let’s just call it even. After all, if I hadn’t thrown that illegal block sixteen years ago, you might be playing for the Cowboys instead of hustling drill bits for that pendejo you call a brother-in-law.”
“Water under the bridge. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Cage hung up and looked around. He hadn’t seen Sergio come out of the bathroom, but he tried the door anyway. It was unlocked and he went in to wash up.
As he stared as his own reflection—the gaunt face, the receding hairline, the tiny grooves that had begun to fan out at the corners of his eyes—he thought again of his father. Maybe he was starting to understand a little of the old man’s desperation.
Not much liking what he saw in the mirror, Cage turned on the faucet, and after washing his hands, splashed cold water on his face.
As he was drying off, he noticed that the window was open, and it occurred to him that the reason he hadn’t seen Sergio come out of the bathroom was because he’d gone through the window. Evidently, he was giving someone the slip—
A woman’s scream brought Cage’s head around with a jerk. In two strides he was across the room and flung back the door a split second before another sound registered…the steady spit-spit-spit of silenced weapons.
In the space of a heartbeat, Cage took in the bloody massacre as he stood there in the doorway. Two of the men at the table were slumped over in their chairs and a third had fallen to the floor. The fourth had tried to crawl toward the door and now lay twitching in a deepening pool of red.
Cage saw a bloody hand protruding from the end of the bar, and he recognized Sadie’s pink nail polish. She was clutching his cell phone. Two crimson splatters on the wall behind the bar marked the spot where she and Frank had been caught by the bullets.
The gunmen were still inside the bar. They were young white guys, unmasked, dressed in jeans and T-shirts. As one of them pumped another round into the man on the floor, the shooter nearest the bar looked up and caught Cage’s eye in the mirror. His reflexes seemed almost supernatural as he spun and fired in one fluid movement.
Cage jumped back into the bathroom and slammed the door.
During the hospital stay after his shooting, he’d often wondered what would happen if he found himself again on the wrong end of a loaded weapon. Would he freeze up? Beg for mercy? Roll over and play dead?
Now he had his answer. Instinct and training wouldn’t allow for any of those things.
Cage did the only thing he could do. He dove through the window and ran like hell.
Chapter Three
Keeping to the alleys
and using the buildings for cover, Cage made his way back around to Main Street.
He had in mind to locate the sheriff’s office, constable, or whatever manner of law enforcement was to be found in a place that size. Even a town as tiny as San Miguel would have some kind of peace officer, who in turn would be able to summon the state police or highway patrol to provide backup. Without a weapon, Cage was pretty much useless.
Still, he hadn’t given up on the notion of finding a way back inside the bar. He couldn’t desert Sadie and Frank without knowing for certain they were dead, and he also didn’t like the idea of leaving his cell phone. It would be too easy for the bad guys to trace it back to him. Right now, anonymity was on his side. The gunmen couldn’t possibly know who he was.
Cage eased around the corner of a building. One of the shooters stood just outside the bar while the other was still presumably looking for him. Cage ducked back and flattened himself against the wall.
After a moment, he glanced around the corner again. A squad car raced up the street and slid to a halt at the curb. A man in a khaki uniform and aviator glasses got out and propped his arm on the open door. After he and the gunman conversed, the cop strolled leisurely over to the bar and glanced inside.
So much for getting help from the state police, Cage thought grimly.
As he continued to watch, the second gunman came jogging out of a nearby alley. While the three conferred, another vehicle pulled up behind the squad car.
Cage recognized the expensive SUV. It was the same one he’d seen earlier, passing through town.
Two men in dark suits and sunglasses got out. Cage was pretty sure they were cops, too, but a little higher up on the food chain.
One of the gunmen stepped forward and pointed to the bar, then gestured toward the alley from which he’d emerged a few moments earlier, undoubtedly trying to explain how he’d let a witness to the shooting get away from him.
The men in dark suits listened without comment, then the taller of the two reached up and removed his sunglasses. Turning, his eyes traveled slowly over the buildings across the street, as if some instinct drew his gaze straight to Cage.
Cage jerked back, but not before he’d gotten a good look at the man’s face. He’d never seen a crueler expression or a colder pair of eyes, and that was saying something considering the lowlifes he’d encountered.
It was only a matter of time before they found out who he was. Only a matter of minutes if they already had his cell phone. Or found his car.
As the five men fanned out, Cage decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Slipping behind the buildings along Main Street to the garage, he grabbed a couple of water bottles from Lester’s cooler and headed out of town the same way he’d come in.
“GRACE! SHERIFF STEELE, I mean. Are you okay?”
“I think so.” Grace was sitting on the bottom stair massaging her right ankle when the front door burst open, and Ethan Brennan rushed in. Ethan worked in the county clerk’s office and was a friend of Lily’s. Platonic friend, she insisted, but it had taken Grace about two seconds in Ethan’s company to figure out he had it bad for her sister.
He was just shy of thirty and cute in that intense, techno-geek kind of way. Shoving his dark glasses up his nose, he hurried over to Grace. “What happened?”
“Good question,” Grace muttered as she turned and glanced up the stairs. Had someone really pushed her from behind, or had it all happened so fast that she’d only imagined the hand on her back, the face at the top of the stairs?
Luckily, the suitcases that had tumbled down with her had somewhat cushioned her fall. Grace gingerly rotated her ankle. It wasn’t broken, thank goodness, but she was already starting to feel the bumps and bruises where she’d been banged around on the stairs.
She looked up into Ethan’s anxious face and mustered up a shaky smile. “What are you doing out here anyway?”
He held up a large envelope. “Lily asked me to come by and drop off some papers. When I didn’t see her car, I thought she might be down at the barn, so I checked there first. Then I came back up here and I found the front door ajar. I got a little nervous—” His cheeks reddened. “I probably shouldn’t have just barged in like that.”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t know what to think when no one answered my knock—”
“Ethan, it’s fine. I’m sure you were worried about Lily.”
His blush deepened as his gaze slid away from Grace. He glanced around at all the suitcases strewn about the foyer. “What did happen here?”
“I fell down the stairs.”
“You—” His gaze lifted to the staircase behind her and widened. “All the way down? You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck!”
“No kidding.”
“How did you manage to do that?”
“Not break my neck?”
“Fall,” he said seriously.
Grace paused. Did she really want to get into her suspicions with Ethan? With anyone, for that matter. Best just to keep her mouth shut until she had a chance to look around. “I’m not sure how it happened. Maybe I hooked my heel on the rug or something. I had my arms full and couldn’t see where I was going.”
His gaze went back to the suitcases. “So…you’re leaving?”
“I’m just moving into town. Maybe you could give me a hand with all this stuff.”
“Be glad to. Just let me put this somewhere first.” He placed the envelope on a table near the stairs, then turned back to Grace. “It’s for Lily,” he said.
“So you said.”
He gave her a sheepish grin that Grace found adorable. How could Lily not just eat him up with a spoon?
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He offered her a hand as she got to her feet.
“Just a few bruises. See?” She put weight on her ankle. “No permanent harm done.”
“Thank goodness. First Sheriff Dickerson and now you. People might start to think there’s a curse on this town.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Grace’s attention was caught by a passing shadow out one of the side windows. A few minutes later, she heard footsteps on the porch, and then Lily appeared in the doorway.
Her dark hair, which she wore in a braid down her back, was slightly askew and she appeared out of breath. She had on jeans and a cotton shirt, which had become the unofficial uniform of the deputies in Criminal Investigations except on days when they had to appear in court.
The lax dress code had bothered Grace at first, but after a few days of coping with the heat and the rugged West Texas terrain, she’d eased up on her expectations.
Since Grace hadn’t heard a vehicle drive up, she had to assume that Lily had been there all along. While Grace had been talking with Ethan, her sister would have had plenty of time to go down the rear staircase and out the back door, then make her way around to the front of the house.
Grace tried to check the direction of her thoughts. Did she really think her own sister had pushed her down the stairs?
“What’s going on?” Lily asked as she stepped through the door.
“Your sister just fell down the stairs,” Ethan blurted.
“Really? All the way down?” Her eyes collided with Grace’s. Lily didn’t seem overly concerned, or even surprised, to hear about the incident. In fact, Grace’s stomach churned at the passive expression on her sister’s face.
“I told her she’s lucky she didn’t break her neck,” Ethan said.
“Well, you always did have all the luck in the family.” Lily’s cool gaze swept back to Grace. “What was it Mama used to say? The more things change, the more they stay the same?”
“But—” Ethan shifted uncomfortably.
“What?” Lily snapped.
“You don’t—”
She put a hand on her hip. “I don’t what?”
“Grace could have been seriously hurt,” Ethan said.
“But she wasn’t. Were you, Grace?”
“I’m fine.”
“Of course you are. No one knows better than you how to take care of Number One. Am I right?”
“If you say so.” Grace wasn’t about to rise to Lily’s bait. She had no intention of airing their dirty laundry in front of Ethan Brennan or anyone else. It was bad enough that Lily could barely remain civil at work.
Her sister spotted the envelope Ethan had put on the table and pounced on it. “Is that for me?”
“It’s all in there,” Ethan said. “Everything you requested—”
“Thanks.” She glanced inside the envelope, then placed it back on the table. As she turned, she made a point of toeing one of Grace’s suitcases out of her way. “So you’re splitting, huh?”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Lily’s gaze lifted, and the coldness in those gray depths sent a shiver down Grace’s spine. “You have no idea what I want. You never did.”
Suddenly, an image of that face at the top of the stairs came back to Grace. She couldn’t say with any certainty that it had been Lily up there peering down at her, and she wanted desperately to believe that it had not been. But dread tightened like a fist around Grace’s heart. What if it had been Lily?
What if her own sister…had just tried to kill her?
THE DESERT WAS NOT an ideal place to hide, Cage soon discovered as he made his way back to his car.
Putting the manual transmission in neutral, he pushed the vehicle as far out into the barren landscape as he could manage. He hated like hell to abandon it. That car was about the only thing he owned free and clear these days. But in his current fix, there wasn’t much else he could do.
Getting out his map, he decided the best way to evade his hunters was to stay off all roads that led into or out of San Miguel. There was another highway about ten or fifteen miles due west across the desert where he might be able to find a phone or hitch a ride.
He glanced up at the blazing sun. He’d be crossing in the heat of the day, but he had two water bottles and he damn sure had the will to live.
Showdown in West Texas Page 3
