Next Last Chance

by Jon A. Hunt

  “Why are you stopping here?” Sandra asked.

  “You wanted to clean up. This isn’t Union Station but the restrooms have running water.”

  She nodded unenthusiastically.

  I circled the green water tank in the middle of the main parking area. Nothing more ominous than battered shrubbery hid behind it. Everything swam in waist-deep vapor. I brought the car close to the flowerbeds and got out. Recently planted Black-Eyed Susans were flattened into the mud. I helped myself to the half-buried garden hose. Delbert Ray was going to lose sleep over that ugly scrape on the Viper’s roof. I should have just bought the thing.

  Sandra stopped beside me and held out my leather jacket in one hand. I straightened and took the jacket reflexively. She traded it for the running hose.

  Silks and other delicates should be hand washed in cold water. I’d read that on a label somewhere. Nobody ever said you had to take the stuff off first. Sandra turned the garden hose toward her shoulders and chest, carefully massaging the morning’s dirt from her blouse’s thin expensive fabric, which pressed hungrily against every feminine detail. I caught myself studying the texture of a lace bra beneath the wet silk, the taut peaks of her reaction to the cold. She caught me staring with a faint smile. Then she passed the nozzle back to me, reclaimed the jacket and followed the path to the nature center. Just a walk. Women of Sandra Donovan’s caliber have never needed to sashay.

  I dragged my attention, with effort, back to the muddy car.

  When Sandra asked what the next steps might be I had no definitive answers. We’d missed whoever had retrieved the money. The blue Mazda had been our sole worthwhile clue and that had come looking for us.

  “Did you get a look at the girl driving?”

  She shook her head, though I detected a tiny catch in her voice. “A girl?”

  “Well, a woman. Light skin, dark hair.” This hardly counted as a useful description. I’d been more concerned with trying not to crash at the time. My driving now was relaxed. I could pay better attention to the woman inside my car. “Who was she?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t—”

  “I mean the one in the photograph,” I said. She’d known that.

  Sandra’s tone went frigid. “You were hired precisely so people wouldn’t find out who the woman in that photo was.”

  “Surely it’s occurred to you she might be involved?”

  “She’s out of the picture. Even if she wasn’t, this kind of thing could never benefit her and she’d never consider trying it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so. Stick to what you’re paid to do.”

  “I don’t really need the money.”

  “Tyler?”

  The softening and deceleration of her voice drew my eyes across the cab. She’d changed into my jacket at the park. Her silk blouse and lace bra had been wrung and stuffed into the pockets. Wet hair that shone like drawn copper was tucked behind her ear. For having spent the morning in the mud, Sandra was unbelievably gorgeous.

  “I realize you’re well off,” she said. “Jonathon said you have more money than he does. But even if you don’t live the way we do, you must understand. If I can’t trust you for who you are, at least let my secrets be safe because of what you are?”

  I supposed she had a point. The turn-off for Hillbriar approached. I took it without a word. Sandra didn’t need to hear my reply.

  Hillbriar’s gates opened on their own. The estate had shrugged off worse weather over the decades. Most of Green Hills would be without power for another day, but a generator clattered up on the hill. Lights burned inside the main house and stable and the lanterns mounted to the limestone entry pillars blazed in defiance of sunshine and common sense. Trees, limbs and debris had been carted away. Only unstained rails in sections of the perimeter fences suggested there’d been damage at all.

  We passed the second set of automated gates and circumvented the fountain. Clear water tumbled over the bronze foals, still frozen mid-frolic as they’d always been. No Jaguar occupied the space beneath the timbered canopy now. A teenager in Hillbriar’s standard khaki uniform approached the passenger window, which Sandra lowered expectantly. He seemed to know which answers to furnish without the bother of being asked the questions.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am. Sir.” He bobbed his bare head respectfully my direction. “Mr. Waldron left for the hospital to see to Luiz’s paperwork. He’ll be discharged tonight. Three broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. Mr. Waldron said to tell you Mr. Donovan called, and he expects to be gone over the weekend at least.”

  “How’s Whiskey?” Sandra asked. That damned horse ranked higher than the man he’d kicked or the man she’d married.

  “He’s his usual self. We had to move him to the extra stable after he busted the inside door to his. I think he’s mad because he couldn’t go out while the fences were getting fixed.”

  “Thank you, Raul.” She dismissed the kid with such a disarming smile he failed to notice she was half naked under a jacket several sizes too big for her. Raul scurried off to other duties.

  “Come inside for a bit.”

  I said I probably shouldn’t.

  “You’d rather I gave your coat back out here?”

  Against my better judgment I poked the ignition button to kill the engine, went around and opened the passenger door like a gentleman.

  Most of the estate’s manpower had been dedicated to horses and grounds. The main house’s mahogany front doors were tall enough to admit a giraffe, but Sandra had to open them herself. The grand foyer inside leapt higher still. Apparently JD had something against low ceilings. Hardwood steps floated upward in arcs on either side to a balcony that mortals or short people would swear was on the third story. Railings for stairs and balcony were gleaming black steel with beveled glass panels. The panels had been etched with stylized musical scores. I recognized “Walkin’ After Midnight” near the bottom. JD might be the only person on earth who paid royalties for his stairs. Autographed vintage guitars embellished the walls, and sunlight streaming in through three floors’ worth of windows projected distorted sixteenth notes and treble clefs onto every visible surface.

  The floors, however, held my attention longest.

  A quarter inch of urethane can’t disguise that many generations of foot traffic. The planks were peppered with square nail heads that had known the heat of long-cold forges and the strike of long-still hammers. The mansion was newer than the abandoned guest house, but only from the floorboards up. How many who’d trod those planks had owned slaves or died on the battlefields at Stones River or Gettysburg, I could scarcely guess.

  “Would you care for a drink, sir?”

  The Donovan’s employed at least one maid and I’d nearly walked over her in my introspectiveness. Slender and not much older than Raul, she wore a black apron over her khaki blouse and skirt, and nervousness and amusement in her dark eyes. She’d seen my gun in its holster, and she’d seen the grand foyer’s hypnotic effects on other first-timers.

  “Laurie, your shift was supposed to be over at noon.” Sandra stood upright at the start of one of the stairs. Her arms were crossed, though a stern demeanor is a tough sell when you look like you’ve been playing dress-up in Daddy’s clothes.

  “Oh, sorry, Mrs. Donovan.” The girl curtseyed. I’d thought that had gone out of style by now. “I couldn’t get here earlier because of the roads. I finished upstairs and was about to go—”

  “Some ice water would be terrific,” I interjected. I wasn’t dying of thirst. Spending any amount of unchaperoned time with JD’s bride in that cavernous place just worried me.

  Sandra relented, slightly. “I’ll have sweet tea. Set both on the foyer table before you go.”

  Laurie curtseyed again and disappeared through a door which presumably led to a kitchen or wet bar or beverage closet or wherever people like the Donovans kept their refreshments.

  “You’ll appreciate the view better from the balcony.”


  My hostess started upward and left me to either follow or stay put and look like a dumbass. I chose the stairs.

  She was right. Hillbriar’s crystal and timber summit was something else. An expansive parquet floor that would do for a ballroom reached from the tops of both stairs, through the mansion’s depth, to more glass that sprang from our feet and didn’t stop till the ponderous ridge beam twenty feet overhead. A monolith of cut limestone interrupted the left-hand windows. Flames convulsed in a firebox big enough to hold three lumberjacks yet still a comparatively tiny gap in the stonework. The driveway’s stone pillars had struck me the same way—a bit much—but at least those were outdoors. The walls finishing the space held built-in shelves up to eight feet, artfully populated with picture books extolling Tennessee’s musical heritage and expensive knick-knacks from around the world. Everything upward was clad in horizontal strips of polished tiger maple. Stained glass French doors opened to more rooms beyond each wall.

  Floor space between stairs and chimney belonged to a Baldwin concert grand piano. Leather sofas and maple end tables faced the instrument in an arc. The piano perched on a rather industrial-looking dolly so it could be rolled around. I wasn’t sure something that large on wheels was the best idea on a balcony. Every now and then someone famous might drop by and tickle the ivories, but they probably received more attention from Laurie’s feather duster.

  Sandra ignored the fireplace and the Baldwin and the treetops marching southward from the windows. She pushed through the doors closest to the fireplace. Sunlight tumbled past her. The doors stayed open and I stopped with one hand on the frame. Staying by the piano and admiring the view of Hillbriar’s trees would’ve been smarter. Today just wasn’t my smart day.

  The expansive bedroom suite had floor-to-ceiling windows, another fireplace as large as the balcony’s, and million-dollar furnishings—for one person. No boots, dress jackets, bolo ties, cologne bottles, dirty socks, nothing of JD’s could be seen in the room because JD didn’t sleep there. His suite must have been through the other French doors across the way. Separate king’s and queen’s quarters. Not even maids who curtseyed were that old-fashioned.

  “What?”

  Sandra turned toward me. Either questions or defiance lit her eyes. I couldn’t tell which. I answered with a very professional shrug, but she’d already heard the gears turning.

  “He doesn’t use this room,” she said. “Or the bed.”

  “I don’t need to know,” I told her. My ice water must be waiting downstairs. That meant the polite kid with the apron had left us alone.

  “You want to know, though. You want to know that I haven’t shared this bed since Jonathon’s mother died.”

  There wasn’t a damned thing to say to that.

  Sandra’s hands reached for the jacket’s zipper pull together, as if she needed the strength of both to operate it.

  “Funny, isn’t it? All this hell I’m going through because of sex, when I’ve been so alone for half a decade…”

  The zipper worked fine. She took two steps forward and let her arms fall. The leather’s weight carried it over her smooth shoulders, past her fingertips to the floor, and she pressed against me brazenly bare from the waist up. Her breath warmed my chin. That was nothing compared to the heat of her breasts through my damp shirt.

  “That’s a long, long time, Tyler.”

  My belt tightened across the small of my back. Sandra’s fingers struggled with the buckle. She shivered, not because she was cold. All the day’s fear and rain hadn’t quite erased the sweetness of her honeysuckle perfume.

  “You told me to stick to what I’m paid to do.”

  “You said you didn’t need the money,” she purred.

  My only anchor was the door jamb. I didn’t let go. That resistance spoke when my mouth couldn’t remember how to argue. She released my belt and sank back a little. High breasts with dark taunting centers followed the quick rhythm of her breathing. Her toned stomach promised the rest of that body would be just as painfully difficult to refuse. A slow emerald explosion in her eyes betrayed surprise and rage that I’d even considered refusing.

  My free hand caught her wrist before she could strike me. Instead of waiting for another slap, I hauled her in and kissed her, just like in the movies. The act wasn’t tender. Our mouths devoured what our bodies shouldn’t. We parted when her fury subsided, when both of us found fragile reins to hold ourselves in place.

  We’d live without breaking the rules. Today. As long as a kiss didn’t count.

  I snagged my discarded jacket with the toe of my shoe and brought it up without stooping. Too much of Sandra Donovan’s fevered skin was too near to chance bending. I turned deliberately. I crossed the parquet floor and descended the stairs without glancing back. The washed blue skies must’ve been glorious through those towering front windows. I didn’t notice.

  The mahogany front doors let me open them. Laurie had indeed set two glasses on a sterling silver tray on the table near the doors, and I hadn’t touched mine.

  Right now I needed a hell of a lot more cold water than just one glassful.

  Eleven

  My exit could have been scripted. Sandra Donovan and I shared top billing. My car was loud and flashy and sunlight dodged through swaying trees to kiss the fenders. Everyone at Hillbriar stopped to watch me go: groundskeepers, groomsmen, Whiskey and his less restive stable mates, the dead empty windows of the padlocked guest house. Surely the half-naked empress had her eye on me from upstairs in her glass and timber palace. Hollywood loves that stuff. Then iron scrollwork eased shut again after me, blushing in the taillights. But it was empty theatrics. I hadn’t stayed long enough to do anything properly scandalous.

  I let the Viper’s back end swing wide, rammed the shifter into the next notch and throttled angrily. The unmarked sedan materialized a hundred feet back, hardly unexpected and adding to my irritation. So many people were using me as a pawn even they couldn’t keep track of whose board I was on.

  Sandra’s advances would’ve been perilously easy to accept. My life seemed too close to finishing to be further complicated by one more distraction. But for all her magnetism, I hadn’t been flattered. Tempted. Severely tempted. Just not flattered. There had to be compelling reasons JD no longer shared her bed, and her last dalliance hadn’t even been with a man. I needed answers to why now? and why me? more than I needed one more distraction.

  I needed to find Clarence DeBreaux and ask him why he’d suddenly gotten tired of wasting JD’s money.

  I needed to unearth JD’s absent daughter, Jetta, and ask her what kept her away so long.

  I needed to know how a Las Vegas assassin was mixed up with these people, whether he was going to put a monogrammed bullet through my eye, and when he was going to get around to doing it.

  I had half a mind to find Rafferty’s federal antagonist, Pennington, and ask him what made the FBI so curious about comings and goings at Hillbriar that they’d tapped into their private security cameras.

  And who was the speed demon in the blue Mazda?

  That added up to a lot of extra little riddles when my job was to solve a completely different riddle altogether. It was enough to piss anybody off.

  Eighty miles an hour has always been too fast for Franklin Pike. The guys in the rearview mirror were probably worried they’d get pulled over trying to keep up with me. I let up on the accelerator till all of us were legal. Rafferty had warned me.

  A penciled, unspoken name from our tense meeting surfaced abruptly. Sometimes it takes me a while to remember details. Women and fast cars are toxic to a man’s memory.

  Gabe Andrews, Paradise.

  I didn’t know an Andrews and Paradise was nowhere close. But I realized where it was.

  Rico had come from Nevada. So had my buddies Nick and Del. If any of them had flown, the airport they used sat in the same unincorporated desert oasis that contained most of The Strip: Paradise, Nevada.

  Thursday hadn’t be
longed to me since it started and the don’t-look-at-the-other-guy goons in their unlabeled shadow car got on my nerves quick. I dodged off Franklin Pike at a drugstore just past the Four-Forty overpass. The rest of my parade damned near had themselves a head-on. Screaming brakes and bellowing horns livened things up and in the interest of not becoming more obvious than he already had, the other car’s driver gave up and continued northward. They’d be back, or someone just like them. I had a few useful minutes to myself, though.

  Inside I bought a prepaid mobile phone, a bottle of sweet tea and a box of powdered donuts. I paid in cash. The phone went into the bag under the donuts. I left the lot as anonymously as could be expected considering my dramatic arrival.

  Thumbing the logout code into my regular phone, I waited till it beeped to let me know the case could be opened without activating the security erase routine, then removed the battery. If those were feds trailing me they could at least trail me the old-fashioned way for a change. The toy phone was for calling Nevada. No name or number attached. I might have an hour before somebody went back to verify I hadn’t stopped that suddenly to satisfy a donut craving.

  A couple traffic lights obliged and I got the package open with my pocket knife. At the next light I turned left. A bland sedan turned with me. Definitely feds. They must have set things up in a hurry to be this unimaginative. I coasted alongside the curb next to a park full of frazzled housewives and squealing toddlers, all very happy to be outdoors. The Viper’s blackened windows stayed up and the engine kept idling. The Smith & Wesson lay across my knee while I followed the recorded instructions to activate my brand new phone. The sedan orbited the park once and left. Cleverer watchers must have taken over because I couldn’t spot them. I poked at the cheap rubbery buttons to summon an operator.

  Yes, I was okay with the charges being deducted from my account balance.

  Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten Paradise didn’t have any listings under that name. I meant Las Vegas. Sorry.