by Amy Vansant
Half-made.
That was it.
Something interrupted him.
Was it Jessie? Did she attack him? Hit him with something and knock him to the ground...
In her mind’s eye she glanced at the kitchen floor.
A chunky stain. The kitchen had been so filthy, and she had been so distracted by the ants, the stain on the floor hadn’t stood out to her then. It wasn’t spatter. It was larger.
Walker might have laid on his floor for some time. He could have died while making a sandwich, fallen to the floor, rotted for weeks, months even, melting into the floor.
She tapped Broch again and he stopped his rock-toss in mid throw to look at her.
“I have a theory.”
“Aye?”
“I think Jessie’s father was dead when she got here.”
“Is it common tae burn yer deid?”
Catriona grimaced. “No. Follow me a second. Maybe Jessie, already upset with her professional and romantic life, returned to the one man she trusted, only to find him dead. It gave her an idea. First she thought she’d hide his body, and then changed her mind. Instead, she burned his body, doing her best to make it look as if her father had burned her. Then she returned to L.A. and created the shrine to herself to make it look as if her father had come to avenge her.”
Broch nodded, seeming to mull the idea. “Na yin wid be keekin’ fur her if she wur deid. They’d be keekin’ fur her faither.”
“Exactly. She probably got the idea for the shrine from her father’s real-life memory board in there. Problem for Jessie, even with her father burned nearly to dust, the medical techs can tell the body is male, no matter how many flowers and ribbons she left around it.”
Broch sighed. “Somethin’ in that wee lassie’s mind broke.”
“Seems like it, doesn’t it?” Catriona headed for the Jeep’s driver-side door. “We need to get back to L.A. before she gets someone else.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fiona opened her eyes, her head throbbing in time with her heartbeat. Her shoulders ached. Her face was pressed into a rough blanket, the surface beneath which felt hard as cement. A heavy canvas covered the length of her body, leaving her unsure if it were day or night.
Her limbs felt wrong. Trying to sit up, she realized her hands were tied behind her back and her ankles tied to her hands, knees bent. She lay on her side. Her body jostled at uneven intervals, sometimes violently.
I’m in a vehicle.
She heard wind, somehow could feel it through the canvas.
Jesus. I must be in the back of some kind of truck.
Fiona swallowed and tried hard not to panic. Her inability to move her arms and legs had her on the edge of hysteria. She didn’t like being pinned.
I’m hogtied in the back of a pickup truck.
She’d made jokes about ending up this way while filming Camping Under the Stars. Some of the locals in their rural filming location looked the sort to hogtie women and throw them in the back of their trucks.
Maybe one of them heard me and decided to make my joke come true.
She swallowed and tried to push her mind elsewhere.
Calm. Breathe in and out. In and—
The truck slowed and turned left. Fiona’s head bounced on the truck bed and she did her best to lift it.
I can’t take much more of this.
The truck rolled to a stop and Fiona realized there was something worse than being jostled in the back of the truck.
Knowing someone who had hogtied you and thrown you into the back of a truck was on their way.
She heard a door open and close. Footsteps on gravel. The tailgate screeched open. Though she couldn’t remember if she’d heard the back of a pickup truck open before, she imagined newer models didn’t make a sound akin to banshees screeching.
She lay in a very old truck. For some reason, that raised her already elevated heartbeat at least another twenty beats per minute.
The canvas slid from her body and Fiona saw it was dusk. She blinked and peered down at the person standing at the back of the truck.
Her kidnapper had long dark hair beneath a cowboy hat. Thin shoulders, what looked like a skirt...
I was kidnapped by a woman.
The woman had her back turned to Fiona as she folded the canvas.
Fiona took a deep breath.
Okay. I can work with this.
Her abductor wasn’t a three-hundred-pound, bearded monstrosity in dirt-encrusted overalls out to collect breeding specimens for his hill people. This girl was already a hundred notches up from Fiona’s worst-case-scenarios. She glanced up, straining her neck, attempting to see into the front cabin.
Unless this girl’s boyfriend is still in the truck.
She couldn’t see.
Surely this little girl hadn’t carried her off the Parasol Pictures lot alone?
She couldn’t recall the kidnapping. She remembered walking into her trailer, a blow to the back of her head, falling, thrashing—her vision darkened, the pain in her head unbearable—and then nothing.
Let’s try working from a position of strength.
Fiona cleared her throat.
“Turn around, you coward.”
The woman stopped folding the canvas and straightened.
“You cut me loose immediately. Do you have any idea who I am?”
The woman turned, and though Fiona thought she’d prepared herself for anything, she heard herself gasp.
Dark lines drew down from either side of the cowgirl’s mouth, mimicking the hinges of a ventriloquist dummy’s jaw. White half-circles beneath each eye created the illusion of a dummy’s googly eyes. Dark shadowing beneath the cheekbones and above the eyes, in combination with hair-thin brown lines made it appear as if she’d been carved from wood.
She wore a white shirt with frills at the throat, a brown vest with elaborate red stitching and a long turquoise skirt. Cowboy boots peeking out from the frills of her skirt completed the outfit.
Most worrisome, her clothing and face appeared smeared in dabs of blood.
Is that my blood?
“I know who you are, partner. You fired Jessie.”
Still stunned by the vision of her captor, it took Fiona a moment to respond.
“What?”
“You fired Jessie. You knew she was in a rough place and you fired her.”
Jessie. The makeup girl.
Fiona squinted.
It’s Jessie under that makeup.
“Jessie?”
“No, my name’s Cassidy. Cassidy Cowgirl. Jessie asked me to take care of you. Give you what you deserve.”
When the girl spoke, only her chin rose and fell, the rest of her face remained frozen like a doll’s. Her eyes rolled left and right, and up and down, but never at an angle. Jessie had clearly spent some time perfecting her Cassidy Cowgirl ventriloquist doll routine.
Fiona swallowed.
The girl’s lost her mind.
She’d known Jessie Walker was on the edge. She’d given her a little push to see what would happen...but the chaos her fun created wasn’t supposed to blow back on her.
“Who told you I fired…Jessie?”
“Miss Shelley.”
Fiona grit her teeth. Shelley. Stupid trash bitch. Talk about people she was going to have fired...
She shook her head as best she could with her cheek against the bed. “Shelly had it wrong. You know I love you. I love your work. I mean, look at your face now. You did that right? You’re amazing.”
Cassidy pulled what looked like a real six-shooter from a gun belt Fiona had somehow overlooked.
“Jessie don’t—”
The girl raised her hand and shot into the sky.
“My name isn’t Jessie! It’s Cassidy Cowgirl! And you’re a big fat liar!”
Jessie roared the last word, but it was the gun blast that made Fiona’s head throb anew. Her ears rang. She realized Jessie’s willingness to shoot into the open sky meant they were miles from anyon
e who might hear the explosion.
That didn’t bode well.
Don’t piss her off. If she wants to be Cassidy, go with it.
“Okay. Sorry. Cassidy. You don’t want to hurt me. I’ll get Jessie’s job back. Okay? Just let me go and I’ll call the studio right now and get your job back for you. I mean, her job.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, partner.”
“Look, just let me—”
“You’ve said it loud as a dinner bell, Miss Fiona. You don’t want to be pretty anymore.”
Fiona felt her stomach flip with a sudden rush of nerves. “What? Wait—”
Jessie collapsed at the waist like a marionette, straightening a moment later. She raised her hand, her fingers gripped around the handle of the largest knife Fiona had ever seen.
Fiona realized the girl must have pulled it from her boot.
This crazy bitch has weapons all over her body.
Cassidy Cowgirl’s head tilted and, grinning, she winked with exaggerated force.
“Ready, partner?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Catriona pulled out of Walker’s driveway. All the police had left but for one cruiser, and the driver of that car had insisted they leave before he did. She’d wanted to loiter around a bit longer, maybe take a run through the house again with Jessie Walker in mind instead of her father.
Her phone rang and Broch answered it for her.
“Aye, this is Catriona’s phone ye’ve reached.”
Catriona rolled her eyes.
“Aye...Aye...Och... Aye. Whit? Och...Aye...Ah’ll tell her. Aye.”
He hung up.
“Who was it?”
“’Twas Sean. He says Fiona’s been taken.”
“You didn’t tell him we think it’s Jessie we’re looking for and not her father?”
“He kens.”
“How?”
“Jessie attacked Sandy.”
“The roommate?”
“Aye. A neighbor found her and the lassie tellt the police Jessie harmed her.”
Catriona nodded. Sean’s never-ending network of police contacts had come through again. “That confirms what we suspected. How does he know Fiona was taken?”
“Her trailer wis mussed and there wis blood—”
“What do you mean her trailer?”
“She wirks fer Parasol noo.”
“What?” Catriona worried her screeching voice might crack the windshield. “How is that possible?”
“She’s...” he trailed off. Catriona glanced at him.
“Are you trying to remember a word?”
“Aye. Datin’.”
“She’s dating someone? Who?”
“Aaron?”
“Aaron?”
Catriona dropped her forehead to her steering wheel, happy that the desert roads were straight and devoid of traffic, because she feared she’d lost the strength to lift her head.
“It isn’t bad enough she’s looking over us like some twisted god—now she’s queen of the studio?”
“Whit dae ye mean, keekin’ o’er us?”
Catriona flicked her wrist in the air, pointing to a building she could only see in her memory. “She bought an apartment in that big white building behind the studio. She can see in our windows from there if she wants to.”
Broch frowned. “Och.”
“Och is right. I think she inspired some guy to try and murder his family to get it, too.”
“Whit?”
“I think I’ve pieced together what she does. What she is. You know how Sean said we’ve all got some need to help people?”
“Aye.”
“She causes pain and chaos. She nurtures the wicked in people. Inspires them to do bad things.”
“And nae she works fae oor studio.”
“Exactly. That can’t be good. And our studio president is sleeping with her. She’s ruining our lives just being near us. Aaron’s in real trouble. God knows what happens to you when you put your—” She cut short. “You get the idea.”
In the distance Catriona saw the crumbling Ferris wheel of Okie-Dokie Corral rising into the dimming light of day and tried to remember how long it had taken them to reach that point on the way to Walker’s house. The math made her groan. They were still hours away from home.
She pressed on the gas pedal. As much as Fiona’s presence disrupted their lives, she couldn’t wish her own sister dead. She needed to help find her, even if it was only to kick her smirky ass.
As they passed the Okie-Dokie she noticed a faded blue pickup truck parked outside the gates. Her foot released from the gas and they began to slow.
“Whit’s wrong?” asked Broch.
Catriona eased to the side of the road.
“Did you see the truck outside that old amusement park?”
He hooked a thumb toward the passenger window. “Na. Ah wis keekin’ oot ’ere at this tairrible land.”
Catriona ran through her memories of the photos they’d found at Walker’s house until she located the image of Jessie leaning on the back of a truck, a tufted piece of grass hanging from her teeth. The truck was blue, a bit brighter than the old one she’d seen parked at the gates, but very similar. She could see the license plate—A86K4R.
“Jessie’s car was left at her father’s but she wasn’t there. She must have taken his truck when she left.”
“The yin ye saw back there?”
“I’m thinking it might be. I have to check.”
She made a U-turn and rolled back to park beside the blue Chevrolet.
A86K4R.
“It’s Walker’s truck. She’s here.”
Catriona tucked her gun into her hip holster and jumped out of the Jeep. She jogged to peer into the back of Walker’s truck while Broch inspected the cabin. A pile of canvas and a blanket were the only things in the open bed. She pulled on the canvas and spotted a hunk of cut rope and a splotch of what looked like blood.
“She could have stashed Fiona back here.”
Broch shut the driver’s side door. “There’s nae sign of Fiona in ’ere.”
Catriona pulled out her phone. “First we call the cops and then we tell Sean to check Parasol’s tapes for a blue Chevy—dammit!”
No bars.
Once again, her phone had no service.
“Stupid desert!”
She made as if to throw her phone, thought better of it, and instead shoved it back into her pocket for a timeout.
She turned, and spotted a hole in the fence where someone had snipped the wires.
She motioned to the tear. “We’re on our own. You think you can get through there?”
Broch strode to the fence and bent back the cut flap as if the thick wire was made of spaghetti.
Catriona felt that embarrassing flush of giddy she suffered whenever manly men did manly things. “That’s a neat trick. You’ll have to teach me,” she said, hoping humor would distract him from her scarlet cheeks.
He rolled his eyes. “Aye. Ye gae first.”
Catriona scrambled through and Broch followed, easing his bulky frame through with care to avoid catching his flesh on the exposed wire.
Brushing off her hands, Catriona scanned the crumbling park. A cartoon pig with peeling paint and a missing eye leered at her, pointing her towards the shuttered ticket booth.
“I’ve had nightmares like this place,” she mumbled.
“Ye gae left and ah gae right?” suggested Broch.
Catriona shook her head. “There were pictures of Jessie and her father at a place like this. It makes sense she’d consider it a safe spot if they performed here. We need to find the stage she used to—”
A scream echoed through the park and the two of them froze.
Catriona felt the hair on her neck stand at attention. The scream hadn’t been the shriek of a thrill-seeker on a plunging rollercoaster. It wasn’t even the soundtrack of a woman afraid of her captor.
Someone was in pain.
Chapter Th
irty
Catriona and Broch sprinted toward the sound of the scream. The deserted park proved shallow. Rounding a ride called the Bucking Bronco, which looked more like a Creeping Spider, they stopped, each flinging out an arm to halt the other.
Two women occupied the stage of a crumbling amphitheater. Though the red paint had faded to a light pink, Catriona recognized the stage as the backdrop of some of the photos they’d seen in Walker’s house. Cowboy Walker and Cassidy Cowgirl had entertained on that stage long ago.
An unwilling participant in today’s performance, Fiona Duffy sat bound to a simple wooden chair. Another woman in a bright turquoise ruffle-bottomed skirt stood over her. The white shirt beneath a leather vest, the long hair, the cowboy hat—Catriona knew they’d found Jessie Walker.
A.K.A. Cassidy Cowgirl.
Metal flashed in the cowgirl’s hand as she shifted, revealing the river of blood sheeting down Fiona’s chin and neck. The blood-curdling scream they’d heard had been Fiona’s. Jessie had cut her, somewhere near her mouth.
“Get away from me!” Fiona’s body jerked as she kicked against the rope binding her feet to the chair, the words escaping in staccato bursts between racking sobs.
Undeterred, Jessie moved in, knife raising to Fiona face as the actress’s head thrashed, neck twisting to withdraw her flesh from Jessie’s blade.
Catriona ran down the aisle of the amphitheater, raising her hands to her mouth to create a makeshift megaphone.
“Hey!”
Jessie’s head snapped in her direction. She placed her large hunting knife against Fiona’s throat and Catriona caught herself on a rusted audience chair to stop her momentum. Without turning her head, she shifted her eyes left and right, searching for her partner. Broch hadn’t followed her down the aisle.
The irony wasn’t lost on her.
Catriona resisted the urge to turn her head and look for him, unwilling to alert Jessie to the presence of another person in the park. If they had any advantage of surprise, they needed to keep it.
She held up her hands to demonstrate she had no weapon. Her gun felt too far away, tucked in the back of her jeans.
Catriona swallowed.
I can do this.
She’d talked enough of the studio’s assets off ledges, both real and metaphorical, she felt she should be able to handle one troubled cowgirl.
