Cut Throat

At this writing, it is almost the end of 2006, and my mother, at age eighty-six, is still with me. We are together again, under one roof as we first began, only the roles have been reversed.

Today I care for her, and I can say with wholehearted honesty that it is my blessing to be able to do so.

She taught me everything I know in this life that is good and right. She is always behind me, backing up my decisions, comforting me as I meet each test life dumps at my feet.

I am one of the blessed ones, and I know it.

I never had a moment of doubt in my life that she didn’t love me, or that she would somehow let me down.

It is through her faith that I have grown to be the woman I am today—a woman centered in life, a woman confident that, no matter what, I will survive what life gives me and, in the end, overcome.

It is with great honor that I dedicate this book about strong women to the strongest woman in my life—my mother, my friend.

To Iris Shero Smith.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Prologue

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

Gunfire echoed through the empty rooms of the abandoned house, making it seem as if a dozen shooters were involved, not just the two men who were exchanging fire in what had once been a luxurious den.

Suddenly a bullet slammed through an old, rusty barrel near the brick wall of the fireplace, igniting the few inches of gas still inside. Bounty hunter Wilson McKay saw the flash of ignition a second before the room went up in flames. He was on his feet and running when the blast from the explosion threw him out the door and onto his knees. He got up quickly and kept on running.

Solomon Tutuola was already ducking for cover when the room exploded. The force of the explosion threw him through a pair of windows at the south end of the house and out onto the ground.

One moment he and Mark Presley had been in a run-and-gun fight with some tall, spiky-haired guy with an earring in his ear, and the next thing he knew, the house in which they had been hiding went up in smoke.

For a few seconds Tutuola lay faceup outside, staring into the sun, all but immobile from the force of the blast. He drew a shallow breath, then another and another. Suddenly a white-hot shaft of searing pain brought him to a sitting position as shock subsided and agony took its place. Groaning and shaking from the shock waves, he rolled over onto his hands and knees, and began crawling away from the burning house, dodging fiery debris, convinced that the skin was melting off his face. He passed out about a hundred yards from the house, unaware that Mark Presley, the man he’d chauffeured into Mexico, had been captured and the two bounty hunters who’d come after him were long gone.

When Solomon came to, hours later, it was late afternoon and he was in more misery than he’d ever felt in his life. He heard the soft sounds of a four-legged animal trotting around his head, then his feet. He opened his eyes, horrified to find a coyote nosing at his heels, while a trio of buzzards circled overhead.

The roar that came out of his throat sent the coyote packing. Solomon staggered to his feet, then turned around, staring first at the smoldering embers of the hacienda, then down at his hands. Blisters had formed on the burns, then burst, mixing with the dirt on which he’d been lying. His entire body was shaking from the intensity of his pain. It wasn’t until he tried to blink that he realized he couldn’t see out of his left eye, and when he lifted his fingers to that side of his face, he screamed.

“Son of a bitch!”

The flesh that came away at his touch was blackened and bloody, and there was a part of his head that was completely devoid of hair. As best he could tell, the entire left side of his face and head had been seriously burned. He needed to get to a doctor, and fast. If he didn’t die from the pain, he was damn sure going to die from infection.

Cursing and screaming with every step he took, Solomon made it to his car. The keys were still in the ignition, and Mark Presley’s luggage—a large duffle bag and a wheeled overnighter—was still on the backseat.

Without wasting time wondering what had happened to Mark, he started the car and headed for Nuevo Laredo.

By nightfall, he was in the hospital, under sedation. The bags were locked in the trunk of his car. His car keys were in his burned pants, hanging in the tiny closet with what was left of the shirt he’d been wearing. Every few minutes, a nurse came into his room, checked the saline solution laced with morphine being pumped into his body, making sure that he wasn’t losing more fluids than were being replaced. For all intents and purposes, Solomon Tutuola was teetering on the verge of death.

One

Six weeks later: Dallas, Texas

The faint cry of her neighbor’s new baby was barely audible from where bounty hunter Cat Dupree was sitting in her apartment, and yet, for some reason, it was all she could hear. She’d blocked out the thunder of her own heartbeat and was ignoring the sick, helpless feeling that had taken root in the pit of her stomach. Her entire focus was on the wanted posters plastered over the walls of her office—that and the baby’s continuous wail.

Her laptop was sitting on top of a file cabinet by the door. The GPS program that was running showed a map of Mexico and a blip that, for the past thirty-six hours, had continued to move steadily westward. It was her worst nightmare come to life, yet she chose to ignore it for the faces on the wanted posters.

After all these years, the faces were as familiar to her as her own, and yet none of them matched the face of the man who, since childhood, had haunted her dreams. The man who had killed her father and left a six-inch scar along the base of her throat. The same man she’d seen only a few weeks ago and had been certain—so certain—was finally dead. She glanced back at the laptop and winced. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Wind rattled the windowpanes behind her, signaling the oncoming storm heading for Dallas. Rain was imminent, but the temperature was in the high thirties, which meant no accompanying ice or snow. After the ice storm they’d endured during Christmas, a simple rainstorm was welcome news. As the wind gusted again, she shivered, then folded her arms across her chest and hunched her shoulders, thankful for the central heating in her apartment. As she did, her focus shifted to the wanted poster tacked above the doorway.

The poster of Justin “Mad Dog” Bailey was the first she’d hung more than fifteen years ago. He’d been singled out as worthy of posting for the simple fact that he had tattoos all over his face and body, one of the identifying features of her father’s killer. She’d known immediately that he wasn’t the man she was looking for, but she’d had to start somewhere, so she’d tacked him up. She tunneled her fingers through her hair. Her head ached, and the muscles in her neck and back were miserably tight, but that was of no importance to her. It was revenge that had driven her to where she was in life, and it was revenge she needed. Her gaze slid to the next poster.

Edward John Forrest. Edward was too young to have committed the attack on her family, but she’d felt compelled to hang his booking photos anyway, and so it had begun. Over the years, she’d acquired an impressive collection.

As she stood, she realized the neighbor’s baby had quit crying. Either someone had poked a bottle in its mouth, or it had finally given up and fallen asleep. The silence was oddly uncomfortable. Now there was nothing to sidetrack her awareness of that damned laptop and the map on its screen.

Frustrated by her lack of willpower, Cat glanced up again, squinting slightly as the light glared on the monitor, blurring the geography through which the blip continued to move. Even though she couldn’t see it clearly, she knew it well.

It was Mexico—the place where she’d run her best friend’s killer to ground.

She glanced back at the wanted posters all over her office walls. After Mexico, they were redundant, because there she’d come face-to-face with not only the man who’d killed her friend Marsha, but the tattooed man she’d spent half her life looking for. His name was Solomon Tutuola, and while, for the third time in her life, she had unexpectedly lived to see another day, she had been under the assumption that Tutuola had not. Then this damned blip had resurfaced, taunting her with the possibility that her assumption had been wrong.

Feeling defeated, she moved slowly toward the doorway, then paused under Mad Dog’s poster and reached up. The paper crackled as she slipped a fingernail beneath the edge. For some reason she hesitated, discovering it was more difficult to remove than it had been to put up.

Finally she pulled it down and dropped it into the trash, then reached for another one. One by one, she pulled them down, until the walls were completely bare and the trash can was full to overflowing. She emptied it, then began dumping the stacks of posters on the floor into another bag.

Almost an hour passed before the task was finished, and then she finally allowed herself another look at the laptop. The blip was motionless. Whoever was carrying the bugged property that was showing hot on the laptop had stopped for the night.

She grimaced. The bastard was getting more rest than she was. Frustrated, she looked back at the filled trash bags littering the floor and sighed. Those images had been such a part of her life, it seemed strange that she didn’t need them anymore.

Last month she’d finally put a name to the face of the man who’d killed her father.

Last month she’d watched the house he’d been in blow up and then burn.

Last month she’d been certain he was dead.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

The motionless blip was like a taunt—a “come and find me if you can” dare that she couldn’t ignore.

Cat sighed. It was time to see if the devil was dead, or if—as she feared—he’d resurrected himself. But before she absented herself from Dallas again, she had to tell her boss, Art Ball. Just because she had an agenda, that didn’t mean he could put his bail-bond business on hold for her. There would always be bail jumpers to find. She just wasn’t going to be the one doing it for him—at least not for a while.

And then there was Wilson McKay. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about him. She refused to admit that he deserved any kind of explanation of what she was up to. Just because they’d had sex—unbelievable sex—didn’t mean she owed him anything. And just because he’d helped her bring in Mark Presley, the man who’d killed Marsha Benton, that didn’t mean she had to keep him updated on the rest of her life.

Part of her wanted to blame Wilson for this uncertainty. When the house where Presley and Tutuola had been hiding out down in Mexico caught on fire, she’d captured Presley, then wanted to go back to make sure Tutuola was dead.

But Wilson had stopped her.

The fact that she would most likely have died if she’d gone back into the burning house was beside the point. When she was being honest with herself, she knew there was no one to blame. But she couldn’t live with herself until she knew for sure if her father’s killer had survived.

Tomorrow she would call Art and then head south to the border. She had to know who was behind that blip. If it was some Mexican local who’d come across some of Mark Presley’s bugged property, then so be it. But if it was Tutuola, then her job still wasn’t done. As much as she dreaded another long road trip, she was satisfied with her decision. Within moments, Cat walked out of her office and headed for her bedroom to pack.

It had been almost a week since Wilson McKay had seen Cat. When he was rational, he told himself to just let her go. It was obvious she didn’t want anything from him except the occasional round of sex. He should have been happy to just take what she gave out with a thank you and a pat on her butt. Any other woman and he would have. But not her. She’d gotten under his skin in a way no other woman had done and, despite everything he believed in and every instinct he had that told him to let her go, he just couldn’t—which explained why he was on his way to her apartment unannounced, with a pizza and a six-pack of beer.

Traffic was heavy on the bypass, but nothing out of the ordinary for Dallas on a rainy Saturday night. The smell of pepperoni wafted under Wilson’s nose as he took the exit leading to Cat’s apartment building, while the constant sweep of windshield wipers kept the view clear. His radio was tuned to a country station—its style matched his mood and the dark and stormy weather. He needed a Cat fix—at the least, a long session of kissing and cuddling, at the most, a long night with the wildcat in his arms. Just the thought of how it felt to bury himself deep inside her made him ache with want. She was a handful between the sheets, always giving back as good as she got. He had yet to understand how a woman with that much passion in bed managed to stay so cold and distant from everyone she knew. He suspected it had to do with all she’d endured at such a young age, and because of that, he just wasn’t willing to give up on her—yet.

The glow of headlights from the heavy flow of traffic was refracted by the rain, while the constant swish of wipers gave the night streets a garish appearance. Wilson thought of the comfort waiting for him inside Cat’s cozy apartment and refused to consider the fact that her welcome might not be as warm.

When he pulled into the parking lot and circled her building in search of a space, he couldn’t help but notice that the lights were on in her apartment. Now it came down to the crunch. She was home, but would she welcome him in or send him packing with a sharp word and a glare from her cold, blue eyes?

He parked, grabbed the pizza and beer, and headed for the door. He would know soon enough how warm his welcome would be.

Cat was on her hands and knees in the back of her closet, searching for the matching boot to the one already sitting next to her suitcase, when she thought she heard the doorbell ring. Frowning, she rocked back on her heels and listened again.

There!

This time she heard the chimes clearly and frowned.

“Who in the—”

Wilson.

She knew without a doubt that it was Wilson McKay. He was the only person who visited her and the only one she knew who would come without calling. Probably because he figured she wouldn’t answer the door if she knew he was coming, and she almost didn’t answer it now. Despite her instincts telling her to leave him standing there, she headed for the living room, hating herself for the spurt of excitement she was feeling. She didn’t really have time for this, but ignoring him might raise more suspicion than if she just let him in and got it over with. At least, that was what she was telling herself as she reached the front door. A quick peek through the peephole was all she needed to see that her guess had been right. It was Wilson—and to her disgust, the sight of him made her pulse skip.

“Hey,” she said, as she opened the door.

Wilson breathed a sigh of relief. She was in a good mood.

“Hey, yourself,” he said, and before she could dodge him, he leaned in and kissed her square on the mouth.

Her eyes were flashing as he pulled back. He couldn’t tell if she was pissed or enjoying the passion he’d put in the kiss.

“Have you eaten?” he asked, offering the pizza.

Cat inhaled deeply, surprised by the hunger pangs she was feeling.

“No, and for that reason only, you can come in,” she said, then lifted the pizza box from his hands and headed to the kitchen, knowing he would follow.

“I should have called,” Wilson said, as he set the six-pack of beer on the kitchen counter.

Cat set the pizza box down and turned to face him.

“Why didn’t you?”

He shrugged. Truth had served him well thus far in life. He figured he might as well continue the process.

“I figured you would tell me no.”

Cat frowned. She hadn’t expected his honesty. Now she had no choice but to respond in kind.

“You would have been right,” she said.

Despite a stab of regret, he grinned and shrugged.

“So I saved us both some guilt and anxiety. Do you want your beer in a glass or straight from the can?”

Cat thought of the trip she was about to make and decided against anything alcoholic. Without answering, she handed him a glass, then filled one for herself with ice and Pepsi and laid out two plates.

Wilson reached for the roll of paper towels. He tore off a couple of sheets to use as napkins and then got a shaker of red-pepper flakes from the cabinet where she kept her spices.

Cat was torn between admiring his good looks and being a bit intrigued with the tiny gold hoop earring he wore in his left ear. As usual, his hair was a style in progress. He wore it in a buzz cut that always seemed to be a week past needing a trim. There was a small scar beneath his right eye and enough of a bump on his nose to know it had been broken more than once. His shoulders were broad, his legs long and muscular, his belly hard and flat.

Cat was well aware of how fit he was beneath the denim and leather, and was thinking of what would come later—after pizza and beer. She wouldn’t lie to herself and pretend she didn’t want him, because she did. They would have sex. Wilson McKay was damn good at it, and she wasn’t a fool. No sane, single, red-blooded woman would turn down a roll in the hay with someone who exuded sex appeal like Wilson McKay. But the moment she thought of having sex with him, she remembered the half-filled suitcase and the chaos in her bedroom.

Shit.

“Uh…Wilson…go ahead and sit down. I’ll be right back.”

She flew out of the kitchen and down the hall without looking back. When she got to her bedroom, she stuffed things back in drawers, tossed others in the bottom of her closet and shoved the half-filled suitcase under her bed. She gave the bedspread a couple of brief yanks to smooth out the wrinkles and then went back to the kitchen.

Wilson was standing right where she’d left him with a curious expression on his face.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Who? Me? Yes…I’m fine,” she muttered, and then pasted a big smile on her face, grabbed a piece of pizza from the box and took a big bite. “Yum.”

Wilson arched an eyebrow.

“Yum?”

“Have some,” she said, and pointed to the box.

Wilson knew something was going on, but it was obvious she wasn’t going to talk about it. Finally he stifled his curiosity and sat down, picked up a piece of pizza and took a bite. He chewed, then swallowed.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said, and toasted her with the slice. “Yum back at’cha,” he said as he took another bite.

Cat grinned in spite of herself. When Wilson McKay wanted to, he could be intriguing—even endearing. Still, there were rules in her world he kept trying to break.

They finished the pizza without serious conversation, but when they began cleaning up, Wilson excused himself briefly to go to the bathroom. It wasn’t until he was coming back down the hallway that he happened to glance into her office and saw the bare walls.

Shocked, he stopped, then stepped inside.

He’d seen the office as it had been before, the walls papered with wanted posters. Now there was nothing left but nude walls peppered with pinholes, and he knew what that meant. Through an odd stroke of fate, in running down her best friend’s killer, she’d found another, as well. He thought of the walls Cat Dupree kept up between her and the world, and wondered how much thinner they were tonight with the absence of those posters.

The banging of a cabinet door reminded him where he was, and he knew that Cat would view his curiosity as meddling. He slipped out of her office as quickly as he’d entered.

“Did I stay gone long enough to avoid doing dishes?” he asked, as he sauntered back into the kitchen.

Cat arched an eyebrow. “Yes.”

“Good,” he said, and slipped a hand around her waist and pulled her close.

As their bodies connected, Cat sighed.

Now it began.

She turned until they were facing each other. “I suppose you think we’re going to have sex.”

Wilson’s eyebrow arched as a muscle suddenly jerked near the right corner of his mouth.

“I don’t have sex with you.”

Cat’s eyes narrowed sharply. “Damn it, Wilson, don’t play word games about—”

He put a finger on her lips. “I make love to you, Catherine.”

She slapped his hand away. “While I, on the other hand, have sex.”

“Semantics,” he muttered, then fisted his hand in her hair and pulled gently, tilting her lips to his mouth.

She felt his anger as she slid her arms around his neck; then the kiss deepened, and his anger morphed into lust. That, she could follow.

A low moan slipped up her throat, but when it emerged, it sounded more like a growl.

“Damn you,” Wilson whispered, and cupped her backside. “Grab hold, or I swear to God that the sex you have with me is going to happen right where we’re standing, with your pants down around your ankles.”

Cat jumped, wrapped her legs around his waist and slammed her mouth against his. She moaned again, but this time because she tasted blood—her own.

Wilson pivoted with her held tight in his arms and strode down the hallway to her bedroom.

“You make me crazy,” he muttered, as he dropped her flat on her bed.

“Shut up and take off your clothes,” Cat said, as she sat up and began undressing.

Wilson’s eyes narrowed angrily. First she didn’t want him here, and now he wasn’t getting to her fast enough? If he had a functioning brain, he would turn around and leave her naked and wanting. But the thought left his mind as she sat up, pulled her sweater up over her head and tossed it on the floor.

He grunted. To hell with pride and dignity.

Within seconds, his clothes were in a pile on the floor and he was standing at the side of the bed.

Cat rolled over onto her hands and knees and crawled over to him, then rose up and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Wilson tunneled his fingers through her hair, then put his arms around her.

“Witch,” he said roughly.

Cat sighed. She loved the feel of him—the hard muscles beneath smooth, warm skin—and she loved the way he made her feel. But she wasn’t going to admit—ever—that she loved the man himself. She locked her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled until she fell backward, pinned to the mattress beneath the weight of his body. At that point she wrapped her legs around his waist again, and this time, she held on.

“So I’m a witch now?”

“Hell, yes,” Wilson said, as he stared down at her, ever conscious of what awaited him in her bed.

“Then…hocus-pocus, Wilson. Time to disappear.”

He grabbed both her wrists, pinned her arms above her head, then thrust into her without warning, taking satisfaction in the shock, then desire, he saw on her face.

“No more you. No more me. Just us. How’s that for a little magic?”