Lady Killer
Kathleen Creighton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

About The Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Epilogue

Copyright

Kathleen Creighton has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old timers’ tales and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything – art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing and now combines her two loves in romance novels.

For Tom and Deb, Bob and Melodie whose acceptance and love enrich my life beyond measure.

Prologue

In a house on the shores of a small lake somewhere in South Carolina…

“Pounding—that’s always the first thing. Someone—my father—is banging on the door. Banging…pounding…with his fists, feet, I don’t know. Trying to break it down.”

“And…where are you?”

“I’m in a bedroom, I think. I don’t remember which one. I have the little ones with me. It’s my job to look after them when my father is having one of his…spells. I have to keep them out of his way. Keep them safe. I’ve taken them into the bedroom, and I’ve locked the door, except…I don’t trust the lock, so I’ve wedged a chair under the handle, like my mom showed me. Only…now I’m afraid…terrified even that won’t be enough. I can hear the wood splintering…breaking. I know it will only take a few more blows and he’ll be through. My mother is screaming…crying. I hold on to the little ones…I have my arms around them, and they’re all trembling. The twins, the little girls, are sobbing and crying, ‘Mama, Mama…’ but the boys just cry quietly.

“I hear sirens…more sirens, getting louder and louder, until it seems they’re coming right into the room, and there’s lots of people shouting…and all of a sudden the pounding stops. There’s a moment…several minutes…when all I hear is the little ones whimpering…and then there’s a loud bang, so loud we—the children and I—all jump. We hold each other tighter, and there’s another bang, and we flinch again, and then there’s just confusion…voices shouting…footsteps running…glass breaking…the little ones crying…and I think I might be crying, too.…”

He discovered he was crying, but he also knew it was all right. He was all right. Sam, his wife, was holding him tightly, cradling his head against her breasts, and her hands were gentle as they wiped the tears from his face.

“I’m going to find them, Sam. My brothers and sisters. I have to find them.”

Samantha felt warm moisture seep between her lashes. “Of course, you do.” She lifted her head and took her husband’s face between her hands and smiled fiercely at him through her tears. “We’ll find them together, Pearse,” she whispered. “We’ll find them. I promise you we will.”

Chapter 1

The black SUV was parked just off the main road on the rocky dirt track that ran around the back side of Brooke’s twenty-five acres. Not far enough off the road to be hidden by the live oaks that grew thickly there, so she couldn’t help but see it as she slowed for her driveway a hundred yards farther on. She didn’t need to see the license plate to know who the SUV belonged to, and the knowledge sent a shock wave of fury through her. There could be only one reason for that car being parked where it was.

Duncan was spying on her.

The cold, clutching feeling in her stomach was one she’d come to know well in the months since Duncan had filed for custody of Daniel. Although the divorce had been no picnic, she’d never been afraid, not then. Only relieved. But that had been before she’d had to consider the unthinkable: the possibility that she could lose Daniel.

I can’t lose Daniel. Duncan Grant is not taking my son.

She wouldn’t have thought such a thing could happen, never in a million years. She was a good mother. She owned her own ranch—twenty-five acres’ worth, tiny by Texas standards, but at least it was paid for—and thanks to the untimely death of her parents in a freeway pileup two years ago, she was also independently well-off. But this was still a good ol’ boy’s county, and Duncan being a deputy sheriff, he had powerful allies. And now, thanks to that idiot at the feed store who’d lost her order, Duncan might actually have that ammunition he’d been looking for in his battle to win custody of their son.

Because of the delay at the feed store, she was late getting home. Daniel would have been home alone for at least an hour, and although Brooke knew he was an exceptionally responsible child and quite capable of taking care of himself for that period of time, she feared a judge would consider only the fact that he was nine years old and disregard any mitigating circumstances.

Damn Duncan, anyway. How could he have managed to show up unannounced on the one day it mattered? He wasn’t due to have Daniel until next weekend. How had he known? Unless—her stomach clenched again—unless one of his buddies had happened to see her truck in town and had reported it to him. It was the kind of thing Duncan would do, set his network of good ol’ boys to spying on her for him.

Then she thought, Oh, Brooke, you’re being paranoid.

But the thought came creeping back: why else would he be here, lurking on the back lane?

All that rocketed through her mind in a matter of seconds while she closed the distance between the lane and her mailbox, and her heart was tripping along faster than it ought to and the coldness was sitting in her belly as she turned into her driveway. The coldness spread all through her as she drove past the live oaks that surrounded her house and the accompanying assortment of outbuildings and animal enclosures that qualified the property as a ranch.

Where in the world is Hilda? And Daniel?

Normally, the Great Pyrenees—Duncan had given the huge dog, then only an adorable fur ball, to Daniel on his fifth birthday—would come bounding out to meet her, giddy with joy at her return, with Daniel not far behind. But the lane remained empty, and there was still no sign of either child or shaggy white-and-fawn dog as Brooke circled the house and drove across the yard to the barn and the feed storage shed next to it. The place seemed deserted.

That is, until she turned off the motor and opened the door. Then the noise hit her. Hilda’s frantic barking. And something else. Something that made the hair prickle on the back of her neck: the unmistakable scream of an angry cougar.

Whispering—whimpering—“OhGodohGodohGod, please, God…no…” under her breath, Brooke tumbled out of the pickup and raced through the open middle of the barn. Out the back and down the lane between the animal pens she ran, not even aware of her feet touching the ground. The cougar’s screaming and Hilda’s barking grew louder as she ran, filling her head, filling her with a fear so terrible, she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, could barely even see.

What she did see, as if through the wrong end of a telescope, was Hilda, lunging frantically at the gate to the wire-enclosed compound far down at the end of the lane and barking with frustration at her inability to get past the high chain-link barricade. Brooke felt a momentary surge of relief, followed by an even more desperate fear.

Lady—thank God! She’s not loose, after all! But—oh, God—where is Daniel? Oh, my God—Daniel!

Her son was nowhere in sight, but for Hilda to be so upset, he had to be here. Which could only mean one thing. He was inside the cougar’s compound.

But why? Although she and Daniel had raised the cougar together from a tiny kitten, the boy knew very well Lady wasn’t a pet, that she was a wild predator and could never be trusted. Daniel would never go into her cage. Not alone. He just wouldn’t.

But he had. She could hear him now, his voice quavering and breathless one moment, firm and commanding the next. And he sounds so very, very young.

Shouting, sobbing “No—no, Lady—back. Lady—back!”

Sobbing herself now, Brooke reached the cougar’s enclosure, and gripping the wire with both hands, she stared in disbelief at the scene beyond the fence. Daniel, with his back to her, her child, holding a rake aloft like a battle sword and a folded saddle blanket over his other arm like a shield, facing down a full-grown mountain lion. And the lion, teeth bared, screaming and snarling in fury as she backed slowly toward the door to her holding cage, pausing now to swipe at the air with her claws.

“Daniel!” His name felt ripped from her throat by forces outside herself.

He didn’t turn, but she heard his breathless “I’m okay, Mom.”

At that moment the cougar, for whatever reason—perhaps returned to sanity from whatever terrible place she’d been by the voice of the only mother she’d ever known?—gave one last huffing growl, turned and sprang through the door and into her cage. Daniel scrambled after her to throw the bar across the door. By that time Brooke had opened the gate to the compound and was there to catch him when he turned, sobbing, into her arms.

But he’d only let himself stay there a moment, of course, being all too mindful of the fact that he was the man in their household now. For the space of a couple of deep, shuddering breaths, he gripped her tightly, arms wrapped around her waist, and allowed her to smooth his sweat-soaked hair with her own shaking hands. Then he let go, stepped back and wiped his face with a quick swipe of a forearm, leaving a smear of mud across one hot red cheek.

“She didn’t mean to, Mom. I know she didn’t mean to.” His words came rapidly, choked and breathless with his efforts to hold the tears at bay.

“Daniel, honey, what—” She reached for him, but he took another step back, eluding her, and shook his head with a heartbreaking desperation.

“She didn’t mean to hurt him. I know she didn’t.”

“Honey, hurt who? What are you—”

“It’s Dad.” He grew still, with a calm that was somehow more frightening than the tears. He drew a deep breath and brushed once more at his damp cheeks. “I think he’s dead, Mom.” His eyes moved, looking past her.

Biting back another question, Brooke instead jerked herself around to follow his gaze and saw what she hadn’t before, when her entire focus had been on her son and the cougar. Saw what looked like a pile of tumbled rags lying a little farther along the base of the chain-link fence.

She stared at it, shock numbing her mind, paralyzing her body, so that for a moment she didn’t register what she was seeing. Then she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Couldn’t let herself believe. The unthinkable.

Not rags, but clothing. A man’s clothing—jeans and a tan-colored shirt. With blood on them. Scuffed cowboy boots turned at an odd angle. And a brown Stetson, the kind the sheriff’s deputies wore. She knew that Stetson. She knew those boots.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, unable to move, unable to think. Then Daniel moved, started toward the body—for that’s what it undeniably was—on the ground, and she reached out and grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back. “No, no, honey. Don’t—” Her voice broke.

“But what if he needs help? What if he’s—”

Brooke just shook her head. She simply couldn’t make any more words come out of her mouth.

Then, from far off in the distance, she heard sirens.

Daniel heard them, too, and caught a quick breath, his face seeming to brighten with hope. “I called nine-one-one. I bet that’s them. Maybe it’s the paramedics. They’ll help him, won’t they, Mom?”

Hearing the anguish in her son’s voice, seeing the entreaty in his dark blue eyes, Brooke felt a measure of calm come to take the place of the shock that had kept her frozen and numb. She took her son by his shoulders—small shoulders, a child’s shoulders, too small to bear such a burden—and held him tightly and with a terrible urgency so that he had to look at her. “Daniel, quick, before they get here, tell me what happened. How did this happen? How did he—”

“I don’t know, Mom.” His eyes grew bright, almost glassy, whether with shock or more tears, Brooke didn’t know. “I got home from school and you weren’t here, so I came in the house and got an ice-cream sandwich out of the freezer, because I was hungry. And then I heard Hilda barking. And she kept barking and barking. And I thought maybe something was wrong, and you weren’t here, so I went out to see, and I brought the cell phone, like you told me.”

The sirens were louder now, coming along the road, almost to the driveway. She gave Daniel’s shoulders another shake. “Yes, yes, and…”

“And I saw Dad lying there, inside Lady’s pen. I don’t know how he got in there, Mom, I swear. I didn’t leave the gate unlocked.”

“Never mind that now. And Lady?”

“She was there, too, sort of crouched down beside %h; him. She had blood on her—you know, on her paws and stuff. When she saw me, she started snarling and screaming. I never saw her like that before, Mom. I didn’t know what to do, so I called nine-one-one. Then I thought maybe he was—maybe Dad was…you know, still alive. So that’s when I got the rake and started making her get away from him. She didn’t try to attack me or anything, Mom, I swear. It was like she was just really upset. I know she didn’t mean to hurt Dad. She wouldn’t.”

The last words were shouted above the noise of the sirens, which had risen to a deafening crescendo before dying away to a series of wails as the emergency vehicles—several, by the sound of them—pulled one after another into the yard.

Brooke gripped Daniel’s shoulders harder. “Listen, don’t say anything. I’ll handle this. Let me handle it, okay?”

Daniel sniffed and nodded, but his eyes were filled with fear, probably the same fear that was in Brooke’s heart. He put both their fears into words, in a very small voice. “They aren’t going to kill her, are they? You won’t let them kill her.” They both knew what happened to animals who turned on their human keepers.

She shook her head and clamped her teeth together, tightening her jaws as she turned to face the fire department paramedics who were just coming through the barn, coming at a rapid jog-trot.

“In here! He’s in here.”

She opened the gate and held it as the EMTs—a young man she didn’t know and a woman she knew from church, a heavyset Hispanic girl named Rosie—brushed past her. As she watched them kneel beside the body and immediately check for a pulse, Brooke reached for Daniel and pulled him against her, held him snug against her front, with her arms crisscrossing his chest. She could feel him trembling and realized she was, too.

Then time seemed to slow, and it seemed a very long time passed while she watched the two EMTs bending over the body of the man she’d once loved, once shared a bed with, still shared a child with…watched them calmly and methodically going about their business, all of them knowing it was pointless but going through with it, anyway. That strange and dreamlike feeling persisted until she heard heavy footsteps and half-turned and took a step back to make room for the sheriff’s deputies who were just arriving, and her heart sank when she saw one of them was Duncan’s partner, Lonnie Doyle.

Of course, it would be Lonnie. This was going to hit him hard.

“Dunk? Ah, no—ah, jeez! Ah, hell—”

Lonnie had barreled past her and gotten close enough to what was lying on the ground being worked on by the EMTs to see who it was, and that whatever the medics were doing, it wasn’t going to be enough. She’d unconsciously braced herself but winced anyway when he jerked to a halt, then whirled on her, his fleshy face red with rage.

“What the hell did you do? How did this happen? It was that damned cat, wasn’t it? That cat killed him—killed my partner!” His hand was at his waist, gripping the handle of his weapon. “Hell, I’m gonna take care of this right now! Right here!”

“No—it wasn’t—” Brooke began in a desperate gasp as Daniel uttered a wounded cry and tore himself away from her, hurled himself at the cougar’s cage and spread-eagled himself across the door.

“It wasn’t Lady’s fault! It was mine. I did something to make her mad. She didn’t mean—”

“No—it was an accident. Just an accident. That’s all.” Breathless with fear, Brooke planted herself between her son and the man bent on exacting his own version of frontier justice. Though what she hoped to accomplish by doing so, she didn’t know. As tall as she was, every bit as tall as Lonnie, she was no match for the man and knew it. He was bullnecked, broad-shouldered and strong as an ox; even Duncan, half a head taller and in good shape himself, had always said he didn’t have a prayer of beating Lonnie Doyle in a fair fight. Plus, the man was armed. And in a rage.

“What are you doing, man?” Al Hernandez, the other deputy, jerked at Lonnie’s arm and half spun him around.

Lonnie shook off Al’s hand. “What I shoulda done years ago. What I told Dunk he shoulda done. Shoulda drowned that cat the day he brought it home. I told him he was crazy. And lookit what’s happened. Now I’m gonna kill that thing. I’m gonna shoot it right here and now!”

Al touched Lonnie’s arm again. “Come on, man—”

“Not without a warrant, you’re not.” Brooke spoke loudly and calmly, and both men jerked their heads to look at her the way they might if the cougar itself had spoken. “This animal belongs to me,” she went on, trying to keep her voice from quivering. “She is not an imminent threat to anybody now. You don’t know what happened, or how it happened. You have no cause to shoot her, and if you try, you’ll have to do it through me.”

She saw Lonnie’s small blue eyes glitter with a dangerous light, saw his jaw jut forward in a way she’d seen it do before, and wondered if she’d gone too far. She felt Daniel creep out from behind her to stand at her side. She felt his arm slip around her waist and wished, for his sake, she could stop shaking. She braced herself as Lonnie took a threatening step toward her.

But then Rosie came walking up, peeling off her gloves and shaking her head as she joined the two deputies. She spoke to them in a voice too low for Brooke to hear over the pounding in her head, and the two men turned and walked back to where the second EMT was packing up his gear. But not before Lonnie stabbed a finger at Brooke and said in a voice hoarse with fury, “This ain’t over, Brooke. Count on it.”

Rosie paused, looking uncertain, then came over to Brooke and reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. “Brooke, Daniel—I’m so sorry. We did everything we could.”

“I know you did. It’s okay.” Brooke felt her head nodding up and down, like a mechanical toy.

“Is there anything I can do? You want me to call Pastor Farley?”

“Yes, thank you. I’d appreciate that,” Brooke murmured, although at that moment she didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. All she wanted was to be alone with her son in her house, where she could fix him hot dogs for dinner and pretend the past thirty minutes or so hadn’t happened. That it had all been a dream—a nightmare. She wanted desperately for it to all be a dream, a mistake, for there to be some sort of magic pill she could take to make it all go away.

Except she knew that wouldn’t happen. And that the nightmare was just beginning.

Numbly, she watched the EMTs pack up their gear and make their way back through the barn to their parked vehicle. Al was speaking into the radio on his shoulder, calling for a forensics team, and Lonnie went loping off to the department SUV and returned carrying a roll of yellow plastic tape. Brooke had been the wife of a law enforcement officer for seven years; she knew what it all meant.

Her ex-husband, Daniel’s father, was dead. This was a crime scene now.

Al finished talking into his radio and came over to where she and Daniel were standing, Daniel with his arm around her waist, still, his body rigid and straight as a post. Brooke, with her arm protectively around his shoulders, was the only one who’d know he was shaking, too. Al hauled in a breath and took on a cop’s authoritative stance, with his thumbs hooked in his belt and his chest out.

“I’m gonna have to ask you to go on to the house now, if you wouldn’t mind. We’re gonna need to ask you some questions, but for right now, I need for you to move out of the way so we can do our job here, which is findin’ out exactly what happened. You understand? We’re gonna find out what happened to your husband.”

My ex-husband! Brooke thought but only nodded.

Beside her, Daniel was shaking his head violently. “No—uh-uh, I’m not leaving. If we do, you’ll shoot Lady. And it wasn’t her fault, what happened to Dad. I know it wasn’t.”

The deputy’s stern cop face softened. He gave a little cough and said, “Now, son, nobody’s gonna shoot your cat. I’m not gonna let that happen.”

Daniel drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “You better promise.” Brooke felt so proud, she almost smiled.

Al Hernandez did smile. “Yeah, son, I promise. There’ll be an au—” he threw Brooke a look of apology, coughed again and said “—an investigation, and then a judge is gonna decide what to do about your cougar. Until that all happens, nobody’s gonna touch her. Okay?”

Daniel didn’t reply, and Brooke felt the resistance in his rigid body. The distrust. Though she understood just how he felt, she tightened her hold on his shoulders, and they left the compound together.

On the way to the house, she remembered the groceries still sitting in the truck. Daniel helped her carry them into the house and put them away, but when she asked him what he wanted for supper, he told her he wasn’t hungry. Again, she knew how he felt but poured him a glass of orange juice, anyway, and as an afterthought, poured one for herself, too.

She pulled out a chair, and Daniel hitched himself sideways onto another, and they sat facing each other across the kitchen table, not looking directly at each other. Daniel took a cautious sip of his orange juice, then said, “I have homework.”

Brooke took a sip of her juice and said, “What kind?”

“Math,” said Daniel. “And social studies.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that right now,” Brooke told him, and he nodded and didn’t ask why. That was the thing about Daniel; he understood so much without being told. Maybe too much for a child his age. Seen too much, too. Things no child of any age should have to see.

Brooke folded her hands together on the table in front of her and stared at them, marveling at how calm she felt. She wondered when it was going to hit her, the fact that Duncan was dead, killed by an animal she’d hand-raised from a kitten. And that he’d been found in a bloody mess by his nine-year-old son. She wondered when it was going to hit Daniel. She took a breath and looked at him and felt an awful twisting pain just below her heart.

“We have to talk,” she said. “About what we’re going to say when they ask us questions.” Daniel continued to stare at his glass of orange juice. “Honey, I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”

He drew a put-upon breath. “I already did. It was just like I said.” He closed his eyes and went on in a singsong voice. “I got home, and I came in the house, and I got myself an ice-cream sandwich, and I heard Hilda barking, so I went out to see what was wrong, and I took the cell phone, because you told me I should always take it when I go out to the animals in case I need to call for help. And I saw…what I told you.”

Forcing herself not to look at the fine blue veins in his eyelids or the bright spots of pink in his otherwise pale cheeks, Brooke persisted. “Honey, I’m sorry. They’re going to ask you these things. Did you, um, look at your dad? Did you see any…” But she couldn’t bring herself to ask him about the wounds. She didn’t want to know about the wounds. Instead, choosing her words carefully, she said, “Daniel, did you see Lady bite your dad?”

He shook his head violently, and she saw him press his lips together hard for a moment before he answered, “No! I told you. She was just crouched down beside him, and she sort of…sniffed him, and then she pushed at him with her head—like this.” He demonstrated. “Then she saw me, and she jumped back and started snarling and making that screaming noise and batting her paws at me. It was like—” He stopped, and the pink in his cheeks deepened.

“What, honey? It’s okay. You can tell me.”

He looked up at her at last, almost defiantly. “It was like she didn’t want me to come in there, okay? Like she was trying to make me stay away. I know it sounds weird, but it was like she was trying to protect me. Like she didn’t want me to see—”

“Oh, Daniel.” Brooke wanted to smile at him, but the ache in her throat and in her whole face made it impossible. She could think of another reason for the cougar’s behavior, of course, one more in keeping with the nature of a predator. She was probably trying to protect her “kill.” Sweetheart, don’t you see that?

But she didn’t say it. So what if her son had found his own way of coping with the awfulness of what had happened? She’d let him keep whatever comfort he could for as long as he could.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. That’s why I didn’t tell you,” Daniel said as he scooted back his chair and carried his juice glass to the sink.

He was heading out of the kitchen, probably going to his room, but at that moment there was a knock on the kitchen door—the back door, the one they and nearly everyone who came to visit always used. Brooke could see Al Hernandez standing on the porch steps, looking off across the yard, where the CSI van and the medical examiner’s wagon had joined the two sheriff’s department SUVs. Thank God, she thought. That meant Lonnie would be out overseeing the processing of the crime scene and the…victim, and she was relieved not to have to deal with his anger and hostility. This was going to be difficult enough without that, she was sure.

When she went to let the deputy in, she saw that he had Hilda with him, on a makeshift rope leash. The dog was panting and grinning, interrupting herself frequently to lick her chops, a sure sign she was agitated. She’d been sitting quietly at Al’s side, but when Brooke opened the screen door, she bounded past her, into the house, and Brooke could hear the scrabbling of toenails on the linoleum as she streaked across the kitchen, making, no doubt, for her favorite refuge, Daniel’s room. She heard Daniel talking to the big dog in quiet tones as she nodded at the deputy and said, “Come on in, Al.”

“Sorry about that,” Al said, with a nod of his head in the general direction Hilda had taken. “I’d appreciate it if you could keep her in here until we’re…uh, everything’s done out here. She’s been raising quite a ruckus.”

“I can imagine,” Brooke said, with a small huff of laughter—the nervous kind—and she wished she hadn’t done it and made a note to herself not to do it again. She took a quick breath and added, “It’s fine. I should have thought to bring her when I came in.” She gestured toward the chair Daniel had been sitting in. “Have a seat. Can I get you anything?”

“No, ma’am. I am gonna need to talk to the boy, though. Is he—”

“I’m right here,” Daniel said, coming into the kitchen. To Brooke, he said, “I put Hilda in my room, Mom. She’s pretty upset.”

“Daniel—” She held out her arm to bring him close, but he evaded her and instead pulled out another chair and sat down.

“I know. You want to ask me questions about what happened to my dad.”

Brooke felt an unexpected urge to cry and clamped a hand over her mouth to stop it. Al Hernandez said, “That’s right, son. I need you to tell me everything you can about what happened out there. Can you do that?”

Daniel said, “Sure,” and went on to tell his story again, without the smarty-pants tone he’d used with Brooke, while Al jotted notes in a notebook he’d taken out of his uniform pocket.

“So, that’s the first you knew anything was wrong?” Al asked when he’d finished. “When you heard the dog barking?” Daniel nodded. “And you didn’t see anybody around the place? Hear anybody? Any cars?” Daniel shook his head. “And your dad—he didn’t come here, to the house?”

Daniel shook his head again, rapidly this time, and began to fidget in his chair. “No, I didn’t see him. I haven’t seen him for a while, actually. Next weekend’s his weekend to have me. I don’t usually see him otherwise.” His face was very pale, so that the freckles across his nose and the tops of his cheeks stood out like sprinkles of sand.

Al must have noticed it, too, because his eyes and voice were kind as he said, “Okay, son, that’s fine. I think that’s all. You did fine.”

“So,” said Daniel, “can I go now?”

“Sure, go on. Take care of your dog.” The deputy waited until Daniel had disappeared down the hall and they heard the thump of the closing door. Then he leveled a look that was considerably less kind at Brooke and said, “Okay, now I’ll ask you the same thing. Tell me exactly what you saw and did. Your son said you were gone when this happened?”

She cleared her throat and nodded. “Yes, that’s right. I’d gone to town for feed and groceries, and I was late getting back because—” she gave that nervous laugh she’d promised herself she wouldn’t “—well, I guess you don’t want to know all that.”

Al just looked at her and waited for her to go on. She told herself she had no reason to be nervous, but she was. So nervous her mouth felt like dust. She clasped her hands together in front of her on the tabletop and tried to make them look relaxed. Natural.

“Um…anyway, when I got home, the first thing I saw was Duncan’s SUV parked on that back road, the one that goes around the property. I thought—” She paused, but Al just nodded and didn’t interrupt. “I thought it was strange, him being there, but I came on to the house, and then I thought it was strange that Hilda—that’s the dog—and Daniel didn’t come running out to meet me, like they usually do. It wasn’t until I turned off the motor and was getting out of the truck that I heard the noise.”

“What did you hear, exactly?”

“I heard Hilda barking, and then I heard Lady—the cougar—scream. And that’s when I ran.” Her voice had begun to shake. She fought to control it while the deputy waited patiently, staring down at the notes he’d made.

She wished she could get up and get a glass of water. She wished she could run to her bedroom and crawl under the covers and pull a pillow over her head.

After a moment, she drew a quivering breath and went on. She described everything that had happened, and when she was finished, she was surprised to discover she’d been crying. For some reason, that embarrassed her, and she tried to wipe the tears away surreptitiously while Al was still looking down, writing in his notebook. She waited for him to ask more questions, and when he didn’t, she cleared her throat again and said, “Al, can I ask you something?”

He glanced up, frowning.

“What did he—I mean, how did he look? You know, were the wounds…” She touched her lips with her fingertips, and more tears rolled down her cheeks. This time she didn’t try to wipe them away. “I just really need to know. Did Lady kill him?”

“Ma’am, I can’t make that kind of judgment. That’s up to the ME.” He paused, then seemed to relent. “I will tell you there’s some blood on Dunk’s clothes, and some—not a lot—on the ground. We’ll just have to wait for the autopsy to determine how he died. Now, if you don’t mind, I have just a few more questions…”

He asked her about the compound, the gate, how it was locked up and who had a key. He asked her how she thought Duncan might have gotten into the pen with the cougar, and why.

“That’s what I can’t imagine,” Brooke said in a whisper. “Duncan was deathly afraid of that cat, although he’d never have admitted it. He always wanted to get rid of it. When I told him I wanted to start a refuge for big cats—you know, like, animals people take as pets, then can’t take care of when they get big and dangerous—he thought I was nuts. He even insisted on buying a tranquilizer gun, just in case, because he said he knew I’d never be able to shoot her, if it came to that.” Her voice broke, and as she paused to control it, a thought occurred to her. “I wonder why he didn’t—Duncan, I mean. Didn’t he have his gun?”

Al gave her an unreadable look. “It wasn’t on him, no, ma’am. We found it in his vehicle.”

He tucked his notebook and pencil back in his pocket and rose. “I guess that’s all—for now. We’ll be in touch once the medical examiner’s done.” He thanked her, nodded a farewell and left the way he’d come, through the back door.

Brooke sat where he’d left her, with one hand covering her mouth and her eyes closed, listening to the sounds of vehicles coming and going outside in the yard, and the distant mutter of men’s voices. She didn’t want to listen to the voices rumbling around inside her own head, but they kept intruding, anyway.

Something isn’t right about this. I can feel it. Something’s not right. It doesn’t make sense.

Either Daniel wasn’t telling her the whole story, or…or what? She didn’t know. Only that something was wrong.

After a while—she didn’t know how long—she realized the noises outside had stopped. That all the official vehicles had gone. Finally. The sun had gone down. It was past time to feed the animals. Only her ingrained sense of responsibility made her get up and go outside and throw some hay to the two horses, six goats and two alpacas, and close and bar the chicken-house door. She didn’t go down to the far end of the corrals, where Lady’s compound was. The cougar was in her holding cage and would be all right where she was until tomorrow.

Back in the house, she went to check on Daniel and Hilda and found both in Daniel’s bed, sound asleep on top of the covers. Daniel had one arm thrown across the dog’s body, and Hilda had her muzzle resting on the boy’s chest. She went to her own room and got a comforter and spread it over the softly snoring pair. Then, after a moment, she lifted the edge of the comforter and lay down, stretching herself out beside her son. With her arm across his body and her face nestled in his damp hair, breathing the salty, small-boy smell of him, she fell asleep.

In the morning, she was in the kitchen, making blueberry pancakes—Daniel’s favorite breakfast—when the knock came. Not on the kitchen door, the one everyone always used, but on the front door. Her hands shook slightly as she wiped them on a dish towel and went down the hall and through the living room to answer it.

Sheriff Clayton Carter stood on her front porch. He was wearing his brown Stetson, and his arms were folded across the front of his unbuttoned Western-style jacket. He didn’t smile or remove his hat when Brooke opened the door, and she didn’t smile and say that it was a nice surprise to see him and ask if he would care to come in for coffee.

“Ma’am, would you step out here please?” the sheriff said.

Moving as if in a dream, Brooke did, and two uniformed deputies she didn’t know came up the steps behind the sheriff, and one of them took her arm and turned her around.

“Brooke Fallon Grant,” the sheriff said, “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Duncan Grant. You have the right to remain silent…”

Then Brooke’s head filled with the sound of high winds, and for some time she didn’t hear anything else. Not until she was in the sheriff’s car and being driven out of the yard, and she looked back and saw Daniel being restrained by one of the uniformed deputies. She heard his shrill and stricken cry.

“Mom! Mama…”

Chapter 2

The last thing Holt Kincaid had expected to encounter when he drove into Colton, Texas, was a traffic jam. According to the information he’d gotten off the Internet, the population still hadn’t topped seven thousand, probably due to the fact that the town was just outside reasonable commuting distance from both Austin and San Antonio, and its residents hadn’t yet figured out how to capitalize on its Hill Country charm and local history to bring in the tourist trade. From what Holt could see, the town’s two main industries appeared to be peaches and rocks, and while there was still an apparently endless supply of the latter—in spite of the fact that nearly all the buildings on the main drag were constructed out of them—the season for the former was pretty much over. And it didn’t seem likely the excess of vehicular traffic was due to rush hour, either, since it was mid-morning and, anyway, in his experience in towns like this, what passed for “rush hour” usually coincided with the start and end of the school day.

Also, it didn’t seem likely that local traffic, no matter how heavy, could account for the high number of vans and panel trucks he was seeing, with satellite antennas sprouting out of their tops and news-station logos painted on their sides.

During his slow progress through the center of town, Holt was able to discern that the excitement seemed to be centered around the elaborate and somewhat oversized Gothic-style, stone—of course—courthouse, which was located a block off the highway, down the main cross street. A crowd had gathered on the grassy square in front of the courthouse, everyone sort of milling around in the shade of several big oak trees, the way people do when they’re bored to death but expecting something exciting to happen any minute.

The sense of anticipation—almost euphoria—with which he’d entered the town, certain he was almost at the end of what had been a long and often frustrating quest, was replaced now by a sense of caution, developed over his long years of experience as a private investigator with a specialty in finding people. While it didn’t seem likely this unexpected gathering of news media could have anything to do with his reason for being here in the town of Colton, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to know exactly what he was getting into the middle of.

A few blocks past the courthouse, the traffic thinned out considerably, and Holt pulled off onto a side street and found a parking spot across from a diner, the inauspicious kind frequented by locals rather than passing-through motorists looking for a familiar franchise.

On his way into the diner, he dropped a quarter into a box dispensing the local newspaper, which he folded in half and tucked under his arm as he made his way past empty booths to take a seat at the counter—also empty, except for a waitress taking her mid-morning coffee break. Holt had an idea the usual denizens of the place could probably be found among the crowd down at the courthouse.

As he was taking his seat on one of the cracked red vinyl and chrome stools, the waitress wiped her mouth with a paper napkin, slid off her stool and swept, with a flourish, around the end of the counter to present herself behind the section he’d just occupied.

“Hi,” she chirped. “My name is Shirley, and I’ll be your server today. How may I help you?” And then she gave a throaty chortle to show she was just putting him on, and said in what Holt imagined was her natural Texas twang, “What can I get for ya, hon?”

Shirley was a heavyset woman in her forties, probably, with Day-Glo red curls piled on top of her head and laugh lines radiating from the corners of her vivid blue eyes. She had a nice smile, so Holt smiled back and said, “Coffee, for starters.” He tilted his head toward the glass case behind the counter. “And maybe a piece of that pie there. Is that peach?”

“Sure is,” Shirley said, beaming. “Local, too. And the season’s ’bout over, so you hit it just right. Can I put a scoop of ice cream on that for ya?”

“No thanks—got to watch my waistline.” He patted himself in that general area, and Shirley gave him a severe look and what could only be described as a snort.

“Oh, sure, like you need to worry. Mister, you turn sideways, you’d just ’bout disappear.” While she was saying this, she was efficiently dishing up a slice of pie and placing it in front of him, with a fork and a spoon beside it.

Holt waited until a mug of steaming coffee had joined the pie, then picked up the fork and said, “Where is everybody?”

Shirley made that same inelegant noise as she leaned against the stainless-steel counter behind her and folded her arms across her ample bosom. “Down at the courthouse, probably. Along with just about ever’body else in this town. It’s where I’d be, too, if I wasn’t stuck holdin’ down the fort here.”

Holt dug into the pie, which was delicious, maybe the best fresh peach pie he’d ever eaten. “I saw the media trucks as I was coming through. What’s all the excitement about?”

Shirley tipped her head toward his left arm. “Well, you could read all about it in that paper you got propping up your elbow there. One of our local deputy sheriffs got killed a couple days ago—by a mountain lion, it looked like. And then they went and arrested his wife—ex-wife, I should say—for murder. Biggest thing to happen around here in a while, I’ll tell you. The whole state of Texas seems to have caught it now, too—because it was a cop that got killed, I guess. Or the lion angle, maybe. Anyway, it sure is a shame. They had a kid, too, a little boy. I guess he’s been staying with the preacher at their church.”

Holt didn’t hear anything more. While the waitress had been talking, he’d unfolded the newspaper and spread it out next to his pie plate. There was the headline, pretty much the way she’d summed it up: Local Deputy Killed By Lion, Ex-wife Arrested, and under that a was photo of the deputy in his dress uniform, complete with Stetson. Holt had started skimming the article and had got as far as the name of the woman who’d been arrested and charged with murdering her ex-husband, Duncan Grant. The name jumped out at him, and it was about like having a rattlesnake coil up and strike right at his chest. Brooke Fallon Grant. Shirley’s voice faded into a soft roar, and hot coffee slopped out of the mug and burned his hand.

“Oh—my goodness. Here let me…” Shirley was there with a towel, mopping up. “Hope ya didn’t burn yourself. Coffee’s pretty hot. Just made a fresh pot…”

He frowned distractedly at her, then relinquished the coffee mug, and she whisked it away and brought him a new one while he tried to absorb the words printed on the newspaper page in front of him.

Mrs. Grant was arrested at her home Thursday morning after an autopsy revealed the presence of large amounts of a tranquilizer in the victim’s body. According to sources at the medical examiner’s office, the drug had evidently been administered by a tranquilizer dart gun, the type used to subdue large animals.

Deputy Grant’s body was discovered by his young son Wednesday afternoon in an animal enclosure on his ex-wife’s ranch. The enclosure had been used to house a mountain lion allegedly hand-raised by Mrs. Grant. The animal was found in close proximity to Deputy Grant’s body and was assumed to have killed him. However, in light of the new evidence revealed by the autopsy, it is not clear now what part the animal might have played in the deputy’s death.

According to information received by this reporter, Mr. and Mrs. Grant had recently been involved in a dispute over custody of the couple’s nine-year-old son.

Arraignment and bail hearing are set to take place Friday afternoon at the courthouse in Colton. A hearing to determine the fate of the mountain lion has not been scheduled, pending further investigation. As the county lacks facilities to house the animal, the mountain lion remains in its compound on Mrs. Grant’s ranch.

In the absence of any known relatives, the couple’s son is being cared for by the pastor of Mrs. Grant’s church pending the outcome of Friday’s hearing.

“Yeah, it sure is a shame.” Shirley was shaking her head. “I used to see Duncan in here now and again. All the deputies like to come in for the pie, you know. I didn’t know him all that well, though—I was a few years ahead of him in school. Never met his wife…I don’t know, though…seems like a pretty heartless thing to do, doesn’t it? I mean, raise a cougar from a cub—or whatever you call a baby one—and then try and blame it for killing somebody? And letting your little boy find his daddy’s body? Hard to imagine a mother doing something like that.”

“Sounds like the paper’s got her pretty much tried and convicted,” Holt said dryly as he slid off the stool and reached for his wallet.

Shirley made that sound again. “Yeah, well, this is kind of a small town, and the local law is real…visible, if you know what I mean. So…you’re not plannin’ on stayin’ around to see how it comes out?”

“Actually, I might stay around for a bit.” He laid some bills down on the counter and picked up the paper and tucked it under his arm. “S’pose you could recommend a nice, quiet motel for me? Or have all these media people got everything booked?”

“Seriously.” She gave him a wry smile as she scooped up the bills with one hand and the dishes with the other. “They’ve been pouring into town all day. I’d say you’d probably have to go a ways to find a room.”

“Yeah, I figured. Thanks, anyway. Great coffee, by the way. And the best peach pie I ever ate.” Holt gave her his nicest smile and turned to go.

“Wait.”

With one hand on the door, Holt turned. Shirley was gazing at him in a speculative way and chewing her lip.

“Okay, look, I don’t know why, but you strike me as a nice guy. There’s a motel just west of here, just off the main drag. It’s called the Cactus Country Inn—it’s not a chain or a Best Western, or anything, but it’s nice. My brother and his wife manage it. They usually keep the room next to their apartment empty, on account of the walls are kinda thin, if you know what I mean. But if you tell ’em I sent you, they’ll probably let you have it. Just don’t throw any wild parties, though, okay?” “I think I can promise that,” Holt said.

An hour or so later, he sat on the edge of one of two neatly made-up twin-size beds in a fairly decent room—he couldn’t remember if he’d ever been in a motel room that had twin-size beds before—in the Cactus Country Inn. He punched a number on his cell phone speed dial and while he listened to it ring, imagined it ringing in a room far away, in South Carolina, on the shores of a small lake. It rang four times before a machine picked up.

“Hello. You’ve reached Sam and Cory’s place. We’re both away from home right now. Leave us a message, and we’ll get back to you.…”

He disconnected and sat for a moment with the phone in his hand, thinking. Then he pulled the laptop that lay open on the bed closer to him, found the page he was looking for, scrolled down the list of phone numbers on it until he came to the one he wanted. Dialed it.

Several minutes and several different numbers later, he’d learned several things. One, his employer was on assignment in the Sudan, and there was no way in hell to reach him. Two, his employer’s wife was also on assignment; only God—and the CIA—knew where.

Three, he was on his own.

Holt Kincaid didn’t often feel frustrated, but he did now. Here he’d finally managed to get a line on one of his client’s missing twin sisters, and there wasn’t anybody he could break the news to.

News that wasn’t good.

And he was very much afraid that if he waited for the clients to return from their various assignments, it might be too late. So, he hesitated for another second, maybe, then scrolled on down to the bottom of the list of phone numbers on his computer screen, to the first one listed under the heading In Case of Emergency. He was pretty sure Sam and Cory would agree that finding the subject of their years-long search about to be locked up for murder would qualify as an emergency.

He punched the number into his cell phone and hit the call button.

Tony Whitehall was sitting on his mother’s patio, watching his numerous nieces and nephews engaged in mayhem disguised as a game of touch football. The game was probably more fraught with violence than it might have been, due to the fact that it was being played on hard bare dirt, since his mother, being more than half Apache and a native not only of America but the great desert Southwest, had better sense than to try to get a lawn to grow on it. His mother did like flowers, though, which she grew in pots near her front doorsteps, where she could water them with a plastic gallon jug. The rest of her landscaping consisted mostly of native plants—junipers and ocotillos and barrel cactus and tamarisks for windbreaks and some stubborn cottonwoods and willows along the creek bed, where for two months or so in the spring a trickle of water actually flowed.

For shade, there was the colorful striped fabric of the umbrellas and awnings, which mostly covered the patio that Tony was enjoying, along with a cold beer, when his cell phone rang. That surprised him, first, because cell phone service out here in the wilds of Arizona wasn’t all that reliable, and second, because most of the people who had his private cell number were already here.

He fumbled around and managed to get the phone out of his pocket and opened up and the right button pushed before the thing went to voice mail. “Yeah,” he said, then remembered to add, “Uh…Tony Whitehall.”

Then he had to stick a finger in his ear to hear the person on the other end, because a gaggle of his sisters were at that moment gathered around their mother on the other side of the patio and were exhorting her loudly and passionately about losing some weight. This was an argument they were bound to lose, since Rosetta Whitehall was quite content with herself just as she was and was countering her daughters’ concerns as she always did by pointing out certain facts: “The women in my family have always been big, and we’ve always been happy, and we make our men happy, too!”

At the moment, Tony was just happy to have his sisters’ attention focused for a few minutes on something else besides him and his persistent state of bachelorhood. The poking and prying and teasing and nagging was something he’d been putting up with since he’d reached the age of puberty, but lately it had begun to grate on his nerves.

The voice in his ear was still an unintelligible mumble, so he said, “Hold on, I can’t hear you,” and got up and walked across the patio and made his way around the corner of the house, where he’d be out of vocal range of both the football game and the sisters. “Yeah…okay. So who did you say this is?”

“Sorry. My name is Holt Kincaid. I’m a private investigator. I’m working for a friend of yours—Cory Pearson—tracking down his brothers and sisters, who got separated from him when he was a kid.”

“Oh yeah…yeah, I knew about that. Found his brothers already, I heard. Fantastic. That’s great. So why are you—”

“Cory gave me your name and number, told me to call you if anything came up while he was on assignment and I couldn’t reach either him or Sam—his wife. So…they’re both on assignment, and…something’s come up. So, I’m calling.”

“Wow. So…what? You find the baby sisters?”

“Well, yeah, one of them, but—”

“Hey, no kidding? That’s great, man!”

“Yeah, well, maybe not. There’s…a problem.”

“Oh, yeah? What kind of problem?”

“It’s a little complicated to explain over the phone, and this is a terrible connection, anyway. How fast can you get to Colton, Texas?”

Gazing off across the dirt yard to where the football game was still in noisy progress, Tony could hear that the voices of his sisters around the corner on the patio had died to a frustrated mutter. Which meant they’d be turning their attention back to him the minute he showed his face again.

“Colton—whereabouts in Texas is that?”

“Uh…roughly southwest of Austin and northeast of nowhere. Hill Country.”

“Okay, how’s about tonight? Say around dinnertime.”

“What? Where in hell are you?”

“At the moment I’m in Arizona, at my mom’s. It’s her birthday. Talk about northeast of nowhere. Otherwise I’d be there sooner.”

“Are you crazy? That’s gotta be eight or nine hundred miles.”

“What? You think I’m gonna drive it? Across West Texas? Now, that would be crazy. Hey, do me a favor, okay? Check and see if this town you’re in has a general-aviation airfield. Failing that, any kind of level airstrip %h; piece of road—hell, even a cow pasture without too many rocks.”

“I can tell you right now, that’s not gonna happen,” the voice on the other end of the phone said dryly. “But I’ll look into the airfield and get back to you.”

“Cool. I’m on my way.”

Tony disconnected the phone and stuck it back in his pocket, then took a breath and summoned the courage to go and break the news to his mother that he was going to be leaving her birthday party a little sooner than expected.

Brooke’s lawyer was an old-school Texan, a grandfatherly sort named Sam Houston Henderson, from her father’s old law firm in Austin. He drove her home after the bail hearing and left her surrounded by a welcoming committee consisting of Daniel; Pastor Steven Farley and his wife, Myra; Rocky and Isabel Miranda, her neighbors from across the road who’d been looking after the animals in her absence; and of course, Hilda, who almost knocked them all flat in her exuberant joy at having the missing members of her “flock” all together and back under her protection again. Brooke was glad to be back, too, of course, but her relief was tempered by what the lawyer had told her in the car on the way home.

“Now, Brooke, honey, you know just because the judge granted you bail doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods on this thing. You got bail because you’ve got sole responsibility for your boy and your animals, and because pretty much everything you own is tied up in your place and in that trust your daddy set up for you. So it’s not likely you’d be goin’ anywhere. And it’s also not likely you’d be a further danger to society, so there just wasn’t any justification in keepin’ you locked up. But that is a deputy sheriff and a local boy you’re accused of killin’, so we’ve got one hell of an uphill fight ahead of us. You know that, don’t you?”

“What about Lady?” Brooke had asked.

“Lady—oh, yeah, the cougar. Well, now…”

“Lonnie Doyle is going to do his best to have her put down.”

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Brooke. It’s gonna be tough to argue that lion isn’t a dangerous animal. She did maul your husband—”

“Ex-husband.”

“—and she did draw blood, whether that was what killed him or not. But for now I don’t want you to worry about that. We’ve got some time before they get around to a hearing about the cat, and right now you need to get yourself rested up so we can figure out how to fight this battle we’re in. Okay? Now, you go on and enjoy being with your boy, and have a quiet weekend, and I’ll talk to you next week.”

“Yes, sir,” Brooke had murmured, and now she stood safe in her own home, surrounded by the warmth and love of her son, her dog and her good friends the Farleys and the Mirandas.

“It’s gonna be okay, Mom,” Daniel whispered as he let her hug him longer than usual.

“I know. Of course, it is.” But as she watched Sam Houston Henderson’s taillights turn the corner at the end of the lane, inside she felt nothing but cold and hollow and scared to death.

“Must be nice, having your own plane,” Holt said to his passenger as they sped back to town on the two-lane FM road that connected it to its surprisingly busy airfield. He’d discovered airfields of the kind that served the town of Colton were pretty common in Texas, which made sense, seeing as how airplanes were probably the most practical means of bridging the enormous distances between anyplace and anyplace else in that part of the country.

“Yeah,” Tony said, “the kinds of places my job takes me, sometimes it’s about the only way to get there.” He looked over at Holt. “Matter of fact, it was your client’s wife—Sam—she’s the one that taught me to fly.”

“That right?”

“We had an…adventure, the three of us, a few years back. In the Philippines. Kind of got me hooked on vintage planes, I guess. She was flying a World War II Gooney Bird at the time. Mine’s a little later vintage than that, though—1979 Piper Cherokee. I’ve got her equipped for long-range flying—extra fuel tanks and all that. Places I go, refueling can be a problem.”

Holt glanced at the man taking up what seemed like more than his share of space in the car. From what little chance he’d had to take the man’s measure, Holt couldn’t in any way, shape or form call him overweight, so it must be something to do with charisma, he decided, that made Tony Whitehall seem larger than life. “So, you’re a photographer?”

“Photojournalist,” Tony corrected, but with a forgiving grin.

That was another thing Holt had noticed right away, the easygoing but straightforward manner that made a person both like and trust the man instinctively. He was beginning to see why Cory Pearson had put him at the top of his list of people to go to in an emergency.

“Well, you’re gonna fit right in, in Colton,” he said dryly. “The place is a zoo. Crawling with news media.”

“Yeah?” Tony shifted around to look at him. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the ‘problem’ you mentioned, would it?”

“It would.” Holt stared at the road ahead and thought about where to begin. Finally, he said, “You said you knew we found the boys, right? Cory’s two brothers. Last summer. Found Wade—the oldest—first. He was a cop up in Portland. And since the two boys had been adopted by the same couple, he put us right in touch with Matt, down in LA.”

“Right, and now you say you found the girls?” Tony prompted, but not in an impatient way.

“One of the girls.” Holt let out a breath. “I thought it was gonna be a cakewalk once I found out they’d been adopted together, too. But turns out the parents were both killed a couple of years ago in a car wreck, along with their biological son—he was quite a bit older than the twins. I found out that this one—Brooke—had married and moved here to Colton. Married a cop, actually. Deputy sheriff. But there wasn’t a thing about the other twin—Brenna. Nothing from high school on. She just disappears at that point. So, anyway, I come here to Colton to get a line on Brooke. Scope out the lay of the land, you know? Like I did when I found Wade. Wanted to see how things were, get an idea who this person was before I went to Cory with it. So we’d know the best way to spring the news, you know?”

“I hear you,” Tony said, nodding. “You don’t just walk up to a stranger and say, ‘Hi, there. I’m the brother you didn’t know you had.’”

“Right. And it’s an even safer bet the twins wouldn’t have any idea about having three older brothers, since they were practically just babies when they all got separated. So anyway, I get to Colton, and I find the town in an uproar because one of their deputy sheriffs has just been killed. Originally, it was supposed to have been a mountain lion that killed him—”

“Oh, wow—I saw something about that. It was on CNN just the other night. The cougar was the guy’s ex-wife’s pet, right? And their little boy found his dad’s body. Supposedly an accident, I thought. I didn’t get a chance to see the news today—it was my mom’s birthday, and the festivities started pretty early. So now—oh, man, don’t tell me. This is the missing twin? The dead guy’s wife?”

“Ex-wife. And it’s not an accident anymore. Seems they found something in the autopsy that puts a whole new light on things. In any event, they’ve arrested my client’s baby sister for murder. First degree, premeditated. And in Texas, don’t forget, they still have the death penalty. And use it.”

Tony uttered a word his mother wouldn’t have approved of.

“My sentiments exactly,” Holt said.

“So what’s the plan?” Tony asked Holt over a club sandwich at a local diner not far from the Cactus Country Inn, where they were staying. A club sandwich was pretty much Tony’s standard order when he was in an unfamiliar eatery, since it was pretty hard to ruin one, but watching Holt chomp into his big, thick, juicy burger, he was beginning to regret his choice. “Somehow I don’t think me being a photographer is going to get me an in with this lady just now.”

The PI nodded as he chewed, then swallowed and said, “Yeah, I know. We’re going to have to come up with something—” He broke off, and Tony watched him in amusement as he coughed and tried not to make it too obvious what he was thinking. Something along the lines of, This guy looks like a bouncer in a mob hangout, and I’m supposed to get him close to a woman who right now is not likely to be trusting anybody short of Dr. Phil? But it didn’t bother him. He was used to it.

“How ’bout the lion?” he said, taking pity on the guy. “I can make it about the cat.”

Holt raised his eyebrows over his burger as he prepared to take another bite. “Hmm. Maybe.”

“No, seriously. I’ve done some wildlife pieces before. The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone, poaching elephant ivory…stuff like that. Plus—” he grinned around the sandwich he was biting into “—I have a thing for mountain lions.”

Holt’s eyes narrowed. “A…thing.”

Tony thought, Me and my big mouth. He didn’t know what it was that had made him mention to this stranger something so personal he hadn’t even told his best friends, Cory and Sam, about it. But it had been the reason the CNN piece had caught his attention in the first place—the bit about the lion. Now he had to find some way to explain without giving up more personal information than he wanted to. “It’s an Indian thing. It’s my spirit animal. Or so my mama says.” He gave a self-deprecating half shrug.

“No kidding? ‘My brother, the lion’—that kind of thing?”

“A little more than that. Hey, it’s complicated, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure my mama’s people—they’re Apache—were totally into that, anyway. I think she just told me that spirit messenger stuff when I was a little kid to make me get over being scared.”

“Of the bogeyman, you mean.”

“Something like that.” And that was as far as Tony was willing to go on the subject. “Anyway, let’s just say I can make a pretty good case for why she ought to let me do a piece on her cougar.”

“Sounds good to me,” Holt said as he polished off the last bite of his burger and reached for his coffee. “Let’s hope it’s good enough.”

Chapter 3

Tony hadn’t expected to be welcomed by Brooke Fallon Grant, accused murderer, with open arms. On the other hand, he hadn’t exactly been prepared to find a shaggy tan-and-white dog the approximate size of a Shetland pony and a little blond kid armed with a rake—a rake?—blocking the driveway to her house.

He halted the rented sedan he’d borrowed from Holt in the middle of the tree-shaded lane and ran the window down. He stuck his head out, smiled winningly and called, “Hey, there. I’m looking for Brooke Grant. Would that be your mom?”

“Maybe.” The boy was holding the rake with both hands, crossways in front of him, not smiling back. “But she’s not here.”

Tony got out of the car and stood with one elbow leaning on the top of the open door. The kid took a step backward, then held his ground. The dog looked alert but wasn’t growling, which Tony took as a positive sign. “Well, now,” he said, still smiling, “I see there’s a pickup truck parked up there by the house, and you look pretty young to be the driver. Are you sure your mom’s not home?”

“Okay, she is, but she doesn’t want to see anybody.” The boy let go of the rake with one hand and reached into the pocket of his jeans. “If you don’t leave, I’m calling nine-one-one on my cell. I have it right here, see?” He produced the object and pointed it at Tony like a pistol.

Tony put his hands in the air. “Hey, okay, son. I’m not here to bother anybody. Look, is it okay if I give you my card?” Not waiting for an answer, which he was pretty sure he wouldn’t like, he took out the card he’d put in his shirt pocket for just such an eventuality. He showed it to the kid, then leaned over the open door and placed it on the hood of the car.

Looking as menacing as it’s possible for a skinny kid with silky blond hair to look, the boy sidled close enough to snatch up the card, then retreated to his comfort zone and gave it a good look. “It says here you’re a photojournalist.” He gave Tony a sideways look of suspicion and hostility. “That’s like a reporter, right? My mom for sure doesn’t want to talk to any reporters.” He began to thumb the cell phone.

Tony said, “No—wait,” and stepped around the door. The dog advanced a step, tail held low and not wagging. Tony hastily returned to his previous position behind the door. “Um, see…it’s like a reporter, yeah, but I’m not here about your mom, or your…uh, anything like that. Look, what I’m interested in, actually, is your lion.”

“Lady?” The boy looked surprised, then uncertain and, consequently, very young. And when he lifted his chin, the combination of vulnerability and defiance made something quiver in the general vicinity of Tony’s heart. “She didn’t do what they said she did. But they want to put her down, anyway.”

“Who does?”

“The sheriffs. Lonnie Doyle, mostly—he’s my dad’s partner. He says Lady’s a killer and she should be put down. But she didn’t hurt Dad, at least not on purpose. I know she didn’t.”

“Well, then,” Tony said gently, “sounds like all the more reason to get her story out there, doesn’t it? Look here—my Web site address is on that card. Why don’t you go ask your mom if you can look me up on the Internet? I’ll wait right here while you do it. How’s that?”

The boy chewed his lip for a moment; then up came the chin again. “Okay, but you better not come any closer. Hilda, watch him,” he said to the dog, then turned and headed back up the lane at a dead run.

The dog flopped down on her stomach with her paws in front of her in the attitude of the Sphinx and fixed him with her unblinking stare.

“Good dog,” said Tony hopefully and settled down to wait.

“Mom, I think you should talk to him.”

“Honey, he’s a photographer.”

“Uh-uh. A photojournalist.”

“That means he’s a reporter. Even worse.”

“Uh-uh, I don’t think so. He’s won awards. It says so right there. And anyway, it’s not you he wants to do a story about. It’s Lady.”

“Of course he’d say that. Honey, it’s probably just a ploy.”

“What’s a ploy?”

“An angle—a gimmick. A way to get to us. Daniel—”

“I don’t think so, Mom.” He hitched himself halfway onto a chair and faced her across the kitchen table, his face flushed and earnest. “I don’t know why, but I don’t think he’s lying. He’s…I don’t know how to explain it—”

“He looks nice, is that it?” Oh, sweetheart, if only it were that easy to tell.

Her son’s expression was impossible to describe. “No. He doesn’t. That’s what’s so weird. He looks really tough and mean, but—” He huffed in a breath, leaned his chin on one hand and pressed his lips together in concentration. Then he said, “It’s like…in the movies when there’s somebody that always plays the bad guy, and then suddenly he’s in a movie, and he’s the good guy for a change. And he still looks like the bad guy, but you just know he’s not. Like when Arnold Swarzenegger was really bad in The Terminator, but then he was really really good in Terminator 2. Like that.”

Brooke hesitated, running her thumb over the smooth surface of the small brown card in her hand. What if it was true? What if this man—Daniel’s “good guy” Terminator—could help save Lady’s life? And maybe mine, too?

Daniel slid off the chair with a long-suffering sigh. “Well, can we at least check him out on the Internet?”

Brooke gave an exhalation of her own and capitulated. “Sure,” she said, handing him the card. “Why not?”

“Your card neglected to mention that one of those awards was a Pulitzer.”

Tony jerked out of a heat-and-boredom-induced doze, closed his mouth and focused on the woman standing on the other side of the open car door. His first thought was, Wow. His second, more coherent, thought was, Okay, tall, slim and blond—I see where the kid gets it. His third thought, as he scrubbed a hand over his face and struggled to extricate himself from the driver’s seat, was Oh man, I hope I wasn’t snoring.

Being as how Brooke Fallon Grant was his buddy Cory’s sister and his buddy Cory was a pretty good-looking guy, he hadn’t been expecting a troll. But the woman standing before him with her fingertips poked into the back pockets of her jeans, regarding him with a not-at-all-sure-I-should-be-doing-this look on her face…well, the only word that suited her was lovely.

Tony had a photographer’s eye, of course, one that saw beyond the fatigue lines, no makeup, and hair that was limp and dull and in need of washing. What he saw was dark blue eyes like Cory’s, eyes that told you they’d seen more than they wanted to of the world’s sadness and suffering. And amazing bones, the kind that made him itch to reach for his camera. Which was too bad, because he was pretty sure the first time he aimed a lens in the lady’s direction, she’d sic that monster dog on him.

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