Lady Killer

Chapter 9

“I have to tell her.” Tony stared bleakly into his coffee cup, having refused Holt’s offer to buy him lunch at the diner. It had been hours since the French toast he’d had for breakfast, but it-or guilt-still lay heavy in his stomach. “This changes everything.”

“Yeah, it does.” Holt stabbed at a chunk of the meat loaf special. “You couldn’t have waited until all this was over to sleep with her?”

Anger lanced through Tony, driven, no doubt, by more guilt. “Look,” he snapped, “it’s not like I planned it, okay? Hell, do I look like the kind of guy who’d move in on his best friend’s sister, particularly at a time when she’s in dire straits?”

“I don’t know what kind of guy you are, frankly,” Holt said. “I just met you myself, remember?”

“Yeah, well…I’m not. Trust me.” He shifted and added darkly, “Okay, maybe you shouldn’t. She trusts me, and I’m not exactly being straight with her, am I?” He let out a breath. “That’s why I have to tell her. Now.”

Holt picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth with it, then reached for his wallet. “Hold off on that, if you can. Just a little bit longer. At least until Cory and Sam get here.”

“No kidding-they’re on their way?” Tony picked up the check. Even the coffee had turned sour in his stomach. “Where’d you find Cory? Sam track him down?”

Holt nodded. “He’s been somewhere in Africa-the Sudan, I think. Covering the latest uprising, I guess. Anyway, he just got airlifted out a couple days ago by the ‘independent security contractors’ along with the entire U.S. embassy staff and their families. I talked to him this morning. They should be here tomorrow sometime.” He raised his eyebrows at Tony as he slid out of the booth. “What? I figured that was good news.”

“Brooke told me some things. About…herself. Uh…jeez…” The last word was mostly breath. Holt looked another question at him, and he shook his head. “Personal stuff. About what happened to her when she was a kid, growing up. Her sister, too. The reason she got married so young. The reason her sister ran away from home.” He paused, and even thinking of talking about it left a bitter taste in his mouth. “Hell, Kincaid, do I need to spell it out?”

“Her father?” Holt’s voice was soft and dangerous.

“Brother. He was a good ten years older than the twins. An adult, anyway. And they were just kids when…it happened.”

They left the diner, with Holt muttering under his breath what sounded like swearing and blasphemy.

Tony nodded his agreement with the sentiments. “Anyway, Cory probably needs to know, and I guess I’m gonna have to be the one to tell him.” He paused, then added bleakly, “He already blames himself for what happened to his family-the kids getting split up. This is going to just about kill him.”

Brooke had never been so late with her morning chores. It was nearly noon when she turned the chickens out of their house, and they clucked petulantly at her as they stalked past her and through the door. Several of the hens were already on their nests-sulking, she was sure. She cooed apologies to them while she replenished their feeder with scratch and made a point to clean and fill their water bowls with fresh water. She gave the goats, alpacas and horses a little extra measure of grain, and gave the horses a good brushing before she turned them out to pasture.

She went to say good morning to Lady, but the cougar stayed on her rocky battlement and refused to come close to the fence. “Are you mad at me, too, my Lady girl?”

The cougar’s head was low and her shoulders tensed-her stalking stance-as she stared intently past Brooke, toward the lane and the barn and beyond. A chill went down Brooke’s spine. Clearly, something had upset her.

She thought of the SUV that Rocky and Isabel’s “cousin” had seen driving out of the back road, and the look on Lonnie’s face when he’d said, “This ain’t over.” And she walked back to the house, feeling small and exposed and vulnerable, like a rabbit in an open field, sensing the hawk circling high overhead.

She found Rocky and Isabel just coming down the back porch steps.

“We were looking for you,” Isabel said, and she looked anxiously at her husband.

They exchanged a brief glance, and Rocky said, “We were worried. Ever since my cousin told us he saw the SUV again. This morning he sees this SUV drive past your driveway, going very slowly. It drives down to the back road and turns in, then backs up and turns around and drives past your house again. He says it did this three times, that he saw. He says he thinks it was the same one he saw the day Duncan was killed.”

Brooke felt her body go still, while inside, her heart pounded hard and fast, and in her mind, a little girl’s voice whimpered, Tony, where are you? Come back! I need you…

Then the voice was gone, and the stillness was inside her, too. She said quietly, “Where is your cousin now?”

Again, Rocky and his wife exchanged glances. He cleared his throat and shifted nervously. “He is gone. He left this morning-after he sees-saw-the SUV. He is afraid because-” Another anxious glance at Isabel.

Isabel stepped forward and said angrily, “He’s afraid because he knows the sheriffs are crooked. They are bad men, Brooke. I’m sorry, but Duncan was, too. They take money, from the…from people like our cousin, and then they tell them they must get more money or they will kill them and send them back to their families in Mexico in little pieces.”

“How does your cousin know this?” The voice came from the vast stillness inside Brooke.

“He had a friend-Ernesto. They came over the border together. The sheriffs stopped them, but they didn’t make them go back or put them in jail. Instead, they took their money and told them they must get more from their families or friends here in the United States. Ernesto told them he had nobody here, and they took him away that night. My cousin never saw him again. My cousin managed to get away, and he came here, to us. So you see why he is afraid.”

Brooke nodded. She folded her arms across her body and rubbed at her upper arms to try to warm herself, but she felt cold clear through, anyway, in spite of the September sunshine. She said, with a calm that amazed her, “Whoever was in the SUV your cousin saw…I don’t think he was after your cousin-or me. It’s Lady he wants.”

“The lion? But why?” said Isabel.

“He wants to kill her,” said Brooke. And in her mind was the image of Lady crouched on her rock pile, a clear and easy target. “I don’t know why. Maybe because he believes she killed Duncan, in spite of what the medical examiner says. Maybe he’s just crazy. But if I don’t do something, he’s going to kill her.” She looked pleadingly into her neighbors’ eyes. “Will you help me? Please?”

Tony drove back to Brooke’s place on autopilot. His mind was lost in a swamp of confusion, where dark shadows and deep waters held unknown perils, and anxiety lurked like the indefinable fears and bad dreams of children.

He hadn’t known such anxiety since he was a child, and he realized he was feeling it now for the same reason he’d felt it then: because he was vulnerable. Overnight, it seemed, he’d come to care for someone in a way that up to now had been reserved for blood kin: mother, father, sisters and brothers. This woman and her son-Brooke and Daniel-had somehow become his responsibility and concern, and their well-being and happiness vital to his own. The realization made him feel warm and excited and happy in a way he couldn’t recall ever feeling before, but at the same time it made his heart tremble and his stomach fill with a cold, hard knot of fear.

The first thing he saw when he drove into the yard was that Brooke’s pickup truck wasn’t parked where it usually was. The second was that Hilda hadn’t come bounding out to meet him. The formless fear inside him coalesced and grew and threatened to become panic.

He got out of his car and slammed the door, leaving the groceries he’d bought sitting on the backseat. He called her name. And that was when he heard it-the sound that sent a chill shooting down his spine: the squall of an angry cougar.

He ran, and each footfall on the hard Texas soil jarred his head and his chest like hammer blows. She’s okay. She’s okay, he told himself, without rhyme or reason for either the fear or the futile attempt at reassurance. A hundred what-ifs tried to crowd into his mind all at once and only created a nightmarish chaos in his imagination.

From inside the barn, from the point where he had a clear view down the lane to the cougar’s compound, Tony could see Brooke’s pickup, and that it was backed up close to the gate in the chain-link fence. And what looked like the lion’s holding cage was sitting in the back of the pickup. And Brooke’s neighbors, Rocky and Isabel, were standing beside the pickup, their attention focused completely on what was happening inside the compound. He saw no one else, no big fawn-and-white dog, no sign of a sheriff’s SUV or deputy in or out of uniform.

With his worst fear unrealized-that Lonnie had come back for Lady and that Brooke was involved in a deadly face-off with an armed and dangerous deputy-and his heart more or less free to resume its normal function, he now felt it swan dive into his shoes. Oh, Brooke…what in the world are you thinking?

Having already halted his headlong dash, faced with the improbable scene before him, Tony forced himself to proceed now at a less panic-stricken pace. He strolled down the lane, with his thumbs hooked in his pockets, showing no sign, he hoped, of the fact that his whole body was vibrating with adrenaline.

“Hello,” he called when he was within a few yards of the pickup, and two heads jerked toward him in tandem, eyes widening with alarm. He nodded in a friendly way meant to calm the couple and said, “What’s going on?”

Isabel looked at her husband, and Rocky gave a shrug. “She is trying to catch the puma. She says she is going to set it free.”

“Jeez…” Tony whispered.

Isabel gave him a crooked smile and said, “Yes, I have been praying, too.”

Beyond her shoulder, Tony could see Brooke out in the cougar’s compound. She was standing with her back to him in the middle of the open area between the fence and the rocky knoll, facing the cougar, who was crouched on top of the rock pile. And even from where he stood, he could see that the lion’s ears lay flattened against her head and her tail was twitching furiously.

Having been acquainted with quite a few domestic felines in his lifetime, Tony knew a very scared or angry-and in this case, dangerous-cat when he saw one.

He opened the gate and slipped inside the compound, closing the gate carefully behind him. “Brooke, honey,” he said, marveling at how calm his voice sounded, “what are you doing?”

She turned her head to look at him, and for a moment his heart stopped. Don’t turn your back on her, sweetheart-please don’t turn around.

Her face was streaked with dirt-dust mixed with moisture that was either sweat or tears-and her voice shook. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I’ve never seen her act like this before.”

“She’s scared,” Tony said, and the lion screamed and cringed back against the rocks as he started across the compound to where Brooke was. And that makes two of us. I’m six years old again, and that cat is looming over me, just the way I remember. And my sister’s hand is trembling in mine…

Then he was beside Brooke, and it was her hand he held tightly. “Don’t move and don’t make a sound,” he whispered, without moving his mouth-or was that a memory, too?

She looked at him with tear-filled eyes and whispered, “Lady’s not a killer. She would never attack me.”

“She’s a cougar, sweetheart. And right now she’s operating on instinct. If you turn your back on her and retreat, she just might.”

Letting go of her hand, he slipped his arm around her waist and began to walk her slowly backward. Out on the rock pile, the cat let out one more squall, then did that doubling-back-on herself maneuver, flowed like liquid amber over the rocks and, in a blink, was gone.

When they were safe on the other side of the fence, Brooke turned silently into his arms, buried her face against his chest and gathered his shirt in fisted handfuls. Rocky and Isabel were nowhere to be seen. Tony wrapped his arms around her and let his cheek rest on her sweat-damp hair, but he was in no way ready to let her off the hook for scaring him to death.

“Brooke…honey…What were you thinking?” He gave an incredulous spurt of laughter. “You were going to turn her loose? Lady’s not feral-she’d never survive in the wild. You know that.”

She pulled away from him, brushing furiously at her cheeks. “Of course, I know that. It’s just better than…at least she’d have a fighting chance. Here-” she swept her arm in an arc that took in the whole compound “-she’s trapped. A sitting duck. Fish in a barrel. I just don’t want to come out one of these mornings and find her shot dead. Or worse, have Daniel find her.”

“You mean Lonnie.” He got his arm around her waist again and began walking her back toward the barn.

She nodded and sniffed, then threw him a look along her shoulder. “You heard what he said. He said he’d be back, and he won’t wait for a judge’s order, either. I know him. And when Rocky told me about his cousin-”

“What about his cousin?” Tony prompted when she paused as if she’d said too much.

She hissed out a breath. “He said he saw a sheriff’s SUV again. He said it drove by the house several times. Slowly. I know it was Lonnie-probably trying to see if I was home or not. I think when he saw your car, he must have decided not to risk it. But that’s not all.” She paused again to look at him, and her eyes were dark with anguish. “Tony, Isabel said some of the deputies are involved in some kind of extortion ring. Involving the illegals, you know? A lot of them come through here, because it’s right on the way from the border to the big cities, like Dallas and Fort Worth, but off the interstate, where most of the patrols are. These deputies, if they catch them, they make them pay money so they won’t get sent back or put in jail, and if they can’t come up with the money…” A shudder ran through her, and she threw him a bleak look. “Isabel says they kill them, Tony. She said Duncan was in on it, too. Do you think…could that have anything to do with why he died?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the truth. He was frowning, thinking he needed to get this information to Holt as soon as he possibly could, although he still couldn’t imagine why, if Duncan Grant had had a falling out with his partners in crime, they hadn’t just shot him and dumped the body somewhere out in the vastness of West Texas. He was also thinking he needed to tell Brooke everything, and wondering if this was the right time.

He’d about decided it was never going to be the right time, and this was probably as good as it was going to get, when Brooke suddenly gasped and said, “Oh God-Hilda. I hope she hasn’t broken the door down,” and took off running for the house.

Giving his heart time to settle back into a normal rhythm, Tony followed at a more sedate pace. He was crossing the yard when Hilda came galloping out to give him a lick and collect the fur-ruffling hug that was her due, then loped off to the pasture to see how the rest of her flock was faring. And he went on to where Brooke was waiting for him on the porch steps, drawn now by the tractor beam of her eyes.

“We shut her up so she wouldn’t scare Lady away,” she said, and the quick-time thumping of her heart and the hitch in her breathing made the words jump in an unrhythmic pattern. She pressed a closed fist against her chest and tried not to let her feelings show.

This wanting was new to her. Even without going further into her sexual past than her marriage-no, I’m not about to go there!-she’d never wanted, not like this. It wasn’t that she hadn’t sometimes enjoyed herself with Duncan, although not nearly as often as she’d pretended to. She’d even initiated the lovemaking once in a while, because she’d known it made Duncan happy when she did. But every time, when she’d known it was going to happen, there had been that moment of fear. That little clenching in her stomach, that flash of thought she tried not to notice because it seemed shameful and unnatural, and she dared not let Duncan or even herself know it was there. Just that teensy little, there-and-then-gone-again no!

But with Tony, she wanted. Wanted him, with a hunger that astounded her. Astounded, because it didn’t embarrass her at all, but only made her want to smile.

Watching him bend down to ruffle Hilda’s neck fur, seeing his hands, so dark against the dog’s white-and-fawn coat, she hungered for those hands, wanted them touching her body again the way he’d touched her this morning. Was it only this morning? It seems like forever ago. And how can I be so hungry for him already?

Watching him straighten and come on across the yard, seeing his mouth curve in that honey-sweet smile, she wanted his mouth kissing her, kissing her everywhere, wanted it the way a starving person wants, smelling the delicious aroma of food. Juices pooled in her mouth, so that she had to swallow and lick her lips, and her lips burned in spite of the moisture she’d put there.

Watching him reach the bottom of the steps and pause to look up at her, seeing his eyes glow golden at the sight of her, she felt her body grow heavy and hot, and pulses jump in places still tender from their earlier union with his body.

She knew he was watching her, seeing her eyes grow slumberous and her smile seductive, seeing the way her nipples beaded in sharp outline beneath her shirt, and she didn’t feel even a flash of fear or self-consciousness, not even a faint echo in her mind of no!

He’d come to the step below hers and, without a word, reached out and hooked an arm around her waist, pulled her to him and lifted his face for her kiss.

But she didn’t kiss him, not right away. She took his face between her two hands and gazed down at him, stroked the broad planes of his cheekbones with her thumbs and marveled at how beautiful he was, and that just looking at him could make her feel so…happy.

What did I do to deserve this? Especially now, when I have no right at all to be happy.

“Are you going to kiss me, or what?” Tony said.

She gave a faint whimper of a laugh. “I was afraid it might be too soon.”

“Hey, I’m a guy-when it comes to sex, we have short…mmm…”

It was all the encouragement she needed. She let herself sink into his kiss and felt her body grow weightless and her mind go floating off into a pale pink haze. Yes…this is love. I…adore…this…man.

She was barely aware when he came up to her step, then tangoed her backward through the door and onto the porch…then into the kitchen. There he paused to look into her eyes and whisper, “Your place or mine?”

“Mine…” She murmured it without opening her eyes, and they were moving again, and she couldn’t have cared less where they wound up as long as it was together.

They undressed each other standing up this time, not in a frantic hurry, but not too slowly, either. When they were both naked, Brooke placed her palms on Tony’s chest and watched her fingers fan on his smooth mahogany skin, and she shivered, not with cold, but with a surfeit of feelings.

“So beautiful,” she whispered, lost in the miracle of him.

He lowered his forehead to hers. “What is, love?”

“You…your skin…your body. You are.”

“Me?” He gave a little gulp of laughter. “Man, that’s a first. I mean, I am many things, some of which I’m even proud to admit to, but beautiful?” He shook his head in a dazed kind of way and, holding her waist with his hands, took a small step back from her so he could rake her body with his eyes. “You, on the other hand-”

“Hush.” She shuddered and slipped between his arms, brought her arms around him and stopped his words with her mouth. Then laid her head on his shoulder. “As long as I am to you,” she said huskily, and tears seeped between her lashes. “That’s all that matters.”

She felt a ripple pass through his strong, solid body, and his fingers glide through her hair with the delicacy of a harpist coaxing beauty from the strings of his instrument. His lips moved against her temple. “You are…more so than you can possibly imagine. And…I’d like to make love with you now. If you’re ready.” He cupped her head between his hands and tipped her face so he could look into her eyes. “Are you ready, sweetheart? Do you want me? Do you want me to love you now?”

Oh, yes…if only you would. Could you love me, Tony? Not just my body, but…me?

She drew a shaken breath and whispered, “Yes…please.”

And as he had given the reins to her this morning, now she gave them, and herself, over to him. To his skilled kisses and artist’s hands that made every nerve in her body shiver with delight…and to his tenderness that made her ache inside with longing. He took her to places she’d never known existed, gave her glimpses of joys she’d never imagined, lifted her to heights of ecstasy that terrified her, then gave her release that seemed to go on forever. And afterward, she wept and couldn’t tell him why.

She couldn’t tell him she was crying because it had ended too soon, and she was afraid she’d never feel anything so wonderful again. And because she was in love with him. Loved him desperately, irrevocably, with all her heart and soul, and had no idea whether he might…if he could ever…love her back.

I think I love this woman.

It slipped into his mind while his guard was down, while he lay relaxed and spent, with her head gently rising and falling with the movement of his chest and her tears cooling on his skin. And once it was there, it seemed pointless to try and deny it. It didn’t even seem as frightening as he’d always thought it would be. In fact, acknowledging it was an almost giddy relief, like finding unexpected rapport with someone he’d been dreading to meet.

The fact that she’d cried didn’t surprise him. It wasn’t the first time a woman had cried in his arms after making love. What did surprise him was the way he felt, which was not like crying, of course-because he didn’t do that sort of thing, at least not very often-but rather so full of feelings he didn’t know what to do with that his chest hurt. For a moment he wondered if telling her how he felt would help, but decided it would probably only make things worse. After all, she had enough on her emotional plate right now, the last thing she needed was to have to deal with the burden of some stranger falling in love with her.

Then he thought about what she’d said about him being beautiful, and the fact that she’d seemed utterly sincere when she’d said it. That she could think such a thing about someone-he had no illusions about this-as flat-out ugly as he was just about took his breath away.

Of course, she was beautiful to him-okay, obviously, she was beautiful to anybody who wasn’t completely blind-but beautiful to him in ways that couldn’t be captured on film or a digital memory chip. Was it possible she saw something similar when she looked at him?

Could she? What the hell does it mean?

A strange shimmering sensation had begun to dance beneath his skin, raising goose bumps just about everywhere, when Brooke stirred and lifted her head to say groggily, “What time izzit?”

He lifted his arm and peered at his watch. “Hmm…’bout three. Why?” Then, before she could answer, he thought, Daniel! and went rigid. “Oh, hell. I forgot. What time does-”

“About three-thirty.” She stretched languidly and kissed his chest. “Don’t worry. Plenty of time. We could even take a shower.” She looked up at him from under her lashes, and her smile was impish.

“Brazen hussy,” he growled, giving her bottom a gentle pat. “Tempting…but you’re forgetting something.” He shifted her off to one side and sat up, then turned to look at her and smiled. He couldn’t help it, given the way she looked lying naked on her side, propped on one elbow, with her head slightly tilted and her hair feathered across one flushed and tanned cheek, lips still swollen from his kisses…The camera in his mind went click.

He said gently, “There’s a cougar cage sitting in the back of your pickup, remember? Are you sure you want to try and explain that to Daniel?” She lay back with a groan and put an arm over her face. He laid his hand on her flat stomach and stroked downward, chuckling when she gasped and squirmed. “Come on, sweetheart-upsy-daisy. Let’s do this. If the three of you managed to get that thing up there, I think you and I can probably get it down. Especially since we have gravity on our side.”

He leaned over and kissed her, then gathered up his clothes and left her. And deep in his heart, he was grateful for the distraction that had made it possible for him to avoid answering the question that had popped into his mind just before she asked him the time.

It turned out not to be too difficult a job, with the help of the ramp and roller bars she used to transport cages full of goats and alpacas in and out of her truck.

“When you’re a woman alone, you learn to find ways of doing things that don’t rely on brute strength,” Brooke told him after they’d wrestled the cougar’s cage back through the compound gate. She dusted her hands and paused to catch her breath. “Of course,” she added, smiling at him, “I never say no to brute strength when it’s offered.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Tony said when they were back on the outside of the compound and Brooke was locking the gate in the chain-link fence. “Where were you going to take her? Do you have any idea how big a wild mountain lion’s range is?”

“I do, actually.” As she so often did, she laced her fingers through the chain-link and gazed beyond it, to where the cougar now lay relaxed in the shade of the oak tree, seemingly without a care in the world. He saw Brooke’s eyes squint a little and knew it wasn’t from the brightness of the sun. “The truth is, I didn’t know exactly where I was going to take her.” Her voice roughened. “Just knew I had to try and save her from Lonnie. Somehow.”

She threw him a look, and the wistful longing in it kicked at his heart. “It was my big dream. I wanted to turn this place into a refuge for big cats. We’re crowding them off the planet, you know. I have the room. The part you see here, the house, barn, pens and pasture-that’s only about five acres. I have another twenty over there.” She made a sweep with her arm. “That’s all mine. I could do it-thanks to my parents’ will, I have the money-but I don’t suppose it’s possible now. Not after this. Especially if I go to-” She swallowed convulsively, and it hit him suddenly-not a little kick, but a wallop that took his breath away-what she was facing and how terrified she must be.

He said gruffly, before he could stop himself, “Look, don’t give up. And don’t do anything stupid, okay? Holt and I-please, just give us a little more time.”

“Holt.” She turned to look at him, still holding on to the chain-link fence with one hand. “That would be…”

“The guy I’ve been sharing a room with-yeah. He’s-”

“Obviously not a traveling salesman.” She said it with a hint of a smile on her lips, but no humor at all in her eyes.

Tony felt a sickening dropping sensation in his stomach. He knew it was finally here-the moment he’d been dreading, the moment he’d known would have to come. And he knew it was going to be worse than he’d imagined, even before she said the words, in a voice that chilled him to his core.

“So, who is he, Tony? And while we’re at it, who are you? And why are you really here?”