At Close Range (16 page)

“Dios mio…”
she whispered, unconsciously adopting Rita's favorite phrase. Her breath caught in her throat and she inched back through the door, shutting and bolting it against the intruder.

Kneeling down and peering out the window, she saw with gratitude that Mack had already locked and chained the front gates.

But to her horror, the truck swerved into the field and, almost as if on two wheels, neatly circled around the gates. It smashed right through the wire fencing, tearing it out with a muffled groan of metal and wood ripped from the ground. The truck jerked to the left, then to the right, and shed the remnants of the fence.
And only paused for a split second before bearing straight for the veranda.

Though she knew it was impossible, she had the feeling the man driving the truck had seen her at the window and was coming straight at her. And although she felt adrenaline shoot through her, her primary, gut reaction was undiluted fury.

The idiot was going to drive right across the newly laid lawn, the lovely flowers and ram into the veranda.

She'd never felt real hatred before, but she recognized it now.

 

Mack didn't pause in his preparations for Turnbull when he heard the maniac plow through the fence. His heart lodged in his throat for a second when he heard the revved motor and knew the man was heading for the porch. A couple of well-placed rams on the right support poles and the whole portal could come crashing down.

Thank God, Corrie had taken the women to the bunkhouse. He'd seen them rushing through the door, a swirl of black skirts and flurried movement. It might be no safer in the long haul, but they only had to hold on until the sheriff and the U.S. deputies arrived. And that would be what, ten, fifteen minutes?

That was about all the time it took for five children to die in the Enchanted Hills disaster. A wave of despair rolled over him.

And, surprising him, following that wave came blessed, clean anger.

Those five weren't these six wonderful kids. The barn wasn't on fire. And if he had to die trying to stop
him, the jerk in the pickup wouldn't touch one hair on these kids' heads.

Or Corrie's. Or Lucinda or Rita's.

He surveyed their handiwork. Even little Analissa was busy tugging on a bale of hay, getting nowhere with it, but busy nevertheless. Pedro leaped across the bale she struggled with and gave a mighty shove as the bale slid into place.

Behind the first zigzag line of hay bales were ball bearings, tacks and nails. Behind the second, puddles of molasses—a mess that had made Jenny wring her hands and worry about how they would clean it up. Behind the third row of hay bales, and stacked the highest, were most of the children, gloved and ready to throw sand in the men's faces before running as fast as they could out the back door.

Mack felt a sharp stab of panic. These were kids playing kids' games. A few bales of hay and some childish booby traps wouldn't slow down a man determined to get to his son.

“Now what, Señor Mack?” Juan Carlos asked.

“The bad men are running their truck into the house,” Jenny shrieked from the front barn doors, her face pressed to the crack in the wood.

Slam!

“Turn on the water,” Mack barked.

“Got it,” Jason shouted.

“Good. Now, we've got to be very quiet from here on out. We'll just use hand signals, like this, okay?” He held up his hand. The children mouthed the words of the signals—stop, run, wait for it, get out of the barn. “And if the barn is on fire, what do you do?”

“Get outside, drop and roll,” they all called out.

He motioned them to silence. “Good. Okay, kids. Try keeping the pups quiet, too, okay? Now, this is the deal. We do nothing unless they try to come in the barn. Everybody ready?”

The children, varying in age from six to eleven years old, nodded with differing expressions on their young faces. Juan Carlos looked excited, though his face was paler than usual. Jenny looked almost angry, determined. Analissa clung to Tony's hand and appeared ready to cry. Jason's jaw jutted forward, his grip on the hose so tight Mack could see the boy's white knuckles. Pedro's eyes moved from child to child and, unexpectedly, he smiled.

Mack thought he understood. No one had ever fought for the poor kid before. The bogeyman that had plagued his whole life would have to face an army of Pedro's friends to get at the child this time. An army of kids and one resolute teacher.

Outside, the pickup's engine revved anew and gave an angry scream, before Mack heard another metal-wood impact and the unmistakable crack of a fired pistol. He realized the new sheriff was a master of understatement. The man in the truck was plain, old-fashioned nuts.

“Mack?” Jenny whispered urgently, waving him over to the slit in the barn door. “Look. Somebody's in the house.”

“What?”

She pointed. “There. In the dining room window.”

Mack saw and his heart constricted painfully.
Corrie.
Sweet heaven, it was Corrie.

Another of the entryway windows shattered at the same moment he heard another crack of the pistol.

He had to draw the men from the house.

And he had to keep the men at the house, away from the children.

It was a devil's choice; either one causing harm. And doing nothing would surely drive him to do something that would result in some innocent's death.

 

Corrie's heart was beating so loudly she scarcely heard the pickup slamming into the portal supports. But she felt it. The impact sent a shudder through the house and she heard a window break somewhere.

She'd run into the dining room when the pickup first veered toward the house. From the relative safety of that room, she watched in horror as the big, blond madman behind the wheel actually laughed as he rammed the heavy round support pole holding the porch. His laugh made her feel insane herself. What kind of man would try to bring down the house he believed his son and wife were hiding in? And enjoy doing it.

As he threw the pickup into reverse, she half hoped he was finished, that some measure of rational thought had seeped into his brain, but when the engine gunned anew, spewing gravel out from behind the truck, she knew he would ram their beautiful home again. An icy chill worked through her veins, making her straighten. And she found the cold infusing her with renewed anger. It was a good kind of anger. A Mack kind of anger.

All her life she'd squelched any feelings of temper. She was so used to doing so, it was automatic. But she'd been angry with Mack a few nights earlier. She'd felt flickers of anger off and on for the past
week. Those who had told her that anger was bad were wrong. Anger could be good, too. It could heal. And it could bring action.

Every injustice she'd encountered in her life seemed to coalesce into one focused rage at this small-minded little man who held human lives in such contempt.

Her eyes raked the rooms she could see, looking for some way to stop the man. Spying the alarm system switches on the wall, she raced across the dining room and threw the switch for the hacienda proper.

They'd never had to use it before, but the fire marshal had insisted it be installed when the building was first renovated. The shrill, pulsating screech nearly sent her to her knees.

To her delight, the alarm seemed to make the man behind the wheel of the pickup pause in his determination to drive right into the hacienda. If nothing else, the noise had made him hesitate, as if disoriented by the shrill racket.

And the fact that he hesitated gave her hope.

She smiled grimly and turned the alarm off.

The car motor gunned again.

She lifted the switch. It was an odd game of war with sound and fury. But she didn't feel a second impact. She flipped the switch down. Her ears still ringing, all she could hear was the whining hiccup of the man's damaged engine.

The sound of a car door opening wiped the smile from her face.

 

Mack winced at the strident scream of the fire alarm, sighed in relief when it cut off and swore softly when it came back on.

Jenny covered her ears. Then gave a little cry. “They're getting out of the car!”

“Get behind the hay,” Mack ordered, and gave her hair a flick as she dashed to her station. He pressed his face against the barn door, trying to take in everything across the drive.

A man roughly the size of a large mountain had climbed out of the driver's side and his two—thankfully much smaller—friends were still struggling with the passenger's door. They finally broke free and staggered toward the front of the battered pickup.

“Lucinda!” the largest of the three men yelled at the house, his voice barely rising over the sound of the alarm. “You get out here, you bitch!”

The alarm ceased.

Stay down, Corrie, Mack willed. Stay down and
stay safe.

One of the other men fired his pistol into the air. The third grabbed at his crotch. “Come outside, Lucinda. We got something for you.”

The man with the gun giggled a high-pitched hyena's cackle.

Already tense, Mack stiffened even more. The men were dead drunk. Through the crack in the barn door, he could see them weaving toward the veranda steps. One of them tromped on the flowers Corrie had admired so much.

Mack's jaw tightened. He would keep the kids safe, he promised himself. And the others, too. But afterward, when all was said and done, he'd find a way to pay that one back for destroying Corrie's innocent pleasure in her seemingly miraculous flowers.

His hand jerked reflexively when the big one he
assumed was Joe Turnbull jumped up onto the veranda. The man had to use the support pole he'd tried destroying to maintain his balance.

“Lucinda! Get out here!”

“Time for that jerk to pass out,” Mack whispered, and even as he did so, wondered if Corrie was whispering her little prayer,
I'm Corrie Stratton, and if I survived my childhood, I can survive this.
He knew why she said it now, knew the phrase had been born the night her parents had died.

He should never have left her in the house; he should have made certain she and the other women were out before he took the kids to the barn. Stay down, he silently commanded her.

 

The only rational thought in Corrie's mind was keeping the men outside long enough for the sheriff to arrive. No matter how many surprises Mack had in store for the madman, she didn't want them anywhere near the children—or Mack.

Something hurtled through the French panes of the dining room window, sending shards of glass across the lovely room. A rock thudded against and skidded across the dining table, scarring the wood. Leeza, who picked out the table, probably would have killed the man right where he stood.

She flipped back on the switch for the alarm. This time she didn't even flinch when the horrible racket ensued.

“Lucinda!” she heard a man yell over the screeching alarm. He punctuated his demand by furiously pounding on the heavy front doors.

Corrie reached up and cut the terrible alarm off.

The pounding abruptly ceased.

“Lucinda?”

Corrie wanted to yell at him to go away, that the police were on their way, but remembered what Mack had said about the man attacking the house first. Better to keep him occupied here than send him anywhere close to the children and Mack.

“I know you're in there, you bitch! Get your skinny butt out here and bring the kid with you. How the hell am I going to pay for that wool you like so much if you and the kid don't do your jobs? Huh? Tell me that, bitch!”

One of the other men laughed vilely. “Yeah. My cousin, he's waiting. He likes the little boys.”

Corrie slammed the alarm back on, blocking out the filthy stream of abuse. If the sheriff didn't get here soon, she would find a gun somewhere and kill these bastards herself.

The blaring alarm sent the men outside reeling away from the door. She was grateful for the clamor as it drowned out the vile oaths she was sure they were yelling at her.

Get here soon, she commanded a distant Ted.

Then, to her horror, she saw the flicker of a lighter reflecting in the shards of glass on the dining room floor.

“You want to play games, bitch? Eat some of this!” A flaming wad of cloth sailed through a broken window and landed in the center of the Saltillo-tiled entryway.

Dark clouds of smoke choked up from the wad of material, and as the flames danced around it, she re
alized one of the men had torn off his shirt to use as fodder for a fire.

She stared at the blaze in the center of the floor and felt the past merge abruptly with the present. Terror swelled up in her. Fire, she mouthed as silently as she had when she was a little girl. Fire.

She dragged the alarm switch down, cutting the noise, throwing the house into sudden silence once again.

“I'm not five anymore,” she murmured. “And you're going to pay for that little cloud.”

T
he children's pups, little more than a year old and more used to being petted than proving their mettle, and pushed beyond their ability to obey commands, had taken up a frenzied barking at the repeated use of the alarm. When the penetrating screech ceased abruptly, the four pups went into a delirium of howling protest.

In the silence, Mack was sure the sound was as equally cacophonous as the alarm itself. He swore when the largest of the three men whirled drunkenly and faced the barn.

“Lucinda! I'm going to get you. You think you can hide from me? No way!” the man yelled, and lumbered down the steps. His two friends—one of them naked to his scrawny waist—staggered behind him.

To his intense relief, Mack saw a shadow move behind the broken windows in the main house and, less
than a second later, the flames he'd seen inside were doused. Corrie was all right. And thinking.

Safe?
Please, let her be safe.

“Lucinda! You stupid bitch, get out here right now!”

“You might try a new line,” Mack growled beneath his breath. He held up his hand to signal the children.

Something hit the barn door with an enormous thud.

“Lucinda!”

The alarm in the main house went off again. The three drunks approaching the barn whirled and faced the house. The one without his shirt lost his footing and fell heavily to the dirt.

With children and booby traps behind him and three drunken oafs in front of him, Mack thought that some dark-humored god somewhere was probably laughing. But laughter was the furthest thing from his mind. Despite the overt black humor, these three men with room-temperature intelligence quotients had spent the afternoon liquoring up enough courage to come attack a helpless woman and her six-year-old son.

They'd found enough bravery in a bottle to fire up somebody's pickup, drive thirty odd miles and try ramming it through a house that for all they really knew, contained only foster and orphaned children of assorted young ages. They'd drunk enough joy juice that they screamed threats of rape and destruction, and had literally torn the shirt off one of their backs to light the place on fire.

What was the difference between these silly and stupid men and the lunatic who had despairingly thrown a firebomb into a crowded school?

The answer was simple, Mack thought.
Nothing.
The two weren't different at all. They were simultaneously ludicrous and dangerous. That was the saddest and most damning comment about madmen he could think of.

The buffoon who fell pushed to his feet and swayed dizzily. The alarm stopped as suddenly as it kept turning back on. “Turnbull, I'm going to nail your wife for that, man,” he growled. “I hate that noise.”

Joe Turnbull approached the barn with the caution of a rabid dog, head down, eyes bleary, body poised for a fight. His thick arms swung from his side like a man aching to swing the first punch. “She ain't over there, anyways. And I'm the only one who's gonna do her tonight,” he said. “
Lucinda!
Get your ass out here!”

Mack, still with his arm upraised, backed away from the barn doors.

“I mean it!”

Something heavy thudded against the barn door.

Analissa squeaked and the pups resumed their furious barking, their yelping holding new tones, a ferocious mixture of anger and fear.

“I wanna go now,” Analissa cried out. “I don't like this game anymore.”

“It's not a game, Annie,” Juan Carlos hissed. “You gotta be quiet.”

“Tell them to go away, Mack.”

Mack threw her a look over his shoulder. His heart wrenched at the sight of her tear-streaked face and big, frightened eyes. He had to get these men away from the barn, away from the children. As far away as possible, without sending them to either the main house or where the other women were.

“I hear you in there!” Joe bellowed. “You send Lucinda out. And Pedro. We're not here for nobody else. You send them out or we're coming in.” He punctuated his demand with a few well-placed rocks against the side of the barn.

“The sheriff's on his way,” Mack shouted. “Get the hell out of here or you're going back to prison.”

“Yeah, and who's gonna make me? Your big-shot marshal's done flown the coop. I seen him leave with his pretty little wife and their Tex-Mex kids yesterday.”

Mack studied the rafters above him, the children beneath. All he had to do was get the kids out, shut all the doors and windows, and he could light the bale of hay on fire. Then the idiots outside would have something to be sorry about. He even pulled a pack of matches he'd tucked in his pocket earlier.

“Who's that I'm talking to, anyways? You're not Pablo, the little weasel. And you sure aren't Clovis. I know, you must be the new candy-assed teacher.” He laughed derisively then said in a falsetto voice, “Oh, Ruiz, I'm so scared of the big bad teacher man. Save me.”

Mack ground his teeth to withhold any response.

Something hit the doors again. This time they bent inward and the bar lock gave a suspicious groan.

“You're making a big mistake here,” Mack yelled. “I've got a .38 and I'm sure as hell not afraid to use it on the likes of you.” Where in blazes were the troops?

Someone fired a round through the barn door. Had Jenny still been standing at the crack, she'd have been
hit. As it was, the bullet passed through the pine planking not an inch from Mack's waist.

“There are children in here, you idiots,” Mack yelled. “Stop shooting and get away from the doors.”

“You coming out?”

Mack glanced over his shoulder at the tense children. Every eye was on his still-raised hand. Slowly he nodded and dropped his hand in a slashing motion. Like puppets, they disappeared behind their curtains of hay. It was like asking them to take cover behind glass walls.

Even the pups seemed aware of something new about to take place and their anxious yips fell silent.

“Fine,” Mack shouted. “You back away from the doors and we'll open them.”

He heard one of them say, “It's a trick, man, don't do it.”

“Hell, it doesn't matter if it's a trick or not. They got my kid. And he's mine. I do with him what I want. No goddamned teacher's gonna take him away. If I wanna kill him, that's my right. I brought him into this world, didn't I? Shoot the damned door again, Ruiz.”

“I don't know, Joe. Getting your kid's one thing. Killing one, like that's a sin.”

“Just shoot the damn lock off,” Joe snapped. “When did you get so worried about sin? Besides, what do you care about other people's snotty-nosed kids, huh?”

“I got a kid,” Ruiz said.

“Come on, you pussy. Give me the damn gun and I'll shoot the damn door down myself.”

Mack looked back to make sure the kids were still down behind their less-than-solid hay bales before
sliding into one of the empty stalls himself, one that afforded him a clear view of the doors and the children at the same time. As if his movement signaled Joe Turnbull, the drunken madman suddenly fired at the door.

While the door held, Mack was less grateful for that than for the satisfyingly dry click signifying an empty gun. Unfortunately, the men seemed undeterred by the lack of that weapon. They were drunk enough to feel invincible and mean enough to try anything.

One of them—probably Joe—charged the door. It bowed in with a shrill whine of protest.

“Help me, goddamn it,” Joe hollered.

The door bowed again, and with the extra pressure, the bar snapped free, spinning off its hinges and slamming into the stall Mack hid behind.

The pups yelped and one of them gave a shrill howl. But it wasn't the noise or even the sight of only two men charging into the barn that had Mack's heart threatening to stop completely.

Little Analissa stood up from her hiding place and clearly yelled, “You're bad, bad men. You breaked our door.”

 

Watching in sheer horror as the men separated, one running in a drunken parody of the spy routines they'd practiced only that afternoon, and the other two breaking through the barn door, Corrie flipped the alarm switch again. And shut it off immediately when only the smaller of the two in the doorway glanced over his shoulder at the main house.

One of the men, the big one she'd identified as Joe
Turnbull, gave a huge guffaw, and punched his friend hard enough that the man nearly fell.

Corrie knew that even in moments of extreme tragedy, humor existed, often bloomed, but she found the fact that these men laughed while terrorizing children to be the consummate abomination. There was nothing funny about two grown and obviously drunk men terrorizing children.