Bad Penny (29 page)

“Hello?”

“Wilson, it’s me.”

“I know. Caller ID, remember? What’s up?”

“Oh. Yeah. Whatever. Anyway, I’m calling because Mom told me to. And I’m quoting her here. Charlie. Call Wilson. Tell him his daddy woke up and was asking for him. She said to tell you to get here as quick as you can. So I’ve delivered the message. You know Mom. I’d suggest you hustle.”

Wilson was so scared he hated to ask, but he couldn’t drive all the way into Austin fearing the worst.

“Is Dad…is he—”

“Oh. Hell. No, no. I should have said that first. She said he’s okay. He’s just asking for you.” Then he snorted softly. “He always did like you better.”

Wilson cursed beneath his breath. “Damn it, Charlie. I’ve heard you whine about that most of my life, and I can promise you, this is not the time to pull it out again. Tell Mom I’ll be there as soon as I can, and if I hear that crap about who Dad’s favorite is again, it’ll have to have come up through your ass before it makes it back out of your mouth again.”

“Point taken. See you later, bro.”

“Count on it,” Wilson said, and headed for the house, calling out to Cat as he ran.

She was just taking the last of the patties from the grill when she heard Wilson calling her name.

She turned with a smile, then saw the look on his face. Please. No more bad news.

“What?”

“Charlie just called. Dad woke up asking for me. Mom sent a message that basically means…get your ass here ASAP or suffer the consequences.”

“Oh, no. Is he worse?”

“Charlie said he wasn’t. I’m going to change into clean clothes and take off to the hospital. Want to come?”

“Oh, honey…the contractor already called. He’s coming out to pick up a check. I told him I’d be here. Do you mind?”

“No. Of course not. Besides, knowing Dad, it’s just some instruction about feeding cattle or the like. He probably thinks the place will go to hell in a handbasket unless he’s running the show.”

“Okay. You change clothes. I’ll make you a burger to go.”

Wilson kissed her quickly, then lingered for a second kiss. When he finally turned her loose, he groaned.

“Hold that thought,” he said, then added, “And since I’m responding to a royal demand, please hold the onions on the burger, too.”

“You got it,” Cat said, and carried the plate of burgers into the house as Wilson made a dash for their room to change clothes.

A few minutes later he was on his way to Austin, eating as he drove, leaving Cat behind to wait for the builder and eat her lunch in solitary splendor. Cat couldn’t have cared less about eating alone. She was just grateful that today was a day when her food stayed in her belly where it belonged.

The contractor came and went, and the afternoon was wearing her down. She crawled onto the living room sofa and covered herself with one of Dorothy’s afghans. Within minutes, she was asleep.

Jimmy Franks knew that backtracking in a stolen car was a risk, but he was through fucking around with Wilson McKay. Today was the day that it was going to be over and done with.

He drove with single-minded focus, never speeding, never calling attention to himself in any way. Just lessening the miles that he’d put between himself and the McKay household with every passing minute. By this time tomorrow, he would be out of the state, heading for points north. And at the first place he came to that had a bus stop, he would ditch the car and use public transportation to get himself out of the state.

He’d taken his last hit of meth on an empty stomach and was as high as he could be without sailing through the roof of Arpatha Mather’s Malibu. He was clutching the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. The bugs he felt crawling underneath the skin had to be the size of quarters, and he had an overwhelming urge to chew on his tongue. But he knew if he rode out the high in bliss, he would wake up in the ditch on a downer. You couldn’t do any kind of business on a downer, and he was flat out of money to buy more meth until he made a withdrawal somewhere, preferably at the McKay ranch after he’d done them in. But, he wasn’t going to be picky. First things first.

Kill McKay.

Kill McKay. Kill McKay.

Luis Montoya once again missed the exit he had meant to take, this time the one that would get him to the McKay ranch. But he’d learned his lesson in Dallas. This time he didn’t keep driving the wrong way, hoping something—like God and a miracle—would deposit him in front of the correct address, as he had done before. He got off at the next exit he came to and backtracked through the city streets, stopping twice at gas stations to make sure he was on the right track.

As he finally reached the correct road and aimed the car west, he made a silent memo to himself to buy a portable GPS before he did any more traveling. He wasn’t sure how to use one, but it couldn’t be any more difficult than what he was going through now.

As he drove, his mind kept going over and over everything he’d learned about Cat Dupree. If he was honest with himself, he would have to admit he was more than eager to meet this superwoman. But if it turned out that she was his killer, he wasn’t sure he would be able to take down such an Amazon on his own. Besides, he knew that if he wanted to make an arrest in the United States, he would have to go through “channels.” And the people who knew her seemed to hold her in high esteem, which meant the powers that be might be hesitant to send one of their own, so to speak, into a foreign country to do time. But, as his mother always said, trouble is a bad thing to borrow. He would just have to wait and see how the interview went.

Wilson got to the hospital in record time, only to find that his father had been medicated again and was sound asleep. Charlie had made an exit about five minutes before Wilson’s arrival.

His mother was there, her face pale and drawn, but with a set to her chin he knew all too well. He slipped into the room and put an arm around her shoulder, surprising her with a soft pat and a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey, Mom. How’s Dad?”

“Better…I think. But they shot him full of something before he could say what he wanted to say. I swear, all they had to do was—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Wilson said. “I’m here, and I’ll be here when he wakes up. Then he can tell me to be sure and feed the old horse two scoops of sweet feed instead of one, and not to forget to band the new bull calves.”

Dorothy sighed. “You’re probably right. Still, it was really strange. I’ve never seen him so worked up.”

Wilson frowned, thinking back over what Carter could possibly need to tell him that was so important, then knew there was no way to guess. They would just have to wait until he woke up to find out.

Cat was dreaming of little boys who looked like Wilson when she heard someone laugh. She thought she was still dreaming until she opened her eyes, and when she did, her heart stopped.

A man was standing less than ten feet away with a gun pointed straight at her head—and she knew who he was.

“Well, hello, Sleeping Beauty. You should have waited a minute, so I could wake you up with a kiss.”

“Like hell,” Cat said, and swung a pillow and the afghan at him at the same time that she bolted.

She leaped over the back of the sofa and made a run toward the kitchen as the afghan flared, then settled over Jimmy Franks’s head like a bullfighter’s cape.

Surprised by the unexpected move, Jimmy ducked as he fired off a shot. The slug went into the ceiling. By the time he got the afghan off his head, the woman was gone.

“Bitch!” he screamed, then jumped over the sofa and ran after her.

Cat was running for her life and knew not to stop or look back. She’d seen too many booking photos to be fooled by a shaved head and biker gear. She had only two options now—outrun Jimmy Franks or outfight him. And while she would have loved to wipe that stupid grin off his face permanently, she couldn’t stand empty-handed against a man with a gun.

She ran through the kitchen and was on her way out the door when she suddenly pivoted and backtracked two steps toward the counter, grabbing a carving knife from the block before running out. Once outside, she flattened herself against the wall by the back door, waiting for him to exit.

Jimmy was screaming and cursing with every step as he chased after her. How was he to know that the bitch would not only fight back but outrun him?

When he reached the kitchen and still couldn’t find her, he began to panic, thinking that she’d gotten away. He couldn’t afford to leave another witness alive. It was like dropping breadcrumbs for the cops to follow. With his eyes on the horizon, he dashed onto the back porch.

He saw movement from the corner of his eye just as the screen door swung shut.

At the same moment that Cat swung sideways with the knife, Jimmy lunged backward just far enough that the blade missed the artery, slicing through muscle as it pierced straight through his shoulder. His roar of pain sent a shiver up her spine.

When the tip hit the wall, the knife vibrated like a tuning fork before flying out of Cat’s grip when Jimmy yanked it loose. She heard it hit somewhere behind her and knew she couldn’t outrun a bullet in time to get to it.

To her dismay, he was still upright and armed, and she was now without a weapon. Hoping that she’d wounded him enough to distract him, she made a flying leap off the back porch and started across the yard.

“You’re mine!” he screamed, while blood poured down his arm, dripping through his fingers onto the porch.

“Stop now!” he shrieked, and fired off a second shot.

Cat heard the words just as the dirt between her legs suddenly exploded. She stopped—but only because she had more than just herself to consider.

“Turn around now!” Jimmy Franks screamed.

Cat turned to find him only a step behind her. He hit her cheek with the butt of the gun, and she went down.

When she didn’t move, Jimmy cursed, then nudged her with the toe of his shoe.

“Get up!” he yelled. She didn’t move.

“Get up, damn it, or I’ll shoot you right there.”

When she didn’t respond to that threat, it occurred to him that he might have hit her too hard. Fine. That would give him time to restrain her. He dragged her body to the porch, then, with blood dripping, dug through the laundry in a basket just inside the kitchen door, hunting for something to use as a rope. When he found a pair of pantyhose, he grabbed them.

Perfect.

Before the woman could wake, he had her tied to a porch post in a sitting position with her hands behind her back. Her long legs were sprawled and dangling down the steps. He stared at her long enough to get hard. That was when he made his last plan.

Cat came to in a panic, with a sharp, stabbing pain in her face, and unable to move. Before she even had time to remember why, Jimmy Franks walked into her line of vision. At that point she was hit with a double dose of fear. She bit on her lip, using the pain to focus, then lit into him with every ounce of strength she had in her, desperate not to let him see her fear.

“So you’re the big bad Jimmy Franks. What a joke. Can’t even take down an unarmed woman without cheating. You’re a sorry—”

“Shut it!” Jimmy yelled.

He was stunned that the first words out of her mouth had been to berate him. She should be scared to death, begging for her life, not threatening his.

“You’re in no shape to make threats, bitch. So shut your mouth or I’ll just do you now.”

“You don’t have the balls to do yourself,” Cat said, and then spat at him. The spittle landed on the toe of his shoe.

He stared at her. “You’re either the stupidest woman I ever met or you were born without a lick of sense.”

“Why? Because I’m not afraid of you?”

Cat stifled the urge to weep and focused on anger instead. If she had any

chance at all of surviving this, it would be because she kept him off guard. Jimmy pointed his gun at her head.

Cat’s heart stopped. Dear Lord, no. Please. Don’t let this be the way I end…not when my life is just beginning…not when my baby will die with me.

Then she saw the glitter in his eyes, his dilated pupils, and realized he was not only mean and stupid, but he was higher than a kite. And she also realized that whatever he’d tied her hands with was stretching. She had another chance. She couldn’t afford to blow it.

“Well, big man…where’s the thrill in this?” “Shut up!” Jimmy shouted.

Cat shrugged, then rolled her eyes. “Just like a man. When in doubt, shout.”

Jimmy couldn’t believe it. She was a bona fide nut. She had to be. Any normal woman would be afraid. He couldn’t figure out what Wilson McKay saw in her. She was nothing but a freak.

“I’m gonna shoot you dead and fuck your ass. How do you think you’re old man is gonna feel about that?”

“Don’t ask me, dumbass. I’ll be dead. Did you ever think of that? Oh, by the way…thank you in advance for shooting me before you do me. At least I won’t have to smell your stinky self all on top of me.”

Jimmy picked up one of Dorothy’s bowls that she used for her beans and slung it across the porch, shattering both it and what was left of his focus.