Death Rides Again (A Jocelyn Shore Mystery) (30 page)

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, I thought. I had no problem with the thought of using T.J. as a human shield, but it felt strange to be considering this complete asshole an ally even temporarily.

Two men walked through the open door, silhouetted for a moment against the bright gray of the morning sky before moving into the dim interior light. Dim, but still bright enough to make out the shapes of the long-barreled rifles they held and to see their faces. The taller of the two was a stranger to me, a big ugly thug of a man with greasy black hair and a hairy growth under his nose that could only be described as a porn ’stache. The other was Manuel, Carl’s soft-spoken kind-eyed ranch hand. The gun looked completely out of place in his work-worn hands.

I felt my jaw drop just a little. Manuel was the last person on earth who should have walked through that door.

“Mr. T.J.?” he called in his soft, pleasant voice.

“Right here,” said T.J.

In Spanish, Manuel asked, “Why are you hiding, Mr. T.J.? It is just us, your friends.”

“Didn’t know it was you, and you can’t be too careful out here,” T.J. replied in fairly decent Spanish. He stepped closer to the front of the stall, but he kept the rough wood of the support post against his left shoulder. He also kept his pistol close to his side with his finger on the trigger. The stall door was still open, and a big part of me wished he would pull it shut.

“Very wise,” answered Manuel, taking a pace forward. “But you can come out now.”

“I don’t think so, and that’s far enough,” said T.J., gesturing with his pistol.

Manual stopped abruptly, but the stranger looked at T.J.’s gun with contempt rather than fear. I did not like the look in his eyes, a soulless malevolence that I usually associated with cold-blooded predators like sharks, snakes, or toddler beauty pageant moms.

T.J. went on. “I can hear you just fine from there. We don’t have anything to talk about anyway.”

Over T.J.’s shoulder, I could see the tall stranger turning this way and that, taking in the layout of the barn. He turned to the lion and approached its cage.

The lion paced back and forth and then abruptly lunged upright, rearing on its back legs and resting huge velvet paws against the bars in a parody of a jailed man. The stranger jumped back involuntarily and then gave a harsh laugh. With the abruptness of a striking cobra, he rammed the barrel of his rifle into the lion’s muzzle. The big cat gave a startled roar of outrage and whirled away with more speed than I would have though possible for such a large animal. I could see blood on its nose as it turned to face its tormentor, but this time it stayed well away from the bars.

“Not so brave now,
kitty
,” said the stranger, also in Spanish.

Manuel frowned at the distraction, but quickly turned his attention back to us. “But Mr. T.J., I think we have a great deal to discuss. My boss has many questions for you. I told him I would bring him answers. Or far better, you can talk to him yourself.”

“No,” said T.J. “You have the answers, and you have the money, what there is of it. You don’t need me.”

Manuel looked at me over T.J.’s shoulder with narrowed eyes, and I suppressed an urge to duck my head behind him. “Why do you have the woman here? She was looking for Carl earlier, and I think she knows too much.”

“She doesn’t know anything. Not about your boss, not about our business. You don’t need to concern yourself.”

“Yet you brought her to this place. Why?”

“She is my girlfriend. She wanted to see the lion, that is all.”

“Unfortunate. For her, that is.”

I felt a quiver go through T.J. Asshole though he was, I realized he was doing his best to save my life. Maybe he really had intended to use Kyla and me as bargaining chips after all.

“Not at all. She knows nothing. She doesn’t even understand what we are saying. All you have to do is turn around and leave, and everyone goes home safe and sound.”

“Of course,” said Manuel pleasantly. “Why do we not do that now? You and the señorita can come out, and I shall introduce you to my friend here.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think so. You walk away. You tell your boss that Carl is the one who made a mess of our business, not me.”

The stranger snorted, and Manuel grimaced. “It was your plan. The fact that it was Carl who missed the horse and hit the wrong target does not make you less responsible.”

T.J. said, “I’ll do what I can to get you the money, but the race winnings are out of our reach, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And since you killed Carl, we have the cops sniffing around, and they aren’t going to back off. That was stupid, Manuel.”

I started, then quickly lowered my eyes, hoping they hadn’t noticed. I definitely didn’t want them knowing I could understand what they were saying. So T.J. had been telling the truth about not killing Carl. A liar, a con man, a kidnapper, and no telling what else, but he was not a murderer.

Manuel’s eyes flashed with anger, but he almost instantly reassumed his mild, pleasant expression. Spreading his hands in a conciliatory gesture, he said, “Carl would have been caught, and then he would have talked. I had no choice. Or rather, my friend here felt he had no choice.”

The stranger, hearing himself discussed, turned away from the lion and gave a most unpleasant smile.

T.J. shook his head. “Carl was too scared to talk. He would have gone down first, not that it matters now. Either way though, your boss should cut his losses and pull out. This operation is over.”

The stranger spoke for the first time. His smoker’s voice sounded like gravel falling into a tin bucket, hoarse, but oddly high-pitched for such a big man. “But what message does that send? Our boss has many competitors who only wait for any sign of weakness to move against him.”

Manuel took a cautious step forward. Behind him, the big stranger edged to the side, probably looking for a way to get a clean shot at T.J. Wishing again that T.J. had pulled the stall door shut, I crouched low enough behind him to get my head out of sight, and as I did, my eye caught sight of the metal pulley system that opened the lion cages.

I went down on one knee in the soft dry earth of the stall floor. I could no longer see Manuel or his buddy, but I could see the lion, which had not taken its golden eyes off the two men. It was still pacing, agitated, tail twitching. I considered this a hopeful sign.

The rough slats between the pair of stalls in which we hid had been designed to be easily removable, probably to accommodate a much larger animal than a horse. The lowest slat was some ten or twelve inches above the dirt and sawdust, making a gap almost, but not quite large enough for me to slide through. As soundlessly as I could, I shrugged off my bulky goose down coat and let it slide to the ground. Then, I carefully moved to the back corner and began quietly pushing the dirt away from beneath the barrier, expanding the gap as best I could. For an instant, T.J. glanced my way to see what I was doing.

The sound of a shot rang out, deafening in the enclosed space, followed almost immediately by another. Without thinking, I hurled myself forward, feeling the rough board catch first my hair and then scrape my shoulders. For one terrifying instant, I thought my rear end wouldn’t make it, but sheer terror gave me the impetus to wrench through, my feet scrabbling in the dirt before finally finding purchase and propelling me into the next stall. Hauling myself to my knees, I threw myself at the stall door, reached through the opening, and yanked on the lever to the lion’s cage.

With a rasp of metal, the cage door rolled back. I had just enough time to see an immense tawny form spring forward before a high-pitched scream and another gunshot ripped through the air. I threw myself down behind the shelter of the wooden partition, then scrambled forward to pull the stall door shut. Wherever the lion was, I didn’t want it sniffing its way to me.

From my crouching position, I listened intently—or as intently as I could over the painful ringing in my ears. I thought I could hear a muffled thumping, but no voices, no other human sounds. The smell of dust, hay, and lion urine now mingled with the acrid scent of gunpowder. I waited, half expecting the door of my stall to swing open to reveal the barrel of a rifle, but nothing happened. After a few moments, the ringing in my ears subsided somewhat but I still heard nothing. Cautiously, I put an eye to the gap in the stall door. An empty lion cage, a stretch of dirt floor, but nothing else. Rising to my feet, I cautiously peeked over the door before ducking back down. The brief look had been enough to reveal a pair of cowboy boots, toes pointing to the roof, and a blur of yellow fur. At least one of the two men was otherwise occupied, I thought, but what about the second? And where was T.J.? Dropping back to the floor, I rested my cheek on the dirt and looked beneath the board.

T.J. lay slumped in the corner where I’d left him. He still clutched his pistol in one hand, but that hand, pistol and all, lay motionless in the dirt. A red stain seeped from under his arm, spreading slowly across the front of his formerly white shirt. He was alive, though, and his eyes, dazed and blank, met mine.

“T.J., pull that door closed,” I whispered to him. “The lion’s out.”

He blinked and looked away, but made no other movement. I wasn’t sure if he understood. Wasn’t even sure he could hear me. After all, he’d been a lot closer to the shooting, and his ears had to be ringing as much as mine were.

Knowing it was not a good idea, I knelt beside the hole between the stalls and spent another couple of moments expanding it, then slipped through again. The first thing I did was slam the door closed, a movement that produced a low growl from a very big throat on the other side. The second thing was to take T.J.’s gun from his hand. Only then did I stand and look out over the top of the stall door.

I sort of wished I hadn’t. Manuel lay unmoving on his side in the center of the floor. I could see his open eyes. Worse, I could see the gaping hole that T.J.’s bullet had torn through his neck. The other man, the tall stranger, lay half under the lion. I couldn’t see his face, but considering what the lion was doing, I didn’t think he was a threat any longer.

From above, Kyla’s panicked voice called, “Jocelyn?”

I straightened. “I’m here.”

“Oh thank God!” she called back. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. T.J.’s not. He’s been shot.”

“I’m coming down!” she said.

“Um, take a look. I let the lion out.”

I heard the tap of her designer boots on the loft floor, then her gasp. “Oh my God!” There was a moment of silence, then she said again, “But you’re okay?”

“Fine. A little deaf maybe, but fine.”

“I didn’t think lions ate people,” she said.

“No, I’m pretty sure they do. Especially when you’ve starved them for two weeks and then poked them with your gun.”

“Who poked the lion with a gun?”

“The guy currently serving as the main course,” I said. “We have bigger problems though. We need to get T.J. to a hospital as fast as possible. Any ideas about how to get past a lion?”

“You could shoot it. I assume you have T.J.’s gun.”

“I’m not shooting a lion,” I protested. “For one thing, it just saved our lives. And for another thing, I think a gun this size would just make it mad.”

“I could drop a hay bale on its head,” she offered after a moment’s consideration.

“That might hurt it. Could you drop one close to it? Maybe behind it so it would go out the door?”

For answer, I heard the sound of something heavy sliding over the floor, then the sound of a bale hitting concrete. The lion flinched and snarled, but didn’t move.

Kyla dropped another bale a little closer with similar results. The third one, however, brushed the lion’s tail as it hit the floor, and the big animal gripped the body in its powerful jaws and dragged it out through the open door. I wondered if lions had trouble digesting porn ’staches.

Kyla descended the ladder quickly, and I opened the stall door and pulled her inside before closing it again.

She looked down at T.J., whose face was rapidly fading to the grayish white color of wet caliche. The blood had now soaked through his shirt and was slowly but steadily dripping into the dirt floor. I knew we should be performing some sort of first aid, but getting him to the hospital was the only way he was going to make it. I knelt again and put my hand into his pocket, digging for the keys. He whispered something, but I couldn’t understand him.

“I’m going to get his truck. See if you can find something to put pressure on the wound,” I said to Kyla.

She looked down at the bloody shirt with distaste, then at the keys in my hand. “Let me go,” she offered. “You can apply pressure.”

“Don’t be silly. You can’t drive his truck.”

“Then I’ll get your car.”

“The truck will be able to go faster on that road, and he’ll be able to lie flat in the bed of the pickup,” I said. This was true. Besides, I didn’t know where the lion had gone, and I didn’t like the thought of letting her go out there alone. Later I would wonder why I thought it was okay for me to go out there alone, but at the time my reasoning seemed to make perfect sense.

“You don’t care if it’s better for him,” she accused most unfairly. “You just don’t want him to bleed on your seats. Which I can appreciate. But how the hell are we going to lift him into that big-ass pickup? We’ll have a hard enough time getting him into your car. He must weigh a ton.” She nudged his calf with the toe of her boot for emphasis.

She had a point, but I was determined. “Hay bales,” I said quickly. “We can haul him up those.”

I took the keys and slipped out the stall door, closing it behind me.

“Don’t get eaten,” she called after me.

“Apply pressure,” I reminded her.

I crept to the barn door, stepping carefully around Manuel’s body and the pool of blood soaking into the concrete. I peered around the corner, but could see no sign of the lion. That might be good or it might not, especially if it was lurking behind one of the three vehicles now parked in front of the barn. Deciding I would just have to take that chance, I braced myself to dash across the stretch of open ground, shivering a little and wishing I’d remembered to put my coat back on.