Death Rides Again (A Jocelyn Shore Mystery) (29 page)

Kyla and I met each other’s gaze, and I tried to will her to cooperate. I didn’t like the panicky look I saw in her blue eyes. Panic could make even the smartest person do something very stupid.

He gestured with the gun and she preceded him reluctantly to his truck. As she started around to the passenger side, he said, “No. This side, then slide over. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

It bothered me that his attention was still mostly on me. “You. Give me your purses.”

Damn. The hope that he might have forgotten about our cell phones died. I wondered if there was any way I could slide my hand into Kyla’s purse and find her gun in time. I moved to the car and opened the door.

“Wait!” he barked sharply.

I froze.

He gestured with the gun. “Move back. I don’t trust you.”

Keeping the gun trained on me, he moved slowly around the car to the passenger side and removed our purses. There was a brief instant when he had to take his eyes off me, but it wasn’t long enough to do anything productive.

He straightened, holding the purses in his free hand. Shutting the door with his elbow, he gestured with the gun again. “Now get in. You follow us, or I swear I’ll spatter her brains all over the inside of my truck.”

I flinched at the ugly words, but did as he said. His enormous black truck passed me slowly, and I pulled out behind him, willing Kyla to keep her head and willing T.J. to have a heart attack and die.

After a mile or so, we left the main road and turned onto a rutted track that wound through first a cactus field and then into scrubby trees and brush. The suspension on the Civic squeaked in protest as we crossed over first one washout and then another, but the little car gamely rumbled on. I hoped the road wouldn’t get much worse, not so much out of fear for my car’s suspension but for fear it literally wouldn’t be able to keep up and then T.J. would take out his anger on Kyla. My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly it felt as though it would snap off in my hands. My brain raced furiously, but I was coming up with nothing. T.J. held all the cards. He had our phones, he had Kyla’s gun even if he didn’t know it, and he was able to use us against each other. I might have been willing to take a chance with my own life, but there was no way I was going to jeopardize Kyla’s.

I have a decent sense of direction, but the road wound and twisted for what felt like miles, and by the time T.J. stopped, I knew only that we were miles from the main road and in the middle of nowhere. We had come to a clearing with a few dilapidated outbuildings clustered around a metal stock tank full of brackish water reflecting the gunmetal gray of the sky. T.J. stopped the truck and got out. I waited to see if he would take the gun off Kyla even for an instant. If he did, I would run him over, back up, and run him over again. But he was too careful, and reluctantly I turned off the engine. I quickly slipped the keys into my pocket. If I had the chance, I could jab at his eyes. A foolish thought maybe, but metal would be better than fingernails. I got out of the car.

“This way,” T.J. said, gesturing with the gun.

He herded us toward the largest building, an ancient barn of weathered gray wood that looked as though a moderately strong breeze could blow it over.

“Open the door,” he told me.

I put my hand on the old-fashioned wooden latch, then stopped. “Why are you doing this? You know people are going to come looking for us.”

He gave a small shrug. “I’m betting they won’t find you. Now open the door.”

I felt a chill go down my back and lifted the latch partway, then stopped again. “Why should I? If you’re going to kill us anyway, why should I make it easy on you?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, considering. “Because it buys you time. I’ve always been a betting man. Today, I’m betting that when you turn up missing, no one will look my way. If I’m right, well, then, you stay here for a few uncomfortable nights while I liquidate and clear out of here. I can call the cops and tell them where to find you when I’m on a plane to Rio. If I’m wrong, then I can use you as bargaining chips. Your lives for immunity. So you see, if you cooperate, you have a chance of making it out of here. If you don’t, I might as well kill you now.”

“Is that what you told Eddy when you took him out to that caliche pit?” Kyla asked.

Her voice was shaky, but I could tell she was past the first shock and was starting to think. I was not sure whether that was good or not. Kyla was unpredictable at the best of times, and this was not a best time.

T.J. shook his head. “Eddy killed himself, or as good as. If he’d just left town like he said, he’d be alive today. But he wanted money, and he made the fatal error of thinking that I’d pay for his silence.”

“So you shot him.”

“You know I didn’t. I have an alibi.” He paused, then added, “Carl thought Eddy might go to the police.”

“So you’re blaming Carl? Very convenient, since he’s dead. I suppose you’re going to say he killed himself out of remorse.”

“Absolutely. It’s really perfect. Much better, of course, if this all just blows over, but if it doesn’t, well, then, I still come out clean. Or almost clean, anyway. I suppose I’ll have to let them prosecute me for the illegal animal imports, but I should be able to survive that. Hardly my fault that the man I hired to transport my stock turned out to be a stone-cold killer.”

“Except he wasn’t.”

“No, he really was,” said T.J. “That’s one reason I hired him.”

Almost without thinking, he moved past us and lifted the door latch himself. The heavy barn door swung open of its own accord, helped by the brisk November breeze. An odd odor streamed out—a musky acrid unfamiliar smell—and somewhere inside, something moved.

T.J. gestured with the gun, something that was becoming very old. Hesitantly, we preceded him into the dim interior.

Another movement, followed by a loud whuffing sound.

“What the hell is that?” asked Kyla, stopping abruptly. Even T.J.’s gun pressing into her back did not claim her full attention.

“Move,” he said, pushing her between the shoulder blades.

The building had originally been a small horse stable. Four empty box stalls lined the right-hand wall. The left side had been converted into two homemade animal pens constructed of chain-link fencing wrapped around reinforced metal supports set in concrete. The closest pen housed a lion.

A very large, very alert lion. And not a mountain lion either. This lion might have come directly from an African savannah, assuming that the savannah was also home to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Even his mother would have described him as big-boned. Droopy pouches swung and rippled under his belly like furry pendulums. His massive feet looked like soft velvet, his sleek coat shone in the dim light streaming in from the doorway. The eyes, however, told a very different story. Golden, almost the same color as his tawny coat, they had the intensity of a fat kid who has missed a meal and now hears the dinner bell.

Keeping the gun trained on the two of us, T.J. went to the wall and stood beside a pulley system. I followed the chains with my eyes and saw they led to the cage doors.

“Carl designed these. Pretty smart really. When we needed to move one of the lions, we’d back the trailer into the barn, set up some fence panels, and pull open the door. The lion always followed its nose to the hamburger in the trailer. ’Course, Carl had a tranq gun, too, just in case, but he never had to use it. And lucky for you girls, the occupant of this cage,” he indicated the second cage with a tip of his head, “got himself shot by one of my hunters last night.”

“This is what you were all laughing about when you were talking about a mountain lion?” I asked, trying to ignore his “lucky for you girls” comment. “You’re shooting real lions? Where in the world do you get them?”

“Well, that’s another reason I’ll be missing Carl. And Eddy, come to that,” he added as an afterthought. “They were really good at finding older carnivals and roadside zoos that were only too happy to sell their stock to an ‘exotic animal rescue’ farm without too many questions. A lot of the big cats were older and pretty soft, but it’s amazing what a couple of weeks without a meal will do for an animal’s motivation.”

Kyla’s gaze strayed back to the big lion, now pacing back and forth behind its cage door.

“Starving animals, T.J.?” She turned to me. “You were right about him. Much as I hate to admit it, you were completely right. In fact, in retrospect, I don’t know what I ever saw in him. I mean, look at him. He’s not even all that good-looking.”

I looked. “He’s not bad on the outside. And after all, he is rich,” I consoled her.

“That’s probably as fake as his good ol’ boy act,” she said. “I bet he’s up to his ass in debt.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “After all, he’s running a scam just to try to stay afloat.”

T.J.’s eyes narrowed. “Carl said you were trouble. I shoulda listened to him.”

I nodded. “So why did you kill him? I mean, it sure seems like you relied on him for a lot of things.”

“Get in the cage.” Fortunately for us, he indicated the empty one.

Neither of us moved.

Kyla just stared at him. “There’s lion poo in there.”

I tried to think of a way to keep him talking. Without weapons, attempting to overpower him was just going to get us both shot and then eaten by a lion.

“So what did Carl do? Get greedy?” I asked.

“He was always greedy,” said T.J. “He got stupid.”

“Pretty stiff penalty for stupidity,” I said.

“Killing Eddy was stupid. He should’ve scared the boy and let him go. No one was going to listen to a Cranny anyway, and we could have spared a couple of thousand to get him a start in a new town.”

“That’s what Eddy wanted? That’s why you killed him? Over a couple of thousand dollars?” said Kyla, shocked.

“I didn’t kill him,” T.J. reminded her coldly. “But yes, that’s what he wanted.”

Poor, silly Eddy Cranny. Driven to desperation by the demands of his shady employers and, let’s be honest, his wife’s family. I frowned.

“So why was Eddy trying to quit? Seems like he had a pretty good job working with you and Carl.”

“Nothing was going right. He was convinced that he and Carl were going to be caught, and he didn’t want to go to jail.” T.J. looked thoughtful. “In retrospect, I might oughta have paid more attention to that point of view.”

“So what about Carl? Was he supposed to throw the race so your horse would win?”

T.J. snorted. “Yes he was. But he got greedy, plain and simple. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing money on Big Bender.”

“So what happened? It was Double Trouble who got shot. Or rather his jockey.”

A muscle worked in T.J.’s jaw. “The goddamn idiot hit the wrong target.”

I thought that having a horse shot out from under you when you were going forty miles an hour might have hurt a bit, but decided not to argue.

“Carl was the shooter?” asked Kyla incredulously. “Why the hell would he try to shoot his own horse?”

“It wasn’t his horse anymore,” I said slowly, trying to work it out.

T.J. just shrugged. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say he had to make sure Big Bender wouldn’t win. But he screwed up. No one except a complete idiot would have even considered going for a shot like that.”

“Is that why you killed him?” I asked.

“If I wanted to kill Carl for screwing up, he would have been dead years ago. I didn’t kill him.”

“Then who did?”

T.J. opened his mouth to answer, and then abruptly shut it. “Enough. I’ve wasted enough time with you as it is. Get into that cage.”

Again, neither of us moved.

“And then what, T.J.?” I asked. “What are we supposed to do? Just wait for you to come back and shoot us? Or starve to death?”

To my surprise, instead of answering, T.J. glanced nervously over his shoulder to the open door. As cold as it was in the dim interior of the barn, beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and upper lip, and I realized that he was afraid. Very afraid. And not of us.

The lion in the cage tossed its head and paced back and forth, big paws almost soundless on the concrete. Outside, a breath of wind rustled through the leaves of the live oaks and sent a swirl of dust through the open doors. And with it, the sound of an engine.

“Oh, no,” he whispered and swallowed hard. His eyes darted frantically from the two vehicles parked outside, then back. “Shit. You,” he pointed the gun at Kyla. “Up in the loft. Hide and don’t make a noise, no matter what you hear.”

Kyla threw me a wild glance. “Jocelyn, too,” she said.

“No. There are two cars out there and no time to hide either of them. If you want to live, get up there and hide.”

“Do it,” I told her. “You’re our safety net. Don’t let them see you.”

She started up the ladder, but said, “Who are ‘them’? What the hell is going on?”

An icy dread settled in the pit of my stomach, but suddenly the pieces clicked into place and I knew. “Los Zetas. Isn’t that right, T.J.?”

“Who?” asked Kyla. She was almost to the top, but she paused, looking down.

“Keep going,” I told her. “The Zetas are a Mexican drug cartel Colin was talking about. He said there were rumors they were operating in central Texas.”

“You’re dealing drugs?” she squeaked with outrage, glaring down at T.J. like an elegant avenging angel.

“Probably not,” I said, casting T.J. one scornful sideways glance. “Probably money laundering. Not that it matters at this point.” Suddenly I felt very cold. Violence and murder, Colin had said. And now they were here. “Seriously, Kyla. You have to hide. Don’t let them know you’re there, no matter what they do.” I fought down a sense of panic.

“‘No matter what they do’? What does that mean?” she said, starting to climb down.

“No!” I said desperately. “We need you up there. You may have to go get help, and you’re the only one who can do that.”

The crunch of tires on gravel outside told us our time was up. Kyla met my eyes, and her own widened as our situation finally dawned on her. Turning abruptly, she slipped into the loft and vanished from sight.

T.J. took my arm and backed us into the nearest stall directly opposite from the lion. “Stay behind me if you can.”