Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1) (40 page)

Thirty yards.

Twenty yards.

Ten feet.

Gulping a bolstering breath, Sadie dashed for the cover of the dirt pile, which stood between her and the house. Muttering a prayer, she dared to peer around the crumbling mound to the hole. Her heart wrenched when she spied Jazi huddled in a ball inside the pit. She'd twined the cord of her
gris-gris
so many times through her fingers, her nails looked slightly blue. An ugly, purple bruise marred her temple.

Bastards. Goddamned bastards!

"Jazi," Sadie whispered urgently.

No response.

"Jazi!"

The feeble flutter of Jazi's shirt assured Sadie the child was alive—barely. She fought back tears of rage. She had to get Jazi out of there. But how? She couldn't lift an unconscious nine-year-old out of a six-foot trench. Not without help. She glanced wildly around the yard for some sort of ladder. Or rope.

That's when she heard the ominous hiss and rattle.

Sucking in her breath, she gazed in growing horror at the diamondback emerging from a hole in the trench. The snake was winding its way toward Jazi's inert form. In the fading light, with the viper so close to Jazi's stomach, Sadie was terrified a bullet would hit the child.

Merciful God.

She tightened her fist over the .32. Her hand trembled as she worried that a shot would alert Poppy and her accomplice. Under the circumstances, Sadie figured she didn't have much choice. She had to shoot that snake!

Clamping both hands over her gun grip, she prepared to fire.

A nerve-jangling growl rumbled from the bushes. Startled, Sadie swung her gun toward the sound. A roly-poly, ring-tailed varmint appeared, galloping toward the pit. A flash of lightning glanced off a leather collar.

Vandy!

The coon scrambled into the grave.

Sadie held her breath. Raccoons ate almost anything; she knew that much. But with Jazi's life in the balance, Sadie worried Vandy had met his match. The rattlesnake was about three feet long—a baby, by Texas standards—but the coon didn't have a lot of room to maneuver. Not with Jazi's body lying diagonally across the gravebed.

The snake lunged and missed.

Vandy proved to be as wild and canny as his forbears, despite the civilizing influence of leather collars and trout almondine. He feinted.

The snake lunged again.

The coon retreated.

Sadie's heart hammered in her ears. Vandy was luring the snake away from Jazi's body!

As the growling and hissing crescendoed, Sadie gritted her teeth and dashed sweat from her eyes. She hoped the thunder was drowning out the dance of death so Poppy wouldn't hear.

Fangs flashing, Vandy snarled and pounced.

The pit grew ominously quiet.

Her heart crawling to her throat, Sadie strained desperately to see past the inky shadows that crowded the grave. All manner of horrific visions plagued her mind.

But in the next flicker of light, she spied a long, limp form dangling from Vandy's jaws.

Air rushed from her lungs.

"Good boy," she whispered.

Vandy's ears flicked. Bright, inquisitive eyes stared up at her.

Then the coon tossed aside his meal. Hunkering down beside Jazi, Vandy rested his head on the child's heart. He whimpered.

Sadie's eyelids prickled. Snakes were one thing. But Vandy couldn't defend Jazi from poison.

Suddenly, she noticed a blond head in the woods near Randie's hiding place. Collie was waving his rifle at her. He seemed to want her to leave the yard, to run to safety.

Hardening her jaw, Sadie shook her head. The boy was a civilian. She was a Pinkerton. Jazi's safety wasn't her only responsibility. Sadie still needed to solve her case. The time had come for her performance as Miranda Reynolds.

Drawing a fortifying breath, Sadie shoved her gun into her waistband, covered it with her vest, and stepped away from the shelter of the dirt pile. She didn't honestly believe Poppy would shoot Randie on sight. A mind as warped as Poppy's would want a verbal showdown. An opportunity to brag.

"Poppy Westerfield," she bellowed at the top of her lungs, "so help me God, if you've harmed a hair on my child's head, I'll rip out your heart and feed it to the buzzards!"

Seconds dragged by.

"Show yourself, Poppy!"

Spears of light rent the gloom. Thunder rolled, rattling the jagged panes of the cottage's windows.

That's when Sadie spied the hangman's noose, dangling from a leafless cottonwood.

Chapter 22

Every hair on Sadie's neck stood on end.

The wind was knocking the bare branches of the hanging tree together. Beneath that unsettling noose, eerie fingers of shadow splayed over a black-robed figure in a voluminous cowl.

Goosebumps scuttled down Sadie's spine.

She could see no features in the black, shadowy oval that should have been a face. But a human female lurked in there somewhere. A flesh-colored hand with red-lacquered nails gripped a gun.

Sadie rallied her nerve. "And who are you supposed to be this Halloween? My confessor?"

"Oh, it's much too late for that."

"You have a flare for the melodramatic, ghoul friend. I'll give you that."

"Impertinent whore! I am Asrael, the Angel of Death! The Regulator of God! And you shall hang for your crimes!"

"Uh-huh."
Looks like Poppy needs to have a few screws tightened.
"Well, I have news for you, Asrael. Angels don't poison people or abduct children."

"I do as God commands."

"Yeah?" Sadie tried to remember a passage—any passage—from her Pinkerton field manual that addressed an agent's conduct, should she be confronted by a lunatic with a gun. Sadie was pretty sure putting Poppy out of her misery wasn't legal. Or ethical. But it sure would have been well-deserved.

"I hear God says to turn the other cheek," Sadie said carefully. "To let bygones be bygones. So I'll make you a deal. Let my baby go, and we'll disappear into the wilderness like we never existed."

"Your
baby?" Poppy spat. "Baron's seed belongs to me! By divine right! By all that's legal and holy! I am his
wife
, you blood-sucking whore!"

Right. And your brain would have to be as twisted as a pretzel to want the bastard.
But Sadie figured Randie wouldn't say that—which was too bad.

"Then you must love all of Baron's children," Sadie said in her best beast-soothing voice.
"That is why you celebrate the return of the
angelitos
tonight."

"The spirits of my babies will return tonight," Poppy conceded grudgingly. "But they won't be leaving here alone!"

"So... you poisoned Jazi?" Sadie recalled the dead plants in the Westerfield's hotel suite. Understanding dawned. "And you poisoned Baron's medicines?"

"I
was careful!
Chantelle
poisoned Baron! Don't you read?" Poppy snapped.

"But you put
something
in his medicines. Something that made him sick."

"He deserved it. He was fornicating with you and half the house staff. I wanted his infidelity to stop, but I didn't want him dead."

"So you could make babies?"

"So I could live in the governor's mansion, you moron!"

Interesting.

Sadie suspected the article in the
Dispatch
had pushed Poppy over the edge. All these months, while using tainted medicines to keep her bull in the pasture, Poppy had never anticipated that Baron might snack on a poisoned confection, intended for his mistress.

Just another reason to question Poppy's sanity.

"I have to agree, you'd make the perfect governor's wife," Sadie lied in velvet tones. "Too bad all your plans revolve around Baron. And his health is failing."

"Baron was as healthy as a bull until
you
started sucking the life out of him!"

So Poppy felt spurned and decided it was payback time?
Sadie was beginning to feel sorry for Randie, who'd actually had to live this nightmare. "Let me guess. You hired a henchman—somebody who doesn't have half your brains—to get rid of me at the Siren."

"I wouldn't say
that,"
taunted a cold, cruel Midwestern accent.

Sadie sucked in her breath.
Hank!

Shrouded by shadow, the outlaw leaned his shoulder against a porch pillar, a can of kerosene waiting by his boots. A match flared in the darkness. His cigarette tip brightened. When the tiny flame plummeted from his fingertips, Sadie's eyes widened. The match landed dangerously close to the kerosene... only to be rubbed out by the killer's boot toe.

She loosed a ragged breath. It was gratifying to know Hank didn't intend to torch the whole yard.

"So you're the one who hurled Greek Fire through my window," she deduced grimly. "Now
that
was a brilliant plan.

Too bad it went awry," she added for Poppy's benefit. "Despite all your efforts, someone found out you've been forging Baron's signature.
Someone
knows you've been paying assassins to get rid of his rivals. All this time, Baron has been turning a blind eye, pretending not to see—until he started getting blackmailed. Until he started fearing for his
life.
That's the real reason why Baron hired Cass, isn't it? To protect you and him from Hank?"

"Ridiculous," Poppy snapped. "Hank's family. Not that it's any business of yours."

"I can fend for myself, auntie."

"Of course you can, dear boy. Don't you have some corpses to cremate?"

"I thought I'd torch them all at once." Hank grinned. "Saves matches."

Sadie's scalp prickled. "Anyone I know?" she demanded with less asperity than she'd intended.

"You might say that."

He thrust his hips forward. Lightning illuminated the pair of walnut-inlaid gun butts, strapped to his hip.

Sadie's heart iced. She would have recognized that double-holstered rig anywhere.

"I don't believe it! Where's Cass?"

"They don't call me The Ventilator for nothing."

No!
Sadie choked back tears.
She wanted to scream. Or vomit. Or better yet, send Hank to hell.

Keep your wits about you, Sadie. You're not out of this mess yet. Think of Jazi. Save Jazi. Then you can rip off the bastard's balls...

Sadie steeled herself against her fury. Every nerve felt like it was being licked by demon fire, but she kept her teeth firmly clenched to silence the primal roar of grief. Sucking down breath after shuddering breath, she furtively touched the mechanism that operated the pistol under her cuff. The yard was nearly dark. Collie probably couldn't see Poppy in her black robe, and he didn't have a good angle to shoot Hank. Sadie couldn't count on the boy for help. That meant she would have to be smart enough, fast enough, to take out two gunmen.

She let a smoke bomb roll into her other palm.

What the hell is keeping Wright and his posse?

"What I still don't understand," she said hoarsely, stalling for time, "is why you've waited so long to teach Baron his lesson. After all, he's had other women.
Lots
of women."

"But you're his favorite."

"Me?" Sadie did her best to look surprised.

"Don't play dumb with me, whore. You talked him into re-writing his will. You tricked him into naming your spawn as his heir!"

Sadie supposed this wouldn't be a good time to spill the beans that Jazi wasn't really Baron's daughter.

"Baron has been on edge, that's all." Sadie struggled to put a soothing note in her voice. "He thinks someone's trying to kill him."
And with good reason, apparently!
"I'm sure if you sat down with him and had a heart-to-heart talk—"

"How dare
you
give me marriage advice, bitch! For 20 years, I've stood beside my husband! He was nothing until I taught him how to read and write the law. But then he threatened to put me in an asylum.
Me!
When I was finally in the family way. When I was going to have our little Barry... "