Krewe of Hunters The Unseen (37 page)

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“Oh, Sandy!” Kelsey said, using a voice she might have when they were kids. “You’re going to kill us, anyway!”

“I really don’t want to,” Sandy said earnestly. “I mean that. I just do what needs to be done.”

“Dress up like a hairy frontiersman?” Kelsey asked.

“That was fun. I wore a costume and did the computer invites at the internet café. But down at the plaza? That wasn’t me.” She moved her lips close to Kelsey’s ear, and Kelsey prayed she wouldn’t notice that the patch was gone.

“That was my partner. No one manages this kind of operation alone. You know what? He’s a great actor. But he’s going to die tonight, too. The diamond is
mine.
” She moved away suddenly. “I want that diamond, Kelsey. And I want it now.”

“You called Logan. He might come with the whole FBI.

Then you can kill me, but they’ll get you, and you won’t get the diamond.”

“Logan won’t let you die. He’ll come alone. You watch.

Now, while we’re waiting, why don’t you see if you can conjure up Rose Langley for me?”

The voice didn’t give it away. Whatever cheap little device Sandy Holly had bought, it was doing the job. No, it hadn’t been the voice that had given her away.

It had been the sketches. There’d been something about the eyes, and when they’d spoken, he’d suddenly seen her face, and seen it with the beard, the mustache, the hair.

It made a shocking kind of sense.

Who knew the Longhorn better?

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And who’d been around when the inn was changing hands?

He kept driving, trying to determine his course of action.

So far, Sandy probably didn’t realize that he knew about the basement—and the tunnel, supposedly walled up, that led to the toolshed. He was almost positive she’d found a way to get Kelsey down there. And Kelsey was tough and smart, but who would expect the enemy to be a friend? A friend who seemed to be in desperate trouble.

And, he thought, Sandy wasn’t working alone.

If he called in the troops, if they came en masse, they’d be able to corral Sandy Holly and her partner.

But Kelsey would die.

He pulled onto the side of the road, and for a minute the pain that surged through him was so intense he couldn’t bear it. Then he breathed, slowly and deeply, and considered what they’d learned about the men who hung around the Longhorn Saloon.

Finally, he thought he knew the truth. He kept breathing and put his plan into action.

He pulled back onto the road and drove to the Longhorn.

“Is he here yet?” Sandy asked.

Kelsey had heard the false wall between the basement and the cellar beneath it slide open, but she couldn’t twist around to see who’d come. The voice was hoarse and low, and hard to recognize.

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of rum. The Ranger needs to come soon. The longer this takes…”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ve kept captives down here for days when we’ve had to.”

“They don’t make any noise when they’re dead. How’s this one doing? Did we really have to call the Ranger?”

“Yes. One of them’s the real deal. I know that for a fact,” Sandy said. “And I’m pretty sure the other is, too. I want insurance. It’s time to put an end to this.” The drug was wearing off; Kelsey had gotten to the patch quickly enough. But with both of them down there—Sandy and her partner—she didn’t really stand a chance. She was afraid to try moving yet.

“Go back upstairs. Watch for the Ranger.”

“Yeah, yeah. She must be another fake,” he said, kick-ing the bedding where Kelsey lay, “or she would’ve called them for you by now.”

Kelsey forced a giggle. “I can call them. Do you want to play ghost?”

At last he stepped around in front of her. She wasn’t surprised. It had all been an act from the moment she’d arrived at the Longhorn Saloon.

“Yeah, let’s play ghost,” he muttered.

Kelsey prayed for help, from the living—or the dead.

“Rose, Rose? Please. I know you’re usually in the house.

But can you come here? Now? Please, Rose, these people want to talk to you about the diamond.” There was no way on earth that Kelsey could have known she was performing on cue.

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Logan had parked the car down the street and around the corner. He’d come in through the exit they’d taken from Sandy’s room the night before. So far, easy. Too easy.

But what kind of shape was Kelsey in? How did he get to her without alerting the others? He’d studied the blueprints up and down and inside out, and there was no entrance other than the basement stairs—off the main bar—

or through the false f loor of the toolshed.

So, drop in, guns blazing? Would they be able to kill Kelsey that fast? She’d be drugged; she wouldn’t be capable of defending herself. They’d surely have taken her Glock by now.

As he reached the house, he saw the birds. He’d never seen so many f locked in one place before, not even that day at his house.

“Hey, help me out tonight, brothers!” he said softly.

Logan was afraid of making any noise as he opened the back gate. He politely asked the birds to shift so he could hop over the fence. He approached the shed from the back.

And then he paused. The birds f lew madly before him as he drew closer to the shed. They were like a cloud of bees, they moved so quickly.

And

then…

The movement ceased, and the birds took shape, and there in the dusk and the moonlight stood Rose Langley.

Please.

He wasn’t sure if he spoke the word aloud or if he thought it, and he wasn’t sure if Rose was really there, or if she was an illusion he’d created.

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to her lips and walked toward the shed, opening the door so quietly he didn’t hear it himself.

But he did hear Kelsey’s voice. It seemed far away and distant, but the trapdoor in the shed was still open, and he moved close to it, and listened as she said again, “Rose, please, Rose, they want your diamond. Could you get it for them?”

“Nothing’s happening,” Corey said crossly. “And I’ve got to go back up and lure that cop down here.”
Let him go. Let me save Kelsey, and then deal with him,
Logan prayed.

His luck wasn’t going to be that good.

“Stay here. The stupid cop’ll go up to 207.” He heard Kelsey speak again, stalling for time, obviously determined to get the truth—before she died. He was astonished that she was conscious, that she could speak, but maybe he shouldn’t be. It was Kelsey, after all. She had known about the patches, and must have somehow gotten hers off.

“So, Corey, are you really a cowboy?” she asked.

“You

bet.”

“But somehow Sandy got you to be a lackey for her. She teased you, and then slept with you, right? But she made you keep it a secret. You liked what the two of you did, though—didn’t you? Kidnapping women and then killing them. But she tried to make you jealous, keep you in line.

Didn’t that piss you off sometimes?”

“Stop it, Kelsey,” Sandy said.

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producer and then f lirted with the newspaper guy—like a true whore!”

“Hey, we had to shut him up!” Sandy said. “Corey, ignore her. She’s doing this on purpose. Ignore her, okay?”

“I gotta go back to the bar,” Corey mumbled.

Let him go. Let me save Kelsey…

He felt a gossamer touch on his arm. Rose. She looked at him with sorrowful, questioning eyes.
Should I?
she seemed to ask.

Logan

nodded.

“Rose?” Kelsey’s voice pleaded.

Rose preceded Logan to the drop. Like a feather through air, she stepped into nothingness and f loated down.

He heard Corey Simmons’s hoarse cry of astonishment as the ghost joined them. Logan leaped down and rolled with his gun cocked. Corey Simmons stared as if he were a ghost, too, but Logan aimed directly at him and shouted a warning when Corey went for his gun. “Drop it! I’ll shoot to kill.”

“
You
drop it!” Sandy demanded, f lying toward Kelsey.

“I’ve got another patch. This one is loaded with fentanyl.

A hundred times more powerful than morphine. She’ll be dead in seconds with this one, cowboy.” He had to shoot; he had to. He couldn’t aim the gun at Sandy because Corey would shoot him, but whatever he did, he had only seconds.

There was a burst of noise in the room, and a burst of blackness. The ghost of Rose Langley had become a f lock of furious f lapping birds once again, and they were blind-ing everyone. Corey Simmons shot wildly. Logan turned IN PROCESS EDITION - JAN. 10, 2012

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his gun on Sandy and shot her through the forehead. Simmons had a bead on him, but to his astonishment, Kelsey suddenly scrambled up from the bedding and tackled him around the ankles. Corey went down, and his second shot went wild as he dropped his gun. He threw off Kelsey, then reached for his gun, but Logan had learned never to take chances. When Corey grabbed his Colt and turned to aim, Logan was above him, his finger on the trigger. He’d aimed true; Corey died swiftly, a bullet hole smoking between his eyes.

Kelsey staggered to her feet and fell against him.

“How?” he asked her.

“I got the patch off,” she whispered. “Oh, Logan…Rose saved us.”

“Even without knowing where the Galveston diamond is.” Logan held her up, held her tight.

“I know where the diamond is,” Kelsey said.

“You do, and Rose didn’t?”

“I went to the room, Logan. I willed myself to see the residual haunting again, and I watched her closely. I saw something glitter in her hair. That’s where she kept it. In her hair. Matt Meyer was a bastard who would’ve searched her body, but she could have slipped it into her hair and he would never have thought to look. When she died, she was a saloon-hall whore, and Texans were about to be massacred. There was no real justice for her, Logan. And there was probably no funeral. She was thrown in a pine box and buried, and if she was lucky, someone said a few words for her. If we find out where she’s buried, we’ll find the diamond.”

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By then, footsteps were tramping down the basement stairs. Ted Murphy came in, smashing the false closure to the walled-in tunnel. Ricky came after him, and then Bernie and Earl, and right behind him were the other members of the unit. Jackson pushed through, anxious to see what had happened. He looked from the dead on the f loor to the living before him.

“You pulled it off, Logan,” he said.

“
We
pulled it off. Kelsey was the first woman who managed to remove the patch. And she managed to keep Sandy talking. We pulled it off,” he repeated. “By the way, your timing was perfect.” He smiled apologetically at Kelsey.

“Even if they’d killed us both, we had to stop them.” She nodded. “That’s what we do.”

“Sandy?” Ricky said brokenly. He turned to Kelsey.

“Sandy?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Ricky.”

There were tears in his eyes. Ricky had really cared about Sandy. But then so had she, Kelsey thought. Sandy had been her friend, her childhood companion, a woman she’d loved. A woman she hadn’t actually known. Whose depths of evil—there was no other word—she hadn’t understood. The grief she felt now was for the Sandy who had never truly existed… .

Bernie Firestone was waving his hands in the air. “What the hell is it with all the birds?” he muttered. “Shoo, shoo…

let’s get them out of here!”

“I rather like birds,” Logan said. “In fact, I’m very fond of them!”

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K elsey left the Longhorn, aware that Rose Langley was at her side. She smiled to herself as she walked.

They reached the Alamo plaza, and she saw Logan immediately—just as she saw Zachary Chase.

Both men stood as they approached. Kelsey nodded at Logan, but then gave her attention to Zachary and Rose.

At first, they simply stared at each other. Zachary took off his hat, and worked the brim anxiously between his fingers as he watched Rose, adoration in his eyes. Rose hesitated.

“Come on, he’s waiting for you,” Kelsey whispered.

“It’s been so long, and…I don’t know how he ever loved me,” Rose said.

“Because your soul is beautiful,” Kelsey told her. “Rose, you forgot how worthy you were of love. How worthy you
are.
Go to Zachary now. Go to him. He still loves you.” Rose stepped ahead of her, until she stood in front of IN PROCESS EDITION - JAN. 10, 2012