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48

Lucy Dockery would have one chance at survival. She had formulated a plan based on what she was sure she could lay her hands on in order to effect an escape. She had done her best to weigh what she was capable of doing against what wasn’t as likely to work. For example, she had seen a bottle of antifreeze in the bathroom, probably used for winterizing the trailer’s toilet. She imagined that if she could get some of it in Dixie’s coffee, the woman might drink it and it would probably kill her the same way it did dogs that drank it. But as far as Lucy knew, the poison could also take a long time to work, and she wasn’t going to get a chance to pour it in the coffeepot, and maybe Dixie wouldn’t even drink any coffee. She was resigned to the fact that her plan was dangerous and it was likely that, if it worked, Dixie probably wouldn’t survive. Well, Dixie planned to kill her and Elijah, and if she had to kill in self-defense, she was pretty sure she could do it.

In theory.

Every time she imagined striking a fatal blow to Dixie, every fiber of her being resisted the alien thought. Lucy was horrified and revolted at the very idea of taking a life.

Yes. To save Elijah, I will. If I absolutely have to, Walter, I will. I promise.

She heard Dixie making noise in the kitchen, mumbling to herself, running water into the sink, opening and closing the refrigerator. Lucy lay still, curled herself into a fetal position. When the door opened, Dixie entered carrying a glass and a plastic bowl. She had a T-shirt draped over one shoulder and a towel over the other. She sat down on the bed.

“Missy?” she said in a low voice. “Baby, you awake?”

Lucy drew herself into a tighter ball.

“You poor little thing. Dixie’s going to clean you up,” the big woman said. “I’m sorry for what Buck did. He got punished for it. He sometimes has trouble controlling his temper. I know you didn’t mean to upset him like you did.”

Dixie reached out and dabbed at Lucy’s blood-matted hair with a wet end of the towel.

Lucy moaned, playing barely conscious as Dixie worked halfheartedly to clean her up. “You are one lucky gal,” Dixie chirped. “This isn’t near as bad as he can do. Not by a long shot it ain’t. It’s sort of his way of fore-playing. Buck’s used to doing like he wants, and that won’t never change. But he won’t bother you again. Not so long as you don’t give me call to turn my back and let him. Think of me as your angel standing between you and . . . Honey, you need to sit up and let Dixie put this shirt on you so you won’t be naked.”

Lucy allowed herself to be lifted so that Dixie could wrestle the T-shirt onto her. It was huge and reeked of stale sweat. Lucy assumed it belonged to one of the men. She remained as limp, as listless, as she could manage, returning silently to her fetal position as soon as Dixie finished dressing her.

“You know it wouldn’t do you any good to try to get out of here. We know everybody around for miles and my daddy about supports half the people out here. You could say we’re very instrumental in this community. A lot of the people around here are our kin.

“Honey, you need to sit up and drink this medicine Dixie got for you,” Dixie said, her voice sticky with false concern. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Lucy had known this was coming, but she was filled with sudden terror, knowing the concoction would probably put her out, or at the least turn her into a staggering mess. If she was going to have a chance, she couldn’t allow it. Dixie turned her over, raised her up, and put the coffee mug to her lips, pressing the rim against Lucy’s teeth. The main odor was that of orange juice with an undercurrent of cough syrup.

“Don’t make Dixie mad,” the powerful woman warned. “Drink it.”

Lucy wanted to scream, but instead she opened her mouth to allow the thick, sweet liquid to flow down her throat. Dixie didn’t take the mug away until it was empty.

Dixie stood, letting Lucy go back into her curl. “You get some rest, missy. A nice restful sleep is just what you need. You’ll wake up at home.”

Dixie stood in the doorway staring in at Lucy for a long time. All the while, Lucy was visualizing the medicine cocktail working itself into the lining of her stomach.

Keep thinking you’re winning, you muscle-bound freak,
Lucy thought.
Just keep thinking it.

Eleven-letter word for Dixie.

P S Y C H O B I T C H

49

Clayton Able knew exactly where Dixie Smoot had called her father from, but he wasn’t going to share that with anybody except the Major. Winter Massey was, as Clayton had insisted from the start he would, proving to be difficult to control. It appeared that if Massey was left to his own devices, he could make a very large mess of things, and generate complications they didn’t need.

He turned to Antonia. “We have to stop Massey.”

“Slow him down,” the Major answered. “It isn’t necessary to do anything so rash. Massey can’t get anything done before tomorrow, and then it’ll work for us. He can die as planned while shooting it out with the kidnappers. No need to change the plan.”

“Randall is hot over what happened at Click’s house. Says we should have warned him that Massey was there.”

“Screw Randall. He didn’t tell us he was going there. This is a two-way street. Max had better not forget who’s calling the tune. Where’s Alexa?”

“Coming here.”

“Good.”

“Massey’s on his way to Laughlin’s.”

“And Laughlin won’t be home. So Massey will go back to see the Smoot kid and—”

“I’ve seen this happen a hundred times and I know in my gut when something is about to go up in flames,” Clayton insisted nervously. “If you don’t let me handle him, I’m not going to stay with this. I’m not going to spend my golden years in prison. We need to let Randall deal with Massey now.”

He heard her exhale loudly. “Go ahead. But it means a change in plan. I’ll work out an alternate with Alexa. Make sure Max understands that Massey’s body can’t be found until Monday. We’ll have to play some hocus-pocus with the forensics. No biggie, since we’ll be controlling the evidence-gathering process and reports.”

“I’ll make the call. You are paying me for my experience with these sorts of matters. It’s the right thing to do,” Clayton said, smiling. “The smart thing is the correct course.”

“It had better be, Mr. Able. It sure as hell better be.”

50

Winter Massey locked the gate to the closed-down clinic, then waited for Alexa to leave. She had the damned phone to her head before she was fifty feet away, probably calling Clayton Able for advice, no doubt begging him for some intelligence that would negate the necessity of Winter’s trip to Laughlin’s. Winter wasn’t going to run everything he did through Clayton, or wait for him to toss Winter some eleventh-hour bone. Winter didn’t care for men who sat at computers playing with human lives that were no more real to them than some teenage sorcerer in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Clayton was working with Alexa, but the man had worked for Military Intelligence. He gave Winter the creeps, and every bone in his body told him not to trust him.

Something else was bothering him more than Clayton Able or Click’s imprisonment. He couldn’t shake a feeling of unease, a feeling whose source he couldn’t put his finger on. Winter had never gone against his gut without being sorry he had. Right now his gut felt hollow and hot.

He hadn’t wanted Alexa to come with him from Click’s house because he didn’t want her undermining what he was doing with Click. He had told himself that she was better off not being involved in anything that was heavy-handed or illegal due to the consequences to her career. She might want to let go and get down in the dirt with him, but she couldn’t. Still it troubled him that she would bring him in to do something and then block him from doing it.

Winter picked up his own cell phone from the console and dialed Sean.

“Hello, Tiger,” she answered.

“You say that to everybody?”

“Just if caller ID says they’re using your phone,” she replied. “How’s it going?”

“It’s picking up steam,” Winter told her. “I borrowed one of your padded cells. Hope you don’t mind.”

“No,” she said. “If you need it, it’s fine.”

“Your liability paid up on it?”

“Yes. Winter—Is everything all right?”

“Peachy keen. How’s everything at the ranch?”

“There’s a leak in the roof and water is running down the stone fireplace. Olivia has the sniffles. Rush saddled his horse without Faith Ann’s help. Faith Ann cooked speckled trout dinner and it was excellent. Hank’s complaining about everything because he wishes he was with you. This bed is so cold and lonely.”

“Well, if things work out, I’ll be back in it tomorrow night.”

“You’d better be. This hot water bottle doesn’t keep me as warm as you do.”

“I’m glad you need me for something.”

“Massey, I need you for everything. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sure I do.”

“You’d better be careful. You get injured and I’m going to be very angry with you. Is Alexa with you?”

“She’s gone back to the hotel to meet with someone.”

“Who’s watching your back?”

“Doesn’t need watching. I’m just driving around in the rain.”

A horn blared. Winter, realizing he had drifted close to another vehicle, swerved back into his lane. A van sped by, the driver holding his hand out in the rain long enough to give Winter a hand signal not covered in the North Carolina driver’s manual.

“What was that?” Sean asked.

“A Toyota, I think,” Winter said.

“Winter, stay focused,” she chastised.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“That’s not funny. You hang up and don’t split your attention again for a minute.”

“Okay, babe. Go back to sleep.”

“Know what, Massey?”

“Yes, Sean, I certainly do.”

“You’d better.”

He waited until after she hung up to end the call. After this was over, he would tell Sean about the machine-gun attack at Click’s. No sense in giving her something concrete to worry about. He had come within a split second of being cut to pieces. It was nice to know that retirement hadn’t put cobwebs in his reflexes.

If the phone book was correct, Ross Laughlin’s house was a large Tudor near Queen’s College on a tree-lined street where other stately homes were surrounded by manicured lawns. The windows of the lawyer’s home were all dark except for the ones on the back corner of the first floor—probably the kitchen. Laughlin’s outdoors lighting was pooled for dramatic effect, designed more to show off the landscaping than to offer security. Winter assumed Laughlin had at least as good a security system as everybody else on the street. Perhaps, being a criminal as well as an attorney, his was better than anything his neighbors had. Winter didn’t like the setup. There was no good place to park without letting himself be exposed as he approached the house from the front. He kept going and turned the corner and found a narrow service alley that ran behind the houses.

Winter went around the block and spotted a house that was being renovated, one end of it a yet roofless skeleton made of two-by-fours. A large container jammed with debris had been plopped down in the rutted disaster that would become a yard. The house was protected from its neighbors by a stand of bamboo. Winter cut his lights, turned in, and parked his truck behind the loaded dumpster.

He speed-dialed Alexa on the cell phone she’d furnished him.

“Yeah?” she answered.

“I’m here.”

“You sure you want to go this route? Not too late to change your mind.”

“I’m here, Lex. Unless you have something from Able that makes this unnecessary.”

“Anything I can say to stop you?”

“I can’t think of a thing.”

She was silent for a few long seconds. “Don’t do anything without weighing it against possible consequences. You’re wide open, Massey.”

Winter ended the call, reached behind his seat, and pulled out his hooded foul-weather camouflage jacket.

He set the cell phone Alexa had given him to vibrate and dropped it into his shirt pocket. He put the coat on, took the SIG out of his shoulder holster, and slipped it into the right front pocket of the coat. He opened the door and climbed out, locking the truck and pocketing the keys.

Winter decided that with current events under way, the lawyer might have special security measures in place, so Winter needed to be extremely cautious approaching the property. He had to let his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness so he could see using what little ambient light there was.

He used the stand of bamboo as a shield, waiting several minutes before he crossed the street and dodged behind a big home that backed up to the alley that ran behind the Laughlin house. Winter moved the way he stalked deer—slowly and deliberately, using the shadows and foliage and avoiding open spaces. Unlike deer, humans didn’t have a sense of smell that would allow them to pick him out. The falling rain covered the sound of his footsteps. He reached the back of Laughlin’s property, which was protected by a brick wall. Going over meant exposing himself and dropping into an area he didn’t know anything about.

His eyes lit on a section of ladder leaning against an oak tree in the backyard of the home closest to Laughlin’s. It was a godsend. He could climb up high enough into the tree to reconnoiter Laughlin’s property from a safe place.

Question coincidence,
his inner voice reminded him.
Anything that seems too good to be true . . .

Something about this conveniently abandoned ladder that had looked so perfect now chilled him. Slowly, he backed deeper into the shadows. He put his hands in his pockets, froze completely, and concentrated on the ladder, his mind drawing lines and angles around it.

Long minutes passed while Winter closed his eyes and focused his ears until the normal sounds of the night were filtered out.

Sound betrayed them.

A muffled cough. Probably into a gloved hand.

A sniffle.

A twig snapped as someone shifted his weight.

Winter opened his eyes slowly.

Two or three invisible men trained in techniques of ambush had a kill zone set up around the bait—the ladder. A shadow beside a garden shed shifted and Winter made out the shape of a man giving hand signals.

They were communicating, which might mean nothing, or it might mean they were growing restless. Winter was positive the men hadn’t been there in the neighbor’s yard since dark in case someone decided to drop in on Laughlin. He was certain that they had known he was coming, and had become increasingly uneasy because he hadn’t arrived yet, long after he was supposed to. How many times had he been in a similar position when an informant’s tip about a location or a time had been wrong, and the fugitive recovery team had grown antsy, fearing their target had changed his mind or had made them? And when that happened, the team had communicated.

He wondered if Max Randall was waiting, finger on the trigger of a silenced MP5, its barrel still reeking of cordite from the assault at Click’s house. There wasn’t but a couple of ways they could have learned he was coming here.

The cell phone inside his coat vibrated.

Judas calling.