Hell Fire

disgruntled silence. Jesse covered the slight awkwardness with more of his honey-sweet Texas charm.

Alice lapped it up, concluding her admiring remarks. “And here you’ve brought another lost lamb back into the fold.” She nodded at Shannon. “After a row in the middle of the parking lot, she swore she’d never set foot in this church again, oh, four months ago or so. Is there any limit to the good you’ll do here in Kilmer?”

Could she be flirting, despite the mention of her husband?

“I never get tired of good deeds,” Jesse said with a straight face. He’d probably been a Boy Scout too.

Mrs. Buckner took us onward then, introducing us to every last soul in town. They all professed to be pleased to meet us, so tickled we’d set Mrs. Walker’s mind to rest at last. Some of them muttered about the worthless nature of local law enforcement.

By the time we’d been there an hour, I’d received hateful looks from Shannon’s mother and her grandfather, Reverend Prentice, but they didn’t dare make a scene—not here, not now. But it was coming; I could feel it. Shannon’s dad was nowhere to be seen. That worried me.

Concern didn’t stop me from enjoying the homemade food: fried chicken, green beans with bacon, sweet potato casserole, ambrosia salad. I slipped bits of chicken to Butch in my handbag. Every now and then he’d growl low in his throat and I’d make a mental note of the person he didn’t like. His instincts were excellent.

In this setting, it’d be impossible to poison us, as much as Sandra Cheney would like to. If she didn’t want to kill us when we first arrived, she did now. As she saw it, we’d stolen her daughter, but I didn’t trust her intentions toward Shannon. Studying Sandra, I suspected the girl had been right to fear. The woman’s expression didn’t contain maternal concern; instead, it was all thwarted rage. By helping Shannon, we’d interfered with something she planned. Sandra’s icy gaze followed me as I wove through the room, tugged by Alice Buckner as if I were a barge.

Single church-going females snagged Chance and Jesse early on; every now and then, they shot me a desperate look, but they needed to man up and pump for information. If I could handle charged objects when my gift had clearly gone haywire, then they could take a few hours with marriage-minded Southern belles.

Shannon stayed close to me. I didn’t blame her.

I was about to call the whole endeavor a bust, when I saw a tall, thin figure across the room. The church hall spun, then seemed to recede. Well, holy shit. Maybe I went pale, because Shannon clutched my arm.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

I waved the question away. “Who is that?”

I pointed at the gray-haired man who stood a head above everyone else. It wasn’t the real estate agent; Phil was much beefier. This man looked like he lived on pickled beets and malice. And he wore a horseshoe tie tack. Remembering what Miss Minnie had said about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I knew that couldn’t be a coincidence.

Now we had to find the rest. We were looking for twelve total, but I had an idea the others followed the lead of the top four.

Shannon searched the crowd, trying to follow the trajectory of my gaze. In a crush like this, it was impossible, so I described him, leaning toward her so nobody could overhear.

She stared at me, wide-eyed, before answering. “Augustus England. He practically owns the whole town. Why?”

“Of course he does,” I muttered. “He’s also the man who choked Curtis Farrell behind his garage until Farrell promised to do his bidding.”

My mother had glimpsed this man pushing back his cowl as she died. She hadn’t seen the others—and so neither had I—but I’d never forget. Oh, blessed day. At long last, our enemy has a face.

White King

Shannon stilled beside me. Obviously she registered the significance, but she said only, “We need to find Jesse and Chance.”

I agreed wholeheartedly; it was time to rescue them from the clutches of a few hopeful Southern belles. We needed to keep an eye on England because I had a feeling he was the key to the whole mess. After thanking Mrs. Buckner for her time in introducing us around, I wove my way through the crowd.

Before we found the guys, I spotted another horseshoe tie tack. I didn’t recognize the man who wore it, but I knew his type. He stood just under six feet, but broad and solid, shoulders straining his navy blue suit jacket. His hair had been shorn close to his skull, leaving a salt-and-pepper buzz. I put his age around forty-five, but he had the fit, powerful body of someone who took physical fitness seriously.

When his gaze met mine, I felt a sudden shock of cold. He had a predator’s eyes, cool and watchful. I absolutely didn’t like the way he smiled at me and took a sip of his coffee, as if he knew something I didn’t.

I turned to Shannon. “Do you know who that is?”

She followed the cant of my head and made a face. “Mr. Cooper. He’s the high school principal, a real tight- ass. I don’t know how many times I was in his office last year, just for violations of the dress code. They were always looking in my locker too, as if I’d be dumb enough to take anything to school with me.” Then she noticed why I was looking at him. “Shit. He’s wearing a horseshoe, just like England.”

“So Phipps retired. Where did this guy come from?”

“I dunno.” She shrugged. “I never had a reason to give a shit about the high school principal before. Lemme ask around.”

I followed her while she made some quiet inquiries, and I noticed that Cooper never stopped watching us. His interest registered like that of a hunter, checking out his prey’s behavior patterns, scanning for weaknesses. A shiver ran through me.

Folks were able to tell us the following: Harlan Cooper had grown up here, but unlike most, he’d gotten out of Kilmer for a little while. Again, unlike most who escaped, Cooper returned. He’d apparently spent some time in the military, though nobody knew which branch. When Phipps was near retirement, England had applied pressure to get Cooper hired as school principal, and Cooper had been his man ever since.

“Oh, and he likes to hunt,” one matron added. “My husband is always turning down his invitations to go prowling around. Harlan just loves those woods.”

Oh, really? Now we had something truly interesting to tell the guys. Chance seemed improbably happy to see us.

He removed a girl’s hand from his arm with a polite smile and turned to me. “Are we leaving?”

“We might be,” I answered.

As we went to get Jesse, I whispered to him what we’d learned. Chance tilted to get a look at the tall, angular man filling his plate at the buffet table. Augustus England had a subtle air of superiority about him; I noticed as he moved away that he made sure not to brush up against other people.

I also noticed the way Cooper watched England from a distance. To the best of my recollection, I’d seen such vigilance only in those paid for protection. Chance took a look at him too, and then scowled.

“He’s a bad one,” he muttered. “And he won’t go down easy.”

Frankly, I was surprised to find the town moneyman at such a function, but when he made for Sandra Cheney, I understood the draw. Her manicured fingers lit briefly on his sleeve, an intimacy he welcomed with a quick, cool pat of his long fingers. Aha. I wondered if Shannon’s dad knew; his overall misery seemed to indicate he did.

We found Saldana standing in a ring of females, none of whom could’ve been more than twenty-five years old. They all looked as if they’d like to hit him on the head and take him home to a shotgun wedding. Jesse excused himself as we walked up, but he managed to look reluctant when he did so. His good manners went all the way down to the bone.

Shannon relayed our news, and then he too looked for England. “We’re tailing him from here?” he guessed.