Lady Killer

Behind them now, Tony could hear Lonnie squirming and struggling on the ground, grunting with his efforts to free himself from the handcuffs. Tony discovered he no longer gave a damn.

It seemed to take forever to get to the barn. Then through it. When they reached the far side, they met Brooke, who had turned Tony’s rental car around and was backing it up to the barn doors.

Once again, she was amazed at how calm she felt. As if, she thought, all the terrible things she’d seen and heard in the past half hour or so had been neatly packaged up and placed in cold storage to await processing. Right now she was focused totally on the task at hand: getting Tony, Daniel and Hilda into the backseat of the sedan.

Which was why she didn’t quite grasp what was happening, at first, when a whole fleet of vehicles came roaring and bumping up the lane and into her yard, raising a cloud of dust. They seemed to be everywhere around her, and the setting sun turned the dust into golden fog, from which came slamming doors and shouting voices and the stutter and shuffle of running footsteps.

“He’s back there,” Tony yelled, jerking his head toward the barn. “He might be running, but I don’t think he’ll get far.”

Then men were jogging by her as she sat behind the wheel of the car, men wearing dark clothing and carrying weapons, and as they passed, she saw they all had large letters stenciled on the back of their jackets.

“Feds,” Tony said from the backseat. “They’ll take care of things here. Come on-let’s go. I assume you know the quickest way to the nearest vet.”

Brooke nodded and began to maneuver the car through the maze of parked vehicles. But when they reached the lane, another car was on the way in, blocking their way.

“Wait,” Tony said. “Stop.”

The other car, a sedan very much like the one they were in, cleared the lane, then pulled over and stopped. Both front doors opened and two men got out. The man on the driver’s side was tall and thin and wore jeans and a gray, western-style jacket and sunglasses. His hair was brown, streaked with silver and longer than the current fashion. The second man was tall, too, though not as thin as the driver, and was wearing faded black cargo pants and a khaki-colored long-sleeved Henley shirt. His hair was darker brown, cut shorter, but also showed flecks of silver. He was wearing sunglasses, too, and he took them off as he walked toward her. And although there were tears in his eyes, he smiled.

She heard a small whimpering sound, realized it was coming from herself and clamped a hand over her mouth. She’d begun to shake.

Oh, God-I know those eyes. Those are my eyes…Daniel’s eyes. Oh, God-it’s true, what Tony said…

The man was bending down, looking at her through her open car window. He gave a self-conscious laugh but didn’t acknowledge or apologize for his tears as he said huskily, “Hello, Brooke…You don’t know me, but I’m your brother Cory.”

She nodded and let go a sob…a laugh…both mixed together.

“The other guy is Holt,” said Tony from the backseat. “And I hate like hell to spoil the family reunion, but, uh…we’ve got a wounded hero here…”

And Daniel, kneeling on the floor, with his hands pressing the bloody shirt against the dog’s side, added his breathless, “Yeah, Mom, can we go-please?”

Holt reached around Cory to open Brooke’s door. “I’ll drive. Mr. Pearson, if you’ll ride shotgun…”

Cory nodded, and she felt his hand on her elbow as he helped her out of the car. He opened the back door and she slid onto the seat beside Tony.

“Tell us where to go-we’ll get you there,” he said softly, bending down to look into her eyes.

He has such kind eyes. Daniel’s eyes. She nodded, and he straightened up and slammed the door. A moment later he was climbing into the front seat and Holt put the car in gear and they were off.

“Left at the road,” she called and felt something stir against her thigh. She looked down and saw Hilda trying to lick her hand. Tenderly, she lifted the great shaggy head onto her thigh and burrowed her fingers deep into the dog’s white neck ruff. Her vision blurred.

“She’s so protective of us,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” said Daniel. “She saved Lady’s life. I didn’t even know she liked Lady.”

Brooke gave a teary spurt of laughter, and Tony said gruffly, “It was your life she was trying to save, son, and if you ever do such a dumb thing again, your mom ought to skin you alive.”

She turned her head to look at him, and the tears in her eyes spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “Tony, I’m so sorry. This was my fault.” Her voice was a very small squeak.

He shook his head and started to say something, to protest, tell her none of it was in any way, shape or form her fault, that he was the rotter who’d bungled things from the beginning. But she plunged on.

“I was stupid. Childish. I shouldn’t have told you…what I told you. He was-he came from the back road. Right after you left. I think he was just waiting for you to leave. If I hadn’t-” She jerked her attention back to the road ahead. “Oh-right at the stop sign.” She drew a shaking breath. “If I hadn’t made you leave-”

“He would have come for the lion sooner or later,” Holt said as he made the turn on screeching tires. “And chances are it would have ended up worse than it did.”

Tony got his arm around Brooke’s shoulders and drew her against him. “The only thing I can’t figure,” he said as she laid her head down on his shoulder and he kissed the top of her head, “is why.”

Brooke’s head popped up, and she looked at him with eyes wide and dark. “Oh-that’s right! You weren’t there. You didn’t hear him. It was Lonnie. He killed Duncan. But it was an accident. He never meant-”

“It was my fault.” Daniel’s voice was soft and husky. His head was bowed, but Tony caught the silvery flash of a tear as it fell. “The whole reason Dad got killed is because of me. ’Cause he wanted me to live with him, and I told him I didn’t want to, and I was gonna tell the judge that, too. So he tried to make it so I’d have to go and live with him, no matter what. And that’s why he’s dead.”

For a few seconds, there was absolute silence in the car. Brooke had her eyes closed and her hand clamped over her mouth. Tony was thinking how wrong the kid was on so many different levels, and trying to figure out how to say it in a way the child would believe. Then Cory shifted around, reached over the back of the seat and laid his hand on Daniel’s head.

“Son, believe me, I know how you feel. I spent most of my life feeling certain the terrible things that had happened to people I loved were my fault.” He spoke to the boy, but his eyes were on Brooke, and she opened hers and looked back at him. The two pairs of eyes, so much alike, clung to each other with such intensity, it seemed an almost touchable bond connected the two of them. Watching, Tony felt an ache in his throat and a knot in his chest roughly the size of a baseball.

Cory went on, speaking in a voice that was vibrant with emotion, firm yet quiet. The kind of voice that can banish a child’s nightmares. “It’s taken me most of my life to realize that it’s the mistakes and bad choices adults make that cause terrible things to happen to children, and that most of the time there’s not a darn thing the children can do about it. Except survive. Be strong.” He paused to smile at his sister, a smile of such sadness and regret, it was hard to look at, but one filled at the same time with such love and joy, Tony couldn’t look away. “I’m telling you this now because I didn’t have anyone to tell it to me when I was your age and in your shoes. If I had, maybe I’d have been able to come looking for you a lot sooner. I might have found you years ago.”

“But then, if you had,” said Brooke, smiling at her brother, giving him the same heartbreakingly radiant smile, “I wouldn’t have Daniel.” She turned the smile on Tony and whispered, “Or you.”

Tony saw Cory’s eyebrows shoot up, and he gave his best friend a shrug and a shaken laugh. “Yeah,” he growled as he drew his woman’s head back down into its nest just over his heart, and then he closed his eyes.

And into his mind came the image of a cougar’s tawny face, with its black mask and glowing yellow eyes…the image of his own childhood nightmares. He thought then about what his Apache grandmother had told him of spirit messengers, and wondered whether there might be something to that stuff, after all.

“Uh…guys? Brooke?” Holt’s gravelly voice came from the front seat. “Am I supposed to be turning anytime soon?”

It was late, long past midnight, when they got back to Brooke’s place. They’d left Hilda behind in the veterinary hospital, sedated and resting comfortably after the long surgery to repair damage to her lungs-Daniel had been