Showdown in West Texas

His gaze went back to the suitcases. “So…you’re leaving?”

“I’m just moving into town. Maybe you could give me a hand with all this stuff.”

“Be glad to. Just let me put this somewhere first.” He placed the envelope on a table near the stairs, then turned back to Grace. “It’s for Lily,” he said.

“So you said.”

He gave her a sheepish grin that Grace found adorable. How could Lily not just eat him up with a spoon?

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He offered her a hand as she got to her feet.

“Just a few bruises. See?” She put weight on her ankle. “No permanent harm done.”

“Thank goodness. First Sheriff Dickerson and now you. People might start to think there’s a curse on this town.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Grace’s attention was caught by a passing shadow out one of the side windows. A few minutes later, she heard footsteps on the porch, and then Lily appeared in the doorway.

Her dark hair, which she wore in a braid down her back, was slightly askew and she appeared out of breath. She had on jeans and a cotton shirt, which had become the unofficial uniform of the deputies in Criminal Investigations except on days when they had to appear in court.

The lax dress code had bothered Grace at first, but after a few days of coping with the heat and the rugged West Texas terrain, she’d eased up on her expectations.

Since Grace hadn’t heard a vehicle drive up, she had to assume that Lily had been there all along. While Grace had been talking with Ethan, her sister would have had plenty of time to go down the rear staircase and out the back door, then make her way around to the front of the house.

Grace tried to check the direction of her thoughts. Did she really think her own sister had pushed her down the stairs?

“What’s going on?” Lily asked as she stepped through the door.

“Your sister just fell down the stairs,” Ethan blurted.

“Really? All the way down?” Her eyes collided with Grace’s. Lily didn’t seem overly concerned, or even surprised, to hear about the incident. In fact, Grace’s stomach churned at the passive expression on her sister’s face.

“I told her she’s lucky she didn’t break her neck,” Ethan said.

“Well, you always did have all the luck in the family.” Lily’s cool gaze swept back to Grace. “What was it Mama used to say? The more things change, the more they stay the same?”

“But—” Ethan shifted uncomfortably.

“What?” Lily snapped.

“You don’t—”

She put a hand on her hip. “I don’t what?”

“Grace could have been seriously hurt,” Ethan said.

“But she wasn’t. Were you, Grace?”

“I’m fine.”

“Of course you are. No one knows better than you how to take care of Number One. Am I right?”

“If you say so.” Grace wasn’t about to rise to Lily’s bait. She had no intention of airing their dirty laundry in front of Ethan Brennan or anyone else. It was bad enough that Lily could barely remain civil at work.

Her sister spotted the envelope Ethan had put on the table and pounced on it. “Is that for me?”

“It’s all in there,” Ethan said. “Everything you requested—”

“Thanks.” She glanced inside the envelope, then placed it back on the table. As she turned, she made a point of toeing one of Grace’s suitcases out of her way. “So you’re splitting, huh?”

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Lily’s gaze lifted, and the coldness in those gray depths sent a shiver down Grace’s spine. “You have no idea what I want. You never did.”

Suddenly, an image of that face at the top of the stairs came back to Grace. She couldn’t say with any certainty that it had been Lily up there peering down at her, and she wanted desperately to believe that it had not been. But dread tightened like a fist around Grace’s heart. What if it had been Lily?

What if her own sister…had just tried to kill her?

THE DESERT WAS NOT an ideal place to hide, Cage soon discovered as he made his way back to his car.

Putting the manual transmission in neutral, he pushed the vehicle as far out into the barren landscape as he could manage. He hated like hell to abandon it. That car was about the only thing he owned free and clear these days. But in his current fix, there wasn’t much else he could do.

Getting out his map, he decided the best way to evade his hunters was to stay off all roads that led into or out of San Miguel. There was another highway about ten or fifteen miles due west across the desert where he might be able to find a phone or hitch a ride.

He glanced up at the blazing sun. He’d be crossing in the heat of the day, but he had two water bottles and he damn sure had the will to live.

Down on his luck was a helluva lot better than dead, Cage decided as he buried the license plates from his car and the contents of his glove box in the sand.

Chapter Four

Ethan helped Grace carry her bags to the truck while Lily watched from the front porch. When Grace went back in to get the last of her things, Lily followed her inside.

She picked up the envelope and tapped it against her palm. “You may as well know,” she said. “I’m putting the ranch on the market.”

Grace looked up in surprise. “When did you decide to do that?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I’ve already talked to Rachel. She says to do whatever I want. She’ll sign the papers.”

Grace tried to shrug off the stab of betrayal she felt over Rachel’s silence. She wasn’t surprised to be the last person Lily would talk to about this, but why hadn’t Rachel called her? “When were the two of you going to tell me about it?”

Lily’s eyes glinted with a touch of defiance. “I’m telling you now.”

“Do you have a buyer?”

“I’ve had some interest. No firm offers yet.”

“Where will you go?”

Lily shrugged. “I don’t know. Find a place in town, I guess. Or maybe it’s time that I move on altogether.”

“Leave Jericho Pass, you mean?”

She tossed her braid over her shoulder. “Why not? You and Rachel couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Now that Grandma Stella’s dead, there’s nothing keeping me here, either.” Especially now that you’re back, her eyes seemed to taunt.

A sound from the front porch brought both women around in surprise. Grace had forgotten all about Ethan, but there he stood watching them.

He cleared his throat. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just came back to see if I could give you a hand with anything else.”

Grace supposed the offer had been posed to her, but Ethan couldn’t take his eyes off Lily. He looked crestfallen, and Grace thought she knew why. Given his position at the county clerk’s office, he probably knew or at least suspected that Lily had plans to sell the ranch, but Grace was almost certain that until that very moment, he’d never contemplated the possibility of her sister actually leaving town.

When he realized that Grace was studying him, he quickly glanced away.

Lily, of course, noticed none of this. Where Ethan Brennan was concerned, she seemed completely oblivious.

“I think that’s the last of it,” Grace told him. “Thanks for the help.”

“Any time.” His gaze crept back to her sister. “See you around, Lily.”

She seemed to catch herself then and said, “Yeah, thanks for everything, Ethan.”

“Glad to help out.” He hesitated, obviously hoping for another bone, then turned with a defeated little shrug and left.

Grace waited until she heard the screen door close before she faced Lily. “You could have left Jericho Pass anytime you wanted. Why now? Is it because I’m back?”

Anger flared in Lily’s eyes. “Newsflash, Grace. Not everything is about you. If I decide to leave town, it’ll be because it’s what I want.”

Grace stared at her in exasperation. “Why the attitude, Lily? What did I ever do to you?”

Her sister folded her arms. “Like you don’t know.”

“It can’t be just about the job,” Grace said helplessly. “You’ve been like this for years. Why don’t you just tell me so we can try to work it out? We’re sisters. It shouldn’t be like this between us.”

Lily smiled. “Well, see, that’s the beauty of it, Grace. You don’t get to control how I feel about you.”

She turned and bounded up the stairs, then paused on the landing to stare back down at Grace. “Ethan was right, you know. You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.”

THE SUN WAS ALREADY going down when Cage finally spotted the highway up ahead. He’d been walking due west since he set out, and early on, the light had been blinding. Now, as the sun sank below the horizon, the sky turned blood red, then deepened to a gilded violet.

As he gazed upward, Cage thought of Sadie and the way Frank had teased her about hoping for a close encounter. You’d be amazed at what you can see out there, she’d said. Cage couldn’t help wondering now if she’d witnessed more than just a starry sky on her nightly excursions to the desert. Was there a reason she’d been shot, other than being at the wrong place at the wrong time?

Cage had a bad feeling the massacre at Del Fuego’s was only the tip of the iceberg. Corruption and drug trafficking were nothing new along the border, but he didn’t think what he’d stumbled into was some penny-ante deal gone south.

In spite of their youth, the shooters were highly trained professionals. And the men in suits looked to be upper crust law enforcement. State level, at least. Maybe even FBI or DEA, which left Cage with few options. If he called the state police, they’d likely haul his ass in for questioning, and until he managed to convince someone to believe him, he’d be a sitting duck in custody. Eventually, the truth might come out, but with cops involved, he could be dead by then.

So, at the moment, he had only one clear course of action. Put as much distance as he could between himself and San Miguel.

About a hundred yards up the road, Cage spotted a car pulled to the shoulder. He hesitated, wondering if he should approach or head off in the opposite direction.

Hunkering down at the edge of the desert, he waited several minutes, but he didn’t see any movement. He might have thought the car had stalled and the driver had taken off on foot like he’d had to do earlier, but the top was down and he could hear the radio.

The twang of an electric guitar seemed a good enough omen to Cage, and he decided to move in a little closer, see if he could detect any sign of life.

The car was an old black Cadillac Eldorado, beautifully restored, with high tailfins and a low slung profile that looked about a mile long. Cage took a moment to appreciate the classic lines before he inched in, keeping an eye on the road behind him and the desert on either side of him.

Easing up to the driver’s side, he glanced in. The key was in the ignition. Whoever the car belonged to couldn’t have gone far—

“Hold it right there, mister.”

Cage straightened. A man stood on the other side of the car pointing a gun at him.

“Back away from the vehicle,” the man said gruffly. “Easy does it, slick.”

Cage lifted his hands and took a step back from the car.

The man kept a bead drawn on Cage as he slowly rounded the rear of the Caddy.

“You weren’t thinking about trying to steal my car, were you, boy?”

“No, sir,” Cage said. “I was hoping I might hitch a ride.”

“That a fact.”

They took a moment to size each other up in the gloom.

Then the driver nodded toward the desert. “What the hell you doing way off out here in the middle of nowhere on foot?”

“My car broke down a ways back,” Cage said. “Cell phone wouldn’t work so I had no choice but to hoof it.”

“I just came from thata way myself,” the man said. “I didn’t see no broken-down car. Didn’t see much of nuthin’ but a prairie-dog town.”

“I pushed the car off the road so it wouldn’t get stripped before I could make it back with a part.”

“That’s city-boy thinking. You ain’t from around here, are you?”

“Just passing through,” Cage said. “Never been out west before. Thought I’d like to see it before I die.”

“You don’t expect that to be imminent, do you?”

“Hope not.”

The man seemed to consider Cage’s explanation. He looked to be in his early to midforties, but he had the kind of round, boyish face that made age hard to determine, especially in the dusky light.

He was average height, with broad shoulders and a wide chest that seemed to strain the pearl snaps of his western shirt, and a gut that was just starting to protrude over his silver belt buckle.

As he eyed Cage suspiciously, he shifted the gun to his left hand and used his right wrist to wipe away what Cage thought at first was sweat from his brow. Then he saw that it was blood.

“Hey, mister, you okay?”

“I’ve been better.” When he edged around the car to open the front door, Cage got a better look at him. He was flushed and his breathing sounded strained. “Just need to sit down for a minute,” he said and waved his gun toward Cage. “Better not get any bright ideas, though. I can pick a fly off that cactus over yonder even with a pea shooter like this.”

“Gotcha.” Cage backed up another step. “That’s a pretty nasty-looking cut. You may need some stitches in that thing.”

“I’ll get it cleaned up soon as I hit the next town.”

“How far is that?”

“Thirty, forty miles.” His breathing was becoming more labored by the minute. Cage thought he looked on the verge of passing out.

“What happened to you, anyway?”

“Been on the road for hours. Started feeling poorly so I pulled over and got out to walk around for a spell.” He took another swipe at the blood trickling down his face. “Damned if I didn’t pass clean out. Never done that before in my life. Must have hit my head on the bumper when I went down. Didn’t feel a damn thing.”

“Look, it’s none of my business,” Cage said. “But you really need to get to a hospital. You don’t look so hot.”

“Don’t feel so hot. But I can still put a lead cap in your ass, you try anything.”

“Tell you what,” Cage said. “I need a ride and you need a driver. What do you say we help each other out?”

“Do I look like the kind of ignoramus that goes around picking up strangers? Why, hellfire, boy, for all I know, you could be one of them serial killers I read so much about. I pass out again, you’re apt to slit my throat and steal my car.”

“Mister, if I wanted to steal your car, I’d already be ten miles down the road by now.”

He drew another bead. “You sure about that, son?”

Cage grinned. “Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Big talker,” the man said, and then he laughed. “But damned if I don’t believe you.”

“WHAT’S YOUR NAME, SON?” the stranger asked over the roar of the wind as the convertible glided like a sailboat down the highway.

Cage hesitated as he pretended to fiddle with the rearview mirror. “Frank. Frank Grimes.”

“Pleased to meet you, Frank. I’m Dale Walsh.”

“Where you headed, Dale?”

“Up the road a ways.”

“Where you coming from?”

“Galveston.”

Cage shot him a glance. “You’re a long way from home. What brings you out west?”

“On my way to see a man about a job.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m headed to a place called Jericho Pass. Ever hear of it?” He laid his head back against the red leather seat and closed his eyes.

“Can’t say as I have.” Cage’s gaze dropped to the gun that rested on the top of Dale Walsh’s thigh. “What do you do?”

“I guess you could say I’m a people person.”

“People person?” Cage said. “You mean like, sales or something?”

“Or something. Business ain’t been so great lately. Damn recession’s killing me.”

“I hear that,” Cage muttered. “So, what do you sell?”

When Dale didn’t respond, he glanced over at him. “Hey, Dale? You okay over there?”

Dale’s head lolled back against the seat. “I don’t feel so good.”

“So you said. You need me to pull over?”

“No, just keep driving, boy. I think you better get me to a doctor real quick. Something’s not right.”

“Hang in there,” Cage said. “And try to stay awake, okay? That head injury worries me.”

“I just need to rest my eyes a spell.”

“Here. How about I turn back on some music? Maybe you could try singing along or something.”

He turned up the volume, but Dale was already looking pretty out of it and Cage was starting to worry that he might be more seriously hurt than either of them had first thought. Head injuries could be deceptive. Cage had seen a guy walk away from a car crash once, perfectly lucid with only a few scratches and bruises, only to die a few hours later from brain swelling.

Hitching a ride with a guy on death’s door was not exactly the way he’d planned to make his getaway, but there was nothing he could do now but get the poor bastard to a doctor.

As they neared the next town, Cage stopped at the first gas station they came to and asked about a hospital. By the time he drove up to the E.R. entrance, Dale was unconscious. When Cage couldn’t rouse him, he flagged down a couple of orderlies to help him.

They loaded Dale onto a stretcher and whisked him into the hospital. The woman behind the desk gave Cage some paperwork to fill out.

“But I don’t even know the guy,” Cage said as he looked down at the form.

“Just do the best you can,” she said wearily. “When you’re finished, bring it back up here to me.”

Cage sat down in the noisy emergency room and looked over the questionnaire. A news broadcast on the television caught his attention, and when he looked up, he saw a map on the screen with San Miguel circled in red.

He laid aside the clipboard and went over to the television so that he could hear over the E.R. chatter.

The bodies of six gunshot victims including one female had been found in a bar in the small border town of San Miguel in Presidio County. A man who was seen entering the establishment was wanted for questioning in the shooting, which authorities believed was drug related. The suspect was described as being a white male, midthirties, six feet tall, lean, and walked with a noticeable limp.

Cage stared at the news anchor in shock. She’d just described him. He was the suspect.

And it was a damn clever ploy, too. By going public with his description, the bad guys would have every local lawman and highway patrol officer in the area on the alert for a man fitting his description. Cage had just become the target of every hotshot cop in West Texas looking to make a name for himself.

“Sir?”

Cage spun, startled. The man who had come up behind him was a doctor, not a cop, thank goodness.

He gave Cage a curious look. “Are you the man who brought in the heart-attack victim?”

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