Lady Killer

Lady Killer

Kathleen Creighton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

About The Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Epilogue

Copyright

Kathleen Creighton has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old timers’ tales and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything – art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing and now combines her two loves in romance novels.

For Tom and Deb, Bob and Melodie whose acceptance and love enrich my life beyond measure.

Prologue

In a house on the shores of a small lake somewhere in South Carolina…

“Pounding—that’s always the first thing. Someone—my father—is banging on the door. Banging…pounding…with his fists, feet, I don’t know. Trying to break it down.”

“And…where are you?”

“I’m in a bedroom, I think. I don’t remember which one. I have the little ones with me. It’s my job to look after them when my father is having one of his…spells. I have to keep them out of his way. Keep them safe. I’ve taken them into the bedroom, and I’ve locked the door, except…I don’t trust the lock, so I’ve wedged a chair under the handle, like my mom showed me. Only…now I’m afraid…terrified even that won’t be enough. I can hear the wood splintering…breaking. I know it will only take a few more blows and he’ll be through. My mother is screaming…crying. I hold on to the little ones…I have my arms around them, and they’re all trembling. The twins, the little girls, are sobbing and crying, ‘Mama, Mama…’ but the boys just cry quietly.

“I hear sirens…more sirens, getting louder and louder, until it seems they’re coming right into the room, and there’s lots of people shouting…and all of a sudden the pounding stops. There’s a moment…several minutes…when all I hear is the little ones whimpering…and then there’s a loud bang, so loud we—the children and I—all jump. We hold each other tighter, and there’s another bang, and we flinch again, and then there’s just confusion…voices shouting…footsteps running…glass breaking…the little ones crying…and I think I might be crying, too.…”

He discovered he was crying, but he also knew it was all right. He was all right. Sam, his wife, was holding him tightly, cradling his head against her breasts, and her hands were gentle as they wiped the tears from his face.

“I’m going to find them, Sam. My brothers and sisters. I have to find them.”

Samantha felt warm moisture seep between her lashes. “Of course, you do.” She lifted her head and took her husband’s face between her hands and smiled fiercely at him through her tears. “We’ll find them together, Pearse,” she whispered. “We’ll find them. I promise you we will.”

Chapter 1

The black SUV was parked just off the main road on the rocky dirt track that ran around the back side of Brooke’s twenty-five acres. Not far enough off the road to be hidden by the live oaks that grew thickly there, so she couldn’t help but see it as she slowed for her driveway a hundred yards farther on. She didn’t need to see the license plate to know who the SUV belonged to, and the knowledge sent a shock wave of fury through her. There could be only one reason for that car being parked where it was.

Duncan was spying on her.

The cold, clutching feeling in her stomach was one she’d come to know well in the months since Duncan had filed for custody of Daniel. Although the divorce had been no picnic, she’d never been afraid, not then. Only relieved. But that had been before she’d had to consider the unthinkable: the possibility that she could lose Daniel.

I can’t lose Daniel. Duncan Grant is not taking my son.

She wouldn’t have thought such a thing could happen, never in a million years. She was a good mother. She owned her own ranch—twenty-five acres’ worth, tiny by Texas standards, but at least it was paid for—and thanks to the untimely death of her parents in a freeway pileup two years ago, she was also independently well-off. But this was still a good ol’ boy’s county, and Duncan being a deputy sheriff, he had powerful allies. And now, thanks to that idiot at the feed store who’d lost her order, Duncan might actually have that ammunition he’d been looking for in his battle to win custody of their son.

Because of the delay at the feed store, she was late getting home. Daniel would have been home alone for at least an hour, and although Brooke knew he was an exceptionally responsible child and quite capable of taking care of himself for that period of time, she feared a judge would consider only the fact that he was nine years old and disregard any mitigating circumstances.

Damn Duncan, anyway. How could he have managed to show up unannounced on the one day it mattered? He wasn’t due to have Daniel until next weekend. How had he known? Unless—her stomach clenched again—unless one of his buddies had happened to see her truck in town and had reported it to him. It was the kind of thing Duncan would do, set his network of good ol’ boys to spying on her for him.

Then she thought, Oh, Brooke, you’re being paranoid.

But the thought came creeping back: why else would he be here, lurking on the back lane?

All that rocketed through her mind in a matter of seconds while she closed the distance between the lane and her mailbox, and her heart was tripping along faster than it ought to and the coldness was sitting in her belly as she turned into her driveway. The coldness spread all through her as she drove past the live oaks that surrounded her house and the accompanying assortment of outbuildings and animal enclosures that qualified the property as a ranch.

Where in the world is Hilda? And Daniel?

Normally, the Great Pyrenees—Duncan had given the huge dog, then only an adorable fur ball, to Daniel on his fifth birthday—would come bounding out to meet her, giddy with joy at her return, with Daniel not far behind. But the lane remained empty, and there was still no sign of either child or shaggy white-and-fawn dog as Brooke circled the house and drove across the yard to the barn and the feed storage shed next to it. The place seemed deserted.

That is, until she turned off the motor and opened the door. Then the noise hit her. Hilda’s frantic barking. And something else. Something that made the hair prickle on the back of her neck: the unmistakable scream of an angry cougar.

Whispering—whimpering—“OhGodohGodohGod, please, God…no…” under her breath, Brooke tumbled out of the pickup and raced through the open middle of the barn. Out the back and down the lane between the animal pens she ran, not even aware of her feet touching the ground. The cougar’s screaming and Hilda’s barking grew louder as she ran, filling her head, filling her with a fear so terrible, she couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, could barely even see.

What she did see, as if through the wrong end of a telescope, was Hilda, lunging frantically at the gate to the wire-enclosed compound far down at the end of the lane and barking with frustration at her inability to get past the high chain-link barricade. Brooke felt a momentary surge of relief, followed by an even more desperate fear.

Lady—thank God! She’s not loose, after all! But—oh, God—where is Daniel? Oh, my God—Daniel!

Her son was nowhere in sight, but for Hilda to be so upset, he had to be here. Which could only mean one thing. He was inside the cougar’s compound.

But why? Although she and Daniel had raised the cougar together from a tiny kitten, the boy knew very well Lady wasn’t a pet, that she was a wild predator and could never be trusted. Daniel would never go into her cage. Not alone. He just wouldn’t.

But he had. She could hear him now, his voice quavering and breathless one moment, firm and commanding the next. And he sounds so very, very young.

Shouting, sobbing “No—no, Lady—back. Lady—back!”

Sobbing herself now, Brooke reached the cougar’s enclosure, and gripping the wire with both hands, she stared in disbelief at the scene beyond the fence. Daniel, with his back to her, her child, holding a rake aloft like a battle sword and a folded saddle blanket over his other arm like a shield, facing down a full-grown mountain lion. And the lion, teeth bared, screaming and snarling in fury as she backed slowly toward the door to her holding cage, pausing now to swipe at the air with her claws.

“Daniel!” His name felt ripped from her throat by forces outside herself.

He didn’t turn, but she heard his breathless “I’m okay, Mom.”

At that moment the cougar, for whatever reason—perhaps returned to sanity from whatever terrible place she’d been by the voice of the only mother she’d ever known?—gave one last huffing growl, turned and sprang through the door and into her cage. Daniel scrambled after her to throw the bar across the door. By that time Brooke had opened the gate to the compound and was there to catch him when he turned, sobbing, into her arms.

But he’d only let himself stay there a moment, of course, being all too mindful of the fact that he was the man in their household now. For the space of a couple of deep, shuddering breaths, he gripped her tightly, arms wrapped around her waist, and allowed her to smooth his sweat-soaked hair with her own shaking hands. Then he let go, stepped back and wiped his face with a quick swipe of a forearm, leaving a smear of mud across one hot red cheek.

“She didn’t mean to, Mom. I know she didn’t mean to.” His words came rapidly, choked and breathless with his efforts to hold the tears at bay.

“Daniel, honey, what—” She reached for him, but he took another step back, eluding her, and shook his head with a heartbreaking desperation.

“She didn’t mean to hurt him. I know she didn’t.”

“Honey, hurt who? What are you—”

“It’s Dad.” He grew still, with a calm that was somehow more frightening than the tears. He drew a deep breath and brushed once more at his damp cheeks. “I think he’s dead, Mom.” His eyes moved, looking past her.

Biting back another question, Brooke instead jerked herself around to follow his gaze and saw what she hadn’t before, when her entire focus had been on her son and the cougar. Saw what looked like a pile of tumbled rags lying a little farther along the base of the chain-link fence.

She stared at it, shock numbing her mind, paralyzing her body, so that for a moment she didn’t register what she was seeing. Then she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Couldn’t let herself believe. The unthinkable.

Not rags, but clothing. A man’s clothing—jeans and a tan-colored shirt. With blood on them. Scuffed cowboy boots turned at an odd angle. And a brown Stetson, the kind the sheriff’s deputies wore. She knew that Stetson. She knew those boots.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, unable to move, unable to think. Then Daniel moved, started toward the body—for that’s what it undeniably was—on the ground, and she reached out and grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back. “No, no, honey. Don’t—” Her voice broke.

“But what if he needs help? What if he’s—”

Brooke just shook her head. She simply couldn’t make any more words come out of her mouth.

Then, from far off in the distance, she heard sirens.

Daniel heard them, too, and caught a quick breath, his face seeming to brighten with hope. “I called nine-one-one. I bet that’s them. Maybe it’s the paramedics. They’ll help him, won’t they, Mom?”

Hearing the anguish in her son’s voice, seeing the entreaty in his dark blue eyes, Brooke felt a measure of calm come to take the place of the shock that had kept her frozen and numb. She took her son by his shoulders—small shoulders, a child’s shoulders, too small to bear such a burden—and held him tightly and with a terrible urgency so that he had to look at her. “Daniel, quick, before they get here, tell me what happened. How did this happen? How did he—”

“I don’t know, Mom.” His eyes grew bright, almost glassy, whether with shock or more tears, Brooke didn’t know. “I got home from school and you weren’t here, so I came in the house and got an ice-cream sandwich out of the freezer, because I was hungry. And then I heard Hilda barking. And she kept barking and barking. And I thought maybe something was wrong, and you weren’t here, so I went out to see, and I brought the cell phone, like you told me.”

The sirens were louder now, coming along the road, almost to the driveway. She gave Daniel’s shoulders another shake. “Yes, yes, and…”

“And I saw Dad lying there, inside Lady’s pen. I don’t know how he got in there, Mom, I swear. I didn’t leave the gate unlocked.”

“Never mind that now. And Lady?”

“She was there, too, sort of crouched down beside %h; him. She had blood on her—you know, on her paws and stuff. When she saw me, she started snarling and screaming. I never saw her like that before, Mom. I didn’t know what to do, so I called nine-one-one. Then I thought maybe he was—maybe Dad was…you know, still alive. So that’s when I got the rake and started making her get away from him. She didn’t try to attack me or anything, Mom, I swear. It was like she was just really upset. I know she didn’t mean to hurt Dad. She wouldn’t.”

The last words were shouted above the noise of the sirens, which had risen to a deafening crescendo before dying away to a series of wails as the emergency vehicles—several, by the sound of them—pulled one after another into the yard.

Brooke gripped Daniel’s shoulders harder. “Listen, don’t say anything. I’ll handle this. Let me handle it, okay?”

Daniel sniffed and nodded, but his eyes were filled with fear, probably the same fear that was in Brooke’s heart. He put both their fears into words, in a very small voice. “They aren’t going to kill her, are they? You won’t let them kill her.” They both knew what happened to animals who turned on their human keepers.

She shook her head and clamped her teeth together, tightening her jaws as she turned to face the fire department paramedics who were just coming through the barn, coming at a rapid jog-trot.

“In here! He’s in here.”

She opened the gate and held it as the EMTs—a young man she didn’t know and a woman she knew from church, a heavyset Hispanic girl named Rosie—brushed past her. As she watched them kneel beside the body and immediately check for a pulse, Brooke reached for Daniel and pulled him against her, held him snug against her front, with her arms crisscrossing his chest. She could feel him trembling and realized she was, too.

Then time seemed to slow, and it seemed a very long time passed while she watched the two EMTs bending over the body of the man she’d once loved, once shared a bed with, still shared a child with…watched them calmly and methodically going about their business, all of them knowing it was pointless but going through with it, anyway. That strange and dreamlike feeling persisted until she heard heavy footsteps and half-turned and took a step back to make room for the sheriff’s deputies who were just arriving, and her heart sank when she saw one of them was Duncan’s partner, Lonnie Doyle.

Of course, it would be Lonnie. This was going to hit him hard.

“Dunk? Ah, no—ah, jeez! Ah, hell—”

Lonnie had barreled past her and gotten close enough to what was lying on the ground being worked on by the EMTs to see who it was, and that whatever the medics were doing, it wasn’t going to be enough. She’d unconsciously braced herself but winced anyway when he jerked to a halt, then whirled on her, his fleshy face red with rage.

“What the hell did you do? How did this happen? It was that damned cat, wasn’t it? That cat killed him—killed my partner!” His hand was at his waist, gripping the handle of his weapon. “Hell, I’m gonna take care of this right now! Right here!”

“No—it wasn’t—” Brooke began in a desperate gasp as Daniel uttered a wounded cry and tore himself away from her, hurled himself at the cougar’s cage and spread-eagled himself across the door.

“It wasn’t Lady’s fault! It was mine. I did something to make her mad. She didn’t mean—”

“No—it was an accident. Just an accident. That’s all.” Breathless with fear, Brooke planted herself between her son and the man bent on exacting his own version of frontier justice. Though what she hoped to accomplish by doing so, she didn’t know. As tall as she was, every bit as tall as Lonnie, she was no match for the man and knew it. He was bullnecked, broad-shouldered and strong as an ox; even Duncan, half a head taller and in good shape himself, had always said he didn’t have a prayer of beating Lonnie Doyle in a fair fight. Plus, the man was armed. And in a rage.

“What are you doing, man?” Al Hernandez, the other deputy, jerked at Lonnie’s arm and half spun him around.

Lonnie shook off Al’s hand. “What I shoulda done years ago. What I told Dunk he shoulda done. Shoulda drowned that cat the day he brought it home. I told him he was crazy. And lookit what’s happened. Now I’m gonna kill that thing. I’m gonna shoot it right here and now!”

Al touched Lonnie’s arm again. “Come on, man—”

“Not without a warrant, you’re not.” Brooke spoke loudly and calmly, and both men jerked their heads to look at her the way they might if the cougar itself had spoken. “This animal belongs to me,” she went on, trying to keep her voice from quivering. “She is not an imminent threat to anybody now. You don’t know what happened, or how it happened. You have no cause to shoot her, and if you try, you’ll have to do it through me.”

She saw Lonnie’s small blue eyes glitter with a dangerous light, saw his jaw jut forward in a way she’d seen it do before, and wondered if she’d gone too far. She felt Daniel creep out from behind her to stand at her side. She felt his arm slip around her waist and wished, for his sake, she could stop shaking. She braced herself as Lonnie took a threatening step toward her.

But then Rosie came walking up, peeling off her gloves and shaking her head as she joined the two deputies. She spoke to them in a voice too low for Brooke to hear over the pounding in her head, and the two men turned and walked back to where the second EMT was packing up his gear. But not before Lonnie stabbed a finger at Brooke and said in a voice hoarse with fury, “This ain’t over, Brooke. Count on it.”

Rosie paused, looking uncertain, then came over to Brooke and reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. “Brooke, Daniel—I’m so sorry. We did everything we could.”

“I know you did. It’s okay.” Brooke felt her head nodding up and down, like a mechanical toy.

“Is there anything I can do? You want me to call Pastor Farley?”

“Yes, thank you. I’d appreciate that,” Brooke murmured, although at that moment she didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. All she wanted was to be alone with her son in her house, where she could fix him hot dogs for dinner and pretend the past thirty minutes or so hadn’t happened. That it had all been a dream—a nightmare. She wanted desperately for it to all be a dream, a mistake, for there to be some sort of magic pill she could take to make it all go away.

Except she knew that wouldn’t happen. And that the nightmare was just beginning.

Numbly, she watched the EMTs pack up their gear and make their way back through the barn to their parked vehicle. Al was speaking into the radio on his shoulder, calling for a forensics team, and Lonnie went loping off to the department SUV and returned carrying a roll of yellow plastic tape. Brooke had been the wife of a law enforcement officer for seven years; she knew what it all meant.

Her ex-husband, Daniel’s father, was dead. This was a crime scene now.

Al finished talking into his radio and came over to where she and Daniel were standing, Daniel with his arm around her waist, still, his body rigid and straight as a post. Brooke, with her arm protectively around his shoulders, was the only one who’d know he was shaking, too. Al hauled in a breath and took on a cop’s authoritative stance, with his thumbs hooked in his belt and his chest out.

“I’m gonna have to ask you to go on to the house now, if you wouldn’t mind. We’re gonna need to ask you some questions, but for right now, I need for you to move out of the way so we can do our job here, which is findin’ out exactly what happened. You understand? We’re gonna find out what happened to your husband.”

My ex-husband! Brooke thought but only nodded.

Beside her, Daniel was shaking his head violently. “No—uh-uh, I’m not leaving. If we do, you’ll shoot Lady. And it wasn’t her fault, what happened to Dad. I know it wasn’t.”

The deputy’s stern cop face softened. He gave a little cough and said, “Now, son, nobody’s gonna shoot your cat. I’m not gonna let that happen.”

Daniel drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “You better promise.” Brooke felt so proud, she almost smiled.

Al Hernandez did smile. “Yeah, son, I promise. There’ll be an au—” he threw Brooke a look of apology, coughed again and said “—an investigation, and then a judge is gonna decide what to do about your cougar. Until that all happens, nobody’s gonna touch her. Okay?”

Daniel didn’t reply, and Brooke felt the resistance in his rigid body. The distrust. Though she understood just how he felt, she tightened her hold on his shoulders, and they left the compound together.

On the way to the house, she remembered the groceries still sitting in the truck. Daniel helped her carry them into the house and put them away, but when she asked him what he wanted for supper, he told her he wasn’t hungry. Again, she knew how he felt but poured him a glass of orange juice, anyway, and as an afterthought, poured one for herself, too.

She pulled out a chair, and Daniel hitched himself sideways onto another, and they sat facing each other across the kitchen table, not looking directly at each other. Daniel took a cautious sip of his orange juice, then said, “I have homework.”

Brooke took a sip of her juice and said, “What kind?”

“Math,” said Daniel. “And social studies.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that right now,” Brooke told him, and he nodded and didn’t ask why. That was the thing about Daniel; he understood so much without being told. Maybe too much for a child his age. Seen too much, too. Things no child of any age should have to see.

Brooke folded her hands together on the table in front of her and stared at them, marveling at how calm she felt. She wondered when it was going to hit her, the fact that Duncan was dead, killed by an animal she’d hand-raised from a kitten. And that he’d been found in a bloody mess by his nine-year-old son. She wondered when it was going to hit Daniel. She took a breath and looked at him and felt an awful twisting pain just below her heart.

“We have to talk,” she said. “About what we’re going to say when they ask us questions.” Daniel continued to stare at his glass of orange juice. “Honey, I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”