Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Canyon) (13 page)

“I don’t see any white pickups.”

“No, unfortunately.” He slowed as they approached. “That’s unit five on the end upstairs.”

“There aren’t any lights on inside. It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.” Claire pointed toward the building attached to the apartments. “Look! Someone’s pulling out of the carport.”

Ben pulled in behind a parked car, stopped and turned off his headlights. He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket, the info Sol had given him that morning, including the model and plate number of the vehicle Dennis “Duke” Hutchins drove.

“Ninety-nine black Chevy Camaro. Texas plate BQ1 BB13.”

“That’s it! It’s Hutchins, Ben. There’s no one in the apartment. We have to follow him!”

Taking Claire with him into what could be a very bad situation was the last thing he wanted. He watched the black Camaro pulling farther and farther away.

Ben stepped on the gas.

Thirteen

“L
eave the damn dog inside. Get out of the truck and let’s go.”

Sitting in the passenger seat, Sam smoothed a hand over the dog’s shiny black coat. “Why can’t Pepper come with us?”

“Because he’ll chase the chickens. Now come on.” Troy tugged the brim of his baseball cap down over his eyes and stuffed a red bandanna into the back pocket of his jeans. He was in a hurry and Sam knew what would happen if he didn’t get moving.

“Stay, Pep. I’ll be back pretty soon.”

Sam jumped down from the seat of the truck and slammed the door. Pepper whimpered and stared sadly out the window.

“What are you waitin’ for? I said let’s go.”

Sam hurried around the truck, afraid to look back at Pep again. Troy could be real mean when someone didn’t do what he wanted. Sam had a knot on the back of his head to prove it.

They started tramping through the powdery dust on the bumpy dirt road, heading for the big barn up ahead. It was made of wood, and there were open windows along the sides, the kind of barn you saw in cowboy movies. There were more pickup trucks than Sam had ever seen.

Troy said they were going to watch a bunch of chickens fighting. Sam thought that sounded really weird. But a lot of people must like it because he could hear them yelling and cheering at the top of their lungs.

The moon helped them see in the dark and there were a couple of lights pointing down from the roof of the barn so people could find their way to the front door.

Walking ahead of Troy, he had almost reached the entrance when he noticed a barrel off to one side. Another barrel sat next to it. As they passed, Sam saw what was in them. His stomach rolled and his mouth went dry. The overhead light shone on feathers of every color—red, brown, gray, white, speckled. The barrel was full of dead chickens, their heads bent at funny angles, their little beady eyes dull and staring.

All of them were covered in blood.

“Those are the losers.” Troy chuckled. “Don’t worry, we’ll be bettin’ on winners.” Coming up behind where Sam had stopped, Troy shoved him forward, making his feet move when they seemed to have forgotten how.

Sam swiveled his neck, his eyes still fixed on the chickens, and suddenly he understood. The chickens didn’t just fight, they killed each other.

“I don’t want to go in there, Troy. I want to wait in the car with Pep.”

“Bullshit. This’ll be good for you. Teach you to be a man.”

Sam tried not to think of the dead chickens, but even if he closed his eyes he could see the mangled, bloody birds. His feet halted again and he swallowed, fighting not to throw up.

“What the fuck?” Troy shoved him hard and he stumbled. “Stop acting like a goddamned baby. You want Duke to think you’re a wimp? Get your ass inside.” Troy shoved him again and Sam kept walking.

All he could think was how stupid he’d been to leave with Troy Bridger. If he could do it over, he would stay with the Robersons whether they liked him or not. He would stay, even though his mother was dead and nobody wanted him.

But it was too late for that. Keeping his eyes straight ahead, Sam walked into the barn.

* * *

Careful to keep the Camaro in sight, Ben drove the SUV along the dirt road leading farther and farther out to nowhere. Nothing but cactus, mesquite and desert. Nothing but dust billowing up from the car in front of him. Good cover for the SUV but making it impossible to see where Hutchins was headed.

Then the road turned a little to the left and he caught a glimpse of light up ahead. The Camaro pulled into a makeshift dirt parking lot filled with trucks and cars. Ben parked a row behind Hutchins and turned off the engine. Fifty yards farther away, a circle of light marked the entrance to a barn.

“What is this place?” Claire asked. “What’s going on?”

Ben knew the area from the time he’d spent in Juarez, knew the favorite pastime. Didn’t matter that it had been outlawed. “Cockfight.”

Claire’s head went up. “What? You don’t think Troy’s here. Surely he wouldn’t bring Sam to something as disgusting as that.”

“You don’t think so?”

She surveyed the assortment of rough-looking people making their way toward the barn. “Actually, I do. In fact, I think it would be just like him. A way of turning Sam into his idea of a real man.”

They sat quietly as Hutchins got out of his car and fell in with a group heading for the barn. Two men and three big-busted, big-haired women wearing low-cut blouses and stretch pants so tight the cheeks of their asses rubbed together.

“We’re going in there, right?”

“I am. You’re staying here.” He had never put the bulb back into the overhead light so the light didn’t go on when he opened the door.

“I’m going with you, Ben,” Claire said, stopping him. “Duke could be meeting Bridger, and Bridger might be with Sam. With all these people and so little light, there’s no way you can spot him. I know his height and build, the way he walks, the sound of his voice. I can find him if he’s in there.”

“You can’t go with me, Claire.”

“Why not?”

“This is a damn bloody sport, for one thing. I’m not sure you can handle it.”

“Other women are going in.”

Ben shook his head. “Not women like you.”

Another group walked past, tattoos and piercings, black leather jackets, a buxom blonde and a heavily painted redhead.

“Just give me a minute,” Claire said.

Ben watched as she opened her purse and pulled out a hairbrush, unfastened the clip holding back her hair and brushed it out, back-combed it into a mass of dark silk.

She took out a tube of red lipstick he was surprised she owned and painted her full lips a fiery shade of crimson, rubbed a little on her cheeks. Unfastening the last few buttons on her white cotton blouse, she knotted the ends above her waist, then unbuttoned the top buttons to flash a little cleavage.

She cast him a challenging smile. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

He tried to ignore the little jolt of lust he got just looking at her. She was right about recognizing Sam. Dressed like that she would fit in well enough. Still, he didn’t like the idea. He made a last effort at discouraging her.

“What about your sneakers? Not exactly de rigueur for this kind of affair.” Even in the powdery dust, the women wore platform heels.

“You’re right.” Climbing down from the passenger seat, she hurried to the back of the Tahoe and popped the trunk. The zipper on her carry-on buzzed. When Claire walked back to where he stood, she was wearing a pair of strappy black superhigh heels. She had rolled up the legs of her jeans, showing off her pretty ankles.

She looked more like a hooker than the angel he called her. But he had to admit it might just work.

“All right, you can come. I might need your eyes to find Sam. But you do what I tell you, and whatever I say, you play along. You’re dressed like a whore. Play the part.”

Those words sent his thoughts in a dangerous direction, but the moment he glanced toward the barn, his mind returned to his son and he was all business. “Let’s go.”

Claire wrapped her fingers around his biceps as they started walking, using him for balance on the dusty rutted road. He slid an arm around her waist to steady her and guided her toward their destination.

The noise grew louder as they drew near. At the entrance, two Hispanic men stood guard, each wearing a shoulder holster over a dark T-shirt. One was big and muscular with skin so dark it looked black, the other tall and rangy, his arms roped with muscle and lined with blue ink prison tattoos.

Ben let go of Claire and eased a little away from her in case he needed to move fast. His pistol rode at his back. He wondered if they would want him to give it up. Then again, this was Texas. Everyone carried here.

Their attention swung from him to Claire, looking her over with eyes full of lust and bulges in their jeans.

“Eh, gringo. I have not seen you here before,” the bigger man said.

Ben managed to smile. “Friend of Duke Hutchins. He here yet? He’s supposed to meet me.”

“
Sí,
he just came in.”

“How about Troy Bridger? He here, too?”

“Maybe. I don’t know him.” Hard black eyes slid back to Claire. His thin lips curled up in a wolfish smile. “You got a good-looking woman,
señor.
She for sale?”

Claire’s face went pale. Ben kept his easy smile in place. “Not tonight.”

The other man just laughed. “Good luck, hombre.”

“Gracias, amigo.”
He wasn’t fluent, but he knew enough Spanish to get by. So did the rest of the guys on his SEAL team. One of the reasons they’d been sent to Juarez. It came in handy in Houston.

“Come on, baby,” he said, pulling her close. “Let’s go win some money.”

She laughed as if she couldn’t wait, a throaty, sexy purr that made his groin throb.

“Buy me something pretty if you win?”

He raked her with his eyes. Even with the makeup and hair, she didn’t quite fit in. A little too elegant, maybe. Or a little too naive. “You bet, sweetheart.”

They headed for the beer concession, which was on the other side of a door leading out on the right. Ben bought a Bud in a red plastic cup and handed it to Claire so they would look like everyone else in the crowd. He made a slow, ambling loop around the barn, noticing it had four big open doors, one on each side, providing possible avenues of escape.

Then he led Claire back inside, moving toward the open area in the center of the barn, keeping her close, scanning the throng of people, looking for Hutchins or Bridger while Claire searched for Sam.

It was hard to believe people brought kids to a place like this, but they were there, standing next to their parents, some up in the rafters looking down on the matches. Bloodthirsty little bastards.

He could feel the tension in the hand Claire wrapped around his arm in a tourniquet grip. As they moved closer to the ring and the cries grew louder, he was pretty tense himself.

* * *

Claire forced her legs to move. She’d been determined to help Ben look for Sam, had told herself she could handle seeing what went on inside. Michael had once done an exposé on cockfighting, a bloody sport that was now illegal in all fifty states but still went on in far too many places.

Obviously one of those places was here.

She clung to Ben’s arm and pasted on a smile, trying to pretend she was enjoying herself. The crowd was a mixture of Hispanic, white and black, the dregs of society, from what she could tell. Michael had told her it was a favorite sport in a number of countries around the world, which might have accounted for some of the Asian men she saw.

He had also said that all levels of society frequented the matches, gambling thousands of dollars, some of the purses as high as a million.

Not this one. As they drew closer to the ring surrounded by bales of straw, she saw fistfuls of money being handed back and forth as the betting went down for each match, but this crowd wasn’t made up of millionaires.

In the center of the ring, a bronze rooster wearing three-inch metal spurs on its legs faced a snow-white opponent also wearing knife-sharp spurs. Their handlers were goading them, bringing them to a fighting frenzy.

The roar in the barn would have matched a World Series baseball game.

“See anything?” Ben asked, stopping next to a wooden post a little ways from the fighting.

Claire tore her gaze away from the ring just as the handlers let the birds go but not before she saw one of the steel spurs on the bronze rooster sink into the white chicken’s back. Blood erupted over its snowy feathers.

“Not...not so far.” She kept her gaze averted, looking up at Ben, her stomach churning, her smile carefully fixed in place. At the moment, with all the makeup and her frozen expression, she figured she looked more like a mannequin in a horror movie than a prostitute.

“Do you see Hutchins?” she asked.

“I got him spotted. Over to the left about two o’clock.”

Her adrenaline took a leap as her gaze swung in that direction. There was enough light to see him—dark blond hair, rangy build, scruffy blond beard along his jaw. She wasn’t sure she could have picked him out from the glimpse she’d gotten as he drove the Camaro out of town, or watching him walk in the darkness toward the barn. But Ben had seen his photo, and he was trained for that kind of thing.

“I don’t see Troy,” she said.

“Keep looking.” He spoke low in her ear. “Anything goes wrong, you know the drill. Get to the car as fast as you can. Give me five minutes. If I don’t get there or if you’re threatened, haul ass for the highway. Find a motel and leave a message on my phone where I can find you.”

Claire swallowed. They’d both gotten keys to the SUV at the rental car agency. She hadn’t considered she might have to leave Ben and drive off by herself. A shiver of fear slid through her.

“What...what are you going to do?”

“For now, just wait for Bridger. If he doesn’t show, we’ll follow Hutchins back to his apartment. I’ll find out what he knows about Sam.”

Those icy eyes looked hard as steel. She didn’t want to think how far Ben would push to get the information he wanted.

Instead, she searched the faces in the barn, looking for Troy or Sam. At the edge of the circle of light illuminating the ring, rough-looking men and blowsy women cheered for the victorious rooster. A number of the men were armed, blatantly wearing knives hooked onto their belts or strapped to their thighs. She was sure some of them carried weapons in their pockets.

It was a dangerous crowd and it horrified her to think that Troy might be bringing Sam to a place like this.

“Hutchins is moving,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The door on the west led to the beer stand, where Hutchins was probably headed. Guards were posted beside each open door, watching for police, she assumed, or keeping out unwanted guests.

She let Ben guide her toward the door, saw Hutchins disappear outside. Ben eased her into a shadowy corner.

“I need to know where he’s going, but I need your eyes in here. Will you be okay for a couple of minutes?”

“I’ll be all right.” She ignored the tattooed, leather-jacketed man standing among several others a few feet away. She didn’t want to think what could happen to her if Ben didn’t return.