Devil in Texas (Lady Law & The Gunslinger Series, Book 1) (32 page)

"It's better to wear a tin star than to be arrested by one," Collie advised Vandy. "Or in your case, it's better to be a coon than a hat. So I reckon I should stop letting you steal food. Even from dead folks," he added grudgingly. "Here."

He offered the gingerbread to the coon.

Eagerly, Vandy rose on his haunches. He wrapped a paw around Collie's forefinger. His whiskers twitched. He sniffed the confection.

Then the strangest thing happened. Vandy, who ate everything from tarantulas and rattle snakes, to scented soap and rotting melons, turned up his nose at Poppy's soul cake.

Collie hiked an eyebrow. "The cake wasn't
that
bad, churnhead."

Vandy shuffled over to
Seňor
Garcia's burned-out luminarias. Hunkering down, the coon began to gnaw a candle in a saucer of sand.

"Seriously? You'd rather eat wax?" Collie frowned. "Hey. You aren't sick from all those sugar skulls, are you?"

Shouts rose from the revelers, distracting Collie. Apparently, the ring-leaders had bullied three of the youngest boys into pranking The Beast. Clutching their sacks of flour in one hand and their eggs in the other, the trio was creeping with great trepidation onto the porch of the house. Lightning sizzled over the chimney in great, purple spears. The oak tree moaned like some wounded soul. In the filtered moonlight, Collie recognized Joaquin, the shoeshine boy, leading his companions to their ultimate goal: the bell pull by the door.

Five feet.

Three feet.

An arm's length away.

Joaquin stretched shaking fingers.

A sudden light flashed behind the house's jagged windows. A deafening boom shook the panes even as splinters spewed from the hole that materialized in the door's rotted wood.

Holy crap!

Miraculously, Joaquin wasn't hit by the rifle blast. Bleating like a lamb, the kid dropped his flour and eggs and bolted off the porch. His companions followed in hot pursuit, shrieking,
"La Bestia!"
The rest of the revelers took up the cry. Soon all the
Tejano
children were bounding around like moonstruck jackrabbits, while rifle cartridges chipped tombstones, splintered fence rails, and cracked through tree branches. When a rotted old oak bough tumbled from the sky, it nearly crushed Collie's skull.

Sonuvabitch!

"Beggarticks!" he hissed at his well-trained coon, and Vandy dived under the bush where Collie had stashed his Winchester and saddlebag. But when Collie tried to grab his rifle, he nearly got his hand blown off.

Grabbing his bourbon, Collie ran in the opposite direction. Bullets were whining over his head. He felt like a metal duck in a shooting gallery. When he dodged right, the sniper drilled a cartridge into the dirt by his boots. When he ran left, a potshot zoomed past his shoulder.

"I owe you a slug, boy!" a Midwestern accent bellowed from the cottage. "For putting a hole in my bowler!"

Even as Collie recognized Hank's voice—and realized The Ventilator had been the sniper on the grocer's roof—the bourbon bottle shattered in his fist. Collie swore. There wasn't a damned thing he could do to retaliate. His .45 was out of firing range.

Why would Hank try to plug Baron if Baron's paying him hush money?

Maybe Tito was the real target in the Square...

But why finger me for Tito's murder? Hank doesn't know me—at least, not well enough to hate me...

Wait a minute. Hank must have an accomplice. An accomplice who doesn't like me.

I'll bet it's Pendleton!

His mind racing with allegations, Collie ran for the cover of a mausoleum. He had some half-formed plan to pick the lock and hide inside. But he'd barely charged through the porch's skeleton dolls and marigolds when his gut started burning. The pain came out of nowhere; he thought a shell had hit him. He clutched his stomach. He doubled over. When he didn't feel blood, he realized he was sick.

The churning in his gut reached volcanic proportions. Helpless to stop the fiery surge to his throat, he spewed gingerbread, blood, and other chunky matter that he dimly recognized as dinner. He had a moment to be mortified; another to realize he'd been poisoned.

Pendleton isn't Hank's accomplice.

Poppy is!

Then the second wave of nausea hit. Collie's retching sounded like the roar of a locomotive to his ears. Even though the rifle blasts had stopped, he figured he was doomed. Hank was probably listening, enjoying the sound of a stomach turning inside-out in a graveyard on Devil's Eve.

Feeling like his innards were exploding, Collie toppled face down beside his vomit. His tongue had swollen. He was struggling to breathe. By the time stars started spinning inside his head, his toes and fingers had grown numb. He was completely helpless. He couldn't hold onto his .45. It bounced down the mausoleum's steps.

The squeal of an opening door was the last thing he remembered before the vortex claimed him.

Chapter 17

Halloween dawned beneath ominous, gray clouds pierced by jagged spears of light. In Lampasas, most people rejoiced to see the thunderheads and prayed the drought had finally come to an end.

Jazi was among the contrary folks, who prayed for another dry rain. As she watched Sadie apply her make-up in Wilma's cave, Jazi confided, between coughs, that she wanted to dress as a Mambo, go trick-or-treating, and maybe even sing for soul cakes with Joaquin, the shoe-shine boy, who'd told her about
Tejano
traditions. Jazi had set her heart on getting twice as much candy by celebrating both Halloween and the Day of the Dead.

"I thought you were afraid of witches," Sadie teased. Her whiskey alto was raspier than usual after standing in the woods last night—with wet hair—and arguing with Cass.

"Not any more. Cass said he'd save me from the witch," Jazi confided with an impish grin. She broke the seal on a fresh tin of Serenata's pastilles and offered one to Sadie.

Shaking her head at this newest evidence of her lover's Coyote Charm, Sadie politely refused a lozenge. When her singing voice became strained, she favored a brand called
Fishmerman's Friend
. Its base ingredients of menthol and eucalyptus were rare, because most modern-day nostrums relied upon cocaine to relieve discomfort. Sadie shunned opiates. In the immortal words of her field agent manual,
"A Pinkerton must keep her wits about her."

"Are you still going to sing in the Halloween show?" Jazi asked wistfully, propping her derriere on the vanity. "Even with a sore throat?"

"You know what they say, 'The show must go on,'" Sadie said, dusting powder over her freckled nose. "As a matter of fact, I need you to run upstairs and remind Cotton to hail me a hack. I'm due at rehearsal in half an hour."

Jazi's brow knitted. She was triple-wrapping the cord of her
gris-gris
around her fingers. "I wish you and Mama could be friends. Then you could visit us in New Orleans."

Sadie fixed a pleasant smile on her face. An act of God would be required to make her and Randie friends. However, Jazi didn't need to know that. On impulse, Sadie dragged off her pearl necklace and draped it over the child's sausage-style curls.

"For me?" Jazi breathed. "To
keep?"

"Forever and ever."

The child squealed, jumping up to admire her reflection. She looked flushed and glassy-eyed, and Sadie hoped that excitement, not another bout of sickness, was the cause.

"I'm beautiful!"

"I
told
you you were, silly."

Jazi threw her arms around Sadie's neck and sniffed back tears. "Thanks for being my friend, Maisy."

Sadie's heart warmed as she watched Jazi dash for the stairs on her errand. As much as Sadie hated to admit it, Randie couldn't be all bad. She'd raised a darling child.

With a furtive glance to make sure the trap door was closed, Sadie concentrated on arming herself—a task that Jazi's visit had forced her to delay. She fastened a pistol to her thigh and slipped a stiletto into the sheath sewn beneath her collar. She snapped plump caps onto the buttons of her bodice; they were easily detached when she needed a smoke bomb. Her cameo could do all kinds of damage, not the least of which was spray ink into an assailant's eyes, and her belt buckle could be "unsheathed" as a knife.

Like her daddy's pendant, her Pinkerton ring hid a secret compartment. Today, she'd chosen a sapphire cabochon. Depending on the color of her gown, the stone could be exchanged for a ruby, emerald, or topaz, all of which snapped closed over a tiny needle that injected a powerful sleeping draught.

But Sadie's handiest weapon, when she was forced to wear a skirt, was her .32. It was attached to the sliding mechanism beneath the right sleeve of her jaunty, bolero jacket.

Satisfied her arsenal was in good working order, she gathered her hat and reticule and headed upstairs.

As her private hack rolled down Third Street, Sadie could see pedestrians in trousers and petticoats shopping up a storm, no doubt hoping to avoid the merciless heat as the sun crept higher. The bargain hunters were haggling with street vendors over last-minute purchases, primarily sugar skulls, although crosses, candles, and ritual toys were also flying off handcarts bedecked with orange marigolds and yellow chrysanthemums.

The Day of the Dead was actually a 72-hour period, from All Hallows' Eve through All Souls' Day. A popular time to build altars, decorate gravesites, and honor departed loved ones, the tradition was dear to
Tejanos
and Mexican immigrants. But
Día de los Muertos
had also been heartily embraced by Lampasas rowdies, who wanted nothing more than an excuse to wear a mask and make mischief for three days.

This notion caused an image of Cass to flash through her mind. Last night, after she'd ended their argument, he'd initiated another round. The fracas had started when he'd insisted she ride Pancake with him to fetch her mare.

"Mount up." Blocking her path, he'd shoved the buckskin's leads into her hand. "I'm taking you back to town."

"I prefer my own horse."

"Quit being so mulish. You don't know what's waiting out there in those dark woods. Or who."

"I can fire a gun as well as any man."

He snorted. "Except me, and Hank, and Collie and Sterne—"

"I can fend for myself!"

"Tell that to Collie after he saved your ass."

Incensed to hear him use her confidence against her, she snapped, "I think you're forgetting who wears the badge around here!"

He backed her into his horse's flank. She sucked in her breath. His eyes were fairly smoking.

Facing Cass, when he took on the Lucifire persona, was an unnerving challenge. At six feet, two-inches, and dressed entirely in black, he towered over her like an Olympian-sized spike, forged on some fire god's anvil. The shadows cast by his hat brim only seemed to make the sapphire flames of his soul burn brighter in that unyielding glare. She had to square her shoulders and ball her fists to keep from cringing.

"Either you mount up willingly," he said in a low, fierce undertone, "or I'll truss you up like a turkey and throw you over that saddle."

Tyrant.

To add to his growing list of sins, Cass had somehow found Rex before she had. The Ranger had been waiting for her, pacing Wilma's boudoir like a caged wolf. Rex had fired the opening shot by demanding to know why she hadn't hidden her Pinkerton badge better. The debriefing had gone downhill from there. She'd been too angry to spare Cass by hiding the truth about his snooping, and Rex had turned florid at her description of the Bowie knife stuck through her handbill's nose.

Wilma hadn't taken the news much better. She'd quickly deduced that her "secret" tunnel wasn't so secret and that Collie was responsible for her missing bottles of Wild Turkey. To keep Collie in Wilma's good graces, Sadie had been forced to describe how the boy had saved her from Hank—or rather, from The Ventilator. Apparently, Cass had already guessed Hank's alter ego. Rex was the one who'd enlightened her.

Then Rex dropped another bomb: he'd recruited Cass.

"Wait a minute. You sent him after
Hank?"
Sadie quailed at this news.

"He'd already made up his mind. I just made sure he wouldn't get arrested for it."