Set the Dark on Fire (27 page)

“You don’t understand,” Dylan said, trying not to panic. “She went to Vegas to sell her body or something. She thinks she’s dumb. She thinks she has no future!”

Fernando’s dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You were with my daughter this afternoon, no? Did you pay her … for her body?”

“Of course not,” he said, starting to sweat. He’d offered to pay her, but that had been his bruised ego talking. “Maybe she’s going to be an exotic dancer,” he conceded, picturing her sexy lingerie. “All I know is that she went to find work, and she wouldn’t tell me more. Whatever her plan is, it’s really bad.”

“What is this exotic dancing? Taking off clothes?”

“Yes,” Dylan exclaimed, finally getting through to him.

Unlike prostitution, which he didn’t seem to believe his daughter capable of, Fernando was visibly upset by the idea of Angel stripping. “When did she leave?”

“At least an hour ago.”

“You know this bus, if you see again?”

Dylan nodded.

Fernando jerked his chin toward the passenger side.
“Ándale, pues.”

Shay waved good-bye to Dylan in the parking lot and promised Fernando she would check in on his kids. He didn’t know how long they’d be out looking for Angel.

She wasn’t sure she approved of her brother going off on a wild goose chase to Las Vegas, but he was almost an adult now and she had to let him grow up. Although she’d like to continue sheltering him, that time had come and gone.

Luke’s absence also worried her. Like most bullies, Garrett was a coward at heart, but such men were dangerous when cornered, and he seemed to have his back to the wall. His marriage was crumbling, and as far as Shay knew, his career was in jeopardy.

The way Garrett treated Lori was none of Shay’s business, she supposed, but he had no right to get physical with Dylan. She might file a formal complaint with the county.

“You need a ride home?” Betty asked. Not one to miss out on any Tenaja Falls action, she’d been standing right beside Shay, watching the drama unfold.

“To the Martinez place,” she corrected. “If it’s no trouble.” Shay would have waited for Luke, but with Angel and Fernando both gone, no telling what the Martinez kids were up to. They were too young to fend for themselves.

“Grill’s still hot. I’ll whip them up some cheese sandwiches.”

“Thanks, Betty.” Shay crossed her arms in front of her chest and blinked at the last sliver of sunset, feeling fatigue settle over her. “That would be great.”

Betty had the sandwiches ready in a snap. She handed them to Shay, piping hot in a large paper bag, and locked the front door. Rubbing her tired eyes, Shay followed her through the kitchen and out the back exit. Betty’s shiny new pickup was right behind the building, facing outward, its rear bumper almost kissing the stucco.

Lying on a corrugated liner in the back of the truck, there were a half-dozen fresh rabbit carcasses, tied together with straw-colored twine.

Betty had probably bought the rabbits from Fernando, who’d tossed them in the back of her truck before he came inside. People around here ate plenty of wild game, especially when money was tight, so the sight wasn’t unusual.

Shay’s reaction to the dead animals was strange, however. While Betty locked the back door, she stared at the stiff legs and beady eyes. Rabbits were typical mountain lion prey. In a flash of intuition, she replayed Betty’s explanation of the bandage covering her forearm.

Cat scratch? Must have been a hell of a big cat.

A creepy feeling came over her, dancing along the nape of her neck. Shay didn’t know why this scenario had never occurred to her before. It was tragic, but not all that uncommon, for ignorant fools to keep mountain lions as pets.

Don’t look back
.

Her mother’s warning echoed in her ears, and a jumble of nightmare images danced through her head. She saw the hanging tree at the Graveyard. Her mother’s dead hand. A yowling lion, his muzzle dripping blood.

But of course, looking back was exactly what she did, turning to question Betty instead of ducking down.

And saw only the cold glint of metal as she was struck.

26

The ride toward Vegas was tense and silent, but that was to be expected. Dylan felt somewhat responsible for Angel’s sudden departure, almost as if he’d instigated her decision to go, and Fernando was none too pleased about the turn of events.

Dylan also knew Angel would resent his interference. She didn’t want him now any more than she’d wanted him before; their time together had been an aberration. The best aberration of his life, to be sure, but it meant nothing to her. Like Chad, he’d been a vehicle in her quest for self-destruction.

Dylan didn’t have to be a genius to figure Angel’s scarred relationship with her mother had taken her down this path, and he could relate to what she was going through. When your own mother didn’t love you enough to stick around, it was difficult to believe you were capable of being loved.

Even though he understood Angel’s actions on an intellectual level, he couldn’t deal with them on an emotional one. And physically, he was a wreck. Fantasizing about his afternoon with Angel while her dad was in the seat next to him was a bad idea, but his mind kept replaying their encounter, no matter how hard he tried to repress it.

“My daughter,” Fernando began, startling Dylan out of his inappropriate thoughts, “she told you she thinks she is dumb? That she has no future?”

“Not in those exact words.”

“Then in which ones?”

He hesitated, feeling guilty, and a little fearful of Fernando’s wrath. “She said, ‘I know I’m stupid’ once after I saw her handwriting.”

Fernando was quiet for another moment. “My father never learned to read. He was the smartest man I knew. My mother could not write her own name, but she told entire stories from memory. She was very wise.” He glanced at Dylan, as if expecting an argument. “There is more to intelligence than book learning.”

“Yessir,” he replied, not having to pretend he agreed.

“I know Angel struggled in school. She never said it bothered her.”

Dylan shrugged. Obviously, it had bothered her. But he didn’t say that.

“She isn’t stupid.”

“No sir.”

“You are very good in school,
verdád?”

“Sí,”
he muttered, smart enough to know where this was going.

Fernando studied Dylan’s swollen cheek. “And yet you can’t seem to stay out of the way of moving fists. Who did that to your face?”

“Deputy Snell.”

“Ah.” He turned his attention back to the road. “Even I know it is better to avoid a man like him, and I have only an eighth-grade education.”

Dylan felt a smile tug at his lips. Fernando made a good point. Dylan couldn’t always dodge Snell, but he could learn how to keep his stupid mouth shut.

“With my daughter …
usaste condón?”

That wiped the smile off his face. “Yes,” he said, his neck growing hot.

Fernando glanced into the rearview mirror. “Good. You are much too young to be a father. In fact,” he weaved through traffic, “You should not touch Angel again.”

Dylan recognized the threat for what it was and didn’t respond. If they didn’t find Angel, the point was moot, and even if they did, she would probably rather die than sleep with him again. But that was up to her, and nothing Fernando said would stop him.

If she gave him the go-ahead, he would touch her anywhere, anytime, and any way she wished.

Fernando’s 4-runner was built for reliability, not speed. Even so, he was punching it down the highway, passing most cars like they were standing still. The time of day also worked to their advantage. At dusk, there was a lot of traffic, enough to slow down a tour bus, but not so much that Fernando couldn’t get through.

The preferred route to Vegas was pretty much a straight shot. The last convenient stop along the way, and the most likely place to catch up with Angel, was in Midway, an appropriately named town halfway between Vegas and LA.

Dylan knew without having to be told that this was their only chance to find her. It was getting dark and soon he wouldn’t be able to recognize the bus she’d taken among the others on the crowded freeway. The transit station in Vegas would be huge and chaotic. As soon as she stepped onto the causeway, she would disappear.

After they took the Midway exit and pulled into the rest area, Dylan saw one dusty tour bus sitting in the back of the lot under the dismal glow of fluorescent streetlights.

“I think that’s it,” he said, straightening in his seat.

But as they came closer, he saw the insignia painted on the side: “Desert Breeze.” Not “Sunset Tours.”

“No,” he said, his heart sinking. “Wrong one. Sorry.”

Fernando pulled into a parking space beside the bus just as the driver started the engine and began to drive away. Curling his hands around the steering wheel, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against it in absolute defeat.

Dylan tore his eyes away from the man’s haggard face, watching helplessly as the wrong bus went by, taking their last hope with it. In the space it vacated, he caught a glimpse of a dark, curvy shape, the outline of a black guitar case.

And the girl sitting next to it, using her duffel bag as a cushion, her elbows resting on her bent knees and her chin propped up in her hands, was Angel.

Shay woke up in the passenger seat of Betty’s parked truck, alone and disoriented. She was slumped on her side, stomach roiling with nausea, her head pounding as if she’d been downing shots at the Round-Up all night.

But she hadn’t been. Had she?

No. The last thing she remembered was being behind the café … with Betty. And now she had a headache from hell.

Groaning, she raised a hand to her hair. It was matted with blood, sticky-wet. And her clothes smelled like …
coffee
.

That’s right. Betty had clocked her over the head with an aluminum coffeepot. But why?

The world outside was dark, not yet black. It was still early evening. She raised herself up to look around and the interior of the cab went spinning. Moaning, she reached out to grab ahold of the dash and squeezed her eyes shut until the motion stopped.

Luke. She had to tell Luke. She had to find Luke and tell him … what? Rabbits. Something about rabbits.

Her eyes flew open. Fuck the rabbits, she had to get out of here. Her clumsy hands lifted the door handle and she almost went tumbling out. Light flooded the cab of the truck. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision as she searched her surroundings and her person. Damn. No cell phone. No keys in the ignition, either. No escape.

Terrified by the idea that Betty would come back to finish her off, she stumbled out of the truck, and fell facedown in the dirt. Her head throbbed as if she’d been struck by lightning. Her stomach rebelled, threatening to send its contents hurling back up.

She was vaguely aware that she was no longer in the parking lot behind the café. The ground beneath her was too soft; earth filled her grasping hands. Panting from fear and nausea, she pushed the passenger door shut and let the night envelop her.

As she lay there, trying to catch her breath, she outlined her choices. Stay here and die. Crawl away and find help.

That last one sounded best. She lifted her head again, moving gingerly, studying the gloom around her. Fuzzy shapes began to take focus. Hills and trees and a dirt road. A long fence and lonely mailbox. It all looked kind of familiar.

Oh, shit. She turned to see Betty’s ranch-style house, looming behind her like something from a nightmare.

They were out in the middle of nowhere. She could crawl for hours before she found a friendly neighbor in this neck of the woods.

Woods. That was it! She could hide in the woods until the pain in her head subsided. There wasn’t much around here but sagebrush and rocks, but the nearby hills offered plenty of cover for a person lying down. At the very least, she should get away from the front yard, and out of sight of the road.

Betty hadn’t brought her home for a game of Monopoly, after all. And any moment, she’d be back looking for her.

Decision made, Shay pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. When no vomiting or head-exploding pain ensued, she struggled to her feet, holding on to the side of the truck for balance.

The wild rabbits were still there, dead, bodies stiff, eyes black in the moonlight.

Everything came rushing back to her. Her strange, foreboding dream. The suspicion that Betty had a pet lion. The blackout blow.

In the close distance, an ear-splitting shriek rang out, shrill and high-pitched, as haunting as a woman’s scream. It was the unmistakable sound of an angered lion.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, feeling her knees shake. What was Betty doing? Letting the lion out to hunt?

She shrank away from the truck, worried that the scent of rabbit would call the lion closer. Then she lifted her hand to her head in horror, aware that the smell of her own blood also filled the air. She couldn’t hide from a hungry lion. And if it came after her, there was no way she could outrun it.

For a moment, she was tempted to crawl back inside the cab of the truck and lock the doors. Betty could still get to her, but the lion couldn’t.

Another set of screams filled the night, causing goose bumps to break out on her skin. This time, the yowl didn’t merely sound like a woman. It
was
a woman. What if Betty wasn’t letting the lion loose? What if she was … offering it a victim?

Shay shuddered where she stood, chilled to the bone. Then, still reeling from the blow to her head, she staggered forward, toward the sound.

Along the side of the main house there was an old red barn, open and filled with rusty farming equipment. If Betty had a caged enclosure, it would be out back. On unsteady legs, she passed the barn, moving quietly over the dry earth.

As soon as she rounded the corner, she saw it. A large chain-link enclosure, bathed in the glow of fluorescent light.

The enclosure stretched from the back of the house all the way to the fence line. Camouflaged netting covered the links on top and wooden slats added privacy along the sides. To a casual observer, the enclosure might appear to be nothing more sinister than an extra-large dog run, but Shay recognized the signs of a big cat.

The concrete floors looked clean but smelled of territorial markings. An intact male lion definitely lived here. There was a kiddie pool filled with fresh water in one corner and she could see a number of “toys” scattered about. A couple of scarred wooden logs, some sturdy rubber balls, and a few old tires were visible through the slats.

Pulse racing, mouth dry, Shay crept along the edge of the enclosure, trying to catch a glimpse of its inhabitant. Her eyes were drawn to a square-shaped flap covering the lower half of the house’s back door.

Good God. The beast had the run of the house, too!

When the cat came into her line of sight, Shay froze in place, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling in awareness. He was at least as big as Hamlet, if not bigger. Muscles bunched beneath his dun-colored coat. The cage seemed to shrink in his presence.

Betty was standing on the other side of the chain-link fence. The entrance to the enclosure and the back gate were both wide open. “Run, you stupid cat!” Screaming her frustration, she prodded him with a steel bar while he spat and hissed. “Run!”

Holy
hell
. Betty
was
trying to free him. Shay studied the barren landscape beyond the fence line, seeing nothing but dark underbrush and pale rocks the size of headstones.

“Don’t,” she said, finding her voice. “Don’t do this, Betty!”

With another sinister howl, the lion turned his massive head in Shay’s direction. When his gray-green eyes met hers, she gulped and took a step back, her heart beating so fast she could hear it thundering in her ears.

“I won’t let you take him,” Betty said, her face ravaged by grief. “He didn’t mean to kill Yesenia. We were only trying to scare her, but Kato got too excited. She started screaming and he pounced. By the time I pried his jaw open, it was too late.”

Shay didn’t know what to say. Betty seemed on the cusp of madness. She had, after all, just bashed her over the head.

“He’s never hurt anyone before,” Betty said. “He was only playing.”

Shay realized that the woman was trying to save the lion’s life, not send him out on another rampage, and she felt a pang of sympathy for her. Shay knew what it was like to lose a beloved friend. Hamlet had been sacrificed unnecessarily, and now Kato would have to be put down as well.

She hated it when animals suffered because of human carelessness.

The circumstances were sad, but Shay couldn’t let Betty free a killer lion. “He can go to a rescue facility,” she lied. Kato wouldn’t be allowed to live, not even in captivity. “He’ll be put somewhere safe and secure.”

Betty let out a harsh laugh, shaking her head. “He can take his chances in the desert.”

Shay scrambled forward, trying to avert a disaster of epic proportions. “No, Betty,” she said. “He’ll never survive—”

But she was too late. Betty had already entered the cage.

Gasping, Shay stopped in her tracks. No telling what the lion would do.