"I said you could come home with me. We can do it in the car."
"h.e.l.l, no. I"m coming in," he said furiously. "It"s my house."
"Well . . . not technically," she reminded, deliberately provoking him. She knew she shouldn"t really, not if she was going to get him to do what she wanted, but it just felt so good she couldn"t stop herself.
"Listen, b.i.t.c.h. I don"t know what you think you"re doing, but you got no game, girl. You don"t deserve to live here, and when the lease is up, you"re on your a.s.s."
"The a.s.s you can"t take your eyes off."
He actually grabbed her by her hair, but then released her immediately. "Oho, I know what you"re doing. You"re trying to set me up for a lawsuit. Well, it ain"t gonna work." He stepped back from her as if she smelled bad.
"You want to come in the house? Fine. Come on in." She walked up the steps to the front door and inserted her key. She was infuriated with the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but even as she was pushing inside and fumbling for the light switch, she realized there was no way she could actually kill him here. Not when it was her name on the lease. Her name on every car registration. Her name on the utility bills. No, it would have to be somewhere else, but what could she use to- Her hand encountered a wall of human flesh and she shrieked in surprise. Whoever grabbed her arm yanked her inside, pushing her to the floor, smacking her head on the floor. She flailed and tried to get up, but the p.r.i.c.k of a needle sent cold shivers rushing through her. "What-what?" she gasped.
Distantly, she heard Lumpkin say cautiously from outside, "Daniella?"
Fighting back a swirling dizziness, she saw him stick his head inside the door, his body outlined by the lighter outdoors. Her attacker was on him in an instant, putting something around his neck that made him choke, stagger, and gasp. In the near blackness Daniella could only make out images: his fingers clawing at his neck, his feet stamping and shifting, the hood covering his attacker"s face, the smell of urine as Lumpkin"s bladder gave up the ghost and emptied onto the floor.
Time pa.s.sed. She must have blacked out because she awakened to find herself dressed in her prayer robe, naked underneath. She felt foggy and strange, and the woman standing over her could have been a mirage. It was a woman, wasn"t it? She was in one of their hooded prayer robes, too, but her face was obscured.
The woman was dangling the chain of one of their ankhs in one hand and there were bits of flesh attached to it.
Lumpkin. Oh, G.o.d. She"d killed him with the ankh! Is it mine?
She sensed she wasn"t alone and turned her head as much as she could muster to see two other robed figures on the floor, gla.s.sy eyes staring, mouths open and tongues flopping. Clarice and Jerrilyn. And Lumpkin . . . on the far side, his eyes bulging out of his head in a death mask of horror.
She shivered, glanced back at the woman. "Naomi?" she tried to squeak out.
The robed woman flung the cross aside and suddenly jumped on her, reaching inside Daniella"s robe to grasp the ankh that was still around her neck. And then she started twisting and twisting. Daniella managed to fling one hand up and claw at her, but her hand was weak and only hit the woman"s robe.
"You call yourself the handmaidens," the woman said calmly as Daniella felt her throat squeeze shut, her lungs scream for air. "You"re a harem of wh.o.r.es."
And the world went black.
West awoke, blinked a couple of times, realized where he was and that Callie wasn"t next to him, and threw back the covers. It was early, the gray light of morning barely creeping in. Quickly he got up and took a shower in the en-suite bathroom. Then he shaved and ran a comb through his wet hair. He had to re-dress in yesterday"s clothes as he"d left his bag in the car. Then he headed downstairs and walked to the back door, disarming the alarm as he emerged into a cool morning that smelled fresh with no hint of the manure scent that sometimes blew in from the northeast, where the bulk of the ma.s.sive herd and barns were located.
He grabbed his bag from the Explorer then retraced his steps. When he entered the house he was surprised to see Callie, fully dressed. "Good morning," he said.
"You got your bag," she observed.
"Yeah, I figured I"d better get ready for the day."
"Did you see anyone out there?"
"No. Why?"
"You"re going to think I"m nuts, but I saw a man standing outside the great room windows last night, the back side of the house. It was around midnight, or maybe one? It worried me so I spent the rest of the night in Tucker"s room."
He frowned. "Why didn"t you wake me?"
"I don"t know." She shook her head.
"Okay, I"ll check for footprints," he told her.
"Good . . . but when you come back, I want to talk to you about Andre."
West let that sink in a moment. "You think it was him?"
"I do."
"Okay. I"ll be right back," he a.s.sured her.
"I"m going to take a shower and change, and I"ll meet you back here in the kitchen. I . . . West, I don"t want to stay here. Without Victoria, I want to leave with Tucker and go back to LA. Call it paranoia if you want, but I don"t think it"s safe here."
He nodded slowly, thinking. He didn"t want her here, either, and with Victoria in the hospital there was no one likely to stop him from taking Tucker away, at least temporarily. "We need to tell Talia."
He saw her relax with relief. "Thank you."
She hurried for the stairs, and West walked back outside, looking around himself carefully. He circled around the back of the house and examined the area in front of the windows, which was hard soil surrounded by gra.s.s in need of mowing. There were footprints in the gra.s.s, nothing noticeable in the soil. It did appear that someone had been walking around the house.
Back inside, he reset the alarm then waited for Callie. Forty-five minutes later he heard Tucker"s high-pitched voice babbling in French and then his clambering footsteps down the stairs. He zipped into the kitchen and stopped short upon seeing him. "Dejeuner!" he declared.
Callie showed up right behind him, showered, and changed. "Breakfast," she translated, but he knew the word.
"How about I take you both to Laughlin BBQ? They have great breakfasts," West said.
"They do?" Callie asked, then immediately said, "Sounds like a plan. Talia told me to go there, too, but I was thinking dinner." She turned to Tucker. "What do you like to eat in the morning?"
"Croissants!" Tucker declared.
"I should have known." She smiled.
"Think it"ll be more like flapjacks," West pointed out.
"Flapjacks?" Tucker perked up at a new word.
"Pancakes . . . like crepes, sort of," Callie explained.
"I know pancakes," Tucker told her haughtily. "Flapjacks," he told West as if ordering from a waiter.
"All right, pardner. Flapjacks it is." West resisted the urge to ruffle the boy"s hair, knowing Tucker wouldn"t appreciate it. Right now the boy wanted Callie and n.o.body else, but given enough time, they might become a kind of family.
The three of them walked out to his Explorer together, Tucker skipping ahead and scaring several rabbits that were munching on the front lawn.
The killer flexed her gloved hands as she looked at the four bodies lying on the prayer room floor and felt a certain amount of satisfaction. This array . . . was a long time coming. She hadn"t antic.i.p.ated the guy. He was nothing more than collateral damage, but she"d seen how he"d acted on the driveway and he was a complete a.s.shole.
She"d put him in Andre"s robe. He hadn"t taken it with him and why would he? Sick man that he was, he didn"t know up from sideways anymore. He was focused on killing the boy, but that wasn"t going to do him any good. She knew how families like the Laughlins worked. They would close ranks and keep him on the outside. He couldn"t see that, of course, because he"d never been psychologically astute and now, with whatever was happening to him-brain tumor, maybe?-tearing him apart, making him believe in his own delusions, and megalomania, well . . . he wasn"t the man he used to be. She was afraid something had popped inside his head, making him believe all the s.h.i.t he spewed.
He"d been so s.e.xy and compelling once. She ached for the old Andre, and she wanted him back!
Carefully, she retrieved the ankh from Daniella"s neck, then gathered up the one she"d used on Lumpkin and tossed aside for effect, the one that had once been Teresa"s. The ankhs were valuable and she didn"t want to leave unnecessary evidence . . . she just wanted to be able to show Andre what she"d done. Let him know how good she was at this kind of thing, how much better than the other handmaidens. With that in mind, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the small black leather bag she"d brought with her and carefully removed a box of cigarette ash.
She looked down at all their distorted faces and smiled. She"d already spread some ash over Clarice and now she did the same to Jerrilyn, Lumpkin, and Daniella.
Then she walked quickly toward the front door, gently tossing Teresa"s ankh into a corner as if it had mistakenly fallen there. If things didn"t go the way she hoped, she was going to have to implicate Andre in their deaths. He would know she"d done the deeds, if he could hold the thought, but he wouldn"t be able to drag her down with him, as long as she was careful.
But she didn"t want things to go that way. She still wanted Andre. A part of her always would.
The cigarette ash was a brilliant addition, the perfect motif for her tableau. Andre would enjoy that she"d made them sacrifices to him and, if the authorities needed to be brought in, they might believe Andre"s scrambled brains had come up with the idea. He wore an ankh around his neck, and the presence of another one, the one used in the murders, would certainly put him under suspicion, but again, this plan was merely a last resort.
Before she left, she went back to the prayer room for a last look over her handiwork. The robed bodies were lining up and she was going to have to get Andre here soon or the smell of rot would be noticed.
Satisfied, she grabbed up Lumpkin"s pants and searched through them for his keys. She"d left her own vehicle down the street and figured it would be fine sitting there for a while. She had a couple more targets in mind, though she wasn"t exactly sure which she would do next, which would present itself first.
She locked up the house, got in Lumpkin"s vehicle, turned the ignition. She drove for about five miles before pulling off on a Venice side street and slipping out her cell phone. "Hey, lover," she said when Andre answered. "You don"t have to worry about Clarice or Jerrilyn or Daniella anymore.... Thanks for telling me all about them. They were easy to fool, just like you said. So predictable. And as a special bonus, your landlord. Time for you to come on home."
What? What was she saying? "I"m not going anywhere," Andre snarled. No one told The Messiah what to do.
"You need to come back," she said in a singsong voice.
Andre looked around the dismal room he"d booked at the Travelin" Inn in Castilla, a motor lodge with a lumpy bed on which he hadn"t slept a wink all night. He"d taken a drive back toward the ranch and had seen his cousin arrive. West Laughlin. Craig"s b.a.s.t.a.r.d who shouldn"t even be around, and yet there he was, with the nanny who looked so much like Teresa it made his groin hurt. Callie Cantrell. What were they doing? What was their plan? He"d dismissed West as unimportant but watching him put the nanny up against a wall and kiss her and press up against her while her hands clutched at him in delirious desperation had made him burn with l.u.s.t and indignation. It was his house! Not some out-of-wedlock cur"s like West Laughlin. After they"d gone inside the house he"d tried to scrub the memory from his brain but his own imagination-visualizing them thrashing around in ecstasy with him inside her and her legs clamped around his back, both of them moaning and crying out-was infinitely worse! He"d gone back later to stare through the window, the urge to smash his way inside nearly overwhelming.
". . . know you want Victoria to die, but it"s time to come back," she was saying and he realized he"d missed what had come before.
"I don"t want her to die yet," he hissed. "If she goes now, the boy could get everything . . . or maybe she"ll leave it all to Cal Stutz." He could hear the despair in his voice and he pulled himself together. He didn"t remember confiding in her about the Laughlins, but he must have.
"Victoria won"t leave the ranch to the help," she a.s.sured him.
He so wanted to believe her, but his fear was too great. "You don"t know Victoria. She"ll do whatever she wants, even though it"s not as it should be." He glanced through a crack in his curtained window and the sudden light blasted his eyes. Quickly he dropped the curtain back and turned away.
"Where"s the boy now? At the house?"
"There"s a woman in charge of him." He deliberately left Callie Cantrell"s name out of it. He needed to think about what to do next, and he didn"t want her spoiling his plans. Was she even telling him the truth about Clarice, Daniella, and Jerrilyn? And Lumpkin? It was so hard to tell sometimes. "She"s staying at the house with the boy."
"If Victoria dies, is this woman in charge of the kid?"
"Possibly."
"Make nice with her," she ordered. "You know how to better than anyone."
Andre couldn"t speak he was so infuriated at the suggestion. He was the one who made the decisions, no one else!
"I"ll call you," he struggled to get out. His head was really pounding. The wild colors showed across everything.
"Come home," she said and he resented her for that, too.
He was going to have to do something about her. Anarchy, that"s what it was. He thought about the Glock he"d taken from his safe, tucked at the bottom of his bag. Bullets were inelegant but all they required was a touch of the trigger, and the Glock could fire eighteen rounds without reloading.
"How are you feeling? The headaches and blank spots still there?"
"Shut the f.u.c.k up," he ground out, clicking off the cell phone and throwing it across the room. It slammed against the wall and fell to the floor. He pressed his palms to his temples and screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Callie"s cell phone rang as she was following West"s Explorer to Laughlin BBQ. Glancing at the screen she recognized Diane Cantrell"s number and thought, Nope. She wasn"t going to be harangued again. Not if she could help it.
West looked over at her Lexus as he pulled into the restaurant parking lot and she rolled into the spot next to him. Both Laughlin BBQ and The Bull Stops Here gift store were closer to the Laughlin Ranch house than Castilla"s downtown and it had only taken fifteen minutes to get to them. Callie got out and then helped Tucker to the gravel parking lot. As soon as he touched ground, he ran toward the rustic building with its board and bat siding stained red, and a weathervane slowly twisting atop the barn-shaped building. Two branding irons were crossed above the sliding wooden door that was the entrance, and which looked heavy enough to rupture a muscle. Tucker tugged on it to no avail, but when West clasped the handle and gave it a hard yank, it slid back on well-oiled tracks.
Tucker loved everything. Talking rapidly in his own mixture of French and English, he let them know he wanted a Cattleman"s Plate, which was steak and eggs and lots of it, but Callie thought he was more enamored of the name than of what he would be eating. She managed to talk him into a child"s stack of flapjacks, orange slice, and a gla.s.s of unfiltered apple juice, he-man style. She had no appet.i.te whatsoever, but forced herself to eat part of a skillet of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and sauteed vegetables labeled FOR TENDERFOOTS ONLY.
West chose bacon and eggs, and coffee that was served in a pot large enough to fill both of their cups several times over. As soon as their order was placed, West pulled out his phone and sent a text. "For Talia," he explained. "You can head back to LA after breakfast. I"ll stop by the hospital and then be right behind you. I"m back at work today."
"Where we go to?" Tucker asked.
"Great-Grandma isn"t well, so you and I are heading to my house until she feels better," Callie said.
"You got horses?"
"No."
"Cats?" he asked hopefully.
"We"ll come up with something."
Their food arrived and while they ate, West said, "I"d like to ask this Andre a few questions, but if he"s still around, it"s going to have to wait. Luckily, Talia can handle things. Not that I want anything to do with the ranch," he added quickly. "But without Victoria . . ." He shrugged.
Tucker lifted his shoulders, mimicking West and grinning as he tried to cut his flapjacks and mangled them miserably. Callie helped him and soon he"d worked his way halfway through the stack.
Just as they were finishing up, the front door opened and a tall man with a shock of nearly white hair, wearing jeans, boots, and a green flannel shirt, came through. He noticed Callie immediately and stopped dead, looking like he"d seen a ghost. West glanced over at him and said, half-apologetically, "You"re going to probably get that a lot."
"Who is that man?" she asked.
"Edmund Mikkels." West lifted a hand to him in greeting, adding in an aside to Callie, "Victoria said he was crumbling. I just saw him a month ago and don"t remember his hair being that white."
Mikkels had to be told twice to follow the hostess to a table two over from theirs. He couldn"t seem to rip his eyes from Callie. She murmured, "It"s pretty clear I remind him of Teresa."
"Teresa is mine maman," Tucker stated positively, which brought both West and Callie"s attention back to him with a bang.
"You overheard us talking?" Callie asked.
He nodded. "She dieded, but Aimee is not mine maman." He slid Callie a sideways glance. "You is."