Cowboy at Midnight. Ann Major

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СКАЧАТЬ the driver muttered, his body rigid. “I’m fine. I’m just fine.”

      “Then why’d you come here? Why’d you change your face? If I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t have recognized you.” There was anguish and what sounded like genuine concern in his passenger’s voice.

      Not being recognizable was the point, of course. “Like I told you, I was in an accident.”

      “Why are you stalking these people?”

      The driver forced himself to take a calming breath before he replied. “You think you’re so smart! You always act so nice! What do you know about anything? About me?”

      “I have to try to help you—for your own good.”

      The driver’s mouth went dry. He could taste his fear.

      Yes. His unwanted visitor could ruin everything…if he didn’t tidy things up fast.

      When they rumbled over a cattle guard, every bump seemed to trigger an electric current that snapped up and down the driver’s legs and spine. Thoroughly shaken, he could barely control the big car as it raced almost blindly down the narrow road through buttery-thick pockets of Hill Country ground fog before it burst out of the murk into the warm, black night again.

      “Slow down,” his passenger ordered. “Are you crazy? You could hit a deer or wrap us around a tree.”

      The driver lifted his flask and sipped the burning liquor as his silent brain screamed shrilly. Who do you think you are—giving me orders? You? You! Ever since we were kids? And calling me crazy?

      “Sure,” he replied easily as his toe tapped a little harder on the accelerator. “I’ll slow down. Sure I will. Hey, relax. We’re nearly there.”

      “You don’t want me here, do you?” came that kindly, superior, all-knowing voice. “I could tell. Your eyes were colder than chips of black marble when you opened your door tonight. But I didn’t come to scare you or hurt you.”

      “Scared? Who’s scared? If I seemed upset, maybe you should have called first.”

      “Right. Give you time to roll out the welcome mat.” His passenger laughed.

      The driver rubbed his brow where the scars from his accident should have been. Then he took another sip from the flask. Not too much. He didn’t want to alarm his passenger by acting any more nervous than he had to. Slowly he dropped his hand back to the seat. He had to focus. He had to concentrate.

      “No. You didn’t want me here,” his passenger insisted, again in that hateful, kindly, yet all-knowing tone that the driver loathed.

      The moon broke out of the cloud cover, and instantly the driver wished it hadn’t. The bloodred globe was huge and obscene and ringed with flame. Strange-looking, crimson-stained clouds scudded beneath it.

      He’d never seen anything like it. Was it even real? Or was it just the mad, blistering fury throbbing in his temples that made it seem so ominous? Was he that charged on adrenaline?

      No sooner had it appeared, than the livid moon vanished, leaving the night blacker than pitch again.

      His lips felt dry, as did his throat. Every cell in his being screamed with the need to drain the whole damn flask. But he didn’t dare take even the shortest pull. He knew he was close to some fatal edge.

      Later he could drink all he wanted.

      Later. When it was over. When he felt brave and strong—when he was safe again. Later he would gloat about tonight, about how smart he’d been when he’d played this hand. Later he would review his clever revenge plot, too.

      Later, after drinks and sex. Lots of sex with a woman who was good at it. Thinking about sex with her, thinking about what she would do to him with her hands and lips, cooled his temper just enough.

      “Of course I want you here,” he lied smoothly, whipping the steering wheel to the right so fast the car skidded and spit gravel. “It’s just that I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

      “Slow down.” The voice in the shadowy car was razor sharp now.

      “All right.” The driver slammed on the brakes, and the car spun crazily in the gravel, throwing them toward the dash, before it stopped.

      “Where the hell are we?” his passenger demanded.

      “The Double Crown Ranch.”

      “I don’t believe you. Where’s the house?”

      “Over there.” He pointed. “See the light? Just through the trees.”

      The juniper and oak were a solid mass of darkness. Still, a faint glow of silver had been visible seconds before.

      “What are you trying to pull this time?”

      He dug under the floor mat. Grabbing the big automatic, he pointed it at the other man’s belly. “Shut up and get out of the car!”

      “What?”

      “Now!”

      “I want to talk to Ryan Fortune.”

      “All in good time.”

      “I came here to help you. I told people where I was going and whom I was coming to see.”

      “Sure you did.”

      The driver was smiling and yanking out the keys and opening his own door all at the same time. The other man lunged, grabbing the hand that held the gun.

      “Bastard!” The driver threw him off and catapulted out of the car onto the sharp, limestone rocks. Vaguely he was aware of cicadas singing in the trees, aware too of the warm, sultry, summer heat.

      The other man sprang on top of him and wrapped his wide hands around the wrist that held the gun and squeezed. Still, somehow the driver managed to lift the automatic and smash it onto his assailant’s brow.

      The other man collapsed, blood pouring down his face. His body sagged to the ground as limply as a heavy bag of feed.

      The driver bent over him. “Always acting nice when all you’ve ever wanted was to destroy me.”

      “I…I came here to help you.”

      Holding the gun close to his assailant’s head, the driver smiled. “Thanks.” He pulled the trigger. Once. Twice.

      And then again, just to make sure. He shot him right between the eyes the last time, eyes that were soft and pleading and almost the same color as his own.

      The other man lay where he’d fallen, soundless, still. The driver rolled away from the body to avoid the awful rush of blood that flowed from the back of his head and drenched the hard, dry earth.

      Slowly the killer pulled himself to his feet. Funny, how the suffocating night smelled sweet and woodsy again. Funny, how the cicadas never let up. Summer bugs. How he loved summer bugs.

      Suddenly he felt light-headed, dizzy. A strange СКАЧАТЬ