Cut Throat (22 page)

It took fifteen minutes to get to the airport, and it was the longest fifteen minutes he’d ever spent in his life. Every siren he heard made him certain the Mexican police were in pursuit. Every police car he saw, he feared it would make a quick turn in the road and give chase. In spite of every preconceived worry he’d had, none of them came true. Only after he had turned off the main road and taken the smaller road to the airport did he begin to relax. Then he saw Mike standing by his chopper and pulled up beside it.

Mike was smiling, but when he saw the passenger in the car, his expression stilled. He got all the luggage out of the car and tossed it into the chopper, then stood aside, holding the door open as Wilson carried Cat toward him.

When Wilson saw the blow-up mattress on the floor behind the seats, as well as the small pillow and blanket his friend had scrounged, he nodded approvingly as he glanced at Mike.

“Good thinking,” he said.

Mike eyed Cat again and then quickly looked away, as if he’d done something wrong. His face was flushed, and his voice was shaking. “Goddamn, Wilson. Goddamn.”

Wilson eased Cat down onto the mattress, then pulled the blanket up over her legs.

“I’ve got to move her car,” he said. “Be right back.” “I’ll start up the engine,” Mike said.

Wilson jumped in Cat’s car and drove toward the small building that served the airport. He parked and went inside, heading for the young woman who was standing behind a counter.

She was a curvaceous Latino in her late twenties who was obviously proud of her big boobs and laser-whitened teeth, because she kept smoothing down the front of her blouse and smiling.

“Miss…I need to park a vehicle here for a while. Is that a problem?” She glanced out at the SUV, then shrugged. “No problem.”

He took a pen and paper from his pocket. “What’s the phone number to this airport?”

She wrote it down for him, then flashed him another toothy smile. Wilson pocketed the paper and laid a twenty on the counter. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “I’ll be in touch about the car.”

She palmed the money as she nodded importantly. “It will be safe here, señor. We have the twenty-four-hour security here, you know.”

“Okay, thanks again,” he said, and headed for the door. Once outside, he ran to the waiting chopper. Not until he was buckled in and they were lifting off the tarmac into the air did Wilson finally begin to breathe easy.

He glanced back at Cat a couple of times, reassuring himself that she was still okay, and then thumped Mike lightly on the shoulder.

“I cannot thank you enough for this,” he said.

Mike just shook his head and started explaining that he’d filed a flight plan that covered the shortest distance to the border.

“We’ll worry about the fastest way to get her home later. Right now, I just want to get back into the States.”

Wilson glanced at Mike, eyeing the set to his jaw and the glitter in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said again, softly, then glanced back at Cat. Thankfully she was, for the moment, beyond pain.

They hadn’t flown more than a couple of minutes from the airport when Wilson realized they were flying low over some pretty exclusive property. Below, he could see opulent houses with well-cared-for grounds all around.

“Hey…look at that,” Mike said, pointing down to his left. “That must have

been one damned big fire.”

Wilson leaned over and glanced at the huge, burned-out shell of a mansion, along with some nearby outbuildings that had suffered roof damage. He didn’t think much of it until he happened to notice the long, older model car parked in front of what must have been a garage.

Suddenly his flesh began to crawl.

He knew that car. They’d tracked it into Laredo, then across the border through Nuevo Laredo to that empty hacienda on the outside of town. The last time he’d seen it, Cat had been running past it as she’d apprehended Mark Presley.

Tutuola. That was Tutuola’s car. Dear God, what had gone on down there?

He stared at the place until they had passed it by, then looked at Cat once again. There would be time for questions later.

Houston and Jimmy Franks had staked out Wilson McKay’s bail-bond business for two days now, and still no sign of McKay. They’d seen his secretary coming and going, and while they intended to show her how to respect real men, they didn’t want to tip their hand too soon by messing her up just yet.

Houston was getting bored with their original idea of payback and wanted

to leave town. It was Jimmy who wouldn’t budge. He’d faced both Wilson and the secretary and come out on the downside. It wasn’t in him to forgive and forget, even if he had been responsible for the outcome himself, and with the meth he kept putting in his system, his sense of invincibility was over the top.

The brothers were living out of their car, and it was beginning to smell like Sunday morning in a Saturday night bar. The trash they’d been throwing onto the back floorboard was now piling up and spilling over onto the seats. Houston was reaching for the last beer in the six-pack ring when Jimmy snatched it up, popped the top and downed a good third of it before he came up for air.

“Damn it, Jimmy. You saw me reachin’ for that beer.”

“Yeah, and you saw me get to it first,” Jimmy said, and took another long swig just to prove his point.

Houston snapped.

He slapped the back of his brother’s head just as Jimmy was about to take another swig. The last of the beer sloshed up his nose and down the front of his shirt to drip on his pants.

Jimmy cursed, flung the empty can at Houston’s head and then doubled up his fists.

“Get out!” he yelled. “Get the hell out of the car now. I’m gonna whip your ass.”

Houston slapped the can away and reached in his pocket for a cigarette.

“You’ve been layin’ that claim your whole life, and you ain’t done it yet, so ’scuse me if I don’t get all panicked over the threat.”

Jimmy wanted to fire off a sharp comeback, but he never could out-talk Houston, and that was a fact.

“You still didn’t have no claim to do what you did,” Jimmy muttered, and then brushed at the wet spots on the front of his jeans.

Houston took a long draw on his smoke, then narrowed his eyes as he blew three perfect smoke rings into the interior of the car.

Jimmy cursed again, but quieter, and rolled the window down enough so that the smoke could escape, but not enough to freeze his butt any more than it already was. He glared at Houston, then channeled his anger to the man they were waiting for.

“I don’t know where that damned McKay got off to, but when he comes back, he’s mine first.”

Houston shrugged. “Fine with me. I just want to get this over with and get out of town.”

Jimmy bent over and picked up the paper sack from the floor between his feet.

“Hey! What happened to them last two Ding Dongs?”

“I ate ’em,” Houston said.

“Well, damn it all to hell, Houston. I’m hungry.” Houston reached down and started the engine. “What are you doin’?” Jimmy asked.

“I’m takin’ you to get somethin’ to eat,” Houston said. “What if we leave and miss McKay comin’ back?” Houston sighed. “Do you want to eat, or do you want to whine?” Jimmy glared. “Well, hell, I suppose I wanna eat.”

“Then shut up and ride.”

Thirteen

It was the vibration of the helicopter and the whine of the engine that dragged Cat from her drug-induced sleep. Other than the pain, which had become her anchor to knowing she was still alive, she had no idea where she was. The scent of fuel and stale coffee further confused her.

She thought about trying to sit up but soon learned that moving was impossible. When she first looked up, she couldn’t figure out why her vision was so blurred. A quick check of her face gave her the answer. Her eyes were swollen, one of them completely shut. Still, she could see what appeared to be the backs of two seats and the silhouettes of two men

sitting in them. Then she heard Wilson’s voice, and she remembered. He’d come.

After she’d made that call to him, she hadn’t expected to be alive and, even though she was still breathing, she wasn’t sure she would ever be the same.

She had a feeling that if she saw herself in the mirror right now, she wouldn’t recognize her own face. She had vague memories of hearing someone talking about stitching her back up. Were those just hallucinations, or had it really happened? If it did, was she was going to be some replica of Frankenstein’s monster?

She’d spent most of her life looking for Solomon Tutuola just so she could watch him die. Now, having accomplished that feat, she wasn’t sure but what a piece of her had died with him. She’d lived with hate in her heart and revenge on her mind for so long that, now that they were gone, she didn’t know how to fill up that space. She no longer had a purpose. There was nothing left in her life that mattered. Except maybe…

Before she could get past the thought, the chopper hit an air pocket and the mattress on which she was lying gave a slight bounce. She groaned aloud, and Wilson immediately turned around. She didn’t know how he’d heard her over the roar of the rotors, but he had. Her view of his face was blurred, but she saw enough of his expression to know he was aching for her.

“Sorry about that, baby,” he said softly.

Her nostrils flared. It was the only sign she gave that she understood.

Wilson glanced at his watch, matching it against how long it had been since that doctor had given her the pain shot.

“Honey…are you hurting? Do you need something for the pain?” She nodded, then lifted a hand and touched the swell of her lower lip. “Thirsty, too?”

He took one of the packets of pain pills, popped two pills from the blister pack and then reached for the bottle of water. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, but he managed to lean over between the seats enough to help her.

“Open,” he said, as he lifted her head to keep her from choking and then popped the two pills between her slightly parted lips. “You need a straw, honey, but I don’t have one, so if I pour some of this in your ear, you can bust my chops later.”

He tilted the water bottle to her lips just enough to let a small stream flow through, then pulled back and waited for her to swallow.

She tried to get the pills down, but choked.

He lifted her head a little higher, then gave her another sip. That time the medicine went down.

By the time he eased her back to the pillow, she’d broken out into a cold sweat. To make matters worse, the chopper bucked again.

“Oh, God,” Cat mumbled, and started to cry.

The tears were bitter and silent, seeping out from between her swollen eyelids. She didn’t know if she was crying for the pain or for what her life had become.

Wilson cursed, then unbuckled himself, climbed over the seat and crawled down next to her. He stretched out on the floor beside the little air mattress, slid his arm beneath her neck and laid his other arm across her hips, careful not to touch the binding around her ribs, then held her. And the next time the chopper hit rough air, he was there, steadying the ride and reminding her that she was no longer alone.

Mike didn’t look back, not even when Wilson abandoned him for the woman. He’d been flying for more years than he could count, but he’d never been as antsy as he was today. The woman they’d gone after was so hurt, and Wilson was unusually nervous. Maybe the nervousness was catching.

He knew Wilson’s reputation as a bounty hunter. He knew that sometimes bounty hunters put themselves in dangerous situations to bring in bail jumpers. He also knew that bounty hunters were illegal in Mexico, so whatever had gone down with Wilson’s lady friend most likely went beyond getting beat all to hell. No wonder Wilson wanted her out of there.

He glanced down, then checked their heading. Just a few more minutes and they would be in U.S. air space. It would be none too soon for him.

Pedro Andehal was the medical examiner who’d received the body from the murder scene. He was fifty-two years old and bordering on burned out himself. The older he got, the more he wanted to be around the living, not the dead. Maybe it was because he was growing nearer and nearer to the day when it might be his own body lying on an autopsy table and someone else about to slice him from stem to stern.

He paused beside the table, eyeing the body before him. At this point, all he knew for certain was that it was male, and that the man had been large —very large. He also knew this wasn’t going to be an easy examination. The flesh was charred all the way to the bone, and there was very little of it left on his face. Samples had already been taken and sent to the lab, but they didn’t exactly have state-of-the-art equipment. They managed, but the facility could certainly have benefited from an upgrade.

Pedro turned on the tape recorder so that he could record his findings as he worked, pulled the face mask up over his nose, rolled his head from one side to the other to loosen the muscles, then picked up a scalpel.

Solomon Tutuola might be toast, but the world wasn’t done with him yet.

Two hours later, Pedro turned off the tape recorder, pulled a sheet back over the charred carcass, wheeled it over to the wall and slid it into a drawer. He turned off the light over the worktable and nodded to his assistant, who began removing surgical instruments and scrubbing the table down.