Nine Lives (27 page)

“Drive all the way up to the front of the house like we own the place,” Cat said.

Wilson arched an eyebrow. “Don't believe in sneaking up on them, huh?”

She waved a hand toward the property. “Look at this place. It's flat as my Sunday pancakes, and there's nothing to hide behind except my gun.”

Wilson grinned. “So you're admitting your cooking leaves something to be desired?”

“I admit to nothing, especially my cooking skills. Let's get this over with, okay?”

“We could call for the Mexican police,” he suggested.

She rolled her eyes. “You've got to be kidding.”

He agreed with her wisdom, then curled his fingers a little tighter around the steering wheel.

“Okay, here goes nothing,” he said. “Hang on, and if they start shooting, get down.”

Cat nodded, then pulled out her gun as Wilson hit the gas and headed for the hacienda.

 

The interior of the hacienda had been destroyed. The once-beautiful adobe walls were marked with all sorts of graffiti, and the storage areas were full of trash. Someone had even set up what appeared to have been a mobile meth lab in the room that had once been a library. There were burn marks on the floor where cooking fires had been started, and, to Mark's dismay, what smelled like some kind of fuel oil in a barrel in the middle of the room. He kicked it and heard liquid slosh, then frowned.

He continued through the rooms and was trying to find a place clean enough in which to sleep when he heard Tutuola yell. He ran out into the hallway just in time to see the big man disappear around a corner.

“What's happening?” he called out, and when he got no answer, ran toward the front of the house.

As he entered the living room, he saw Solomon crouched behind some drapes, peering out a window.

“What the hell are you—”

Solomon gestured wildly for Mark to shut up, then pointed.

Presley saw a dusty, dark blue SUV slide to a stop. It was when he saw the woman getting out from the passenger side that he started to curse.

“It's her! It's that fucking woman! How in hell does she keep doing this?”

“They're coming in! Get down,” Solomon ordered, and pulled a 9 mm handgun from inside his jacket and aimed it toward the door.

Before Mark could move, the front doorknob was turning. Suddenly the door was pushed inward, hitting the wall with a solid thud.

Solomon aimed toward the opening, expecting one or both of the intruders to come running in. Instead, from the corner of his eye, he saw one of them running toward the back of the house. It distracted him enough that when the man came through the front door in a rolling dive, shooting as he went, he was forced to take evasive action.

Standing in plain sight with no cover behind which to hide, Solomon went into a sudden crouch just as the first shot splintered the window frame beside his head. He crawled on his hands and knees behind the sofa, then rose up and emptied a clip into the room, aiming in every direction.

Wilson was face down on the floor without cover, cursing with every breath. When it dawned on him that the man's gun was empty, he rolled behind a pile of boxes and began to fire at the old sofa, well aware that every shot was going through and into the floor or the wall behind it. If the bastard was still there, he was dead.

When the shots began, Presley was on the floor, crawling toward the hall on his belly. When he made it all the way out of the room without being shot, he headed for the back of the house.

The car keys were still in the car, along with his other belongings. It didn't bother him to leave Tutuola alone to his own defenses. After all, it wasn't as if
he
had any means of protection. It was every man for himself.

 

Cat was crouched next to an outer door at the back of the house when the gunfire began. At that point her heart sank. If anything happened to Wilson McKay, she would never forgive herself. Before she could react, she heard running footsteps coming toward the door and tensed.

Just as she heard the hinges beginning to squeak, there was another round of gunfire. Then something exploded inside the house, followed by an orange ball of flame. She thought of Wilson and said a quick prayer.

It was all the time she had as the door swung inward. Smoke billowed out. Presley emerged on the run without looking behind him.

Cat tackled him from the back, hitting him waist high and sending him to the flagstones with a deadening jolt.

He tried to scream, but there was no breath left in his body, and the pain in his back was so sharp, he thought he'd been cut in half. He'd landed elbows down as his chin cracked on the flagstones. Blood began oozing from the various points of contact. While he was still trying to catch his breath, someone yanked on his hands and pulled them behind his back. He heard a distinct click, and when he tried to get up, realized he'd finally been handcuffed.

As he was rolled from his belly to his back, he had a skewed view of the smoke billowing from the house. Then he saw her.

When he opened his mouth to beg, she stabbed a boot against his neck and pushed just hard enough for him to gag.

“Don't talk to me, you sorry bastard. You don't have anything to say that I want to hear.”

To his dismay, she dragged him up from the ground as if he weighed nothing and began hauling him around the house. When she got to the car, she opened the back hatch and pointed.

“Get in,” she said.

He hesitated, which was a shame, because Cat's patience was gone. Presley never saw it coming. One minute he was upright and then he was not. She cold-cocked him with her fist and shoved him in the back of the SUV. He never knew when she grabbed a length of rope and tied his feet, then bent his knees until she had tied his bound feet to the handcuffs on his hands,

Cat was shaking as she turned toward the house. Smoke was coming out from under the eaves of the roof as well as from the front door. She didn't know what had happened, but she knew Wilson was still inside. Sudden fear that she would lose him, too, sent her running toward the house.

She reloaded as she ran and met Wilson coming out. He staggered straight into her arms, and when he realized who he was holding, began shaking with relief.

“Get in the car!” he shouted. “We've got to get out of here.”

But Cat didn't move. She kept looking over his shoulder into the smoke.

“The other one! Where is he?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe dead in the fire. We were shooting the hell out of the place, and when we got into the second room, everything went up. I don't know what was in that barrel, but when a bullet hit it, it blew.”

He grabbed Cat by the arm and started dragging her toward the car.

“Wait!” she begged, and pulled free from his grasp, only to have him catch her again before she could get away. “I can't let him go. I have to know. Don't you understand? Damn it, Wilson, I have to know for sure that he's dead.”

“Like hell,” he muttered, then grabbed Cat off her feet, threw her over his shoulder and started to run.

He threw her into the passenger seat, then slammed the door in her face. She was screaming his name and arguing with him as he slid behind the wheel. She reached for the door latch as Wilson started the car. Before she could open the door, he grabbed her by the arm and slammed the SUV into reverse. She was yelling and screaming as he began backing out of the yard. They were halfway down the drive when the second explosion occurred, shattering what was left of the sprawling hacienda and sending a shower of burning refuse up into the air.

“Get down!” Wilson yelled, and swerved as a ball of fire dropped right beside the front wheel of her car.

They were already past it before Cat realized it was what was left of a burning sofa. She was shaking so hard that she couldn't catch her breath. The last glimpse she had of the inferno was in the side-view mirror on the outside of the car.

She tried to focus. She needed to give Wilson what for because he'd taken away her choices, but for the life of her, she couldn't find the words to berate him when she knew that he'd just saved their lives.

There was nothing left to do now but get Mark Presley into the hands of the Texas law. She knew what they did to killers in her state, and she intended to watch every last second of his life, right up to the moment when they executed his ass.

When they finally returned to the place where Wilson had left his own truck, he pulled the SUV over and stopped.

“Are you all right?” he asked, as he ran his fingers all over her body, checking her arms and torso for signs of gunshot wounds.

“Yes. Presley wasn't armed.”

Wilson's eyes widened. Suddenly he turned around and looked over the seats to the back. He could just see the top of a man's shoulder.

“You got him?”

Cat nodded.

“Way to go!” he said, and reached for her, but he felt her tense and stopped.

“You know I couldn't let you go back in that house,” he said after a long moment.

“I needed to know he was dead.”

“Yeah, well, I needed to know you weren't.”

She wouldn't be swayed, and he couldn't change what he'd done. Finally he shook his head.

“I'm beginning to understand how you tick,” he muttered, and then reached for her phone. “In the meantime, we need to call Detective Flannery.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't think we're going to be able to get this sorry bastard across the border without some help. I don't want to take the chance of having the Mexican police take him away from us, do you?”

“Make the call.”

 

The sandwich shop where Joe Flannery was having lunch was at maximum capacity. All the booths and tables were packed, as were the six stools at the counter. It was standing room only as customers waited in line to pick up their to-go orders. The sounds of so many people talking all at once was somewhat muted by the piped-in music, but the din inside was just below a dull roar, making it impossible to understand the person seated next to you. This was definitely not the place for a social lunch.

There were two other detectives at the table with him. One had gotten up to refill his drink at the self-help bar, while the other was smearing mustard on the top of his roast beef sandwich. Flannery was eyeing his buddy's roast beef and wishing he'd chosen the same instead of the pastrami on rye. For some reason, it just didn't suit his taste buds today. Still, he'd been raised by one of those “clean your plate” mothers, and habit ran deep. So he was chewing and swallowing his food without thought.

Then his cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and frowned. “Flannery.”

“Detective…this is Wilson McKay. Catherine Dupree and I have a situation we need help with.”

Flannery frowned, not bothering to hide the frustration he was feeling. “What now?”

“Cat caught Mark Presley.”

The entire Dallas Police Department—Joe Flannery included—had still been operating on the theory that Mark Presley was dead, so when Flannery heard that, he almost dropped his phone.

“The hell you say. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I'm looking at his sorry-ass self right now, tied up like a pig for roasting in the back seat of her car. Trouble is, we're in Mexico and not so sure we can get him across the border without your help.”

“Hang on,” Flannery said, and dropped his sandwich on the table while motioning for the other two detectives to join him outside. They scrambled for last bites and one more swallow of their drinks as Flannery walked out ahead of them. Once he was out on the street, it was easier to hear.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Now…tell me again. You two crossed the border and—”

“No. Cat followed Presley and a hired gun across the border. I met up with her just outside Nuevo Laredo. She knew where they were hiding. We went in after them together. They started shooting. The place went up in flames.”

“Hell of a lot of things catching fire around this Presley character,” Flannery muttered.

“Yes, well, at any rate, Presley went one direction and his hired gun another. Cat caught Presley, and we think the hired gun burned with the house, although at this point, we can't be sure. However, it's Presley she was after, and she got him.”

“And you say he's with you right now?”

“Yeah. Tied up and unconscious in the back of her SUV.”

Flannery whistled softly beneath his breath. This changed everything. Once the hospital fire had been put out, the firemen had found what was left of a body in Presley's room. First assumptions had been that it was Presley, but if he was in Mexico, then who had died in his room? Now they had an unexplained death to lay at Presley's feet, as well as several patients who'd succumbed to smoke and flames.

“Exactly where did you cross the border?”