The Devil and Ms. Moody (17 page)

His shrug said things were different now. And he was also curious, she realized. There was an alertness behind his casual posture.

“What do you want with this Holt, anyway?” he asked.

“It’s personal, a family thing,” she said evasively, “
his
family.” It wasn’t that Edwina didn’t trust him. She’d been trained not to reveal any more information than was absolutely necessary. As soon as people knew you were looking for the missing heir to a fortune, long-lost relatives popped up everywhere.

“How’s the search going?”

“I’m narrowing things down.” Again, Edwina wondered just how much she should tell him. He might be able to help her, and since tomorrow was the last day of the rodeo, her time was running out. “What do you know about Killer?” she asked.

Another shrug. “He plays the stock market.”

“Exactly. And it so happens that the man I’m looking for comes from a family of stockbrokers—Braxton Securities. Benjamin Braxton, the fourth, is Holt’s uncle.” She watched for his reaction.

“So ... you think Killer is Holt?”

“I think he could be, and I intend to find out.”

He scooped a twig up off the ground and began to break it into smaller pieces. “Where’s this Holt from?”

“East Coast, Connecticut area.”

Diablo shook his head. “Killer’s a native Californian. His dad owns a movie studio and a couple of theme parks. Hell, he’s got four or five names, and none of them is Holt. Louis B. Mayer Killebrew, or something like that. His dad named him after a movie mogul. Probably why he goes by Killer.”

“You’re sure?”

“He’s not hiding it. Ask him.”

Edwina honed in on that immediately. “You said you didn’t want me asking questions and arousing suspicions.”

“Killer’s okay. He’s harmless.”

“Now he tells me.” She shifted impatiently to look at him. She doubted that Diablo knew it, but he’d just blown a week’s worth of detective work. “Okay, then, since you didn’t want me asking questions before, maybe
you
can answer a few now.”

He smiled, agreeable. “Like what?”

“Like do you happen to know any bikers who are also Harvard Business School dropouts?”

He drew back skeptically, and then an ironic glitter crept into his eyes. “Gotta be Mad Dog, right?”

“Mad Dog went to
Harvard?”

“Sure, can’t you tell? The Ivy-League apparel, the shrewd intellect?”

“Hey! Could I get a straight answer here?”

“I was only kidding, Princess. Mad Dog crawled out of a swamp—a primordial swamp.”

“No, really. What do you know about him?”

“What do
I
know? He changes his story so often, nobody knows anything about him. He even got drunk one night and told a bunch of us that he was an astronaut.”

“But you must know what part of the country he’s from?”

“I don’t even know what planet he’s from.”

Edwina might not have logged a lot of investigative miles in her short career, but she knew when she was being put off with quick answers. “I guess I’ll have to find out for myself,” she said, settling back to look up at the night sky. The dragon star blinked down at her. “Come to think of it, there are several things I’d like to know about Mad Dog, including why he doesn’t have an old lady. I thought that was the rule—”

Diablo pulled her back around to face him.

“Mad Dog doesn’t have an old lady because he’s a brain-dead thug,” he said, his voice steely. “Rumor has it the woman he had with him when he joined ran off screaming one night and was never heard from again. Mad Dog is
bad news,
Princess. And I don’t want you anywhere near him, is that clear?”

Edwina nodded, but there was no way she could do what Diablo was asking. The curly reddish hair, the harmonica, even the Harvard-dropout reference. Perhaps they meant nothing, but she had the distinct feeling that Mad Dog was a link to Chris Holt—if not the man himself. She also had a sneaking hunch that Diablo knew more than he was telling her.

Edwina and Diablo arrived at the rodeo at mid-morning the next day. Several of the gang were there to greet them, including Carmen, Squire, and Food Chain, whom it seemed Carmen had officially adopted. She had the pig on a leash and was hand-feeding him a BLT sandwich, which Food Chain scarfed down without so much as a peep about the bacon.

Diablo was quickly recruited for that morning’s barrel-racing event, but not before he and Edwina suffered through the requisite number of crude jokes about their night of passion.

“Did she overheat your engine, Diablo?” someone wanted to know. “Poor dude’s still smoking!” another agreed. “He’ll be easy to beat today!”

Edwina was immensely relieved when Diablo finally herded the hooting bunch off toward the stadium. She glanced at Carmen next to her and noticed the Mexican woman following Diablo’s easy stride. “Is something wrong?” Edwina asked.

Carmen flushed slightly. “I’m just surprised that you survived the night with that man. I would be dead from the pleasure.”

“I almost am,” Edwina admitted, joining Carmen in her appreciation of Diablo’s considerable male magnetism. As he disappeared from view, Edwina felt an echo of the longing she’d experienced the night before. The fires within were still smoldering, she realized.
What was she going to do about her feelings for him?

It wasn’t until later that morning, when she and Carmen were seated in the stands watching the men compete, that Edwina finally had her chance to check out the information Diablo had given her. She dropped some casual questions about Killer and learned from Carmen that he was exactly who Diablo claimed he was, a studio executive’s son. Not Chris Holt. Carmen’s knowledge of Mad Dog wasn’t nearly so conclusive, however.

“He’s new to the area,” she said. “Nobody knows too much about him except that he’s very secretive. I think his past may have caught up with him, though. There was a man here yesterday, looking for him. Weird guy in a trench coat.”

“A black trench coat?”

“Yeah, that was him. He wouldn’t say what he wanted.”

Edwina decided against mentioning that she’d seen Mad Dog with the very same man. She wanted to keep Carmen talking. “When did Mad Dog join the Warlords?”

Carmen absently stroked Food Chain’s pink ears. “I don’t know, maybe six months ago. I never wanted him in the gang,” she admitted. “But Squire figured it would be better to have a guy like him with us than against us.”

“He is pretty intimidating,” Edwina agreed, keeping the tone conversational. “I wonder where he’s from originally?”

Carmen merely smiled. “He told Squire he was from New York. Said he rode with the Hell’s Angels back east. He’s always bragging about something. I don’t believe half of it.”

She shook her head and turned her attention back to the rodeo. “A Hell’s Angel who plays the harmonica?” she said disdainfully, still tickling the pig’s ears.

New York, Edwina thought. At least it was the right coast. She hadn’t turned up any reference to the Hell’s Angels in her research, but that didn’t mean Holt hadn’t ridden with them at some point. The other possibility, as Carmen suggested, was that Mad Dog had made it up. And if he was lying, he appeared to be going to a great deal of trouble to conceal his past.

While Edwina mulled the possibilities, she joined Carmen in the task of fondling Food Chain. The creature snorted in ecstasy as she rubbed the bristly underside of his snout. Hog Heaven, she thought, gazing into his bloodshot eyes. She did love animals, but whoever designed the pig must have been having an off day. “You do have nice cheekbones,” she assured him, chucking his chin.

Food Chain sighed, and Edwina went back to the task at hand—Mad Dog. The next logical move would be to ask him some questions—not a pleasant proposition, but necessary. She was putting together a battle plan when a roar went up in the stadium.

Edwina looked up to see Diablo and his bike flying through the air. She rose, gasping with the crowd. The bike boomeranged off the stadium’s chain link fence, and Diablo hit the ground, rolling and tumbling.

“Is he all right?” someone shouted.

Edwina was nearly sick with fright. The violent image swam in her head as she fought her way through a sea of bodies to get to the aisle. She couldn’t see the field in her rush to descend the bleacher steps, and by the time she’d reached the bottom, a swarm of onlookers had blocked her view completely.

“Let me through!” she pleaded, frustrated in her attempts to penetrate the suffocating crush of spectators. More bodies crowded in on her as she tried to shoulder her way out of the mob scene. “
Please
—let me through!”

Desperate, she climbed onto a row of bleacher seats and made her way toward the exit. “Diablo!” she cried as a gap in the crowd opened up. He was encircled by bikers on the field, but she could see him getting to his feet. Yes, it
was
he, she realized. He was supported by Squire, but he seemed to be moving, walking.

Tears of relief burned Edwina’s eyes, and she clasped her shaking hands together. “Let me get through!” she pleaded. “I’m his old lady!” But her frantic attempts to push through the pack were ignored. No one seemed to hear her, and the solid wall of bodies wouldn’t budge.

That was when she saw Mad Dog.

He was half hidden in the shadows of the stadium, talking to the trench-coated man. Edwina’s heart was pounding, and the only thing on her mind was getting to Diablo. She might not have even noticed the two men if they hadn’t been directly in her line of sight, but something about their conversation struck her as clandestine. A frightening thought hit her as she worked her way toward the exit. If there was any chance that the trench-coated man was another investigator—a free-lancer, looking for Christopher Holt on his own—then Edwina might be about to lose the case—and her fee. It happened all the time with big estates. Whoever got to the missing heir first could make her own deal.

A siren wailed in the distance. Edwina wrenched her attention away from the huddling men and saw Diablo being helped out of the arena. Torn, she began to push through the crowd again, glancing back repeatedly to see what Mad Dog was doing. Her heart froze as she saw Mad Dog and the man leaving. The impulse to follow them was overpowering. All of her investigative instincts were triggered. If she didn’t find out what was going on, she might not get another opportunity.

She jerked around again as the ambulance roared up. Her view of Diablo was blocked by the people streaming onto the field, but from what she could see, he was on the ground, propped up against someone’s bike.

“Diablo!” she shouted, waving. He looked up and saw her then, his green eyes flashing in the sunlight. “Are you all right?” she cried.

He gave her a thumbs-up as the paramedics piled out of the ambulance and flung open the back doors, obscuring Edwina’s view completely. Dear God, she thought, her heart twisting with concern, was he badly hurt? He had looked all right, but there was no way to know for sure. She needed to talk to him, touch him, see for herself.

She glanced back just in time to see Mad Dog and the man disappear from view. Edwina was nearly sick with indecision, but she finally broke her paralysis and began to follow the two men. At least she had to determine where Mad Dog was going and what he was doing. Then she could return to Diablo.

She followed the men across the fairground to the parking lot, watching them from the cover of a concession booth as they got into a four-wheel drive with California plates. They peeled out in a cloud of dust, roared down the road a short distance, and pulled off onto a heavily wooded dirt road that Edwina knew was not a through street. She’d seen the sign several times.

The car disappeared from sight, and Edwina glanced back at the stadium briefly. A filmy layer of perspiration covered her forehead. If she followed Mad Dog, she would have to go on foot. It was a devastating choice. If Diablo was badly hurt, she would never forgive herself, but she had to go. There was so much at stake—her family and home.

She was breathing heavily by the time she reached the underbrush that bordered the back road the men had taken. Following the rutted trail a short distance, she spotted the four-wheel drive parked in a narrow clearing in the trees. She approached slowly, using the foliage as cover. A twig cracked beneath her foot, and it sounded like a gunshot in the silence. Edwina’s pulse beat went crazy.

She was about twenty feet away, close enough to get a direct look into the front side window, when she realized there was no one in the car. A shaft of sunlight poured through the empty cab, giving it a surreal appearance. Edwina made her way noiselessly through the brush and opened the car door, quickly scanning its interior. The keys hung from the ignition, and the ashtray overflowed with cigarette butts, one still smoldering.

Edwina was about to reach for the glove compartment to check the car’s registration when she heard someone come up behind her. She didn’t have time to react. An arm locked around her neck, and she was jerked backward out of the cab, off her feet.

The voice that snarled in her ear was terrifyingly familiar. “What in the hell are you up to?” Mad Dog asked, locking an arm across her windpipe.

Edwina couldn’t answer. She could barely breathe. He dragged her backward as she flailed and fought, digging at the burly arm that was cutting off her air. Her lungs burned as though she’d inhaled acid. Static swam in front of her eyes, a sickening scatter of black and white dots that pulsed and swirled. She could barely make out the man in the trench coat as he stepped in front of her.

“I suppose we could throw her off a cliff,” he said, staring at her as though she were a curious specimen of wildlife they’d tossed a net over. “Make it look like she slipped on some loose rocks. An accident.”

Edwina must have blacked out then. All she could remember was Mad Dog’s viselike hold, locking off her wind. The static engulfed her, a million tiny drops of ink bursting like black raindrops. The last images in her head before she drowned in darkness were Diablo’s being flung from his bike and the screaming urgency of the ambulance....

When she came to, she’d been thrown into the back of the four-wheel drive, a tarpaulin tossed over her. Her head throbbed, and her stomach slid with queasiness. She glanced around warily and saw Mad Dog and the other man exchanging packages alongside the car. They hadn’t bothered to tie her up, and the clock in the car’s dash told her that only moments had passed since she’d blacked out.