ONE RAINY NIGHTa March 1997 release from Bantam Loveswept® © 1997 by Janis Reams Hudson
CHAPTER ONE Lightning flashed outside the window. Overhead, the kitchen light flickered off. The man at the table barely noticed, just as he barely noticed a moment later when the light flickered on again. The unopened bottle of Jim Beam was cool and sleek in his hand. Smooth, like a woman. That was a laugh. It had been even longer since he'd had a woman than it had since he'd had a drink. The drink, he could still taste. The woman, he couldn't even remember, and that shamed him. A lot of things shamed him these days, but he was trying to put them behind him. More or less. In his other hand, he caressed the pistol, his Glock 9mm. It, too, was smooth and sleek, and promised him more peace than he'd ever found in a bottle or with a woman. He tried to think of a reason not to put the barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger. There used to be reasons. He just couldn't remember what they were these days. Maybe later. He was too tired just then to bother ending it all. If he didn't get some sleep soon, he wouldn't have to bother doing anything, he would simply keel over dead. But when he closed his eyes, there was no sleep. Only blood. Dead, staring eyes. A hand reaching out to him for help he couldn't give. Al's hand. Al's dead, staring eyes. Al's blood. Zane swore and released the bottle for a moment to scrub a hand over his face. The bottle had occasionally helped block out the nightmares that haunted him, the guilt that ate at him. At least, for a time. He reached for the bottle again, only to realize his hand was shaking. With a deep breath, he concentrated on letting go. Of the tension in his shoulders, the guilt in his gut. The bottle. The gun. They would all keep. Neither the booze nor the gun was going anywhere. They'd be around when he wanted them. He shoved the bottle of bourbon aside. It was much too slow and humiliating a way to die. The Glock, on the other hand . . . No, not yet. It would be rude as hell of him to splatter his brains all over his landlady's nice kitchen. The gun could wait. At least until after he'd testified next month and Buddy King was convicted and headed for death row where the bastard belonged. * * * * With a plastic tub of fudge in one hand and Clint Black wailing from the stereo downstairs, Becca Cameron leaned down to peer through the telescope in her aunt and uncle's upstairs bedroom window. She hadn't touched the telescope since that morning when she'd located the mockingbird nest in the rose-of-Sharon bush in front of the kitchen window of the rental house across the street. In fact, she hadn't touched the telescope then, either. She'd looked through it, but hadn't touched it. Uncle Jim had been specific. "Don't touch it, Becca. It's focused on that nest I've been watching. You can look through it, but don't touch. Got it?" Got it. She hadn't touched. But she had looked. What a hoot. She was really getting in to this bird watching hobby of Uncle Jim's. If her brothers could see her now, they'd razz her clear into next week. But the light was on in the window directly behind the nest across the street, so Becca was hoping for a glimpse of the mama bird hunkered down over the nest. She wanted to assure herself that the pounding rain just before sunset hadn't drowned the baby birds. Lightning flashed and lit the sky. More rain was coming. Becca frowned. "Not my fault." It had been raining most of the past two weeks. Uncle Jim talked about those hatchlings across the street as if they were his own kids. If Becca had to tell him they drowned while he and Aunt Sue were off on vacation, it would break his heart. And somebody would blame Becca. They always did. "No more rain," she begged the sky. "Please." She wasn't going to take the blame for drowning baby birds. It had actually stopped raining earlier in the day and the sun shone for about an hour. Becca had used the opportunity to get some shots with Uncle Jim's camera of a cardinal in the brush along the road out front. Jim hadn't said not to touch the camera. At the reminder, she swore under her breath. She'd snapped a couple of mediocre shots before getting the hang of the shutter action. By the time the cardinal started flitting from branch to limb to barbed wire, she'd been able to follow, snapping shots in rapid succession. She'd even captured the bird in flight when a car came along the side road and scared it from its perch. It would have been a perfect shot, except for the car. Instead, it was a perfect shot of Mark Hammond, foreman of the Bar B down the road in Smith County, and a passenger, a white-haired man she'd never seen before, as they'd turned the corner onto the road that ran past the house. Becca wouldn't be showing that picture to her uncle. He would only laugh at her bad luck. Although, maybe he could add a little humor to the book he was doing, Crow County Has More Than Just Crows. Jim could use the shot she'd taken by mistake. Hammond had been driving his go-to-town car instead of his ranch truck. The caption could read, "Although they fly through the area from time to time, Firebirds are not known to nest in Crow County." Munching on another piece of fudge, Becca patted the roll of film in her pocket and leaned down toward the eyepiece of the telescope. On the outside chance that any of her shots were good enough for Uncle Jim to use, she would take the film to town tomorrow and drop it off for developing. She'd meant to do it today, but made it all the way there with the film still sitting in the kitchen. She'd felt like an idiot, standing at the counter in the drug store with empty hands. The day had gone downhill from there. Geoff Terrill, a sheriff's deputy she'd gone to high school with, usually offered a sympathetic ear when Becca messed things up. Today, when she'd told him about the botched photographs and that she'd forgotten the film, he laughed at her. The jerk. "Don't tell me you got a shot of Mark and that rodeo queen from down in Ardmore. You could make a fortune selling him the negatives before his wife finds out." "Why that woman puts up with him," Becca had said, "is a mystery. But it wasn't a woman in the car with him. Just some man with snow-white hair and enough gold chains around his neck to strangle a bull moose." "Jeez, Becca, you can't even take a decent blackmail picture." She'd made a face at Geoff and left. When she'd come home, the kitchen faucet had sprung a leak and she'd had to replace a washer, skinning her knuckles in the process. To treat herself afterward, she made a pan of fudge. That it came out the consistency of sun-baked adobe, and with a slightly scorched flavor, proved the perfect topper to a lousy day. One peek at Uncle Jim's nest, then she would finish off Aunt Sue's apple pie and turn in. Tomorrow had to be better. Becca squeezed one eye shut and peered with the other through the eyepiece of the telescope. The smell of vanilla, which she'd spilled down her jeans and somehow managed to get in her hair while making fudge, teased her nose. Through the telescope, things were fuzzier in the dark. If she turned the knob just a little, she could refocus tomorrow in the daylight. She wouldn't hurt anything by doing that. She turned the knob just a hair. The wrong way. The dark blob that she thought was the nest grew fuzzier while whatever that was beyond the window, inside the lighted kitchen, grew sharper. Good grief, a gun! The man across the street had a gun in his hand. She couldn't see him, only the table, where one large, dark hand held a big, ugly gun, and the other grasped a bottle of whiskey. A shiver of dread rushed down her spine. "What's wrong with this picture?" The man wasn't cleaning the gun, he was caressing it. Lifting it. Pointing it . . . at himself! "No!" Becca whirled and raced down the stairs, out the front door. There was no time to call anyone for help, and no one to call. The nearest house was more than a mile to the south, the closest town, thirty miles east. If anyone was going to stop the man from . . . from . . . Lord, she couldn't even think the words. There was no one to help. No one but her. A screwup and a jinx. Bad Luck Becca. The poor man didn't stand a chance. But she had to try. Panting in terror, she sprinted down the gravel drive, across the muddy road, up the yard of her aunt and uncle's rental house. "Don't do it, mister." She thought she'd yelled, but it came out in a whisper. "Don't you dare shoot yourself while I'm the only person around. Don't you dare!" Sure, people called her a jinx and a screw-up. Things went wrong when she was around. But not something like this! "No, no, no!" She leapt onto the front porch and pounded on the door with her fist. "Open up! Mister? I know you're in there! Open up!" What was his name, she wondered desperately. Uncle Jim had told her, but-- The door jerked open beneath her fist. Becca nearly sagged with relief as the big man loomed before her. She had a bad moment when she realized the gun was still in his hand. Then his name suddenly burst through her mind. "Zane Houston!" "Who the hell are you?" Becca stared at him, her chest heaving with exertion and the remnants of terror. "Becca Cameron," she answered automatically. He was tall, just over six feet, and menacing as the devil with that fierce frown that drew his eyebrows together over eyes as dark as day-old coffee. And a gun in his hand. But those eyes. So full of torment, fatigue. Becca had the inexplicable urge to reach out to him. "What do you want?" I want you not to kill yourself? She couldn't say that. It didn't occur to her that he might use the gun on her. She only knew that she didn't want to do or say anything to remind him of what he'd been about to do when he'd sat alone at his kitchen table. If that's what he'd really been about to do. If that's what the pain in his eyes meant. But what excuse could she give for barging in on a stranger after ten at night? She glanced down and realized she still held the plastic tub in her hand. Incredible. Stupid. But it would have to do. "I, uh, made fudge. I thought you might like some." Zane tucked his pistol into the back of his belt and shook his head, certain he'd heard wrong. Maybe he was hallucinating from lack of sleep. How else could he account for a pixie with hair shorter than his standing on his doorstep late at night offering him candy in a husky, breathless voice that slid over him like dark velvet? He glanced beyond her into the night. No car in his driveway, none on the road. Where the hell had she come from? Lightning flashed again. Zane's blood ran cold. The brief flash of light revealed a figure rising up out of the bar ditch that separated his yard from the road. The figure of a man. A man with a rifle. In reflex Zane hit the light switch beside the door and darkened the hall as he jerked the woman into the house and down to the floor. She screamed. Blue and orange fire spat three times in rapid succession from the barrel of the rifle as Zane landed half on top of her and rolled. Three booms nearly covered the sound of three splats as three holes appeared in the wall across from the front door. Something in the living room beyond shattered. Son of a bitch. Heading for the scant cover against the wall, Zane rolled again, ending up on top of the woman. In the glow of the kitchen light around the corner, he took a quick glance at her. He'd never seen her before. He was sure of that. A strange woman knocks on his door, and less that ten seconds later someone takes a shot at him. Three shots. Coincidence? He didn't believe it for a minute. And she looked so damned innocent. Like a little pixie. Although she didn't feel like a pixie, the way her breasts cushioned his chest and her thighs cradled his hips. She felt like a woman. And he was a stupid son of a bitch for noticing. He braced his forearm across her neck. "Who sent you?" Damn, she even smelled like a woman--warm. Sweet. Like . . . sugar cookies. He added pressure to her throat and hated doing it. She opened her mouth, but the only thing that came out was a choking sound. Her eyes bulged. Zane eased the pressure on her throat and kicked the door shut. "Who sent you?" he demanded again. "Who set me up? Who's the shooter in the ditch?" Gasping for breath, Becca gaped at the man looming over her. Deranged, she thought frantically. The man was deranged. "Who sent you?" The weight of his forearm increased across her throat, cutting off her breath again. "Nobody!" she croaked. Her wide frightened eyes almost made a believer out of him. Almost. "You just showed up on my doorstep and somebody started shooting? You expect me to buy that?" "I-- You-- Agh." Okay, he wouldn't choke her after all. He eased up on her throat again. As he did, he whipped off his belt and used it to tie her hands behind her back. "Hey! What are you doing?" "Got your voice back, I see." "Look, mister--" "Save it. I'm going to have a look around outside. If you're as innocent as you're pretending, you won't make a sound." "You're going to leave me here, tied up like this, so somebody can shoot me?" "Like this? Yes. Here? No. And if I'm not mistaken, it's me he's shooting at." Next to the front door was the coat closet. Zane pushed open the sliding door, stuffed the woman inside, and slid the door closed. "You can't leave me in here!" "Quiet," he commanded. Dismissing the woman as the bait used to lure him to the door, he rolled again, this time across the hall and into the kitchen. There he hit the light switch and plunged the room--the whole house, since that had been the only light--into darkness. Careful to be quite, he checked his pistol and let himself out the side door. The grass was wet. Water-logged, after two weeks of downpours. Judging by the lightning and thunder, it was going to get wetter before the night was over. Zane circled around the back of the house and made his way carefully through the woods that edged his yard. Water dripped off branches as he ducked beneath them. Minutes before he reached the ditch, a car door slammed down the road to his left. No need for quiet now. Zane ran the rest of the way to the ditch. When he jumped it--or rather, when he landed on the other side--a screaming shaft of pain shot up his thigh and down his shin from the area of the steel pin just above his right knee. Son of a bitch. How could a metal pin hurt so bad that his vision grayed? How could steel hurt at all, dammit? The pain cleared his head in time for him to see a car take off into the night. At that distance and through the darkness, all he could see were the tail lights that told him the car was a late model, a full-sized sedan, dark in color. With a grunt that was half dissatisfaction and half pain, Zane limped back to the house, careful to avoid stepping where the shooter might have. Paying no attention to the mud he tracked, he went in through the front door. In the closet, Becca heard footsteps approach the house. It was a minor miracle that she could hear anything over the pounding of her heart. Instantly she stilled her struggles to get free of the belt binding her wrists behind her back. Who was it? The tenant, or the man shooting at them? Her mouth went dry. The front door creaked open. The footsteps entered the house. Uneven footsteps, someone limping badly. Becca held her breath and prayed. The footsteps stopped before the closet door. "You can yell all you want now," came Zane Houston's voice. Light filtered in through the cracks around the door. Blessed light, scant though it was, easing the tightness in her chest. Becca wilted in relief, then stiffened in outrage at his casual tone. "Let me out of here! Untie my hands!" "In a minute." Zane left her on the floor of the closet and went to the kitchen phone to call the county sheriff’s office, knowing the sheriff himself wasn't likely to be there this time of night. Harp had a family now. He was probably snuggled up at home on his farm, surrounded by his wife and kids. But when the dispatcher answered the phone, Zane gave his name and asked, "Is Sheriff Montgomery in?" "Hold on." While waiting, he absently massaged the ache just above his right knee. The screaming pain had settled into a dull throb. "Hey, Houston, ol' buddy." Harper Montgomery's familiar voice rang over the phone line. "What's up?" "Not much. Just wanted to report a shooting." The friendly, bantering tone disappeared, replaced by steel. "In my county?" "In my yard." "You do the shooting?" "I wish. I was the target." "I'll be right there." The line went dead. Zane hung up the phone and reached for the flashlight he kept beneath the kitchen sink. "Hey! Let me out of here!" Oh yeah. The woman in the closet. The bait to lure him to the door. "Let me out of here!" He really should let her out of the closet. He really should question her, shake loose a few answers. And he would. Later. First he wanted a look in the ditch before the rain returned and wiped out all signs of the shooter. Flashlight in hand, Zane stepped back out through the front door and ignored the pounding and cursing from inside his front closet. As he approached the ditch, fat, intermittent raindrops pelted him. What Al would have called an eight-inch rain--drops eight inches wide and eight inches apart. After more than a year, it still hurt to think of Al. They'd been partners for four years. So long that more than a year after Al's death, Zane still caught himself turning to say something to the man who was closer to him than a brother. Caught himself thinking, I'll have to remember to tell Al that one. Those incidents were worse than the nightmares. Everyone had told him that the pain would dull with time. They'd been right. It didn't help, though. Dull or sharp, pain was pain. Guilt was guilt. Three inches of runoff from earlier rains rushed along the bottom of the ditch. The shooter had left plenty of signs, none of them useful. Skids and gouges in the mud spoke of presence, but not identity. No clear footprints, no spent shells. Using his flashlight, Zane searched in wider and wider circles, knowing it was useless. The shooter had parked his car down the road, walked back to the house, then left the same way he'd come. Zane found where the car had been parked, but there was nothing useful there either. By the time he returned to his yard the fat raindrops had turned into a light drizzle, the red and blue lights of the sheriff's car were flashing their way down the road from town, and Zane's leg was stiffening up. The sheriff pulled his tan-and-white car into Zane's driveway, while two deputies parked in the road. Crow County Sheriff Harper Montgomery stepped out of his car and settled his Stetson against the rain. They'd never been partners, but they were old friends, Harp and Zane. They'd both worked for several years as agents for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, until a couple of years ago when Harp retired and settled on his family farm in Crow County. "Anybody hurt?" Harp asked. Zane resisted the urge to rub his thigh. "No." "You're limping." "Yeah, so?" "Idiot." Harper's tone was only slightly exasperated. "When are you going to get your butt back into physical therapy where you belong?" It was an old argument and one Zane didn't intend to pursue. The doctors had told him that his leg would never be one hundred percent again, so what was the point? "I didn't call you because of my physical shortcomings." "Mental shortcomings, you mean," Harper retorted. "You wouldn't limp like that if you'd get back and finish that damn therapy. If it's not already too late." "You wanna know what happened here, or not?" With a heavy sigh, Harper looked up and let the rain fall on his face. "All right." He lowered his face and wiped it with his hand. "What happened?" * * * * Inside the front closet, Becca had managed to slide the door open with her feet and was struggling futilely to free her hands. She'd heard the man call the sheriff, heard his uneven steps leave the house again. An eternity of tense silence passed before she heard the crunch and squish of tires on the mud and gravel of the driveway. Now car doors were slamming. Voices called out. The sheriff? She sincerely hoped so. She wanted out of this damn closet! To that end, she struggled to her knees, but getting her head out from inside the denim jacket hanging from the rod above her took a minute. Finally she stumbled out into the hall. The first thing she saw was the flashing red and blue lights of three county sheriff's cars. Her knees weakened with relief. "Sheriff!" Walking back from the ditch with Zane, Harper Montgomery jerked his head up at the sound of her voice. "What the-- Becca? Is that you?" Zane flinched. "You know her?" "Hell, Zane, everybody knows Becca Cameron. I'm just surprised you do." Harp punctuated his comment with a grin and a slap on Zane's back. "I wouldn't say I actually know her," Zane muttered. But her name tugged at a hidden memory. Zane followed Harper to the porch, where the woman waited. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. Her short hair stood on end, like a cartoon character who'd stuck his finger in a light socket. Becca Cameron. Becca Cameron. Why was that name suddenly so familiar? She turned her back to him and Harp and wiggled her bound hands. "If someone would be so kind?" Harp's mouth dropped open. "What the hell? What's going on around here?" he demanded. Becca Cameron. Zane delved for the elusive memory. Becca Cameron. Becca-- "You tied up your landlord's niece?" Harp demanded. Hell. Zane closed his eyes. "The niece." He remembered now. Jim Anderson had told him his niece would be house-sitting while Jim and Sue cruised the Bahamas for a couple of weeks. "Hell." Becca Cameron made a low snarling sound. "Would someone please untie my hands before my fingers fall off from lack of circulation?" "Only to you, Becca, would something like this happen. Harper reached to free her hands. Zane waved him aside. "I'll do it." "You're too kind," Becca said with a tight smile. "Look, I'm sorry, all right?" Zane loosened the belt around her wrists and slipped it off. "What was I supposed to think? A strange woman comes to my door late at night--" "I am not strange." "--with some lame excuse about bringing me candy--" "Which is now scattered all over your floor in pieces, thanks to you." "--and suddenly bullets start flying." "So naturally you blamed me." "Naturally," Zane answered. Wild-eyed, Becca whirled on Harp. "This was not my fault, Harper. Don't you go saying it was." "I didn't say a word," Harp protested. "Not yet, but you or somebody else will get around to it." She jabbed a finger in Zane's direction. "He already thinks it was my fault." "I said I was sorry," Zane replied tersely. Becca's eyes narrowed. "You didn't have to stuff me in the closet." "You stuffed her-- No." Harper held up a hand for silence. "Never mind. I don't want to know. Save it for your statement, both of you." Becca rubbed her aching wrists. "I'll give you a statement, all right." "I expect you will. Mike," Harper called to one of the deputies standing at the end of the driveway. "Get a couple of evidence bags and come help me get the slugs. Jim, you keep an eye out." Mike LaMott had been a deputy with the Crow County Sheriff's Department since Becca was a little girl. On his way into the house with what looked like plastic sandwich bags in his hand, he stopped and gave her the once over from beneath bushy gray eyebrows. "You okay, girl?" Remembering the gunfire, Becca shivered and tugged her cardigan tightly around her. "Yeah. I'm okay." She followed Harper, Mike, and Zane Houston into the house. Using a pocket knife, Zane enlarged a hole in the Sheetrock and dug a bullet out of the wall stud there. The other two bullets had missed the stud and gone through the wall into the living room. One had taken out a table lamp and flattened itself against the fireplace. The brick there would never be the same. The third bullet had gone straight through the room and out the back window before burying itself in a post on the back porch. Becca watched it all with a sense of detachment. Logically she knew someone had fired three bullets at her and Zane Houston, but it didn't seem real. The sting in her wrists, the pain in her shoulder from landing on the floor, the ache in her throat from a big mean arm, the memory of a man's hips settling arrogantly between her thighs--those things were real. She barely remembered the bullets. Zane left the house and returned in a few moments with a piece of plywood. Harper and Mike helped him secure it over the broken window. When they finished, Harper turned toward Becca. "Are you up to giving me a statement now?" "I'm as up as I'll ever be. What do you want to know?" He shook his head. "We'll do it at the station. I'd like both of you to come in to town and give me your statements." "Not tonight," Becca protested. "'Fraid so," Harper said. "While everything's fresh in your minds. You said you were up to it. It shouldn't take too long. All you'll have to do is tell me what happened so I can get it down straight. You can ride in with Zane, can't she, Zane." "I can drive myself, thank you," Becca stated flatly. Zane snorted. "Yeah, sure. If you don't mind ending up in the ditch. The way you're shaking, you'll probably never even get the key in the ignition." Becca opened her mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. She couldn't argue against the obvious. It wasn't just her hands that shook. Every bone inside her was rattling, every muscle quivering in the aftermath of the terror that had gripped her. She turned to Harper. "I'll I ride with you. This man's a maniac and people are shooting at him." "He's not a maniac," Harper protested. "Zane is an old friend. We worked together at the OSBI. You're welcome to ride with me--" "Thanks." "--but Tommy Carmichael got drunk and disorderly last night at the dance over at the VFW and I had to take him in. He threw up in the back seat. Nachos and beer." "Never mind," Becca said quickly. "I guess I'll ride with him." She gestured none to graciously toward Zane. Harper himself went with her to the house so she could get her purse and lock up. By the time she returned to the rent house across the street, her uncle's tenant had put on a denim jacket and backed his car out of the garage. He stood next to the open passenger door, waiting for her. A regular gentleman. Now that he'd decided not to strangle her. Glancing again at the car, Becca's eyes widened. "Oh, wow." Like a sleek jungle beast poised to leap, the machine rumbled, it's engine purring, ready to shake the ground at its driver's command. "Wow," Becca whispered again, her heart racing. Zane watched, puzzled, as Becca Cameron disregarded the rain plastering her short hair against her skull and circled his car. She reached out and stroked the front fender as though it were a lover. The sudden image of those slender hands on him sent blood rushing to places that hadn't felt such a rush in more than a year. It came on so fast, so unexpectedly, it had him sucking in a sharp breath and stuffing his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. Suddenly she turned on Zane. "Put it back." "What?" "Put it back in the garage. It's getting wet." "Yeah, it does that when it rains." "Put it back," she cried. "My God, you can't mean to drive this on these muddy roads." "That's exactly what I mean to do, if you'll get in before we both drown." "But--it's a Mustang." "Yeah, so?" "A sixty-nine Mach One. In mint condition. You can't take a car like this out on roads like that." She splayed her hands across the wet hood. "Unless I miss my guess, you've got a Cobra Jet Ram-Air 428 under here, capable of doing the quarter-mile in 13.9 seconds, even though the sixty-nine outweighs the original model by more than a thousand pounds." Zane blinked against the rain. It was a little like watching a two-year-old read from an encyclopedia. With those huge gray eyes in that pixie face, Becca Cameron didn't look like she had a brain in her head, yet she spouted statistics worthy of Car and Driver about a car built before she'd been born. "I jinx people," she said looking over at him. "You what?" "I jinx people. When I'm around, things go wrong. Tonight is a case in point. You really don't want to drive this car with me in it. Something will go wrong." "Nothing's going to go wrong that hasn't already. This car is in peak condition." "You can say that again. They rated it at 335 horsepower," she said almost lovingly, "but most people thought that was conservative. Sixty-nine was the second major change in the Mustang body style, but it was the Mustang's best year. The Mach One was the best of the sixty-nine's. It's beautiful. A classic." She looked up at Zane. "Listen to it. That's a 750i Holley four-barrel carburetor with a racing manifold. You can't take it out on these roads like it was nothing more than a car. Especially not with me in it." "You know cars." Zane said stupidly. Slowly, she removed her hands from the matte black hood and narrowed her eyes to slits. Angry slits, Zane thought. "And if I do?" "Nothing," Zane said quickly holding his hands in the air and backing up. "Just making an observation." She stomped around to the door he held open for her. "Let's go get this show over with. But if anything goes wrong, don't say I didn't warn you." Puzzled by her defensive attitude, Zane closed the door after her and got in on the driver's side. A moment later they were following Harp's patrol car down the gravel road toward town, with two deputies behind them. * * * * A dark gray, full-sized, late model sedan had already circled the one-mile-square section of Crow County and parked just back from the intersection of the two gravel roads nearest the scene of the shooting. The driver turned off his lights and waited. A few moments later the county sheriff's car came barreling down the crossroad, headed back toward town. Behind the sheriff's car came a classic Ford Mustang that looked slick as hell, followed by two more county sheriff vehicles. Riley frowned, trying to decide what to do next. He wasn't about to go back to tell The Man face-to-face that he'd missed the target. He'd never missed before. Never. He still couldn't figure it. He would put his skill up against anybody, anytime, any place. But from the outset, this job had been a disaster. He'd gotten his assignment, then headed out through the rain, and before he'd gotten within a mile of his target he'd gotten stuck in the mud. He'd been an hour getting unstuck. Then he'd located the house and had been working his way close when that crazy woman had come flying outside, streaking across the street and messing up his plans. Rushing him, forcing him to shoot before he was ready. The whole night was almost as if he'd been jinxed. Even rushed, he shouldn't have missed. He was too damn good at what he did. When the front door of the small house had opened, his target had been centered smack in the middle of the rectangle of light, had loomed large and close in the scope of his rifle. He shouldn't have missed. He'd have to tell The Man, but not in person. That's what cellular phones were for. With a nervous twitch of his fingers, he punched in the number and waited. "Yeah?" "It's me." "It is done, I presume," came the voice in his ear. "Not yet." "Excuse me? I'm certain I must have heard you wrong." Cold sweat trickled down Riley's spine and gathered along the small of his back. "I, uh, mis--" "Don't say it. I do not want to hear it. Just tell me you will take care of it." Riley wiped the sweat from his palms one at a time and swallowed hard. The Man had been known to kill people for lesser mistakes than tonight's. "I'm going to take care of it." "Yes, you are. Oh, and Riley . . ." Silence stretched, filled only by a low, menacing hum over the cellular phone. "Don't come back until it's done." Riley swallowed. "Yessir." He disconnected, then punched in another number. -- end of excerpt -- Excerpted from One
Rainy Night, Copyright © 1997 by Janis
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