Cut Throat (18 page)

Solomon gasped. For the first time in his life he was truly defenseless— naked, unarmed, covered in blood from the gushing wound in his shoulder and facing an intruder in his own home. It took a few moments for his

eyesight to adjust, and when it did, he realized that he knew the woman— or at least, he’d seen her before.

“You!” he roared, and started toward her. Cat fired again, this time hitting him in the chest.

When the bullet struck, it spun him completely around. He went to his knees. At that point he leaned forward, bracing himself with his hands, then shook his head like a dog shedding water. To Cat’s disbelief, he pushed himself up, staggering as he stood to face her.

Cat flinched. What the hell was it going to take to keep him down?

Tutuola’s fingers clenched and unclenched into fists as he stared across the room at the tall, dark-haired woman with the husky voice. When she stepped out from behind his sofa, he shuddered. She was holding a gun aimed straight at his face. No one had ever looked at him without flinching. No one.

Until her.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Cat Dupree.”

He splayed a hand across the gunshot wound to his chest, trying to stem the flow of blood. Then he shuddered again. Was this how he died? It didn’t seem possible that a total stranger—and a woman, at that—would turn out to be the one who took him down.

“I don’t know you,” he muttered.

“Oh…we’ve met. Twice before. You know what they say, third time’s a charm.”

“I saw you at the hacienda…outside Nuevo Laredo. Did you come for the money?”

“Hell no,” she said softly.

The bitterness in her voice was unsettling. He couldn’t help but remember the curse that Paloma had put on him. Was this woman part of the witch’s curse?

“Then why?”

“Payback,” Cat said.

He frowned. “Payback for what? You are nothing to me.” “Do you remember a man named Justin Dupree?”

Solomon frowned. “You’ve got the wrong man. I never knew anyone by that name.”

Cat moved a quick step to the right and took aim at his knee. “That makes it even worse,” she said softly.

“Why? Why are you doing this?” “He was my father, and you killed him.”

Solomon couldn’t believe this was happening. For the first time in his life, he had money. He had property. He had everything he’d ever wanted. He couldn’t die now.

“No. No. It wasn’t me,” he said.

“Yes, it was you,” Cat said, and raised her gun. “I saw you do it.”

Solomon shook his head. “Now I know you’re lying, because I never left a witness to anything I did.”

Cat reached up and yanked down the neck of her sweater, revealing the thick pink curl of scar tissue.

“You left one,” she said. “Me. You cut my throat, then left me to watch as you stabbed my father to death. You left me to die. Instead, I have come to kill you.”

Solomon realized that his only chance of survival hinged on getting that gun out of her hands before she could fire another shot. There was a piece of Mayan pottery sitting on a pedestal just to his right. Ignoring the pain in his body, he grabbed it by the handle and threw it just as she fired off another shot.

The shot went wild as Cat instinctively ducked. By the time she looked up,

he was on her. He knocked the gun from her hand, then began punching her in the face. She fought him hard, kicking and scratching and trying to get her fingers in his eyes. He grabbed her by the throat with both hands and began squeezing.

The pain was immediate. The chance that her hyoid bone was about to be crushed was imminent. Figuring she had about two seconds before he killed her, she drew her knee up sharply, jamming it into his testicles as hard as she could. His scream of pain and rage was deafening, but it worked. He turned her loose. She rolled out from under him, and then, before he could react, kicked him square in the jaw as he leaned over her.

Solomon dropped like a felled ox.

Cat scanned the room frantically, looking for her gun. Suddenly her gaze focused on the sofa. The butt of her gun was visible between two of the cushions. She lunged for it just as Solomon came to and made a dive for her. For a few seconds the gun was in her grasp, and then Solomon landed on her with all his weight.

Every ounce of breath was knocked from her body. He turned her over, then rose up just enough to give himself room to swing a fist.

The first blow landed just below her breastbone. She heard ribs snapping. Pain ripped through her body in shockwaves, but she only grunted as he drew back for the next blow.

Cat was fighting for her life. She scratched at his face, digging her fingers into his skin, and then, finally, pushing her thumbs against his eyeballs.

Again the pain was so sharp that Solomon was forced to turn her loose. He rose up with a roar as she blinded him, then swung wildly, connecting with the side of her jaw. Cat flew backwards, landing flat on her back. Her head bounced against the hard, tiled floor and, for a few seconds, everything went black. It was an inborn sense of self-preservation that made her move even before she was able to breathe.

She shook her head frantically, trying to clear her vision, as she staggered back to the sofa and grabbed her gun. Blood was pouring out of her nose, she couldn’t feel her lips, and one eye was swollen shut. But she was still breathing. When she spun, Solomon was within five feet of her.

For a fleeting second everything seemed to move in slow motion. The tattoos that had marked him as her father’s killer seemed to come to life, moving on his skin like geometric snakes. She saw the rage in his eyes, the healing burns on his face and neck and the blood flowing from the wounds on his massive body. His hands were doubled into fists, and one was swinging at her. She knew that if he hit her again, she wouldn’t be getting up.

So she fired.

Tutuola didn’t even flinch as he grabbed her hair with both hands. Cat shoved the gun against his belly and fired again.

He shuddered. Then his fingers moved from her hair to her throat, cutting off the oxygen to her body and the blood to her brain.

The gun went off again, but Cat didn’t know it. She was on the floor, unconscious. She never saw Tutuola fall. She never saw him reach for his

chest, as if trying to stop the blood coming out of the bullet holes.

Cat thought it was the sound of water gurgling in a slow-moving fountain that brought her back to consciousness, but when she opened her eyes, she realized the gurgle was coming out of Tutuola’s mouth. She rolled over, then propped herself up on one elbow. For a fraction of a second she thought she saw consciousness in Tutuola’s eyes.

“Finally…you die,” she whispered.

He complied.

Cat managed to sit up, but standing seemed impossible. Pain was in every muscle of her body, in every pore of her skin. The room looked like a war zone, and her blood was all over the place, mixed with his. But she wasn’t in the system, so with luck they wouldn’t be able to ID her through her blood. And the gun she’d used, which she managed to stuff back in her holster, wasn’t registered and couldn’t be traced back to her, which meant there was no way forensics could examine the rifling on the shells and connect her to what had gone on. Since she was wearing gloves, there was no chance she would be leaving fingerprints behind, either.

She hadn’t really expected to live through this, once she’d decided to give him fair warning that she was there, but since she had, there was enough of her brain functioning to realize she needed to get up and get out. She had no intention of spending the rest of her life in a Mexican jail over a piece of shit like Solomon Tutuola. She’d made sure that he’d fired first. In fact, he’d fired at her numerous times before she’d fired back, leaving her conscience clear. There was the fact that she’d broken in to his house, but he’d broken into theirs, so she considered them even on that

score. She’d given him more warning and leeway than he’d ever given her and her dad.

She made it onto her hands and knees, but when she tried to take a deep breath before rising, she almost passed out again. There was no way to know how many ribs he’d broken. All she could do was pray that none of them had punctured a lung.

Stifling a scream, she crawled across the floor to the sofa, then used it to pull herself up. She moaned, then swiped the blood out of her good eye and looked around.

A pair of large fat candles sat on either end of the mantle over the fireplace. A box of matches was nearby.

Fire. That was what she needed. A fire. Fire burned. Fire destroyed. Fire cleansed.

But it took everything she had to move, and when she did, every step was like a knife in her gut. By the time she reached the fireplace, she was sobbing.

“God, please help me do this now and judge me later,” she mumbled, then spat the blood pooling in her mouth onto the floor as she reached for the candles and matches.

Her hands were trembling so badly she was afraid she would drop the candles and, if they fell, she knew she would never be able to bend over for them and get back up again. So she clutched them to herself as tightly as she could, then made her way back across the room, ignoring the devil she’d dehorned.

There was a wet bar in the corner of the room, and she needed a starter. The alcohol in the whiskey would work just fine. When she felt herself fading, she took a stiff drink from the decanter of bourbon, then poured the rest of it on the sofa, before emptying the other decanters over the rest of the furniture, saving the last for Tutuola himself.

When she stood over his body and poured the last of his own liquor onto him, years of guilt at surviving when her father had not began to lift from her soul.

She took the two candles, lit them, then scooted one beneath a sofa and the other beneath an upholstered chair. The furniture would soon catch fire, and when it did, the liquor would accelerate the fire, but not before she had time to get out.

She paused over Tutuola’s body and struck one last match. The tip flared as it caught. She held it for a moment until she began to feel the heat from the tiny flame, then took a couple of steps backward and tossed the match. It landed on Tutuola’s back. The fire caught and blazed on the whiskey pooled at the back of his waist. She tossed a couple of throw pillows next to him, then watched until they also caught fire.

Only after his body was immersed in flame did Cat turn away. She stumbled and staggered all the way to the door, paused, then turned out the lights.

The room was instantly aglow, both from the fire blazing on Tutuola and the two candles beneath the furniture. Already the fabric was beginning to smoke.

“Straight to hell,” she muttered, then closed the door behind her.

The night air was cold—a slap in the face that she needed. It was a good hundred yards down the hill to her car, and she didn’t have time to waste. There was no way to know how long it would be before someone noticed the blaze, but she was betting her life that it would be long enough to destroy whatever DNA she might have left behind.

She felt in her pocket for her flashlight. It was still there. She turned it on and began stumbling down the hill to her car as the house burst into flames behind her. She never knew when she reached her vehicle or how she found her way back to the hotel. It wasn’t until she had parked in the back lot and headed for the door that she realized where she was.

Moving on nothing but pure grit and nerves, she made it inside without being seen, then into her room. She stared down at the “Do Not Disturb” on the knob inside the room, then shakily hung it on the outside instead.

The words were printed in three languages. That should be enough to guarantee that she would be left alone.

Only after the door was closed and locked behind her did she begin to shake. She was covered in blood and all but blind from the swelling and bruising. She couldn’t breathe without crying, and blood kept filling her mouth.

She was alive, but she didn’t know for how long. Fearing that this might be her last night on earth, there was something she needed to do.

She dragged herself across the room to the sofa and then picked up her cell phone, which she’d left on the table. Twice the room went in and out

of focus before she could steady herself enough to see the numbers. There was only one person she needed to call. One person whose voice she needed to hear. One person. Just one.

Please, God, let him be there.

She punched in the numbers with trembling fingers. She wasn’t sure that she’d hit the right combination until she heard a phone begin to ring. At least she’d called someone. All she could do was pray it was the right someone.

Wilson was sound asleep when the phone began to ring. At first he thought it was the alarm clock, and he reached over in his sleep and slapped at the snooze button. But when the ringing continued, he quickly realized it was the phone. He grabbed it, accidentally knocking an empty glass off the end table as he did. The glass thumped as it hit the carpet but didn’t break. Wilson lifted the phone to his ear.

“Hello?” he mumbled, still half asleep.

It was the silence at the other end of the line that brought him the rest of the way to consciousness. He rolled over onto the side of the bed.