Smarty Bones (27 page)

Before I knew what had happened, there was a loud noise and the car jolted. The steering wheel felt like it was stuck in drying cement. The car was completely unresponsive as I left the asphalt road and launched into the cotton fields going at least forty-five miles an hour. I was flying, flying through the night.

The impact threw me against the steering column and I had enough presence of mind to realize I could have cracked my sternum and damaged my heart. My last thought was about Sweetie Pie. Had she been thrown clear of the car? Was she alive? Before I could seek answers, a swirling blackness sucked me down to the center and held me there.

I came to my senses, aware that Sweetie’s low growls came from my right side. I couldn’t have been out long, because I knew exactly what had happened, and I was leaning against the steering wheel with my chest. The older car was equipped only with lap seat belts, not the shoulder harness, and no airbags, but at least I hadn’t gone flying through the windshield.

“She ain’t dead.”

The man’s voice was so unexpected, I almost screamed.

Almost. But I got a grip on myself. Sweetie, though, was much less contained. Her growl warned of serious intent.

“Shoot the damn dog and let’s get her.” This was an older man, a voice I knew but couldn’t pinpoint.

“If she dies here, it’d be the best thing.”

“She’s a long ways from dead, you idiot. She’s just a little stunned. Now shoot the dog, pick her up, and let’s move. The boss is gonna be pissed as it is.”

The one thing I could not allow was for Sweetie to be shot. My hand slid toward the key in the ignition. When I’d blasted into the cotton field, I’d hit a berm at the edge of the crops and slammed into the ground on the other side. The impact killed the engine, but Mama’s roadster was a tough old machine. It had cranked like a charm—after sitting unused in the barn for five years—when I came back from New York.

I was tough, too. The jolt had bruised my ribs and chest, but I wasn’t mortally wounded. And I had one chance to escape. Still draped on the steering wheel, I eased the car into park, turned the key, and jammed it into drive. Thank goodness we hadn’t had rain in several weeks or I’d have been up to the running board in gumbo, the thick soil of the Delta. The car started, the wheels gained traction, and I spun out.

Only to go nowhere. I didn’t have any tires. The bastards had laid spikes across the road, waiting for me to drive by. They’d blown my tires, which is what sent me into the cotton field in the first place.

“Get her, Arnold!” The older man was obviously in charge.

They were behind the car, and clouds covered the moon and stars.

“Just shoot the silly bitch.” I recognized Arnold’s voice. Holy crap, I’d fallen into the hands of the crazy survivalists. But the older man talking was neither Jeremiah nor Buford. He was confident, though. In charge.

Sweetie’s growl warned me they were approaching. One of the men chambered a round. I groped on the seat for my cell phone, but I had no idea where the impact had flung it.

“If you won’t shoot my dog, I won’t fight.” My pistol was in the trunk. If only I’d thought to put it in the front seat with me. That was the problem with carrying a gun. I didn’t have a holster like the boys in the Wild West. What good was it in the trunk?

“Get out of the car.”

I tried to open the door, but it was stuck. I’d landed pretty hard. “I can’t.”

Footsteps brushed through the cotton, and a large man loomed at my door. “If that dog tries to bite me, shoot it.”

“Sweetie, stay.” We weren’t far from home. Sweetie would find her way back to Dahlia House. And I would figure a way out of the mess I’d gotten myself into. I was far more worried about Graf and the Richmonds than I was about myself. But I had a hunch I was about to find my missing fiancé and friends.

Arnold wrenched the door open and his fingers dug into my arm.

“Hey, I said I’d go with you.” I tried to twist free but his grip was iron. That on top of my bruised chest was agonizing.

“Shut up!” He leaned down to unfasten my seat belt and I couldn’t say for certain what happened. A piercing scream burst from his throat, and he backpedaled from the car, thrashing and cursing. He fell into the cotton, writhing. Sweetie remained motionless in the front seat beside me.

“Arnold, what’s wrong?” The other man sounded nervous.

Arnold bellowed a steady stream of curses and threats. “Get it off me! Get it off me!” He rolled around in the cotton, crushing plants.

“What is it?” The other man ran to his friend, but he couldn’t see and hung back helplessly.

“It’s clawed my eyes! I’m blind!” Arnold bucked like a rodeo bull.

I didn’t have to see to know that Pluto had hitched a ride in the backseat and waylaid Arnold with his signature move.

Sweetie and I slipped out the other side of the car and took off through the cotton field. With the overcast sky, they’d never be able to track us.

I worried for Pluto, but he was a cat with more than nine lives and plenty of brainpower. Cats had superb directional abilities, and he’d return to Dahlia House. Sweetie and I couldn’t go there—once Arnold and his friend recovered from the cat attack, that would be the first place they searched.

They couldn’t afford for me to contact the sheriff. Which meant they’d do everything they could to stop me.

Everything.

I knew the land. I’d ridden Reveler, Miss Scrapiron, and Lucifer through the fields and brakes, along the straight and narrow country lanes. If I headed due north, I could make it to a neighboring plantation. They’d let me use their phone and give me a ride into town.

I’d covered a hundred yards when Arnold and his friend realized I was gone.

“What had hold of you, man?” the other guy asked.

“Some kind of hell cat. It musta been in the backseat or something. We got to find that Delaney bitch,” Arnold said. “If we don’t get her back, the boss is gonna make us suffer.”

I forced my legs to move faster. The farther away I got, the less caution I had to take about making noise, and I could run. Sweetie felt the same way. We tore through the field, panting but never slowing down.

“Go home, Pluto. Go home and be safe.” I spoke aloud though Pluto couldn’t hear me. Still, I used my words as a prayer to send him safely back to Dahlia House.

I tried to ignore my panic and the natural questions that arose and spurred me on. What did those men want with me? More important, what had they done with Graf?

I came to a small irrigation ditch that marked the south boundary of the McCauley land. I wasn’t far from help now. I didn’t know the new owners. The plantation had changed hands two years ago in a foreclosure, but the name would take decades to change. The McCauley family, who had farmed the land for several generations, had lost hard in the stock market crash. When they couldn’t pay their mortgage, a national bank had foreclosed on them. I’d watched them pack and leave with sadness. Somehow, I’d never connected with my new neighbors. Now I’d meet them under pressing circumstances.

The cry of night birds and the constant chorus of insects told me no one followed me. Once I gained McCauley’s, I’d call for help. I put on a final burst of speed and crossed the last wide fields to the front porch.

The house was old, like Dahlia House, built before the Civil War. A light glowed in an upstairs room, and when I peeped in the window of the front door, I saw the glow of a television in a back room. They were home and they were up. My hopes soared as I lifted my hand to knock.

Headlights jouncing down the long driveway made me pause. Sweetie’s growl was all the warning I needed. We sprinted across the porch and dove into shrubs as a new-model pickup slewed to a stop in front of the house.

“Get out,” a familiar voice commanded. “I can’t tell how bad you’re hurt. I need some light.”

“Don’t tell ’em it was just a cat.” Arnold sounded mortified.

“The boss won’t care what sliced up your head. Our problem is the private detective got away. This ain’t gonna be pretty.”

The truck doors slammed and both men stomped up the steps and onto the porch. They knocked three times, then twice. The porch light snapped on and the door opened.

“What the hell happened to you, Arnold?” Jeremiah Falcon asked in his arch, educated tone. “You look like you stuck your head in a meat grinder.” There was a pause. “Where’s Sarah Booth?”

The two men stumbled and fumbled over their explanation of how they lost me. I peeked over the edge of the porch. Arnold’s face and head were shredded. One ear was barely hanging on. Pluto had surely done a number on him. The other man I didn’t recognize but wouldn’t forget.

“She’s in the cotton fields?” Jeremiah was livid. “We have to contain her. If our plan is to work— She has the potential to ruin everything.” He walked out on the porch. “Did you hear something?”

Sweetie and I huddled around the base of a big azalea.

“No, sir,” Arnold said. “I didn’t hear anything. I need to see how bad my face is damaged.”

“Screw a few scratches. If you can’t handle one little girl, you’re worthless to me.”

“Mr. Falcon, she had a critter in the car with her. It nearly clawed my eyes out.” There was a tad of heat in Arnold’s voice. He might be a Heritage Hero foot soldier, but he didn’t cotton to condescension.

“You’re a bagful of excuses, Arnold. You let my crazy bro-ster snoop through our plans. We moved our planning session to the river and they found us there. Now you let a half-starved girl best you.”

Half-starved? Jeremiah thought I was thin? He did have at least one good quality.

“Look at my head!” Arnold had been pushed too far. “It was dark. I was attacked by something with claws. Might have been a wolverine.”

“Cat,” the other man said, barely able to hide his mirth. “It was a fat cat, to be sure, but just a cat. It ran in front of the headlights.”

“Shut up!” Arnold said. “The damn thing was vicious and it meant to put my eyes out.”

“Shut up,
both
of you!” Jeremiah thundered. “You’re incompetent. I have half a mind to court-martial each of you. Organize a search party for Ms. Delaney. We have to find and contain her. Arnold, get inside and have Rob stitch your ear back on. Make it fast. We have work to do.”

15

Jeremiah cracked orders left and right. “Get back in the field and search for her. She can’t be far. She’ll likely head toward Dahlia House. Get between her and her plantation and stop her.”

“I think we should call the other members. We may need help subduing the detective.” For such a big, strong man, Arnold had the whine down pat.

“You
need
to find Ms. Delaney. Now. This disaster is your fault.”

The silence told me Arnold was balking. But at last he said, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’ll round up the other men on the premises. We’ll load up in your truck and head out to the place where she wrecked. She has to be around there. Was she injured?”

“She hit the steering wheel pretty solid.” This was the older man I couldn’t identify. “She was pretendin’ to be unconscious, which is how she got away.”

“You
assumed
she was unconscious. Only idiots assume. Now you’d better find her and make this right.”

The door slammed and in a few minutes boots tromped out of the house and onto the porch. Harsh laughter and a few ribald comments accompanied the men clambering into the pickup.

“Are you coming, Jeremiah?” Arnold asked.

“I am indeed. I’ll follow in my car.”

The pickup cut a sharp U-turn and sped out the drive. Another vehicle followed. The heat-soaked night settled over the fields.

I needed a telephone, and the closest one was likely in the house. I waited as long as I could, listening for anyone left behind. Worry for Graf and Pluto was eating me alive. Even if entering the house unleashed danger, I had to risk it.

“Ready, girl?” I asked Sweetie.

Her reply was a sprint around the porch and up the stairs. When I caught up with her, she was standing on her hind legs peering in a window. A television’s glow illuminated the back room in a wavering blue light. It put me in mind of ghosts and creepies. My fear, though, centered on flesh and blood—men armed with guns. Ghosts I could handle.

The only sign of life came from the television, so I tried the doorknob. It turned without complaint. Sweetie was Velcroed to my leg as we entered. The house was mostly unfurnished. When the McCauleys lost their land, they took the family antiques and gracious décor that made the house such a warm memory. I’d come here with my mother on several occasions to share the garden’s bounty or to have a cup of coffee. Libby Delaney looked out for neighbors, no matter how busy she was. She made it a point to stop and talk with the older folk who lived around the county, and I had often accompanied her. I’d learned a deep appreciation for the ties binding us to place and home.

Those times had passed. Now the beautiful old hardwood floor was scarred by careless misuse. Dust clouded the once burnished wainscoting that had given the foyer such a mellow glow. The beautiful ceiling medallions that centered light fixtures and crown molding handmade from plaster and horsehair had begun to crack and fall due to humidity and lack of care. In a matter of months, Jeremiah and his crowd had corrupted an antebellum beauty. He was truly a man determined to destroy anything of merit that crossed his path.

Especially his sister. And anyone who defended her right to be herself.

Sweetie and I didn’t linger. We moved through the rooms as silently as ethereal spirits. My quest was simple—a phone to contact Cece and Coleman. They’d come and get me, and we’d hunt for Graf. Something had detained him. Something bad.

The empty rooms depressed me. They even worked on Sweetie. She moaned softly in her throat, letting me know she shared my emotion. When we entered the TV room, a blond bimbo on an entertainment network read the news with the startled expression of a possum in the headlights. But she was giving it all she had, trying to whip her audience into a frenzy.

This was the only room with furniture and the best bet of locating a phone, if one existed. The odds were fifty-fifty. Many people had forgone landlines. I searched every flat surface without result. Strangely, there were no computers or electronics.