Redheads (48 page)

“After you, ma’am,” quipped Whistler to the tart. He opened the door and eased her into the carriage with a helpful hand up her skirt on her firm rear end. Then he put his boot on the metal step and climbed in across from her.

The old Wells Fargo driver climbed up onto the driver’s seat, cursing the whole way. He shoved the guard aside, grabbing the reigns. “I’m drivin’,” he shouted, “you’ll put us in a damn ditch. YYEEEE—AHHH!” He cracked the reins and the team surged forwards, the stagecoach pulling out.
 

The carriage picked up speed, scared horses hauling the rig at a full gallop. The wagon rocked back and forth on the uneven terrain as it plunged into the desert nocturne. Whistler could still hear the howling, but they seemed to be moving away from it. All he heard were the sounds of the wooden wheels on the rocks, the squeaking of the chassis suspension and the loud pounding of the hooves. He looked across from him in the tight, trembling quarters to see the hooker frozen in the leather seat a few feet away, pale fragile face staring out the open window of the stagecoach, eyes bugging out.
 

“Hurry, hurry…” she murmured.
 

The big wolves bayed.

And gave chase.

The bounty hunter drew both pistols and gripped them in his fists, looking out the other window. The moon was waxen. Vague jagged landscape and blurred rock formations rushed past in near total darkness. The wagon was picking up speed, hurtling recklessly now, shuddering carriage violently jarred by the broken trail. It hit a big rock and rose off its wheels, slamming down on its suspension so hard it tossed him and the woman to and fro. She screamed again and held onto the leather hand straps for dear life. The bounty hunter leaned up against the window, pistols at ready and looked out, thinking he caught glimpses of big, bounding black forms keeping pace with the speeding stagecoach.

The loud dull report of a shotgun blast sounded from the roof.

Then another.

Something hit the other side of the stagecoach like a boulder, knocking the wagon into a veering fishtail.
 

The old man released a horrible high-pitched scream of agony as his body was dragged off the roof seat and smashed against the door in a blur of cloth and red flesh with a bone-snapping
thud bang crack
.

The hooker saw the driver torn from the carriage and was screaming hysterically now. Whistler had to slap her silly to shut her up as he crawled across the seat to look out the other window. He fired two shots blind into the blackness, hopefully at least wounding a few of the things.

With a terrible crash, something landed on the roof so heavy it cracked the wooden ceiling.

Redheads

Jonathan Moore

A killer far worse than insane.

Chris Wilcox has been searching for years, so he knows a few things about his wife’s killer. Cheryl Wilcox wasn’t the first. All the victims were redheads. All eaten alive and left within a mile of the ocean. The trail of death crosses the globe and spans decades.
 

The cold trail catches fire when Chris and two other survivors find a trace of the killer’s DNA. By hiring a cutting-edge lab to sequence it, they make a terrifying discovery. The killer is far more dangerous than they ever guessed. And now they’re being hunted by their own prey.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

Redheads

Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Moore

ISBN: 978-1-61921-491-0

Edited by Don D’Auria

Cover by Angela Waters

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: November 2013

www.samhainpublishing.com

Endnotes