“What happened?”
Struggling into his jeans, he caught up with her, grabbed her wrist and spun her around to face him. His face was etched with concern, and if she was one of those goosey women she detested, she might actually be led to believe that he loved her. He didn’t, of course. Certainly he cared, she wasn’t stupid enough to deny what was painfully evident, what he’d just admitted, but love her? No way. Not Nevada Smith. Never Nevada Smith.
“I found out that the reporter who’s been poking around town, rattling everyone—”
“Katrina Nedelesky?”
“That’s the one.” She lifted a finger and winked as the shadows of night started to fall. “Well, it turns out she’s not just a freelance reporter for
Lone Star
magazine. Nor is she just a woman intent on writing a tell-all, part-fiction, part-fact book about Bad Luck.”
“What?”
“No, indeed,” Shelby insisted. “She just happens to be my half-sister, daughter of Nell Hart, a waitress the Judge had an affair with, then paid to leave town before their love child was born.”
“Wait a minute—”
“And that’s not the worst of it. Nope. It just gets better and better,” Shelby said, speaking so rapidly that the words tumbling out of her mouth were beyond her control. “Nell Hart’s baby, Katrina. is the reason my mother committed suicide. That’s right, she didn’t accidentally overdose one night after drinking too much. No, she was so depressed and suicidal that she took a lethal dose of sleeping pills and booze and then ... and then my father ... the goddamned Judge covered up any hint of scandal, never recognizing his own daughter, never acknowledging that his wife, my mother, was in so much emotional pain that she would take her own life.”
“Oh, honey—”
“Don’t!” she said as he reached for her. “Just don’t touch me and don’t tell me everything’s going to be all right and don’t ever ... don’t ever tell me what to do.”
Over her protests he folded her into his arms, held her tight against him and didn’t flinch as the first sob burst from her throat. Tears tracked from her eyes and her fingers curled in his chest hair as she fought to control her runaway emotions. “Oh, for the love of God,” she finally sniffed, “I didn’t mean to break down like some pathetic, weak female. Damn it, Nevada, why does this always happen?”
“Don’t know.” His arms tightened over her and he laughed. “But believe me, Shelby, of all the things I’ve ever thought about you, ‘pathetic, weak female’ has never entered my mind.”
“Good.” Swiping at her nose with the back of her hand, she shook her head to clear her mind. Darkness had settled over the countryside, and far in the distance a coyote howled.
“But if I indulge any more displays like this, you’ll have to change your opinion.”
“I doubt it.” Arms linked behind her, he leaned backward to meet her eyes. “But I’m worried about McCallum.”
“Don’t be.”
“Shelby—”
“I’ll be fine,” she promised, refusing to be intimidated and giving him a quick peck on the cheek. “He’d be a fool to try anything with me again.”
“Yeah, well, as far as I know, he hasn’t earned any intelligence awards lately and besides, we’re not talking about a rational man.”
“I’ll be careful.” She broke out of his embrace and reached for the reins to her horse.
His smile fell away. “You don’t have to be tough, you know.”
“Sure I do, Nevada.” She climbed into the saddle and stared down at him for a long minute. “We both do.”
Katrina rubbed the kinks from her neck and stared at the four walls of her tiny room in the Well, Come Inn. Dingy walls and yellowed, once-beige drapes surrounded a bed that sagged in the middle like a broken-down workhorse.
She’d turned the television on earlier. It sat in the comer, muted, a sitcom she didn’t recognize offering up laugh tracks every few seconds or so. Lying on the back-breaker of a bed, her laptop balanced on her thighs, she tried to compose her notes, put them in some sort of order, while a glass of tequila sweated on the night stand. She’d only taken one sip, and the gawd-awful stuff had burned its way down her throat.
Tired, restless and feeling like shit after her run-in with her jerk-off of a father, Katrina considered going back to the old ways and scrounging up a joint. Surely even in this backwater town there was a dealer who could hook her up with a few ounces of marijuana or cocaine.
“Don’t even consider it,” she muttered, angry with herself. She’d tossed out the drugs along with her ex-husband, and nothing was putting her back on that one-way track, not even a run-in with the almighty Judge.
Taking another sip from the now-warm tequila, Katrina thought there was surely a better way to slowly kill herself, then wrote down the poem she’d heard earlier that day at the White Horse Saloon. It was a knock-off of a nursery rhyme. At the time she’d thought it was funny, but it hit a little too close to the bone now.
How’d it go? Oh, yeah.
Ole Judge Cole was a nasty old soul,
And a nasty old soul was he.
That was it. She started typing again, her fingers flying as she heard a thud and an angry shout from the next motel room, a woman yelling in Spanish and a man answering back sharply.
Great,
Katrina thought, wondering if she’d be the victim of a random bullet fired because of a domestic squabble.
The noise level from the television elevated with a local commercial for a weight-loss concoction and Katrina, though her concentration was about shot, kept working. She’d been promising the magazine her story but had kept putting them off, claiming she was polishing it, and with Caleb Swaggert’s death, she wanted to add a new angle, the slant that he might have been murdered in order to keep his mouth shut.
This was a distinct possibility.
Caleb Swaggert certainly was no Karen Silkwood. In fact, he could’ve been an out-and-out liar just trying to line his daughter’s pockets, but there was the distinct possibility that he’d known too much, was shooting his mouth off and pissing off someone who decided to take the old man’s fate into his own hands and silence Caleb for good. If that was the case, Katrina, too, might be in danger.
Wonderful.
The thought that someone might be out to get her had been her companion for the past few days, and as she glanced around the cinder-block walls of Room 18, she shivered inwardly.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained,
she reminded herself. All good reporters faced their own mortality. Look at those guys who stayed in war-torn countries just for a story, the people who approached burning airplanes, or interviewed despots, all for the sake of fame.
And yet ... she wasn’t fool enough to want to give up her life for the sake of a story. Fame was important; money even more so. But it wasn’t worth dying for. Though she would like nothing better than to expose Judge Jerome “Red” Cole for the son of a bitch he was, even satisfaction wasn’t worth her neck. That’s why she’d bought the gun—a small, silver pistol that fit neatly into her palm.
God help her if she ever had to use it.
She turned her attention back to her computer screen, and the fight in the room next door died down. A nightly drama flickered from the television screen, but she thought of Shelby Cole. The princess. Her half-sister.
Unwed mother.
Now
that
was interesting. The Judge, true to his loathsome, self-serving self, had not only denied Katrina her birthright, but had done the same with his own grandchild, Shelby’s daughter.
Who was the father of that baby? Katrina wondered and made yet another note to herself. Shelby seemed hell-bent to find the kid, but wouldn’t it be a hoot if Katrina managed to do it first? After all, she had connections.
She smiled to herself and nearly jumped out of her skin when there was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” she said, shoving the computer aside and climbing to her feet. The gun was in her purse if she needed it.
“You the reporter-woman?” an unfamiliar male voice called from the other side of the dead bolt.
“Yes.” She reached for her handbag.
“Good. I’m Ross McCallum.”
Her heart stood still.
“You hear me?”
“Y-yes.”
Oh, God.
This was either the opportunity of a lifetime or her worst nightmare. Her pulse began to skyrocket as she unclasped her purse. “What can I do for you?”
“Why don’t you open the door so we can talk?”
Nothing ventured,nothing gained,
she reminded herself yet again, the old adage suddenly becoming her litany. With one hand on her purse, she used the other to throw the dead bolt, unhook the chain and swing open the door.
There he was. Backdropped by the blue glow of the streetlights, as bad-assed looking as any of the pictures she’d seen of him, he leaned against the doorjamb. “Mr. McCallum,” she said coolly, though she thought she might lose her bladder at any second. The man emanated pure evil. “Isn’t this a coincidence? I was just about to call and suggest we meet.”
He snorted his disbelief and cold, humorless eyes stared straight through her, silently charging her with the lie. “Well then. let’s get down to it,” he said, glancing past her to the tiny, cramped room and the bottle of tequila that was capped on the bureau. “I figure now that Caleb Swaggert’s dead, you might want to work a deal with me.”
So that was his game. “Possibly.”
“What?” His head whipped around and he impaled her on those cold eyes. “Look, I expect the same deal you gave Swaggert. In exchange, you get my side of the story.”
“Your testimony’s already a matter of public record, whereas Mr. Swaggert was changing his, risking perjury. I can’t offer you a dime until you can assure me that you have something more to add, something different, and even then I’ll have to talk to the magazine.”
“Hey, I did my time. Spent over eight years payin’ for a crime I didn’t do, so don’t fuck with me.”
“Then don’t you fuck with me,” she shot back. “Let’s hear what you’ve got to say, off the record. If I decide it’s worth paying for and printing, I’ll call the magazine.” She held his gaze and didn’t let on for a second that her insides suddenly felt like half-set Jell-O.
He lifted one surprised eyebrow. One side of his mouth curved heavenward. “All right, missy—”
“Katrina,” she insisted. “Or Ms. Nedelesky. Your choice.”
“Katrina, then. Why don’t you buy me a drink?” He tipped his head toward the nearly full bottle.
“Fair enough.” She walked out of the room, locking the door behind her. “Let’s go to the White Horse.” As eager as she was for his story, she wasn’t going to lock herself into a motel room alone with him. The saloon was just across the street, and there would be plenty of witnesses should he become aggravated, threatening or violent.
“Someone might hear us.”
“It’s a chance I’m willing to take.” She slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder and held the bag firmly in her right hand. Together she and Ross walked through the parking lot and dodged traffic as they crossed the street.
At the White Horse, Ross McCallum held the door open for her. Country music, conversation and a cloud of smoke rolled into the night.
Nerves strung tight, knowing she might be about to start the interview of her life, Katrina stepped inside the tavern and wondered if she was about to share a drink with a murderer.
She recognized some of the regulars. Manny Dauber and Badger Collins were shooting pool in a back corner. A group of Hispanic men leaned over the bar and watched a baseball game on the television set mounted over the bar. Half-a-dozen women were scattered at different tables, laughing, smoking and generally checking out the action. Ruby Dee was one of them, and as Katrina and Ross passed her booth, she visibly shrank and stared at the neon beer sign hanging in the window. Lucy Pride was tending bar and keeping an eye on the front door, watching everyone who entered. She winked at McCallum as he and Katrina made their way to a comer booth near the busboys’ station.
More than one interested glance was tossed in their direction, and Katrina felt the mood in the bar shift, as if a silent undercurrent of electricity had followed them inside.
“What can I get ya?” Lucy asked, appearing the minute Katrina set her purse on the bench seat next to her.
“The regular,” Ross ordered.
“Just a Coke.” Katrina wasn’t going to lose her edge.
“You got it.” Lucy disappeared.
“Kind of a lightweight, aren’t you?” Ross observed, leaning back on his spine and eyeing her.
“This is business.”
“Could be more.”
“I don’t think so.” She leaned forward. “So why don’t you tell me why you think I would be interested in paying for your side of the story.”
He grinned wickedly. “Because I know who killed Ramón Estevan,” he said.
“And yet you spent eight years in jail.”