Chapter 1
The dark Lincoln pulled over in the graveled entrance to the Weston Ranch. The lights blinked off and the wipers stopped. Immediately, the windshield became a mirror, an impenetrable silver curtain of rain sluicing down the glass.
Oblivious to the fury of the Texas thunderstorm raging outside, the driver reached out, his fingers pausing to caress cold steel before they curled around the soft pink child’s toy lying on the seat. He leaned back and closed his eyes, focusing on the toy until his mind filled with a vision of its owner. A cold smile spread across his face. He set the toy back on the seat and started the car, edging it forward at an angle that blocked one lane of the road.
The cell phone clipped to the dash jingled the beginning notes to a song. He ignored it, knowing it was his partner alerting him to what he already knew.
Their target was about to arrive.
Picking up the gun his fingers had toyed with moments before, he stepped into the downpour. A second car stopped next to his, blocking the other lane. Its driver, pulling the hood of his slicker forward against the biting rain, joined him. The reflection of headlights glimmered in the puddles on the pavement. They raised their guns.
***
James Weston glanced worriedly into the rearview mirror. Jaime continued to cry. She’d been sobbing, “ The bad man’s coming,” the entire trip. Now, she was wailing it.
Kathryn turned in her seat, trying to distract and soothe their daughter with her favorite songs and games. “James, maybe we should…”
“You know we can’t, Kath. I hate what this is doing to her, too, but I want you and Jaime safe. I have to get you away from here so I can deal with Carl. The storm will clear by morning. I’m flying you and Jaime to safety. Somewhere he can’t get to her with his threats.” He glanced in the mirror again. “We‘re almost there, Jaime, coming up on the last turn before the ranch. Just a little further, baby. It will be…”
Brakes squealing, the Mercedes slid like a skater on ice. It finally stopped mere feet from the gunmen in the road.
“Down Kathryn! Get down!” Futilely, James tried to shove the car in reverse. The windshield imploded and he jerked like a marionette on a string as the flying glass sliced at him and the sledgehammer impact of bullets slammed into his chest.
Kathryn leaned into the back and struggled frantically with the straps on Jaime’s carseat. She managed to release her daughter. The first two bullets ripped into her as she pushed Jaime to the floor and threw a coat over her. A third shattered the back of her head.
Jaime huddled beneath the coat, cringing, shaking. The roar of thunder, the whine and groan of bullets tearing through metal, and the shattering glass drowned out her whimpers of, “Bad man…bad man,” whispered over and over in rhythm to the droplets of warm blood that fell from her mother’s wounds onto the hand that was not completely covered.
***
It had gone like clockwork. Just as planned. He’d relished the moment of recognition, the shock of realization on his brother’s face. His lips twisting into a malicious smirk of satisfaction, Carl Weston extracted another clip from his pocket, snapped it into the gun, and resumed firing. He ignored the pouring rain that soaked through his coat ruining his expensive Armani suit. It didn’t matter. Not even the near zero balance in his bank account after he’d paid the other gunman, who continued firing into the now bullet-ridden Mercedes, was going to dampen his mood. When they finished this little task he’d have everything he wanted.
The second gunman circled the Mercedes; the Mac-Ten sending tingles through his hand as it continued to spit sparks of death through the shattered windows. The glare of oncoming headlights caught his attention. “Christ! Someone’s coming. Let’s go.”
“I have to be sure.”
“Don’t be an ass! Nobody lived through that. We’ve got to get the hell out of here before they get close enough for a good look!” Squeezing a final burst from the gun, the man headed toward his car.
Seeing the truck now slowing to a stop, Carl saw the wisdom in the warning and sprinted to the dark Lincoln.
***
The almost simultaneous cessation of gunfire and thunder left a pronounced silence, allowing the voice of his whimpering child to penetrate the fog of James’ pain filled consciousness. “Oh God! Jaime,” he groaned.
It wasn’t more than a whispered gurgle that escaped his lips, but the little girl heard him and immediately began trying to reach her father. Rising from the floor and crawling onto the seat, she looked into her mother’s sightless eyes. A tiny sob escaped. Jaime could not find the courage to climb past her mother’s body. Instead, she crawled across the seat, struggled with the lock, finally got the rear door open, and slid into the rain and wind. She’d managed the back door with the leverage kneeling on the seat had given her, but now she yanked and pulled at the lift-up handle of the driver’s door, but she could not open it. She turned to face the two men who walked toward her.
***
Rain pouring from an angry sky made the narrow road slick and treacherous. Leon Cavanaugh leaned forward, swiped at the fogged windshield and slowed to a crawl through the sharp turn. As he rounded the curve, a flash of lightning revealed the scene ahead. “Judas Priest!” His hasty application of the brake sent the truck and the trailer behind it fishtailing wildly back and forth across the slick pavement.
The swerving motion of the truck whipped his passenger’s sleeping form forward and slammed him sideways into the door before the seatbelt jerked him roughly back against the seat. “What the…”
Leon ignored Solomon’s sleepy protest and continued fighting the violently jerking wheel. He managed to bring them out of the skid just in time to catch a brief glimpse of two men, both carrying guns, before they leaped into their cars and sped away.
The nefarious purpose of those weapons was obvious in the spotlight of the truck’s high beams. Shattered glass sparkled like diamonds on the hood of the remaining car. The bullet holes peppered across the blue exterior made it appear to have been painted with black polka dots. Ominous crimson splatters turned to pink then faded from the remaining glass of the car’s windows in the deluge that continued to fall from the sky.
Solomon and Leon stared in frozen shock. They let out mutual gasps of surprise and outrage when the rear door opened and a tiny survivor slid out.
Solomon turned to Leon. “She is just a baby. We have to help.”
“Yeah, and after what she’s just been through, look who’s here to help,” Leon drawled as he climbed from the truck. God only knows what further trauma the sight of the two staring attractions of Cavanaugh’s Oddities and Wonders coming out of the night is going to cause her. Shrugging his shoulders and sighing in resignation, Leon allowed Solomon to walk ahead.
Solomon had a growth disorder that left him midget sized. Despite the humped left shoulder and his awkward shuffle-clump walk, Leon hoped “Cavanaugh’s Midget Hunchback”—as Solomon was billed in the carnival—would be less threatening to the child than “Cavanaugh’s Frankenstein.”
Slouching, Leon tried to pull his nearly seven feet, three-hundred-fifty-pounds of bulging muscle into something less intimidating. He pulled up the collar of his coat and tugged down the brim of his hat. Not because of the rain, but to hide malformed skull and facial bones, the misshapen lumps and bumps that made him—as one reporter writing about Cavanaugh’s Oddities and Wonders had said—look like the cast aside mistake of a modern day sculptor gone mad.
As they neared the destroyed car, the little girl turned to face them. Tears brimmed in her eyes and spilled down her face. Her eyes met his, but Leon saw none of the fear he expected, only a plea for his aid.
A groan from within the car had her spinning, jerking at the door handle. Leon gentled her fingers from the wet, slick steel, lifted her, and placed her in Solomon’s waiting arms. He took a deep breath and opened the car door. The woman was dead, and one look at the man, at the bubbling, sucking wounds in his chest told Leon it was hopeless. Still, he removed his jacket and leaned in to cover him.
The man jerked violently in reaction to his appearance in the car, groaned, then winced at the pain the effort caused him. Leon brushed his hand lightly against his shoulder. “It’s all right, we have your little girl safe. Now we’re going to help you.”
“Too late for me. Must hide Jaime! Please…hide Jaime! Paul Randolph…Weston Corp…oration…will help. Tell him…James Weston said…sandbag.” Pink foam bubbled from the man’s lips, the gray tint of his skin darkening, spreading with each word, each struggling breath.
“Don’t try to talk. We’ll get your daughter to this Paul.”
“No! Must hide…Jaime…protect…hide Jaime!”
“Okay, I promise.” Leon made the pledge knowing he could speak for Solomon. He wasn’t sure where the urge to give this man reassurance and peace came from. After all, he wasn’t carny; he was an townie, a mark. Nevertheless, for some reason he felt compelled to continue, “We’re with a carnival. We’ll keep her with us, okay? I promise she’ll be safe. No one will think of looking for her at the carnival. Besides, we protect our own. We’ll take good care of her.”
The mention of the carnival had James Weston’s pain filled eyes clearing briefly, widening with the realization that the face leaning over him was no pain-induced illusion. Leon’s eyes filled with promises, with the strength and determination to keep those promises, locked onto those of the dying man and held until fear settled into peace on his face.
James managed to lift the hand in his lap and spread shaking fingers. “Take ring to Paul. Tell Jaime, daddy lov….”
With a final crack of thunder, with James Weston’s final rattle of breath, the rain gentled into little more than a drizzling mist as if the fury of the storm had died with him.