Devil in Texas(58)

He forced his feet forward.

To approach a mausoleum—with the intention of entering it—would have been spooky on any day of the year. On Halloween, the proposition was downright ghoulish. Cass's palms grew damp as he removed the trigger guards from his guns.

Suddenly, Vandy grew excited. The door was beginning to move; its rusted hinges squealed in protest. The eager coon galloped into the shaft of candlelight that pierced the cemetery's gloom. Scratching and wriggling, he squeezed his girth past the door.

Cass held his breath. He expected to hear Collie's muffled greeting.

Instead, the sound that reverberated through the ruddy interior was Vandy's growl.

"Quit playing around," a female voice snapped. "And hurry! We have preparations to make at the house."

Cass slowed his strides. His hands flexed instinctively over his holsters.

Within moments, Poppy pushed her way onto the lawn. She was dressed in a peculiar fashion: a black monk's robe with bell-shaped sleeves. Cass hiked an eyebrow. Why was she wearing a Halloween costume in a mausoleum? Why wasn't she at the hospital with Baron?

He halted a judicious 20 yards from the tomb's doorway. When she turned and saw him, she shrieked, making a great show of clutching her heart and fanning her face.

"Good heavens, Cass! You gave me such a fright!"

"Did I?" he countered in gravelly tones. He had no patience for her theatrics today, not after the whoppers she'd been telling Sid about Collie. Part of Cass wanted to believe she was prone to hysterics, that she'd merely leaped to some unflattering conclusions about an insolent young man, whom she considered backwards and crass.

Another part of him feared she had deliberately implicated Collie in Tito's murder.

"Where's Collie?" he demanded.

She raised her chin a notch. "Honestly. You don't have to bite my head off. He's inside."

"Doing what?"

"Helping me arrange the memorial flowers, of course."

Cass's eyes narrowed as he considered her response. He supposed it could be true. But then, why hadn't Collie greeted Vandy?

"Aren't you jumping the gun?" Warily, he began to close the distance between them. "Baron isn't dead yet."

She blew out her breath. "The flowers aren't for Baron; they're to commemorate the Day of the Dead—a church holiday."

Lightning spat above the angel on the roof. Undaunted, Poppy held her ground, blocking the door and toying with the emerald ring below her scarlet fingernails. The flickering glow that emanated from the mausoleum limned her head and shoulders in orange. For some reason, Cass was reminded of Jazi's vision: the witch with the bloody claws and flaming hair.

He pushed the absurdity aside.

"I wasn't aware you had kinfolk in Lampasas," he probed in dubious tones.

"I don't like to speak of him."

"Because he's dead?"

"Because he's a bastard."

Cass halted before her. Whether she'd meant her kinsman was illegitimate or unscrupulous wasn't clear. "So that's why there's no surname over the keystone?"

She nodded. An oddly intense glow had kindled in her stare.

Suddenly, the utter silence in the mausoleum registered on Cass's senses. If Collie was really arranging pots of marigolds behind that door, wouldn't he be grumbling to Vandy about the task? Wouldn't Cass hear scraping and rustling? Footsteps and coon snuffling?

"I'm glad we ran into each other," Poppy said, distracting him with her husky tone. "I'm glad we'll have this opportunity to put last night behind us." She pasted on a smile—one that looked a tad ghoulish beneath the color-leeching flash of sky fire. "I'd hate for Baron to get the wrong idea."

"Me, too."

"So it'll be our secret. Forever."

"Uh-huh." He was only half listening. In fact, he was trying to see past her shoulder into the tomb.

Maybe that's why he was so surprised when she sprang at him like a sex-starved alley cat. Their chests collided, and he oomphed, staggering. She threw her arms around his neck, and something sharp pricked his skin. He thought it must have been her ring, but he was too busy muttering oaths and disentangling himself from her headlock to give the matter much thought.

"Dammit, woman! Enough!" He shoved her aside.

"My sentiments exactly." A vicious little smile curved her lips. "Good-bye, Cass."

He crossed the lawn toward the tomb. Dizziness assailed him by the third step. With his fourth step, pinwheels of light were spinning in his brain. His heart was speeding. His lungs were wheezing. His mouth tasted like sand.

Against the backdrop of candlelight, a shadowy figure in a brown Stetson swam into focus. The silhouette shoved the tomb's door wider. Instinctively, Cass reached for a Colt, but his knees were buckling. The ground was speeding upward at an alarming rate.

He never felt the bone-jarring jolt of that collision. He was unconscious before he hit the dirt.





Chapter 20



Sadie woke with a start. Dark purple shadows were creeping across the bed. She was cold, and her heart was pounding harder than usual. For a moment, she wasn't sure why.

Then she realized she was clutching a pillow, not her lover. Cass had left her. Again!

Fighting off an inexplicable sense of dread, she threw back the quilt and turned up the gas lamp by the bed. According to the timepiece on the mantel, the hour was after 5 p.m. Masked revelers were probably prowling the streets, demanding candy and singing for soul cakes.

Turning her back on her battered reflection, she threw on a shirt and trousers. Since Wilma was two inches shorter—and enviably rounder in the hips—the Cajun had ordered Gator to haul Sadie's traveling trunk from the cave to the boudoir. That meant Sadie had mostly men's clothing to choose from. However, the wardrobe suited her. No lady walked the streets, looking like she'd brawled in a saloon. Even whores didn't show their faces in public after a beating, since damaged goods raised less money.

She returned to the vanity, where she encountered Wilma's ritual implements. Before Cass's arrival, the Mambo had insisted on chanting a healing spell for Sadie's eye and imploring Loa Eshu to protect her from evil. Sadie hadn't dared to protest, although she had cracked a few nervous jokes. Needless to say, Wilma hadn't considered them funny.

Confronted once more by the evidence of the Cajun's spooky side—a side which Sadie didn't understand, and wasn't sure she wanted to—she glanced over her shoulder like a guilty child. Satisfied the door was closed, she wrinkled her nose and gingerly pushed aside dried rosemary and peony root, guttered candles and etched bones, and a cotton poppet with red hair and a black eye. The doll looked alarmingly like her.

Remind me never to piss off Wilma.

At last feeling safe enough to reach for her brush, Sadie perched on the vanity stool and began working the snarls from her curls. She'd just about finished the process when she heard voices arguing in the hall.

"Thanks to some pranking kids and their ghost stories, the uncurried fool decided to play hero," Rex growled. "He rode off to a potential hostage situation. Without backup. Now no one knows where he is."

"If you didn't think Cass was ready to ride alone," Wilma retorted, "you shouldn't have made him a Ranger."

Sadie lowered her hair brush.

Cass is missing?

She stomped on boots, all the while straining her ears to hear the escalating argument.

"I pinned Cassidy to give him immunity in case he had to draw his gun," Rex said, "not so he could run half-cocked through the streets on a personal vendetta. You were supposed to keep him out of the brothel."