“ You are afraid that they will wind up like Mr. Donovan and his family?”
“ Yes.”
“ I will do as you ask.” Singh took the money.
“ Thank you, Mr. Singh.”
“ Good luck, Rick.” in their relationship, both professional and personal, it was the first time he had addressed him by his first name. “Oh, yes, this might be helping.” Singh reached back to the shelf under the register. “You might be needing an extra magazine.”
Rick took it and slipped it into the bag, then he stuck his hand out and Jaspinder Singh shook it.
“ If you don’t hear from me by this evening, get them out of town tomorrow.” Then he turned and opened the door, setting off the three golden bells as he left.
On his way back to the car, Rick cleared his mind of everything, but the moment. The sun was rising, changing from orange to yellow, and brightening the day. The soft breeze carrying the scent of the sea came in from the ocean and the gentle sound of lapping waves competed with the occasional passing car. Any other time he would have taken in the air and enjoyed the morning to its fullest, but today he tried to clear even the sunrise and ocean air from his mind.
And, as he forced everything out, he felt one thought sticking and he concentrated on it till it screamed and he knew where the big man was. He had come to Tampico to humiliate him one last time, before sticking in the knife, and the best place to find him was at home. The man with the gravel voice was most likely sitting in his living room, waiting to jump him as soon as he walked in the front door.
But before confronting the killer, he wanted to go up to Prospector’s Donkey Road and make sure J.P. was okay.
Five minutes later, he turned from Mountain Sea onto the dirt track, slowing the car when he left the pavement. He drove up and parked behind one of the two police cars and felt a pang in his chest when he saw they were both empty. There was no sign of the deputies or of J.P. He feared the worst.
With the forty-five auto in hand, he got out of Judy’s new SUV and started toward the path. He clicked the safety off and kept his finger on the trigger. He couldn’t help feeling like he was walking into an ambush.
He heard a rustling in the brush off to his left and stopped, pointing the gun in the general direction of the sound.
“ J.P., Lincoln, Jesse!” he called out. The rustling stopped. “It’s Rick Gordon.” He waited for a long twenty seconds and getting no answer, continued on toward Lover’s Hideaway.
A low growl stopped him in his tracks. He crouched low and waited. There was something out there. His mind raced back to the day Judy had been chased by the bear and how J.P. had insisted that he’d fired the revolver at the Ghost Dog, not a bear.
He waited a few more seconds and hearing no further sound, got up and continued. Then he tripped over something. He threw his hands out in front of himself to break his fall. He hit hard, twisting his arm, spraining his wrist and losing the pistol.
“ Damn!” He turned and started to get up and came face to face with Lincoln Hewett’s bloody head. “Shit!” He scrambled back.
The horrible head, eyes screaming wide, stared into the sky with an unfathomable fear frozen onto its face, daring Rick to go further, but he no choice, he had to know what had happened to J.P.
He looked around for the gun, trying not to look at Lincoln’s staring eyes. He couldn’t find it. He stepped back and saw why. It was lying next to the dead deputy’s head, with blood on the grip. When he dropped the gun it must have landed on the head and bounced off. He grit his teeth, picked it up, wiped the blood off on his Levi’s.
He was stepping around the head when he heard the low growl. Something was on the path behind him. He turned and pointed the gun down the path, but there was nothing there except silence.
He turned back toward Lover’s Hideaway, moving as quickly as possible, rapid heartbeat, tense nerves and clammy skin betraying his fear. When he plunged into the clearing, his horror at the bloody sight sent him reeling backwards and he had to fight to keep from running away.
He turned away from Lincoln’s headless body. He didn’t need to inspect it to know he had been maimed and killed by a big animal. He picked up a khaki shirt and dropped it. He saw Jesse Terrenova’s automatic and picked it up. It was empty. He tossed it aside, and with pain in his heart, he saw J.P.’s Levi’s and the striped shirt that he’d been wearing yesterday.
He sank to his knees.
“ Not J.P., too,” he cried. Grief overcame him. He loved that boy. It was like his own son had been ripped from his breast by starving wolves. He had been dealt deep wounds, piled on, one after another until now he began to believe what the killer had said in his note.
He was damned.
His friends and lovers were being torn from him in the most brutal of ways and he was unable to stop it. Now he was going to have to face Judy and tell her that her son was dead. He didn’t know if he could do it.
He felt eyes on him.
He looked up through his tears and saw what could only be both J.P.’s Ghost Dog and Ann’s beautiful, horrible animal. It was a long way from Australia. The animal stared at him, unmoving, and Rick took the time to study it.
The beautiful black coat that Ann had told him about was now matted with blood. Rick assumed that the deputy had gotten off some good shots. The beast was wounded, but still very much a threat.
Rick tightened his grip on the forty-five as the animal stepped into the clearing and lowered itself, ears back, onto its haunches, like it was going to leap. He raised the gun and started firing. He missed, but the animal turned and fled, vanishing in a hail of bullets pinging in the earth behind it and slapping into the bushes and trees over its shoulders.
Rick kept firing into the brush until the gun was empty, hoping that he might have gotten in a lucky hit, then he jammed the hot gun back in his pants and scooted over to where Lincoln’s headless body lay and tore the thirty-eight police special from its holster. It wouldn’t do the damage of a forty-five, but it could kill just as deadly.
He remained still and listened for the animal’s deep breathing and, hearing nothing, he made his way to the path. He wanted to get back to the car. He moved swiftly with the thirty-eight clutched tightly in his right hand. If he fell again, he was determined not to lose the gun.
Halfway back to the car, he heard a heart stopping roar coming from the direction of the clearing. He heard the beast as it started down the path after him. He stopped, crouched and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long, within what seemed fractions of a second the beast was in sight charging down the path. Rick started firing, hitting the animal several times, not only stopping it but forcing it to turn and flee again. And Rick fled also, continuing his dash toward the car.
Running full tilt with not far to go, he heard the beast crashing through the brush, parallel to him and overtaking him. He fired two rapid shots, without slowing, in the direction of the crashing sounds. They were panic shots, serving only to quicken his already frantic pace, but the beast beat him to the cars. When he reached the end of the path, it was standing by the Montero, its black coat covered in wet blood and it was foaming at the mouth.
It roared into the morning, then started for him.
Rick fired on the move, but the hammer fell on an empty cylinder. The weapon was empty. He dashed for one of the police cruisers, grabbed the door, dove in and slammed it shut.
The beast pounced, smashing its head into the safety glass of the passenger window. The glass cracked into hundreds of small bloody pieces, held together by only the safety film, but it held. The black beast bounced off and readied itself for another charge. Rick knew the glass wouldn’t stop it a second time.