Final Stand Read online

  “How long is this going to take?” She wrestled with the gloves as she returned to the table. Spotting the jar of blood-swollen insects floating in what she guessed was alcohol, she grimaced.

  “Not very, but you can forget about her traveling tonight. We’ll see how she is in the morning.”

  Not “we,” she amended silently. By morning, she planned to be hundreds of miles from here. And the first thing she would be doing was looking for a change of vehicles.

  Gray closed the lid on the container and deposited it and the tweezers he’d been using in the sink. When he returned he had another injection prepared.

  “What’s that?” Anna asked, eyeing the yellowish liquid.

  “Sodium Pentothal. Lidocaine would probably do, but she’s been through a lot. Better to go with the general anesthetic.”

  Once he appeared satisfied that the drug had taken effect, he went to work. He’d completed several neat sutures before asking, “So what do you do?”

  He didn’t look up, and since they had only the examination table between them, Anna was glad. “I’m…between jobs.”

  “Good.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “This way you won’t have to feel guilty in the morning for being groggy on the job. Healing, whether it’s man or beast, requires time.”

  No doubt, but she took from his sudden chattiness that he was softening her up, fishing for more information. She had no intention of taking the bait. She did, however, approve of how he worked, with speed and efficiency.

  “Holding up okay?” he asked midway through.

  “Well enough.” And for good reason—she was trying not to look. The last time Anna had been in an emergency room, it was to hold the hand of a kid getting her forehead sewn together. Blood had never bothered her before, but, maybe because the patient was a kid, the room had spun like a carousel gone out of control, almost costing her what remained of a six-hour-old lunch. Somehow this poor pooch brought that all back.

  “I’m impressed. Would have bet twenty you’d be hanging over the edge of the sink by now.”

  As she tried to ignore what her peripheral vision was picking up, she countered, “Does that mean I get a discount?”

  “It means I’m grateful that the sight of a half-gutted creature doesn’t make you faint…or worse.”

  “Then maybe skipping that grilled chicken salad was my one smart move today.”

  The gaze he shot her from under stark eyebrows, though brief, was sweeping and all-encompassing. His eyes, she realized, were neither aquamarine blue nor silver, but the color of the coldest January skies.

  “Don’t tell me you diet.” When she failed to respond, he murmured, “Ah, the profundity of the uncommunicative woman. But you’re right, I’ve ventured out of line again.”

  He didn’t speak after that, working with such focus Anna almost believed he forgot about her. After knotting the last stitch, he snipped the end, then swabbed the area with what she suspected was another antiseptic. Then he prepared another injection.

  “Penicillin,” he explained. “You’ll want to pay special attention to keeping the sutures dry and the area clean. She also needs as quiet an environment as possible. Don’t let her chase any squirrels or rabbits.” He administered the injection. “Otherwise, the stitches can be removed in about a week.”

  Anna shook her head, not at all happy with what she was hearing again. “You don’t really expect me to take her in a moving van?”

  “Not tonight, no…at least not for a long trip. The motion is liable to upset her stomach more than the wound. How much farther do you have to go?”

  She countered with, “What would it cost for you to nurse her back to health and see that she finds a good home?”

  He made a face. “Honey, you could tie a hundred-dollar bill to this mutt’s tail and there wouldn’t be any takers.”

  Talk about blunt! She took a moment to consider the listless dog and tried to see her from the perspective of a child. “She’d be a cute pet once she was cleaned up.”

  “Then you’d better head in a direction where they’ve had rain in the last four months because no one around here has the patience or funds to find out.”

  It wasn’t his sarcasm that got to her—she’d heard far worse—but the thought of being responsible for another life right now, even if it was a stray dog that no one else on the planet gave a spit about. “Why did you bother sewing her up then? I thought vets were supposed to help animals.”

  “I did,” Gray intoned, pointing toward the door. “Do you know how often people dump their problems on me? Almost every week I find something or other in one of the outside kennels, or litters left by the front door. Occasionally some get out of their boxes and end up on the street. Are you catching my drift? And not just dogs, it’s cats, rabbits—”

  “What if I pay for her to be spayed?” she asked, not wanting to hear any more.

  “She’s too weak for that. Have your family vet do it in the next month or two.”

  “I don’t have a—Why are you being difficult about this?” Anna used her forearm to wipe the moisture from her brow. It wasn’t just her agitated state that was getting to her, the man must shut down the air-conditioning when he locked up every night; it was as hot and steamy as a sauna in here. “I’ve never been on that highway before today, and you said yourself that you didn’t recognize me.”

  “I also don’t believe a woman traveling alone at this hour would pull over and pick up a strange dog out of a ravine. Animals don’t like to be touched when they’re hurting, especially not by strangers in the middle of the night.”

  “There! Testimony to my personality. If the dog trusts me, why can’t you?”

  The look he shot her with those frosty eyes had her closing her own.

  “Fine. Whatever. The fact remains that I have to leave, so if you’ll help me get her back in the van, I’ll pay you.”

  “And I told you that’s risky.”

  “Believe me, that’s the least of my problems.”

  He started to reply, but another sound, that of the back door opening, stopped him.

  “Slaughter! You in there?”

  3

  The sharp query yielded a strange reaction in the doctor, an odd stillness and deeper resentment. If that was possible, Anna thought, not exactly happy with the idea of company herself.

  “Yeah.” After the curt reply, Gray added to her, “You have a complaint to make? Here’s your chance. That’s your so-called ‘cavalry.’”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The Law.”

  Before she could recover from that jarring announcement, their visitor appeared in the doorway.

  “Well, well.” The man in the summer blues of Bitters’s police department leaned back against the doorjamb, one hand on his hip, the other on the gun strapped to his belt. A slow grin spread across his wide mouth. “What do we have here?”

  “Take a wild guess,” Gray replied. “Better yet, tell me what you want since I know better than to think it was concern for my safety that brings you over.”

  The sarcasm only made the cop grow more cheerful. He was a ripcord-lean man, surprisingly fair-skinned for someone in this part of the country, yet the muscles on his arms suggested rawhide toughness. Contrasting that were sunny blue eyes as curious and mischievous as a boy’s, framed by hair the color of chili powder and just long enough to curl with its own hint of devilry. He was, she decided, Shakespeare’s Puck grown up. Then his gaze moved over her with the laconic speed of cooled molasses and she knew to abandon the amusing analogies. This man hadn’t been a harmless charmer for decades—maybe not ever.

  “Did you happen to hear the sirens earlier?” he asked them.

  Gray remained focused on the dog, but allowed, “You know Pike’s not one to be a quiet hero. He sounds those alarms on the truck driving through town after a wash.”

  “Well, this was no polishing party. Somebody torched Assembly of Souls Church.”<
br />
  “Arson…you’re sure?”

  “What else would you make of a bonfire built on the front steps? Fortunately, Pike was having a smoke outside the station and spotted the glow. They caught it fairly early on. Only lost the porch. Well, maybe the front wall, too.”

  Frowning, Gray carried his instruments to the sterilizing container. “Bitters as the center of hate in Sutton County…that’ll be an interesting sell.”

  “Racism is nothing to joke about.”

  “What racism? There isn’t one black person in twenty miles, and the Mexicans the mayor and half of your business owners have working in their homes and at their ranches are Catholic. They don’t care about not being welcome at Assembly of Souls. They’re also making more money here in a month than all year at home. Racism…give me a break.”

  Instead of answering, Elias switched his gaze back to Anna. “I noticed your Texas plates, but I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  Wishing she could be anywhere but here, Anna was grateful that at least she was wearing surgical gloves and didn’t have to shake hands. “Diaz. Anna Diaz.”

  “I’m Frank Elias.”

  “Congratulations, Frank,” Gray drawled. “You managed to resist adding your title. He’s the chief,” he explained to her. “Meaning that if there’s any racism to be exercised around here, he claims first rights.”

  Elias’s glance was cutting, but he let the dig pass.

  Anna remained silent, too, preferring to wait for the point to all of this.

  “That your dog?” the lawman finally asked.

  She shook her head.

  “What did I do, Slaughter, interrupt a hot date? Just when I thought you’d never get back into circulation. But it’s a helluva time to try to impress a lady with your professional skills.”

  What on earth was going on? Anna thought, her unease growing.

  Gray tossed the bloody bandages into the marked receptacle. “Get to the point, or better yet, get out before I’m tempted to assume you’re here to get something tucked and snipped yourself.”

  Sensing that whatever was between them went deeper than a simple misunderstanding, Anna decided she wanted no part of it. “Dr. Slaughter kindly helped out after I happened across this injured dog up the road,” she interjected in the hopes of keeping things from getting uglier.

  “Whereabouts?”

  She glanced around remembering the layout of the building in conjunction to the street and then pointed east. “That way.”

  “You’re sure? How far?”

  “Maybe a mile.”

  To her surprise, the two men exchanged glances. After a second, Gray merely shrugged.

  “Get as far as the church?” Chief Elias asked.

  “No, it was mostly woods where I stopped.”

  “The church isn’t far beyond the city limits sign. Pretty hard to miss.”

  “Then apparently I didn’t get there.”

  “Visiting kin in the area?”

  “No.”

  He waited for her to continue. She didn’t.

  “Just passing through?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not exactly safe times for a woman to be driving alone, particularly at this hour.”

  The heat Anna was trying to ignore manifested into a trickle of sweat streaking down her back. It was no less uncomfortable than the droplets condensing between her breasts, but she did her best to keep her tone and expression calm. “Probably not.”

  “So where are you heading?”

  “East.”

  “Did you happen to see any other vehicles?”

  “No…wait. Yes. Someone came up behind me once I started back to town. And come to think of it, there was a bright glow in the sky.” Preoccupied with her own problems, she hadn’t connected the two images until he’d brought it to her attention.

  “A bright glow like…streetlights or another vehicle?”

  “I honestly didn’t give it much thought. I was concerned with the dog.”

  “Right.” Frank nodded, all agreeableness. “Tell me what you can about the vehicle.”

  “There’s not much. It stayed behind me all the way back to town. I kept hoping it would pass me—”

  “Why?”

  “For exactly the reasons you mentioned. Also, I didn’t want to be forced to drive in a way that might cause the dog more pain.”

  “This dog that you’ve never seen before tonight?”

  Gray smirked. “You think I’m a hard case,” he told her, “when he’s bored, he plucks the legs off crickets and grasshoppers for entertainment.”

  “Not everybody sees sticking your hand up a cow’s butt as a religious experience,” Elias replied, crossing his arms over his chest. To Anna he added, “You were saying?”

  She shrugged. “It continued on by as I pulled in here. It was a white pickup truck.”

  “A pickup, wouldn’t you know it,” the chief drawled. “The one thing we have more of in Texas, aside from beautiful women and bullshit.”

  Once again she found herself losing ground to the day, to its demands and dangers, only to be provoked by Frank Elias’s snide tone. “I could say it was a Rolls, but that would be some of that bullshit that you insinuated.”

  The laughter vanished from Elias’s blue eyes. “How would you like to walk next door with me and try being cute over there?”

  “Calm down, Frank.” Shooting Anna a cautioning glance, Gray passed between them to get to the waste container. “It’s not her fault that you don’t have any clues, let alone suspects.”

  The chief rubbed his knuckles against his jutting jaw. “Who says I don’t? Maybe my numero uno suspect is staring me right in the face, eh, Ms. Diaz?”

  “I hope that’s your idea of a joke,” Gray said quietly.

  “Hey, I have every right to be suspicious, not to mention a little sore, when someone brings trouble to my town.”

  “You should suggest the chamber of commerce use that on a billboard,” Anna said, recognizing the man for what he was—a full-blown, narrow-minded redneck. “‘The town where the only trouble is the tourists.’”

  Frank straightened and assumed his initial pose. “Yeah, I think you’d better come with me.”

  Anna eyed the hand on the holster. “Are you arresting me?”

  “Did I say that? No, all I’m saying is that a change of environment will help you answer the rest of my questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “For one thing I’ll want to know where you can be reached should we need your testimony in the future.”

  “I don’t have a permanent address yet.”

  “You said you knew where you were heading.”

  God, Anna thought, this was getting worse by the minute. If only she’d kept her mouth shut. “Generally, not specifically. I’m in the process of relocating.”

  “Do you hear that, Slaughter?”

  Gray shrugged. “Most people see moving as a constitutional right.”

  “God bless the U.S.A. So, in that case,” the chief continued to Anna, “we’ll take down your statement, get some cellular-phone number or a relative’s address, whatever you have, and you’ll be back on your way in no time at all. Sound good?”

  Only if you were a fresh-hatched chick. She didn’t believe him and wouldn’t trust him until she had his office, this entire town, in her rearview mirror. But she was reassured by the “we” part. That must mean more staff would be at the station due to the fire. Reassured, she drew a stabilizing breath and, pulling off her gloves, said to Gray, “Doctor, it appears that I have to impose on your kindness a while longer.”

  4

  Moths executed jet-fighter maneuvers in the blinding floodlights outside the back of the clinic, but their erratic movements were nothing compared to what was happening behind Anna’s ribs. She wondered what she was heading into. The temptation to risk making a run for it couldn’t be entirely ignored.

  I’ve told so many lies, how many more
should I risk?

  “Whereabouts in Texas do you live?”

  Though spoken matter-of-factly, Anna knew there was nothing casual about the question, just as there was nothing innocent about the way Chief Elias maneuvered around her so that she was on his left. It was the opposite side of his gun.

  “I don’t live in Texas.”

  “That’s what the plates on your van indicate.”

  How close had he gotten to the vehicle? Not close enough to have looked inside, she assured herself, otherwise she would be cuffed by now. But she regretted not having taken the time to lock up the way she usually did. Gray Slaughter hadn’t given her the chance.

  “They’re Texas plates because I started having transmission trouble and traded in my old car before I ended up stranded,” she replied. It wasn’t the truth, but it was a logical explanation.

  “Smart girl. Mechanics always rip you off for that kind of work, and once a transmission is shot, you might as well ditch the vehicle. So where are you from?”

  Anna knew she had to give him something. “Louisiana.”

  “You don’t say? Huh. Still don’t hear an accent.”

  “I’ve been out West for several years.”

  He studied her profile, all of it, as they walked. “You an actress?”

  She focused on the building they were approaching and the single patrol car parked before it. “A failed one.”

  “I bet you’re just being modest.”

  The compliment would have been easier to stomach with less oil soaking it. “No, embarrassingly honest.”

  She could feel his curiosity intensifying, and tried to tolerate that by getting a better feel for her surroundings, what little there was. Not only was the town small, it was deserted. She’d missed the sign for the health-food store across the street next to the supermarket. Not surprisingly, there was a For Rent sign in the window. Next to that was a non-franchise hardware store.

  “Married? Involved?”

  “Not interested.”

  He grinned, exposing strong, square teeth. “Doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  No doubt he asked often, Anna thought gloomily, and with enough success to think women liked his brand of flirtation.