The Devil's Country [Kindle in Motion] Read online

  I didn’t reply.

  “I’d advise against trying to help her,” he said.

  I looked toward the front door.

  “But if you want to anyway,” he said, “I’ll keep your beer cold.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I stuck a cocktail napkin in the paperback. “Whatever you do, don’t lose my place.”

  Jimmy nodded.

  On the TV, the thunderstorms were almost to town.

  I strode to the front exit and stepped outside onto Main Street, the only commercial avenue in town, ten or twelve blocks long.

  It was late in the afternoon, the middle of June, but the sky was black, thunderclouds rolling in from the west. Dust and litter blew down the street, chased by a cool wind that smelled like ozone and sage.

  Piedra Springs was tiny, a population of maybe five thousand if you counted dogs and cats. At the moment, nobody was on the street, not people or animals.

  The county courthouse and bus station were at one end of Main Street, Jimmy and Dale’s at the other, across from an old motor hotel built during the Eisenhower administration. The Comanche Inn, where I’d checked in about an hour before.

  A car door slammed not far away.

  The automobiles on the street appeared empty, so I headed to the narrow parking lot between the bar and the local feed store.

  Nothing in the parking area except three vehicles and a battered pay phone mounted to the wall of the bar.

  The first vehicle was a twenty-year-old Chevy pickup with no one inside.

  It was parked next to a newer version of itself, a late-model extended-cab Chevrolet, gray with tinted windows.

  The third vehicle was a battered Ford van across the lot from the two pickups. The van had a Confederate flag bumper sticker.

  Rain began to fall, a few drops here and there. A thin mist of steam rose from the surface of the parking lot, cold water on hot asphalt.

  The van’s rear lights winked on as the engine chugged to life and exhaust spooled from the muffler.

  The vehicle backed out of its spot and started toward Main Street.

  Nothing was stopping its departure but me, standing in the middle of the parking lot, blocking the way.

  The dash lights gave Suzy and her date an eerie glow, almost purple.

  Mr. Swastika stared at me, a confused look on his face, no doubt thinking something along the lines of, What is this idiot doing? Am I going to have to give him a beat down right here in the parking lot?

  Suzy stared at me, too, her eyes soft, a sad little smile on her face. After a moment, she mouthed something to me, what looked like, I’m OK. Thank you.

  The wind grew louder, and I realized I was in Piedra Springs, a town I’d never been to before, and not in a police station back in Dallas, weeping over the news that my wife and children had been murdered.

  I stepped aside.

  You can’t save everybody. If Suzy wanted to bump uglies with a Charles Manson wannabe, who was I to stop her?

  The van drove past.

  Mr. Swastika nodded once, a simple acknowledgment that I had let him pass. He wasn’t offering thanks, but he wasn’t gloating, either, and I wondered if he realized how close he’d come to tumbling down into the black canyon at the center of my being.

  Suzy waved as the van turned onto Main Street and headed west.

  I watched the taillights get smaller as thunder cracked and the rain fell harder.

  That’s when the woman appeared.

  She must have been crouched by the front of the older pickup, out of sight.

  She was otherworldly, like a time traveler from 150 years before. Her hair was in a bun. The dress she wore looked like something from Little House on the Prairie, a flowing skirt that reached her ankles, the sleeves covering her wrists. The material was ripped and soiled.

  “Please help me,” she said. “They’re going to kill us if you don’t.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The woman in the old-timey dress moved away from the old Chevy, and I saw two figures behind her, a boy in his early teens and a girl a few years younger. The boy held one arm like it hurt.

  The wind blew harder, whipping our clothes.

  “What happened?” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “We escaped.” The woman’s voice was shrill. “They’re coming after us.”

  “Who’s coming after you?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “Aren’t you the one we’re supposed to meet?” she asked. “I tried to call.”

  “I’m not supposed to be meeting anybody, ma’am.” I paused. “Take a deep breath, and tell me what’s going on.”

  She stared at me, mouth agape, an astonished look on her face.

  The boy spoke for the first time. “The men. That’s who’s after us.”

  Blood coated his arm. He trembled, teeth chattering.

  “Have you been shot?” I said.

  The woman and the boy stared at me despondently, faces weary. This was the end of the line for them, and for whatever reason, I was their last hope.

  The girl moved to the woman’s side, clasped her arm.

  She was about ten, yet somehow already well on her way to being a stunningly beautiful young woman. Creamy skin, high cheekbones, long limbs hidden by a dress as shapeless as the woman’s. In a few years she could be a model or an actress, gracing the covers of magazines.

  If she got out of this parking lot.

  I pointed to the bar. “Let’s go inside and call the police.”

  Terror filled the woman’s eyes. She shook her head. “No-no-no.”

  “I’ll stay with you until—”

  Around the front corner of the bar, two figures appeared. They wore jeans and work shirts that were of a modern design, hats pulled low against the rain. The hats were distinctive, crowns creased and sloped Tom Mix–style, high in the back, low in the front.

  The cowboys from the bar, the ones playing darts at the front.

  They approached us, stopping a few feet away, and I realized I’d made an error in judgment when I first saw them.

  They weren’t a couple of guys playing darts after a hard day punching cows. They were hired muscle, thugs. The way they carried themselves and stood apart from each other—not too close, not too far, either, hands loose by their sides.

  The one who appeared to be the leader had a thick mustache that grew down either side of his chin.

  He said, “We’re here, Molly. Everything is OK.”

  The woman looked at the men and then back at me, an expression of abject horror on her face.

  “Let’s be quick about it,” the man with the mustache said. “Your boy needs a doctor.”

  “Don’t let them take us.” The woman held out a hand in my direction. “Please.”

  I stood between her and the cowboys, looking back and forth between the two groups.

  Lightning jagged across the sky, followed almost instantly by a thunderclap.

  “C’mon, Molly.” The man with the mustache began to ease around my side. “It’s time to go.”

  “No.” Molly pressed her back against the old Chevy, clutching the children. “Stay away from me.”

  The man looked at his partner. Some sort of wordless communication passed between the two. The partner began to flank out on my other side.

  Another crack of thunder. Then the rain slackened and the sky took on a greenish tint, the quiet before the real storm began.

  “She doesn’t want to go with you,” I said, watching them take their positions. “You boys need to walk away before you get hurt.”

  The partner laughed, shook his head slowly.

  The man w
ith the mustache said, “You’re not involved in any of this. You should keep it that way.”

  “They’re going to kill us,” Molly said. “Please help.”

  Her children whimpered behind her.

  I was unarmed except for a folding knife in my waistband.

  On the ground at my feet lay a piece of brick and a broken broom handle, the latter maybe a yard long, one end jagged and sharp.

  The two men had stopped about six feet away from me, which was a mistake.

  I couldn’t fault them, however. They were hoods, not professionals.

  There is a rule that every cop knows.

  The Thirty Foot Rule. Ten yards, the length needed for a first down.

  If you were fewer than thirty feet from an adversary, a determined attacker could cross that space in a matter of a second or two, while you were still clearing your gun from its holster. I had no idea if these guys were armed, but only six feet away, it wouldn’t matter.

  I picked up the broom handle.

  From the direction of the courthouse came the wail of a civil defense siren, a tornado warning.

  Molly began to cry. The children did as well.

  There’s another rule that’s specific to the Texas Rangers, hard-edged people who are used to working alone, a rule they don’t talk about much but has been used to save many a Ranger’s life.

  If you think the situation is about to get nasty, attack first.

  The partner glanced toward the street. Then he reached under his shirt as the man with the mustache said, “Put the stick down and ge—”

  I took a quick step toward the partner and smashed the broom handle across his nose.

  The gun that was barely in his grasp dropped to the ground. He grunted, reached for his face, and I shoved the jagged end of the broom handle into a spot right above his navel. The wood punctured his flesh, penetrating maybe a half inch into the man’s abdominal muscles. No permanent damage, just a lot of pain and blood.

  He fell backward, landing on his ass with a thud.

  The man with the mustache swore, reached under his shirt.

  I charged and met him as he brought up a pistol. Got one hand on the gun, twisted, felt something like a finger bone crack. Not mine, fortunately.

  He screamed.

  I kept pushing, ramming him against the exterior wall of the bar.

  The pistol clattered to the asphalt.

  He swung at me with his uninjured hand. Missed.

  I kneed his groin.

  He doubled over.

  I grabbed his throat and slammed his head against the brick wall.

  He fell to the ground, all the fight gone out of him like a switch had been thrown.

  From a long way off came what sounded like a freight train at top speed, a high, steady howl. The tornado was coming.

  Adrenaline from the fight made my limbs shaky. The rain had almost stopped, but the wind was furious.

  I looked around for the woman and her children, but they were nowhere to be seen. They must have run off while I’d been dealing with the two cowboys.

  I picked up the guns and tossed them on the roof of the bar.

  The woman and her offspring could have escaped one of two ways—the alley or the street.

  I jogged to the street, looked in both directions, debating which way to go. There were no people visible. Everything was shut up tight against the storm.

  A swirling mass of clouds covered the western horizon. Beneath the mass, a funnel appeared.

  I ran back into the bar.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jimmy stood just inside the front door when I entered.

  The place was empty.

  “What happened out there?” he said.

  On the TV by the bar, big red letters flashed across the screen: seek cover! a tornado has touched down west of piedra springs.

  “Do you have a storm cellar?”

  Jimmy didn’t answer. He looked at the television and then at me. He seemed to be having a hard time processing what was going on.

  A lot of people in tornado country are like those who live where hurricanes are prevalent. They either talk of riding out the storm or subscribe to the it’ll-never-happen-to-me theory. They’re fearless until the moment Mother Nature’s fury actually arrives. Then they are paralyzed.

  “We need to get somewhere safe,” I said. “This is the real deal.”

  “The storeroom.” He pointed behind the bar. “That’s the best place.”

  Jimmy and Dale’s was constructed from cinder blocks and had very few windows. A pretty good design for surviving tornadoes, if the storm didn’t spawn a biggie like an F-5, a monster cyclone with a base that could reach a half mile wide.

  I propped open the front door with a chair. This would equalize the pressure between inside and out, keep what windows there were from imploding and the roof from crashing down. In theory, anyway.

  I jogged to the bar, grabbed my book, and followed Jimmy into the storeroom, a twenty-by-twenty room filled with shrapnel. Hundreds of liquor bottles. Cases and cases of beer.

  Jimmy stared at all the glass. “What should we do?”

  Two sofas were against one wall. They were identical, old and worn, armless, wide enough to hold three sitting people or one lying down.

  “Get on the floor.”

  I scooted one of the sofas away from the wall.

  Jimmy did as instructed, lying on his stomach.

  I tilted the sofa on top of the man, forming a barrier over him about the size and shape of a coffin. Then I flipped the second sofa and crawled underneath. Not perfect but better than nothing.

  Outside, the freight-train sound had gotten louder. The end of the world.

  Which put me in mind of a day nine months before. The end of another world, the day my family was taken from me. Through force of will, I closed the door on that day and chose another.

  Years before that, when we were young and happy and life held the promise of a thousand cloudless days, I held her in my arms.

  My wife, the reason for everything. Alpha and omega. The beginning and the end of my existence.

  We were two-stepping to a Bob Wills song in a dance hall outside of Fort Worth. Sawdust on a wood floor, the twang of a steel guitar, Lone Star and Shiner Bock in ice-filled tubs.

  “What are you thinking about?” She squeezed my hand.

  I didn’t answer. A lot was on my mind. Impending fatherhood will do that to a man.

  “It’ll be OK,” she said. “People have been having babies for a long time now.”

  She had eyes the color of jade and skin that smelled like lavender soap. In the dim light, those eyes twinkled, mischievous and innocent in the same moment.

  When she looked at me like that, I felt captivated and beguiled, entranced. Her gaze left me adrift in a sea of warmth and grace, the core of who she was.

  “I want it all to be perfect,” I said.

  “Nothing’s ever perfect, Arlo.” She rubbed her cheek against mine. “But we’ll make it work, you and me. And whoever this turns out to be.” She smiled down between us at the life we’d made. “We should start thinking of names.”

  I was drawing a blank. That’s what she did to me. I held her close. “I love you.”

  The music stopped. The crowd clapped, called for another song.

  She kissed me. “I love you, too, Arlo.”

  The air around me smelled like leather and stale beer.

  Everything was dark. I couldn’t see.

  Then, light and a voice.

  “You OK?” Jimmy stood over me, holding a flashlight.

  We were in the
storeroom of his bar. He’d moved the sofa off me.

  The dance with my wife had been a decade ago, seven months before our first child had been born. Our son.

  “What happened?” I blinked.

  “Storm passed. We made it.”

  I stood. My legs were shaky.

  “You OK?” He aimed the light at my face. “Looks like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

  Perceptive, that Jimmy.

  I left the storeroom.

  The bar was empty and dark, the front door still propped open.

  Jimmy followed me outside.

  Sunlight streamed through the rapidly diminishing cloud cover.

  The power appeared to be off for the whole town, and debris and tree limbs littered Main Street, but all of the buildings remained intact. There were no collapsed walls or broken windows. The cars that had been parked along the curb were still there, too, dotted with leaves and trash.

  I strode to the side of the building, the area between the bar and the feed store.

  The parking lot was empty.

  The two Chevy pickups—one old, one new—were gone, as were the two injured cowboys.

  I jogged to the rear of the parking area, looked down the alley in either direction.

  No living thing was visible. There was nothing to see at all except dumpsters and the backs of buildings.

  “What are you doing?” Jimmy stood at the edge of the lot by the street.

  I stared up at the sky but didn’t reply.

  Jimmy pulled out a phone, tapped on the screen. “Weather Channel says it was a small one. Looks to me like it zipped straight down Main Street. Didn’t hit nothing.” He grinned. “We just rode that sucker out.”

  I walked back to the front of the bar.