Рита Браун - Hotspur

A vision of twenty-one years ago was going through his mind. He wanted Nola.

Sister reached around and pulled out the .38 tucked in the small of her back. She fired a warning shot over her head.

Ken spurred on his horse.

Shaker, hearing the shot, knew it wasn’t ratshot. “Jesus,” he thought to himself. He told Betty and Jennifer to load up the hounds. He knew hounds would follow him, so he had to wait while they were hastily loaded. Then he was off.

Ken thought he could outride Sister, thought that because he was forty-eight and she was seventy-one he had the advantage. He should have known better. He’d ridden behind her for thirty years. She was tough as nails and always on fast horses.

He jumped into the sunken meadows and raced across, traces of rising mist all around him. He heard the two dogs behind him. Raleigh couldn’t have been more than twenty yards behind. Rooster was only a few paces behind the Doberman.

He crossed Soldier Road, got across the wildflower meadows just as Sister and Lafayette crossed Soldier Road.

Shaker and Hojo cleared the fence into the sunken meadows. He looked up ahead in the distance and saw Sister leveling her gun on Ken. She fired and missed.

“Christ,” he thought. “If she kills him she’ll go to jail even though he deserves it.” He laid his body low over Hojo, and the gelding knew just what to do. He put on the afterburners. They were over Soldier Road in no time.

Ken plunged into the wooded base of Hangman’s Ridge. There was enough cover that Sister couldn’t hit him. Raleigh and Rooster, however, were right behind him, giving tongue for all they were worth.

Ken cursed the fact that he didn’t have a gun. He’d shoot them and he’d shoot that goddamned old woman riding hard on his tail. The bitch. If she’d come to him quietly he would have paid her off generously. And killed her later, of course.

Sister and Lafayette pulled up at the base of Hangman’s Ridge for a moment, and she saw Shaker heading for her. She heard Raleigh and Rooster. She followed their voices. Like any good hunter she trusted her partners—in this case, one harrier, one Doberman, and one thoroughbred.

Warily she rode into the brush. She heard her dogs making a huge fuss and Ken cursing them. He was climbing. Well, it was faster than going around the ridge.

She pushed up the ridge. Shaker was now a third of a mile behind her.

While leading Melissa and Brandon home, Walter had heard Ken, then Sister, riding away. Now, hearing gunfire and a third set of hoofbeats, he urged the two actors to do their best and trot.

He nudged them toward Hangman’s Ridge.

Ken finally reached the top of the ridge, his horse blowing hard. He pushed on, heading to the hanging tree. The mists from below, rising, dissipating, wove in and out of the branches like silvery silk ribbons. He looked up. There sat Athena and Bitsy, an unnerving sight, especially since Athena held her wings fully outstretched, spooking his horse, who jumped sideways as Ken kicked him on.

Sister was over the ridge now, and Lafayette was gaining on Ken’s horse. Sister leveled her arm and fired. She hit Ken in the right shoulder. He didn’t make a sound but he bobbled in the saddle.

Lafayette drew even closer. She fired again, and this time hit him in the left shoulder. Blood seeped out of the back of his coat.

He had no grip left in his hands. Ken fell off the horse, his spurs digging up the earth as he hit hard.

His horse, grateful, stopped, sides heaving, covered in lather.

Athena kept her wings spread. She looked spectral.

Sister pulled up Lafayette to stand over Ken. “I have three bullets left. I will put one through your head.”

“I’ll tear his throat out.” Raleigh leapt on Ken.

“Off, Raleigh.”

The Doberman obeyed but sat by the bleeding man, ready to strike.

Shaker came up alongside. He dismounted, whipped off his belt, and tied Ken’s hands behind his back.

“Well done,” Shaker said. “Jesus, I thought you were going to kill him.”

“Day’s not over. I just might.” She stared down at Ken. “Why?”

He didn’t answer, so Shaker kicked him in the kidney. “Speak when a lady speaks to you.”

“I was going to lose everything.”

“But you already had lost everything.” Her face darkened.

He looked up at her through watery eyes.

“You lost your soul.” She slipped the gun back into her belt as Athena folded her wings.

Just then Walter, with an exhausted Melissa and Brandon, rode up by the wagon road.

Ken saw Melissa. His head fell to his chest as he sobbed.

CHAPTER 41

“The sordidness of it.” Alice Ramy stared at a tendril of poison ivy, flaming red, twining around a walnut tree.

Sister, Alice, and Tedi Bancroft sat on the bench in the hound graveyard. The three women had gravitated there as they walked together Sunday afternoon. They found themselves bound by time, by losses and loves, and finally by the profound shock of Ken Fawkes’s perfidy.

“You risked your life, Janie. I don’t know how to thank you. Edward and I can never truly thank you.”

“He didn’t have a gun. I was safe.” She grinned raffishly.

“He’d killed three people. He would have killed you if he could.” Alice noticed the long rays of the sun, the changing light from summer’s harshness to the soft, sweet light of winter.

“I don’t know if Sybil will ever thank me.”

“She will. Edward and I will get her through this. And the boys, she has to live for the boys now.”

“Poor girl . . .” Alice’s voice trailed off.

Alice put her arm around Tedi’s shoulders. “At least we know. That’s something.”

Tedi’s left hand fluttered to her face, the blue from Nola’s sapphire pulsating. “I loved her. She was like the light on my face, but”—she struggled against her emotions—“she was wrong. Nola’s capriciousness cost her life, Guy’s life, Ralph’s life, and her sister’s happiness. She didn’t deserve to die, but she was wrong, so very wrong.”

Sister quietly said, “Tedi, when you’re young and you have that kind of power, that power Nola had over men, maybe you just have to use it.”

“I feel so guilty.” Tedi choked up.

“Oh don’t, Tedi. Don’t.” Alice hugged her. “I don’t blame you. Those babies come out of the womb as who they are. We might help them or hurt them, but they’re formed. You didn’t make Nola the way she was. And maybe Sister’s right—when you have that kind of power, you use it.”

Tedi put her face in her hands. “If only I’d known!”

“Nobody knew except Ralph. And even he didn’t know all of it.” Sister leaned back on the bench. “I suppose we can be grateful that Ken confessed. We’d still be trying to put all the pieces together.”

“To think that he’d been having an affair with Nola for six months and none of us knew. I guess they were better actors than we realized.” Sister watched a small branch dip as a red-tailed hawk landed on it.

“What a fool.” Tedi spat out the words.

“Well, that was it, wasn’t it? She made fools of men? I don’t know why Nola did it. It’s one thing to exert your power, it’s another thing to hurt men.” Alice dropped her arm off Tedi’s shoulder and held her hand. “We’ll never really know what went on inside. I think at the end Guy knew. Maybe he sensed he’d never really have her. He was twenty-five. He was thinking about the future in a way he never had before. He wanted her to be part of it.”

“You warned him.” Tedi remembered Alice trying to steer Guy away from Nola.

“Children don’t listen.”

“Amen.” Tedi sighed, wiping away her tears with her free hand.