Ann Major - Cowboy at Midnight

“Who’s out there?” she cried.

The cicadas halted their serenade. A thousand eyes seemed to stare at her from the silent wall of dark trees.

Stark fear drained the blood from her face. She felt like a target.

With a muted cry, she raced back inside her living room with its dozens of velvet floral paintings and cozy, overstuffed furniture.

Slamming her door, she flipped on all her lights. Then she stared unseeingly at the sofa piled high with her recent purchases from a flea market—mirrored sunglasses, towel sets, children’s clothes and toys, all in need of sorting. Breathing heavily, she triple-bolted the door and sagged against it.

Maybe the moon hadn’t been a human skull floating above the house, but one thing was for sure—she’d never seen anything like that bloodred moon circled with a ring of fire before. Never in all her sixty-six years.

And that cry for help. And the laughter—that terrible, inhuman laughter coming from the trees…

Someone was out there. Someone with murder in his heart.

Rosita could trace her blood to prehistoric civilizations in Mexico. She knew in her bones that this moon was a sign.

The Fortunes were in trouble—again.

She’d worked for them for a long time. Too long, Ruben said. He wanted her to retire so she could focus on him. “We’ll move away, not too far, but we’ll have a place of our own.”

Ruben had always wanted his own land, but she loved Ryan Fortune and his precious wife, Lily, as if they were members of her own family. She couldn’t leave them. Not now! Not when she knew they needed her more than ever. In the morning she would try to warn them as she cooked them eggs and bacon and tamales and frijoles. They teased her because she cooked frijoles with every meal.

They would probably laugh at her for warning them, too. Ryan and Lily had loved each other since they were kids, but they’d had to wait a lifetime to realize their love. They wanted to be happy, and she wanted that for them, too. Why, then, did her heart feel heavy with the thought that they were doomed? Oh, dear. Maybe when the sun was high in the sky tomorrow she would be able to laugh at her fears and believe all would be well.

She made a fist. “I have to tell them anyway! First thing, when I go to the ranch house!”

When she finally stopped shaking, it was a long time before she felt safe enough to switch off a few of the lights. Even then she was still too nervous to go back to bed or to sort through her flea market purchases, so she curled up in her favorite armchair and clutched the arm-rests as if her life depended on it.

The night seemed endless. If only she could wake Ruben and tell him about the skull and the laughter.

But he would only think her stupid. He would tell her it was nothing and order her to bed. Because he was a man, he thought he knew everything.

“Ya verás. You’ll see, viejo. You’ll see when somebody dies,” she whispered, hugging herself as the shadowy forms of the tall furniture in her living room shaped themselves into snakes and cougars and alligators.

Somebody was going to die!

Soon.

As soon as they reached the Double Crown Ranch, everything would be under control again, and he could focus on his plan to get even with Ryan Fortune.

The man who was driving fought to stay calm. He was as unnerved by his passenger as he was by the automatic with the silencer he’d concealed under his own floor mat, which felt like a lump under his left heel.

He disliked guns, but he liked order. He had to have everything in its exact place. His slacks were all hung together in his closet; his shoes were in shoe racks. The gun was a tool to help restore order. That was all. That was why he’d had plastic surgery, why he’d come to Texas.

Neither moon nor stars lit the wild, desolate ranch land that was owned by the man he was determined to destroy. Except for the twin cones of light arcing every time he struck a pothole or an overlarge rock and except for the interior lights of the big car, the passenger and driver were lost in a strange, pink-tinted, black void that seemed as deep and dark and endless as outer space.

“What the hell are you doing down here in Texas?” his passenger whispered in a low, raw tone from his side of the car.

The driver was tempted to brag about his clever plan. Instead he bit his lips as he whipped down the gravel county road at an even faster speed, sending rocks flying into the dark encroaching walls of cedar and oak. One of his large, perfectly manicured, suntanned hands gripped the steering wheel; the other held a silver flask half filled with vodka. Both fists were white knuckled and shaking.

“You shouldn’t have run out in the middle of those psychological tests,” the passenger said in that cool, kindly voice that sent chills through him.

The hell I need more psychological testing!

“What do you know about it?” the driver muttered, his body rigid. “I’m fine. I’m just fine.”

“Then why’d you come here? Why’d you change your face? If I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t have recognized you.” There was anguish and what sounded like genuine concern in his passenger’s voice.

Not being recognizable was the point, of course. “Like I told you, I was in an accident.”

“Why are you stalking these people?”

The driver forced himself to take a calming breath before he replied. “You think you’re so smart! You always act so nice! What do you know about anything? About me?”

“I have to try to help you—for your own good.”

The driver’s mouth went dry. He could taste his fear.

Yes. His unwanted visitor could ruin everything…if he didn’t tidy things up fast.

When they rumbled over a cattle guard, every bump seemed to trigger an electric current that snapped up and down the driver’s legs and spine. Thoroughly shaken, he could barely control the big car as it raced almost blindly down the narrow road through buttery-thick pockets of Hill Country ground fog before it burst out of the murk into the warm, black night again.

“Slow down,” his passenger ordered. “Are you crazy? You could hit a deer or wrap us around a tree.”

The driver lifted his flask and sipped the burning liquor as his silent brain screamed shrilly. Who do you think you are—giving me orders? You? You! Ever since we were kids? And calling me crazy?

“Sure,” he replied easily as his toe tapped a little harder on the accelerator. “I’ll slow down. Sure I will. Hey, relax. We’re nearly there.”

“You don’t want me here, do you?” came that kindly, superior, all-knowing voice. “I could tell. Your eyes were colder than chips of black marble when you opened your door tonight. But I didn’t come to scare you or hurt you.”

“Scared? Who’s scared? If I seemed upset, maybe you should have called first.”

“Right. Give you time to roll out the welcome mat.” His passenger laughed.

The driver rubbed his brow where the scars from his accident should have been. Then he took another sip from the flask. Not too much. He didn’t want to alarm his passenger by acting any more nervous than he had to. Slowly he dropped his hand back to the seat. He had to focus. He had to concentrate.

“No. You didn’t want me here,” his passenger insisted, again in that hateful, kindly, yet all-knowing tone that the driver loathed.

The moon broke out of the cloud cover, and instantly the driver wished it hadn’t. The bloodred globe was huge and obscene and ringed with flame. Strange-looking, crimson-stained clouds scudded beneath it.

He’d never seen anything like it. Was it even real? Or was it just the mad, blistering fury throbbing in his temples that made it seem so ominous? Was he that charged on adrenaline?