The Crush Part 36

"Grace started crying. She's a strong lady but, like all of us, she has a breaking point, and her family is it. Oren says she didn't fold, didn't beg or plead. But somehow she must have persuaded him that she didn't know anything.

He got out of her car and into his. He even waved her good-bye before driving off.

"Grace immediately called Oren on her cell. Within minutes the girls were collected and put under police guard. Grace, too. Oren was . . . well, you can imagine."

They were quiet for a time. Crickets were tuning up for the night.

"He wants Grace and the girls to go stay with her mother in Tennessee," he continued. "Even while he was talking to me he was packing their bags. Over their protests. I could hear the girls fussing in the background and Grace saying that if he thought she was going to leave him alone, he could just think again. Nor, she said, was she going to be frightened away from her home by a homicidal freak like Lozada."

"What do you think?"

"Oh, he's a freak, all right."

"You know what I mean. Should she leave?"

He shrugged. "I can see both sides."

"So can I. Having met Grace, seen them together, it doesn't surprise me that she would refuse to leave her husband in a time of crisis."

"Not only that, Rennie. If Lozada wants to hurt Oren's family, he will. A trip out of state would be only a minor inconvenience."

They exchanged a long look.

Then suddenly Wick left his chair and began to pace the width of the flagstone patio. "Lozada. He really is the lowest t.u.r.d in the s.h.i.t pile. He's threatening women and children now? I mean, what kind of lowlife . . . You know what I think? I think he's got no b.a.l.l.s, that's what I think.

He attacks in the dark like those G.o.dd.a.m.n scorpions he keeps."

"Scorpions?"

"He gets his victims in the back. In the back. Think about it. He choked the banker to death from the back.

He stabbed me in the back. The only one he's met face-to-face in daylight is a woman, and he threatened her chil

dren. He's never faced a man. I wish to G.o.d I could get a crack at him face-to-face."

"That could prove dangerous."

He shot her a bitter look. "You and Oren are reading from the same script. I was already out of your porch swing and on my way to the garage to get my truck and return to Fort Worth, but Oren told me if I so much as crossed the city line, he'd have me arrested."

"For what?"

"He didn't specify, but he meant it. He said the only thing he needed to make a bad situation worse was a hotheaded avenger. He said the only good thing about Lozada's terrorizing Grace was his choosing to do it when I was out of town."

"He did it because you were out of town."

He stopped pacing and turned to her. "Did you eavesdrop on our conversation? Because that's exactly what Oren said. He thinks Lozada threatened Grace in the hope of smoking me out."

"I'm sure he's right."

He raked his fingers through his hair. "I'm sure he is too," he mumbled. "Lozada would expect me to ride in like the cavalry"

"Making you a target that would be hard for him to miss."

"Especially if I was the aggressor. Lozada would love

nothing better than for me to come after him. If I did, he could drop me and then claim self-defense."

Rennie agreed with a nod, which agitated him further.

He resumed pacing. "Oren hoped I'd gone back to Galveston.

He wasn't too happy to learn I was still this close to Fort Worth."

"With me."

"I've told him there's no way that you and Lozada are, or ever were, in cahoots."

"Does he believe you?" His hesitation in answering gave him away. She said, "Never mind. I know he thinks I'm shady."

Wick didn't belabor the point. He returned to his chair, picked up the bottle of wine, and took a drink from it. She didn't stop him. He then leaned toward her. "Lozada upped the ante today when he messed with Grace. Attacking me is one thing. Going after her, Oren's kids, that's another. I'm gonna get this son of a b.i.t.c.h, Rennie.

For good.

"And it can't be done through legal channels. I've learned that lesson several times over. Now Oren realizes it too. We can't rely on the system. It's let us down. We've got to get him some other way. We've got to forget the law and start thinking like Lozada."

"I agree." He registered his surprise, and she continued, "You thought I left town to escape him. That I ran in fear when I learned that he'd been released from jail. You thought I had come here to hide. Well, you're wrong. I left because I needed time to plan how I was going to free myself from him. I refuse to live in fear, especially in fear of a man.

"Lozada has invaded my home. Twice. He killed my friend Lee Howell. He killed Sally Horton and tried to kill you, and, so far, he's gotten away with it. He got away with killing that banker, and I helped him do that."

"You were a juror. You voted according to your conscience."

"Thanks for the endors.e.m.e.nt, but I regret that decision now. Lozada seems to be immune to the law, but he's not invincible, Wick. He's not bulletproof."

"And you're a d.a.m.n good shot." His grin collapsed when he saw the drastic change in her expression. "I was referring to the bobcat, Rennie, not to what happened in Dalton."

She formed a half smile and nodded acknowledgment.

"I have no intention of shooting anybody, even Lozada. I don't want to wind up in prison myself."

"I'd rather not either, although I'm committed to eliminating

him no matter what it costs me." "Because of your brother?" When he nodded, she added, "Was that one of the life-changing things that happened to you all at once?" "That was the major one." He leaned back and laid his head against the chair cushion. The sky had turned an inky purple. Already he could see stars. Thousands more than were visible in the city. Even more than he could see on the Galveston beach where commercial lights reduced stars to dim reminders of what they should look like. "Joe and Lozada had actually known each other in school. Or rather they knew of each other. They attended rival high schools but graduated the same year. Joe was a star athlete and student leader. Lozada was a hoodlum, h.e.l.l raiser, drug dealer. They saw each other occasionally at places where teens hang out. "They only clashed once, when Joe broke up a fight between Lozada and another guy. They exchanged words, but it amounted to no more than that. Joe became a cop. Lozada became a hired killer. Both excelled at what they did. They were destined to collide. It was only a matter of time." He reached for the wine bottle and took another drink, hoping it would relieve the throbbing pain in his back, which had returned with a vengeance. "Fast-forward a few years. Joe and Oren were working a high-profile homicide case. Typical Texas tale. Socialite wife of wealthy oilman whacked on terrace of mansion. "The husband was conveniently out of town and had a long list of indisputable alibis. Since nothing had been disturbed, nothing stolen, it stunk of a murder-for-hire. Joe and Oren leaned heavily on the husband, who had a very demanding, very expensive twenty-two-year-old mistress in New York. "Figuratively speaking, the murder had Lozada's fingerprints all over it, but they couldn't link him to the husband. Joe hammered the guy, and each time he questioned him, he cracked a little more. Joe was relentless, kept at him. He was this close to splitting the thing wide open." He was quiet for a time before continuing. "The last time I saw Joe, we met for a cup of coffee. He told me he could taste the man's fear. 'I'm close, Wick. Close.' He predicted that the guy was gonna crash and burn soon, and when he did, Joe would have his a.s.s as well as Lozada's. The oilman was a schmuck, he said. p.u.s.s.y-whipped by this brat in New York. His d.i.c.k had done him in. Joe said you could almost feel sorry for him.

" 'But that Lozada dude is bad news, little bro. I'm talking real bad news.' Joe's words exactly. He said Lozada killed for pleasure more than for money. He liked killing.

Joe said he was gonna do the world a favor and put that heartless, hairless son of a b.i.t.c.h away for life.

"I remember us clinking our coffee cups in a toast to his success. Which, apparently, Lozada also thought was

coming down soon. He must've sensed the oilman was close to ratting him out.

"That same evening, Oren left the office a few minutes behind Joe. When he got to the parking lot, he noticed that Joe's car was still there. The driver's door was standing open. Joe was just sitting there, staring through the windshield.

Oren remembers walking toward the car and saying, 'Hey, what's up? I thought you'd be gone by now.'"

He paused to inhale a deep breath and let it out slowly.

The darkness was now complete. The moon was a sliver hanging just above the horizon.

"Joe was already dead when Oren found him. I was hosting a party at our house that night. Oren and Grace came to tell me." He leaned forward, planted his elbows on his knees, and lightly tapped his lips with his clasped hands.

"You know what I wonder about most, Rennie?" Turning his head, he looked at her and realized that she hadn't moved since he began talking. "You know what really puzzles me?"

"What?"

"I wonder why Lozada didn't kill the oilman instead.

That would have shut him up. Why didn't he do him instead of Joe?"

"Joe posed the greater threat. Bailing the oilman would have been a temporary fix to a long-range problem.

Lozada knew Joe wouldn't give up until he had him."

"His twisted form of flattery, I guess."

"Why was he never charged and brought to trial for Joe's murder?" she asked.

But Wick's cell phone rang, sparing him from having to answer.

He opened the phone and put it to his ear. "Yeah?"

He listened for a few seconds, glanced at Rennie, then left his chair and moved to the edge of the patio, keeping his back to her. "No, we haven't talked about it yet," she heard him say as he stepped off the flagstones and moved

even farther away from her.

Taking the hint that he wanted privacy, she went inside and finished cleaning the kitchen. She wondered what unpleasant developments Detective Wesley would tell them of this time.

Through the window above the kitchen sink, she could see Wick pacing along the fence line. She shared his restlessness.

She felt she should be taking action, doing something, but she just didn't know what to do.

In the living room, she switched on an end-table lamp and took up her favorite spot in the corner of the sofa. She flipped through a magazine, but neither the pictures nor the text registered. She was preoccupied with thoughts of Wick.

He was in perpetual motion, just as Grace Wesley had said. Yet he had a habit of making his point by holding a stare for an interminable length of time. Once his blue eyes locked with yours, it was difficult to escape their intensity.

He was clever and glib and funny and had self-confidence to spare. But he wasn't superficial. He felt things deeply.

He had loved his brother, and the loss was still a raw, open wound. Every hour Lozada went unpunished was like salt to that wound. He seemed to hate Lozada as much as he had loved Joe, and that was a perilous level of emotion to keep contained. Lozada should be very afraid of Wick Threadgill.

She identified with the rage that drove him to get even.

Her vengeance had taken an altogether different form, but she understood Wick's compulsion to seek it. She also pitied him for it, because finding retribution is a lonely, all-consuming business.

She hadn't wanted to like Wick Threadgill, but she did.

She hadn't wanted to forgive him for tricking her, but she had. She hadn't wanted to be attracted to him, but she was.

She had known that if she ever kissed him once, she would want to again. She had, and she did. And if that kiss was any indication of how fervently he made love, she wanted to experience it.

"Rennie?"

She sat up straight and cleared her throat. "In here."

His boot heels made clomping sounds against the hardwood floor. He took the opposite end of the couch but perched on the very edge, as though he might spring off it at any moment. "What are you doing?"

She indicated the open magazine in her lap.

"Horse magazine?"

"Hmm."

"Anything new and interesting in the world of horses?"