Bounty Hunter Ransom Read online

  It had sounded so real, she thought as her breathing came harder and harder. Then she realized something was wrong. She couldn’t breathe. The telltale, rotten-egg odor of Mercaptan was strong in the air.

  Mercaptan was the chemical the gas company added to methane to give it a nasty smell. Oh, God. She jumped out of bed, reached instinctively for the light switch, then stopped herself. She couldn’t afford to turn on lights. Any small spark could ignite the methane and cause a lethal explosion.

  She opened the door onto the hallway—she had to get everyone out of the house. The air seemed fresher in the hall, or perhaps she was just getting used to the smell.

  Wayne’s room was closest. She knocked loudly and entered, finding her uncle in a sound sleep. Thankfully a nightlight allowed her to see.

  “Uncle Wayne, wake up!” she shouted. “We have to get out of the house!”

  He roused slightly, but he was extremely groggy. “What? What’s going on?”

  David appeared in the doorway, wearing only a pair of sweatpants. “Dad? Aubrey, is he all right?”

  “There’s a gas leak. Can’t you smell it? Help me get your father out.”

  David reached for the light switch just as she’d done. “No! No lights.”

  “Right.” He rushed over and helped her get Wayne out of bed. Between them they half dragged, half carried him out the door and down the wide, curved staircase.

  “Who else is in the house? Beronica?”

  “Yes, on the third floor. I’ll get her.”

  “I’ve got Uncle Wayne. You go. Beronica should be okay. The mix of methane and propane they use in Payton is heavier than nitrogen or oxygen, so it sinks.”

  Wayne was walking now, though he leaned heavily on Aubrey. “A gas leak?”

  She saw him to the entry hall and used the key hanging on a hook by the front door to unlock the dead bolt. “Get as far away from the house as you can,” she said. “It might explode.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To make sure there’s no one else here.” She ran through all the rooms downstairs, calling out. In the study manning the phone she was surprised to find not the uniformed officer Lyle had promised, but Lyle himself. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, he was slumped over the desk, asleep.

  She hoped.

  She shook him. “Lyle, wake up.”

  He roused slowly. “What?”

  “Gas leak. We have to get out of the house.”

  “Gas leak?” he repeated stupidly.

  “Please, Lyle.” She tugged on his arm to get him to move. Finally he seemed to understand, and the two of them made it out the front door, though they were both staggering with dizziness.

  Aubrey breathed in great gulps of the humid night air until her head cleared. Lyle appeared to be doing the same. Then she looked for her uncle and the others. All she could see was a white lump on the grass, far from the house.

  “Oh, my God.” She ran toward her uncle’s crumpled form. Lyle was right behind her, cell phone in hand. He was already summoning help.

  Wayne was conscious, but struggling for breath. “Call for an ambulance,” she said.

  “No, no ambulance,” Wayne managed to say. “I’m in hospice, remember? I’m DNR.”

  Aubrey looked at Lyle, hoping he might know what that meant.

  “Do Not Resuscitate,” he said. “It means no heroic lifesaving measures.”

  “But it’s not the cancer that’s making him sick,” Aubrey said desperately. “It’s methane gas.”

  “I’m all right now anyway,” Wayne insisted, sitting up.

  Beronica and her baby boy soon joined them. The baby—Carlos, Aubrey remembered—was crying. Was that the baby she’d heard earlier in her dreams? Had he awakened her?

  She gave Beronica and Carlos an impulsive hug. “I think you saved our lives, kiddo,” she said to the baby, who wasn’t listening. “Where’s David?”

  Beronica’s eyes were huge. “He say he go turn off bad air.”

  “He should leave it for the gas company,” Lyle said. “They’re on their way. So is the fire department.”

  Aubrey considered going to look for David. What if he’d gone back inside and passed out? But then she saw him coming around the corner of the house. And he wasn’t alone. Was that—could it possibly be…

  It was. What was Beau doing here? Aubrey ran to meet them, then skidded to a stop with an involuntary shriek of shock. David had Beau by the arm, and he was aiming a gun at Beau’s back.

  “Look who I found skulking around in the bushes,” David said, a note of triumph in his voice.

  “David! Put that thing away. Are you insane?”

  “Not until I’m sure he didn’t have something to do with that gas leak. Maybe he got inside, blew out all the pilot lights.”

  Aubrey rolled her eyes. “Even if he did, it would take days for that small amount of gas to accumulate to lethal levels. Anyway, the thermocouplers on your appliances would detect the absence of a flame and automatically turn off the gas.”

  The two men looked at her, surprised.

  “I interned at the gas company when I was in college,” she explained. “It’s probably a leak in a line somewhere. Now, put the damn gun away. What are you doing with a gun, anyway?”

  “I want to know what he’s doing here,” David persisted.

  Beau, who looked like he’d had enough, suddenly twisted around. In one smooth move he freed his arm from David’s grip and had the gun in his hand. “I was just keeping an eye on things.” He opened the revolver’s chamber, emptied the bullets into his hand, and returned the gun to David. “I hope to hell you have a license for that thing.”

  “I do, smart-ass.”

  Sirens signaled the arrival of the fire department. The gas company was right on the heels of the fire engine. Soon the mansion was swarming with yellow-coated men and women. The house was aired out, so the danger of an explosion was minimal now.

  Aubrey was more worried about her uncle. He was breathing normally, but his face looked gray. She supposed that might be the moonlight. At her insistence, a paramedic looked him over. He gave Wayne some oxygen, and he grudgingly allowed the mask to be put over his face.

  Lyle had gone to confer with the firefighters and the gas company people. Aubrey remained sitting on the lawn with her uncle, Beronica, and Carlos. Beau remained with her. She didn’t know where David was.

  “What were you doing in the bushes?” she finally asked him. “Really.”

  “Just what I said earlier. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t help thinking that this whole thing is connected to you somehow, at least on the edges. Three brushes with death in two days can’t be coincidence. And I wanted to keep an eye on you.”

  “Four brushes now,” Aubrey said, shivering despite the warm temperature. “What could it mean? I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when I was assaulted at my house. And Cory beating me up—I went looking for trouble. But getting shot at earlier—someone really wants me dead. And now this. I can’t believe it’s an accident. My God, six people could have died.”

  He slid his arm around her. “I wasn’t much help, either.”

  “At least your instincts were correct. I thought I’d be safe in my bed, with a cop in the house, the doors and windows and front gate locked.”

  “A cop in the house?”

  “Lyle. He was monitoring the phone.”

  As if speaking his name had conjured him up, Lyle approached them. He gave Beau a hostile look, then focused on Aubrey. “They found the problem. It was a broken gas line going into the water heater on the second floor. Looks as though mice or rats chewed through it. They repaired it, but you probably should have the whole house inspected. And gas detectors installed.”

  A guy from the gas company joined them, basically repeating what Lyle had just told them.

  Aubrey felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Rats or mice. It was an accident. No one had tried to kill her or her whole family.
r />   IT WAS ALMOST DAWN by the time things calmed down at the Clarendon mansion. Beau sat on a stone bench by the fountain and watched it all. He was interested in how the Clarendon family related to one another. The gas company had said it was an accident. But how hard would it be to chew through a gas line—with pliers, maybe—and make it look like a rat had done it? A gas leak that almost wiped out an entire family—it was just too much of a coincidence after everything else that had happened. Beau didn’t like coincidences. Like Lyle being there just when it happened.

  Still, nothing seemed out of whack with the family. David’s hostility and his haste in blaming Beau were irritating, but Beau’s uninvited presence on the grounds was suspicious. He’d have probably done the same thing in David’s position, though he’d have done it more skillfully. Taking the .22 away from him had been pathetically easy. David might have a license for the gun, but he hadn’t handled weapons much.

  Much as he wanted to keep David on the suspect list, he reluctantly scratched him off. From what Aubrey had told him, he’d been instrumental in rescuing Wayne, staying inside the gas-filled house to help the old man down the stairs. Then he’d rescued Beronica and her baby.

  But what the hell was Lyle Palmer doing here? Beau understood getting obsessed with a case like this. He could recall some sleepless nights when he’d been a new detective. But manning the Clarendon’s tip line wasn’t where he should be putting his efforts.

  If Lyle had wanted to keep working the case, he should have been out talking to people. Didn’t the guy have any informants? He should be finding people who knew Cory. Beau couldn’t help feeling Cory was near the center of the mystery. His reaction to Aubrey’s curiosity had been so extreme, there was no doubt she’d been sniffing up the right tree. But the bartender–drug dealer had gone to ground. Craig said no one could locate him.

  Beau considered the idea that Lyle might have a crush on Aubrey, and thus wanted to stay close to her. That was a motivation he could relate to.

  As the gas company cars pulled away, Aubrey joined Beau on the bench. She looked beautiful, with her reddish hair pulled back in a hasty braid, her face milky-pale in the moonlight. She had on the same nightshirt she’d worn the previous morning, pale blue with little clouds on it. He remembered how it had looked as she’d peeled it off.

  He stifled a groan. He remembered every detail of their lovemaking as if he’d recorded it digitally in his brain.

  “Everyone’s going back inside now,” she said.

  “Is that my cue to get lost?”

  “Lyle’s so irritated with you he was ready to escort you off the estate at gunpoint. I told him I’d seen quite enough of guns for one night, and that I would talk to you.”

  “I should get some sleep,” he said, but he made no move to leave. “Tell me something. Do you think Lyle has the hots for you?”

  “For me?” She looked bewildered. “No. It was Patti he wanted, not me.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out why he’s here. He should have delegated this task to someone else.”

  “I asked him the same thing. He said he just didn’t trust anyone else to handle it right, if the kidnapper called. But I think he’s feeling guilty for not jumping on Sara’s disappearance with both feet when she first went missing. If anything happens to her, he’ll take it very personally.”

  “I guess I can relate to that.” He was here, too, after all. “I wish someone else was in charge. Love him or hate him, he’s incompetent.”

  Aubrey didn’t argue.

  “So, are you going to kick me off the premises, or what?”

  She sighed. “I should. But I won’t. The fact is, the only time I feel safe is when I’m with you.”

  “That’s illogical as hell. I haven’t done such a hot job protecting you so far.”

  “What do you mean? You saved me from Cory. And you threw me on the ground when someone was shooting. You kept Charlie from coming in here and killing me.”

  “But it was pure luck that saved you tonight.”

  “No, not luck. I heard a baby crying. It woke me up, and it sounded just like Sara. Then I smelled the gas.”

  “You were probably dreaming.”

  “I guess. But it seemed so real.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Beau, what if she doesn’t come back? What if we just never find her? Maybe Summer wasn’t so far off. Maybe someone took Sara, and they’re selling her on the black market for an illegal adoption.”

  He pulled Aubrey close and let her cry on his shoulder. He was amazed she’d held it together this long, after all that had happened today. “We’ll find her,” he vowed, letting a new determination fill him. It tore him up inside, seeing Aubrey in so much pain.

  She put her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry I was so mean to you earlier.”

  He started to say, Which time? Then he stopped himself. She was handing him an olive branch, and he’d be a fool to knock it away. “You’ve got a lot going on.”

  “Doesn’t excuse me. The truth is, I feel myself…wanting to forgive you. Or at least to believe you still have some good, decent qualities.”

  “And the love of a good woman could bring them out?” he asked skeptically.

  Her laugh turned into a sob. “I’m trying to say something here.”

  “Sorry.” She was talking forgiveness, which was what he’d wanted from her all along. But now, oddly, he felt it wouldn’t be enough, having her forgive him for the sins she thought he’d committed. No, he wouldn’t be satisfied, he decided, until she understood what had happened that night two years ago.

  She ran her index finger along the edge of his black denim vest. “The idea of not hating you scares me.”

  “It’s a lot easier to hate me than to believe Gavin did something really, really wrong.”

  She stiffened. “He would never have shot you. You knew that. He loved you like a brother.”

  He wanted to tell her the truth. But she obviously wasn’t ready to hear it.

  “He was a scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb,” she continued, gaining momentum. “He was set up, but he was going down, and there was nothing he could do. You should have let him escape.”

  It sounded almost like a rehearsed speech. How many times had she repeated those words in her head?

  “He was guilty, Aubrey.”

  She pulled away from him. “No! You have to believe that, because it’s the only way you can justify what you did. But there is no way Gavin was tampering with evidence.”

  “He was stealing drugs from the evidence room. Him and a lot of other guys. Those other guys were terrified Gavin would testify against them. Gavin should be glad, real glad, I’m the one who found him.”

  “You shot him!”

  “In the leg. Lots of the cops out there looking for him would have taken a head shot to save their own necks.”

  “Why didn’t you just let him go?” she said, shaking her head. She absolutely refused to consider the possibility Beau was telling the truth.

  “Because a couple of years in prison are better than a lifetime as a fugitive.”

  “You mean ten years.”

  “He’ll be out in two or three. Texas prisons are overcrowded.”

  That silenced her.

  Beau rubbed the back of his hand across his gritty eyes. He really did need to get a couple hours’ sleep, or he’d be useless later. And he didn’t want to talk about Gavin anymore.

  “I’m meeting Craig for lunch tomorrow—today, I mean. He’s got a friend who works at the Medical Examiner’s office, so he can get the unofficial autopsy report—probably before Palmer hears it.”

  “How can you even say lunch and autopsy in the same breath?”

  “Sorry.” Cops tended to take for granted gruesome crime-scene photos and autopsy reports. He kept forgetting this was Aubrey’s cousin they were talking about. “How about if I meet you afterward? You want me to pick you up?”

  “The less you show your face around here, the better. I’ll meet you. I c
an borrow a car from Uncle Wayne. Though I need to pick mine up from the motel sometime soon.”

  “Okay. Stubby’s, around two?”

  “Not Stubby’s.” Too many memories. “Melody Lane Park.”

  “Okay. I’ve got some other things to show you, but they can wait.” He didn’t think now was the time to reveal Patti’s rap sheet, but it certainly didn’t lend credence to Aubrey’s belief that Patti had turned her life around.

  Chapter Eleven

  Melody Lane Park was another place full of youthful memories. Aubrey wasn’t sure why she’d picked it—it might be even more painful than Stubby’s.

  Images floated through her mind…hanging out with a gang of kids, playing touch football in the dark, breath steaming in the wintertime, skin slick with sweat in the summer, like now.

  And Beau, always Beau, so close but so untouchable. She’d watched in agony as he went through a succession of girlfriends, and she could never say a word to anyone. Her reluctance had less to do with Gavin and more to do with her abject fear that Beau would reject her or worse, laugh at her, if he knew she had feelings for him. In fact, Gavin’s warning was only an excuse she’d used to rationalize her cowardice.

  Was she still using Gavin as an excuse? What if she considered the possibility that Beau was telling the truth? That he’d shot Gavin and brought him in not for the money, but to protect him from his own rash actions?

  Gavin might be released sooner than she’d thought. And she’d have him back in her life. If he’d fled the country as he’d originally planned, she might not have ever seen him again.

  She spotted Beau’s Mustang pulling up to the curb near the picnic tables where she waited, and that put an end to her uncomfortable musings. She was surprised to see Craig with him.

  She didn’t know Craig well. He hadn’t hung out at Dudley’s as much as some guys because he had a wife and kids to go home to. But he’d seemed nice.

  In his mid-thirties, Craig was tall and rangy, his face scarred from a teenage knife fight. But the thin white line that ran from the corner of his eye, down his cheek and over his lip, only gave him a rakish air. Aubrey still thought him handsome, with his unruly, wavy blond hair and twinkling blue eyes.