Luke knew the brand of the first cigarette the kid had smoked. Just as he knew when the kid had taken the first false step, made the first bad friend that had led toward his dealing dope for Spook. Luke could have called the old man, could have warned him long before the kid went bad. Big Red had cut the free-spending kid off when hed flunked out. The kid had been desperate. Instead of getting a real job, hed started selling dope to friends.
Hed been a natural salesman. Girls had been easy to get after that. His life and travels had made fascinating reading. And the ritzy Longworths had been fooled by the lies the kid told them, believing he was a whiz in the computer business and had a real job.
Will Sanders, a private detective in Albuquerque, still made his monthly visits to Austin to update Lukes files. Sanders had even had contacts in prison, so Luke knew everything that had happened to Little Red during the past five years, too. He knew about that night seven guys had held the kid down in his cell and nearly killed him.
Luke had taken steps then, used connections to get the kid moved. Gradually, Luke had begun to feel pride about how stoically Little Red had endured prison. A lot of pampered rich kids couldnt have stood up to the abuse Little Red had suffered.
The kid was out. Free.
But cancer?
The kid needed doctorsfast.
McKade, have you heard a damn thing Ive said? Hes got a gun, Baines repeated.
And he knows how to use it. Stay out of his sight. Ill be there as quick as I can.
Look, Ive got another big problem that cant wait. A woman
Hold tight.
What are you going to do?
Give the kid a target he cant resistme.
This is good.
Luke slammed the phone down, his gut churning. He waited a minute, grabbed his cell phone to call his pilot.
No! Hed drive.
He didnt bother to pack. He was out the door, running.
The smell of raw sewage hung in the air, no doubt, vapors from the Rio Grande. Heat glued Lukes white collar to his neck. His long-sleeved, cotton shirt felt heavy and wet against his armpits. He wore jeans, boots, and a black Stetson. Three blocks shy of the posh, tourist zone of Nuevo Laredo with fancy restaurants like his favorite, El Rancho, and glitzy silver and leather shops, Luke stomped through paper cups, papaya peels, plastic bags, broken bottles, not to mention the human debrisbeggars and pimps.
Familiar territory to a man with his past.
Nuevo Laredo, Mexico was an old city with a crumbling infrastructure. Like all poor places it was noisy, hot and dirty. It was in-your-face, gutsy, colorful and alive.
A shiny, low-riding American sedan cruised up to Luke, its radio blaring. A skinny, Mexican punk with a silver crucifix dangling from his glistening brown neck got out. The boy rushed him from the darkness, flipping pictures of naked girls.
Gleaming white smiles in pretty brown faces. Iridescent straight black hair. Breasts. Thighs.
Girls who didnt look a day over fifteen. Girls willing to do whatever perversion a man could pay for. There were illustrations of those perversions.
Unsure of Lukes nationality, the boy switched back and forth from English to Spanish.
Meesterpretty girls.Putas.Muy baratas. Cheap! They do anything.
Luke shook his head, waving him off, only to have a dozen more swarm him.
¡Vayate! Luke growled, knowing but not caring that he probably botched the grammar.
Chinga
The boys made vile hand gestures, such gestures having a rich obscene vocabulary all their own in Mexico. Aloud, they cursed him with a virulent stream of Mexican profanity. Then on the next breath, they sauntered jauntily across the street to cajole a fat-stomached tourist in Bermuda shorts who was smoking a cigar. Rap music pulsed from the low-slung sedan as the gringo leered at their pictures and then pulled out a fat wallet.
Putas. Very pretty.
Fun and games? In Mexico? Tonight?
They do anything.
It had been a while since Luke had had a woman. Sucker that he was, hed been true to Marcie. It struck him hed been waiting for her call and not her lawyers. His pride, his stupid pride had killed her.
Im sorry. Why had that been so hard to say?
Sweat dripped from Lukes brow. The heat. The damned desert heat. In July, even at night, Nuevo Laredo was like a furnace, baking him from above and below.
Why the hell hadnt Baines done what Luke had told him? Why couldnt he have stayed put in the good old U.S. of A.? But, no. Baines, like a lot of lawyers, had a penchant for drama. He was up ahead, leading this caravan of fools through the dense NAFTA traffic.
Little Red was not far behind.
Baines had gotten a green light when hed crossed the border. His companions were a gorilla in a jogging suit, a small, skinny guy with greasy, black hair and a goatee, and a yellow-haired whore in red polka dots who was so pretty she made Lukes stomach knot.
The Americans had stopped Little Red. But the paunchy-gutted idiots in their tight uniforms had let him go. When Luke got across the traffic-clogged border, which was bumper to bumper with eighteen-wheelers, he found Bainess and Little Reds cars two blocks from the main drag, their doors open in a dirt lot as if the occupants had scrambled out of them and taken off running. The radios had been ripped out. In another hour, the tires would be gone, too.
Beside Bainess car, Luke had found his brothers wallet, all the money gone and a high-heeled, red pump. Was the shoe the whores?
So where were they? Hed asked questions. Paid people. So far, hed come up with zip.
Suddenly something that looked like bright red hair shimmered under blue neon a few blocks ahead. When Luke sprinted, a beggar with a mouthful of black teeth grabbed his ankle. Stumbling, he threw a fistful of pesos at the woman. Pushing himself free of her, he raced toward blue neon.
The redhead had vanished. Luke ran until he was thoroughly out of breath and thoroughly lost. When he stopped, he was on some dusty, rutted lane that wound in an indefinite course through a warren of shabby, graffiti-splashed buildings. Breathing hard, Luke rocked back on his heels.
Buildings? The houses were crude shacks made of sticks, adobe and cinder block. They leaned against one another like a row of dominoes ready to fall.
Hell on earth had to be junked cars lining a road like this. Hell was dirty, mean-looking, starving cats and dogs, half-naked kids with big brown eyes and ragged clothes. For an instant Luke was back at the pueblo. Then he stopped himself, not letting himself go there.
A lone rooster wandered in circles in the middle of the road. What was the use? Little Red could be anywhere. Luke might as well find a bar, have a tequila, the good kind, and pray for a break. But as he was scanning the houses for a familiar landmark so he could retrace his steps, a woman screamed.
Harsh slaps quieted her.
Then a gun popped, and she screamed again.
Get off her, so I can kill myself a lawyer!
Luke knew that voice.
The kid!
Another low-throated cry. This time Luke placed it as coming from the cinder block shack two houses down.
The silence that followed unnerved him. A brown bottle in the gutter caught Lukes eye. He needed a weapon. Crouching, he swiped his sweaty hands on his jeans and then grabbed it by its long neck.
When the girl screamed again, he knocked the bottom off against a wall. Pulse pounding in his temple, Luke pressed himself into the warm shadows and inched nearer the house.
The silence that followed unnerved him. A brown bottle in the gutter caught Lukes eye. He needed a weapon. Crouching, he swiped his sweaty hands on his jeans and then grabbed it by its long neck.
When the girl screamed again, he knocked the bottom off against a wall. Pulse pounding in his temple, Luke pressed himself into the warm shadows and inched nearer the house.
When he was close enough, he yelled from the street. Damn you, Little Redyoure crazy to carry a gun into Mexico. Cops down here will lock you away. Youll never get out.
This is good, mocked his brother drunkenly. Not before I kill me a lawyer andanda bastard.Youre nextIndian.
The door banged. Bloody fingers against his golden face, Baines staggered outside. As always he was dressed impeccably in a dark custom-made suit. His two goons, the giant in the jogging suit and the runt with the slicked-back hair, stumbled outside behind him, grabbing Baines before he fell.
Run, you sons of bitches, Little Red whooped, rushing after them. Vengeance is mine.
The three men took off running. Luke sidestepped into a black pocket between two houses. Something hed read in one of Sanderss reports came back to him. Little Red had starred in a dozen plays in high school.
Corny. Prison damn sure didnt dim your flair for cheap drama, did it, kid? he shouted.
Where the hell are you? Elbowing his way into the shadows, Little Red waved his gun. Step out where I can see you.
This isnt a high school playkid. And you aint Rambo. And I aint stupid.
The gun swung wildly.
Luke shrank against the wall.
Luke! Youyoucoward! You bastard!
Silence.
Then a roach scurried out of the dark past the rooster. Scrawny wings spread.
When Little Red fired, the confused rooster flapped straight at Little Red.
Sonofabitch! Swatting wildly at the bird, the kid dropped the gun.
Racing footsteps at the other end of the alley.
Mr. This-is-good and his goons hadnt gotten far after all.
Little Red roared in rage, then gleefully scooped up his gun and lurched after them.
Silently, swiftly, Luke pursued them.
He got ten feet before she yelled. Then she moaned.
When nobody answered, a final hoarse cry was swallowed, strangled, broken off.
She was scared. The bastards had left her all alone in that shack.
Luke remembered the gunshots and stopped running. With acute frustration he watched Little Reds bright red head vanish into darkness.
She could be hit. Dying.
Marcie.
3
Help This girls Texas drawl was as pronounced as Marcies. Thus, the e was elongated.
Luke stared at the black door as if it were the gate to hell.
Please Again her prominent vowels seemed endless. P-le-e-ease
Marcie? he whispered.
No. But this girls faint cries held raw urgency. He drew in a savage breath and then pushed against warped wood that creaked heavily on ancient hinges.
Help
He cursed the dark and Mexico and the heat that had him dripping with sweat. Most of all he cursed the whore and her soft, alluring drawl that compelled him into this black and forbidding shack.
A bar of moonlight backlit his tall, muscular body and the broken bottle he held raised above his black head. More of that same silver light slipped through the cracks in the mortar left by shoddy workmanship and glistened against dirty, broken windowpanes.
The room was squalid, hot and hellish; its ceiling so low he had to stoop slightly. Plywood had been nailed against a hole in the wall. Corrugated tin was both ceiling and roof. The dirt floor was carpeted with cigarette butts and loose boards. Then he saw a Mexican bullwhip coiled like a black snake around a brand new, red high-heeled pump on the dirt floor, this shoe an exact match to the one hed found earlier.
He picked the shoe up, turning it in his palm, and whistled. Cinder-eff-ing-rella!
Who are youPrince Charming? drawled a small wavery voice, in an attempt at bravery. What gives? A prince in blue jeans and cowboy hat?
He liked her spunk.
The yellow-haired girl was tied by her wrists and ankles with remnants of her own nylons to a metal bed in the middle of the room. She lifted her drugged gaze to his.
A board groaned under his weight.
Her eyes bulged when she saw the bottle. Trying to free herself, she squirmed on the bare mattress. Moonlight rippled over her long shapely legs that were spread widely apart.
The room seemed to shrink, and the confines of it were suddenly more stifling. He drew a sharp breath.
Masses of reckless, yellow hair framed her exquisite oval face.
Sexy. Sexy as hell.
He thought, Wow.
He muttered, Damn.
It was only natural to want to keep his reaction to himself and to be repelled by it. He averted his eyes from the girls face and her awesome legs. But he felt like hed fallen into a sensual barrel of forbidden delights. A girl with looks like hers made a man think of only one thing.
Images of those endless legs, a short polka-dot dress pushed above shapely thighs, black lace bikini panties and a garter belt had burned themselves into his testosterone-charged brain. Her breasts bulged against a low neckline. And that facewith those slanting eyes that caught the moonlight. Those full red lips
Ah, such a face would give a saint wet dreams. Not that McKade was a candidate for sainthood. For as surely as there was a devil in hell keeping tabs, McKades name would be scrawled in roaring flames at the top of that fiends list of sinners.
Are you going to he-e-e-l-p meor
Shhh
Why did she sound so much like Marcie? Why did she have to be blond?
Dont look at those legs, or at that face. Dont notice that her skin is pale and luminous, her shapely lips so moist and bright with paint they make your mouth go dry.
Her makeup, her costume, the mere fact Baines and his goons had brought her here and tied her to this bed to play kinky games told Luke what she wasa whore. As a kid, hed had fun with her kind.
Was this hellhole her room? Or Bainess?
Glazed, startlingly blue eyes, lined in heavy black, stared up at him. Its our honeymoon. Love me. Love meP-pleasejust love me.
Love?
What Luke felt had a lot more in common with what she would do for a dollar than with love. He wanted sex; she sold sex.
She moistened her lip with her tongue. Then she seemed to suffer a moments shortness of breath beneath his direct gaze.
His stomach lurched. She represented sex and the forbidden, all the vices hed learned young and tried to rise above when hed crawled out of the gutter. She had designed herself to bring out the beast in him.
She did.
Shhh
With a muted whimper, followed by more slurred endearments, she strained toward him. Black stockings jerked, and she collapsed against the bed.
She was drunk or very high on something. Yet not so high that she wasnt conscious of him. Nor did she act ashamed to be lying there with her breasts and legs so exposed. Instead, she twisted her hips deliberately to entice him, begging, Love me.
At that honey-soft plea, his breath stalled. His body hardened. Her cheap beauty and suggestive posture paralyzed him. For a second or two, he even forgot about the heat.