Double Play: Ambushed! / High-Caliber Cowboy

She wiped at her tears, tears she shed not for herself but for Lanny. She hadn’t let herself think about her father’s best friend. Lanny had always been kind to her and had remained Max’s friend until her father’s death. That was what had gotten Lanny killed, Molly was sure.

Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten. She pulled off the interstate in one of the tiny, dying towns north of St. George, Utah, and parked in the empty lot of the twenty-four-hour Mom’s Home-cooking Café.

A bell jingled over the door as she stepped inside. It was early, but Molly doubted the place was ever hopping. She slid into a cracked vinyl booth and rested her elbows on the cool, worn Formica tabletop.

A skinny gray-haired waitress who looked more tired than even Molly felt, slid a menu and a sweating glass of ice water onto the table. She took a pad and a stubby pencil out of her pocket, leaning on one varicose-veined leg as she waited.

“I’ll take the meat-loaf special with iced tea, please,” Molly said, closing the menu and handing it to her, noticing that the waitress took it without looking at her, pocketed the pad and pencil without writing anything down and left without a word.

Molly watched her go, thinking her own life could be worse. It was a game she and Max used to play.

“You think your situation is bad, kiddo, look at that guy,” he would say.

He called her kiddo. She called him Max and had since she was able to talk.

“Better no one knows we’re related,” he’d always said. “It will be our little secret.” He told everyone that he’d picked her up off the street and kept her with him because she made a good assistant for his magic act.

There was a time she’d actually believed he was just trying to protect her by denying their relationship because Maximilian Burke had always been outside the law.

He’d raised her, if a person could call that raising a child. He’d let her come along with him. He used to say, “You’re with me, kiddo, I’m not with you.” Which meant she didn’t get to complain, even when he didn’t feed her for several days because he had no money. He would hand her a couple of single-serving-size packets of peanuts and tell her they would be eating lobster before the week was out.

And they usually were. It had been feast or famine. A transient existence at best. Homeless and hungry at worst. Her father was a second-rate magician but turned out to be a first-class thief.

She glanced out the café window, remembering late nights in greasy-spoon cafés, lying with her head on her arms on the smooth, cool surface of the table, Max waking her when the food was served. Too tired to care, she ate by rote, knowing that tomorrow she might get nothing but peanuts.

“You have to learn to live off your wits,” Max used to say. “It’s the best thing I can teach you, kiddo. Some day it will save your life.” That day had arrived.

The waitress brought out a plate with a slice of gray-colored meat loaf, instant mashed potatoes with canned brown gravy over them, a large spoonful of canned peas and a stale roll with a pat of margarine.

Molly breathed in the smell first, closing her eyes. This was as close to a mother’s home-cooked meal as she’d ever come. What she loved was the familiarity of it. This was home for her, a greasy-spoon café in a forgotten town.

She opened her eyes, tears stinging, and picked up her fork, surprised that she still missed Max after all this time. Surprised that she missed him at all. But as much as he’d denied it, he was all the family she’d ever had.

She took a bite of the meat loaf. It was just as the meat loaf she’d known had always tasted, therefore wonderful.

After she’d finished, the waitress brought her a small metal dish with a scoop of ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup as part of the meat-loaf special.

She got up to get the folded newspaper on the counter where the last patron had left it, opened it and read as she ate her ice cream, feeling better if not safer.

The article was on page eight. She wouldn’t have even seen it if the photograph of the woman hadn’t caught her eye. The spoon halfway to her mouth, the ice cream melting, she read the headline.

Missing Woman’s Car Found in Old Barn.

She put down the spoon as she stared at the woman’s photograph. The resemblance was uncanny. Looking at the photograph was like looking in a mirror. Or at a ghost. Molly could easily pass for the woman, they looked that much alike.

Heart pounding, Molly read the entire story twice, unable to believe it. Fate had just given her a way out. Her luck had definitely improved.

Las Vegas, Nevada

VINCE WINSLOW PULLED UP in front of the motel room and honked the horn of the large older-model car he’d bought when he’d gotten out of prison.

Vince thought of himself as a fair man. He’d been a mediator in his cell block at prison and everyone agreed he had a way with people. It was a gift. He would hear gripes and grievances, then he would settle them. One way or another. Sometimes he’d just bang a few heads together. Whatever it took.

The one thing he couldn’t stand was injustice. It made him violent and that was dangerous for a big, strong man who’d spent most of his fifteen-year stint in the weight room at the prison, planning what to do when he got out.

He honked again and Angel Edwards came out of the motel room scowling at him. Vince slid over to let Angel drive.

“What? Are your legs broken? You can’t get out of the car? You got to honk the damned horn?” Angel slid behind the wheel, cursing under his breath.

Compared to Angel, Vince was a saint. Angel was a hothead. Short, wiry, all energy with little brains.

“Haven’t you ever wondered why I put up with you?” Vince asked in his usual soft tone. Right now he was definitely wondering that very thing himself.

Angel snorted. “I’m the best getaway-car driver in the business and you know it.”

Vince couldn’t argue that. Angel had lightning-fast reflexes. But since that life was behind them, Vince didn’t need a getaway driver anymore.

“You also love me,” Angel said without looking at him.

Vince stared over at him, realizing that was the only reason he didn’t take Angel out into the desert and put a bullet through his brain. Angel was his half brother. Blood was everything, even if your mother had no taste when it came to men.

“Damn, it’s like a refrigerator in here,” Angel complained, reaching over to turn off the air-conditioning. “You tryin’ to kill me?”

All those years of being locked up in the same cell block had made Vince even more aware of his brother’s shortcomings. Not that it had ever taken much to set Angel off, but now, once angry, Angel was nearly impossible to control. That had proved to be a problem. On top of that, now that Angel was out of prison, he had unlimited access to sharp instruments and a fifteen-year fixation on getting what he had coming.

“We need to talk,” Vince said.

“What is there to talk about?” Angel demanded, glaring over at him. “We find the bitch. We get what’s coming to us. This ain’t brain surgery.”

“My fear is that when we find her, you will go berserk like you did with Lanny and kill her before she tells us what we want to know,” Vince pointed out calmly. “If I hadn’t gotten you out of there when I did last night, we would be on death row right now. We almost got caught because you can’t control your temper.”

“You were going too easy on Lanny. I had him talking. He was just about to tell us. If he had lived just another few seconds…”

Vince groaned. “When we find Molly, you have to refrain from that kind of…persuasion, or we will never get the diamonds.”

“If she hasn’t already fenced them,” Angel snapped.

“She hasn’t,” Vince said for at least the thousandth time. These particular diamonds couldn’t be easily fenced—they were too recognizable. And Vince had his sources on the outside watching for them. There was no way Molly could have tried to fence the uncut stones without him knowing about it.

Angel shifted in the seat, his left cheek twitching from a nervous tic. “Okay, okay. So why are we still sitting here? Let’s find the bitch.”

“I found her before I found Lanny. She’s working at a greasy spoon off the Strip,” Vince said.

“You’ve seen her?” Angel asked, his voice high with excitement and suspicion. “Why didn’t you take me with you?”

Vince raised a brow as if to say, “Isn’t it obvious?”

“You wouldn’t try to cut me out of my share, would you?” Angel asked, going mean on him. Angel didn’t trust anyone, but still Vince took it as an insult.