Chapter 8
Jill climbed into the front seat of the gray Buick, and Lang smiled whitely at her. "Mrs. Devlin; my, my-you can manage to look yummy in just about anything."
"Thanks," Jill said, and stayed far on her own side of the seat.
"Jojo stayed with Mr. Mercer, of course," he said, putting the car into gear. "So I drew the assignment of driving you. I don't mind at all. Mr. Mercer said you wanted to see him again, so I suppose that's the first stop."
"Yes, please," she said, and trying to find any kind of ally, "Your hair looks nice, Lang."
"Oh," he said, and lifted a hand to the back of his head, "oh, thank you, dear. I mean, without a beauty shop, it's difficult, but I manage. Of course there are shops even in Midway, but they're so provincial, and I can't trust my hair to just anybody. It's very fine, you know."
"I can see," Jill said, and wondered why anyone would hire this one as a bodyguard. Then she remembered his eyes, the first time she'd met him, and remembered the reptilian set to them.
On the way to town, Lang chatted about everything-the countryside, the lack of gourmet food in Midway, what an irritant Jojo could be; but he said noting of any importance, such as where Aaron Mercer came from, or what his business was in town. So Lang really said very little, and Jill was glad when they rolled into the parking lot of the motel, just as happy that the lot was discreetly shielded by the swimming pool and a generous design of greenery. She didn't want to be seen there.
At the doorway to Aaron's room, she thanked Lang again, and he seemed genuinely responsive. She glanced at the room beyond, and saw the curtains drop back into place. Jojo was always alert. She tapped at the door and it swung back right away.
Inside, Aaron paraphrased the compliment Lang had paid her. "You make the simplest clothes look chic, my dear. I'm happy you came."
She nodded agreement at the offer of a drink and said, "I'm grateful for the car, Aaron. My husband took the truck, and there's no other transportation on the ranch, except horses and the tractor."
"Glad to be of service; bourbon all right? It's a real pleasure to see you looking so lovely, so fresh and unspoiled. That quality is rare, Jill, almost as rare as your natural sensuousness."
He looked neat and polished; there was a bright yellow scarf at his throat to relieve the effect of so many shades of gray; his soft leather slippers matched the scarf. Jill caught the scent of his musky shaving lotion, and knew that Aaron was correct at least about one thing: There was an inborn sexiness to her. Even disturbed as she was, angry and hurt and shocked as she was-yes, and worried, too-it would take very little to turn her on, right here and right now.
She said, after she'd downed all her drink, "Pittman is up to ten thousand above the payoff, and my husband found out I've been sleeping with him."
Aaron smiled slightly. "I noticed that small bruise on your cheekbone. Where's the betrayed spouse now?"
"I don't know. He said things about getting even with Boyce, and that he'd find the money for the mortgage by himself. I'm sure he can't, but I'm not sure he won't get into serious trouble over Boyce. My husband is a violent man, Aaron, and dangerous."
He pursed his lips and tilted the bottle over her glass. "He might possibly be dangerous to the transfer of your ranch. If he's in jail, it will be difficult to convince him he should sign the papers, and if you divorce him, that will take too much time."
Jill stared. "Divorce? But I didn't-"
"It's out of the question anyhow; too time consuming. But of course, if you'd like to travel with me and some time later file for a separation-"
"Aaron! I-I love my husband, even if-" "He mistreated you? Only that small bruise?" "No! He-he made me take him in my mouth.
He said I must have done it to Boyce and so I'd do it for him, and he-he forced me to eat him, to swallow his semen. It-I don't know-it was the idea behind that kind of rape that made me ill."
He shook his head and refilled her glass. "Poor girl. That should never be forced on anyone, but brought about carefully, so as not to destroy the appreciation. Oh, my; I think your husband has spoiled something for me."
He walked across the room, hands in the pockets of his gray silk smoking jacket; when he turned back to her, he was composed. "Pittman gave you a time limit to accept or reject his latest offer?"
Bewildered by the sudden change of subjects, Jill said, "Yes; a couple of days, he said, and no more. And I don't know if I should tell you this, Aaron, but my husband's way of getting back at Boyce is through his daughter Sherry. She's only a child, and Boyce dotes on her, and I think he'll just blow sky high and forget about the ranch and everything else, if Steve somehow manages to lay that kid and sees to it that Boyce knows."
Aaron poured himself a drink, his first. Then he said, "A complication, to be sure. This all began so simply, with only the well-defined and basic ingredients-and now it becomes confused, new seasonings added, new chefs gathering about the cookpot, each clamoring to use his own spoon."
Frowning at him, feeling the effect of three quick drinks, Jill said, "I don't understand."
"Of course not, my dear, but don't bother. Tell me, have you thought over the money we spoke of-the bank's twenty, and your seventy thousand?"
"Yes, I have, Aaron. And-and it sounds damned good to me. I wasn't sure before this morning, when Steve-when he treated me like a no-good bitch that he despised. Now I am sure, and I'll sign my share, any time you have the papers ready. Steve-well, maybe I can still convince him, once he finds out nobody will lend him the kind of money we need."
This time his smile wasn't convivial, but more as if it had been quickly roughed in by a careless artist. "He'll be convinced, my dear. Now, is there anything else?"
"No. It's just-I mean, I don't know why I come to you all the time, unless it's because I have nowhere else to turn, and you-well, you radiate a kind of strength."
"That's a nice compliment, Jill. You're also perceptive, in addition to your other, more obvious, attributes. Freshen your drink?"
She shook her head and stood up. "No thank you. If I have any more, I won't leave this room. And much as I'd like to stay-really-I have to try and find Steve before he does something stupid."
He moved close to her. "Keep the car as long as you wish. Do try to speak to your husband, and Jill-" Aaron's hands came up, their palms out. He cupped her breasts, thumbed gently over her nipples, then slid his hands down over her hips to place one on her buttocks and the other between her thighs where he fondled her pubic mound. "-Jill, my dear, voluptuous creature, don't let that single bad experience stop you from fully enjoying oral love. I'll help you; I'll go down on you as I did before, thrill you with my tongue and teeth, as I did the other night when you went nearly insane with ecstasy. But this time, there'll be a difference; this time, while I'm eating your delicious pussy, you'll be eating my prick. We'll love each other together, and I promise you'll adore it."
Jill trembled; his voice was warm and sugared, and his deft hands were moving, moving. She knew his penis was rising, that his huge, deeply satisfying penis was readying itself to screw. She was ready for its thick, long penetration, too; Jill could feel her vulva loosening, turning sultry and humid. Her knees were weakening, and she knew the lifting of her rigid nipples.
"I-" her mouth had suddenly gone dry, and she dampened her lips with her tongue to try again. "I'll do anything you say, Aaron-anything; you already know that."
His hands fell away and he kissed her lightly upon the mouth, a fatherly kind of kiss that surprised and disturbed her. Aaron said, "I hope so, my dear. We'll postpone our lovemaking, but only for now. First we should get this business with Pittman, with your husband, out of the way."
So she was out on the street, driving the unfamiliar new Buick, seeing in its grays and blacks, the personality of Aaron Mercer himself. Even to the throb of power under the hood, she thought, and was sorry that she hadn't made it with Aaron again. He was a connoisseur of women; he knew their needs, and realized how they loved to be appreciated. Aaron would never have slapped her for laying someone else, if he hadn't been around for two years. And if Aaron forced her to go down on him, it would be with a gentle and urgent persuasion, for her own good.
But she didn't love Aaron. He thrilled her, aroused her to fever pitches that she had never before known, but she didn't love him. She was still in love with the hard-headed ex-sergeant who was hiding his badly bruised ego under a cloud of threatening rhetoric. Jill had to find him, to explain, and surely, once the sharp edge was off his hurt, he'd listen to her, see her side of things.
Would he understand about Aaron? Jill bit her lip; that was asking too much of Steve, of any man. He might accept the fact that his wife had screwed one man because she thought it might save the ranch, but he'd never forgive her if he discovered that she'd also been laying another man-alternating between her lovers.
Driving slowly, she cruised along Main Street, peering into store windows on her side, trying to make out Steve's shape. She parked at the end of the street and walked slowly back, going in and out of the drug store, the Happy Hour beer garden, the grocery store; no Steve.
She tried the feed store before it closed, and the bakery, and peeked into gas stations where sometimes men played pinochle; no Steve.
Walking fast, she went back up the street and got into the Buick. The girl, the Pittman girl; she rode a lot, went to horse shows all over the state. Maybe Steve was already working on the kid, trying to get next to her while she trained a horse. The damned fool, Jill thought; if Boyce didn't shoot him for seducing the child, then the banker might get the law on him for statutory rape.
Maybe forcible rape, if the kid didn't go along, and Steve lost his head again. But he could be charming and smooth, and there was something about her husband that had always turned women's heads. Sherry Pittman could be susceptible, as well.
Jill drove to the fairgrounds and through the main gate, then around back to the stables. There were several kids working horses in the open arena, but Jill didn't see the red-brown hair of Sherry Pittman anywhere, nor the Arabian the girl usually rode. She looked for the pickup, and didn't find that, either.
Damn Steve, she thought, going back into town and beginning her slow drive down the other side of the street. Parking the car in front of the closed bank, she looked up at the clock and blinked; it was getting on in the day, and she'd better get to Steve before he made a bigger fool of himself. He could have picked up the girl and taken her over to Junctionville, she thought. If he had, there'd be no finding him until he was ready to be found.
Would a kid that young let herself be talked into anything by a forty-year-old man? But they grew up so fast these days, Jill thought; kids that young were getting pregnant and hanging up on drugs and balling in sex orgies. Because the town of Midway was small, that didn't mean it was innocent.
She walked the street again, steering carefully away from the motel, and heard the jukebox banging in the last ginmill. Steve lurched out of it and stood swaying in the middle of the sidewalk, drunker than hell. Jill walked toward him, trying to put together the right words in her mind, making ready what she could say to him, so he'd come home with her.
The Buick, she thought, oh, lord, the new Buick! How would she explain that? She wouldn't try; she'd help him to their old truck and drive him back to the ranch, and later she could call Aaron and tell him where the car was.
A big man blocked her view of Steve, somehow drifting in and closing off her husband. A square and blocky man, with a dark head set thickly down between heavy shoulders, and she thought she recognized his back.
Jojo. What was Jojo doing here, away from his job?
"What the hell-" Steve said, and staggered back against the brick wall. Hurrying toward him, she saw Jojo move faster, and Steve's head jerk back. Then Steve fell over on the sidewalk.
She screamed wordless shock and hate as she ran at Jojo, but he only swept out a furry paw and wiped her casually aside, so that she ricocheted into the building herself. She wobbled around and braced her back against it, and saw Steve get up.
He was drunk and confused, but the reflexes of a hundred street brawls took over, and when Jojo chopped at his head again, Steve got away from the punch. Jojo swung the other big fist, and Steve kicked him in the belly.
"Uh!" Jojo grunted, and backed up a step. But when Steve tried to kick him again, he caught Steve's boot and flipped him off his feet. Jill pressed her hands to her stomach as her husband hit the sidewalk hard and lay still.
"No-no!" she begged, as Jojo moved to him and leaned down, one fist drawn back for a pile driver blow.
Steve rolled into Jojo's legs and Jojo fell on hands and knees. Steve came up behind him and kicked Jojo very hard in the side, over the left kidney. Jojo jerked up to his knees and grabbed his side with both hands, and that's when Steve punched him four, five times in the face-swift, cutting, punishing blows that rocked Jojo's head back and forth and made blood jump out of his face.
"Steve!" Jill cried out. "No, Steve-don't kill him!"
Jojo grabbed one of Steve's hands and used it to pull himself slowly, ponderously erect, while all the time, Steve was hammering the other fist into his eyes and mouth. Jojo's face was a red ruin, and he was sucking air through bloody bubbles, but he got the other arm around Steve's waist and began to squeeze.
Jill started forward as she saw her husband lifted from the ground and slammed back again, but then Steve stuck his thumbs into Jojo's eyes and pried his head back far enough so that Steve could butt him under the chin-twice, three times-and Jojo made horrible, strangling noises.
He let go when Steve got a knee up into his crotch, and started to fall like a big tree that has fought the high winds too long. But Steve Devlin wouldn't let him fall. He punched him and punched him, grunting with the whiplash force of each blow, until Jojo kind of slid off to one side and crumpled.
"Steve-oh, Steve, my darling!" Jill reached him and propped him up, because he was just about to fall across Jojo's motionless body.
"Jill? Jill-what the hell this big bastard hit me for? I never-never ..."
Some of his weight was lifted from her, and she saw another man beside Steve. The man said, "Poor Jojo; but he has his uses."
"Uuuhhh!" Steve moaned, the gut noise driven out through his open mouth.
"Lang! Lang-don't!"
There was something leather in his hand, something woven and springy, and he brought it snapping down across Steve's neck again. Gasping, his eyes rolling, Steve dropped to his knees.
"Be a good boy," Lang said, smiling sweetly. "Listen to your nice wife when you sober up."
"B-bastard," Steve mumbled, and Lang hit his exposed rib cage with the blackjack, swinging it easily and expertly, striking and mumbling.
"Be good," Lang said, "or I'll smash your balls, dearie."
"Oh, god," Jill said, "oh, please don't hurt him any more-oh, please! He-let me get him out of here before a crowd gathers. L-let me take him home!"
Lang touched his hair with his free hand, and the other one made the blackjack disappear. In its place sprang a knife with a long, bright and wickedly slim blade. He made a loosely peeling motion with it, and a red line jumped along Steve's cheekbone.
"Pay attention," Lang said. "You don't want to see me ever again, dearie; that's to remind you. All right, Mrs. Devlin; take him home and talk sense to him."
Somehow, she got Steve up and with her shoulder braced under his armpit, steered him around back of the bar where he'd have parked the truck. Breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief when she saw it there, she wrestled Steve into the cab and shut the door after him. He was breathing heavily and the cut on his cheek wasn't deep, so she thought he was all right. When she started the truck, he fumbled with the window and stuck his head out to retch, and she could smell the bitter odor of beer and sickness.
Driving from behind the building, she looked up and down the street before pulling out, and saw that Jojo was already gone, Lang with him. She shivered, and took the pickup out of town, speeding a little on the state road, turning into the county one. Glancing at her husband, she saw his head lolling back on the seat, saw his eyes closed.
Why had they beaten him up? Aaron Mercer was behind it, because his men wouldn't stir without his orders. He'll have to be convinced, Aaron said, and now she understood a small part of the cold steel that lay beneath Aaron's softly rational talk.
Good, lord, she thought-Aaron is a killer! Whatever he was involved in here, whatever he had to do with the ranch, with Boyce Pittman, or anything else in the county, she had to see that Steve kept out of the man's way.
Jojo-brutish and powerful, but Steve had handled him. Then Lang came-mincing, effeminate Lang with the quick blackjack and the swifter knife; of the two, Lang was the more deadly by far.
And what did that make their master, Aaron Mercer? Jill turned into the Rafter D and took the bumpy road in a hurry. Steve had to sign whatever Aaron wanted now; he had to. If he didn't, they might kill him.