3 Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray Read online

  The intern slammed to a quick, brake-squealing stop. “Is this guy crazy?”

  “Six hundred pounds of Spam tell me yes.” I opened the door to climb out.

  Nick and Jenkins climbed out after me.

  “You can’t take that stuff,” Buchmeyer yelled from his prone position underneath the truck’s front bumper. “It don’t belong to me. It belongs to the Lone Star Nation.”

  “Not anymore.” Nick grabbed Buchmeyer’s boots and dragged the old man out from under the truck’s bumper and off the drive.

  Buchmeyer rolled over onto his back in the weeds. He tried to sit up, but had trouble with his hands still cuffed behind his back. “You’ll be sorry you messed with me.” His narrowed eyes took each agent in turn. “Just you wait and see.”

  Vague threats. Not the first or last time for that, either.

  Nick and I turned to walk back to the bug-splattered fleet car. We’d leave the old man there for the deputy to deal with. That’ll teach the officer to question the capabilities of an IRS special agent.

  Nick and I held the gate open as the intern drove the rental truck out. He gave us a honk and a wave before turning onto the county road. Jenkins thanked us for our assistance, then climbed into her vehicle and headed out, too.

  Nick and I made our way to the car. He paused at the passenger door, his eyes focused on something off in the distance behind me. I turned to see what he was looking at. Though it was dusk now, it wasn’t too dark for us to see another dark dust cloud being kicked up at the back of the Buchmeyers’ place.

  “Something’s going on back there,” he said.

  Given that we’d just seized enough guns and ammo to arm a sizable battalion, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back there and find out what it was. Anyone there would likely be holding both a weapon and a grudge. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do if that girl’s a federal agent on duty, right?

  I put on my brave face. “Let’s go check things out.”

  We walked back onto the property, stopping to speak with the deputy. He’d already secured August in the back of his cruiser, but he grabbed his rifle and joined us. Given that we’d seen at least three vehicles drive onto the property, he called for backup, suggesting his fellow deputies use the fire road for access.

  “You’re one helluva shot,” the deputy said, cutting his eyes my way, his tone respectful now.

  He’d underestimated me. Yet another event that had happened before and would surely happen again. I was tough, smart, and capable, but I came in a deceptively petite, benign-looking package.

  “Where’d you learn to handle a gun like that?” he asked.

  “My father taught me,” I said. “He got me my first Daisy BB gun for my third birthday.”

  Dad was a gun nut and had taught all three of his children how to handle a weapon. He’d taken my brothers deer hunting on many occasions over the years, but settled to shoot skeet with me. I couldn’t stomach the sight of a dead deer. I might be a tough federal agent, but I was still a girl at heart.

  Darkness set in as we set out across the overgrown field. The deputy had a Maglite to light his way, but Nick and I had to pick our way in the dark. Too bad we hadn’t had the foresight to snag a couple flashlights from the barn for ourselves.

  Ahead we could see several more cars pull onto the property, their headlights sweeping across the pasture, illuminating the dust and people, who stood in a tight group. As we drew nearer, we heard whooping, catcalls, hollering. People raised fists in the air and jumped up and down. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was at a football game or a prize fight.

  We finally made our way up to the edge of the noisy group. The people gathered around were so focused on what was going on in front of them they didn’t even notice us.

  I stood on tiptoe to see what had them so rapt. Then I wished I hadn’t seen what I saw.

  My hand went to my chest and I felt momentarily breathless. “Oh, my God!”

  The people encircled a shallow pit in which two large, colorful roosters fought, running at each other, pecking and kicking and clawing.

  A cockfight.

  Another thing that happens when rednecks have too much time on their hands.

  The deputy grabbed one of the smaller men on the outer loop of the ring and tossed him aside. He elbowed his way into the pit, raising his rifle over his head. “Don’t none of you leave!” he shouted. “You’re all under arrest!”

  The crowd turned and scattered like fire ants from a mound, a couple of beer-bellied men nearly plowing me down. So much for not leaving.

  The deputy fired his gun into the air and yelled, “Drop to the ground!” Nobody listened. Should’ve brought the bullhorn. Then again, it probably wouldn’t have done much good. These people didn’t look like the type who’d earned gold stars for good behavior in school. They didn’t look like the type who showered on a regular basis, either.

  Nick tackled a man half again his size, bringing him down and cuffing him in three seconds flat. I had to admit, his physical prowess was damn titillating.

  While Nick wrangled with another man, this one a gangly guy with a ridiculous handlebar mustache, I held out my arms to block two chubby women in tube tops and blue jeans. Both had bleached-blond hair with jet-black roots showing at the part, sort of like inverse skunks. “Stop right here!”

  “Who the fuck are you?” yelled the taller one.

  “Federal law enforcement.” I’d learned that saying “IRS” in such situations only served to confuse people.

  The two exchanged glances, then turned to run in the other direction. I ran after them. I reached out and grabbed their ponytails, digging in with my heels and leaning backward, trying to pull them to a stop. Instead, the two dragged me along behind them, my heels digging trenches in the dirt as if I were a human plow. Still, they couldn’t make good time with me weighing them down and, with their heads pulled backward at an odd angle, they couldn’t see too well where they were going.

  “Let go of me, bitch!” one of them yelled, turning and clawing at my wrist with two-inch acrylic nails. The other tried to twist out of my grip, failed, and backhanded me across the face. My cheeks burned with both the impact and fury.

  So that’s how they wanted to play this, huh?

  Still holding on to their ponytails, I jumped into the air, coming down to the ground as pure dead weight, the force yanking them both backward onto their asses. The shorter one’s left boob plopped out of her black tube top, her nipple pointing up to the sky like the lens of a telescope seeking the North Star.

  I let go of their hair, leaped to my feet, and pulled my gun. Standing over them, I aimed the barrel first at one, then the other. “Don’t either of you dare move.” The nipple seemed to look at me expectantly. “Oh, for God’s sake, put your boob away. But no funny business or I’ll take you down.”

  Since I’d used my only pair of cuffs on Buchmeyer, I had to come up with a creative way to restrain them. I instructed them to sit back to back and quickly tied their ponytails together in a hopelessly tangled knot. Siamese twins joined at the stupid.

  Engines roared and dust and rocks were kicked up as people attempted to flee in their cars. Luckily, backup had arrived and two county patrol cars blocked the back gate. The only exit was to drive directly through the fence. A pickup chose that route and a third cruiser took off after it, lights flashing, siren wailing in hot pursuit. The truck wouldn’t get far. The barbed wire had punctured its tires and already they were becoming flat, losing traction.

  The next few minutes were a blur of wrestling bodies, screams and shouts, along with dust in my eyes and nose. Finally things settled down. One of the cruisers had its bright headlights shining on a group of people sitting on the ground, their hands shackled behind them. Some sat slack jawed, while others cursed. There wasn’t a full set of teeth among them.

  In the pit, the two roosters continued to circle and lunge at each other. I ran to the pit and tried to shoo them apart. Bi
g mistake. My efforts only managed to infuriate the birds, who set their sights on a new target.

  Me.

  With one arm I covered my eyes lest they be pecked out. I whipped my other arm around, trying to scatter the birds. But these gamecocks had been bred and trained to attack and weren’t about to back down.

  Nick and the deputy jumped into the ring with me. While the deputy chased one of the birds, Nick quickly got hold of the other one, immobilizing the creature by holding its wings down flat at its sides. He held the struggling bird in front of his groin, a mischievous grin on his face. “I’ve got a large pecker here.” He held the bird out to me. “Would you like to pet my cock?”

  Before I could order Nick to behave, the loose bird fell out of the sky, flying right at me, the cruiser’s headlights illuminating a bright flash of metal on its leg.

  I fell back against the side of the pit and instinctively threw up my hands to protect my face. The next thing I knew, a three-inch metal gaff slashed through my pants and lodged in my upper thigh, mere inches from my girlie parts.

  Holy hell, I’d never felt such sharp pain!

  To make matters worse, the bird was still attached to the gaff, which was firmly embedded in my flesh. The rooster beat me with his wings as an involuntary scream tore from my throat, an elongated sound that basically ran through all the vowels, excluding the sometimes y. “Aaeeiioouu!”

  Nick dropped the bird in his hands. It fluttered unhurt to the ground. He ran to me, grabbed the chicken that had stabbed me, and began to pull.

  “Wait!” I barely managed, stumbling to hang on to Nick for support. “Don’t remove the blade. Just get it off the bird.”

  I’d learned a few things about first aid in Girl Scouts and knew that removing an object could often be more dangerous than leaving it in. A person could bleed to death. The damn gaff could have sliced some important artery. For all I knew, the bird had damaged my G-spot. I’d never been sure exactly where the G-spot was, only that it was in that general area down there.

  While I hung on to Nick’s shoulder, he wrestled with the bird, finally removing the tie that held the gaff on the bird’s leg. The deputy ran over with a small, open cage. Nick shoved the poor, terrified bird inside, and secured the door.

  The deputy and the other bird now ran in circles around the pit. It was unclear who was chasing whom at this point, as this bird was outfitted with sharp, jagged blades on his legs. Nick managed to grab the bird as it circled by, tucking it under his arm where it couldn’t escape. He quickly removed the razor blades.

  I fell back onto the side of the pit, panting, trying to breathe through the pain. I tried that hoo-hoo haa-haa breathing technique that pregnant women used in TV shows and movies. I wasn’t sure if the breathing method only worked on labor pains, but it was the only thing I could think of at the moment. My head felt light and fireflies seemed to be darting around my vision.

  The deputy jumped out of the pit to retrieve the other cage and Nick shoved the orange and black bird inside.

  He turned to me and scooped me up in his arms. “We’ve got to get you to a doctor. Fast.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Medicinal Margaritas

  Nick carried me in his arms as if I weighed nothing and rushed across the field toward the car. I cradled against his broad chest and tried to think happy thoughts. Not easy to do with a metal blade sticking out of your leg. Then again, I was pressed up against some pretty fine, rock-hard pecs. Under different circumstances, this could be fun.

  When we reached the car, he set me down gingerly on the asphalt. I leaned against the fender and fished the keys out of the pocket of my blazer, tossing them to him. He bleeped the door locks open and helped me into the passenger seat, bending down to take a look at my leg in the overhead light.

  “That looks deep,” he said, noting that half of the gaff had disappeared into my leg.

  I rummaged in the console and found some fast-food napkins another agent had left in the car, holding them around the cut and applying pressure. Nick hopped into the driver’s seat and yanked out his cell to call 911 for directions to the nearest hospital.

  I shook my head. “Take me back to Dallas,” I gritted out between teeth clamped tightly shut against the pain.

  “Tara, that cut looks—”

  “Just get me the hell back to Dallas!” I shrieked.

  Nick jammed the key into the ignition, gunned the engine, and took off like a bat out of hell, tires squealing.

  On the way back to the city, my cell phone chirped. I checked the readout. Lu, our boss. I flipped my phone open. “Hi, Lu,” I managed to grunt out.

  “Did I catch you on the toilet?”

  Ew. “No!”

  “Why are you grunting, then?”

  Thankfully, Nick took the phone from me. “Hey, Lu. You won’t believe what went down.”

  “Don’t tell her I got hurt,” I whispered. With her lung cancer, the woman had enough to worry about without fearing for her agents’ safety.

  Nick lifted his chin in agreement and told Lu the rest of the story, leaving out the fact that a chicken had turned me into a human shish kebab. He flipped the phone closed. “She says ‘good job.’”

  Nice to feel appreciated. Of course Nick had also left out the part where I’d fired my gun, too. Lu might not feel so appreciative when she realized I’d be facing another internal investigation in what was already a long string of internal investigations.

  In forty-five minutes we pulled up to the medical clinic where Dr. Ajay Maju worked. As many times as I’d been into the clinic to see him, the guy had practically become my personal physician. Driving all the way back to Dallas probably wasn’t the smartest decision under the circumstances, but it would’ve felt like cheating to have another doctor treat me.

  Leaning on Nick’s shoulder, I hobbled into the lobby. He had one arm around my waist, and I tried not to notice how warm and strong it felt. The evening receptionist took one look at the bloody spot on my thigh and called a nurse, who led me to an examination room right away.

  Ajay entered not ten seconds later. Ajay was short in stature but long in skill. He wore a T-shirt embellished with LET ME KISS YOUR BOO-BOO. Where did he find these things?

  He stepped right over and looked at my thigh, his brows meeting in confusion. “What the heck is that thing in your leg?”

  “We broke up a cockfight.” I grimaced against the pain. “The idiots who fight them put gaffs and razor blades on the chicken’s legs so that the fight is more violent and bloody.”

  Ajay shook his head. “There are a lot of sick fucks in this world.”

  And there’d be a lot of sick fucks spending the night in the county lockup. Neener-neener.

  The doc grabbed a pair of scissors and, starting at the hem, cut all the way up the leg of my pants, stopping just past the gaff and just short of my panties. He pulled the fabric back to expose my bare leg. Good thing I’d shaved that morning. After injecting my thigh with a local anesthetic, he carefully began working the blade out of my flesh.

  Oh, Lord. The fireflies were back.

  “Look at me,” Nick said, trying to distract me from what was going on. He took my hand in his and stared into my eyes. Under other circumstances, the interaction might have been romantic. But given that I was on the verge of puking, not so much now. Still, his golden-brown eyes proved to be a pleasant distraction.

  Before I knew it, Ajay finished and held up the bloody gaff. “Mind if I keep this for my next medical conference? The doctors always meet in the bar for show-and-tell.”

  “It’s all yours.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Nick and I sat in a booth at a nearby bar with Ajay and Christina Marquez, a DEA agent with whom I’d worked on a recent case and who dated the doc. She’d also helped me smuggle Nick out of Mexico and back into the U.S. Maybe one of these days I’d have the opportunity to pay her back for that favor.

  Christina had the warm brown skin, bodacious body, an
d long legs of Salma Hayek, along with the kick-ass attitude of Angelina Jolie. The one thing she didn’t have was a frozen margarita in front of her. She’d opted for a sparkling water.

  “You’ve become a teetotaler?” I asked.

  “I’m on a cleanse,” she said.

  I lifted my margarita glass. “Six or seven of these babies and, trust me, you’ll get a cleanse.”

  This particular bar had a reputation for the strongest ’ritas in town. Rumor was the bartenders added a shot of Everclear. I didn’t know if the rumor was true or not. At the moment all I cared about was dulling the pain in my leg. The anesthetic had begun to wear off, so I was self-medicating with a numbing agent of a more general, lime-flavored variety.

  Ajay’d closed the wound with three stitches and covered it with a bandage. My boyfriend would be none too happy when he found out I’d been injured on the job, yet again. Time after time I’d told him how rare it was for special agents to fire their weapons, how infrequently agents were attacked or put in real danger. But time after time I’d had to shoot my gun and ended up at the medical clinic.

  Even I didn’t believe my spiel any longer.

  Thankfully, my other pending case, which involved a nationally broadcast megachurch and its pastor, shouldn’t pose any dangers. No real risk there other than the threat they’d try to convert me. I was plenty happy as a backsliding Baptist, thank you very much.

  Nick rested his hand on the booth next to my bare leg, the warm skin of his fingers brushing against my thigh. I supposed I should’ve moved my leg away, but I wasn’t sure Nick was even aware he was touching me and I didn’t want to look like I was reading something into the touch that wasn’t there.

  There wasn’t anything there. Right?

  Christina tilted her head and looked at me. “How in the world did you get stabbed by a chicken?”

  I told her the full story of the revenge of the birds.

  She shook her head. “That kind of thing could only happen to you.”

  “I know, right?” I seemed to be a magnet for freak accidents.