Page 51 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)
Keller stretched his back gingerly as the lovely scent of lilacs floated over him.
Had to be a dream. In that dream, Savannah came to him softly, her gentle fingers a soothing balm smoothing over his blistering forehead.
He reached for her. She reached for him, intertwining her fingers with his.
Kissing his fingertips. Nuzzling his cheek. Loving him like she always did.
Keller wasn’t sure which dream was real, this one with Savannah in it or the one with the horse.
“I’m real, my silly Secret Agent Man,” she whispered in his ear, her breath the sweetest scent a man could ask for. Beg for. Die for.
But his eyelids were too thick and too heavy to lift. He couldn’t make his mouth speak, and his mind was already drifting away from him. From Savannah. Complex thinking was impossible. All he could tell her was, ‘Stay. Please. Stay. ’
‘I’m here, honey, and I’m never leaving you again. Not ever.’
The fire in his chest roared to life. ‘Stay,’ he told her as his fingers slipped out of hers.
‘Always,’ she breathed into his mind even while she gathered his limp hand between her beautiful breasts and pressed a kiss to his forehead. ‘I’m calling your doctor. Something’s not right.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ Whatever. Keller drifted then. Fevered. Angry. Sore and thirsty…
Back in Louisiana, Doctor Rudy John had a plan.
The Preakness had come and gone, as had the mighty Bruce Fontenette and that waste of time and money, Sand Dollar.
Stupid horse. If it hadn’t been for the wiles of Doctor Rudy John and the elixirs he manufactured out of his plain-looking little country clinic, that horse never would’ve won the Derby.
Never would’ve made Fontenette the hot shit he’d thought he was, either.
Fontenette’s scheme to flood the markets with rare, exotic birds had been harebrained at best. Wealthy, grasping men who fancied themselves presidential material should stick to what they knew best, instead of thinking they knew it all.
Especially when it came to dabbling in black markets.
Bruce had money all right, just not enough brains to understand the intricacies of gentle, but firm mental manipulation in the underworld business.
It wasn’t the stock market. It was a thousand times worse. Meaner. Bloodier.
The underworld was where men like Doctor Rudy John thrived. He smiled at how quickly he’d reduced Fontenette to an outlaw, while distracting him from the true power broker behind the scenes. RJ never planned for all those pretty little sparkly birds to live.
Too well he knew the secret underbelly of illegal smuggling. He also knew how to act dumb while sniffing out a wealthy client’s weakness, how to exact the best bargains while cheating your suppliers and your buyers.
That was where Fontenette fell short. He thought his fame and wealth translated into street cred.
Dumb ass. All it did was make him an easy mark.
Rudy John pegged him right from the start.
The fancy Southern gentleman considered himself above the law and out of the reach of moral accountability.
His greed and thirst for power, to be better than all other elite millionaires, made him easy to manipulate.
He’d wanted an idiot to lick his boots, say ‘yes, suh’ and ‘no, suh.’ So, RJ had stepped on up and acted the part.
Why not? He’d been acting since he was nuthin’ but a wet behind the ears youngster up in Turkey Creek.
It paid well then, and it was going to pay handsomely now. Just not how Fontenette expected.
Smiling to himself and as smug as a bloodsucking tick stuck to a mama coonhound’s dripping wet teat, RJ snapped shut the wide mouth of his restocked and newly filled-to-the-brim medical bag. The race wasn’t always to the fastest. No sirree Bob .
Doctor Rudy John was not the dummy folks thought he was, either.
All those greedy rich folks who thought they could own birds so endangered that they only lived in limited populations in the rarified altitudes and valleys of the Andes, would’ve gotten quite the surprise.
They’d ordered those birds sight unseen, but that wasn’t what they would’ve got.
It wasn’t what those FBI agents back in Florida thought they had now, either.
Almost made a man shiver with glee. Yes sirree Bob.
Doctor Rudy John was nothing short of a genius. A mastermind. Hell, he actually might rule the world at the end of the day—this day! For once, people would cringe when they heard his name. He couldn’t wait.
Because he knew what they didn’t. The special gas he’d concocted to keep those smuggled birds quiet was also alive with a rare strain of avian flu that came with a two-week incubation period.
Once inhaled, it promised slow and bloody disintegration of an animal’s lungs.
And those pretty birds had been inhaling it for days.
Better yet, it only took one breath to pass the contagion from bird to beast to human.
There was no cure, no antidote, because he hadn’t made one.
Why spoil perfection? This was a dream come true.
A chance to purge the earth and start again, only this time Doctor Rudy John would be king. Or God.
The original plan had been for Fontenette to transfer ownership of those hummingbirds to his elitist, millionaire friends and their snobbish wives.
Once they fell ill, they’d contact their doctors to come save them and their friends to come cry over them.
They contact their families. It’d be impossible to trace the point of origin of the virus by then.
The contagion would spread, killing the rich and powerful first, then filtering down to the working classes.
Their maids. Their pool boys. Their waitstaff.
But plan B would work just as well. Maybe faster now that Fish and Wildlife had quarantined Fontenette’s inventory. If even one of those tiny, germ enhanced birds escaped...
Doctor Rudy John couldn’t suppress the smile that crinkled his amazing, but itchy goatee.
It was officially too late. There was no way to contain the virus now.
He stroked his chin, petting himself and thinking, ‘ Look out, America. You folks are about to witness some real magic now.’ And he didn’t even have to be there to make it happen.
Hefting the medical bag in his right hand, RJ hung the CLOSED sign in his clinic window for the last time.
The sun didn’t set until well after seven these days.
It was spring, and he had a plane to catch.
He couldn’t be late. He was going… somewhere.
Oh yeah. He was going back to Florida. Though precisely where and why…
? Well, he couldn’t exactly remember. He had a lot on his mind, but he did have business back in Bruce Fontenette’s kingdom. Important business. Yes sirree Bob.
The only fly in the ointment was that he didn’t own old lady Church’s land. No matter how hard he’d tried, he’d never gotten close enough to Savannah Church to ask for a date much less her hand in marriage.
That’s too bad …
Yup, damned shame the way things worked out sometimes, but that was the risk of playing. You only won if you risked losing, and RJ didn’t plan to lose again.
That Fed, that FBI agent, that self-righteous prick, Special Agent Keller Boniface?
It’d taken Doctor Rudy John a couple hours dwelling on that guy, worrying and ruminating on where he’d known Boniface from.
But it’d finally come to him outta the clear blue sky, yes sir, just like a bolt of hundred-proof moonshine.
The guy’s last name should’ve been his first clue.
Yes, it should have been…
But RJ’d been so preoccupied plying Savannah with his best, most sincere compassion at her Gran Mere’s passing that he’d missed the connection.
Damned if that snotty Northerner was none other than Queen Elaine’s bastard offspring without the twang.
Pretty boy had gone and got hisself a haircut and an education.
Probably had a real college degree in a golden frame on his wall and everything.
That was why RJ hadn’t recognized Boniface.
’Course, Queen Elaine always claimed she’d been legally married to the drunk when she birthed the boy, but RJ was past believing that lying bitch.
Queen Elaine was as uppity as her son, just not as smart.
She ought to stick to what she knew best, her needles and her voodoo dolls, her setting folks against each other.
That was what she was good at, stabbing folks in the back while kissing their asses and making them think someone else had it out for them instead of her.
That nothing was her fault when everything that went bad in Turkey Creek eventually led back to Queen Elaine.
She really was a witch, just not a magical one.
Damn! Where’d that come from? RJ smoothed his hand over his head at the sudden sting. Must’ve been a hornet. Sure felt like a big one.
Locking the front door of his practice behind him, RJ strolled to his late model Ford, tossed the bag in through the open window to the back seat, and climbed behind the wheel.
Damned shame about Miss Church, though. He hadn’t done a thing to her, well, other than whisper his dark black magic into her empty head long enough to make her believe she weren’t no better than other folks.
He hadn’t even gotten to the good stuff when he’d lost his connection with her, and she’d slipped away.
Which had to mean she was dead by now. That was the only thing that made sense.
Well, good. Savannah deserved what she got.
Doctor Rudy John always kept his ability to get inside other people’s heads a secret. Why share? Seemed what folks didn’t know, would hurt them. Ha!