Susan Andersen - Coming Undone

"Apparently he feels I'm not honoring my mother."

"Shit." Her heavily made-up eyes hardened. "That sounds like him, all right. That honoring thy parents stuff was his main bitch with me, too. A snake." She shook her head. "Man. That's just plain freaky."

"He also seems to be stalking her," Jared added.

"As in he actually left Iowa?"

"Yes." He gave her an abbreviated rundown of the man who had delivered the snake and showed her the police artist's sketch.

"That's him, all right. Holy crap. It sounds like he's totally gone round the bend."

Jared asked her several more questions, but it was obvious that Mary didn't have a clue what her father was up to these days and was blown away to hear of his recent activities.

When they got up to go, P.J. shook Mary's hand. "I know you said country music's not your thing, not to mention that you're probably working tonight," she said. "But I'm playing down in Lubbock at the Municipal Coliseum and I'd love to have you come as my guest."

"Oh, I don't know." Mary shifted her weight onto one foot, standing hip-shot. "I got tonight off, but it really ain't my cup of tea."

She gave the other woman a crooked smile. "Believe me, if anyone understands that knee-jerk need to stay away from stuff her parent likes, it's me. But tell you what-I'll leave a couple of tickets at the will-call office under your name just in case you change your mind. If you don't wanna use them it's no biggie."

But in the car heading out of town a short while later, P.J. looked over at Jared. "Other than confirming Menks is every bit as loony tunes as we feared, I'm not sure what we gained from that."

"Me, either." He took his eyes off the road for a second to glance over at her. "Only time will tell if something comes of it or not." He shrugged as if it didn't matter one way or the other, but when he pinned her in his sights once again the intensity of his gaze told another story. "I'll tell you what, though. I'd rather take the time to track down each and every lead than let one slip by, only to find out later it was the one thing that we should have been looking into in order to keep you safe."

THE SUN HAD SET BUTa sliver of moon rode the eastern sky as Luther Menks clutched his concert ticket and tried to keep from touching anyone in the crush of people surrounding him-a goal that simply wasn't workable in a crowd that pressed and jostled as it surged forward, funneling down toward the entrances to the Lubbock Municipal Coliseum. He shuddered, hating all this sweat-and-perfume scented, unclean humanity. But taking deep breaths, he held on, for soon he would be seated in a darkened arena where an assigned seat would keep the concertgoers on either side from getting too close as he watched Priscilla Jayne perform.

Surely tonight would be the night she repented her sinful ways. The scalpers' tickets to the last three concerts had been astronomical-far too rich for his budget-so he'd had no way of judging if the impact of the lesson he'd tried to impart had improved her attitude since the Red Rocks concert. By now she'd had plenty of time to reconsider her behavior and adjust it to fit the confines of good Christian morality. Or that was his sincerest hope, at least.

Because only then would he be able to forgive her her trespasses.

He was still twenty feet away from the manned turnstile when he became aware of grumblings in the crowd around him.

"What the fuck's the hold-up, dude?" the youth tromping on his heels demanded of his circle of raucous foul-mouthed friends.

"I've never seen the lines move this slowly," said a woman in a pair of neatly pressed slacks and a prim blouse to a girl wearing a short denim skirt and a cowgirl hat.

"What they doin', looking for someone or something?" demanded a thuggish-looking fellow with a hoop earring and a bandana tied around his bald head.

The latter question made the short hairs on the back of Luther's neck stand up and bristle. Were they looking for someone?

Were they looking forhim?

That had better not be the case.

Because that would mean Priscilla Jayne hadn't repented her morally abhorrent ways at all. Just the thought was enough to dredge forth a rage that was startlingly close to the surface. Like a swarm of roused bees it began humming throughout his nervous system.

But he was putting the honey before the hive here. Blowing out a breath, he fisted and flexed the fingers of his free hand in an attempt to release some of his tension. He was definitely getting ahead of himself. There was no real reason to believe that A, the sentries manning the entrances were looking for anyone and B, that even if they were, it was him. The buzz of his wrath began to die.

He watched the security guard as he neared the entrance he'd be using. When he approached a point a few yards from the doorway, he saw the man's gaze drift to the group of complaining young men behind him. Suddenly it snapped back to make full eye contact with him and the other man's eyes widened. The guard immediately turned his attention to others in their line but Menks had been in the business for years and he knew when someone had been made.

And the only possible way he would ever be recognized was if Priscilla Jayne's soul was so far beyond salvation that she couldn't even recognize a helping hand when it was extended to her.

Suppressing his resurrected fury, Luther instinctively sidestepped through the line that was winnowing down from three and four people abreast to one or two the nearer they got to the individual entrances. He whirled to go against the widening flow behind him like a salmon fighting his way upstream.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the security guard wave someone over to take his place at the turnstile then jump the gate to come after him. Barely registering the protests that followed in his wake, he zigzagged through the crowd, pushing and shoving, crouched as low as he could manage in order to fly beneath the radar as he prayed to his Maker that the guard had lost sight of him in the man's own efforts to get through the throng of concertgoers.

The mob eventually spit him out at the back of the lines. Shuddering, he slapped and brushed at himself, trying to dislodge the germ-infested filth from his hands, his arms, his hair. Then he made himself desist, knowing that he didn't have time for this now. As much as he detested the multitude of close-packed bodies, he was exposed out here in the open, so he wove through the more loosely packed crowds at the back of the gathering, working his way toward the parking lot.

He briefly considered trying another entrance, knowing from experience that some security employees were more diligent than others. But he decided against it.

He had been given a sign, and an intelligent man only ignored one of those at his own peril. Clearly it was time to withdraw to somewhere safer and reevaluate the situation. But cold anger filled him.

Priscilla Jayne didn't know who she was dealing with, and she had better beware. Because he had God on his side.

And she had just bought herself more trouble than she could imagine.

RUBBER BURNED. BRAKES SCREAMED. And Jared went from a sound sleep to crashing against the imitation-leather folding curtain of his sleeping berth when the bus tipped to an inexplicable forty-five degree angle. Opening his eyes to the pitch-dark night, he heard a thump out in the hall between the berths, followed by a spate of creative cursing. But before he had time to worry about anyone else's safety the bus slammed down on all four tires and he was thrown back against the cubicle's outside wall. The sound of air brakes from another vehicle shrieked past and P.J. and Nell's raised voices exploded in an anxious babble of high-pitched confusion behind their stateroom door. He unsnapped the flap and shoved it back.

Eddie was sprawled out across the hallway floor, buck naked and cussing a blue streak as he simultaneously rubbed one flank and checked his elbow. Hank was swearing, as well, as he clutched at the half-opened accordion curtain with one hand, his abdominal muscles standing out in stark relief as he hauled his upper body back into his berth.

The stateroom door burst open and the women tumbled out.

"Shit!" Lurching up onto the hip he'd been nursing, Eddie reached into his berth and snatched out a cowboy hat, which he whipped over his lap.

It made Jared realize that he himself was standing there in nothing but his boxers and he grabbed a pair of jeans from his own compartment. Pulling them on, he gave first P.J. then the rest of her crew a swift assessment. "Everyone okay?"

The general consensus was that they were and he nodded. "Good. Let's find out what the hell happened. Marvin!" It suddenly registered that P.J. wore only a skimpy white tank top and bikini panties and Nell had on an almost see-through baby-doll nightie. "You two might want to grab your robes," he said. "And, Eddie, trade your hat for a pair of jeans. Marvin!" Looking toward the front of the bus he saw that the driver wasn't behind the wheel. "Where the hell did he go?"

He strode up the aisle past the galley to the front, where he saw the door standing open. Jumping down to the bottom step, he leaned out into the night. A barely visible but steady drizzle misted his bare shoulders and he shivered. "Marvin?" God, what time was it, anyway? He felt as if he'd slept for hours, yet when he glanced at his watch he saw that not even two had passed since he'd gone to bed.