Chapter 1
His name was Brawley Hayes, and if you had seen him standing there, tall and wiry in a t-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, watching the Key West street performers as the sun melted into the horizon, you could never have guessed that twenty-four hours later, he would be the subject of an international manhunt that would change the world forever.
Brawley grinned as the skinny calico jumped back and forth through a golden hoop held by her trainer, a red-faced man in a battered top hat, Hawaiian shorts, and a baggy t-shirt that read The Cat Wizard.
“Good girl, Callie!” the Cat Wizard said, proving that he was better at training cats than naming them. He swept the top hat from his head and gestured toward a pair of ladders with a length of clothesline stretched between them.
Callie climbed the ladder, delighting the crowd.
That’s when the trouble started.
Thirty feet away, a trio of assholes set to laughing like a pack of hyenas. One of them was all duded up in a shiny dress shirt and a pair of sunglasses pushed up into his peroxide-blond hair. Cupping hands around his dark goatee, he shouted at the Cat Wizard, jacking with him, trying to throw him off this game. “Hope she doesn’t fall!”
The Cat Wizard glanced nervously in their direction but kept performing.
Brawley clenched his fists. During his years on the Professional Bull Riders circuit, he’d traveled all over. No matter where he went, he saw guys like this. Loud fuckers who hung in groups and started shit where shit had no business being started.
Sometimes, Brawley ended up knocking their teeth out.
But not tonight. Not here.
This wasn’t some backcountry honky-tonk, where men understood that words had consequences. This was Key West, a nice place. And he wasn’t here to fight.
Besides, according to the doctors who had rebuilt his neck, one good smack—like say, a haymaker from that thick bastard next to Blondie—might pop the vertebral pin, slice the main artery, and bye-bye Brawley.
He’d been restless ever since getting out of the hospital. Restless and wracked by weird dreams of swaying palms, street performers, and a brightly painted sign that read Welcome to Mallory Square, the World Famous Sunset Celebration!
Which was strange, since he had never even heard of this place.
Then he’d found out it was real. All of it. The town, the celebration, even the damned sign. That very day, he’d left the ranch and headed east, driven by curiosity like a tumbleweed before a storm.
This place had drawn Brawley to it, and he wanted to know why. But he was pretty sure he hadn’t been summoned across sixteen hundred miles merely to toss knuckles with these assholes.
So he did his best to ignore them and watch the show.
Callie was quite a cat. All these people, all this noise—hell, the next act over, some guy was juggling torches atop a ten-foot unicycle—but Callie was walking back and forth across the tightrope as calmly as she might cross the floor of a familiar barn.
That was poise, a trait Brawley held in high regard.
He decided to drop a five in the tip bucket.
Then Callie flew away.
The cat didn’t jump. She just whipped away through the air, screaming with fear and zooming over the tourists like a cat riding an invisible flying carpet.
What the hell?
The Cat Wizard raced after her. The crowd followed, crying out with confusion.
A hundred feet from shore, Callie hovered in midair above the ocean.
Brawley shouldered his way to the water’s edge and heard the Cat Wizard pleading with the trio of assholes.
“Pay up next time, Beastie,” the blond-haired guy said.
Before Brawley could even wonder about that, Callie dropped into the water.
People screamed, staring in horror as the cat struggled.
At this distance, Callie’s head was nothing but a colorful dot in the water, there and gone and there again, the cat obviously struggling to stay afloat in the choppy bay.
Brawley glanced around for a boat or anything he could use to save her, but there was nothing close enough to make a difference.
He considered kicking off his boots and jumping in, but his gut said he’d never reach her in time. And life had taught Brawley to trust his gut.
Come on, Callie. Come on, girl.
The cat was making no progress toward the shoreline despite her flailing.
“Oh my gawd, she’s gonna drown!” a woman screamed.
Brawley’s vision sharpened as it sometimes did when his adrenaline kicked in. Suddenly, he could see the struggling cat just as clearly as if he was looking through the Leupold gold ring atop his .308.
Callie spat and screamed, her eyes huge with terror. Then her head went under again.
Brawley reached out, wanting with every fiber of his being to do something, anything, to save the animal.
She broke the surface again, eyes rolling with horror.
Strange pressure was building in Brawley’s head. A line of fire burned up the back of his neck, making him wonder if he had reinjured it somehow.
He blocked this out, focusing on the cat. The roar of the crowd faded to a dull murmur, and the world went almost silent just like it used to when he was riding, back before Aftershock had taken it all away.
Come on, Callie. Fight, girl. Swim.
But the cat disappeared again—and stayed under this time.
Brawley was seized by a sense of powerful anticipation, as if life had rushed sharply in one direction with the whoosh of a drawn-back whip, and now he was waiting for the sharp crack of the return stroke.
Brawley’s heart hammered like bull hooves in his chest. Heat and pressure filled his skull, which felt like a volcano about to erupt.
Crouching down, he reached out with both arms.
Callie resurfaced with a pitiful yowl.
Then, suddenly, Brawley could feel the cat.
He could feel her struggling. Not in his hands but in some other hands, the hands of his imagination, it seemed.
He imagined using those hands to hoist the cat to safety, and the crowd cried out, pointing as Callie lifted into the air.
Which wasn’t possible. But given the circumstances, Brawley didn’t give a shit about what was or wasn’t possible. In his view of things, once you set your mind on something, you stuck to it and didn’t quit till the thing was finished. Right now, he only cared about saving the cat. Possibility be damned.
“That’s it, girl,” he said, and concentrated on pulling her toward land. “I got you.”
Callie drifted toward him through the air, swaying back and forth. It was like invisible hands were holding her under the arms. “Come on, pretty girl.”
Brawley felt foolish then, realizing he’d been talking out loud and gesturing with his arms like a lunatic.
People gawked.
Oh well. Let them stare.
He stayed focused on Callie. At last her bony body came into his hands—his real hands this time—and he pulled the wet, trembling cat to his chest.
Which Callie promptly scratched the shit out of, squealing like someone had stomped her tail.
Lines of fire zipped across his flesh as the panicked feline sprang free and raced across the pavement to the Cat Wizard, who scooped her into his arms and sobbed with relief.
Brawley’s white t-shirt was a bloody, tattered mess, and the scratches burned like hell, but he burst into loud laughter anyway.
He’d done it. It shouldn’t have even been possible, but he had saved the cat.
Everyone was staring at him now.
Some smiled.
A few applauded, having somehow convinced themselves that this had been a trick and that Brawley was a performer, part of the show.
Other folks weren’t so enthusiastic. They backed away, eyes bulging, making the sign of the cross or pulling kids close as they hustled off.
Then everything went sideways.
All the strength drained out of Brawley. He stumbled, and the world around him lurched and spun like he was riding a rank bull. The cobblestones tilted, and he almost dropped.
Only his superhuman balance, which he had honed over years and years of training and competition, saved him. He came to again, still on his feet, and the spinning slowed.
But he was sick as hell and had a wall-banger of a headache. And he was thirstier than he’d ever been in his life, which was saying something, coming from a guy who’d grown up in West Texas.
He needed a drink. Pronto.
“Thank you, mister,” the Cat Wizard said, appearing with Callie in his arms and tears streaming down his stubbled cheeks. “Thank you for saving my girl. Bless you.”
Then a middle-aged woman was sticking a phone in Brawley’s face. “Most amazing thing I’ve ever seen! How in the world did you do that?”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Brawley said, “but I really need a drink.”
“Who are you?” the woman exclaimed.
Brawley didn’t feel like hanging around, but he had been raised to be polite, especially to women, and that went double for women who happened to be older than him. Also, his time on the circuit had conditioned him to answer questions and pause for photos even after getting thrown or stomped.
He cleared his parched throat and said, “My name is—”
And then the woman’s phone snapped in half and dropped to the cobblestones in a rain of twisted metal and shattered screen bits.
The woman reared back like a spooked horse, knifing the air with terrified shrieks.
Brawley could only stand and stare, wondering just what the hell kind of otherworldly hornet’s nest he had kicked coming here.
Then someone grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him away through the crowd.
“Come with me now,” the girl beside him growled, “or you’ll get us both killed.”
Chapter 2
Looking down, Brawley couldn’t believe his eyes.
Hustling him through the crowd was a tiny woman who looked like a cross between a Victoria’s Secret model and a rodeo clown.
Even in his current state, even at a glance, Brawley could see that she was drop dead gorgeous—despite her studded dog collar, glittering nose ring, and crazy hair, which was long and purple, except for where she’d shaved one side of her head to stubble. She wore combat boots, camouflage cut-offs, a plaid flannel knotted around her waist, fingerless gloves, and a skin-tight tank top emblazoned with an anarchy symbol and crisscrossed with little slashes that exposed lines of tanned flesh.
She was of an age with Brawley, somewhere in her early twenties, and couldn’t have been more than five-three beneath that heap of purple locks. She was slender and toned with great collarbones and amazing curves that jiggled hypnotically as she marched him away from whatever the hell had just happened back there.
After his first couple of years on the circuit, Brawley had largely avoided the inevitable army of dolled-up groupies who turned up in every town to stalk the bull riders. Most of the buckle bunnies were beautiful, but they tended to be loud and showy, and their makeup, short-shorts, and pushup bras felt like a trap to Brawley.
He preferred real women. Mostly country girls, who were pretty without the fuss and who could sit a horse, handle a rifle, gut a fish, or throw together a Sunday dinner for twelve on short notice.
This girl was about as far from his type as he could imagine but looking at her was like getting whacked right between the eyes with a ball-peen hammer. She was next-level gorgeous, purple faux hawk and crazy clothes be damned.
“I love cats, too, but what the actual fuck were you thinking?” she snarled. “Do you have a death wish or are you just a moron?”
Before he could answer, an angry voice called out behind them, “Stop running, Nina. We want to talk to your boyfriend.”
“Go fuck yourselves!” Nina replied, and hauled Brawley into an alley packed with tourists.
Brawley slammed on the brakes. If those assholes wanted trouble, he’d give them all the trouble they could handle and then some.
But when he tried to jerk his arm free, he couldn’t break Nina’s grip.
And that was curious. Ponderously curious.
Brawley was 6’2” in his sock feet and broad across the shoulders, 170 pounds of whipcord muscle hardened by riding bulls and handling everything his hardscrabble ranch life threw his way, from roping cattle to mending fences to putting up hay.
And yet this angry little punk rocker, who probably tipped the scales a few ounces either side of a hundred pounds, hauled him down the alley like a mother bear dragging her cub by the ear.
That’s when Brawley realized just how weak he was. Whatever happened back there had sure enough knocked the hell out of him.
His legs wobbled, twitching with fatigue. Explosions of pain popped like fireworks in his skull, blurring his vision. His throat was drier than a desert road.
“You’re a piece of work, cowboy,” Nina said as they left the alley and cut across the street. A slow-moving herd of people wearing cruise ship badges packed the sidewalk. Nina and Brawley wove through them, hurried around a corner, and hung a quick left into another alley.
At the other end, Nina mounted a pink moped covered in stickers and slapped the seat behind her. “Can you ride?”
The world reeled, crazier than a funhouse mirror. But Nina’s question brought Brawley around. People had been asking him that same question since he’d fallen off his first sheep back in his mutton-busting days. And Brawley told her the same thing he told people every time somebody asked, no matter how bad he was hurting. “I can ride.”
He squeezed in behind her, barely fitting on the seat, and folded up his long legs. He grabbed her tiny waist with his big calloused hands, wrapping his fingers across her hip bones and onto her taut abdomen, one finger sliding into the slit fabric and pressing into her warm flesh.
Nina zipped down the street, whipping away from the shouts of the assholes, who had finally made it to the end of the alley.
Brawley focused on not falling off the bike. He was dead tired and dizzy. His head roared with pain, and he felt like puking.
It was like being drunk and hungover all at the same time.
But Nina’s toned body still felt good. Her piled-up hair was a purple cushion beneath his chin. He breathed in her smell, an intoxicating blend of fresh ocean air, sweet pineapple, and Caribbean flowers.
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