The Devil's Cauldron Read online

“It pissed him off when I said that,” the woman continued. “He never said a word against me. Never dared. But the tips of his ears turned red. So cute, my cousin. So weak and vulnerable. He needed someone to take care of him. That someone wasn’t you.”

  Kaitlyn Potterman.

  Meggie had known all along, hadn’t she? Known that Kaitlyn was a vicious backstabber. If not, why hadn’t Meggie blurted her discovery to Benjamin the moment she found out?

  Your cousin is stealing from the company. Look at these transfers. Fifty thousand, then thirty thousand. Twenty more on four separate occasions between October and the end of the year. Yes, I know there are invoices in Spanish from Costa Rica, but there’s no such thing as Asociación Tierra Alta. It’s a bogus company, they went bankrupt two years ago. She’s bought it, she’s the owner. It’s not a grower co-op, it’s her way of stealing.

  Any reasonable person would have looked at Meggie’s paper trail and called the police to nail Kaitlyn to the door. Benjamin himself would have done it to anyone else. Even one of his brothers, Meggie was convinced.

  But not his cousin. And when Kaitlyn found out, she’d go ballistic. No question.

  The night before their descent into the cave in the Nevada desert, Meggie had asked herself some hard questions. They were in a dusty little town named Brine Hollow at the base of the Snake Range, staying in a rundown motel with a cracked parking lot, overblown with tumbleweeds. Kitschy dinosaurs made of re-bar and hubcaps and other assorted junk lined the weedy strip between the motel and the highway. The office was a trailer on cinder blocks. The motel was the closest to the caves, roughly forty miles distant, so they forked over their fifty bucks per room, said that no, they weren’t going to be around for the continental breakfast (nobody on the team was remotely tempted, even if they hadn’t planned to leave before dawn), and lugged their gear to their rooms.

  Not surprisingly, the motel rooms were equally shabby, so they found the only bar in town, trying to avoid the frowns of the locals who looked up from pool tables and video slot machines. An old-fashioned jukebox played country music over the digital ringing of the slots. A fly strip covered in black specks swirled in the air kicked up by the overhead fan. The doors were closed, so there was nothing to cut the smell of sweat, beer, and stale cigarette smoke that hung around the people inside. A huge guy with a cowboy hat, boots, and a nose that looked to have been busted up several times stared them down.

  “I saw this once in a movie,” Benjamin muttered. “It didn’t end well. Maybe we should grab some beer at the mini-mart and drink in our room.”

  “Take it easy,” HalfOrc said. His real name was Paul Gorry, but he preferred his forum handle. “Don’t come in with an attitude and you’ll be fine.”

  Both HalfOrc and Duperre were from out West, and Meggie figured they recognized the vibe, and it was safe. Besides, Duperre was an older guy in his late fifties—wiry and fit, but with a casual, non-threatening demeanor. Surely, they wouldn’t jump him.

  She grabbed Benjamin’s sleeve and pulled him in, growing impatient. Part of not having an attitude was not freaking out because of a few cowboys in a bar.

  Sure enough, after a couple of beers, the guys were playing pool for drinks with the locals, winning and losing their share. It took Benjamin longer to warm up, but when he did, he was fine. Didn’t make an idiot out of himself.

  Meggie found herself throwing darts with the girlfriend of the big cowboy with the busted-up nose. Her name was Feather, and she had a hard look. Bleached blond hair, plenty of tats, bionic boobs that jutted at a right angle to her body and were surely pumped with silicon, and a face that had seen a lot of sun and hard drinking.

  “Is that skinny one your boyfriend?” Feather asked with a nod toward Benjamin, who lined up for a shot at the pool table. He was laughing at some story Duperre was telling.

  “Fiancé,” Meggie said, throwing her dart. Right in the bulls-eye, which won the game.

  “Damn,” Feather said, as she collected the darts and passed the blue ones back to Meggie. “Nice throw.” Another glance at Benjamin. “Guy must be rich, huh?”

  Meggie let out a surprised snort. She almost answered yeah, he was. He was about to take over the family company. But she held back. “What do you mean?”

  “That dude has a stick up his ass. Your buddies ain’t too warm to him, and you looked bent outta shape when he set one foot in Maxi’s and turned up his nose. So I thought maybe he was rich.”

  Meggie nodded toward Duperre and HalfOrc. “We never met those other two before today. So we’re just getting to know each other.”

  “Guess that explains why the other two fellas went out to have a smoke with my Don, while your man stayed inside shooting pool by himself.”

  “We’re all tired,” Meggie explained. “Drove all the way from Salt Lake today, and we’ve got a big hike into the desert tomorrow. We all get along fine, I swear.”

  “Got it.” Only Feather didn’t sound like she got it. She sounded skeptical.

  “What are you saying?”

  Feather shrugged. “What do I know? I ain’t no judge of character. My ex used to beat me up, and Don drinks too much. Boss said he shows up hungover one more time, he’s getting his ass kicked to the curb.”

  “Benjamin is all right, anyway. He makes a good living. He treats me okay.”

  “Okay, huh?”

  “That means a lot to me,” Meggie said. “I had a lot of struggles growing up, so I wanted someone stable.”

  “Something bad happen when you was a kid?”

  Meggie hesitated. Back East, you didn’t start bitching to a stranger about your drunk boyfriend or your abusive ex, not unless you wanted to be taken for trailer trash, but somehow it sounded natural coming out of Feather’s mouth in that unvarnished western twang. And that made Meggie want to talk about it.

  “My mother died when I was six,” she said, “and my dad left me to be raised by my uncle and aunt. He went to Alaska to work on a salmon boat. He sent back money, but didn’t bother calling or emailing. My uncle and aunt did their duty, but they wanted me out at eighteen. Never sent me a dime after that. I worked my way through school and never looked back.”

  “And your dad?”

  “Haven’t heard from him in years.”

  “Dumbass,” Feather said in a tone of solidarity. Her dart hit the bulls-eye and she pumped her fist. She grabbed her beer from the table and drank the last bit, then shouted at the bartender to pour her another Bud. “Winner buys next round?” she said to Meggie.

  “Duh, you’re ahead by twenty points. No way. Next game.”

  “Deal.”

  “Anyway, Benjamin is all right,” Meggie continued. “His family coughed up a hairball the first time they heard of me, but they came around. Maybe it’s because his parents figure they don’t have much time if they want grandkids.”

  “How old is your man?” Feather asked.

  “My fiancé? Only twenty-six. But his parents were in their forties when they had their kids, so they’re pretty old. Anyway, they’ve got money. The family runs a coffee company.”

  “Like a diner? Or a coffee shop?”

  “No, they import beans from Central America.”

  “Oh, wow. So they are rich.”

  Meggie shrugged. “It’s not a huge company, but they do pretty well. Benjamin is the oldest of his brothers, so he’s in charge now that his dad is retiring. The younger two both think they can run it better, and I think his cousin Kaitlyn does too, but he’s in charge. Benjamin just needs to toughen up a little and he’ll be fine.”

  “Gotta watch out for family.”

  “No kidding,” Meggie said. “It’s a big frigging mess.”

  Once Meggie got going, she didn’t stop. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just westerners who ran off their mouths. And Feather was plenty chatty herself. She told Meggie about how her best friend from high school was working at a brothel in Winnemucca, how Feather cobbled together a living cleaning rooms at the motel
and waiting tables at the diner. In turn, she let Meggie dump all her frustrations about Benjamin and his family.

  The two women played a while longer, the guys still drinking and playing pool. Meggie only weighed 120 pounds and was seriously buzzed, even though she’d only had three beers. Time to call it a night. She didn’t know about HalfOrc and Duperre, but she figured if she didn’t get to bed soon, she’d be dragging in the morning when the alarm went off. And hungover, if she didn’t stop drinking.

  After saying her goodbyes to Feather, she went over and tapped on Benjamin’s shoulder to tell him she was heading back to the motel.

  “Okay,” he said, returning the pool cue to the rack. It was the middle of the game, and Don, Feather’s boyfriend, groaned.

  “I’m just telling you,” she said. “You can stay if you want. It’s not that late, but I’m tired.”

  “Okay. Do you think I should finish up here? Or should I come with you?”

  “I don’t know, are you tired? We leave at 5:30 A.M.”

  “What do you think? Tell me if I should come to bed or not,” he said. “Maybe I should.”

  “Dude,” she said, starting to grow annoyed. “You know the drill in the morning. How much have you had to drink? No, it’s cool. Use your own judgment.”

  In the end, he decided he should go back with her. Meggie told him to finish the game—she’d wait—then paid the bar tab for the two of them and led him into the cool night air. Crickets chirped, and a breeze blew off the high desert that smelled of sagebrush and sand. Hard to believe that in twelve hours she’d be dangling from a rope, rappelling two hundred feet into the ground.

  She eyed Benjamin in the flickering neon of the broken bar sign before they picked their way across the darkened parking lot toward the highway and the motel directly opposite. Benjamin didn’t look overly drunk. Maybe now was the time.

  “It’s good to get away from work,” she said.

  “I wish I had cell coverage,” he said. “I should check my email.”

  “At least you didn’t say check in with your cousin.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Benjamin said.

  His voice was pinched. Was he angry Meggie had taken him to a dead zone? Gah, what was it with those two? Couldn’t they leave each other alone for three days?

  She squeezed his arm. “I know you’re close to family, but you’ve got to make your own life sooner or later.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind.” They reached the highway, which stretched straight and flat in either direction, a dark ribbon across the desert plain. On the other side, the dim lights along the front of the motel gave it a depressed, gloomy air. “It’s just you guys are all working together, I think you lose perspective.”

  “I don’t think we do.”

  “I mean, what would happen if someone in the family tried to rip the rest of you off?” Meggie asked. “It would be hard to stand up to family. You’d make excuses for them and stuff.”

  “You mean like if my brothers were trying to get control of Tropical Beans?”

  “Or stealing from the company, yeah. Or even Kaitlyn. I mean, what would you do? It would be hard.”

  “She’d never do that.”

  “But what if she did? What if she were stealing? It would be tough, but you’d have to do something.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” His tone was bristling. “Never happen.”

  Funny how Benjamin could be so malleable in some cases. He couldn’t even decide whether or not to leave the bar without her input. As if that mattered. But when it came to something important, like getting out from under Kaitlyn’s thumb, he turned huffy and defensive. Meggie decided to drop it for now. Maybe in the morning, or down in the cave, underground, with all pretension stripped away. Maybe then she’d bring it up.

  “Anyway, I’m glad we’re out here together,” she said, as they reached the motel.

  There were two new cars in the parking lot. Good. A few more people would make this place look less deserted and spooky.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “You’ve been working too hard. And it’s been forever since we got away from your family. I’ve missed that. Missed the alone time.” He didn’t say anything, and Meggie knew she should let it drop, but her mouth had the need to fill the silence, so it kept running away. “We need more time alone, don’t you think?”

  “We’re hardly alone. There are other people on the trip, remember.”

  Meggie stood in front of the door and fumbled at the lock. It didn’t use a keycard, but an actual key on a fob. “Not the same thing. We don’t know those guys and they’re not prying into our lives or anything. Not like . . . ” Her voice trailed off just in time. Mention Kaitlyn again and he’d go off, and that would ruin the night.

  He didn’t say anything, but she felt him stiffen behind her shoulder as she finally guided the key into the darkened lock. The door swung open. The light was on.

  And there she was, kicked back on one of the two double beds, reading a book. Benjamin’s cousin herself. Kaitlyn. She’d peeled back the covers, stripped out of her clothes and now sat on the sheets wearing nothing but panties and a skimpy camisole.

  “Oh, hey, Meggie,” she said, flashing her wide smile that looked so charming until you got to know the venomous person behind those gleaming teeth. “Ready for some caving?”

  Chapter Six

  Before Meggie could collect her wits and ask what the hell was going on, Benjamin was pushing into the room with a confused expression. Kaitlyn tossed aside her book, sprang from the bed and gave him a hug.

  “What, when?” he sputtered.

  “Surprised?”

  “Well, yeah. How did you get out here so fast?”

  Kaitlyn didn’t answer, but looked around the room. “What a dump. You couldn’t find anything better?”

  “There’s nothing for fifty miles,” he said. “But when did you decide to come?”

  “Yeah,” Meggie said, finding her voice at last. She gave Benjamin a hard stare. “And how did you even know how to find us?”

  Kaitlyn shrugged. “I know I said I couldn’t make it, but the conference ended early and I jumped on a standby flight.” She threw up her hands. “So here I am.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question,” Meggie said.

  The other woman frowned. “What, is your caving expedition full or something?”

  She still had her arms wrapped around Benjamin’s neck from her “hug,” and if anyone had walked in right now, what would they possibly think? Meggie stood stupidly at the doorway, while her fiancé enjoyed the embrace of a cute young woman bulging out of her camisole, her lower half in panties right up against his crotch.

  Meggie struggled to contain the scream that threatened to burst out of her mouth. “Benjamin, could I talk to you for a moment?”

  He pulled away and flushed. He wore a sickly expression, like the face of a kid who has eaten most of his Halloween candy in one go, but can’t stop eating the last few pieces. “What for?”

  “I think you know.” She pushed open the motel room door and nodded her head toward the parking lot.

  He started to follow her out, but Kaitlyn put a hand on his arm and he stopped like an obedient dog at the edge of a leash. “Come on, Meggie, don’t overreact,” she said.

  “You can’t just show up. How did you even know?”

  “It wasn’t a secret, was it? I saw you asking around on the forums. Duperre made a couple of comments in one thread, so I sent him a PM asking what was up. He told me. Of course I wondered why nobody invited me. But it seemed like your dates were bad, so I didn’t push it.”

  Kaitlyn sounded hurt and confused, as if traveling across the country without warning, renting a car somewhere, and driving hundreds of miles across the desert to show up unannounced was a perfectly reasonable course of action. Digging around, spying in the forums. But no, she was the aggrieved party, because she hadn’t been invited.


  What’s more, Meggie could see from Benjamin’s expression that Kaitlyn’s appearance wasn’t totally unexpected. He must have given her details, too. Must have known this was a possibility.

  “We’ve got a trip plan written up and recorded,” Meggie said. “It’s going to be a pain in the butt to change it now. Do you even have your own gear?”

  She looked doubtfully at Kaitlyn’s bags in the corner. Didn’t seem there was enough there to include caving equipment.

  “I’ve got everything I need in the car. Don’t worry, I won’t be any trouble, I promise.”

  “Duperre is the trip leader,” Meggie said. “I’m not going to ask him to change the plans. Not now. Makes us look like newbies who don’t know what we’re doing.”

  Gah, this was all wrong. Giving multiple excuses was worse than none at all. Why didn’t she just say, Look, I don’t want you here. I need time alone with my fiancé without you butting in. Oh yeah, and you’re ripping off the company. What do you have to say about that, you lying, stealing sack of . . .?

  But Meggie didn’t say anything like that. Truth was, she was afraid of Kaitlyn. Maybe the woman suspected, guessed that Meggie was on to her. And this whole surprise visit was designed to turn Benjamin’s affections, make it so when Meggie brought up the fraud, he’d doubt her. It would look like she was jealous. Desperate to break apart the cousins’ special friendship.

  Kaitlyn never left them alone, and about twenty minutes later they were in their beds, Benjamin and Meggie in the bed closest to the bathroom, and Kaitlyn in the one by the outside door. It was pitch black in the room and Meggie lay there fuming, unable to see her rival in the next bed, but sensing the woman’s malevolent presence.

  After about twenty minutes, Benjamin snuggled up to Meggie and began touching her, like he wanted to start something.

  “Dude,” she whispered. “Your cousin is three feet away.”

  “She’s asleep,” he whispered back. “Listen, she’s not moving.”

  Kaitlyn did seem to be lying quietly in the other bed, motionless. Benjamin kept trying.

  Men. Didn’t matter the situation, there was no putting them off once they got in the mood.