Deadly Intent

by Valerie Parv

  “An hour,” he reminded her. “They should be here anytime.”

  She completed a few more circuits with no sign of anything red or yellow. Pointedly she avoided thinking of the water-filled sinkholes Sunny could have stumbled into. Last time she was here, she’d seen enough bones scattered around the waterholes to warn her what could happen if you drank the stuff, much less fell in.

  Ryan lowered the glasses. “What if we’re looking in the wrong place?”

  She shot him a puzzled glance. “This is where he wandered off.”

  “Or was taken.”

  A cold sensation prickled the back of her neck. “What are you getting at?”

  “Horvath wasn’t at home when Tony Honda and I called there this morning. What if Horvath was tracking Sunny, waiting for an opportunity to grab him?”

  The sensation of cold intensified. “Because he found out that you had a relationship?”

  “He could have some crazy idea of using Sunny to pressure me into handing over the genuine deed to Cotton Tree Gorge.”

  She nodded slowly, taking this in. “The fire didn’t burn us out and you tricked him out of the paperwork. But would he be desperate enough to resort to kidnapping?” Her heart ached at the thought of the little boy in Max’s clutches.

  “I think he’s at the point where he’d try anything.”

  She chewed her lip. “Wouldn’t he get in touch, make demands?”

  “He can’t while we’re up here.”

  “Then we’d better set down so he can contact us.” If Ryan was right and Max was behind this, she added mentally. There were a lot of ifs.

  Ryan touched her arm. “Not here.”

  “A hunch?”

  He inclined his head. “Cotton Tree Gorge.”

  It made a crazy kind of sense, she thought. Max wanted to explore the gorge. He would know they’d be searching Wolf Creek crater, so if he had taken Sunny, why not hide the child in the last place anyone would think to look? Anyone but Ryan.

  A distant plume of dust along the rugged approach road caught her attention. “Looks like the cavalry’s arrived.”

  The radio crackled into life as the police searchers made contact. Unhooking the mike, Judy reported what they’d seen and learned. She was about to explain Ryan’s suspicion when he shook his head in negation. “Why not tell them what you suspect?” she asked after she clicked the transmitter off.

  “In the first place, I could be wrong. I’d rather they made a thorough search of the crater to eliminate any chance that Sunny is lost down there.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “And if you’re right?”

  “The fewer people who converge on Cotton Tree Gorge, the more chance of Sunny staying unharmed.”

  She heard what Ryan wasn’t saying. At least until they gave Horvath what he wanted.

  Activating the mike again, she reported their disappointing search results in full, then said she was returning home because of a technical glitch. Knowing the brakes hadn’t been properly checked, she wasn’t straying far from the truth, but she still felt uneasy leaving the area.

  “If we don’t find any trace of Horvath at the gorge, we’re coming straight back here,” she stated.

  “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  “How did you and Sunny get together?” she asked to fill the time as she steered the plane into a turn and headed back.

  “His mother and I worked for the same boss. Marion Coleman was raising Sunny on her own after her husband was killed taking part in a rodeo. She was still grieving when we met, and didn’t have the resources to give Sunny what he needed. Having me as his mentor gave her the space to come to terms with her own loss, so she could get back to being a good mother again. I was never involved with her,” Ryan said, as if reading Judy’s mind.

  “Wouldn’t matter to me,” she said with less than complete frankness. “We’re both free agents.”

  “I haven’t been free since the day I set eyes on you,” he growled. “Last night…

  “Last night we needed each other. It wasn’t a marriage proposal,” she said, forestalling him.

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  She didn’t bother dignifying that with a response. “Pity Max Horvath,” she said instead. “He has no idea what he’s taken on.”

  A cleared area near Cotton Tree Gorge provided a place to set down. The landing was bumpy, and she was aware of Ryan hanging on like grim death as they slewed to a halt within a hundred feet of a rock wall, but he kept his eyes open.

  “You’re getting better at this,” she said in admiration.

  “If I’m going to die, I prefer to meet it with my eyes open.”

  She shut down the engines, the sudden quiet deafening. “Oh ye of little faith.” Unstrapping herself, she turned to him. “We’re here. What now?”

  He pulled his cell phone out of the pack he’d thrown into the plane on departure. “I call Horvath.”

  “You expect him to answer, just like that?”

  He punched in numbers and waited, then his face became set. “Horvath,” he said grimly. “I believe you and I have some unfinished business.”

  Just like that.

  Climbing the eroded walls of Cotton Tree Gorge was arduous at the best of times, but killing in the high humidity of the approaching wet season. Judy was drenched by the time they reached a shelf on the sheer rock where a small boab tree clung to the valley wall. The sight was unusual because boab seeds and fruit were too heavy to be carried on the wind. Rock wallabies were the answer, scattering a number of different seeds in their droppings. The seed of this particular tree would have come to rest on the ledge until the first rain germinated it.

  Ryan braced his hands on his hips and looked around. “This is the meeting place Horvath specified.”

  She had already recognized where they were. A few hundred yards to the west was the vine-screened wall concealing the access to the underground cavern, and probably also to Jack Logan’s diamond mine. “Max must have found the way into the hidden valley,” she said, heart sinking. If he knew how to get into the cavern, they were probably too late already. Only Ryan’s ownership of the land was keeping Max from claiming his prize.

  Ryan’s look hardened. “I believe Horvath is holding Sunny in the cavern.”

  “And he’s all right?” She had heard Ryan insist on speaking to Sunny before making any deals.

  “So far, Sunny thinks they’re playing a game, but he sounded tired and fractious,” Ryan said.

  Horror coiled through her. “You don’t think Horvath would renege on the deal and leave Sunny in the cave?”

  “He isn’t the type to have much patience with a crying six-year-old.”

  Ryan sounded as if he were running out of patience himself, she noted. “Surely Max won’t leave the little boy alone while he keeps the rendezvous with you?”

  “He’s sending Mick Coghlan to meet us.”

  “But you don’t have the deed with you.” They had never planned for this eventuality.

  “As it happens, I do. After last night, I wasn’t letting it out of my possession.”

  She plucked at a stalk of wiry grass growing out of the rock, made uncomfortably aware of how much the document meant to him. “I doubt whether Horvath or Coghlan would fall for another substitution. If Coghlan suspects any tricks, he’ll contact Horvath.” She didn’t need to spell out the risk to the little boy.

  Ryan was well aware of what was at stake, she saw, when his eyes darkened. “We’ll have to make sure Coghlan doesn’t get a chance to contact his master.”

  She unsheathed her cell phone but was stopped when his hand closed over the instrument. “We have to involve the police. You’re an investigator, not a secret agent,” she said.

  His hand stayed in place. “And they’ll do what? Send the search party here?”

  She knew her expression betrayed her. “It makes sense. The chopper will be over Wolf Creek by now. We can save them and the people on the ground wasting t
ime, and Tracey and Heather from worrying themselves sick. Now we know Sunny is safe…”

  He didn’t let her finish. “We don’t know anything of the kind. We believe Horvath has him, but not where. The gorge is my call. I don’t have any evidence to back it up. Do you want the search stopped on the strength of my gut feeling?”

  “You’re right. Until we know more, we should let them do their job in case Horvath is keeping Sunny hidden in the vicinity of the crater.” She pocketed her phone. “How do you suggest we handle this?”

  In words of one syllable, he told her.

  Could anything be crazier than this? she asked herself as Ryan tore at her shirt buttons, shredding the fabric and making her look thoroughly disheveled. They’d already gone through the motions of a noisy argument. Now he tangled his fingers in her hair, surreptitiously rubbing bark and sand through the strands. She dropped her head back as if he was pulling her hair.

  “How am I doing?” she asked, looking up at him as if begging him to stop. In truth, she didn’t want him to stop. Surely she wasn’t turned on by the game? Knowing she was safe in his hands made the play-acting surprisingly arousing.

  “You could look more distressed, as if I was really attacking you,” Ryan suggested, taking her by the shoulders.

  She let her head rock back and forth, as if he were shaking her instead of pretending. “I’d better focus on Coghlan then, since this is for his benefit.” They’d agreed that Horvath’s head man was likely to be watching them from a distance.

  Ryan’s expression softened momentarily. “Do you find it so hard to imagine me taking you by force?”

  “Try impossible,” she said, although a shiver she refused to connect with desire rippled through her. She dismissed the possibility out of hand. Apart from Ryan’s own moral code ruling out any such thing, why would such an attractive man need to resort to violence? All he had to do was smile at a woman the right way and she melted. Wasn’t Judy herself proof? “You’re not the type,” she denied, throwing the words at him like an accusation for the benefit of their watcher.

  “You have to make Coghlan think I am,” Ryan said, going through the motions of shaking her again. “We need the element of surprise.”

  Yelling meaningless accusations at him, she pretended to scramble out of his reach, only to be dragged back, her heart speeding up of its own accord as she was hauled against his rock-hard chest. “Let’s hope he’s buying this,” she said, finding her voice hard to summon. “He’ll be surprised, all right.”

  And Coghlan was.

  When the freckle-faced man climbed up to the ledge, a gun tucked in his belt, he stopped short at the sight of Judy apparently alone, slumped on a rock, gulping back tears and holding her clothes together with a shaking hand. “What happened to you? And where’s Smith?”

  She forced a sob into her voice. “He attacked me, then took off.”

  The head stockman’s pale blue eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be on the same side. Why would he attack you?”

  “He persuaded me to fly him here by lying that he’d discovered the way to my great-grandfather’s mine. When I found out he intended to give Max the deed to the gorge, I tried to grab it from him. This is my family’s land. He has no right to give it away. I tried to fight, but he was stronger. He took the deed and ran, leaving me like this.”

  Coghlan looked more appreciative than affronted at her sorry state. “Didn’t Smith tell you his kid’s life depends on him handing over that deed?”

  So they thought Sunny was Ryan’s son? She wiped her mouth with a dirt-streaked hand. “What do I care about his bastard?”

  Coghlan leered. “What is this? Jealous because he didn’t give you one of your own? What you need is a real man to take your mind off things. I’d oblige, but Mr. Horvath is waiting for the deed. He won’t like hearing that Smith didn’t keep his end of the bargain.”

  She sniffled. “Max won’t harm the boy, will he?”

  “I thought you didn’t care? It’s a female thing, I suppose. Women worry about kids. My boss will keep him hidden until I report success. That’s what we agreed.”

  “But Wolf Creek crater is crawling with police and searchers,” she said, making her voice a pitiful wail.

  “Then it’s just as well they’re looking in the wrong place, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t let a flicker of an eyelash betray her response to this news, but exhilaration pumped through her. They were on the right track. “There’s still the problem that Smith took the deed. How will you get it back?”

  “I know a thing or two about tracking. No ham-fisted cow cocky is going to get away from me in the bush.”

  She let her face fall. “Then you’ll give the deed to Max, and I’ll be back where I started.”

  Mick looked interested. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Why make your boss rich? We can tip the police off where to find Max and the boy. Get the title deed back for me and I’ll share the diamonds with you—as a reward, I mean. And you can show me what a real man can do.”

  “This land means that much to you?”

  “More than you can imagine. I’ll do anything to keep it,” she said.

  Mick frowned, torn between liking her offer and worrying about his boss, she could see. The worry won. “Max won’t like me muscling in on his territory,” he said.

  “He’ll be too busy defending himself on charges of kidnapping. With me as your alibi, he’ll be on his own.”

  “I like the way you think.” His tone said he liked a lot more as well as he advanced on her, flicking aside the torn front of her shirt. She heard his breath catch as her fuchsia lace bra was revealed, and he actually licked his lips. Then screamed as he bit his own tongue at the shock of being lifted from behind and flung bodily against the rock wall.

  Winded, he staggered to his feet and pulled out the gun, but Judy aimed a kick at his wrist that sent the weapon flying. She heard it clatter somewhere down among the rocks.

  He touched a finger to his tongue. The finger came away red. “What the hell is this?” he demanded thickly.

  “It’s called a setup,” Ryan said pleasantly, closing on the man. He motioned Judy back. “Let’s see if you’re as cocky without a gun as you were aiming one at me.”

  “Pity I only winged you,” Coghlan spat at him. “And didn’t get a chance to show Miss Smart-Ass here what a real man can do.”

  The ledge didn’t allow much room for sparring, and by dropping down from above, Ryan had made the most of the element of surprise. But as soon as he got close to Coghlan, the other man braced his torso against an outcrop of rock and swung his feet up, planting them viciously in Ryan’s midriff. The sound of Ryan’s breath rushing out as he shot backward set Judy’s internal alarms screaming. She hadn’t allowed for Ryan losing this fight.

  Neither had he, it seemed. Clawing at bushes and rocks to arrest his slide perilously close to the edge, he bounded to his feet and threw himself at Coghlan before the other man could repeat his maneuver. He had his hands around Coghlan’s throat when the other man forced his arms up and between Ryan’s, breaking the hold. Inches from their feet, shale rattled over the edge and careened down the canyon.

  A swift uppercut from Ryan threw the other man to his knees but she saw what Ryan could not—Coghlan’s hand closing around a large rock. “Ryan, look out,” she screamed as Coghlan swung the rock in a wide arc.

  Her warning allowed Ryan to duck, so he caught only a glancing blow from the rock. He took advantage of Coghlan’s momentum to ram him headfirst against the rock wall. The man went down as if poleaxed.

  She came away from the corner, where she’d tried to stay out of Ryan’s way, and looked at the man slumped between them. “I hope you haven’t killed him.”

  Ryan check for a pulse, then straightened. “He’s alive. Not feeling sorry for him, are you?”

  She didn’t bother to hide her revulsion. “I was hoping for the chance to finish him off myself.”

 
Ryan licked blood from a scraped knuckle. “You’ll get your chance in court.”

  She lifted his hand and inspected the graze, wanting to rub her cheek against it. Instead she brushed her fingers over the back of his skull where the rock had caught him. “You’ll have a nice lump there tomorrow.”

  He caught her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. “Thanks to your timely warning, that’s all I’ll have. You okay?”

  “Fine, considering I was cheated of the chance to know a real man,” she simpered. She had to restrain herself from kicking the inert figure at her feet.

  Ryan’s head came up. “If he’d have touched you, you wouldn’t have to ask if he was alive.”

  She suppressed a shudder. “When he reached for me, I was itching to damage his real manhood.”

  His hands dropped to her shoulders. “You did well enough disarming him. Self-defense lessons?”

  “Soccer practice,” she said with some satisfaction.

  He grinned. “You’d do well in my line of work.”

  “Not if it involves dealing with lowlifes like him.”

  “Not always. And it has its rewards.”

  He looked as if he was about to kiss her and she braced for the contact, but instead he began slowly and carefully to remove the debris tangled in her hair. With no comb or brush on hand, he could only do the job with his fingers, but the massaging touch against her scalp made her want to purr.

  She closed her eyes, savoring the sensation. When he finished, she wanted to grab his hand and make him continue. But a little boy’s life was still at risk. And the fact that Max thought he was Ryan’s son made the situation even worse. She pulled the front of her shirt together, fastened the one button still attached, and knotted the ends under her breasts.

  Ryan’s appreciative look brought a warmth to her cheeks, telling her he also regretted the lack of time for them. Later for us, his expression seemed to promise.

  “At least he confirmed your suspicion that Max is holding Sunny nearby,” she said.