In the seconds it took his dimmed brain to react, his father had come out of the study and found him in the hall with Callie's mother, in a compromising position. Micah and his father had almost come to blows. Callie and her mother were summarily booted out the door and Micah had accused Callie of sending her father out there to catch him with his stepmother, out of revenge because he wouldn't kiss her. It had broken Callie's heart. Now, she withdrew from Micah Steele as if he were molten lava. She had no wish to repeat the lesson he'd taught her.
"Very well," she said demurely. "I'll look after Dad while you do...whatever you're going to do. I've got my grandfather's shotgun and some shells. I'll protect him at night."
He looked at her in a different way. “Can you shoot it?''
"If I have to," she replied. Her face was very pale, but she wasn't flinching. "Was there anything else?"
His dark eyes slid down her slender, graceful body and he remembered Callie in bathing suits, in flimsy gowns, in her one fancy dress at her birthday party—her eighteenth birthday party. She'd been wearing deep green velvet, cut low and sensuous, and he'd refused her invitation to attend the celebration. Like so many other things he'd said and done, he'd hurt her that day. She still looked impossibly young. She was barely twenty-two, and he was thirty-six, over a decade her senior.
He wanted to prolong the meeting. That was unlike him. He shrugged one shoulder indifferently instead. "Nothing important. Just watch your step. I'll make sure nobody gets close enough to hurt either of you."
She gave him one slow, eloquent look before she turned to her small car and unlocked it. She got in and drove off, without another word. And she didn't look back.
Twelve
Cy and Lisa were having a late supper at the kitchen table. They watched each other hungrily with every bite as they discussed the changes the baby would mean in their lives. They were delightful changes, and they spoke in low murmurs, smiling at each other between bites. The loud squeal of tires out front caught them unaware and made them tense. Surely it wasn't another attack by Lopez or his men...!
Cy was out of the chair and heading for the front door seconds later, his hand going automatically to the phone table drawer where the loaded .45 automatic was kept. He made a mental note to himself to keep his gun locked up once the baby arrived. He motioned Lisa back and moved cautiously out onto the porch. Seconds later, he lowered the weapon. It was Micah Steele, but he was hardly recognizable.
His thick blond hair was disheveled, and he needed a shave. He looked as if he hadn't slept.
Cy didn't waste time asking questions. He caught the taller man by the arm and pulled him inside. "Coffee first. Then you can tell whatever you need to."
"I'll bring it to the study," Lisa offered.
Cy smiled at her and bent to kiss her cheek. "I'll bring it to the study," he corrected tenderly. "Growing mamas need their rest. Go watch TV."
"Okay." She kissed him back, sparing a curious and sympathetic glance for Micah, who nodded politely before he preceded Cy into the kitchen.
When Lisa was out of earshot, Cy poured coffee into two mugs and put them on the table.
"Would you rather talk in the study?" Cy asked him.
"This is fine." Micah cupped the mug in both hands and leaned over it in a slumped posture that said all too much about his mental condition.
Cy straddled a chair across from him. "Okay. What's wrong."
"Lopez has Callie," he said in a husky, tortured voice.
Cy sat stock-still. "When? And how?" he exploded.
"Yesterday, not five minutes after I spoke to her outside her office building," he said dully. "We had a brief conversation. I warned her that someone I knew might possibly target her or my father. She listened, but she didn't pay much attention. I told her I was going to have someone watch them for their own safety. But I'd barely gotten back to my motel when Eb phoned and said he'd had an urgent message from Rodrigo that Callie was going to be snatched. I phoned the adult day care where she leaves Dad every day and they said she hadn't picked him up." He looked absolutely devastated. “You can set your watch by Callie. She's always early, if she isn't right on time. I went looking for her, and I found her car about a block from the senior center on a side street. The driver's door was standing wide-open and her purse was still in it."
Cy cursed roundly. "Did you call the police?"
Micah shook his head. He ran a big hand through his hair restlessly. "I didn't know what to do." He looked at Cy in anguish. "Do you know what that snake will do to her? She's untouched, Cy. Absolutely untouched!"
He had a pretty good idea what Lopez would do, and it made him sick to consider it. Judging by Micah's behavior, his stepsister meant a lot more to him than he'd ever admitted; possibly, more than he'd realized himself.
'The first thing we do is call Chet Blake."
"A lot of good a local police chief is going to do us," Micah said miserably. "By now, Lopez has her out of the state, if not out of the country."
"Chet is a distant relation of our state attorney general, Simon Hart," Cy interrupted, "and he has a cousin who's a Texas Ranger. Lopez's men left some sort of trail, even if it's just a paper one. Chet has connections. He'll find out where Lopez has taken her. If she's in Mexico, we can contact the Mexican authorities and Interpol..."
Micah's steely glare interrupted him. "All I need to know is where she is," he said tautly. "Then I'll pack up Bojo and Rodrigo, and we'll play cowboys and drug dealers."
Cy wanted to try to reason with him, but the man was too far gone. He'd seen Micah in this mood before, and he knew there was nothing he could say or do to stop him. He spared a thought for Callie, who was probably terrified, not to mention Micah's father. The old man had already had a major heart attack and a stroke, and the news might easily be too much for him. Micah would have to make up a story and tell it to whoever was nursing him. He said as much.
"I've already taken care of that," Micah said heavily. "One of the freelance homebound nurses who sometimes visits him at the center went home with him. I've arranged for her to stay there until I come back—or until Callie does. I told her to say that Callie had an emergency out of town, a cousin in a car wreck. He doesn't know that she has no cousins. He'll believe it, and he won't have to be upset."
"Good thinking," Cy said. "What can I do?"
Micah finished his coffee. “You can keep an eye on Dad for me while I'm out of the country. You and Eb," he added. "If you don't mind."
"Certainly I don't mind," Cy told him. "We'll have somebody watch him constantly. I promise."
"Thanks," Micah said simply. He stood up. "I'll let you know when I've got her safe."
"If there's anything else you need, all you have to do is ask," Cy told him.
Micah smiled wanly. "Remember that old saying, that we don't appreciate what we've got until we lose it?"
"She'll be all right."
"I hope so. See you."
"Good luck."
Micah nodded and went out as quietly as he'd come in. Cy poured himself another cup of coffee, took out a glass and filled it with milk for Lisa before he closed up the kitchen and went to join her in the living room.
Her eyes lit up when he sat down on the sofa beside her, put the drinks down and slid his arm behind her to watch her knit.
"What was wrong with him?"
"Lopez got Callie," he said.
She grimaced and groaned. "Oh, poor Callie! Can he rescue her, do you think?"
"As soon as we find out where she is. I've got to make some phone calls in the study. Go on to bed when your program goes off. I'll be there in a little while."
She put her hand on his cheek and caressed it softly. "I love going to bed with you," she said softly.
He smiled at her, bending to kiss her lips tenderly. "I love doing everything with you," he said.
"Will it be enough for you, me and the baby?" she asked solemnly. "Will it make up for what you've lost?"
He drew he
r close and hugged her. "I'll always miss Alex," he replied, naming his five-year-old son who died in the Wyoming fire. "And I'll always blame myself for not being able to save him. But I love you, and I want our baby very much." He lifted his head and looked down into her dark eyes hungrily. "You'll be enough, Lisa."
She smiled again, and kissed him hungrily before he got up from the sofa. "I love you."
"I love you, too." He ruffled her long hair and grinned at her. "You've changed my whole life. I look forward to waking up every morning. I have such a pretty view in my bed."
She chuckled. "I have a very nice one of my own." She sobered. "Will Lopez hurt Callie?"
"I wish I knew. We'll do what we can to help Micah find her."
"Even when Lopez is not here, he's still here," she said. "One of these days, he's going to be called to account for all the evil things he's done."
"And he'll pay the price," Cy assured her.
He went to make his phone calls. He paused in the doorway to take one long look at his wife. Despite his sympathy for Micah Steele, he was grateful that he hadn't lost Lisa to Lopez's violence. His life was new again, fresh, full of promise and joy. After the storm, the rainbow. He smiled. The winter soldier had found a warm, loving home at last.
6 The Last Mercenary (2002)
Chapter One
It had been a jarring encounter.
Callie Kirby felt chilled, and it wasn't just because it was November in south Texas. She watched the stepbrother she worshiped walk away from her as casually as if he'd moved around an obstacle in his path. In many ways, that was what Callie was to Micah Steele. He hated her. Of course, he hated her mother more. The two Kirby women had alienated him from the father he adored. Jack Steele had found his only son wrapped up in the arms of his young wife-Callie's mother-and an ugly scene had followed. Callie's mother, Anna, was sent packing. So was Micah, living mostly at his father's home while he finished his last year of residency.
That had been six years ago, and the breach still hadn't healed. Jack Steele rarely spoke of his son. That suited Callie. The very sound of his name was painful to her. Speaking to him took nerve, too. He'd once called her a gold digger like her mother, among other insults. Words could hurt. His always had. But she was twenty-two now, and she could hold her own with him. That didn't mean that her knees didn't shake and her heartbeat didn't do a tango while she was holding her own.
She stood beside her little second-hand yellow VW and watched Micah bend his formidable height to open the door of the black convertible Porsche he drove. His thick, short blond hair caught the sunlight and gleamed like gold. He had eyes so dark they looked black, and he rarely smiled. She didn't understand why he'd come home to Jacobsville, Texas, in the first place. He lived somewhere in the Bahamas. Jack had said that Micah inherited a trust fund from his late mother, but he'd sounded curious about his son's luxurious lifestyle. The trust, he told Callie privately, wasn't nearly enough to keep Micah in the Armani suits he wore and the exotic sports cars he bought new every year.
Perhaps Micah had finished his residency somewhere else and was in private practice somewhere. He'd gone to medical school, but she remembered that there had been some trouble in his last year of his residency over a lawsuit, stemming from a surgical procedure he refused to do. Neither she nor his father knew the details. Even when he'd been living with his father, Micah was a clam. After he left, the silence about his life was complete.
He glanced back at Callie. Even at a distance he looked worried. Her heart jumped in spite of her best efforts to control it. He'd had that effect on her from the beginning, from the first time she'd ever seen him. She'd only been in his arms once, from too much alcohol. He'd been furious, throwing her away from him before she could drag his beautiful, hard mouth down onto hers. The aftermath of her uncharacteristic boldness had been humiliating and painful. It wasn't a pleasant memory. She wondered why he was so concerned about her. It was probably that he was concerned for his father, and she was his primary caretaker. That had to be it. She turned her attention back to her own car.
With a jerk of his hand, he opened the door of the Porsche, climbed in and shot off like a teenager with his first car. The police would get him for that, she thought, if they saw it. For a few seconds, she smiled at the image of big, tall, sexy Micah being put in a jail cell with a man twice his size who liked blondes. Micah was so immaculate, so sophisticated, that she couldn't imagine him ruffled nor intimidated. For all his size, he didn't seem to be a physical man. But he was highly intelligent. He spoke five languages fluently and was a gourmet cook.
She sighed sadly and got into her own little car and started the engine. She didn't know why Micah was worried that she and his father might be in danger from that drug lord everyone locally was talking about. She knew that Cy Parks and Eb Scott had been instrumental in closing down a big drug distribution center, and that the drug lord, Manuel Lopez, had reputedly targeted them for revenge. But that didn't explain Micah's connection. He'd told her that he tipped law enforcement officials to a big drug cargo of Lopez's that had subsequently been captured, and Lopez was out for blood. She couldn't picture her so-straitlaced stepbrother doing something so dangerous. Micah wasn't the sort of man who got involved in violence of any sort Certainly, he was a far cry from the two mercenaries who'd shut down Lopez's operation. Maybe he'd given the information to the feds for Cy and Eb. Yes, that could have happened, somehow. She remembered what he'd said about the danger to his family and she felt chilled all over again. She'd load that shotgun when she and Jack got home, she told herself firmly, and she'd shoot it if she had to. She would protect her stepfather with her last breath.
As she turned down the street and drove out of town, toward the adult day care center where Jack Steele stayed following his stroke, she wondered where Micah was going in such a hurry. He didn't spend a lot of time in the States. He hadn't for years. He must have been visiting Eb Scott or Cy Parks. She knew they were friends. Odd friends for a tame man like Micah, she pondered. Even if they ran cattle now, they'd been professional mercenaries in the past. She wondered what Micah could possibly have in common with such men.
She was so lost in thought that she didn't notice that she was being followed by a dark, late model car. It didn't really occur to her that anyone would think of harming her, despite her brief argument with Micah just now. She was a nonentity. She had short, dark hair and pale blue eyes, and a nice but unremarkable figure. She was simply ordinary. She never attracted attention from men, and Micah had found her totally resistible from the day they met. Why not? He could have any woman he wanted. She'd seen him with really beautiful women when she and her mother had first come to live with Jack Steele. Besides, there was the age thing. Callie was barely twenty-two. Micah was thirty-six. He didn't like adolescents. He'd said that to Callie, just after that disastrous encounter-among other things. Some of the things he'd said still made her blush. He'd compared her to her mother, and he hadn't been kind. Afterward, she'd been convinced that he was having an affair with her mother, who didn't deny it when Callie asked. It had tarnished him in her eyes and made her hostile. She still was. It was something she couldn't help. She'd idolized Micah until she saw him kissing her mother. It had killed something inside her, made her cold. She wondered if he'd been telling the truth when he said he hadn't seen her mother recently. It hurt to think of him with Anna.
She stopped at a crossroads, her eyes darting from one stop sign to another, looking for oncoming traffic. While she was engrossed in that activity, the car following her on the deserted road suddenly shot ahead and cut across in front of her, narrowly missing her front bumper.
She gasped and hit the brake, forgetting to depress the clutch at the same time. The engine died. She reached over frantically to lock the passenger door, and at the same time, three slim, dark, formidable-looking men surrounded her car. The taller of the three jerked open the driver's door and pulled her roughly out of the car.
She fough
t, but a hand with a handkerchief was clapped over her nose and mouth and she moaned as the chloroform hit her nostrils and knocked her out flat. As she was placed quickly into the back seat of the other car, another man climbed into her little car and moved it onto the side of the road. He joined his colleagues. The dark car turned around and accelerated back the way it had come, with Callie unconscious in the back seat.
Micah Steele roared away from the scene of his latest disagreement with Callie, his chiseled mouth a thin line above his square jaw. His big hands gripped the steering wheel with cold precision as he cursed his own lack of communication skills. He'd put her back up almost at once by being disparaging about the neat beige suit she was wearing with a plain white blouse. She never dressed to be noticed, only to be efficient. She was that, he had to admit She was so unlike him. He seemed conservative in his dress and manner. It was a deception. He was unconventional to the core, while Callie could have written the book on proper behavior.
She hadn't believed him, about the danger she and her stepfather-his father-could find themselves in. Manuel Lopez wasn't the man to cross, and he wanted blood. He was going to go to the easiest target for that. He grimaced, thinking how vulnerable Callie would be in a desperate situation. She hated snakes, but he'd seen her go out of her way not to injure one. She was like that about everything. She was a sucker for a hard-luck story, an easy mark for a con artist. Her heart was as soft as wool, and she was sensitive; overly sensitive. He didn't like remembering how he'd hurt her in the past.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 274
