“I see.”
“So don’t blame him,” she said softly. “I know he feels terrible, like he let me down. But it could have happened anytime. This man seems to know very well how to get to people,” she added quietly. “He’s like a snake. He can get in anywhere, without being noticed.”
“We’ll find him.”
She turned her head on the pillow. “You have to be very careful,” she said. “If you have medicines that you take, check them.”
“I’m way ahead of you there,” he assured her. “But there’s no way anyone could get into my house without being noticed.”
“Don’t assume that,” she said. “It’s what we assumed, too. And here I am.”
He grimaced. “You could have died.”
“Yes. But he miscalculated,” she said. “That will hurt his confidence. It will make him pause and rethink his methods. It will give you an opportunity to find out who he is.” She squeezed his hand. “Dalton, he’s done this before. Not exactly like this, but he’s killed someone. Someone important. That’s your key. That’s what you have to look for...” She swallowed, hard. She let go of his hand. “Sorry. I’m so...sleepy.”
“It’s all right. You rest. I’ll be back to see you tomorrow.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
He smiled, when he’d never felt less like smiling. “Hey, what are friends for?” he asked her softly.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Something flashed there, something odd. But she only smiled back and said, “That’s right.” Then she closed her eyes again.
* * *
HE LEFT HER. His mind was working overtime. He wanted to throw Carson through a wall. The man was the devil himself. He remembered Carson charming the beautiful flight attendant, all smooth talk and smiles. It hadn’t mattered about that woman, who was a stranger. But this was Merissa. And Merissa was his.
If only he hadn’t botched it when he’d blurted out that proposal. He’d even had the rings in his pocket. He was going to press them into her hand and ask her right then. That wasn’t really how he’d meant to do it. He wanted to do the whole courtship thing. Send her flowers, buy her presents; take her on moonlight rides. But he’d lost it when he had her so warm and soft in his arms.
She loved kissing him, he could tell that. But she was backing away and just when he wanted to get closer, much closer.
So was it Carson pulling them apart? Was he a rival? And if he was, how could Dalton, who was no rounder, compete with him? The thought tormented him.
* * *
“WHAT DO YOU know about Carson?” he asked Rourke later, when they were going over new safety precautions for the ranch.
Rourke lifted both eyebrows. “Not a lot. Why?”
“He told Merissa things.”
“Oh?” Rourke’s one brown eye was twinkling. “What sort of things?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” he muttered. He ran a hand through his thick hair. “He’s one smooth operator. He turns on the charm and women fall at his feet.”
“Well, yes, they do. But he’s a one-nighter, if that helps.”
“What do you mean?” Tank asked.
“I mean, he doesn’t date the same woman twice. He has no staying power. In fact, if you want my honest opinion,” he added, “he hates women.”
Tank gave him a disbelieving look.
“No, I’m not joking,” Rourke continued. He finished connecting two wires on a monitor. “He even said something about it once, to the effect that women are no damned good. He said they’ll crawl to a man who treats them like dirt, but turn their backs on one who’d die for them.”
“The reverse of that is often true,” Tank commented.
“I know.”
“I’ve seen him in action, too,” Rourke added. “I can’t say I wasn’t a bit envious. Never had that sort of luck with the ladies.”
“And that’s not what I’ve heard about you,” Tank mused.
Rourke shrugged. “I’m like Carson. I like variety.”
Tank pursed his lips. “I believe you helped Carson feed a man to a crocodile over a woman...?”
Rourke’s face hardened like steel. He averted his eye and didn’t say another word.
“Sorry,” Tank said.
Rourke didn’t look at him. “There are things I never discuss. Tat’s one of them.” He turned his head, and his one good eye was blazing. “K.C. Kantor’s another.”
Tank held up both hands. “I didn’t say a word.”
Rourke shrugged. “Sorry.” He tuned the device he was working on. “I used to have a higher boiling point.”
“We all have weaknesses.” Tank leaned back. “Mine’s lying in a hospital bed, mooning over your damned womanizing comrade.”
Rourke’s eyebrows almost blended into the blond hair at his forehead. “She’s what?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TANK FELT EMBARRASSED. He shifted his posture. “He tells her things.”
He chuckled softly. “She’s that sort of woman. It doesn’t mean she’s got eyes for him,” he pointed out.
“Well, I think...”
His cell phone rang. He pulled it off his belt and answered it. “Kirk.”
“Can you bring Rourke and meet me in the parking lot of the Custom Kitchen?” Carson asked.
“What in hell for? Are you hungry?” Tank asked sarcastically.
“I’ll tell you when you get here.” He hung up.
Tank relayed the message.
“He’s found something and he isn’t willing to talk at the house,” Rourke said grimly.
“Surely he didn’t leave Clara at the house by herself?” Tank asked worriedly.
“I can almost assure you that he’s got her with him. He may be a womanizer, but there isn’t anybody better at the job than he is.”
“He wasn’t there when Merissa was almost poisoned,” Tank pointed out coldly.
“None of us would have expected the SOB to walk into the house and poison her meds,” Rourke retorted. He stopped and frowned. “You said he left tracks?”
“Yes.”
Rourke cocked his head. “Now, isn’t that interesting? He’s sneaky enough to poison prescription meds so that they’re undetectable, and yet he leaves footprints?”
“We need answers.” Tank moved ahead of him to a nearby ranch pickup.
“I think we’re about to get them, too,” Rourke predicted.
* * *
CLARA WAS WITH CARSON. He sent her inside, with a gentle smile, to have coffee while he talked over some things with his colleagues.
Tank was somber and cold. Carson either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He was intent on what he and the sheriff’s investigator had uncovered.
“The tracks led to the highway about a mile behind the house,” Carson told them, leaning casually back against the bed of the truck with his arms crossed. “They vanished. We assume a car or another vehicle was parked there. We found a partial tire track in the snow on the side of the road. We couldn’t track any farther on foot, but the sheriff’s department has dogs. They marked the spot with GPS and they’re bringing out bloodhounds in the morning.” He sighed. “But if you want my take on it, they’ll track him to a deserted house or a parking lot, and another dead end.” His black eyes narrowed. “He’s just playing games. That’s all.”
“Games. He almost killed a woman!” Tank exploded.
“To him, it’s just a game,” Carson replied calmly. “Cat and mouse. He’s playing you.”
Tank looked menacing.
Carson’s face softened just a little. “I know what she means to you,” he said quietly. “I’m not downplaying how serious it could have been, if she’d taken more than one of those Malathion-laced capsules. I’m telling you how h
e feels about it.”
“How do you know so much?” Tank asked.
“Men work in patterns,” he said surprisingly. “I was a math whiz in college,” he added. “Top of my class, in fact. I have a photographic memory, which came in handy when I majored in history as an undergraduate. History, as you may know, is mostly case law. I had in mind being another F. Lee Bailey,” he mused. “But I dropped out of law school just before graduation, due to...personal matters.” He straightened. “What I’m saying is that people have habits that make them predicable, like equations. This man shows a few traits that may help us track him down.”
“Such as?” Tank asked, mellowing.
“He’s a master of disguise. We know that already. He’s single-minded, methodical, careful, and he knows how to tamper with pharmaceuticals without being caught.” He shook his head. “So how is it that this careful, methodical man leaves a trail a kindergarten child could follow?”
Rourke and Tank exchanged glances. “We were just discussing that,” Rourke confessed.
“He’s keeping you off your guard, unbalanced, by placing Merissa and Clara in danger,” Carson continued.
“So?” Tank asked.
“He’s afraid that you’re going to remember something that will hurt him, point him out to the authorities. He’d like to kill you, but he can’t get close enough. So he’s keeping you focused on the women instead of the past.”
“He may have a point,” Rourke said.
“There’s another thing,” Carson continued. “Remember what I said about the man I worked with who was an expert at covert poisonings?”
“I do,” Tank said.
“You met him once, too, I believe,” Carson told Rourke. “The red-haired fellow who was always talking about sharks.”
“Sharks!” Tank straightened.
“What?” Carson asked, diverted.
“Sharks.” He paced, touching his forehead. “Sharks. Why can’t I remember? Someone was talking about a man who mentioned sharks...”
“Carlie,” Carson said quietly. “In Cash Grier’s office.”
“Yes!” Tank turned. “Remember, she said the rogue agent came into Cash’s office and he was talking about sharks and how misunderstood they were. She said he told her he liked to swim with them in the Bahamas!”
“Sharks. Disguise. Poisons. The Bahamas.” Carson’s eyes narrowed. “I need to make a couple of phone calls.”
“Why did you want us to meet you here?” Rourke asked as the other man pulled out his cell phone.
“The man we’re looking for knew that Merissa kept her headache pills in her bedside table, and that she was starting to get a headache. How?”
The men looked at one another.
“I missed a bug. We missed a bug,” Carson told Rourke.
“Impossible!” Rourke said angrily. “I ran the rooms four times, just to make sure!”
“You were out of sight yesterday,” Tank said, “when Merissa took the medicine.”
“Only for thirty minutes.”
“About that time, I was driving Merissa home. Where was Clara?”
“I don’t know, but we can ask,” Rourke said, leading the way into the restaurant. “If she was out of the house at all, that gave him the opportunity to sneak in another bug.”
“How about the capsules?” Tank asked. “That would have taken time. The doctor said it was an almost perfect job of tampering.”
“He knows she has headaches. All he lacked was the opportunity to place the capsules.”
“Why not when he was bugging the place?” Tank wondered.
“I imagine he makes it up as he goes,” Rourke replied quietly. “He plans, but he plans as situations develop. He might have learned about her headaches for the first time after he placed the bugs. The tampering could have taken place over a period of days.”
“Yes.” Rourke paused. “And he might have counted on Merissa’s father to take her out for him, along with her mother.” He glanced at Tank’s hard face. “The man is unbalanced. Brilliant, but unbalanced.”
Clara saw them come in and motioned them to the booth where she was sitting. She smiled. “We could eat while we’re here,” she suggested. “Then, if I could impose on you to drive me by the hospital...?”
Tank said as he slid into the booth, “I’ll go, too.”
“Clara,” Rourke began after they’d ordered barbecue plates, “when Carson was out placing his surveillance units, did you leave the house at all?”
She blinked. “Why, yes, just to run by the drycleaners and leave a comforter. I wasn’t gone five minutes. Why?”
Tank and Rourke exchanged glances. Tank nodded.
“Don’t say anything in the house that you’d mind being overheard,” Rourke told her. “You must be extraordinarily clever. I’m not going to remove the bug he’s just placed. Let him think we’re too dim to realize it’s even there.”
“Bug? I don’t understand,” she began.
Tank explained how they thought the bug was placed, and how the intruder knew where Merissa kept her headache medicine.
“Oh, goodness,” Clara said heavily. “I opened my big mouth. Just like I did, telling them where Bill was, and I got him killed,” she added sadly. “Then there’s that other man. The one Merissa told us about, that she saw in her mind, a man who knew about this intruder and was going to tell on him...”
“You can’t save the world,” Rourke said heavily. He gave her a weary smile. “I know. I’ve been trying.”
She smiled weakly. “I see your point. It’s very hard, though, to know something and not be able to warn anyone.”
“In that case,” Tank told her, “you have to consider that some things just happen the way they’re meant to. We can’t see very far down the road. God can.”
“Okay.”
Carson came back in. He slid into the booth beside Clara. “I’ve put some things in motion,” he said. “There’s been a development back home.”
“What?” Tank asked.
“It seems that Cash Grier managed to track down the man who attacked Carlie’s father with a knife. He turned up in the morgue in San Antonio. He was poisoned.”
“Good grief!” Tank exclaimed. “Merissa told him that there was a man who knew him and was thinking about going to the authorities. He said he knew who it was and he’d take care of him.” He groaned. “It’s going to hit her hard.”
Rourke’s one eye narrowed. “Don’t tell her.”
“The man had a rap sheet seven pages long,” Carson added. “One of his arrests was for rape. He’s no loss to the world.”
“Did he talk to the authorities?” Tank asked. “Do you know?”
“He made a phone call before he died. It was to a police officer in San Antonio. They’re trying to contact the officer to see if a conversation even took place. One more minor detail.”
“Yes?” Tank asked.
“The man was taking a prescription medication for allergies. The capsules were tampered with. Like to take a guess at what sort of poison was in them?” Carson mused.
“Don’t tell me,” Rourke said. “Malathion.”
“Exactly. He had access to it on the ranch, didn’t he?” Carson asked Tank.
“He was in and out of the barn where we keep it, but it’s in a locked shed room,” Tank replied.
“You keep your keys hanging just inside the back door in the house,” Rourke recalled. “Does one of them fit that storeroom?”
Tank’s eyes closed. “She warned me about those keys the first day she came to the house,” he said. “She said, ‘he’ll find them there.’”
“She’s very perceptive,” Clara remarked gently.
“I wish I’d listened!” Tank groaned.
“He’d have fo
und another way,” Carson said. “Anything can be used to poison someone, even common household items.”
“Like hand grenades?” Rourke said, tongue-in-cheek. “I believe El Ladŕon’s convoy was treated to a few of those...?”
“The convoy of El Ladŕon was accidentally blown up by a few equally accidentally tossed hand grenades.” He looked perfectly innocent.
“Nice aim,” Rourke said, grinning.
Carson grinned back. “I get in some practice from time to time.”
Tank started to ask a question when the jukebox, a holdover from the past, started up. The sounds of rock music filled the restaurant.
“Try talking over that,” Carson groaned.
The song was an old hard rock tune by Joan Jett, called “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.” It had a hard, heavy beat and it had been a favorite of the Kirks’ mother when she was still alive. It brought back memories for Tank. He smiled as he listened. And then, quite suddenly, he frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Clara asked.
He caught his breath. “That song,” he said.
“Yes, it’s loud,” Carson muttered.
“No! The man who was, or who was pretending to be, a DEA agent when I was ambushed,” he said, feeling all over again the impact of the bullets. “I heard that song.”
“The mind plays tricks in dangerous situations,” Rourke began.
“It was that song. But it wasn’t sung. It was...I don’t know...like wind chimes,” he faltered as he tried to recall it.
“Wind chimes?” Carson mused.
Rourke frowned. “My...employer,” he said, hesitating before he gave the relationship, and not the real one at that, “has a very expensive Swiss watch that he customized with a tune he was fond of. It plays the opening bars of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.” He lifted his head. “It sounds like wind chimes. Or chapel chimes that used to come out of the steeples at churches.”
Tank sat very still. He closed his eyes, trying, trying to remember the man. “It’s no use,” he groaned. “When I picture him, all I can see is that damned gaudy paisley shirt he was wearing.” He opened his eyes. “But I know I heard chimes. It could have been a watch. I’m not sure he was wearing it. Judging by his suit, he couldn’t have afforded an expensive Swiss watch with customized music,” he added. “His suit was strictly off the rack.”
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