The new sketchpad Jeannie had purchased for her last time she’d gone to town lay on the floor, sheets crumpled and a footprint across a charcoal sketch of José holding one of the pups.
She flew from Dulce’s room to José’s messy domain. Because he lived, as many children did, in a world of chaos and scattered possessions, she could see no concrete sign of anything amiss—except his tennis shoes were there. Wherever he was, he was barefoot.
She tore down the hall to the kitchen, calling the children, Juanita and Pablo. The silence in the house was terrifying.
She stumbled to a halt inside the dining room. Lunch dishes were still on the table, though it was nearly time for supper. One of the chairs lay on its back. A glass of iced tea had been overturned, and the liquid pooled around one of the plates and on the floor beneath the table.
“No…oh, please, God, no…” Scarcely able to breathe, Jeannie moved to the kitchen. Aside from the obvious clutter of a lunch prepared and ignored, nothing seemed out of the ordinary—except that Juanita wasn’t there.
Jeannie raced from the house and didn’t wait to mount Diablo. She ran headlong across the large circle drive to the corral and barn, calling for the children and Pablo all the way.
Every alarm bell within her jangled discordantly as she tried telling herself her family might have disregarded chores while she was gone for so long. She shouldn’t have left them, shouldn’t have lingered with Chance beside a magical hidden pool, leaving her children to heaven only knew what.
The barn, dark and cool, smelled of horses, hay, leather and…the coppery tang of blood. She heard a moan from one of the stalls and for a moment of sheer cowardice couldn’t move toward the sound. But her family was in danger.
As if the notion of family imbued her veins with liquid steel, she moved toward the stall. She jerked open the heavy door and almost didn’t recognize Pablo Garcia lying inside. His face was battered, and so bruised that one eye seemed permanently closed.
She knelt over him, her hands in the air above his head, afraid that any touch would cause him more pain.
He muttered something as Jeannie asked, “Where are you hurt?” A better question might have been to ask where wasn’t he hurt?
“My shoulder. Shot,” he said.
She felt a slight jolt to realize she’d been right to suspect he spoke English. “Where are the children?” she asked, even as she moved his bloodied and scraped hand to see what the damage might be.
“Rudy took them,” he said. “Rudy Martinez.” He swore in Spanish and stopped on a hiss when she peeled away his torn shirt from the still oozing wound. What she knew about bullet wounds wouldn’t fill a thimble, she thought, dazed, but considering bloodstains on both the front and back of his shoulder, she thought the bullet had passed through him.
“Stay here,” she commanded. She ran from the stall into the tack room and grabbed a handful of chamois grooming towels and a couple of the leather replacement reins. Before she dropped to his side again, she asked, “Are we talking about the sheriff’s man, Rudy?”
Pablo swore as she none too gently yanked open the shirt, stuffed a folded towel down and pressed it tightly against the jagged hole in his upper right chest just below his collarbone. “Rudy. Yes. El Patron’s man.”
“I thought he was Nando Gallegos’s head deputy,” she said, gritting her teeth against the sight of the gaping wound, the blood and the pain she was causing him in her rush to patch him so she could find her children.
“He’s no deputy. But he’s Nando’s boy, too. It’s the same difference.” Pablo ground the words out. “Pendejo.”
Jeannie didn’t ask for a translation. “Why did he take the children?”
“No sé,” Pablo said. “I don’t know for sure. He wasn’t too interested in sharing information with me. Seems he knew about Chance. I don’t know how. Juanita…”
“What about Juanita? Is she okay?”
“She tried to stop them. She begged them to let the children go. They took her, too.”
“What about Tomás?”
“That pendejo. He works for El Patron. Juanita, too, I think. Tomás has been the one starting the fires. Sometimes cutting the fences. Juanita talked about it with Rudy.” He gave a rough laugh. “They were talking in English because Juanita thought I didn’t understand.”
Jeannie stanched the exit wound in Pablo’s back, wincing as he bit off a growled curse. She looped the spare strap around his chest and cinched it every bit as deftly as she’d hitched Diablo to the post at the main house.
“Who is this El Patron?” she asked, pulling the strap as tight as she could manage. “And why does he want my children?”
“They came, Rudy and a couple others. We were having lunch.”
“Why did they take the children? And where did these men take them?”
Pablo shifted to a half-sitting position. “El Patron.”
“And who is this El Patron? Tell me Pablo,” she demanded.
“He’s the reason Chance and I came out here. He’s a murderer. A killer. But we could never catch him. He always has someone else doing his dirty work.”
Jeannie felt a chill that had nothing to do with the shadows in the air-conditioned barn work over her body. A killer? A murderer had her children? She drew a ragged breath and forced herself to think, to ask questions that might lead her to her kids. “The reason you and Chance came to work here? Start with that, please. And fast.”
“Chance thought your fires and cut fences had to do with El Patron. And Rudy was boasting about finding some two hundred head of cattle out on the range. Claimed they were some El Patron had been missing.”
Jeannie’s head was reeling. Chance had known these things all along and hadn’t told her?
“Who is Chance Salazar?” she asked coldly.
“He’s a federal marshal. He’s under cover here. In town, too. Nobody knows he’s a Fed.”
“You said this Rudy or El Patron must have found out about Chance. Is that what you meant? Found out he is a federal marshal?”
“Si,” Pablo said. He struggled to get to his feet. Jeannie gave him her arm, though a very real part of her wanted to hit him for lying to her, for letting her children be taken, for letting her go off and leave them alone that afternoon. “Is Chance here?” he asked.
“No,” she said and thought of him on the road, waiting for his deputy marshals to take them to a dead body in the middle of her ranch. She thought of the way he’d cupped her face that afternoon, the way he’d kissed her. The way she hadn’t let him tell her what he was doing on her ranch. She hadn’t had to fight with him over that, she reminded herself grimly. If he’d really wanted to tell her, he could have, magical spot or not.
And while he made love to her, letting the truth be stripped away every bit as readily as she’d allowed him to remove her clothing, some thugs had come onto her ranch and stolen her children. Her family.
“Get Chance,” Pablo said, slumping against her. “You need him.”
“Where is this El Patron?” Jeannie asked, ignoring him.
Pablo slid down her body, his weight too much for her to support. She knelt beside him, sorry for him but feeling no tenderness. She couldn’t afford it. She had to find her kids.
She pulled his face around to hers. “Where is this El Patron?”
“At his ranch. It’s south of here. About twenty miles.”
“How do I get there?” she asked.
“Get Chance.”
“The hell with Chance Salazar,” she snapped. “Tell me how I can find this ranch of El Patron’s.”
“Chance should have told you. Don’t be mad at him, señora. He didn’t want to frighten you. He wanted to help you.”
“He helped me, all right,” Jeannie said grimly, her anger blinding her to all his positive qualities.
“He’s a good man, Chance is. The best.”
Jeannie felt as if everything she’d come to believe true in this universe had been tipped upside do
wn. Innocent children she had sworn to protect and had come to love with an intensity she’d never dreamed possible had been stolen by apparent murderers and thugs. The man she’d given her body and soul to only that afternoon had steadily lied to her and neglected to tell her that she and the children were in danger all along. And her only source of help was a dying man begging her to be lenient with the very man who had lied to her.
“I’m sorry to ask this, Pablo, but why did this Rudy leave you alive?”
Pablo averted his gaze. She lifted a hand to his bruised jaw and propelled him to face her again. “Tell me, Pablo.”
“Rudy told me to say that if you want the children back, you’re to go to El Patron’s ranch and beg for them yourself.”
The words seemed to hit her with the force of a physical blow. “Do you know why he wants this?” she asked.
He shook his head. “But I think it has something to do with what Tomás burned in that bowl in the barn when Chance found him.”
Jeannie didn’t have to think which night that was. She could still hear the sound of the metal kitchen bowl striking the ground when she’d taken hold of Chance’s shirt and pulled him to her. And she’d seen him pick it up later, when she’d watched from her bedroom window and listened to her husband’s ghost warning her to be careful.
She hadn’t been careful, had she? She’d trusted the man, a federal marshal, and her children had been kidnapped.
“What else, Pablo? What else did he tell you?”
“Just you, no one else. But you can’t do that. You have to get Chance. He’ll know what to do.”
“Right,” she said. “He’ll pat me on my head and tell me not to worry my empty little brain about it. And then what’ll happen to Dulce and José? Where is this ranch they’ve been taken to? If you don’t tell me, Pablo, I swear I’ll finish you off with my bare hands.”
He gave a ragged chuckle. “I told Chance you’d be mad.”
“I’m way beyond angry,” she said. “So tell me.”
“South of here, off the highway. First ranch road on your right on the way to town. Big gate. Las Golondrinas.” Pablo took a jagged breath. “The Swallows.”
The nameless thug had probably been responsible for killing Lucinda’s husband, had stolen her children for unknown reasons and was holding them at a place called The Swallows. It seemed incongruous to the point of being surreal, she thought.
“You mustn’t go there alone. People go there and never come back,” Pablo said. His voice was fading, his eyes lowering.
“Chance will be along presently,” she said. “Or I’ll see him on the road.” She pushed Pablo back, settling him against a bale of hay and cushioning his head with the remainder of the chamois cloths.
“Señora,” Pablo called after her.
“You’ll be fine,” she said, though she wasn’t sure she was telling the truth.
“In the bunkhouse. Get my gun. It’s in the nightstand, okay? Don’t go without that. Or get Chance’s. It’s bigger.”
“Thanks, Pablo.”
“De nada. And don’t forget…it’s loaded.”
When Chance spied Ted, Dell and Jack pulling up in the marshal’s office four-by-four Range Rover, he waved his hat to signal them and turned Jezebel to the north. He swore at himself for not telling Jeannie to have them come in separate cars. He could have sent one of them on to the ranch to check on Jeannie and the kids.
He waited until they edged the all-terrain vehicle through the bar ditch and up the rise to stop alongside him. He didn’t wait for their questions. He leaned down and spoke into the opened window. “One of you has to start walking to the ranch. I sent Jeannie on alone, and I don’t know if whoever killed Jorge might still be around.”
Dell got out. “Guess that’d be me. Cora would kill me if something happened to Jack, and Ted here just wants to see some action. Want me to send Pablo out?”
“No.” Chance waited until Dell had started for the ranch, then urged Jezebel into a gallop.
He felt a little better knowing Dell was on the way to the ranch. Not a lot better, but somewhat. He knew he’d never forgive himself if something happened to Jeannie and the kids. Pablo, too, for that matter.
He found the body without difficulty, though the sun was lower in the sky and the shadows had shifted. He had the deputies pull up a fair distance from Jorge and signaled them to get a crime kit.
“Damn,” Ted said, after walking a complete circle around Jorge. “Somebody worked him over pretty good.”
Jack nodded. “But he hasn’t been dead for two weeks. My guess would be yesterday.”
“But he was dumped here today,” Chance said.
“Yeah,” Ted concurred. “Nothing at him yet.”
Jack said, “You know, I’m retiring here in a couple of weeks—”
“I thought I told Pablo to let you go ahead and take off now,” Chance said.
“Yeah, well. Couldn’t leave you in the lurch,” Jack muttered. “Anyway, I was about to suggest that when I do, I’ll just mosey on out to El Patron’s prettified ranch and shoot the lowlife down like the dog he is. Whatcha think?”
“I think Cora would kill you first, then me for letting you do it,” Chance said.
“Somebody strangled him, then hit him,” Ted said. “That bash on the head wasn’t what killed him. Not enough blood.”
“Poor Lucinda,” Jack murmured.
Over the raucous calls of the vultures, Chance thought he heard a horn honking. It sounded like Jeannie’s Jeep Cherokee, but that was probably his imagination. He listened more closely but couldn’t hear it any longer. Imagination or not, he felt uneasy and jumped on Jezebel. “You guys stay here and do the dirty work, okay? I’m going to pick up Dell and check on the ranch.”
“Okay, boss,” Ted said and grinned at him.
Chance didn’t feel much like grinning back. His hunch barometer had gone haywire.
Chapter 12
J eannie pressed the power off button on her cell phone and tossed it on the passenger’s seat, where it collided with Pablo’s gun. The cell phone looked so tiny in comparison. She thought of Pablo’s suggestion to take Chance’s weapon because it was bigger. She couldn’t imagine being able to carry it, if that were true.
Pablo’s weapon looked every inch of deadly. Black-handled, in its padded holster, just resting on the seat it made the danger seem real and more terrifying for being beyond her comprehension.
An ambulance was on its way for Pablo, and she’d called the state police. She might have federal marshals crawling all over her ranch, but she wasn’t any too pleased about that, or with one marshal in particular.
Driving at a speed far too high for a dirt road, she hardly detected the lone figure walking toward her. At first glance, she thought it might be Chance, believed for a single second he’d fallen from Jezebel and was plodding on foot to the ranch.
She gave a ragged, ironic chuckle. The rodeo rider unseated by a friendly old mare. But then, was he even a rodeo cowboy? She didn’t know the answer to that. Then she saw that the man walking toward her wasn’t Chance Salazar. It was a total stranger, thin and wiry.
She pulled Pablo’s gun from the seat onto her lap, fumbling with the holster’s strap even as she slowed the car at the man’s long-armed hail.
She withdrew the pistol from its holster and held it in her lap, pointing it at the car door. She rolled the window down a scant few inches and pulled to a stop beside him.
He was older than he looked from a distance. He tipped his hat. “Dell Johnson, ma’am. We spoke on the phone.”
“Yes,” she said. What was he doing on foot?
As if reading her mind, he said easily, “Chance is showing Ted and Jack where Jorge’s body is. He sent me on to the ranch to make sure everything is okay.”
“Because he’s the marshal,” she said.
He looked uncomfortable for a split second, then grinned at her. “No, ma’am,” he said, and his blue eyes cut to her hand, not quite hid
ing below the steering column. He couldn’t miss the gun aimed at him. He cleared his throat. “It’s because he found the body and needed to be able to lead us to it. Everything okay back there?”
“No, it is not,” she said baldly. “Somebody named Rudy Martinez has taken my children and shot Pablo Garcia.”
She was perversely glad to see the grin wiped from his open face. “Oh, hell,” he said. “Is Pablo dead?”
“No.” She blinked at him, at his too-swift assumption of death. “He’s alive. He was beaten pretty badly first, then shot in the shoulder. I don’t know too much more than that. I patched the wound as best I could. I’ve already called for an ambulance. If it gets here as quickly as you did, you won’t have to wait long.”
“Won’t have to wait— What are you talking about?” he asked, and ignoring her weapon, reached for the locked door. He jiggled the handle. “Open the door, ma’am,” he commanded softly.
Jeannie ignored him. “Pablo told me this man Rudy passed along the word that if I want to see the kids again, I have to go to Las Golondrinas and beg for them myself. So if you’ll excuse me…”
“What—wait!”
“He said to come alone,” she said, moving Pablo’s gun to the passenger’s seat but not holstering it. She saw Dell Johnson looking at the deadly weapon, an odd expression on his broad face.
“You don’t want to do this,” he said.
“I’ve never wanted to do anything more,” she said. “These are my children. I’m responsible for them.” Her eyes suddenly swam with tears. She blinked them away furiously. “And—I love them. I can’t think of a better reason.”
“What can you do?” he asked wildly. “You’ve got to let us—let Chance—go after him.” He tugged at her door handle, and when it didn’t give, tried the back seat door, only to swear when he found that locked, as well. He held out his hands as if she still had a gun trained on him. “Look, you don’t know El Patron. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
Cowboy Under Cover Page 17
