Twice A Target (Task Force Eagle)

by Susan Vaughan

  TWICE A TARGET

  Susan Vaughan

  “Strong characters and plenty of romance.”

  –Kat Martin, New York Times Bestselling author

  TASK FORCE EAGLE - When federal agents Rick Cruz, Jake Wescott, and Holt Donovan go after a Mexican cartel kingpin, they face unexpected hazards—to their hearts.

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  He doesn’t want a woman he can’t trust, and she doesn’t want a man who won’t let himself trust her.

  Disaster strikes DEA Agent Holt Donovan twice, when a gunfight ruins his mission and a car crash kills his brother and sister-in-law. Home on the Colorado ranch to raise his infant nephew, Holt enlists a nanny, Maddy McCoy, who once jilted his brother and is now a nomadic photographer. As they cope with old resentment and new desire, their investigation of the crash leads them into danger and a shocking discovery.

  Published by Gullwood Press

  Copyright 2013 Susan Hofstetter Vaughan

  Cover design and digital layout by www.formatting4U.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at shvaughan.author@gmail.com. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For more information on the author and her works, please see http://www.susanvaughan.com

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to author and friend Ann Voss Peterson for your advice and expertise about horses. And much appreciation to Luanna Nau for the final read and for the baby advice.

  Dedication

  For my friends and critique partners Diane Drew, Lois Winston, and Karen Davenport, and for my husband, who has my back. Always.

  Prologue

  March 10

  Mexico

  By afternoon the notorious drug kingpin known as El Águila would be history.

  If everything went as planned.

  DEA Agent Holt Donovan slipped on sunglasses against the Baja California sun. The light breeze blowing in off the water helped about as much as a folded paper fan. He reached back to adjust the SIG-Sauer automatic pistol hidden beneath the loose tail of his sport shirt. Sweat glued the holster to his heated skin. Ducking beneath a shade umbrella, he peered at the hotel’s side exit. Nobody yet.

  Not a bad setting for a stakeout. The towers of the Hotel Corona Royal rose as regal and white as a wedding cake. Beyond the snowy sands of the Playa Royal, the rolling Pacific waters gleamed azure under the relentless sun.

  He and other agents of the DEA, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, and the Mexican Federal Police had spent months tracking the cartel kingpin’s movements, hoping to set up a trap. No luck until now. They spent the past week at the resort scoping out his routine and planning strategy. No pictures existed of the secretive man. The agents were operating only on a sketchy description from hotel employees. But frightened workers didn’t necessarily impart the complete truth.

  Once every ten days or so, the man registered as Juan Perez and a small entourage left the penthouse for the maze of Tijuana streets and other parts unknown. Juan Perez—that was an alias if Holt had ever heard one, the Spanish equivalent of John Smith.

  Today they would get no farther than the parking lot.

  While he waited for his quarry to descend from the penthouse, he tipped down his Broncos cap and scanned the crowd at the wedding reception on the patio. Might as well enjoy the view.

  Dressed in Spanish lace, the fresh-cheeked bride smiled. The groom, in the traditional silver-braided Mexican tuxedo, stood attentively at her side. Perfect. Holt hoped what would go down would disturb none of the celebrants. Families deserved peace for such occasions.

  He sure as hell recalled a humdinger in his family. Maddy leaving his younger brother red-faced at the altar had trampled the whole family like a cattle stampede. Rob was married to someone else now. Maybe he’d let it go, but Holt wouldn’t forget—or forgive. His involvement in the mess didn’t bear examining.

  A detour to Colorado before he had to return to his regular post in the New England DEA offices in Boston would suit him fine. He had yet to see his nephew, less than a month old. Once they had El Águila plucked and stowed, Holt had some time coming. Leaving Rob to run the Valley-D chafed at him, but that was the decision they’d made years ago when their dad left them the family ranch.

  The hotel’s double doors opened, and two burly men stepped outside. Like him, they wore cotton shirts, loose over their khaki trousers to conceal weapons. One was a hawk-faced man Holt had seen in the elevator. The other sported a bushy mustache. Bodyguards.

  The remainder of the group exited. In the center of the group walked a stocky, older man wearing a white open-collared shirt and dark trousers.

  El Águila. The Eagle.

  Holt thumbed the speed dial on his secure cell phone. “The bird is on the wing,” he said into his headset.

  “How many in the flock?” came the response.

  “Six. Our bird and five chicks. Four muscle and one lieutenant.”

  “We’ll have ‘em on camera as soon as they move to the parking lot. The Federales have picked up the driver. Our bird has no getaway car. We’re set.”

  “Roger.” Success depended on patience and strategy, waiting until their prey entered the trap before dropping the net. Could be a problem if some of the newer agents didn’t understand that timing meant as much as action. If not more.

  Like any flock, the group moved and stopped as one.

  “Hold on. They’ve pulled up twenty feet away.” He sat on the lounge chair beneath the umbrella. To appear in casual conversation, he continued to mutter an inaudible—he hoped—description of the action into the receiver.

  At his boss’s side, the lieutenant, young and tall in a flashy red shirt, spoke quietly. Perez nodded. Then the lieutenant issued a brief order to Hawkface. The bodyguard dashed off to the wedding tent. A moment later he returned with a paper plate stacked with wedding delicacies.

  With apparent reluctance, Perez sampled a cake. In his fifties or sixties, he wore his hair slicked back, as did many Latino men, but its unnaturally black color betrayed his vanity. His sharkskin gray complexion and cavern-deep eyes gave him an appearance both repulsive and fascinating.

  “He just sampled the wedding goodies. Here they go.” Holt waited until they’d passed well ahead of him. “I’m moving in behind.”

  A flagstone path wound through bougainvillea, flowering trees and hibiscus toward the sprawling parking area and beyond that a three-story parking garage. The little flock would soon enter the open area.

  Keeping behind the shrubbery, Holt followed his quarry. He drew his pistol and flicked off the safety.

  Behind him, mariachi music cranked up. The celebrants would dance and dine until the sun dropped into the Pacific and the moon rose to take its place.

  Hawkface and Mustache, bringing up the rear, glanced around, but didn’t make him.

  Ten more steps brought them to the edge of the net. Holt could hear the agitated voices, enough words to catch Perez’s irritation at the driver’s tardiness. Now they would move out into the open, and agents would surround them.

  “¡Alto! Federal Police. Drop your weapons and surrender!”

  Holt’s gut clenched and his heart rate shot up. Shit! Some Federale jumped the gun. Instead of inside a circle of
agents, the gangsters stood at the brink of the net.

  At the brink of escape.

  Then all hell broke loose. Two of the bodyguards hunkered down behind hibiscus bushes. They drew handguns and fired volleys at their unseen enemy.

  From all sides, agents returned fire. Bullets slammed into the ground. Shots ricocheted off the flagstones around the shooters. One of the gunmen went down.

  Holt ran forward.

  Hawkface, Mustache, and Redshirt began to edge their leader away from the danger.

  “¡Alto! You cannot get away,” Holt called in his American-accented Spanish. “Agents surround you.” He ducked behind a tree as skinny as a flagpole and about as much protection. The others should be moving in to flank them and cut off their escape.

  At his warning, the bodyguards wavered. Redshirt drew a pistol and pushed his boss behind him. The others raised their weapons in his direction.

  He knelt to form a smaller target. Put himself in the zone. Calm. Focused. Where the hell were the Federales and the American agents?

  Gunfire boomed from the perimeter of the parking area.

  El Águila stood his ground. He stared at Holt, challenge in his eerie gaze. But not fear. The malignant intelligence in his sunken eyes scrutinized him as if he could see through the scrawny tree. Damned clear why the criminal was named for a bird of prey.

  At Redshirt’s signal, El Águila’s protectors fired.

  Splinters erupted above Holt’s head. The hibiscus blossom beside him exploded red petals. He dropped to his belly and squeezed off four rounds.

  Hawkface dropped his pistol and clutched at his arm. The younger lieutenant fell like a heel-looped calf.

  Holt fired another round into the ground before them. “Drop your weapons.”

  El Águila roared like a wounded puma and knelt beside his downed man. Still firing, the winged goon dragged him away. Mustache heaved the young man over his shoulder. The four of them melted into the bushes.

  The rattle of shrubbery announced the cavalry.

  About damn time. “Through there,” Holt yelled to the approaching agents. “Don’t let them get away.”

  *****

  March 24

  San Diego

  Holt tapped computer keys as he completed yet one more report on the Operation Bird Net fiasco. He’d had the man in his sights. Could have taken him down, but stopped because higher-ups wanted the scum alive. Fuck. That might’ve been his only chance at El Águila.

  In the confusion, somehow the gangster’s party escaped. To show for their trouble, the task force had one clear photograph of the missing men. The two captured bodyguards and the driver weren’t talking.

  For two weeks they combed Tijuana and environs for any sign of their fugitives. No sign of the kingpin and the three men who’d escaped with him. No doctor or hospital reported gunshot wounds, but that was no surprise. Such a powerful underworld figure would have resources.

  “Yo, Donovan,” Another DEA special agent across the room said. “There’s a phone call for you. From Colorado.”

  “Must be my brother.” Holt punched the Save button.

  “Guy says his name’s Luke Rafferty.”

  “Rafferty?” Unease crawled over Holt’s skin. If the deputy sheriff tracked him down in Californis, it wasn’t with good news.

  He reached for the phone.

  Chapter 1

  April

  Colorado

  Holt stared at the mountain vista he’d missed like a lost limb. April’s snow-edged meadows rose into the verdant shades of Ponderosa pines and budding aspens. To the distant southeast, the lowering sun painted a magenta wash on the slopes of Pikes Peak. He swore in this valley he could hear the heartbeat of the mountains.

  He should be enjoying the spring with Rob. Grief squeezed his heart. A man wasn’t supposed to lose his younger brother. And sure as hell not the way he’d planned to return and take up the reins of the ranch. With his mug of coffee in hand, he turned away and sank onto a chair at the kitchen table.

  “I’d stay if I could, you know I would.” Esperanza O’Grady folded the dishtowel on its rack over the sink and flicked off the country music radio station she favored. She cocked her head and smoothed back raven hair edged with silver. The housekeeper’s Ute heritage shone in her burnished visage. “Two days a week is all I can give you from now on.”

  “That’s okay, Espie. Two days is all I can afford after this. You’ve done more than anybody else, and I appreciate it.”

  Espie’d worked part-time on this ranch since he was a kid. Her tenure began before his and Rob’s mother left and continued after Rob married. Gradually, her cleaning business expanded with her family. Cleaning wasn’t what he needed the most, even if he could afford full time.

  “I’ll lose my other customers if I put them off any longer. You won’t need me forever, and I need to keep the fridge stocked. Danny and Sean would devour the shelves.” She slipped on her jacket, and then lifted her leather tote to her shoulder.

  “I’ve left you a casserole for tonight and a chicken dish in the freezer. See that you eat proper, now. You need your strength.” She wagged a finger at him.

  “You’re not kidding.” He levered to his feet, removing his broad-brimmed black Resistol and holding it over his heart. “My hat’s off to single parents everywhere.”

  “Single is the key word. What you need is a wife.”

  The word made him shudder. “A wife would only complicate a situation already as convoluted as a Rocky Mountain pass.”

  He needed help big-time, and fast, but not the kind she meant. He slapped his hat on the table and crossed to the door. “Before you can say it, not a mother either. Last person on earth I’d call.”

  At the bitterness he never could quite conceal, Espie reached up to pat his cheek. “Time you let that go. Bonnie wasn’t cut out for ranch life. Not every woman’s tough enough. Many can’t take the isolation.”

  At least Maddy had bailed out on his brother before the wedding. She couldn’t take it either. Lit out for the big time. Violet eyes and a filly’s long legs flickered in his mind. He shook away the vision, but the memory stung like a picked scab.

  “No wife. No mother. I have a good hand to help me on the Valley-D. The rest I’ll figure out as we go.”

  “A good hand.” She gave a snort as she eased out the door. “If that old coyote works half as much as he flaps his jaw, I reckon he’ll do. Don’t you tell him I said so neither.”

  Holt watched from the porch as she left in her pickup. He rubbed a hand over his gritty eyes. Running the Valley-D on the scant sleep he’d had the last few weeks was taking its toll. Most of the cows and the bred heifers had calved, so the damn midnight vigils were close to being finished.

  The ones outside, anyway.

  “That ornery female gone yet?” Bronc Baker, spare and weathered as an old fence post, sauntered toward the house.

  “Ornery? Bronc, I thought you liked Espie. Besides, we couldn’t have made it these last few weeks without her.”

  “Shee-it, I know that.” Bronc removed his tan Stetson from his grizzled head and whacked it against his grimy jeans. A dust cloud rose from both hat and pants leg. “But the woman talks all the time. A man can’t pry in a word with a crowbar. Bronc this and Bronc that. Asks about the calves, have we got heifers or bulls and will we have a good hay crop and—”

  “Whoa, I get the picture.” Holt’s mouth twitched, but he held back a laugh. Between them, those two jabbered so much a conversation could kick up a dust devil.

  The older man settled his wide-brimmed hat on his head. “Um, I did mention to her we might need her boys to help with the brandin’.”

  “Good idea. Nothing better than calf roping for teenaged boys.” Calf roping had kept Rob and him out of trouble for many years. The memory tightened his chest.

  “Anyways, I come to tell you things look peaceful in the calving pen. Moms and babies is doin’ okay. Lower pen’s quiet too. No signs of more lab
or right away.”

  “So it looks like I get the night off. I can use it.”

  Bronc nodded. “And you’ll get to the field truck tomorrow? You’re a better mechanic than me.”

  “Or Rob, I reckon. The tractor needs some work too.” Holt scratched his head. His brother’s ranch management was an oxymoron. “Back east, they thought all we did was ride around on horseback and herd cattle.”

  The ranch hand barked a laugh. “City folks don’t know a rancher’s got to be a mechanic, a vet, and a farmer.”

  “Don’t forget shoestring businessman.”

  Holt offered to share Espie’s casserole. Bronc excused himself, saying he had stew on the stove in the mobile home that served as a bunkhouse.

  The peaks beyond the valley drew a lingering look before grief pulled Holt’s gaze toward the aspen-topped knoll behind the house. A neat brown scar in the greening grass, Rob’s grave was the newest one beside their father and two sets of grandparents.

  Past regrets and present burdens heaped on his shoulders, he plodded into the house.

  He dug into his dinner like a wolf on fresh kill. Five o’clock. His daily chores on the land were done, but his nightly ones were about to begin. Maybe fate would grant him a peaceful evening.

  The first plate was finished and a second heaped before he took time to savor the spicy beef, tortillas, and cheese. He was rinsing his plate when he heard the engine. He expected no one, and the hairs on his nape lifted in warning. Lately every new arrival, every phone call heralded more trouble.

  A glance out the window in the kitchen door revealed the back view of a long drink of female. Mile-long legs in tight jeans and running shoes, sweetly curved butt, and short blond hair. She was waving good-bye to the deputy sheriff’s white Cherokee as it chugged down the gravel drive.