by Diana Palmer
She grinned. “I taught her. I like snakes, too.”
“Well!” he exclaimed, and returned the grin. “Lucky Ramirez.”
“Colby!”
He glanced at his watch. “We’d better get going, hadn’t we?” he said, finishing his coffee. “We don’t want to be late.”
She gave up and let the subject go. He wasn’t going to take to Rodrigo, even if half his family did. But she wondered if he’d been serious about settling down…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
COLBY ARRIVED at Ritter Oil just after Sarina did, and he went straight to Hunter with what he’d learned from the gang leader, and his proposal about doing some snooping in Jacobsville.
“The hitch is that we’ll have to explain our absence from here, without arousing suspicion,” he added. “And you and Jennifer will have to agree to keep Bernadette for three or four days. We have to have a solid reason for being in town there.”
Hunter pursed his lips, considering this. “We might stage a conversation for Vance’s benefit,” he began.
“Not a bad idea,” Colby had to agree. “I’ll have Cy put it around town that I might be looking for property, with Sarina and Bernadette in mind. Gossip runs rampant in small communities. I remember that from my own childhood,” he added, chuckling.
“So do I. Cy would be willing, I’m sure. Micah, too.”
“I owe him one for coming all the way to Houston to treat me for malaria,” Colby said with a smile.
“You’d have done the same for him, if circumstances had been reversed.”
“I would,” Colby agreed.
Hunter frowned. “I wonder why Vance is keeping such a low profile lately,” he said. “He hasn’t made a single wave since the assault on the warehouse.”
“He probably thinks we suspect him,” Colby replied. “And he’s not wrong.” His eyes narrowed angrily. “He could have killed Sarina. I owe him one for that bullet he sent into her. If I could get enough evidence…”
“I know how you feel,” the older man interrupted. “But we have to keep playing a waiting game here, until we have a solid lead. Your bit of information, if it’s true, is a big help. But until we actually see drugs being moved, we can’t prove a thing. And if Sarina fingers Vance for shooting her,” he added, “there goes any chance of flushing out Cara Dominguez and her lieutenants.”
“I guess so,” came the quiet reply.
“Don’t be so impatient!” Hunter chuckled. “We’ll nail Vance, and Dominguez, and the rest of the bunch. I promise you we will. Don’t forget how long it took Cy and the others to bring down Lopez.”
“I know. Things move so slowly.”
“But they do get done. While you and Sarina are in Jacobsville, the rest of us will put a little more pressure on Vance and see what he does. I’ll have one of our men monitor that wire you put in his car. So far he’s been pretty quiet.”
“He’ll slip eventually,” Colby said with certainty. “They always do.”
“Give Cy my regards,” Hunter told him. “Maybe one day we can have a reunion and talk about the old days.”
“I’ll see if I can arrange that,” Colby told him with a grin.
TWO DAYS LATER, Colby and Sarina were installed in separate rooms in the Jacobsville Hotel. Colby might have suggested a single room, but he wasn’t ready to share what he’d learned about their marriage with her just yet. She was still wary of him and distant, despite their intimacy in the recent past. He didn’t want to push too hard. He wanted her to think about all he’d said.
They went together to Eb Scott’s training camp. Colby felt right at home with the mercs. He was somewhat easier with his past now that Sarina knew about it. Her reaction hadn’t been quite what he expected. She was a straight arrow, very conventional. He’d expected that she might not want anything to do with him once she found out about his past. It hadn’t been like that at all.
Not that she was letting him get any closer. She was polite, courteous, and as cool as ice water.
“You’re quiet,” he remarked as they got out of the car at Eb’s ranch.
“I don’t have anything to say,” she replied.
“You’re still mad about Vance,” he guessed, nodding when she gave him a startled look. “I wanted to take him in, but Hunter stopped me. He said we couldn’t afford a ripple in the stream.” He looked angry and frustrated, all at once.
She was vaguely surprised at the anger. She turned to look up at him, her dark eyes wide and quizzical. “I didn’t think it mattered to you that he got away.”
“He shot you,” he said curtly.
She turned away, but not before he saw a faint smile on her lips.
Eb Scott was tall and lean, with blond-streaked brown hair and green eyes. He shook hands with Colby warmly.
“Long time, no see,” he said. “You’ve weathered well.”
“So have you,” Colby replied. He glanced around the camp, which he knew was state-of-the-art. If there were any advancements in surveillance, Eb had them first. “You’ve expanded since I was here last.”
“That was years ago,” Eb reminded him with a grin.
“I guess it was.” He turned to Sarina. “You don’t know Eb, do you?”
She shook her head, smiling. “I’ve heard of him, of course. Cy meant to introduce us, but there was never time.” She held out her hand. “I’m Sarina Carrington, DEA.”
Eb shook the hand, glancing at Colby curiously.
“We were married, once” was all Colby would admit. “We have a daughter. She’s just turned seven.”
Eb had heard about Colby’s marriage, but from what he knew, the woman had been a brunette. This one was a blonde.
“You probably knew his second wife,” Sarina said, anticipating the question. “I’m the first one. But we were only married for one day.”
Eb raised an eyebrow. “Wise lady, to know so quickly what a rotten husband he’d make.”
Colby burst out laughing. Sarina was surprised, because she’d expected him to take offense. Apparently these two knew each other very well, indeed.
“What are you two doing down here?” Eb asked. “I thought you were working for Ritter, in Houston.”
“I am,” Colby said. “But we’ve had some drug smuggling complications, and we understand that a big shipment of cocaine is going to be sent down here for concealment. We plan to stop it.”
“Good for you,” Eb said. “We’ve had enough drug smugglers here to last us a lifetime. Cy and Micah and I shut down Lopez’s operation, with a little help from Harley Fowler, and put Lopez’s men on the street.”
“I heard. Good work.”
Eb shrugged. “It wasn’t that difficult. He underestimated us right down the line.”
“His successor is heading in the same direction,” Colby told him. “She thinks Lopez’s survivors invented the mercenaries to explain their failure.”
“Obviously she doesn’t read magazines,” Eb mused, recalling that his operation in Jacobsville had featured largely in one about the time Lopez died.
“She’s a very superior sort of woman, in her own mind,” Sarina interjected. “But she depends on the wrong people. One of her operatives spilled the news that she was going to attempt to move the shipment from its hiding place at our warehouse in Houston. He assumed that he was the only man in the company who understood Spanish.” She smiled wryly. “His mistake.”
“If you know the shipment is in the warehouse, why don’t you just do an inventory?” Eb asked.
“You have no idea how big the warehouse is,” Colby replied, “or how many cartons would have to be opened and inspected. Besides that,” he added with narrowed eyes, “I don’t really think the drugs are in cartons. I think they’re concealed somewhere else.”
“Where?” Sarina wanted to know.
He grimaced. “I’m not sure. Just a hunch.”
“Your hunches used to be pretty accurate,” Eb recalled.
“They still are,” Sarina murmured,
without looking at Colby.
“Well, we’ll get Micah and Cy in, and hold a council of war. I’ve got contacts everywhere,” Eb mentioned. “And Cy knows a man who went undercover in Lopez’s outfit…”
“I know him, too,” Colby said, and his eyes spoke volumes to his old comrade.
Eb was quick. He knew immediately that he wasn’t supposed to mention Rodrigo in front of the woman.
“We can discuss him later,” Eb said, carelessly. “Come on in and I’ll give you a tour of the place. Sally will be home from school about four. We have a son who’s in day care while mommy and daddy work, but he’ll come with her. You can meet him, too.”
“You with a wife and son,” Colby shook his head. “Who’d have thought it six years ago?”
“I could say the same of you,” Eb returned, grinning. “Haven’t we changed, though?”
“We have, indeed,” Colby agreed, with a warm smile at Sarina, whose cheeks colored just faintly.
EB’S OPERATION was enormous. There were two barracks with electronic hookups and every sort of gadget known to modern science. There was a huge metal building used for martial arts training. There was a gun range. There were exercise trails through the woods, and marked areas, including an urban setting, where mock combat took place. There was even a track where one of Eb’s experts taught defensive driving tactics. It was a counterterrorism school of which any country would be proud.
“We do a lot of contract work here for various governments,” Eb told them. “I add people as I need to. The defensive driving range is new. So is the combat area. We have to keep up with current terrorist trends. Street fighting is a recent innovation, starting in Iraq. We have an instructor who teaches Arabic and Farsi, along with some Bedouin dialects. I had plans to teach demolition and bomb dismantling, but Sally put her foot down. She hates explosives.” He shrugged. “You win some, you lose some.”
“She just didn’t want you blown up,” Colby ventured.
He chuckled. “It was just as well. I’d planned to ask Cord Romero to teach the course, but he got married and has a child on the way. He’s going to retire from merc work and raise prize bulls.”
“He and Maggie were in the papers a few months ago,” Colby recalled. “They shut down a child slavery ring and killed the ringleader in Amsterdam.”
“They did, indeed. And just think, she was formerly an investment counselor.”
“She,” Colby jerked a thumb at Sarina, “was an oil company clerk. She’s one of the best intelligence agents I’ve come across in recent years.”
“I got shot,” Sarina reminded him dryly, but glowing from the praise.
“Anybody can get shot,” Eb said. “I’ve got a few holes in my hide, too, and not from carelessness. The wounds heal, eventually.”
“Eventually,” Colby agreed.
SALLY CAME HOME with their little boy, who was the image of his dad. He was shy around the newcomers, but sweet.
Eb’s wife taught grammar school. She was blond and slender, and obviously in love with her husband. She and Sarina kept each other company while Eb and Colby talked over old times.
The next day they spent with Cy and Lisa, at their ranch. They arranged for some surveillance at the known haunts of the late Manuel Lopez, with trusted cowboys riding fence lines and keeping their eyes open.
“Did you know that there’s a ranch near by that’s up for sale?” Cy asked Colby.
“No. What sort of ranch?” he replied.
“It’s not a big one, by local standards,” Cy told him. “But it has potential. Lots of good grazing land, plenty of water. It could support a nice herd of horses.”
Colby glanced at Sarina, who was listening carefully. “Where is it?” he asked.
Cy grinned. “I’ll show you.”
They left Lisa at the house, because her pregnancy was advanced and she found riding difficult. It made her sick. Cy loaded his visitors into his big red Expedition and drove them over past the D Bar G, Judd and Christabel Dunn’s prosperous cattle ranch to the old Hob Downey property.
“Hob was killed by one of the notorious Clark brothers,” Cy told them. “He was a good old man, everybody loved him. The property has been deserted ever since.” He parked at the front door of the ramshackle ranch house. “The land is the thing,” he added when he saw their dubious looks. “The house is a dead loss.”
“It is,” Colby agreed. “I’d pull it down and rebuild. Maybe a Spanish revival style. It would fit in well with all those agaves and cacti.”
Sarina glanced at him with a warm smile. “Yes, it would. And painted a pale yellow, like desert sand…”
“…it would be perfect,” he finished for her. “Bernadette would love it. She could ride horses every day.”
Sarina’s heart jumped up into her chest. Her eyes widened, darkened, as they met his across the backseat. “Yes,” she said softly. “She would.”
They exchanged a look hotter than a jalapeño pepper. Cy cleared his throat to get their attention.
“And we’re here,” he said, hiding a smile as he got out at the front door of the ramshackle shack. At the end of the driveway was a dull, lackluster For Sale sign, which had obviously been there for quite some time.
“Andy Webb has the option on it, at Jacobsville Realty,” Cy told them. “Since old Hob had no living relatives, there’s no one to inherit. Some of the proceeds will go toward his burial and the rest will be invested, with the proceeds to go to our local needy fund. Hob always used to say that poor people needed more help than they ever got from the government. This way, he can go on helping, even though he’s no longer here.”
“He must have been a nice person,” Sarina said softly.
“He was,” Cy replied. “Why don’t you two look around? I’ll sit in the truck and talk to Lisa on the phone.” He grinned sheepishly. “We do that a lot, with the baby almost here.”
Colby chuckled and drew Sarina along with him. “If you’d known him six years ago,” he told her wryly, “you wouldn’t think he was the same man. Marriage has changed him.”
“He seems very much in love.”
He caught her slender hand in his. “He is.” He walked to the back of the property, where the yard was thick with denuded rosebushes and shrubs. Beyond was open pasture that ran to a line of trees far on the horizon. “Lots of space here,” he mused. “Like back on the reservation, when I was a boy.”
“Your father talked about it a lot,” she said softly. “He knew he made a lot of mistakes in his life. He was sorry for all of them, especially when he lost touch with you. He felt responsible.”
His hand contracted around hers. “I blamed him for every bad thing that ever happened to me,” he reminisced. “Even after I was grown.” His broad shoulders rose and fell. “But I’m just beginning to understand how he felt. He loved my mother, but he couldn’t give up the bottle. After she died, he must have hated himself. It only made the drinking worse.”
“He did hate himself, for a long time. But when he knew I was carrying his grandchild, he sobered up and never took another drink. Not even a beer. He liked to think he made up for a little of the past by the way he took care of Bernadette while I worked. He loved her very much.”
He turned and looked down at her somberly. “So do I, Sarina,” he said in a tone like rich velvet. “More every day.”
She searched over his scarred face, up to his dark, quiet eyes. She’d loved this man half her life. She wondered how she ever managed to live without him. Love was a tenacious thing, she pondered. Tenacious and terrifying.
He touched her soft mouth with his fingertips. “You loved me,” he said in a quiet harsh tone. “I knew it, but I still gave you hell. I deserved what happened to me with Maureen. You don’t build happiness on someone else’s despair.”
Her heart jumped. “You loved her,” she began.
“Hell,” he said harshly, “I wanted her. I never liked her, as a person. She was selfish and grasping, and she never put herself
out for anyone. I feel sorry for the child she’ll be raising. It will probably be in juvenile hall before it’s thirteen. She’s nobody’s idea of a mother.” He shook his head. “And I wanted children with her. Lucky me, that we never had one.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder, about that night we spent together?” she asked curiously.
He laughed softly, with self-contempt. “I thought you were experienced, remember. I thought you were on the Pill. It never occurred to me that there might be a child.” He searched her eyes slowly. “Have you thought about how it might have been if Maureen hadn’t deliberately ignored your call for help?”
She managed a weak smile. “I did, occasionally. I couldn’t help wondering what you would have done.”
“I’d have come to you like a shot,” he replied immediately. “I wanted children more than anything in the world,” he said with faint bitterness. “I was convinced that I couldn’t have any.”
“Then maybe you wouldn’t have believed she was yours,” she began.
He put his forefinger against her lips, to silence her. “It’s easy to get a DNA test these days. There wouldn’t have been any doubt for long. Especially once I saw her,” he added gently. “I never thought of you as the sort of woman who’d go from one man to another so quickly. Especially,” he added uncomfortably, “after what I did to you.”
She moved into his arms and pressed against him, embracing his waist so naturally that he enveloped her with delight. “Maybe we’re not remembering the same thing that you did to me,” she whispered. “I was remembering when we took a shower together, while you were getting over malaria.”
He actually shivered. His mouth searched for hers, found it, ground into it in the windy chill of autumn that surrounded them. He groaned when he felt her instant response.
“It was glorious,” he whispered roughly. “I’ve never felt anything like it. Especially after…” He stopped dead and lifted his head. “Oh, God,” he whispered, his face tautening.
