The Texan

by Joan Johnston

  “Don’t tell me you’re the pilot.”

  “All right. I won’t.”

  Which meant, of course, that he was. “I don’t trust you on the ground. Why should I trust you in the air?”

  “We need to get where we’re going in a hurry,” Owen said as he opened the door to the pickup for her. “There’s a jet sitting on the landing strip at Bitter Creek, and I’m a qualified pilot. You’ve talked your way into coming, but I’d be just as happy to leave you behind.”

  “You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” she said.

  He grimaced, took her backpack from her, and swung it into the back of his pickup, then gestured her into the front seat of the black extended-cab Silverado. She was inside the luxurious pickup before she realized she’d let him take her backpack and open her door. Well, she’d soon cure him of thinking she was some fragile female. She could take care of herself.

  “I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” he said. “You’re a pilot yourself so—”

  “I only fly a helicopter during roundups.”

  He lifted a dark brow. “That’s a helluv—That’s a lot more difficult and dangerous than fixed-wing flying.”

  For some reason it irritated Bay that he’d edited the profanity from his speech. She didn’t want his deference. She wanted them on equal footing. So she added the profanity that he’d edited. “I’m not going to argue with you. I’d just feel a helluva lot better if we had a qualified pilot.”

  “I am a qualified pilot,” he said as he started the pickup and headed toward the bump gate that led from Creed to Blackthorne property.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You mean, you’d rather not trust your life to one of those dastardly Blackthornes.”

  He surprised a laugh out of her. “You must admit your father’s a hard-hearted man.”

  “I’m not my father,” he said curtly.

  “You’re cut from the same mold,” she countered. “You crippled my brother.”

  In the blink of an eye he’d hit the brakes, grabbed her arms, and pulled her up nose to nose with him. “That’s the last time I want to hear those words out of your mouth. Is that understood?”

  She scowled at him and said, “Let go of me.”

  He shook her once and demanded, “Answer me! Is that understood?”

  She knew better than to taunt an enraged animal. But she couldn’t help herself. “You are what you are.” She stared at the vicious grip he had on her arms. “A man with a nasty temper that gets out of hand. You hurt my brother. And now you’re hurting me.”

  He let her go instantly and turned back to face the road, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard she thought he might break it in two. Through tight jaws he said, “This isn’t going to work. I’ll arrange for someone to take you home when we get to the landing strip.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “One little temper tantrum isn’t going to scare me away.”

  “I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again.”

  “I work every day with cantankerous beasts who growl and bite, when I’m only trying to help. I think I can handle you.”

  “I’d like to see you handle me,” he said, eyeing her up and down.

  She ignored the double entendre, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t sizing her up as an adversary on the tae kwan do mat. She put a hand to her stomach, which was doing a strange flip-flop. “Don’t think I couldn’t take you down,” she said seriously. “I’ve trained in the martial arts.”

  He smirked. “That I’ve got to see.” He started the truck again. “But not right now.”

  Owen did a thorough flight check of the Cessna before he pronounced it ready to fly. He took Bay’s backpack from her again and put it in the forward baggage compartment. When he opened the door to the passenger compartment, two foldout steps appeared.

  “Pretty nifty,” Bay said as she entered the cabin, which had a recessed floor that allowed her to stand upright. She looked at the four facing seats, two on each side, and said, “I’d rather fly up front with you.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, stooping as he headed for the front of the airplane.

  “It has nothing to do with wanting your company,” she assured him. “I just want to make sure you can fly this thing.”

  “What help could you be if I can’t?” he asked.

  “I did a paper in college on airplane hydraulic systems,” she said, surveying the cockpit.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  She buckled herself in. “I had to take a lot of science classes to become a vet, so I tried to do papers on things that interested me.”

  Bay noted the Citation CJ1 was equipped with the best, most modern com/nav/ident avionics gear. The soft camel leather seats and burled wood trim were evidence of the luxury in which the Blackthornes indulged.

  Her family had once owned a secondhand helicopter they used for roundups, but they hadn’t been able to keep up the payments, so the bank had taken it back. Now they rented a helicopter when they needed one.

  “You wrote a paper on hydraulic systems?” Owen repeated dubiously, as he checked generators, flaps, thrust attenuators, and speed brakes.

  “What did you write about in college?” she asked.

  “As little as possible,” he replied.

  “What did you study? I mean, what was your major?”

  “Clay and I both studied government. Clay went on to Harvard Law. I went into law enforcement.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can imagine what your father said when you did that.”

  “I don’t think he noticed,” Owen said, as he set aside his clipboard.

  Bay shot Owen a sideways look as he powered up the jet’s FJ44-1A engine and confidently pulled the control yoke back for takeoff. She wondered if he realized how much he’d revealed in that simple statement.

  Bay knew something about being shunted aside by a parent, but she’d never resented the attention her father had paid to her injured brother. Sam had needed a lot of help when he first came home from the hospital.

  Later, when Sam had learned how to lift himself in and out of bed and how to manage his own care, her father had still given her brother the bulk of his free time. Bay had finally concluded that her brother and her father spent so much time together because they could feed on each other’s hatred of the Blackthornes.

  She shuddered to think how Sam would react when he realized their mother was having an intimate relationship with Blackjack. With any luck, her mother would come to her senses and call the whole thing off before Sam got wind of it.

  Bay waited until they were safely in the air to speak again. “Why didn’t you become a lawyer like your brother?”

  “I hated the thought of spending the rest of my life in an office. I like the wide open spaces.”

  “I can appreciate that,” Bay said. “I feel the same way.”

  “And I wanted to be a Texas Ranger, like a lot of Blackthornes before me.”

  “Creeds have been Texas Rangers, too,” Bay said. “Jarrett Creed, who married my great-great—however many greats—grandmother, Cricket Stewart, was a Ranger. In fact, they met when he recovered some horses that were stolen from her father.”

  “I’ve heard that story,” Owen said with a laugh. “Is it true Cricket had three pet wolves?”

  “Rogue, Rascal, and Ruffian,” Bay confirmed. “She raised them from pups. I keep forgetting our families are related—were related—in the beginning. I’d give a lot to know the truth about how and why Cricket Creed ended up marrying that English Blackthorne fellow. Her son Jake believed Blackthorne forced his mother into marriage because he wanted her land.”

  Bay glanced at Owen. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.”

  “It’s not,” Owen said. “My brother Trace showed me a diary Cricket wrote that proves they fell in love. Trace loaned the diary to your sister Callie. Didn’t she share it with you?”

 
; “I guess she didn’t have time before your brother rushed her off to Australia,” Bay said, unable to keep the resentment from her voice.

  “Sounds like you don’t believe your sister and my brother fell in love, either,” Owen said.

  “Trace swept Callie off her feet, all right. It helped that she needed the money he could provide to pay my father’s estate taxes, after your mother had him murdered.”

  There it was again. The most recent wrong the Blackthornes had done the Creeds, staring them both in the face. The reason her brother Luke had gone after his brother Clay. To prove, once and for all, that the mighty Blackthornes weren’t as righteous and law-abiding as they wanted everyone to think.

  Bay missed her father so much sometimes her chest physically ached. She felt cheated because he’d never had a chance to see her become a successful vet, especially when he was the one who’d made her believe she could be a good one. Deep down, she knew her father had been thinking of all the money he’d save on vet bills, but she didn’t think he would have pushed her, if she hadn’t loved it as she had.

  She angled herself toward Owen and asked, “Do you really believe that both your parents might have conspired—independently—with Russell Handy to kill my father?”

  She saw Owen’s throat working and noticed he avoided her gaze as he answered, “It’s possible. Handy was my father’s right-hand man. If Dad ordered him to squeeze the life out of someone, he’d have done it.”

  “Then Blackjack’s getting away with murder, too,” Bay said.

  Owen frowned. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But there’s no more proof my father committed the crime than there is against my mother.”

  “Somebody should have pressed Russell Handy for the truth.” She watched Owen shift uncomfortably in his seat. “You did!” she realized suddenly. “You went and talked to him! What did he say?”

  “He wouldn’t admit anything. Except that he loved my mother. And respected and admired my father.”

  Bay realized they were descending. The CJ1 had made the five-hundred-mile trip across South Texas in a little more than an hour. Owen set the jet down smoothly on the short landing strip in the tiny West Texas town of Alpine, which was only an hour’s drive from the entrance to the Big Bend National Park.

  “If you find you can’t keep up with me, I want you to say so right away,” Owen said.

  “I won’t be turning back,” Bay said.

  “The sooner you quit, the less backtracking I’ll have to do to get you headed back home,” he said flatly.

  “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll keep up.”

  “We’ll be picking up some safety equipment in Alpine.”

  She gave him a questioning look. “Rappelling equipment, you mean? Climbing stuff?”

  “Nerve gas stuff,” he said bluntly. “Rubber safety suits and atropine-oxime autoinjectors.”

  Bay felt her body go cold. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not only hunting down the man who killed my best friend. I’m looking for those missing VX mines. If I find them, there’s a chance that in the confusion one of them might go off. So yes, we’ll be picking up gas masks and rubber suits, along with an antidote for VX gas. But honestly, if I thought we’d be needing them, you wouldn’t be coming along with me.”

  “I did a college paper on chemical warfare,” she said.

  Owen eyed her sideways. “What did you learn?”

  “A single drop of VX nerve gas on your skin is enough to kill you.”

  “I think they told me that when they offered me the rubber suit.”

  “What else did they tell you?”

  “If I even suspect I’m exposed, I need to inject myself with the antidote immediately.”

  “Did they tell you VX gas can hang around in the air for days on end?” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Although, heat can make it evaporate more quickly.”

  “Thank God we’re headed for the desert,” Owen said.

  Bay frowned at his flippancy. “Organophosphate poisoning is gruesome. It attacks the nervous system and reacts with neurotransmitters—”

  “You’re losing me,” he said. “Too many big words.”

  “I can use small ones,” she said. “When you’re exposed, you get a headache and your eyes hurt and your chest gets tight. Then you get bronchospasms—”

  “Lost me again,” he interrupted.

  “You start wheezing,” she corrected. “And drooling and hallucinating and vomiting. Are those words small enough for you?”

  “I’m getting an ugly picture of what this stuff does to you.”

  “There’s more.”

  “How long was this paper?”

  She ignored him and said, “You start to sweat. Probably because you realize it’s all over. You begin defecating and urinating, your arms and legs twitching, unable to breathe. Think of it. Just one tiny drop. And you die a swift, agonizing death.”

  “Guess we can forget the rubber suits.”

  “You’d be smarter to bring along a gallon of Clorox.”

  “Clorox?”

  “The brand doesn’t matter. Just some household bleach. It works to neutralize the gas and decontaminate surfaces. Assuming we’re still alive.”

  “Remind me to stop by the Safeway in Alpine,” Owen said.

  Bay stared soberly at Owen. “Until you forced me into that ridiculous recitation, I never really considered what we might be walking into.”

  “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about coming?”

  She shook her head. “I have to believe that whoever stole those mines knows how dangerous it would be to detonate one of them.”

  “Or that they won’t want to waste one in such an unpopulated place,” Owen said.

  Bay felt a chill of alarm run down her spine when she saw the three men hovering near the entrance to the small terminal building in Alpine. Despite the searing June heat, they were wearing dark suits, white shirts, and wide ties knotted tightly at their throats. Since the FBI special-agent-in-charge of investigating the theft of the VX mines was headquartered in Midland, only a four-hour drive away, Bay wondered if one of the men might be Paul Ridgeway. Owen must have been in contact with him to make all those arrangements.

  Her suspicions were confirmed when Owen smiled, held out his hand to the man in the middle, and said, “Hi, Paul.”

  “Owen. Good to see you.” Ridgeway was the shortest of the three men and wore wire-rimmed glasses that made him look businesslike rather than trendy. He was nearly bald, and what hair he had left had been cut severely short.

  There was no mistaking the fact that Paul Ridgeway was in charge. He reminded Bay of a bulldog, with his powerful neck, square flat face, and short legs. Seeing the way he stood braced on both feet, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he turned out to be as fiercely tenacious as one of those small, tough animals.

  The other two agents were long, lean, and sharp featured. Definitely Dobermans.

  “It was nice of you to meet us, Paul,” Owen said. “But we really don’t have time for more than hello and goodbye.”

  Bay felt Owen’s hand in the small of her back, urging her inside to pick up their camping gear, which a baggage worker was bringing inside. She barely managed not to jump at the frisson of feeling it caused. She didn’t need any further encouragement. The sooner they got shed of this threatening pack of lawmen, the happier she would be.

  “You’re going to be delayed long enough to give us a chance to talk with Miss Creed,” Ridgeway said as he joined Owen.

  The other two men flanked Bay, one walking beside her, the other slightly behind, like watchdogs. All that was missing were the bared teeth and the growl.

  Bay did her best to keep the panic she felt off her face. What if they kept her here? What if they sent Owen into the Big Bend alone?

  She glanced at Owen to see whether he was going to leave her at the mercy of this pack of wild dogs. When she saw the twitch of irritation in Owen’s jaw, sh
e nearly sighed aloud with relief.

  “The airport has put a room at our disposal,” Ridgeway said. “This shouldn’t take long. Then you can both be on your way.”

  “What is it you think Dr. Creed knows?” Owen asked.

  “We’ll find that out when we speak to her,” Ridgeway replied.

  The four men were two steps beyond Bay when they realized she had stopped. When they turned to face her she asked, “Am I under arrest?”

  “Why, no, Dr. Creed,” Ridgeway said.

  “Then I feel neither the inclination nor the necessity to speak with you. Excuse me, please.” She saw her backpack sitting on a baggage cart and walked past them to retrieve it.

  When the four men caught up to her, Ridgeway’s jaw was jutting. “Surely you realize the seriousness of the accusations against your brother.”

  “Of course I do. There’s nothing I can tell you.”

  The agent lifted a skeptical brow. “Then what is it you’re doing here?”

  “Protecting my family’s interests.”

  “Would you mind explaining that?”

  “Not at all,” Bay said as she grabbed her backpack, slid her arms through the straps, and slung the forty pounds easily onto her back. “I’m going along to make sure nothing happens to my brother if—when—he’s found, so he’ll have a chance to explain himself to you.”

  “So you think he’s hiding in the Big Bend?”

  Bay realized the clever trap Ridgeway had set. She’d stupidly fallen right into it. “My brother isn’t hiding, Mr. Ridgeway. He’s missing, maybe even lost.” She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could with forty pounds on her back. “I don’t know how Luke’s motorcycle ended up where it was found. Maybe he left it there. Maybe someone moved it there. I have no way of knowing that.”

  Bay took a deep breath. “But I’m certain my brother had nothing to do with the theft of those VX mines, and I’m going along to make sure he gets a chance to prove it.”

  “You’re risking your life—and a lot of other lives—by not telling us what you know,” Ridgeway said.

  “I’ve told you everything I know.” Bay turned to Owen and said, “I’m ready when you are.”

  “You heard the lady,” Owen said to Ridgeway, as he slung his own backpack over one shoulder.