by Paula Graves
“We have so many more pages to work through,” she protested.
“And they can wait until tomorrow,” he told her firmly. “Right now, you need some food, a nice hot bath and a good night’s sleep. In that order.”
She slanted a look at him but didn’t say anything else until they reached the small roadside barbecue stand near her house. They picked up barbecue brisket, baked beans and tangy vinegar slaw to share and were back at Miranda’s house by five thirty.
Rex and Ruthie both greeted them at the front door when they entered, as good a sign as they were likely to get that nobody had tried to break into the house while they were gone.
John fed the cats in the kitchen while Miranda pulled an old folding card table and two chairs onto the front porch. By the time John went outside, she’d already laid out their meal on the table and had kicked back, her feet propped on the porch railing, sipping iced tea through a straw while she watched the ruby sunset sinking into the western horizon.
“Every time I wonder why I haven’t moved out of this little bitty town, I look at one of those sunsets, breathe in the clean air and listen to the killdeer calling and I remember why I’m still here.”
“It’s very different than where I’m from.” He took a sip of his own tea and followed her gaze toward the sunset. “But just as beautiful in its own way.”
“Miss the mountains?” She dropped her feet to the porch floor and turned to spoon a couple of slabs of brisket onto her plate.
“Some. Not as much as I would’ve thought.” There was a wild beauty in the flat scrubby plains of the panhandle that spoke to something inside him he hadn’t even realized existed, a hunger for wide open spaces and endless horizons that couldn’t be found in the hills of home.
“I used to think of this place as untouchable.” She added beans and slaw to her plate and poked a fork into a piece of brisket. “Crime didn’t really exist here, you know? Not like in the bigger cities. I could count on my hand the number of serious crimes in the past ten years. Until now.”
“Can’t keep the world out forever.”
“No.” She dropped her fork. “Now we have a murder, and an unsolved hit-and-run and God knows what else we’re going to find once we figure out what kind of code Delta was using—”
“You can’t keep the world out forever,” he repeated, reaching across the table and closing his hand over hers. “But maybe we should try to keep it out for tonight?”
She looked at him for a long, tense moment, then turned her hand so that her palm touched his. “Do you think we can really do that?”
“We could try.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look for a second, then smiled. “Okay. No shoptalk for the rest of the evening.”
They settled in to a comfortable silence as they ate, but soon, with their stomachs full, the leftovers put up in the refrigerator and the card table restored to the hall closet, Miranda sat on the sofa across from John and shot him a questioning look. “What now?”
“What do you usually do when you have men over?”
Her gaze skittered away. “I don’t usually have men over.”
“Ever?”
“I don’t have a lot of time to date these days,” she said, sounding mildly defensive. “And when I do, we generally drive in to Plainview or Lubbock for dinner and maybe a movie, and then it’s late, so I have to come home so I can get a decent night’s sleep before work in the morning.” She pressed her face into her hands. “God, that sounds pathetic.”
“Yeah, well, the last woman I went out with didn’t even know my real name, so I don’t exactly have room to judge.”
She managed a smile. “I don’t think this is what you had in mind when we agreed to no shoptalk.”
“Relax. I don’t have anything in particular in mind.” He joined her on the sofa, sitting close enough that he could touch her if he liked, but not so close he would send her nervously skittering into the next zip code.
“Maybe we could ask each other questions,” she suggested. “You know, getting-to-know-you kind of questions.”
“Sure. You want to start?”
“Okay.” Her smile was a little nervous, but she turned her body toward him, giving him a nice view of her long neck and the ripe curves of her breasts beneath her thin blue T-shirt.
Progress, he thought, trying not to stare too obviously.
He must have failed, he realized a moment later when a look of amusement lightened her gray eyes and her nerves seemed to settle in a heartbeat. “I’ve already done a background check on you, so no easy questions from me,” she warned with a widening smile. “Let’s start with a hard one. Ever milked a cow?”
He laughed. “Yes, actually. On my granddaddy’s farm. He had a place west of the mountains, where he raised chickens and pigs and he had a milk cow and a couple of swayback mares he’d let us ride until we got too heavy for them.”
“You and your brother and sister?”
“Yeah. Josh, Julie and me.”
“All your names started with J?”
“Not one of my parents’ better decisions. My poor mom went through the whole list every time she was trying to call any one of us.”
Miranda laughed, the sound warm and inviting, drawing him closer despite his intention to keep his distance. “My dad just had me, but when he gets mad, he uses my full name.”
He leaned even closer. “Which is?”
“Miranda Crockett Duncan.”
“Crockett? As in Davy?”
“Remember the Alamo,” she said with a sheepish laugh. “My dad tells me it was a compromise. He wanted to name me after his mother, Geraldine, and my mother wanted to name me after her best friend in grammar school, Mercedes Gonzales.”
“Miranda Mercedes Duncan?” He couldn’t hold back a wince. “Yeah, I think Crockett was definitely the way to go.”
“You’d think. But there was this one kid in summer camp who found out my middle name and kept singing the Davy Crockett TV show theme whenever he saw me.”
“Summer camp where?”
“Down near San Antonio. Of course.”
“And you went to college at Texas Tech.”
“Wreck ’em, Tech!” she said with a big grin.
“So, have you ever actually left Texas?”
“Of course. I drove across the state line into Oklahoma once. Quickly.” She shot him a big grin. “Seriously, of course I’ve been other places. I went to Spain for a semester my junior year of college. I’ve seen Notre Dame in Paris and once talked my way onto a sculling crew practicing on the Thames.”
“What did a girl from Cold Creek, Texas, know about sculling?”
“Not a damn thing.” She laughed. “But the guys thought I was cute, so they nearly capsized the boat trying to teach me how it worked.”
He could picture the scene all too easily. There was something about Miranda Crockett Duncan that made a man want to do things he never realized he could. Or should.
He touched her cheek because it was there, softly curved and tempting, within his reach. Her smile faded and her gray eyes grew large and luminous as she gazed back at him in breathless anticipation.
He kissed her. Her response was swift and fierce, her hands threading through his hair and drawing him closer. Her lips parted, inviting him in, and before he knew quite how they got there, she was lying on her back beneath him, her hands sliding under his shirt until they touched his skin, her fingertips leaving a shivery trail of need the farther they traveled.
Suddenly, her fingers pressed against a tender place above his shoulder, and he couldn’t quite swallow the hiss of pain it evoked.
She went still, drawing her head back to look at him. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” he lied, dipping his head toward her again.
&nb
sp; But she wriggled out from beneath him, pushing him back into a sitting position. “That was a bullet-wound scar.”
“I told you about that.”
“You said they were hunting you, but I didn’t realize they actually shot you. I thought maybe you just got assaulted or something.” She reached for the collar of his shirt, tugging it aside until she found the corresponding entry wound scar. “How many other scars like this do you have?”
He nudged the waistband of his jeans down to show her where he’d taken a bullet just above his hip. “That wasn’t much more than a flesh wound.”
“Is that it?”
He let the jeans fall back into place and lifted the bottom of his shirt to bare his right side. The wound there was the worst of his scars because it had taken surgery to remove the bullet lodged a few inches away from his hepatic artery. It had nicked his liver, but the damage to that organ had been minimal and it had healed on its own, once the surgeon had removed the bullet from its dangerous hiding place.
“How much damage did it do?” she asked quietly, her eyes wide with dismay.
“Not as much as it could have.”
“What did you do that made the Blue Ridge Infantry put you on their most-wanted list?”
He frowned. The night wasn’t going the way he’d hoped at all. “I thought we weren’t going to talk shop.”
“I don’t consider this talking shop,” she said with a frown. “What did you do to cross them, exactly?”
“Remember I told you about that tough lady named Nicki who helped bring down the Virginia branch of the militia?”
Miranda nodded.
“Nicki was deep undercover. She had no contact with our boss, Alexander Quinn, except through me. I guess you could say I was sort of her handler.”
“And the BRI found out what you were doing?”
“Not exactly. What put me on their radar was my part in helping Nicki sneak their top man’s wife and kid out of their cabin in the woods.”
Miranda’s eyes narrowed. “Were they being held hostage?”
“Not exactly.” He settled back against the sofa cushions with a sigh. “Nicki had been trying to get close enough to find out the identity of the militia leader. People talked about him in hushed, almost reverent tones, but they never called him by name. The only thing she’d learned was that he had a medical condition that needed nursing care, and she made it her goal to be chosen as his medical caretaker.”
“What kind of condition?”
“Diabetes. The story was, he was having trouble stabilizing his blood sugar and he didn’t trust doctors or hospitals.”
“And Nicki was a nurse?”
“She had paramedic training.”
“So she managed to get them to trust her?”
“We thought they did. One day, they told her she was in and arranged for her to go meet the leader.” There were some fuzzy places in his memory of what had happened next, but one thing he’d never forgotten was the gutting fear that had come over him when he’d realized the Blue Ridge Infantry was on to Nicki’s scheme. “It turned out, Nicki had been working for the leader of the Virginia BRI the whole time she was in River’s End. He was her boss at the diner where she’d worked as a fry cook.”
“My God. And she never had a clue? What about the diabetes—if he was having so much trouble getting his blood sugar regulated, didn’t he show signs of it?”
“That’s the thing. It was never Trevor Colley who was sick. It was his little boy.”
Miranda lifted her hand to her mouth. “Juvenile diabetes?”
He nodded. “The kid was really sick, and Colley let his fear of doctors and hospitals put that kid in danger. They took Nicki hostage and made her try to help the little boy while they waited for Nicki’s backup to arrive so they could take them out.”
“Which is where you and your bullet wounds come in.”
“More or less. Nicki had gotten involved with someone else, someone in nearly as much trouble as she was, and he helped me get to her once the operation went crossways. Nicki convinced Colley’s wife that they needed to get the little boy to a real doctor. That if they didn’t do something soon, he’d die. Nicki’s friend, Dallas, helped her get the woman and the boy to safety.”
“While you were doing what, offering a diversion for Colley and his men?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“My God, you let them shoot at you so the others could get to safety?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. I’d had one job—keeping Nicki as safe as possible while she did her very dangerous job. I had to see it through.”
She just stared at him for a moment, her heart in her eyes. Then she reached out and caught his face between her long-fingered hands. “You crazy, amazing man.” Bending, she kissed him firmly, not resisting when he pulled her into his arms.
The kiss deepened, but only so far. He didn’t know if he was the one keeping things in check or if it was Miranda, but in the end, he didn’t suppose it mattered. They ended up holding each other quietly, the fire of desired tamped down beneath an odd sort of survivor’s communion.
“I was serious when I said you should take a hot bath and get a good night’s sleep,” he said a while later, long after the lingering light of day had disappeared into cool, blue night.
“But then I’d have to move,” she grumbled against his throat. “And I’m so comfortable.”
“I might be persuaded to give you a back rub once you got out of the bath.”
She leaned her head back and looked up at him. “You’re playing with my emotions now.”
As he opened his mouth to respond, her cell phone rang, the sound muted where her hip pressed against his side. She wriggled out of his grasp and pulled out the phone. “It’s a local number,” she murmured, pushing the button to answer. “Miranda Duncan.”
He saw her brow furrow as she listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. “I see,” she said finally. “Okay, I understand.” She hung up the phone, her expression still troubled.
“Who was that?” John asked when she didn’t say anything else.
“It was Rose McAllen.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “She told me to stop looking into her daughter’s death.”
“Why?” he asked.
She turned her head to look at him. “She didn’t say, but I could tell she was worried. Maybe even scared.”
“Do you think someone’s threatened her?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her chin with her fingertips before she turned to look at him. “It’s odd, don’t you think, that I make a call to the Bar W Ranch, wanting to talk to Jarrod Whitmore about Lindy McAllen’s death, and a couple of hours later, Rose calls and asks me to stop looking into her daughter’s case?”
“You think Whitmore threatened her?”
She frowned, as if giving the question real thought. “I don’t know. Honestly, it doesn’t sound like Cal Whitmore’s style.”
“He’s a wealthy, ruthless cattleman, and you don’t think threats seem like his style?”
“He’s a wealthy, successful cattleman,” she amended. “And most people around here like him. They don’t fear him.”
“Maybe because they’ve never had to cross him.”
“He tends to grease the skids with money, not threats.” She looked at him, still frowning. “Do you remember when we saw Rose and Cassie the other day at the hardware store? I told her then that we’d never stop looking for the person who killed Lindy. And she gave me the strangest look, as if she wanted to say something. But then she just turned away.”
“And you think it’s because she doesn’t want you to keep looking?”
“I think she already knows that Jarrod Whitmore was the one who did it. And I think
Cal Whitmore has paid her for her silence.”
“But how could she have known it was Jarrod? Did she witness it?”
“No,” Miranda answered, an odd look in her eyes.
“Then how?”
Miranda pushed to her feet, pacing toward the fireplace. The afternoon had been warm, so they hadn’t bothered with a fire, but now that night had fallen, there was a definite chill in the air, and John could see her looking with almost wistful longing at the cold hearth before she turned to face him, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Remember earlier today, when Angela Layton told us that after Jasper met with Delta, he decided to pay the money back to the charity?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t that seem like a strange thing for someone to do in response to a blackmailer’s demands?”
“It could have been the only way to make her go away.”
“Or maybe it’s what she wanted from him all along.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms as if fighting off a chill. “Maybe it’s what she demanded from Jarrod Whitmore, too.”
He stood up to face her, finally understanding what she was getting at. “You think Delta—”
“Wasn’t blackmailing people for money,” she elaborated. “I think she was trying to make them do the right thing.”
Chapter Fifteen
Miranda’s cell phone rang shortly after six the next morning. She grabbed it from the bedside table, rubbed her eyes and checked the display. It was the station. “Duncan,” she answered, her voice hoarse with sleep.
It was Sheriff Randall. “Waller and Mendoza are both in the hospital in Lubbock. They took their wives into town for dinner and got broadsided by a dump truck on the way home.”
She sat up quickly, her stomach knotting with anxiety. “How bad?”
“Broken bones, shaken up, but everybody’s going to recover.”
“Thank God.”
“But we’re shorthanded now.”
“No worries. I’ll be right in.” She hung up the phone, grabbed her robe and headed for the bathroom to shower.
By the time she finished dressing, she could smell bacon frying in the kitchen. She secured her hair in a ponytail and followed the aroma down the hall, where John stood at the stove, flipping strips of bacon. “You’re up early.”
