The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “We’re aware of that, yes.”

  She entwined her fingers together tightly. “I don’t have what they want. How can I give them something I don’t have?”

  “We’re working on coming up with an acceptable substitute for the real thing.”

  “Don’t you think they’ll be expecting some kind of trick? They’re not just going to hand him over without verifying the authenticity of whatever I give them.”

  “No. Probably not.”

  “Meantime, my son could be hurt.”

  “We’ll do everything we possibly can to make sure Nicky is safe. I swear it, Doc.”

  She whirled on Colt, and couldn’t prevent some of the bitter acid of betrayal from leaking into her voice. “And I’m supposed to believe you now—trust you, dammit—when every single word you have said to me since I met you has been a lie?”

  “Who else can you trust?”

  She wanted to scream and rail at him, to lash out, if only to ease some of this pain. But she couldn’t argue the truth of these words, at least. She had no one left to trust.

  Later, after Nicky was back in her arms, she would have time to grieve for the loss of all the silly, foolish dreams she had been spinning about this man, dreams she hadn’t even dared admit to herself.

  Later she would have time for anger and regret. Now she had to concentrate on her son, on doing everything she could to see him safe once more.

  “We’re just trying to come up with a plan.” Colt slid along the bench to make room for her, and after a brief hesitation she forced herself to join the men at the table, knowing she had no choice.

  She sat down, careful to keep as much space as possible between them.

  “I have one question before we go any further. Why were you two there that night? At Michael’s office and then later at Rosie’s house?”

  Beckstead and Dunbar exchanged glances, then the older man spoke “Your husband had been under surveillance for several weeks before his death. We’d been electronically monitoring his office—”

  “Bugging it?”

  He nodded. “We knew Santori and Franky Kostas planned to pay him a visit and that DeMarranville wanted them to put a scare into him. We were all set to make our move after their meeting, hoping he would be ready to cooperate with us and lead us to someone bigger.”

  “DeMarranville. The man who has my son.”

  He nodded again.

  “Why? What has he done?”

  “What hasn’t he done?” The antipathy in Colt’s voice took her by surprise. “Damian has his fingers in just about every illegal or crooked scheme in the Bay area. Drugs. Prostitution. You name it. Whatever will earn him a buck off other people’s misery.”

  Damian. He had called DeMarranville by his first name. Suddenly she realized what had been niggling at her the night before, after her phone call from DeMarranville. He had mentioned Colt in that slithery voice, had said for her not to bring McKendrick when she made the drop.

  Subconsciously she must have noted how odd it was that Damian would know the name of the rough cowboy who had befriended her and her son, but she had been too preoccupied with the idea of Nicky in his hands to register anything else.

  “You know each other,” she said now.

  A muscle twitched along his jawline. “We were partners once. DeMarranville used to be on the job. He was a renegade agent who decided to switch sides.”

  “This is personal, then.”

  “For all of us,” Beckstead said. “Damian was my protégé.”

  “That means he knows as much about FBI tactics as the rest of you do,” she said.

  Colt nodded. “He was a good agent, which is exactly how he’s managed to cover his tracks for the past ten years. By thinking like the FBI.”

  Maggie folded her hands together on the table. “What would you do if this were a normal kidnapping?”

  She heard her own words and fought back a sob. “Listen to me. ‘A normal kidnapping,’ like there is any such thing. What would you do if your suspect wasn’t a former FBI agent?”

  “Probably have an agent dress up like you and make the drop surrounded by other undercover operatives, who would jump in and arrest him,” Special Agent in Charge Beckstead said.

  “That’s what he’ll be expecting, then.”

  “Probably,” Beckstead answered.

  She clenched her fingers together so tightly her knuckles turned white. “So we do what he’s not expecting. I’ll make the drop, just like DeMarranville insisted.”

  “No way,” Colt argued. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “He has my son,” she said vehemently. “I don’t care how dangerous it is. Now let’s get on with making a plan.”

  Chapter 16

  What followed was the longest day of her life. Every minute seemed like hours; the hours like weeks.

  She was going crazy from the waiting and the worrying. Finally, in an effort to keep her hands busy at least—if not her mind—she reported to the small cinder block medic office underneath the VIP bleachers and spent a few hours wrapping tender joints for the opening night of the rodeo.

  She was winding tape around the bad knee of a hotshot young bull rider from Jackpot, Nevada—and answering in short, distracted monosyllables to his halfhearted attempt at flirting with her—when a knock sounded at the door.

  “Yes?” she called, but didn’t look up when it opened until the bull rider spoke.

  “Hey, McKendrick,” her patient said with a nod.

  “Rusty.” Colt greeted him. “How’s the knee?”

  “Better. The doc here does one helluva job. If it weren’t for her, I would have been sidelined after I got knocked on my butt in Colorado a few weeks ago.”

  “That’s what they pay me for. Patch ’em up so they can get knocked on their butts all over again the next night.” Maggie yanked the tape hard enough to earn a wince from Rusty Larsen.

  “Hey, watch it,” he protested.

  “Sorry.” She eased up, ashamed that she would take out her storm of emotions on an innocent patient. If she couldn’t control herself better than that, she ought to just go back to her trailer and leave someone else to take care of the cowboys.

  Colt cleared his throat. “Are you two about done in here?”

  “Why?” She didn’t bother to keep the icy scorn from her voice.

  “I would like to have a word with you.”

  She spared him a quick look, registering his discomfort in the hard set of his mouth and the Stetson he shifted between his fingers like it was a discus he was ready to hurl, then turned her attention back to Rusty’s bad knee. “I don’t think I want to talk to you yet.”

  “Please. Just for a moment.”

  “Come on, Doc. Talk to the poor guy,” Rusty urged, with an enthusiastic grin.

  Cowboys always stuck together. It was one of the unwritten rules of the circuit. They could be beating each other to a bloody pulp in a bar fight one minute, but if an outsider stepped in, mortal enemies would join forces against him.

  And for all their bluff, cowboys could also be the most romantic souls on earth. She sighed and secured the tape, then straightened. “There you go, Rusty. Be careful tonight and try to put your weight on the other knee when you fall.”

  “When I fall. Right.” He snorted. “When I jump off after my bee-yoo-ti-ful eight-second ride, you mean.”

  “Either way.” She returned the tape to the small chest of supplies, careful not to risk another look at Colt.

  She’d had all day to think about how he had deceived her. The magnitude of it was only now beginning to hit home. Every word he had said—every gesture, every touch—had been carefully calculated to earn her trust. Nothing had been genuine. She had been an assignment to him and nothing more.

  It made her cringe to know how foolish she had been, and how hard he must have been laughing at her willingness to open her life and her heart to him.

  “Thanks, Doc,” Rusty said after he had yanked on his jeans a
nd his boots. “’Preciate it.”

  “You’re welcome. Good luck tonight.” Her smile was forced, her words hollow, but the cowboy didn’t seem to mind. He grinned a salute in return and bounded out the door, leaving an awkward silence behind him.

  Colt cleared his throat again. It sounded unnaturally loud in the small cinder block enclosure. “I wanted a chance to talk to you before tonight,” he said. “To try to clear the air a little.”

  She remained silent. Nothing he could possibly say would atone for such a betrayal.

  “I never wanted to lie to you, Doc.”

  She didn’t want to hear apologies or explanations She wanted to clutch her anger and shame to her chest like a shield against him. “And yet you did.” Her movements were jerky and abrupt as she finished clearing off the exam table for the next patient. “And so well, too. I can certainly see why you’re a professional.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “In my experience people only say they have no choice when they don’t like the alternatives.”

  “In this case there were no alternatives. My assignment was to determine how deeply you were involved in Prescott’s dealings. By the time I knew you well enough to figure out you were innocent, it was too late. I couldn’t tell you the truth without losing whatever trust you had in me. I thought it was for the best to keep you safe.”

  “Isn’t that convenient for you? Convince yourself you were doing it all for my good and then you don’t have to be bothered by a stupid little thing like scruples.”

  “I wanted to tell you a hundred times.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Doc—”

  She didn’t want to hear any more. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears or, better yet, walk away from him. And yet some masochistic force compelled her on.

  “Was anything you told me the truth?” she asked. “Did I really have a flat tire that night?”

  He shook his head. “Not until I took a screwdriver to it. I’m sorry, Maggie.”

  She felt sick again at her complete gullibility, then stared at him, struck by a sudden thought. “What about the Broken Spur? Did you really lose it to Joe Redhawk?”

  Colt met her accusing gaze with an impassive expression. “No. It’s mine. Joe is my foreman.”

  That explained all the currents between them, the strange, amused looks the silent Shoshone wore most of the time while she had been there.

  A memory of the bittersweet yearning she had witnessed in Colt surfaced and she frowned. Had even that been a lie? No, she couldn’t believe it. The emotion had been too raw, too painful to be feigned.

  “Why did you leave it? The ranch, I mean. You obviously love it there. You couldn’t have been making that up. Is all this FBI business really worth leaving the home you love?”

  He shifted against the wall. How could he possibly explain about the guilt and the shame that had driven him after his father’s death. “No,” he said gruffly. “It’s not worth it.”

  She was quiet for a long time, hands folded together in her lap. When she spoke, her voice sounded small and defeated. “And what about us? About making love? How did that fit into your lies?”

  Her words sliced into him, sharp and brutal. He couldn’t blame her for being suspicious. It was no less than he deserved, but it still wounded him. “That was truth, Doc. I swear it.”

  Her gaze met his and memory flickered for just a moment. But he felt like he was trying to start a fire with wood too wet to burn: the memory died before it could even flare to life.

  She looked down at her intertwined fingers. “I wish I could believe you,” she murmured.

  If you believe nothing else, believe that, he wanted to say, but before he had a chance, the door to the medic office swung open.

  Her stepmother, in a glittery scarlet shirt and skintight black jeans, poked her head into the doorway. “Maggie, we need you out m the chutes. One of the wranglers tangled with Corkscrew. Didn’t get gored but he was trampled pretty good and took a hard knock to the head. He’s still out cold. Paramedics are on their way, but I figured you could get there faster.”

  After just an instant’s hesitation, she grabbed that old leather medical bag never far from her side and rushed out the door, without a backward glance at Colt.

  He let out a breath when the door slammed shut behind her. If he was ever going to convince her to forgive him, he was obviously in for a long, hard haul.

  And what purpose would it serve to even try, except maybe to make him feel better about what he had done? Even if she did eventually come to understand his motives for living a lie the last few weeks, it couldn’t change who he was and what he did.

  He was an FBI agent, who would always be waiting for the next assignment. He went undercover, sometimes for months at a time, and when he resurfaced, he was usually so strung out and edgy it took him weeks to decompress.

  He couldn’t ask her to live with that, even if she would be willing to eventually forget his deception. She would never be happy as the wife of an FBI agent, especially not when she had firsthand knowledge of the kind of violence he faced every day.

  She’d be happy living at the Broken Spur.

  The thought flickered through his mind, seductive and appealing, and he thought again of those images he’d had the other night when he had come home and found her waiting for him. Of roundups and fishing trips and making love.

  Somehow he knew she would love living on the ranch and so would Nicholas. And God knows, the people of rural Montana were always desperate for doctors. She would have plenty of work to keep her busy, if she wanted to hang out a shingle in Ennis and open a practice.

  No, that kind of thinking was crazy. He jerked his mind away from the thought. It was crazy and it wouldn’t get him anywhere

  Even though it was hard to remember that, when he was looking into those big dark eyes, his role in her life began and ended with this job and that’s the way it had to be.

  The injured wrangler had already regained consciousness when Maggie arrived at the chutes. Bag held high over her head, she shoved her way through the crowd of people gathered around the cowboy, who was now trying to sit up and was loudly and succinctly swearing a blue streak about Corkscrew and his progenitors.

  She had to agree with his sentiments. The brindle bull was one nasty beast. Too bad the ill-tempered ones were always the biggest crowd pleasers.

  She set her bag down next to the wrangler and knelt at his side. “I’m Dr. Rawlings. What’s your name?”

  “Marty,” he said through gritted teeth. “Marty O’Sullivan.”

  “Well, Marty, don’t try to get up until I can figure out how badly you’re hurt.”

  The wrangler—just a kid really, with bright red hair and a wild riot of freckles he probably hated—glared at her. “I can tell you exactly how bad I’m hurt, Doc. Damn crazy bull about killed me. Somebody oughta shoot that sumbitch.”

  The crowd gathered around seemed to breathe an audible sigh of relief. Maggie did, too. If the wrangler was coherent enough to curse Corkscrew so furiously, he would probably survive.

  “It’s your hair,” one of the older cowboys said with a deep, whisky-gruff laugh. “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your hat on around him?”

  The other men laughed, but Maggie barely paid attention to the ribbing as she reached into her bag for her stethoscope. The scope seemed stuck on something. She gave a quick look inside and noticed it had snagged on the brown satin lining. As she tried to twist the earpiece free, she saw that the seam of her bag had begun to fray and the lining had pulled away slightly from the leather.

  She caught only a glimpse of something strange and out of place inside the lining. A bandage probably. She concentrated on it only long enough to make a mental note to herself to check it out later, then pulled the stethoscope out and set to work examining the cowboy’s injuries.

  A few minutes later she finished examining him. “Everything looks fine, Marty. You might h
ave a slight concussion and a few bruised ribs so they’ll probably keep you overnight at the hospital for observation, but it looks like you’ll live to bullfight another day.”

  She summoned a small smile for him—the best she could do today—just as the paramedics arrived.

  After briefing the EMTs on her cursory exam, she left them to transport the wrangler to the local hospital. When she returned to the medic room, Peg was waiting for her, concern in her dark-fringed eyes.

  “How you holdin’ up, sugar?”

  Maggie had been staying in control all day by sheer force of will. Now, at the soft worry in her stepmother’s voice, tears formed behind her eyes. She missed her son so acutely it was like a physical ache. Please, God, let him be safe, she prayed again.

  Ruthlessly she forced the tears back. She had to be strong, for Nicky’s sake. “I’ve had better days,” she replied.

  “I know.” Peg pulled her into her arms for a quick, tight hug. “Only a few more hours and then that little boy will be back with us, safe and sound. You’ll see. Colt will get him back for us.”

  For a few moments Maggie surrendered to the comfort of Peg’s maternal embrace and then, when she felt the tears threaten again, she pulled away. “Colt has done enough, don’t you think?”

  Peg’s frown wrinkled the fine network of lines the years and elements had carved on her face. “You’re bein’ pretty hard on that good-lookin’ hunk of cowboy of yours, aren’t you?”

  “He’s an FBI agent, not a cowboy.”

  “He’s a man,” Peg corrected. “A man who’s hurtin’, too.”

  “It wasn’t his son who was kidnapped.”

  “No, but I have a feelin’ he loves that boy as much as he loves the boy’s mama.”

  She opened her mouth to correct her stepmother, then shut it again. She didn’t have the energy to argue with Peg when she was in this kind of mood. Maggie knew, though, that Colt didn’t love her.

  He might want her physically—although she still didn’t know for sure whether that just had been part of his deception—but he didn’t love her. She had simply been a job to him, just another assignment. As soon as this was over, Colt McKendrick would move on to the next assignment without a backward look.