Covert Cowboy

by Harper Allen

“What’s her background?” Con’s question was abrupt, as was his nod toward the woman seated across the interview table from DeMarco in the glassed-off room.

  Colleen exhaled tightly. “Apart from being our new governor’s fiancée, she was FBI. She was one of their best and we’re lucky to have her. Don’t let those brown-eyed blond good looks fool you, Burke—Fiona’s a skilled interrogator.”

  “And she’s tired. How long has she been in there with him now? Four hours?” Con turned decisively from the window, his arm leaving Marilyn’s shoulders. “Take her out. Send someone fresh in.”

  A gleam of silver flashed between the fingers of his left hand, and then somehow the coin was in his right. Marilyn realized from his preoccupied frown that the sleight-of-hand had been entirely unconscious. If Colleen hadn’t spied the worn coin on the Royal Flush driveway this morning and returned it to Con, she thought wryly, she herself would have turned over every piece of gravel to find it. Restlessly passing it back and forth between his fingers had seemed to be the only way he’d been able to take the volatile edge off his tension during these past two days.

  Well, not the only way, she admitted to herself as he and Colleen, the latter with a quick smile of apology to her, walked a few feet away from the other groups of agents and herself to carry on a low-voiced discussion. Although she suspected that Colorado Confidential wasn’t restrained by the strictures of other law enforcement agencies, at Colleen’s insistence DeMarco was given several breaks from his interrogation during the day and all questioning ceased at eleven o’clock in the evening, not to be resumed again until early morning. Any break for DeMarco was a break for Con—and for herself, from worrying about the man she loved.

  Familiar heat touched her cheeks as the memories of their previous two nights of lovemaking replayed in her mind. Ensconced in the Royal Flush’s grand guest room, and with the glow of an antique oil lamp on a nearby dresser casting softly mysterious shadows on their massive four-poster bed, Con had taken his sweet time about showing her just what those skillful gambler’s hands of his could do.

  And even if she would never be able to shuffle a deck of cards as well as he could, Marilyn thought happily, she’d returned the favor, teasing him with her mouth and her fingertips until his eyes had been clouded with passion and his drawled entreaties had been edged with desperate need. When they’d finally set all teasing aside and come together, it had seemed to her that for a time they’d left the shadowy bedroom behind, and had soared through the crystalline Colorado night like two shooting stars blazing a sparkling trail across the sky.

  After they’d made love for the first time on their initial night at the Royal Flush, she’d fallen asleep in Con’s arms. Coming drowsily half-awake just before dawn she’d felt an unfamiliar weight on her left ring finger and known without looking that Con was also awake and watching her. She’d slanted her sleepy gaze at him and seen his smile flash white in the semidarkness.

  A heartbeat later her eyes had flown fully open. Even as she stretched her arm out toward the bedside table and the silk-shaded lamp sitting there, Con lazily reached across her and snapped it on.

  “I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket for about a week, cher’,” he’d said huskily. “There’s a catch, though. A no-good New Awlins gambler comes with it, if you’ll take him.”

  Well over four and a half carats, the pink diamond in its pink-gold and platinum setting seemed to glow like a rose-colored flame on her finger. Unable to speak for joy, she’d only been able to throw her arms around Con and drench his bare shoulder with tears of happiness.

  “If you want us to be married in Boston or Denver, that’s okay with me,” he’d said into her hair. “But if you’d like, I know Tante Jasmine and Maman would adore shopping for a wedding dress with you.”

  “A New Orleans wedding,” she’d said promptly, lifting her head from his shoulder. “Oh, Con, I want to be married in your city. That’s where we’re going to make our home together, so it seems only right. The Langworthys and the Van Burens will just have to fly down for the ceremony. But it better be soon or I’ll have to settle for walking down the aisle in a white pup tent.”

  His palm had gently stroked her stomach, and he’d smiled. “F’true, you’re gettin’ pretty big there, mama,” he’d murmured. “Can you guess how it makes me feel, knowing I gave you that child growing inside you?”

  She’d looked up through her lashes at him. “Children, Con,” she’d said with quiet happiness. “The doctor who checked me over when I was taken from the hotel to the hospital this afternoon was mainly concerned that I’d suffered no ill effects from Halid’s injection. But when he’d given me a clean bill of health in that regard he advised I take Dr. Roblyn up on her suggestion of an ultrasound as soon as possible. He seemed to think I might be carrying twins.”

  “A whole houseful of children, and a mama to go with them.” His tone had been uneven. In the subdued lamplight she’d seen pure joy light up those emerald eyes, before they’d just as suddenly darkened. “When I think of how close that bastard came to harming you—”

  He hadn’t finished his sentence. She’d known from the tense set of his jaw that he was trying to bring himself under control.

  “But it was a ploy, Con,” she’d ventured. “Evil as the man is, he had no intention of killing me—not with an injection of distilled water.”

  He’d flicked an uncomprehending glance at her. “Of course he meant to kill you, cher’,” he’d ground out. “Not in that hotel room, no. But as a pregnant woman, your chances of surviving that virus once it entered your body through Denver’s water supply would have been zero, and DeMarco knew that.”

  A chill had run through her at his words, and she’d known instinctively that he was right. When Con had taken her tightly in his arms and they’d made love for the second time that first night, there’d been a quality of fierce desperation in their coupling, on her part as well as his.

  It had been the same last night, she remembered now. Con had held her as if he was afraid to let her go, had kissed her as if she was in danger of being snatched from him, and when he’d cupped his palms gently on the curve of her belly, for just a second she’d seen a flash of bleak fear shadow the joy in his eyes.

  With an effort she attempted to banish the vague uneasiness shadowing her mood, and focused her gaze on the slim, pant-suited blonde questioning DeMarco. Her future sister-in-law, a woman she hadn’t exactly given a warm welcome to the family. Marilyn planned to rectify that as soon as this ordeal ended.

  Colleen had mentioned that the process was being videotaped, but Marilyn was suddenly certain that the mobster’s skillfully evasive answers would yield no inadvertent clues even if those seeking them replayed his performance a hundred times. In front of her was a small speaker with a volume control, and although Con had lowered it to inaudibility, preferring to concentrate on DeMarco’s facial expressions and body language rather than his spoken words, on impulse she turned the volume up.

  “…greatly in your favor if you cooperated with us in finding little Sky,” Fiona was saying evenly. “You see that, don’t you, Lio? We’re of the belief that abducting a baby wasn’t any part of your original plan anyway.”

  “What original plan?” DeMarco’s cold eyes widened. “As I’ve already told you, Agent Clark, I’m a simple businessman. It’s ludicrous to think I could be connected in any way with the kidnapping of a child or any other crime. If you or your fellow agents have any proof to the contrary, I’d be interested in knowing what it is.”

  “We have the statement of the woman your people were holding in that hotel room two days ago. She’ll testify that you gave the order for Dr. Halid to inject her with what you implied was a deadly virus—the virus that you instead had arranged to be released into the city’s water supply,” the blonde riposted.

  Not by the flicker of a muscle or a change in her tone was Fiona showing the frustration she must be feeling, Marilyn noted. But Con was right. Under her e
yes were slight smudges of exhaustion, whereas DeMarco looked as if he were merely engaging in an unimportant conversation. His voice even held a hint of good-natured disbelief as he answered her.

  “I wouldn’t count too heavily on any possible future testimony that may never come to pass, Agent. Don’t many witnesses recant their stories when they get on the stand, if indeed they’re still available to give evidence when the time comes? And don’t some pregnancies prove risky for both mother and child, especially when there’s the added stress involved of testifying at trial?”

  Even as Marilyn swayed in shock against the glass barrier, Con was beside her, his strong arms going immediately around her. She felt a tremor of violent emotion run through him, and knew he’d both heard DeMarco’s last words and had understood them for what they were.

  “He just threatened the life of a witness, Wellesley,” he said harshly. “He just threatened the life of the woman I love, dammit! Tell me again how you’re going to justify releasing that bastard!”

  “…a threat, Lio?” From the speaker came Fiona’s voice, and this time Marilyn thought she heard a touch of shakiness in her tone.

  “Please.” DeMarco sounded aggrieved. “I asked you two questions about the trial process. And although I’ve willingly cooperated with the authorities up until now, even to the point of waiving my rights to have an attorney present during all this, I can’t really afford to take any more time away from my businesses. Especially since I’m currently in the middle of negotiations for opening a New Orleans branch of my importing firm,” he added carelessly.

  “New Orleans?” At Helio’s reference to the city, a white-faced Colleen swiftly turned the volume control off, but Marilyn barely noticed. “New Orleans, Con? He knows I’m listening, doesn’t he? He’s telling me I can’t escape him!”

  “He’s said nothing we can use against him to hold him any longer, Burke.” Colleen ran a trembling hand through her hair, her gaze anguished. “Colorado Confidential was given a pretty wide latitude in this interrogation by the powers that be, but we’ve reached the end of the line. We have to release him. We don’t have a choice.”

  “He’s going to try to kill my wife and unborn children. And you’re telling me he gets to walk?” Con’s voice was thick. “Send me in again, Wellesley. Give me one more chance to get something out of him.”

  “You were the first interrogator, dammit.” Colleen shook her head. “You got less from him than anyone, since he refused to speak a word until we replaced you. This isn’t my decision. We were given forty-eight hours to hold him, and DeMarco’s well aware of that. Our time’s—”

  “He wants Burke to be the one who releases him.”

  Now that she was out of the interrogation room, the ordeal she’d just endured showed in every fatigued line of Fiona Clark’s delicate figure. She passed a hand across her eyes. “It’s part of his game-playing, I think. He wants to rub it in that we lost. I’m sorry, Colleen. I just couldn’t crack the bastard.”

  “No one could, Fi.” Colleen’s lips thinned. “But I’m not about to allow him to gloat over one of my people. I’ll take the release forms in and countersign them, Burke. Why don’t you and Marilyn go upstairs and—”

  “He was my collar. He’s right, by the rules I should be the one who tells him he’s free to go,” Con said stonily. “If I send you in my place he’ll know he got to me.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a wise—”

  “Con knows DeMarco. If he says that monster will see his absence as a sign of weakness, then I believe him,” Marilyn rasped. “And we can’t let DeMarco think that, especially after the threats he’s made against me. Let Con go in, Colleen. It—it’s important that he does.”

  The brunette hesitated. Behind Colleen Con’s eyes darkened as they met Marilyn’s. For a long moment she held the gaze of the man she loved, her own steady and unwavering, and then she flicked her glance back to Colleen.

  “Let Con go in,” she said quietly. “It has to be this way.”

  “Fine.” Wellesley exhaled tensely. “He’s your collar like you say, so I can’t stop you if you insist. But if it looks like you’re about to lose it in there, Burke, I’m pulling you out and finishing up the paperwork myself. There’s a hell of a lot of it,” she muttered, thrusting a sheaf of forms at him.

  He didn’t immediately take them. “You’re sure you’re all right with this, heart?” His question was low. Marilyn’s voice was just as low as she answered him.

  “I’m sure. But be careful, Con. Gators—” She bit her lip. “Gators bite.”

  “I’m a Louisiana boy, cher’. I know they do,” he said softly, pulling her quickly to him and pressing a kiss to her mouth.

  The next moment he had taken the forms from Colleen, and was pushing open the door to the interrogation room.

  “I wish this had turned out differently.” Beside her, Colleen shook her head. “We all know Helio was making a threat, but he couched it carefully enough that we never could prove it. What we need to do now is to make sure he doesn’t get a chance to carry out his threats. I intend to talk to Con about the two of you entering the Witness Protection Plan, at least until we get enough on DeMarco to put him safely behind bars.”

  “That’s how Con and Roland Charpentier first ran across DeMarco,” Marilyn said distantly, her gaze fixed on the two men in the room. DeMarco was reading over the papers Con had pushed across the table to him. “Helio’s organization found and eliminated a mob accountant who was in the witness program.”

  “I didn’t realize that.” Colleen frowned. “Wasn’t Charpentier the friend of Con’s that DeMarco killed? Do you know the details of how that happened?”

  “…the thing was rigged to release a vapor the second time it was used…

  “No.” DeMarco had finished reading the forms, Marilyn saw. He nodded briskly, and frowned at the plastic ballpoint Con tossed his way. “Con never spoke of it to me,” she added softly.

  “We’ll work out something.” Colleen was watching too, now. “You’ve got yourself a good man, Marilyn. I suppose he told you he’s been asked to head up the Confidential operation in New Orleans sometime in the future?”

  From the inner pocket of his suit jacket DeMarco produced an expensive-looking pen. He clicked the small silver release at the top of it, signed his name with a flourish on the last page of the document, and passed it and the pen across to Con, clicking the release closed as he did.

  “Yes.” Marilyn’s hand slid over the curve of her stomach. She stared with burning eyes at the scene. “Yes, he told me. He thinks he’ll accept.”

  His gaze cold and dead, Helio seemed to be holding his breath as Con clicked the borrowed pen’s release, signed his own name, and then hesitated. Out of the corner of her eye Marilyn saw Colleen frown at the delay and turn the speaker’s volume control up to hear what was being said.

  Con initialled something on a previous page. He returned both the document and the pen to Helio.

  “…not actually arrested, only held for questioning. Just counter-initial that change and we’re done, DeMarco.”

  With an oddly tense impatience, swiftly the mobster took back the papers, snapped the pen’s release one final time, scrawled his initials. He sat back and folded his arms, his hooded gaze on the man across the table from him. Con stood. Without another word he began walking toward the door.

  “That must have galled Burke, having to let Helio go.” Ryan Benton, an agent who’d questioned DeMarco earlier in the day, grimaced. “I hated having to breathe the same air as that bastard while I was in there with him.”

  …a vapor that brings death within ninety seconds of being inhaled…

  “Looks like Burke feels the same way.” Shawn Jameson joined them. Marilyn vaguely remembered being introduced to him the night she’d arrived at the Royal Flush. “Or maybe that’s what they call a poker face,” he added wryly. “I hear he’s a gambler.”

  “I knew he was a gambler when I fell in love wi
th him,” Marilyn said through numb lips. “I—”

  Con came through the door, his expression unreadable. In the interrogation room behind him Helio DeMarco suddenly clutched at his chest.

  “What the—” Colleen sounded confused. Her confusion turned to urgency. “The man’s having a heart attack, for God’s sake. Shawn, Ryan—give me a hand with him.”

  The two agents at her heels, she crashed into the interrogation room. Marilyn saw Benton loosen DeMarco’s jacket as the other two got the mobster to the floor, saw Jameson grimly place his palms on Helio’s chest and start CPR. She turned away from the window and met Con’s gaze.

  “He intended to kill you the same way he killed Roland, didn’t he?

  He nodded tightly. “The pen I used—”

  “The pen you used was Roland’s,” she finished for him. “But since the hand is faster than the eye you switched it back again when you asked him to initial the change. He was the one who used his own pen the second time…and he was the one who inhaled the vapor.”

  “It wasn’t revenge, cher’,” Con said hoarsely. “You taught me to leave that part of myself in the past. But I knew that while he was in the world you and our babies would never be safe, so I—”

  It was over, Marilyn thought. The horror that had been Helio DeMarco was finally gone. And she and Con and their children had a future she wanted to begin right now.

  She put her fingers lightly on his lips. “I love you, Con. When’s the next flight out of Denver to New Orleans?”

  Slowly the tenseness in him faded. A corner of his mouth quirked up and he kissed the tips of her fingers. “Tonight too soon, heart?” he whispered, bending to her.

  “Tonight sounds just fine,” she breathed happily as Con’s mouth came down on hers. “I can’t wait to get home to New Awlins, cher’.”

  Epilogue

  “F’true, Cap—a boy and a girl. My little dawlin’, she just sailed through the whole thing like a pretty mama Persian cat giving birth to one kitten after another.”