Iron Cowboy

by Diana Palmer

  “Why were they after you?” he asked.

  “They were going to take me for ransom.”

  “Oh. Who do you know with that kind of money?” Coltrain teased.

  “They followed Jared Cameron’s lawyer into the bookstore,” she murmured, feeling drowsy now that the excitement was all over. “I guess they thought I had a connection to him that they could exploit. There’s an article about him in the new financial magazine. His photo’s on the cover. He’s down here trying to avoid being kidnapped by South American terrorists who made a try for his oil pipeline.”

  “The excitement of living in Jacobsville, Texas,” he replied as he stitched her up. “When I was a kid, this place was like the end of the world. Never any excitement.”

  “Maybe he’ll go away and we’ll get back to normal.”

  He only mumbled.

  Sara was sitting up on the examination table when Cash Grier walked in.

  “Harley said three men attacked you in the bookstore,” he said without preamble. He looked solemn. “Three prisoners escaped from the Victoria jail yesterday about noon. They were Arabic, according to the police chief up there. At least, they spoke what sounded to him like Arabic.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “They were in a ratty old van. They followed Jared Cameron’s lawyer to the bookstore in one of the ranch trucks. They thought I was important to Mr. Cameron. What a joke!”

  He didn’t laugh. “Did they say anything to you?”

  “Only that they thought I had a connection to him. They must be really desperate for a hostage.”

  “Did one of them stab you?” he asked.

  She grimaced. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  “Try me.”

  “I stabbed myself. I made them think I was committing suicide. They hesitated when I fell on the floor and pretended to be dead. Then Harley showed up and they cut their losses and ran for it. Good thing Harley was wearing his .45 on his hip today!” she added. “He always does when he rides fence lines.”

  Cash’s dark eyebrows arched and he smiled gently. “Well, aren’t you the mistress of improvisation?” he said with respect.

  She grinned. “It seemed the only chance I had. There were three of them. You always said there was no shame in running if you were up against impossible odds.”

  “Yes, I did. You spooked them, I gather.”

  “Want to hire me?” she asked saucily. “You can teach me how to shoot a gun and next time I won’t have to resort to stabbing myself. I can shoot them instead.”

  “We’ve put out a BOLO on the van,” Cash assured her.

  “It will stick out,” she said. “It really is ratty.”

  Harley stuck his head in the door. “How are you?”

  She smiled. “Dr. Coltrain sewed me back up. I’m fine.”

  “You couldn’t have screamed?” he asked.

  “Who would have heard me?” she retorted. “We’re the only business left in the strip mall.”

  “She has a point,” Cash told the younger man.

  Just then, his radio beeped. He talked into the radio mike on his shoulder. “Grier.”

  “We got them,” Assistant Chief Judd Dunn told him. “We’re bringing them in now.”

  “On my way,” Cash replied. “Clear.”

  He turned to Sara, grinning. “And that’s a nice day’s work. Stop stabbing yourself,” he added firmly. “I’m sure there’s a law against attempted suicide.”

  “Never again. I promise,” she assured him.

  He winked and left. Harley moved into the cubicle and held Sara’s hand.

  “What a relief to find you in one piece,” he said gently.

  Sara smiled at him. He wasn’t the only person who was relieved.

  There was a terrible commotion in the corridor. Seconds later, Tony the Dancer walked into the cubicle.

  Nine

  Tony glanced at Harley, who was holding Sara’s hand in his.

  “I heard those three assassins went after you,” Tony told her, worried. “They followed Max, didn’t they?”

  “I think they did,” she admitted. “But how did they know her?”

  “Our Web site mentions all the people who work for the corporation,” he replied. “I’m sure the would-be kidnappers are computer literate. Most terrorists are these days. You okay?”

  She smiled at him. She nodded.

  “What did they do to you?” he asked, noting the dried blood on her blouse.

  “They didn’t do anything. I stabbed myself where I had the appendectomy and played dead on the floor. They didn’t want a dying hostage, I figured. Then Harley showed up with his .45 and spooked them while they were deciding what to do about me. They ran. Chief Grier said his men just stopped them and they’re under arrest.”

  Tony let out a breath. He glanced at Harley and smiled. “You do look like a gunslinger,” he said.

  Harley chuckled. “I never get any practice on living targets,” he said. “Pity they ran.”

  “Wasn’t it just?” Sara murmured. She grimaced.

  Copper Coltrain came back into the cubicle, raising his eyebrows at the newcomer.

  “This is Tony Danzetta,” Sara introduced him. “He works for Mr. Cameron.”

  Coltrain nodded. So did Tony.

  Harley checked his watch. “Damn! Sara, I was on my way to pick up some butane and fencing for Mr. Parks when I stopped by the bookstore for a minute to see you. I’ve got to go.”

  “Could you call Dee and tell her I’ll be there as soon as Dr. Coltrain releases me,” she began.

  “In a pig’s eye you will,” Coltrain snapped, his red hair seemed to flare up. “You’ll go home and stay in bed for two days. You’ll start an antibiotic as well, to protect against that wound getting infected.” He hesitated. “You don’t need to be on your own.”

  “Chief Grier and his men have the would-be kidnappers in custody,” she repeated.

  “Sara, that isn’t what I mean,” he replied.

  “She won’t be alone,” Tony said quietly. “I’ll take her home and get the prescription filled. Then I’ll take care of her until she’s well.”

  “But, your boss,” Sara began.

  “I’m quitting today,” he returned, avoiding her eyes. “If they’ve got the kidnappers, he won’t need me. He doesn’t need protection anymore. If he does, he can hire somebody else. He’s rich enough.”

  Sara sensed a confrontation, and she was sure she didn’t want to know why Tony had quit. She was almost certain it had something to do with her.

  She flushed scarlet as she considered what Tony might have found out from Max.

  Coltrain saw the flush and Tony’s tight lips and drew a conclusion. “Mr. Danzetta, I need to take one more look at the incision. Will you wait outside, please? You, too, Harley.”

  “I’m just going. Get better, Sara,” Harley said softly, smiling.

  “I’ll do my best. Thanks for what you did.”

  “It wasn’t much. See you.”

  “I’ll be right outside,” Tony added, following Harley out into the hall.

  Coltrain closed the door of the cubicle. His eyes were quiet and intense. “You don’t have to say it. I read faces very well. What do you want to do?”

  She started to deny it. She knew better. Coltrain was a force of nature. “I can’t kill an ant,” she said.

  He scowled. “Who asked you to?”

  She pulled the envelope with the check out of her pocket and handed it to him, nodding when he started to open it.

  Tony the Dancer heard the curses outside in the hall. He opened the door and went back in, daring the doctor to throw him out.

  “What?” he asked.

  Coltrain, red in the face with bad temper, handed him the envelope.

  He cursed as darkly as the doctor had. “A firefight in Africa that damned near killed her, and now this,” he muttered.

  Sara and the doctor gaped at him.

  He cleared his throat. He looked at Sara
. “You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked.

  She shook her head, feeling again the sadness that came with remembering her past.

  Tony moved a step closer and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I was with a group of American mercs who were fighting to restore the rightful government in the province where your parents were missionaries,” he said quietly. “We’d just driven into town, chasing after a rebel group that killed two of our men. We saw the explosion. And we found you and your parents.”

  She stared at him, trying to reconcile her memories. “Yes. Some mercenaries buried my…my father,” she said huskily. “And one of them carried me to a truck and got me and my mother to safety, to the mission headquarters.”

  “That was me, Sara,” Tony replied quietly.

  She smiled sadly. She hadn’t recognized him. But then, she couldn’t remember much of that long-ago life. “I lost some of my long-term memory. I can’t quite match colors, and I forget names…”

  “You’re smart, though,” Tony replied. “It doesn’t show. Honest.”

  Coltrain drew in a long breath. “It’s a small world, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Tony nodded. “Cy Parks was in another group of mercs, working with us. He walked right into the gunfire of a machine nest and took it out. One of the men who died had set the explosion in the mission that killed Sara’s father and injured her.”

  Sara was spellbound. “I never knew,” she said softly.

  “You never needed to,” Tony told her. He looked at Coltrain. “When can you tell if she’s pregnant?”

  Sara gasped.

  Coltrain took it as a matter of course. “In a couple of weeks,” he replied. “Maybe three. I could do a blood test now, but we might get a false positive. You need to shoot your damned boss,” he added without missing a beat.

  “I’m tempted,” Tony said curtly. “But it’s too late now. What’s done is done. I’ll take care of her, no matter what.”

  Sara fought tears and lost.

  Tony pulled her face to his shoulder and held it there while she cried. “Now, now,” he said gently. “It’s all over. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Coltrain clapped Tony on the shoulder. “I’ll write the prescriptions for an antibiotic and some pain medication. You can make sure she takes it properly.”

  “You bet I will,” Tony replied.

  Sara felt like royalty. Tony was a wonder. He cleaned the place until it shined like a new penny, rearranged her uncoordinated shelves in the kitchen and made dinner. He also doled out pills and did the laundry.

  Afterward, he called Dee and gave her a progress report.

  Sara was aghast when he told her, late that night. “You told her you were staying with me?” she asked.

  He glowered at her. “At least Dee doesn’t have a dirty mind,” he informed her.

  “I do not have a dirty mind,” she protested.

  He drew the covers up over her, in the plain, discreet pajamas she was wearing. “I want to tell you a story,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside her. His dark eyes were quiet and sad. “I had a sister, who was three years younger than me. We lived in foster care. Our old man drank and knocked us around a lot. Our mother was long dead. They took us away from the old man and we shuttled from foster home to foster home, where we were mostly barely tolerated. At one of the homes,” he added coldly, “there was an older boy who liked the way my sister looked. I warned him off, but he was persistent and she was flattered that a boy liked her. She was only fourteen, you see.” He drew in a long breath and looked down at the floor. “Long story short, he got her pregnant. She was so ashamed, so scared, that she didn’t know what to do. The boy found out and told her he’d make her sorry if she didn’t get rid of the kid. He wasn’t going to be rooked into paying child support for sixteen years because she was too stupid to get the pill and use it.”

  “What a nasty boy,” she muttered.

  “She was too ashamed to tell the foster parents what she’d let him do, and too afraid of the boy to have the child. I was moved to another foster home while all this was going on, so she couldn’t tell me, either. So she went out one night, after everybody was asleep. They found her washed up on the riverbank the next afternoon.”

  “Oh, Tony,” she said gently. She touched his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  He grimaced. “She was all I had.”

  She slid her little hand into his big one and smiled at him. “No. I’m your family now,” she replied. “You can be my big brother.”

  He looked down at her with eyes that were suspiciously bright. “Yeah?”

  She squeezed his hand. “Yeah.”

  He drew in a steadying breath. “Well, we’ll be part of one amazingly dysfunctional family, if you still consider Jared part of it.”

  She glared. “He became a stranger when Max handed me that check. And we’re not going to let him be in our family anymore, either.”

  He didn’t believe that she’d stopped caring about Jared. She was just hurt. So he smiled and nodded his head. “Suits me.”

  He squeezed her hand and let it go. “You need to get some sleep,” he said, standing. He smiled down at her. “I’ll be a better family to you than my ex-boss was,” he added coolly. “That’s for sure.”

  The memory of how close she and Jared had become, until the end, made her sad. She’d cared for him more than she wanted to admit. His betrayal was almost more than she could bear.

  “Don’t brood,” Tony said firmly. “It won’t change anything. We’ll deal with whatever happens.”

  “I’m not getting rid of a child, if the test comes up positive.”

  He smiled. “I never thought you would.”

  “We won’t tell him,” she muttered. “He can go back to his houses all over the world and have fun with Max.”

  “Nobody has fun with Max,” Tony told her. “She’s got a one-track mind. All she thinks about is money.”

  “That’s sad. I mean, it would be nice to have money. But I’m happy living the way I do.”

  “So am I, kid,” he told her. “Money’s poor company if it’s all you’ve got.”

  She smoothed the cover over her belly, wondering. “He loved his little girl,” she said out of the blue, and felt sorry for him all over again.

  “He did,” Tony had to admit. “But he discovered it far too late. Now he’s alone and afraid to risk having another child. He’d be vulnerable.”

  She laid back against the pillows. “Everybody’s vulnerable. You can’t escape life.”

  “Yeah,” he had to agree. “I know.”

  She didn’t expect to sleep, but she did. It was comforting having Tony down the hall. People would probably gossip about her, but she’d live with it; with the pregnancy, too, if she had to. Her friends wouldn’t snub her, and it didn’t matter if her enemies did. She frowned. She didn’t have enemies. Well, unless you counted that conceited rancher who couldn’t take no for an answer.

  Tony brought her breakfast and went to work baking them a nice pound cake. But just before lunch, he walked in with her portable phone, his big hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Who do you know in New York City?” he asked, curious.

  “No one…New York? Give me that!” She was almost on fire with excitement as he handed her the phone. She wrenched her newest set of stitches grasping for it and groaned before she spoke into the receiver. “Sara Dobbs,” she said at once.

  “Miss Dobbs, I’m Daniel Harris, an editor with Mirabella Publishing Company. I wanted to tell you that your story is delightful, and the drawings are exquisite. We’d like to publish your book!”

  Sara sat there with dreams coming true. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She fought to find her voice. Yesterday her world had felt as if it were ending. Today…today was magic!

  “I’d love that,” she managed finally, and then listened while he outlined the process that would ensue, including an advance against royalties that would be forthcoming.

&nbs
p; Tony lifted his eyebrows while he listened unashamedly to her conversation. She was so animated that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see her levitate right up to the ceiling.

  She hung up, finally, and handed him back the phone. “They bought my book. They bought my children’s book! They’re going to publish it! And I get paid!”

  He laughed. “Well!”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “What’s this book about?” he asked, curious.

  She told him, going into detail about the puppies and their adventures. “I have to call Lisa and tell her. She’ll be so thrilled. I’ll call Tom Walker, too,” she added. “His dog was their grandfather—old Moose, who died just recently.”

  “I’d love to see this book,” Tony replied.

  “I just happen to have a copy,” she told him, and pointed to the small desk in the corner of her bedroom. “I made a duplicate, in case it got lost in the mail.”

  He sat beside her and went through the drawings, exclaiming over their beauty. “I never knew anybody who could draw like this,” he murmured. “You’re really good.”

  “Thanks, Tony. I’m overwhelmed. I never dreamed it would even sell, and certainly not so quickly.”

  He glanced at her. “You know, life evens out. Something bad happens, and then you get something good.”

  “My grandfather used to say that.” She leaned back against the pillows. “My mother hated him. He talked my father into the mission to Africa, something he’d always wanted to do, but never could. Mama didn’t want to go. She thought Africa was too dangerous, but my grandfather and my father made her feel guilty enough to back down. She blamed Grandad for everything that happened. She went out of her way to embarrass him, to make him pay for Daddy’s death.” She shook her head. “The only person she really hurt was herself.”

  “You poor kid,” he said gently. “I thought I had a bad life.”

  “Everybody has a bad life, up to a point,” she replied, smiling. “But somehow we survive, and get tougher.”

  “So we do.”

  She’d just finished a cup of coffee when the door opened and Jared Cameron stalked in. His face was unshaven. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked worn-out and irritated. He wasn’t smiling.