Iron Cowboy

by Diana Palmer

  “He doesn’t hate you,” she said gently. “He doesn’t punish people, you know. We have free choice. He doesn’t control every second of our lives. Bad things happen. That’s just the way life is. But faith is how we cope. Especially in small towns.”

  “You’re only nineteen,” he said quietly. “How did you come to be so wise, at such an age?”

  “I had a hard life as a child,” she replied simply. “It teaches you things you wouldn’t learn in a protected environment.” She searched his eyes. “I had a best friend at the mission in Africa. I watched her die of a fever. All the medicines we had couldn’t cure her. One of our best workers, a nice boy named Ahmed, was gunned down two feet from his front door by rebels. He was smiling when he died. He said he was going to heaven now, and we weren’t to grieve.” She shook her head. “In Jacobsville, you can walk down the streets after dark and not get shot. I think of that as miraculous. People here just take it for granted.”

  He sat down beside her on the bed. “Where we sunk wells in South America,” he said, “there were people living in conditions that you couldn’t conceive of if you hadn’t been there. Women were old by the age of forty, men were missing fingers, teeth, eyes. Children died in infancy of diseases we can prevent here. I felt guilty for making a profit from oil, when all those conditions were going on around me. I set up a foundation, to provide small grants to people who wanted to start businesses of their own. Women, mostly, who could weave cloth and keep chickens and a cow so they had eggs and milk and butter to sell. You’d be amazed at how far that little bit of money went.”

  She was fascinated. “But they sent kidnappers after you,” she said.

  He nodded. “The government nationalized all the oil companies. I pulled my people out. I’d already foiled one kidnapping attempt when I went down with our corporate attorneys to try to work the situation out. Do you know what a narcoterrorist is, Sara?”

  “Yes. I’ve read about them. They grow coca and process it in factories on site, and sell coca paste to drug lords who market it in the U.S. and elsewhere,” she said. “They control politicians.”

  “They always need money, for bribes and weapons,” he said. “They’ve discovered that kidnapping wealthy foreigners is a quick, easy way to get cash. It’s a bold move, sending people up here to try to nab me. But there was a raid just recently that cost them several million in operating cash. They thought I’d be easy to kidnap. Their mistake.”

  “Tony said that’s why you came here,” she replied. “A lot of his former comrades live in Jacobsville.”

  He nodded. “But it didn’t work. They tracked me here without attracting attention. They might have succeeded, if you hadn’t been canny enough to panic them.” He shook his head, smiling softly down at her. “You’re brave, Sara. I don’t know a single other person, except maybe Tony, who’d have had the nerve to do what you did.”

  She felt warm inside. She shouldn’t. He’d said terrible things to her. Besides, there was the possibility of a child. She looked up at him steadily. “So the kidnappers are in custody. Those worries are over. Right?”

  His lips made a thin line. “They didn’t actually kidnap anyone,” he said. “Cash Grier is holding them right now on a weapons charge.”

  She felt her heart skip. “A weapons charge?”

  “They had an AK-47 in the van and no permit,” he replied. He frowned. “Actually I don’t think you can get a permit for an automatic weapon as a private citizen. I’ll have to ask Cash. Anyway, it’s illegal in their case. But they didn’t carry you out of the store or even lay hands on you.” He sighed. “So there’s a good chance that they’re going to get out on bail as soon as their high-pricedAmerican attorney gets them to a bail hearing.”

  “The judge can set a high bail, if he or she is asked to,” she began.

  He smiled cynically. “Drug lords have so much money that even a million dollars is like pocket change to them. It won’t help.”

  “But if they get out, won’t they just try again?”

  His expression changed. “Worried about me?” he asked in a soft, deep tone.

  “I can worry, even if you’re not family anymore,” she returned pertly.

  He laughed softly. The trap didn’t feel like a trap. Maybe he’d been too grief-stricken to think of a child on his own, but this one had fallen right into his lap. Well, he’d helped it to, and he shouldn’t feel happy about losing control with Sara, all the same.

  She was watching his expression change, unable to follow what he was thinking. He seemed to be more comfortable with her now than he had several minutes ago. That didn’t mean he was happy about their situation.

  “What will you do?” she asked, because she really was worried.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I think I’ll go talk to the police chief.” He frowned. “Now there’s an odd bird,” he said conversationally. “Someone said he was a Texas Ranger once.”

  “He was something else, once, too,” she mused.

  “The sniper thing?” he scoffed. “Gossip, I imagine.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not. A Drug Enforcement Administration agent’s little girl was kidnapped by the former head of one of the Mexican cartels last year. They threatened to kill her if the feds didn’t back off their raid on a local drug warehouse. Cash Grier took out two of the kidnappers and the DEA agents got the rest and rescued the child. He made the shots in the dark from over six hundred yards away.” She lowered her voice. “They say he was a covert assassin once.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “And he’s a small town police chief?”

  “He’s happy here,” she told him. “His wife, Tippy, used to be a model. They called her the ‘Georgia Firefly.’”

  “Well!”

  “They have a little girl named Tris.” She gave him a smirk. “So, you see, not everybody dislikes living in Outer Cowpasture.”

  “Touché,” he replied.

  “Maybe he has friends who could get those three guys on some sort of terrible federal charge,” she murmured. “We never found out who the DEA agents were,” she added. “One of them does undercover work, so he wasn’t identified. The other, the child’s mother, was a DEA agent, too. Her husband bought property here, but they’re living in Houston until the end of the school year because of their daughter. They didn’t want to put her into a strange school midyear.”

  “Do you know everything about everybody here?” he asked curiously.

  “Sure,” she told him. “Everybody does.”

  He glanced at the door, where Tony was just entering with soup and sandwiches on a tray. He glared at his ex-boss. “She needs to eat her lunch.”

  Jared got to his feet. “I was just leaving.” He smiled down at Sara. “Eat it all up, like a good girl.”

  She flushed. “I’m not a kid.”

  He sighed. “Compared to me you are,” he said quietly, and he looked lost.

  “My mother was nineteen when she had me,” Tony said abruptly.

  Jared glanced at him, curious.

  Tony shrugged. “It isn’t the age, it’s the mileage,” he clarified, meeting the other man’s eyes. “She’s got almost as much mileage as you have. She just looks younger.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I like babies,” Tony said, setting the tray across Sara’s legs.

  Jared withdrew into his safe shell. He didn’t say a word.

  “Try not to get killed,” Sara told him. “I’m in no condition to go to a funeral.”

  He laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

  Tony glanced at him. “They’ll try again,” he said. “The minute they make bail, and they’ll make it.”

  “Yes, I know,” Jared replied. He pursed his lips. “I’ve had an idea.”

  “What?” Tony asked.

  Jared glared. “Oh, sure, I tell you, and you tell her, and she tells everybody in Jacobsville.”

  “I only gossip about people I like,” Sara protested.

  “And pigs fl
y,” he returned. “I’ll come by tomorrow and check on you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Sara protested.

  He glanced at her belly with an unreadable expression. “I’ll come by anyway.”

  He turned and left without another word.

  “We could have offered him lunch,” Sara told Tony. “Even if he isn’t part of our family anymore.”

  “He’d curdle the milk,” Tony muttered.

  Sara laughed and finished her soup.

  Jared went straight to Police Chief Cash Grier’s office when he left Sara’s house.

  Cash was on the phone, but he hung up when Jared walked in and closed the office door.

  “I haven’t let them out yet,” Cash told him, anticipating the reason he’d come.

  “They’ll skip town the minute they can make bail,” Jared replied.

  “In the old days, I’d have thrown them out the back door and charged them with attempted escape.”

  Jared glowered at him. “Civilization has its price.”

  Cash sighed. “Spoilsport.”

  Jared sat down in the visitor’s chair without being asked. “They’ll be as much a danger to Sara as they are to me,” he said. “We have to find a way to prove they’re kidnappers.”

  Cash’s dark eyebrows went up. “We could stuff you in their van under a blanket and catch them at the city limits sign,” he suggested dryly.

  Jared chuckled. “That’s just what I had in mind.”

  “It would be entrapment, I’m afraid,” Cash replied, leaning back in his chair. “We’ll have to find a legal way to keep them locked up.”

  “Suppose we have Tony the Dancer arrested for breaking and entering?”

  Cash blinked. “Are we having the same conversation?”

  “You could put him in the cell with the three kidnappers,” he continued. “Tony could offer to help them get me, for revenge.”

  Cash whistled. “And I thought I was the only dangerous person in town.”

  “I didn’t inherit what I’ve got,” Jared told him. “The first company I started was a security business. I hired my men and myself out to oil companies as protection against terrorist attacks. An elderly oil tycoon with no dependents took a liking to me, taught me the business and left his company to me when he died. Eventually I sold the security company and parlayed the oil business into a worldwide corporation.”

  “So that’s how you know Tony the Dancer.”

  Jared nodded. “He was the first man I hired, in the days before he worked for a legitimate authority. He still does odd jobs for me, from time to time.”

  Cash pursed his lips. “Then I suppose you know about his real background?”

  Jared chuckled. “I check out everybody who works for me. His dossier was, to say the least, impressive.”

  “Yes, and how fortunate for him that he’s not wanted in the States,” Cash replied. “The only man I know who’s a target for assassination in more countries than Tony is an undercover DEA agent named Ramirez.”

  “I know him,” Jared said unexpectedly. “He worked for me, too, in the early days.”

  “He worked for a lot of people. He’s involved in a case right now, so if you see him anywhere, pretend you don’t know him.”

  “Isn’t it risky for him to go undercover again?” Jared asked, curious.

  “It is in Texas. He helped bring down the late drug lord, Manuel Lopez. But he’s not known locally, except by a few of us with ties to mercenaries. His name was never mentioned when his partner’s child was kidnapped by drug smugglers here last year.”

  “I understand you brought down some of the kidnappers.”

  Cash nodded. “Some skills never get rusty.” He leaned forward. “Who talks to Tony, you or me?”

  “It had probably better be you,” Jared said heavily. “He’d enjoy cutting my throat right now because of Sara.”

  “You didn’t put Sara in the hospital,” Cash replied, misunderstanding.

  “No, but I may have gotten her pregnant,” he said uncomfortably.

  Cash’s good humor eclipsed. His black eyes flashed at the man across the desk.

  “We’re all capable of making ungodly mistakes,” Jared said quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been around an innocent in my whole life. In recent years, women are as aggressive as men when it comes to sex.”

  “Not all of them,” Cash said in an icy tone. “And Sara’s only nineteen.”

  “I didn’t find that out until it was too late,” he said. “She seems older than she is.”

  “Considering her past, that isn’t surprising.”

  Jared nodded. “I didn’t know about that, either.” His eyes held a sad, faraway look. “My daughter died eight months ago,” he said. “I’ve grieved until it was an effort just to get out of bed in the morning. I don’t understand how, but Sara brought the sunlight back in for me. I never meant to hurt her.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cash said. “I know what it is to lose a child.”

  Jared met his eyes. There was, suddenly, a bond between them, forged of grief.

  “Tony seems very fond of Sara.”

  Jared’s face hardened. “Well, I’ll take care of that when the time comes. If she’s pregnant, that’s my child. No way is he raising it.”

  Cash’s eyebrows arched.

  Jared cleared his throat. “He’s not going to be able to settle down, anyway.”

  “You need to meet a few people around town,” Cash told him. “Starting with Eb Scott.”

  “Eb Scott lives here?” he exclaimed.

  “Yes. He’s got a state-of-the-art training center for military and government resources,” he said. “A lot of exmercs work for him.”

  “I’d never have expected Scott to be able to settle down.”

  “Most people said the same about me,” Cash replied, smiling. “I think it comes down to what’s important to you. It used to be work, for me. Now it’s Tippy and our baby. And Rory,” he added. “My brother-in-law.” He chuckled. “He’s twelve years old.”

  “It’s still work that gets the major portion of my time,” Jared replied. “But just recently I’ve begun to wonder if I don’t have my priorities skewed.” He studied his boots. “There aren’t many women around like Sara. Of course, she’s years too young for me.”

  “Judd Dunn, my assistant chief, is married to a young woman who was twenty-one at the same time he was thirty-two. They have twins and they’re very happy. It depends a great deal on the woman. Some mature sooner than others.”

  “I guess they do.”

  Cash got to his feet. “I think I’ll go have a word with Tony.”

  “I think I’ll stop by the flower shop and start working on my campaign.”

  “Campaign?”

  “Tony’s not marrying Sara,” Jared said shortly.

  “That would be her decision,” Cash cautioned.

  “Yes, well, he can’t afford as many roses and chocolates as I can, so let’s see him compete!”

  Cash knew when to shut up.

  Sara was curious to see Cash Grier at her door. It must have something to do with the would-be kidnappers, she thought.

  “How’s it going, Sara?” he asked, smiling. “Feeling better?”

  “A lot, thanks. Why are you here?”

  “I have to talk to Tony.” He moved closer to the bed. “You wouldn’t mind having someone else stay with you for a couple of days, would you?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Well, I’m going to have to arrest Tony for breaking and entering,” he began, “and I don’t want you to be here alone.”

  “Arrest…?”

  “Now, calm down,” he said. “It isn’t for real.”

  “What isn’t for real?” Tony asked, carrying two cups of coffee. “We can talk in the living room,” he told Cash. “Sara, will you be okay for a few minutes?”

  She couldn’t put two words together.

  Cash put his finger to his lips, walked out with Tony and cl
osed the door, leaving Sara worried and quiet.

  “But I didn’t do it to steal anything,” Tony was protesting. “I had to feed the cat!”

  “It isn’t for real,” Cash insisted. “We want you to have to be thrown in with the kidnappers. Jared’s having you arrested. You’re furious at him. You want to get back at him. They’d love to help, I’m sure.”

  Tony put his coffee cup down. “Okay, now, you’re starting to scare me. Have you been drinking?”

  Cash chuckled. “Not today.” He leaned forward. “Here’s the deal. I have to turn the men loose. All I’m holding them on is a weapons charge. I can’t convince a sane judge to set a million dollars bail for a weapons charge. They’re going to skip town the minute the cell door opens. If they do, they may try to grab Sara again, or they may go after Jared. Either way, it’s going to lead to tragedy.”

  Tony pursed his lips. “Oh. I get it. You want me to lead them into a trap so that you can charge them with kidnapping.”

  “That’s exactly what I want.”

  Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Jared put you up to it.”

  “He did,” Cash confessed. “He’s worried about Sara.”

  “Not enough to keep himself from seducing her,” Tony said angrily.

  “I heard about that, too. He’s sorry he did it. But if you have plans to help her raise the baby—if there is a baby—you’re in for the fight of your life,” he added. “He’s just starting to feel possessive about her.”

  Tony scoffed. “He goes through women like a sword through tissue paper,” he said coldly.

  “Like a man who’s afraid to risk his heart twice, I would have thought,” Cash replied solemnly. “He told me about his little girl.”

  Tony’s hard demeanor softened. “Yeah. That was rough. She was a sweet kid. He didn’t spend nearly enough time with her, but he loved her. She loved him, too. Hell of a tragedy.”

  “Let’s not have another one,” Cash said. “Help me get these guys off the street before they do something stupid. Sara might not be so lucky a second time. And they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her, after she foiled their plan so deftly.”

  “I thought about that, myself.”