The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

by Kathleen Creighton

  He looked at his watch and his heart ached. How much longer could he put off calling Dixie? Don’t tell anyone, they’d said, with the usual warning of dire consequences if he disobeyed that directive. But how was he going to get through this without Dixie by his side? He’d have to tell her soon. She had a right to know. To prepare herself for the worst.

  The worst. His mind slammed shut on that thought. Cold to the depths of his soul, he pivoted to face the group at the table.

  “Okay-” he huffed out a breath and drove a hand through his hair “-we know what they want.” Their demand had made that clear. They wanted him out of the presidential race. They meant to keep Lauren until after the national convention, to insure that he would refuse the nomination. And after that…what then? He ground his teeth thinking about it. “So. Let’s summarize. What do we know about these people, these…Sons Of Liberty? Who, where, what, why and how many.”

  Not, he thought, that it mattered much how many they were. Look at Oklahoma City. How many had it taken to destroy more than two hundred lives? How many would it take to kill one small person? Just one. Lolly, his precious little girl.

  Pat Graham looked at him. The burnt-umber eyes that were a legacy of her African-American heritage lit with compassion. A veteran of the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s, she knew all about pain and fear and loss. Rhett couldn’t imagine anyone he’d rather have succeed him as attorney general, or anyone he’d rather have beside him now. How many years had they worked together on the weapons-control project? She’d begged to be put on it in the beginning, he remembered, when he’d considered it too inflammatory a position for a woman. With her courage and passion she’d made him ashamed of that view. Illegal-weapons trafficking wasn’t just a political hot-button issue to Pat Graham. She’d grown up in a south-central L.A. neighborhood where the slaughter of children with assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns had become so common that it seldom even made the evening news anymore. To her, keeping guns off the nation’s streets and out of the hands of its children was a true crusade of the heart.

  She swiveled back to the table and nodded at the FBI director. “Vern, you want to do the honors?”

  Vernon Lee cleared his throat and shuffled through papers already in rumpled disarray. “Okay. We know they call themselves SOL.” He pronounced it “soul” and went on to explain, “That’s Spanish for sun. That’s their signature, their logo-the rising sun. The good news is-” he leaned back in the upholstered chair, leaving one hand palm down on the papers in front of him “-we know quite a bit about them. The leader of the group is a man named Gilbert McCullough-ex-marine, war hero, spent five years as a POW in Vietnam. Supposedly he’s a legitimate rancher out in Arizona now-owns several thousand acres of land, most of it pretty rugged. Raises cattle and horses. And runs a fair-size militia on the side. Actually,” he added almost as an afterthought, “SOL is one of the better run of these kinds of groups. Well organized, well trained, well disciplined.”

  Vernon leaned forward again, forearms on the tabletop, hands clasped. “And that’s the bad news, I’m afraid. They’re careful. They don’t make mistakes. They cover their tracks. We believe McCullough’s goal is to eventually arm and unite all the various militia groups in that part of the country under one supreme commander-himself. That’s an ambitious undertaking for a man who never achieved a military rank above sergeant. Also expensive. We believe the group is directly responsible for a large number of bank robberies and truck hijackings in the Southwest and upper Midwest, but so far we can’t prove it. They’ve learned from others’ mistakes, it seems. They pay their taxes, for example, stay on the good side of local authorities. Up until now they’ve been real careful not to give us any excuse to go after ’em.”

  Rhett rubbed at his burning eye sockets. Well, he thought, we sure as hell have an excuse to go after them now. And if we do, and if we make one mistake in the process, I’ll bury my only daughter.

  He drew a steadying breath. “Okay. Give me an idea what the situation is out there. Local law enforcement-” He stopped as the head of ATF made a soft inarticulate sound. “Sorry, Henry, what was that? This is your bailiwick, after all.”

  Up till now Henry Vallejo had been sitting with his chin tucked against his barrel chest, watching his fingers turn a pencil end over end. He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “We don’t believe local law can be trusted. It’s highly likely some are members of SOL themselves. We know for sure some are sympathetic to the cause. The code of the Old West, you know. Those people out there do love their guns.”

  Rhett frowned. “You suspect, or you know that for a fact?”

  “Fact.” Henry squirmed uneasily and glanced at Vernon Lee. “Uh…our intelligence sources have confirmed it.”

  “Intelligence sources?” Rhett felt his chest quiver with a new excitement as he moved in beside Henry and leaned down close to him, gripping the table with his hands. “Are you telling me you’ve infiltrated this group? You have a man on the inside?” He looked across the table at Pat, who raised her eyebrows. He transferred the look to Vernon Lee. Vernon shrugged. Henry cleared his throat. No one appeared to be breathing. “Henry,” said Rhett, his voice turning soft and dangerous as he came back to the ATF Director, “are you telling me you knew about this? Before last night? You knew they planned to kidnap my daughter?”

  At the look on Rhett’s face, Henry reared back in alarm and held up a hand. Pat Graham pushed back her chair. “Rhett-”

  “You knew? And you let it happen? You stood by and let these people kidnap my daughter?”

  “Look, I’d only gotten the word from my guy the night before. There wasn’t anything he could do, not without jeopardizing his own position-”

  “Jeopardizing his position? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  The ATF man was on his feet and facing him. So was Pat Graham, who had taken Rhett’s arm in a calming grip. Which, since she was five-two and 110 pounds on a good day, was a little like a Jack Russell terrier trying to corral a Great Dane.

  Vallejo’s face was flushed. “Look, Rhett. I know how you must be feeling. But think about it. You know how long it takes to get a man in position with one of these groups-they’re paranoid as hell. This man is one of the best agents we’ve got. I couldn’t risk him. For what? We keep your daughter from being taken-this time. What then? These people are hell-bent on keeping you out of the White House. As far as they’re concerned, you are the great Satan. They’ll stop at nothing-and I mean, nothing-to keep you from accepting that nomination. How many people do you figure would die if they pull off an Oklahoma City at the Dallas Convention Center? Are you prepared to pay that price for your daughter’s safety?”

  As if suddenly realizing what he was asking, Vallejo halted and put a sympathetic hand on Rhett’s arm. “This way we have a shot at getting the whole organization, Rhett, don’t you see? We can bring them down. Put the whole operation out of business. It’s the chance we’ve been waiting for.”

  “And my daughter?” Rhett asked in a dead-soft voice.

  “My man will do everything he can to keep her safe. I promise you that.”

  Rhett’s eyes burned into Vallejo’s. His fingers closed around the other man’s forearm in a grip of iron. “You promise. He’ll keep her safe. You trust him to be able to do that, this man of yours?”

  “I’d trust him with my own life. More importantly, with my daughter’s life,” Vallejo said softly. “He’s the best there is.”

  After a long tense moment, Rhett let out the breath he’d been holding. Around him, three others did likewise. “Okay.” His mouth was dry as ashes, his voice a croak. “So, when do we move on them?”

  Vallejo looked at his watch. “We’re getting our people in position now. As soon as my man lets me know she’s safely away, we’re good to go.”

  God help you, Rhett thought, his mind holding fast to the knowledge that somewhere out in the Arizona wilderness, an unknown man held his daughter’s lif
e in his hands. God go with you-whoever you are.

  Chapter 3

  Bronco heaved a silent sigh of relief as the last of the McCullough ranch’s horse barns and outbuildings sank from sight behind the crest of a juniper-studded hill. He wouldn’t feel safely away until they’d reached timber, but there was at least a measure of comfort in knowing that they were beyond visual range of the ranch and the road leading to it.

  He studied the sky, taking note of the thunderheads gathering over the Superstitions, every nerve ending in his body straining for sounds he didn’t want to hear. But he heard only the call of a mourning dove, the screeches of scrub jays feeding among the junipers. He altered his touch on the reins imperceptibly, and Sierra, the long-legged Appaloosa mare he was riding, dropped back even with Linda, the slower stockier gray he’d chosen for his prisoner. Meanwhile the magnificent blood bay at the end of a lead rope adjusted his pace to a graceful trot. Bronco didn’t spare him a glance; he knew the stallion would follow willingly. That was why he’d made sure both saddle horses were mares-Cochise Red would consider them his by right.

  With the worst of the pressure off, at least for the moment, Special Agent John Bracco of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms took a moment to study the woman who had complicated his life so unexpectedly.

  Other than the fact that she looked every bit as good on a horse as he’d thought she would, Lauren Brown wasn’t what he’d expected-not that he’d had a lot of time to form expectations one way or the other. This thing had come upon him with the speed and unpredictability of an avalanche. One minute all he’d had to deal with was figuring out which of two terrorists acts he was going to have to prevent-the assassination of a presidential candidate or a missile attack on the convention center-preferably while keeping his own cover intact. And the next…well, the woman had practically fallen into their laps.

  Bronco was fairly sure Gil had had no idea who Lauren Brown was when she’d first contacted him on behalf of some ranch in Texas about buying his champion quarter horse stud. It wasn’t until the commander had run his customary background and credit check on her that he’d realized what he had. The opportunity had seemed to him God-given, the possibilities she presented beyond even his most optimistic dreams. Even then, smart paranoid that he was, Gil had held off on the final decision to go ahead with the plan until after he’d met the woman. Until he was sure she wasn’t the bait for some elaborate government trap.

  A trap. Bronco let out a slow breath. McCullough was indeed riding into a trap, just not the one he’d been looking out for. Like Julius Caesar, whose betrayal had come, not at the hands of Cleopatra or any other woman, but through his closest and most trusted friend.

  “He really is magnificent, isn’t he?” Lauren’s voice brought him back from that troubling place. She sounded almost wistful as she watched the stallion dip and weave like a kite at the end of a string, and Bronco knew she must be thinking of the innocent, even joyous quest that had brought her to this. She glanced over at him, and an unexpected smile of irony played around her lips. “I’d sure love to ride him, just once…” She left her words hanging there, sounding like a condemned prisoner’s last request.

  No, she wasn’t at all what he’d expected.

  What, exactly, had he expected of Lauren Elizabeth Brown, daughter of former U.S. attorney general Everett Charleton Brown? About to become First Daughter, if the polls were to be believed. About to be instantly recognized the world over, with every move, every breath, every step scrutinized and analyzed to death by both the legitimate and tabloid media.

  He knew her parents had divorced when Lauren was ten, that her father had subsequently married Dixie Parish, of the folk-singing Parish Family, which counted among its many real-estate holdings that horse ranch in West Texas. He knew she’d been born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, that she was a graduate of Iowa University and Harvard Law School, and that she’d passed the bar on the first try. A bright lady with a bright future-a future that reportedly included marriage to an equally brilliant member of a fine old Des Moines law firm. The media were already salivating over the prospect of a White House wedding. Oh, yes, and there was one brother, Ethan, currently attending UCLA, scheduled to begin his senior year in the fall.

  That was what Bronco knew about Lauren Brown-pretty much what the rest of the world knew. What surprised him was the discovery that he would like to have known more. A lot more.

  For one thing, he wanted to know what had brought a big-city lawyer to a West Texas horse ranch hundreds of miles from the man she supposedly loved. Bronco had never been in love and didn’t expect to be, but he was pretty sure that if he ever did love a woman enough to want to marry her, he’d want her near him every day of his life. He’d want her voice and her laughter lighting up his days, and her body warming his bed at night. He’d want the scent of her in his sheets and in his pores. If a man and woman pledged to join their lives together, they should be together. And stay together. That was the way he saw it.

  And he wanted to know why a woman raised in a Midwestern city looked so natural and right astride a horse in the mountains of Arizona. This was wild country, the land of his ancestors-Indee, the People. A beautiful land, but harsh and unforgiving of those who didn’t understand and respect her delicate balance. The bones of many strong men lay bleaching in forgotten canyons as mute testimony to that. And yet, this woman, tawny-haired and wraith-slender, seemed almost to belong in this sunburned landscape, as much at home here as the deer and antelope he’d hunted as a boy.

  Close on the heels of that thought came another. As he studied her, it occurred to Bronco that in spite of the fact that she’d recently been forcibly abducted by armed men for purposes she could only guess at, she seemed almost happy. She rode with her body relaxed and graceful in the saddle, her face lifted to the warm wind and her eyes half-shut, her mouth softly smiling. As if, he thought as warmth stirred unexpectedly in his own body, in acceptance of a lover’s caress. But why, he wondered, fighting off the image of soft lips, slowly parting, did she seem so unafraid? Had she no concept of the peril she was in? Her apparent innocence irritated him, even as her innate sensuality stirred and excited him.

  Irritated, stirred and excited was not what Agent Bracco wanted to be. Not ever, actually, but especially not now, not with so much at stake. He told himself he’d have to do a better job of keeping himself in balance, focused on the task at hand. He couldn’t afford to let himself be distracted just because that task happened to involve shielding and protecting an extraordinarily beautiful woman.

  A grim smile stretched his lips as he watched the stallion prancing grandly along behind the little gray mare, so intent on establishing his own sexual dominion that he was oblivious to the lead rope that held him captive. It occurred to him that there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between a man and any other male animal when he allowed himself to be governed by his…testosterone.

  For some reason, the words the woman had spoken earlier that morning came back to him, carried on the wind like the scent of a far-off storm: I should never have danced with you.

  He looks so hard and dangerous when he smiles like that, Lauren thought. I wonder what he can be thinking.

  A shiver passed through her in spite of the Southwestern sun that burned like a branding iron across her shoulders. Because the only thing she knew for certain was that she could never be certain what that man was feeling. What a consummate actor he was! What a talented liar!

  She told herself she was upset because she’d misjudged him so badly. That as a lawyer she felt she ought to be more adept at reading people. But in her heart she knew better. The real source of her shame and betrayal lay in the accusation that pounded now inside her head in time to the horse’s hoofbeats.

  Not, How could I have been so wrong about him?

  But rather, How could I have been so attracted to him?

  She couldn’t even look at him now. Whenever she looked at him, her heart would begin to ham
mer and her eyes burn hot and her mind cloud over with rage. She wanted to fly at him in a screaming spitting clawing fury.

  Why, she asked herself, did she feel so ashamed? Because she’d watched him ride and admired his skill?

  No, her honest heart answered her. Because you watched him ride and thought him beautiful.

  Did she feel such anger because he’d danced with her and then betrayed her?

  Again she was forced to hear her own truth: No-because you danced with him and your own body betrayed you.

  With her face lifted to the wind and her eyes closed, she could see him standing beside her table at Smoky Joe’s, looking down at her with the little yellow flame from the candle in the globe lamp on the table burning in his eyes. And as she gazed into them, the boisterous crowd seemed to close in around them, surrounding the two of them with a wall of noise and heat and cigarette smoke and darkness, so that all at once she was aware only of him-of his heat, his masculine scent and the blackness of his hair, lying like a skein of silk across one shoulder.

  She remembered how warm his hands had been, covering hers. She’d felt the wiry, coiled-spring tension in his hips beneath her palms, the swaying rhythm, blatantly sexy-and her body had grown hot. She’d lost track of the music and the steps of the dance until suddenly she’d found herself face-to-face with him. Face-to-face and chest to chest. Frozen, she’d felt his arms come around her, gathering her in, and the cool silk of his hair against her cheek, his heart thumping in counterrhythm to hers.

  Had that been a lie, too? Could he control the timing of his own pulse? With this man, even that seemed possible.

  They’d danced that dance and then another, and with each note, each measure, it seemed to her, their bodies had moved infinitesimal fractions of inches closer together, until it felt as if they would melt into each other’s pores.