by Harper Allen
The other woman hesitated. When she spoke again she seemed to be choosing her words with care. “I didn’t hear any gossip about strangers poking around, either,” she said quietly. “Tell me—how sure are you that someone’s after you?”
“As sure as I am of the fact that Frank Barrett was killed,” Susannah said flatly. “I identified his dead body, Greta. And a few weeks after I had him laid to rest I saw the owner of the diner where I worked killed by a bullet meant for me.”
Restlessly she stood. Through the iron lace of the gates the moon Greta had promised hung, full and orange, over the desert. “I just don’t know who’s after me or why, which is why every time I’ve gone to the police I sound like a crazy wom—”
“What is it?” Greta’s glance went to the baby monitor at Susannah’s quickly indrawn breath.
“Not Danny.” Susannah shook her head. “Someone’s coming. Were you expecting company?”
Greta was already standing, but as the headlights that had caught Susannah’s attention came closer her posture relaxed. “I know better than ever to expect Del Hawkins. Every so often the man simply shows up, and I’m fool enough to run into his arms when he does,” she said dryly. “That’s partly what was behind our little tiff last week just before he left—although he’s back a day earlier than I thought he’d be.”
She shrugged. “But I’ve bored you with that story more than once, sweetie. Do you want to meet my tough old mustang or would you feel better if he didn’t know you were here? You can trust him to keep his mouth closed about seeing you,” she added, her eyes still on the approaching truck.
He was the reason Greta had never married, and why she’d taken up residence in this remote chunk of New Mexico when she’d decided to concentrate on her painting. If only for those reasons it would be interesting to see just what kind of a man he was, Susannah thought. But even if he and Greta had been no more than acquaintances, his arrival still would have been momentous.
Because if he was the Del Hawkins she’d been looking for, her twenty-five-hundred-mile journey had just come to an end.
Her palms felt suddenly damp. Surreptitiously she pressed them against her thighs.
“Granny Lacey used to say two catbirds sound real sweet singing together, but as soon as a third one shows up the harmony’s gone.” Her smile felt wobbly. “I’m near ready for my bed, and I suspect my little mister’s going to have me up again in a few hours anyway.”
Granny Lacey had also said that not telling the whole truth was as good as a lie, Susannah thought, making her way into the house. That one she didn’t completely hold with.
“If your great-granny was still alive she’d say I was sliding down that slippery slope real quick, starshine,” she murmured to Daniel as she bent over his cradle. “But your mama had to think of something. You’d think nine whole months would have been time enough to prepare myself, but I guess I wasn’t as ready as I thought. Besides, there’s a chance it might not be him.”
She lifted her head, her brows drawing together in a frown as she heard the solid-sounding thunks of not one, but both of the truck’s doors being slammed shut. Del had brought a friend. Even if her hasty withdrawal had been for the sole purpose of allowing Greta a few minutes of privacy it would have been all for nothing, anyway.
“Someone should give that fool male a slap,” she muttered in momentary distraction, stepping to the screened window and looking out at the candle-and-moonlit patio. As she gazed at the man leaning forward to plant a casual kiss on Greta’s slightly parted lips, any last doubts about his identity fled.
He was the Lieutenant Hawkins she’d grown up hearing so much about from her grandmother—the man her father had served under during a long-ago and terrible war, one of only two men Daniel Bird had sworn he would trust with his life. Del had lost both legs in Vietnam and although Greta had told her he’d been liberated from a wheelchair ten years ago when he’d been fitted with prosthetic limbs, the cane he was holding in his left hand was obviously necessary to his balance.
“But you’re still a fine-looking man, aren’t you?” she said under her breath, watching as Hawkins lightly touched Greta’s hair before turning to introduce his companion. “And in love with her, if the look on your face is anything to go by. So why don’t you—”
Susannah froze in shock. Her eyes widened painfully as she stared at the stranger standing with Del Hawkins and Greta.
Except he wasn’t a stranger, she thought faintly. He was a fallen angel, and even while he reached for Greta’s extended hand his attention was fixed on something on the table.
Tyler Adams raised his eyes from the baby monitor, his gaze encompassing the courtyard and then going to the house itself. In the light from the candles the sweep of his lashes cut shadows on the hard ridges of his cheekbones.
And at that instant the night exploded in gunfire.
“Get down!”
There was no way he could see her—but incredibly, Tye’s hoarse shout seemed directed at her. Susannah could have sworn his eyes locked desperately on hers before he turned swiftly to his companions.
Hawkins had already started to act, one muscled forearm shooting forward to knock Greta out of the line of fire coming from the openings in the wall where the votive candles had been moments ago. Even as his arm made contact with the blonde, Susannah saw her slam against him, as if some invisible fist had driven into her chest with enough force to lift her off her feet. Del’s stricken voice rose above the cacophony of gunfire.
“Greta!”
As she slumped against his chest he dropped his cane and took her whole weight with him. His knees crashed onto the brick of the patio but, showing no reaction to the pain, he pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her as if to shield her with his own flesh and bone.
Of course he hadn’t reacted to the pain. He hadn’t felt any. The last time Del Hawkins’s knees had felt pain had been over thirty years ago in a Mekong Delta swamp, Susannah reminded herself. Even that long-ago agony, terrible as it must have been, couldn’t have contorted his features with the anguish she now saw carved into them.
Wrenching free from the paralysis gripping her, she whirled from the window and ran to the cradle. As she bent over it Danny started to scream, his tiny fingers bunched into fists, his eyes wide with shock.
“I’m here, starshine. Mama’s here.” Scooping him into her arms, with shaking fingers she wrapped his blanket tightly around him. Terrified blue eyes stared into hers, and his screams became louder.
A terrible anger rose up in her, hot and clear, and her gaze swung to the olive-wood cross, a stark black silhouette against the shadowed wall.
“He’s only a baby, Lord!” Her protest was harshly agonized. “And that woman outside opened her home to me out of the goodness of her heart. Why are You letting this happen to us?”
The cross swam in front of her burning eyes. It seemed to waver and grow larger, and all of a sudden it was no longer a symbol but two splintered timbers crudely affixed together and set up on a lonely hill, the nine long nails pounded into it put there by human hands, not divine.
It wavered, and once again came into focus.
“I—I’m sorry,” Susannah whispered. “Men brought this evil to us, I know. But I can’t let it touch my son.”
She looked down at the baby in her arms. Bringing her face close to the frightened red one peeping from the blankets, gently she pressed a kiss to Danny’s flushed forehead. His screams subsided into a hiccuping sob.
“The man I named you for is out there protecting you, little one. I wish I could do something to help him, but you’re my first responsibility. We’ll just have to pray he stays safe.”
On the dresser by the now-extinguished oil lamp was her purse. She reached for it with her free hand, slinging its strap bandolier-style across her chest.
“Your mama’s going to get you out of here, starshine. And Lord help me, if I have to use this to do it I will.”
The revolver felt heavy in her grip a
s she made her way to the door. Cradled against her with her other arm and barely visible in the blanket he was wrapped in, Danny gave a burbling sigh that ended in the softest of baby snores. She risked a glance at him, her lips curving into an amazed smile.
“You’re a real little mountain man, all right,” she breathed. “Fight when you have to, sleep when you can. That lesson’s been bringing Bird males home safely since Zebediah Bird fought the British at New Orleans, Daniel Tyler.”
There was a good chance Tye had managed to arm himself, if Hawkins had told him about the vermin rifle kept in the courtyard’s gardening shed, she thought, creeping through the dark kitchen. Sightlessly she fumbled on the counter for the keys she’d seen there earlier.
Her fingers closed over them. She grabbed them up just as she heard the flat crack of a shot being squeezed off, noticeably different from the more explosive sound of the guns the intruders were using. Tye had found the rifle, she thought shakily. With any luck his first shot had found a target.
He’d seen Daniel’s baby monitor and he’d immediately realized she was here. She didn’t know how she was so sure of that, but she was. She’d felt it—the same current that had run through her when he’d placed a newly delivered Daniel into her arms a week ago.
She hadn’t imagined it then. She hadn’t imagined it tonight. And what it meant she was never going to find out.
He kept saving her. She kept leaving him.
She was going to have to leave him now, and pray he and Hawkins could hold off their attackers until help arrived, she told herself. Her hand shook so badly she could hardly turn the knob on the door in front of her.
Greta’s pickup truck was her workhorse, but the red four-by-four was her pride and joy—which was why she’d had a walk-through garage built for it, complete with an automatic door that opened onto the arrow-straight drive leading to the road. Susannah hastened to the vehicle.
“As soon as that garage door opens Mama’s going to be puttin’ the pedal to the metal, Danny Tye,” she said to the sleeping baby in her arms. “Good thing your aunt Greta bought a car seat for you. She—she said she wanted to take her favorite guy out for a drive one of these days.”
She couldn’t let herself think of Greta right now, she told herself. She couldn’t let herself think of anything or anyone but her baby. His life depended on it.
In a matter of seconds she had Daniel secured. She slid into the driver’s seat, praying that the four-by-four could outrun whatever her pursuers were driving for at least as long as it took to get to Last Chance and alert the authorities.
And to tell Dr. Jennings to get ready for an emergency surgery, she thought. She forced the tears back, her lips tightening. The garage door remote in her hand, she pointed it at the windshield and activated it as she turned the key in the ignition.
The next moment pure terror shafted through her.
“This vehicle moves an inch and the brat doesn’t see his first birthday. Hand over the keys if you want him to live.”
For nine months she’d wondered what the face of evil looked like, Susannah thought in icy fear. Now she knew.
Standing by the opened passenger-side door, with his sandy hair and average height he looked deceptively ordinary except for the ugly black automatic that fit so easily into his hand it seemed to be a deformed extension of it. The flat, compact barrel moved.
“D-don’t hurt him, please.” Her tongue felt as if it had cleaved to the roof of her mouth. The keys jingled crazily in her shaking fingers. As she dropped them into his outstretched palm she tried again, her words spilling out in a moan.
“You couldn’t live with it on your conscience. Do what you want with me, but please don’t hurt my little one.”
“Ah don’t rahtly get paid to have no conscience.” His mockery of her speech was accompanied by a thin smile. He reverted to his own toneless voice. “God, it’s been a long time since I heard cornpone as thick as that. Get out of the car, Ellie May, and don’t even think about reaching for that gun by your feet.”
Even as he spoke, the sound of a shot and then of returning fire came from the direction of the portale. Two more shots split the night, and on the heels of the second one Susannah heard a sound she’d never heard before.
A man was screaming. Tye’s rifle had found a target. As the scream broke off abruptly and she half fell, half stumbled from the vehicle, the man beside her stiffened. Then he shrugged.
“Lucky for me I won the toss and came after you. Whoever your friend is, he’s done this before, but I’m a professional, too. Kneel down on the floor and it’ll all be over in a minute.”
“Why?” Instead of complying, Susannah stood her ground, her desperate gaze holding his. “Why have you people been hunting me? Why do you want to kill me?”
“I’ll give you the same answer I gave your husband. Payback. Which reminds me—I guess I’d better take something in the way of confirmation.” Roughly pulling her purse from her, he set it on the hood of the vehicle and carelessly tipped it upside down. Her wallet spilled out first. “So that’s why it was so hard getting a line on you. No credit cards. No ATM card. Not as dumb as we figured, are you?” Unzipping an inner pocket, he drew out a folded paper.
“My wedding certificate,” she said, the fear in her voice overlaid with a thread of trembling anger. “One day Daniel’s going to ask, and I want to be able to show him his daddy and me were married when we made him.”
“Since the brat’s never going to get old enough to worry about it now, I’ll just take this for—”
“No!”
Even as she lunged at him he brought his hand up and shoved her back, with no more emotion than if he was swatting a fly. His features tightening impatiently, he turned to the passenger side of the four-by-four, but by then Susannah had regained her balance, and before he’d taken more than a step she launched herself at his back and was on him.
“Not my baby! You don’t even touch him!” The terrified order came out in a thick, clogged voice she didn’t recognize as hers. Her grasping fingers went instinctively for his face. “You don’t touch my baby!”
“What the—”
His words were a disbelieving snarl. Turning so swiftly that one of her hands almost lost its grip, he made an inarticulate sound of rage when he found she was still clinging to his back. He stumbled against the garage wall and Susannah felt the skin being abraded from her arm as it scraped along the rough concrete.
“Damn you, bitch, let go of me!” His hands, one of them still holding the gun, wrenched at her wrists and managed to break her hold. She fell from him, striking her head against the wall as she did and landing jarringly on the floor at his feet.
“Goddammit, you could have blinded me!” He thrust his scratched face into hers, his features twisted in rage. “Did you think you could stop me from sending the brat along with you—”
“Over here!”
The shout came from just past the opened garage door. As the sandy-haired man’s head jerked up and he instinctively swung his gun around, the very air seemed to tear apart with the force of a double explosion. Susannah saw his head snap back, saw the just-fired gun drop from his hand, saw him fall to the floor beside her. She caught one horrific glimpse of his blood-soaked chest and scrambled to her feet, instant nausea rising at the back of her throat.
She made it to the front bumper of the vehicle before she threw up.
“For God’s sake, did he hurt you, Suze? Where’s Danny?”
Even before the hoarsely urgent questions had left Tyler’s lips he was beside her, an arm around her hunched shoulders, a hand holding back her hair as the thin bile spilled from her. She raised her head, wiping her mouth with the back of a trembling hand. Pulling from him, she ran to the passenger side of the vehicle.
In the past fifteen minutes her baby had been taken from his bed and hastily strapped into a car, and the world had exploded around him. But there was a contented little bubble of spit at the corner of the rosebu
d mouth. Danny exhaled softly in his sleep, and the bubble burst.
Susannah’s eyes flooded. She started to pull the edge of the blanket up around his shoulders, but her hand was shaking too badly to complete the small task.
“He’s grown.”
Gently moving her aside, Tye adjusted the blanket. He stood for a moment looking down at the child who’d been named for him and another strong man, and Susannah stood looking at him.
The T-shirt he was wearing was ripped at the shoulder, with a dark V-shaped patch of sweat running from the neckband to the middle of that washboard stomach. One tanned bicep sported a still-bleeding gash. Dried blood mixed with dirt smeared a hard cheekbone.
And still there was a golden glow about him.
“Babies—babies do that,” she answered unevenly. “The other shooters, Tye—they could be anywhere. We should—”
“I got one. Two, I guess,” he corrected himself, his jaw tensing as he flicked a glance over his shoulder at the body in the corner of the garage. “The one I took out first got hauled away by his buddy. The speed their car was going, with any luck they’ll break an axle before they make it to a paved road and Sheriff Bannerman and his men will find them. The man I came here with, Del Hawkins, should have made the call by now,” he added.
“And Greta? I saw her get hit, Tye,” she said, her fearful gaze on his. “We’re going to have to get her to—”
“She’s beyond any help Doc Jennings can give her,” he said, his voice harsh with emotion. “Del’s getting a medical chopper out here.”
Susannah closed her eyes, unbearable pain rushing through her. “I—I brought this to her,” she whispered. “She took me and Danny in, and the men who are after me got her instead. I should have known they’d find me here, Tye! I had no right to put her at risk like this!”
“Listen to me!” His hands were on her shoulders. He gave her a small shake, sharp enough that her eyes flew open and she raised her gaze to his in shock. His face was grim.
“If anyone’s at fault, I am. I should have pushed Bannerman harder when I realized he wasn’t convinced of my story the day I found you gone. I should have guessed someone had taken you in, instead of hitting gas stations and motels asking if anyone had seen a woman with a baby who looked like she didn’t belong with whoever was transporting her. But I didn’t. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
