Lone Rider Bodyguard

by Harper Allen

  “He—he smells a little milky,” she said, slightly embarrassed. “To me that’s just contented-baby smell, but—”

  “It’s contented-baby smell to me, too,” Tye said, bending his head to Danny’s clutching fingers. A tiny palm brushed against the stubble of his jaw. “I like it. I can always tell when you’ve just fed him.”

  “It’s not exactly French perfume.” He wasn’t just talking about Danny, Susannah knew. She’d noticed that same milk-and-talcum-powder baby scent on herself more than once. He raised an eyebrow.

  “No, it’s not French perfume. And the Frenchman who discovers how to bottle anything that erotic is going to be a very rich man, honey,” he said blandly. Before she could react he went on. “I’ve always suspected Del had his ghosts, but tonight they were stronger than ever. I’m glad you said what you did.”

  “I just told him the truth.”

  “The next generation of Double B men…” His tanned lips curved into a slow smile. “You know what the locals always said this place’s initials stood for, Suze? Bad Boy Ranch. More appropriate, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe fifteen years ago, but not now,” she protested. “For heaven’s sakes, you dropped everything when you learned Del was in trouble and now you’ve taken on my problems, too. Jess barely knows me and yet he’s using Crawford Solutions’s resources to find out what he can about Frank.”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “Hell, we’re no heroes. Just working off some serious karma, honey—trying to make up for all those cars we hot-wired and those street rumbles we got into when we were wild and crazy and out of control. I think Dan the Man’s about ready for some shut-eye. I’d better hand him over to his mama again.”

  For a moment as he gently transferred the small, warm body into her embrace, both of them were holding Danny. The feeling of completeness, of rightness again struck Susannah, as it had done earlier.

  And this time she knew what it meant.

  The Reverend Peabody would have been wrong, she thought shakily. What she felt for the big man with the baby in his arms wasn’t mere lust and it wasn’t just physical, although physical was part of it.

  She was falling in love with Tyler Adams…and even an unsophisticated single mama from Fox Hollow had to know a relationship between her and a fast-living, sweet-talking, ex-bad boy would never work.

  Chapter Seven

  “Once in a while Frank would say he’d left his wallet in his other jacket and ask me if I could spot him for breakfast at the diner,” Susannah said, staring at the rutted road ahead of them and barely noticing as the truck bounced jarringly in and out of a pothole. “Other times, it was all I could do to convince him it wasn’t fitting for him to buy me an expensive watch or a pair of earrings. I don’t know why I didn’t figure out before now that only a gambler could practically throw money away one day and be flat broke the next.”

  Jess had phoned early this morning, just shortly after Del had left for the hospital and while she was getting Danny ready for his outing to Joanna Tahe’s clinic. Tye had taken the call and it had been left to him to break the news to her—news that obviously hadn’t been a surprise to him, however shocked she’d been by it.

  “Atlantic City—” he’d shrugged “—and a grifter who liked fast money he didn’t have to work for. It seemed likely he wasn’t there for the salt air.”

  “How did Jess find out all this so fast?” she’d asked. “He must have been on the computer all night, but still…”

  “Despite the laid-back impression he likes to give, Jess can run rings around most of the high-paid geniuses he’s got working for him,” Tye had informed her. “He used some experimental software Crawford Solutions recently developed. After he downloaded one of Barrett’s old mug shots the program compared it with newspaper photos, surveillance videos, pictures from the security cameras in automatic bank machines—you name it. In this day and age, everybody’s on file somewhere. He got about a hundred hits, and at least half a dozen of them were from casino videos.”

  She’d frowned. “Most of this is beyond me, Tye, but I wouldn’t have thought private surveillance pictures would be available to just anyone with a computer.”

  “Fifteen years ago our boy Jess was capable of hacking into school records,” he’d said with brief humor. “Let’s just say I figured it was best not to ask too many questions.”

  He’d gone on to tell her the rest of what his friend had learned—that not only had Frank been a gambler, and an unlucky one, but he’d been blacklisted from several of the more well-known casinos for not making good on his losses.

  “After he was barred from the mainstream operations he went to the mob-run joints,” Tye had said. “In particular, he shows up several times on the surveillance videos of Michael Saranno’s club, and it’s rumored that although Saranno poses as a legitimate businessman he has his own way of dealing with dead-beats and cheats. There’s a real possibility Frank’s death was a mob hit, Susannah.”

  One day in the future Danny would want to know everything she could tell him about his father, Susannah thought now, glancing over her shoulder at her son in his infant seat as they jounced over another patch of bad road. She wouldn’t lie to him, but she would make sure he knew there had been more to Frank Barrett than the unpalatable facts Jess had gleaned from his computers and software. She looked down at her hands, lacing her fingers together in her lap.

  “I only saw him lose his temper once,” she said. She felt rather than saw Tye take his attention from the road for a second and look at her, but she didn’t meet his eyes.

  “A waitress who worked with me broke up with an abusive boyfriend, and the boyfriend showed up at the diner. Frank had him out of the door so fast his feet barely touched the ground, and when he took a swing at him, Frank laid him out cold in the parking lot. That was one of the times he was flush. When he came back into the diner he gave Lydia all the money he had on him and said she should make a new start in another city. Whatever else a body might say about Frank, he couldn’t abide seeing a woman being threatened like that. It would have torn him apart to think he’d been responsible for what’s been happening to me and Danny.”

  Now she did meet his gaze, her own clouded with worry. “This Michael Saranno—how does Jess figure he’s going to get in to see him?”

  It had been the final unwelcome component of Jess’s theory that a reluctant Tye had relayed to her this morning. If the killers targeting Susannah were mob hit men who’d eliminated Frank Barrett as an object lesson to other gamblers, their pursuit of her could mean Saranno intended to drive his warning home with a vengeance: not only would prospective deadbeats be putting themselves in jeopardy, but their families would be punished, as well. Jess had felt their only hope of calling off Saranno’s thugs would be for him to approach the mobster personally to plead Susannah’s case. Minutes after his conversation with Tye he’d boarded his company jet with the intention of doing just that.

  “Crawford Solutions does business with some of Saranno’s legitimate enterprises.” Tye winced as the washboard surface of the road gave way to unstable gravel. “And Jess isn’t certain Saranno will agree to see him, he just thought it was worth a shot. So do I.”

  He flicked a glance into the rearview mirror at the baby in the back seat, the lines around his mouth relaxing slightly. “Joanna Tahe said the word had already spread around the reservation about me delivering a baby by the side of the road. The women at her clinic were joking that the Double B would make a good maternity hospital.”

  If he’d meant to divert Susannah with his change of topic he’d succeeded. She smiled swiftly. “From what you’ve told me about her I can almost imagine her talking Del into it, at that. It was good of her to offer to check me and Danny over, Tye.”

  “I know Doc Jennings in Last Chance isn’t an option as long as we’re trying to keep a low profile for you and Danny, but if you’d prefer I took you into Gallup to see a doctor—” he began, but she didn’t let him finis
h.

  “You said Joanna spent ten years in Albuquerque as a maternity ward nurse before returning home here to open a new mothers’ clinic. It sounds like Joanna is way more qualified than any wet-behind-the-ears young doctor I might get if I just showed up at a hospital with Danny in my arms, and besides, we agreed it’s probably safer to stick as close to the ranch as possible until we hear from Jess.”

  She looked at the passing landscape with interest. “When do we cross over into the reservation?”

  “We’ve been on Navajo Nation land since shortly after we passed the Double B’s boundary. We’re talking a fair chunk of real estate, Suze…bigger than West Virginia,” he added with a teasing smile, gearing the truck down. “This slice of northwest New Mexico is only a small section of it—the Dinetah crosses into parts of Arizona and Utah, too.”

  He saw her puzzled look and elaborated. “The Navajos’ name for themselves is Dineh. It means the People, and Dinetah means Navajo country, or homeland. There’s the clinic, just ahead.”

  It was a squat white building, seemingly plunked down in the middle of nowhere. Three or four pickup trucks were parked nearby, one with a brindle-coated mongrel sitting in the driver’s seat, waiting for its owner. As Tye swung in to park alongside the vehicle, a dark-haired man in his late twenties or early thirties appeared from around the back of the clinic. Seeing their approach, he halted, his expression closed but not unfriendly.

  “Joanna’s brother, Matthew,” Tye informed her in an undertone. “He’ll give us a good reason for running into us here, but my guess is he planned it this way because he wanted to see you for himself. Matt’s Tribal Police.” He shot her a wry glance. “Just the fact that the unknown Belacana woman everyone’s talking about who gave birth at the side of the highway chose to bring her baby to his sister’s clinic, rather than going to an anglo doctor, would have him interested.”

  Belacana, Susannah surmised, had to mean non-Dineh. It was the second time he’d referred to the gossip surrounding Danny’s unconventional birth, and she felt sudden alarm.

  “This is what I was afraid of,” she said tightly as the truck came to a stop and Tye switched off the motor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Matt Tahe walking casually toward them. “If anyone’s asking around about me and Danny, it won’t take long before they find out everything they need to know, including where we’re staying. I know you said the Double B’s secure, but Vincent Rosario got past Kevin Bradley two nights ago, Tye, and my best chance of keeping my little boy safe was making sure no one found us.”

  “Rosario had to have gotten onto the property while Kevin was occupied with Jess,” he said with a frown. He nodded at Matt, now only a few yards away from them. “Even if your presence here is an open secret among the Dineh and the tribal authorities feel they should check you out, don’t worry. A stranger asking questions won’t get any answers from the People.”

  “Tyler Adams. It’s been a long time since you paid the Four Corners a visit.”

  Joanna Tahe’s brother drew near as Tye alighted from the truck. He didn’t offer his hand, Susannah noted as she opened her own door and flipped back the seat to unbuckle Danny, and she was glad Tye had explained earlier this morning to her that the omission was customary and not to be taken as an insult. But that was as far as her peace of mind went, she thought worriedly, scooping a wriggling Danny into her arms. How could she be sure Tahe wouldn’t mention her presence over coffee in a café, or that one of the mothers at the clinic wouldn’t inadvertently let something slip the next time she was in town buying formula?

  “Too long.” There was faint surprise in Tye’s voice, as if he’d just realized his answer held more truth than he’d realized. He repeated himself, more slowly this time. “Too long. I’d almost forgotten what clean air smelled like.”

  “My second cousin works out in California,” Matt said, nodding. “Stunt work for the movies. He says it’s hard to keep to the Way when some days you can’t even see the sky for the smog. But the money’s good, Joseph tells me.”

  It wasn’t quite a question. It wasn’t just a comment, either, Susannah sensed.

  “Your second cousin’s right, the money’s good if that’s all a man’s interested in. The people who hire my security firm to guard them certainly have all the toys and the possessions.”

  Tye seemed to have fallen into the same unhurried and thoughtful cadence as the black-haired man he was talking to. He looked away, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. Automatically following his gaze, Susannah saw that although the sky above them was cloudless and blue, the far-off ridge of mountains shimmered hazily.

  “Thunderheads building up.” Tahe’s observation was directed at her, and for the first time he smiled. “Sometimes tourists don’t realize how fast the road can wash away in a flash flood. I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for strangers, I guess, warn them off for their own good.”

  “I heard once of a pack of wild dogs getting swept away.” Tye shrugged. “Damnedest thing. But they’d been hanging around a herd of sheep trying to get at the lambs, so it was just as well. Saved the price of the bullets it would have taken to eradicate them.”

  Susannah felt suddenly at home. The conversation, convoluted as it was, would have made perfect sense to Granny Lacey or to any other close-lipped Fox Hollower, she thought with an inward smile. Even the fact that Tye hadn’t introduced her to Matt Tahe was significant—he’d wanted the lawman to realize he was aware Matt knew perfectly well who she was, and that their supposedly accidental meeting here was no accident.

  Whatever doubts Tahe might have had about Tye and the woman he was protecting had been dealt with in the same roundabout fashion. Tye had made clear his respect for the Way Tahe had spoken of—the Navajo Way of moderation and balance she remembered Del mentioning during one of their conversations yesterday—and in return Tahe had pledged his cooperation in watching out for any suspicious strangers.

  It’s like the stories Granny told me, about the government men who used to come around looking for Jeb Wainwright’s still during Prohibition, she thought, amused and reassured at the same time. They never did find it. Even folks who didn’t hold with bootlegging wouldn’t have told on Jeb.

  “…on my way to his hogan to speak with him now. You’re welcome to come if you want.” Matt Tahe was speaking again, his manner diffident. “Of course, if Alfred Nez really does believe it was a witch he saw in the canyon two nights ago he’ll be too afraid to say much of anything useful, but we might learn something from him.”

  “Your grandmother isn’t too scared to let everyone know she thinks there’s a Navajo witch on the loose,” Tye said evenly. “She was at the Double B yesterday, warning Del that the Skinwalker was still stalking.”

  “My sister told me,” Matt said, his expression darkening. “Grandmother also thinks that as long as she carries some pollen in a pouch she can keep Skinwalker away. She won’t listen to me when I tell her that if she’s wrong and it was an ordinary man who killed those horses we found last week and Billy Morgan’s sheep the month before that, nothing in a medicine bag could protect her if he thinks she knows something and decides to silence her.”

  “I knew about the horses. I thought it was an isolated incident, maybe someone getting revenge on the owner for something they thought he did.” Tye exhaled sharply. “I hadn’t heard there’d been other incidents besides the ones at the Double B.”

  “Not related, I’m sure.” Tahe shrugged. “When we catch whoever’s responsible it’ll probably be the same kind of scenario as what was going on at Del’s ranch with Vincent Rosario—someone with a grievance, out to cause as much trouble as possible. Still, until we catch him I’d feel better if Grandmother was more careful. You want to come with me to see Alfred Nez? We’ll be back within the hour.”

  “Go on, Tye,” Susannah said, seeing his indecision. She nodded at the other pickups parked nearby. “Seems as if there’s other ladies ahead of me, so I’ll likely be here a spell. No point in
you waiting in the truck for me, and you might feel a little out of place with the mamas and the babies inside.”

  His slow grin told he’d been thinking the same thing, but over her protests he insisted on escorting her into the clinic before leaving with Matt, seemingly unaware of the silent flutter of interest his brief appearance in the waiting room had caused.

  Unaware, or so used to it he didn’t notice anymore, she mused half an hour later when the last mother and child went into the examination room with an apologetically smiling Joanna Tahe, leaving her alone for the moment with her thoughts. From the joking comments Jess had made, even as a teen Tyler Adams had been irresistible to the opposite sex, and the broad-shouldered, good-looking man he’d become since wouldn’t ever have had any trouble attracting women.

  But probably not all of them were fool enough to fall in love with him, she thought heavily, rocking an uncharacteristically fretting Danny in her arms. And you haven’t just fallen for him, have you? You actually lay in bed last night wondering what it would be like being married to the man, for heaven’s sakes.

  He’d kissed her—once. In her world that meant something, but in the circles Tye moved in—in the circles a lot of other people moved in, Susannah reminded herself—a kiss didn’t have to mean anything. Even sleeping with someone didn’t have to mean anything.

  Except it does to me. She looked down at Danny. Sleeping with someone has to mean you’re willing to accept the possibility you might make a baby with them. That’s a commitment, in my book.

  “A lifelong commitment, at that,” she murmured to her son. “Which means marriage. I know a lot of folks don’t think that way these days and I’m not saying anything against them, but I guess I was brought up kind of old-fashioned, little man. I’m not his type of woman at all, am I? I never could be, not in a million years.”