Texas…Now and Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  Haley returned his narrow-eyed scrutiny. Marriage agreed with him, she thought. Spence had always been intense and, from what she’d heard through Carl Bridges during her years abroad, had made a hell of a prosecutor. Since his marriage to a single mom with a school-aged son, though, he’d given up the D.A.’s job to become a private law consultant and to spend more time with his new family. The change showed in his face. The lines were softer, the angles less sharp.

  “I hear you’ve had a rough time of it,” he said finally.

  Haley had no answer for that.

  “Luke explained why you disappeared the way you did. He also said you’re Lena’s mother.” A rough sympathy glinted in his brown eyes. “We’ll get her back.”

  She could have kissed him for putting aside the past and concentrating only on the urgent present.

  “Thank you.”

  To her relief, at least one of the two men who arrived a few moments later appeared ready to do the same. Tyler Murdoch tossed a small leather satchel onto the table and gave her a slow once-over, much as he had when she’d approached his table at the Saddlebag last night. The taciturn, onetime mercenary made no reference to her supposed drowning, however, and said only that he was there to help.

  Flynt Carson seemed to have the toughest time accepting Haley’s resurrection. Not because he, along with the three others, had been charged with her death. But because the ruggedly handsome rancher had taken Lena into his home and into his heart.

  In her cover as Daisy Parker, Haley had ached inside every time Flynt and his wife, Josie, brought Lena into the country club and showed her off with such love and pride. She’d also seen that they were as shattered as Haley herself when the baby was kidnapped from their ranch four months ago. She fully expected Flynt to lay into her now for setting him and Josie up for that kind of pain. The regret she saw in his piercing blue eyes surprised her.

  “You could have trusted us, Haley. Luke and I and the others would have helped you, both when you needed to escape Mission Creek and when you came back.”

  “I know I could trust you.” A lump lodged in her throat. “You were Ricky’s closest friends. I had crushes on each one of you at various times. I just couldn’t let you—any of you—put your lives at risk.”

  The brutal reality behind the statement silenced Flynt. Haley had nothing more to say, either. Shoving her hands into her jeans’ pockets, she glanced from one man to the other.

  How many times had she seen them standing shoulder to shoulder like this? How many times had she heard their shouts of laughter echoing through the Mercado house?

  Luke. Spence. Tyler. Flynt.

  And Ricky. If only Ricky were here! The Fabulous Five would be together again, guilt and blame forgotten, the past erased.

  Maybe soon, she thought wearily. Now that she’d confessed the truth, maybe the five men could mend the broken links of their friendship. Maybe these four could pull Ricky from the pit he’d fallen into after Haley’s supposed death. Clinging to that thin hope, she joined the group at the table. Teresa Chavez bustled around, serving coffee and the remains of her spicy stacked tortilla lasagna to the three hungry males before heading for the front of the house to make her morning rounds.

  “Just to recap,” Luke said, “Frank Del Brio contacted Haley at an FBI safe house a little past nine last night and demanded two million dollars for Lena’s safe return.”

  “Did the FBI get a trace on the call?” Tyler asked quickly.

  “No.”

  “Well, hell! What the heck kind of equipment are they using, anyway?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What kind of proof did he offer?” Flynt put in. “How do we know Del Brio actually has Lena?”

  “We don’t, at this point. That’s one of the conditions we’ll stipulate. He’ll have to deliver visual, real-time evidence that she’s alive and unhurt before we deliver the two million.”

  “Aren’t you going to negotiate?” Spence asked, frowning. “I hate to see scum like Del Brio make off with a cool two million.”

  “Del Brio knows I’m good for it,” Luke replied. “He won’t settle for less and I don’t want to waste time with lengthy negotiations. I want to get the money ready so Haley and I can deliver it to the specified point at the specified time.”

  “Haley and you?”

  Three pairs of eyes switched to the woman at the table. Tyler asked the question that showed clearly in each face. “Del Brio agreed to that?”

  “No. He told me to make sure there were no cops or anyone who even faintly smells of FBI within fifty miles of the scene or I’d never—” Her voice hitched. “Or I’d never see Lena again. It was my idea to ask Luke for help.”

  “She figured Del Brio wouldn’t consider me much of a threat,” he explained wryly. “She also suggested I could provide some sort of distraction while she takes Del Brio down.”

  Haley braced herself, expecting Luke’s three friends to become indignant on his behalf. To her surprise, they gave her plan serious consideration.

  “She has a point there,” Tyler mused, tapping his blunt-tipped fingers on the weathered wood of the table. “The little contact I’ve had with Frank over the years was enough to convince me that he’s an arrogant bully. He wouldn’t consider you a threat, Luke.”

  “If you play it right,” Spence added slowly, “you might just get within range.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  Luke’s feral smile raised the small hairs on the back of Haley’s neck. His three friends wore similar expressions. They’d closed ranks, she saw. Their shared training and military experience, not to mention the hardships they endured as POWs, had sent their minds racing along parallel tracks. Luke called on that experience now.

  “Think you can fix me up, Tyler?”

  “I’ve got a few tricks in my electronic grab bag that might just surprise ole Frank.”

  “Like what?” Haley asked. Her earlier argument with Luke had made her distinctly nervous. This one was adding to her uneasiness by the minute.

  The mercenary shifted in his seat, obviously reluctant to lay out the tools of his trade. She leaned forward to make sure she had his full attention, as well as that of the other men at the table.

  “Luke and I have already had this discussion, Tyler. We’ve agreed that we’ll operate as a team. I don’t want any surprises when we go to deliver the ransom. No wild pyrotechnics going off when I least expect them or explosive devices that might endanger my child.”

  Tyler still needed confirmation from their unspoken leader before he’d agree. “Luke?”

  “Haley’s right. She’ll be out there on point with me when we deliver the ransom. She has to know who and what is backing her up.”

  “True,” his friend conceded with a shrug. “Okay, here’s what I’m thinking. We could outfit you with a miniaturized phased-array scanner. The army’s testing one up at Fort Hood right now. It’s the size of an ordinary wristwatch, but the damned thing sends out high-intensity radar waves, identifies objects that fit certain parameters and returns a perfect signature.”

  “So Luke won’t need sight to track Del Brio’s every move,” Spence put in for Haley’s benefit. “The scanner will do it for him.”

  Tyler continued to outline his plan. “I can also rig a special infrared laser scope that will lock on to a target and follow it. What weapons are you planning to take with you, Luke?”

  “A SIG Sauer 9 mm. Maybe an ankle-holstered .38 Special, as well.”

  Haley listened in a growing daze. They’d already moved so far beyond her original, half-formed plan using Luke as a distraction that she could scarcely keep up.

  “What about explosives? I know where there’s a stash of high-impact, zero-centered grenades.”

  “No explosives,” Luke said swiftly. “At least not until Haley and Lena are well away from the scene. At which point,” he added, “there won’t be enough left of Frank Del Brio to blow up.”

  Tyler
nodded. “Good enough. I’ll chopper up to Fort Hood as soon as we finish here and get working on this stuff.”

  Nodding, Luke pushed a slip of paper across the table in Spence Harrison’s general direction.

  “Spence, I need you to retrieve the money for me. I e-mailed Hoyt Bennington last night and told him to expect you. Here’s the authorization to withdraw the two million from my cash reserve account. Del Brio specified nonsequential bills, no larger than hundreds. Hoyt promised to have it banded and ready when you get there.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Flynt?”

  “Right here, buddy.”

  “I don’t plan to let Del Brio walk away with the ransom, but just in case, we’ll have to tag the bills.”

  “He insisted they had to be unmarked,” Haley interjected.

  “What Del Brio wants and what he gets are two different sacks of beans,” Flynt drawled. “Don’t worry. Tyler has a supply of some very interesting chemical agents. They can’t be picked up by X-ray machines, light scanners or explosive-sniffing dogs. We’ll treat the bills and, as backup, I’ll also scan their serial numbers so we can send an alert through the Federal Reserve computers. If Del Brio walks with the cash, he won’t walk far.”

  “I don’t know how much time we have,” Luke warned the assembled team. “Del Brio could contact Haley at any time with instructions for delivery. We’ll counter with a demand for proof of life, which should buy us at least a few hours, but we’ll have to hustle.”

  Chairs scraped the floor as the three friends rose.

  “Not to worry,” Tyler assured him. “We’re off on our assigned tasks. We’ll let you know if we run into any glitches. And just so Del Brio doesn’t intercept our communications, we’d better use these.”

  Unzipping the leather satchel he’d tossed onto the table earlier, he passed out what looked to Haley like ordinary cell phones.

  “They operate off a secure satellite and send scrambled signals,” he explained. “The V.R.S.—Voice Recognition System—built into each phone restricts transmissions to only the person whose speech pattern the scrambler recognizes. Punch in 0-1-0-6 and say ‘Mary had a little lamb’ to activate the V.R.S.”

  Spence snorted. “‘Mary had a little lamb’?”

  “Hey, when Luke called late last night, Marisa and I were, uh, otherwise engaged. A nursery rhyme was the best I could come up with at the time.”

  “Considering that you and Marisa have been married for all of three weeks,” Spence retorted, “I’m surprised he could get you out of bed at all.”

  “It took some doing,” Luke drawled.

  “What can I say?” the mercenary replied with a goofy grin. “I’ve finally been broken to the bit.”

  “From what Marisa’s told me,” Spence retorted, “you’re a long way from being broken to the bit. But if anyone can do it, she can.”

  Silently, Haley agreed. She’d only crossed paths with Tyler’s fiery, fiercely independent new wife a couple of times. The brief encounters had made a definite impression.

  “I still can’t believe all three of you went down in flames so quickly, one right after another.” Shaking his head, Luke snapped closed the laptop’s lid. “Single women all over the world are probably weeping as we speak.”

  The good-natured jab elicited a quick response from Flynt.

  “You’ll understand when you give up your free-wheeling bachelor ways,” he predicted with the utter confidence of a man who, against all odds, had been given a second chance at love. His blue eyes flickered in Haley’s direction before returning to his friend. “And in case you’ve forgotten, you’ve got a daughter to help raise now.”

  Haley stiffened. She wasn’t prepared to discuss Luke’s role in Lena’s future. They’d work out the necessary arrangements if—when!—they got Lena back.

  Luke evidently shared her reluctance to discuss the matter in front of his friends. Charging them to keep him posted on their progress during the next few hours, he sent them off on their various assignments.

  With their exit, the intense energy levels that had swirled around the kitchen for the past hour seemed to drop a good ten or twenty amps. Suddenly Haley felt as drained. Pushing out of her chair, she started clearing the table of the plates and coffee mugs.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Luke informed her. “Teresa has a helper who comes in. She’ll take care of the dishes.”

  “I need to keep busy.”

  “Suit yourself.” Tucking the laptop under his arm, he left her to her self-appointed task. “I’ll be in the den.”

  Trailing his right hand along the marble countertop, he made his way out of the kitchen and down the hall. His footsteps echoed on the polished parquet floorboards. Belatedly, Haley realized the Persian runner that used to add such a glow of jewel-like colors to the hall was gone. Rolled up and stored away like the ones in the living room, she guessed, so Luke wouldn’t trip over it.

  Thinking how both their worlds had changed so dramatically, Haley collected the dirty dishes. A few minutes later she tucked the last of them into the dishwasher, wiped her hands on a handy towel and followed Luke to the den.

  He was standing at the front windows, his hands shoved into his back pockets, staring through the sparkling panes as though he could actually see the glorious Texas morning now spreading its gold across the surface of the lake.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “We wait.”

  Twelve

  “Why doesn’t he call?”

  Clutching a dew-streaked iced-tea glass in a tight fist, Haley checked her watch. It was almost noon. Three and a half hours since Luke had sent his friends off on their appointed tasks. Fifteen since Frank Del Brio’s call last night. She’d just about worn a rut in the den’s hardwood floor with her pacing.

  “He wants to keep you on edge,” Luke stated calmly, following the sound of her voice.

  “Well, he’s doing a damned good job of it.”

  She’d been a bundle of nerves all morning. A call to the hospital assured her her father was holding his own. That had helped steady her, for a little while anyway. But the slow, dragging hours had piled tension on top of fear on top of frustration.

  “He’ll try to up the pucker factor until you won’t stop to think when he does call, you’ll just jump. Don’t play into his hands, Haley. Sit down. Force yourself to relax.”

  “I can’t make myself visualize a soft gray haze right now,” she muttered, too tense to attempt the relaxation technique that had worked so well last night. “I don’t want to think about anything except Lena.”

  “So visualize her. Better yet, help me visualize her. Tell me about her.”

  The ploy worked. Haley’s emotions shifted instantly from gnawing worry about her daughter to the remembered joy of cuddling her small, warm body. With a sigh, she dropped down in the over-stuffed leather chair next to Luke’s.

  “She’s so beautiful. Honestly! This isn’t just a proud mother speaking. She’s got fat little apple cheeks and the happiest gurgle. And she was born with the most incredible head of hair. Thick and black, like yours. The nurses tied a pink bow in it the day we left the hospital.”

  Swirling the ice in her watered-down tea, Haley savored the memory. What could have been such a wrenching experience for a single woman had in fact been the most momentous event of her life.

  “She has your eyes, too. At least she did the last time I saw her,” she added with a hitch in her voice. “That was four months ago. Four months! She was just coming up on her first birthday.”

  “Is that the magic point?” Luke asked, dragging her back from the brink again with his deliberate calm. “One year? After that, a baby’s eye color doesn’t change?”

  “Not if the books I read are right. Supposedly the pigment cells in the irises accumulate and the eye color matures by the time the baby’s a year old.”

  “So she’s got my hair and eyes. What did she inherit from you?”

  “M
y stubbornness,” Haley replied without hesitation. “For such a tiny bit of fluff, she’s got a temper she doesn’t mind showing every so often. She has my skin tone, too, compliments of her Italian heritage. Her nose is still just a button, thank goodness. I’m hoping she doesn’t develop the little bump in the bridge my mother passed on to me. I didn’t miss that when the cosmetic surgeon gave me a new nose.”

  “The surgeon did a good job. I remember thinking you looked familiar when you first walked into the Saddlebag that night. I couldn’t place you, but there was something. Your walk maybe, or the way you held yourself. But I knew I’d never seen your face before. I would have remembered it. What do you look like now?”

  With a start, Haley remembered he’d never seen her in her Daisy Parker persona. He’d left the country just before she began her stint as a waitress at the country club. When he returned, he’d lost his sight.

  “I have the same face I did that night at the Saddlebag. I just use a lot more makeup.”

  Or she had, until the shoot-out three nights ago that left her father in ICU and Haley buttoned up in the FBI’s safe house. She’d hardly eaten or slept since, let alone bothered with makeup.

  “When I first went undercover, I had injections to make my lips fuller. I’ve lost weight these past months, too. Except for my hair, which is a lighter blond now, I’m pretty close to the woman I was two years ago.”

  She hesitated, then placed her glass on a coaster and slipped out of her chair to sit on her heels beside his. Reaching for his left hand, she guided it to her cheek.

  “Do you recognize that woman, Luke?”

  The roughened pads of his fingers moved across her cheek to her nose. With a small frown of concentration, he followed the smooth slope down and up again before tracing the line of her brows. Leaning forward, he brought his right hand up to join the left. His palms cupped her cheeks. His thumbs moved over her lips in slow exploration.

  Haley’s breath caught. His touch was light and gentle, but her skin prickled with each slow stroke. He was so close to her now, his elbows resting on his knees, his face mere inches from her own as he rediscovered the woman whose mouth and body he’d claimed repeatedly the night they’d conceived their child.