Protector

by Diana Palmer

  “A man I know at the sale barn was telling me about it. Seemed a shame to him to kill a horse for defending a child. So I intervened.” She didn’t add that she’d intervened with a lawyer, a friend in network TV reporting and several animal rights activists. But in the end, she got custody of Archibald.

  “I imagine that’s a very long story,” Hayes said, reading between the lines.

  “It is, and not a pretty one,” she replied solemnly. “But I wasn’t about to let the horse pay for what a mean human being had done.”

  “What about the child?” Hayes asked.

  She smiled. “He went back to live with his mother. They found that he had a history of emergency room visits since he’d been with his stepfather, and he’d had a couple of broken bones. The stepfather lied about the boy’s mother abusing him to get custody, all to spite his ex-wife for leaving him. A tragic story all around.”

  “So now Archibald leads a charmed life and he has lots of fillies to keep him company,” Hayes said with a smile.

  “Yes. He’s such a gentle horse.” She winced. “It never ceases to amaze me, how some people think animals don’t even have feelings and that it’s all right to abuse them.” She shook her head. “What a world we live in.”

  “It’s getting better,” Hayes said. “Enlightenment takes time, grasshopper,” he teased.

  She grinned. Her face flushed at the teasing.

  “Well, I have to go,” Yancy said. He got to his feet.

  “But I’m just bringing coffee,” Sarah protested, entering the room with a tray. She glared at Yancy. “So you just sit right back down there and drink your coffee and eat some of this nice lemon pound cake Minette made,” she said belligerently.

  Yancy chuckled. “First time I was ever forced to eat cake and drink coffee. I’m not complaining. I’ve even got the boss himself for a witness,” he added, jerking his head toward Hayes. Everybody laughed.

  * * *

  After Yancy left, Minette went back to work, even though Hayes protested that she needed to rest her foot. Hayes stayed in the living room, by himself, brooding.

  “You should be resting,” Sarah said from the doorway.

  He sighed. “I should,” he agreed. He turned his head toward her. His dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Sarah, how much do you know about Minette’s mother?”

  She moved into the room, sat down on the edge of the sofa next to Hayes’s chair and looked at him somberly. “I know that the man she married wasn’t Minette’s natural father,” she confessed. “Minette knows that, too.”

  “Yes, but how much more do you know?”

  She looked worried. “She never said much about him. She was very reticent. I thought he was probably married, and that was why.” She smiled sadly. “My niece was always very naive. Sweet, but innocent. She wanted Minette very much. I don’t think she would have wanted her so badly if she hadn’t been in love with the father, you know?”

  He nodded.

  “I asked her one time if he knew about Minette. She never answered me.”

  Hayes felt his heart jump. That would be a complication, and it was one that disturbed him a lot.

  Sarah was sharp. Her own eyes narrowed. “You know a lot more about this than you’re saying, Hayes.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “You gave your word to somebody, that you’d never speak of it, didn’t you?”

  He smiled. “I guess my reputation follows me around.”

  She nodded. “We know if you make a promise, you keep it.” She leaned forward. “But how is it going to affect Minette, if her father turns out to be somebody really bad and he shows up here?”

  Hayes felt his face go taut. “You’re reaching, Sarah.”

  “Am I? Wouldn’t it be better, even if you break a promise, to tell her the truth before she finds it out in some public and humiliating way?”

  He was troubled, and it showed.

  “You need to think about that,” Sarah continued. She got up. “I won’t say another word about it.”

  “You see too much.” He smiled gently.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I just read people very well. Even sheriffs with poker faces,” she added with a grin.

  * * *

  Hayes was torn. He did feel bound by the promise he’d made. On the other hand, Minette’s life could be in danger. Her real father, El Jefe, might use her as a bargaining chip to save himself from being arrested and prosecuted for drug trafficking. His enemy, the other drug lord, Mendez, might feel inclined to kidnap her, or worse, use her as revenge for the other man’s invasion of his own drug territories.

  Either way, having El Jefe as a resident of Jacobsville did nothing to help Hayes’s recovery. He only wished he had some way, any way, to find out what the neighborhood drug lord was really up to.

  * * *

  Hayes’s wish came true unexpectedly. Zack stopped by two days later, his face grim. “Well, I think I may have some answers,” he told Hayes when they were behind the closed door in Hayes’s bedroom. “I can guarantee you won’t like them.”

  “Go ahead,” Hayes replied.

  “Well, it seems that El Jefe has a contact in Houston. That guy has a friend who works for one of the foremost private investigators in the business, Dane Lassiter.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Hayes said. “He was in law enforcement before being badly injured in a shootout.”

  “That’s the one. He’s got branches of his business in every major city in the country, and his reputation is sound. A few weeks ago, El Jefe had his contact hire Lassiter’s firm for a private matter.”

  “If Lassiter finds out who he is, he’ll be looking elsewhere for help,” Hayes predicted.

  Zack smiled. “Exactly. Lassiter did his homework. As an upshot, El Jefe had to find another private investigator.”

  “Do we know what he’s looking for?” Hayes asked quietly.

  “It’s a who, actually,” Zack said. “Or, rather, that’s the assumption. Get this, they say that El Jefe has a child somewhere, and he’s trying to find it.” He sighed, missing Hayes’s suddenly tense expression. “If you want my opinion, he’s already got the information he wanted. I mean, why would a drug lord who’s one jump ahead of the U.S. authorities suddenly pick up and move into Texas?”

  “You think El Jefe is related to somebody local,” Hayes interpreted.

  “You bet I do,” Zack replied.

  “Any idea who?” Hayes asked, trying his best to sound casual.

  “No clue,” the other man replied. “But the word is that El Ladrón has also engaged private detectives, no doubt for the same reason.” His expression was grim. “So we may find ourselves in the middle of a real turf war, protecting someone who’s going to be in a great deal of danger pretty soon.”

  “Yes.”

  “So I was thinking, if the drug lords could hire a P.I., why can’t we?” Zack continued.

  “The county commissioners will be thrilled if I go to them for funding,” Hayes remarked, trying to keep his fears about Minette hidden.

  “You could send Yancy,” Zack suggested. “Old Ben Yates is terrified of him. He’d probably agree at once.”

  Hayes frowned. “Why is he afraid of Yancy?”

  “There was this disagreement about a stand of oak trees that the chamber of commerce planted on the main county road several years ago,” Zack reminded him. “Ben decided that they were planted without proper permissions, so he tried to pass a motion to have them cut down.”

  “Now that just makes no sense at all,” Hayes mused.

  “It does if you realize that Ben lives on that road, that he just installed a huge wood-burning stove in his house, and that firewood’s expensive. He suggested that he could perform the labor himself for the wood.” He pursed his lips. “Oak’s a real slow-burning wood.”

  “And he could be arrested if I catch him cutting down a single tree,” Hayes said, irritated.

  “Well, that’s exactly what Yancy said, and a lot mor
e besides. You know, Yancy’s pretty intimidating when he loses his temper, plus he curses in some odd dialect of Spanish that nobody in this county even understands. So Ben didn’t understand what he was saying at all, but he actually ran out of the hardware store where the discussion took place, and went home. Ever since then, if you mention Yancy’s name, he gets real nervous and mentions that he doesn’t even own an ax.” He chuckled. “I think it’s funny.”

  “And people think politicians are honest.” Hayes shook his head.

  “Well, some of them probably are,” Zack replied.

  He bit his lower lip. “There should be a private detective somewhere around here that we could hire, closer than Houston.”

  “I’ll look into it. But whether or not the county will pay for it...”

  “I just had a thought,” Hayes remarked. “Winnie Kilraven’s husband is a fed,” he added. “And kidnapping is a federal crime. Now we don’t actually have a kidnapping yet, but if El Jefe’s enemy is looking into the identity of this unknown child, that’s a potential kidnapping. So I was thinking maybe we could get Kilraven to get the private detective on the job.”

  “What a brilliant idea,” Zack said with pure admiration.

  “Oh, I’m well-known for my brilliance,” Hayes assured him. “In fact, I tell people all the time how smart I am.” He smiled.

  “They must not listen. Nobody’s ever said anything like that to me about you.... I’m going!” Zack laughed, holding his hands palms-out.

  Hayes just grinned. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  * * *

  But when Zack left, Hayes was preoccupied. He had a bad feeling about the future. He couldn’t do a thing until he knew for certain what the drug lords were up to. He hoped Kilraven would be willing to help, and that he had a budget that would allow it.

  * * *

  “You want me to hire a private investigator to find out if a drug lord is planning on kidnapping somebody in Jacobsville?” Kilraven asked, aghast, when Hayes called him. “Hayes, I heard you got shot. Did you get shot in the head?”

  Hayes laughed. “No. In the shoulder. Listen, I know this sounds screwy, but I’m pretty sure that El Jefe has a child in the vicinity. And if El Ladrón’s boys are trying to find he...it,” he corrected quickly, “what better way to get a rival out of the way than to kidnap his child?”

  “You said ‘her.’” Kilraven was quick. “You don’t need a P.I. You already know.”

  “Damn,” Hayes muttered under his breath.

  “Don’t worry, this is a secure line and I’m as closemouthed as a clam,” Kilraven assured him.

  Hayes drew in a short breath. “Okay, I do know. But I can’t admit that I know. I promised my father.”

  “Does the child know?” Kilraven asked.

  “No. And I don’t know how to tell her,” Hayes said heavily. “She’s in danger.”

  “Talk to your father and promise him you wouldn’t do it unless you were convinced it was the right thing.”

  “My father’s been dead for years, Kilraven,” Hayes replied.

  “I know that. Talk to him anyway. Listen, I talk to my dad,” he said. “And I’m not crazy, despite what Cash Grier might tell you.”

  “Oh, Grier doesn’t think you’re crazy because you talk to dead people,” Hayes assured him. “He thinks you’re nuts because you’re always spouting that sixteenth-century Scottish political history to anybody who gets trapped in a room with you.”

  “There is nothing more exciting or interesting than sixteenth-century Scottish political history,” Kilraven scoffed. “Well, except for sixteenth-century British political history,” he conceded.

  “I like my history like I like commercials on television—muted.”

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”

  Hayes sighed. “Okay. Then can you pretend you hired a private investigator and that he told you who El Jefe’s child is, so you can tell me and I won’t have to break the promise I made to my father, right?”

  “Talk about convoluted reasoning,” Kilraven began.

  “Just do it. Please?”

  “Okay,” Kilraven said. “Here you go. El Jefe has a child. He moved to Jacobs County to find out more about his child. El Ladrón knows, and he may try to snatch the child. Will that do?”

  “Nicely. I’ll leave you a nice piece of land in my will,” Hayes promised. “I’ve got a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot plot covered in stinging nettle.... Hello?”

  There was a chuckle on the other end just before the line went dead.

  Hayes looked up at the ceiling. “Sorry, Dad. I know. But it’s for her own good. She has to know.”

  He couldn’t quite find the words to tell her. He decided that a shower might help him think, so he took one.

  He was still pretty weak. He managed to get into his underwear and his burgundy pajama bottoms, but he had to sit down on the closed toilet lid until his head stopped swimming. He really did feel his age. He wasn’t mending as fast as he wanted to. His arm was still really sore, and he couldn’t use it much. He hoped that the impairment would be temporary. Coltrain was noncommittal, and that nurse at the rehab wouldn’t tell him anything. She just kept smiling and telling him he was making great progress.

  Some progress, he thought huffily. At this rate, by next summer he might be able to bathe himself without danger of passing out!

  He got up a minute later and toweled off his hair with one hand. He looked in the mirror. It wasn’t encouraging. He looked drawn and pale. His thick blond-streaked brown hair could use trimming. At least he was clean-shaven and there wasn’t any stubble marring his square jaw. There were dark circles under his eyes, though.

  He glanced down at his chest and winced. Visible through the thick mat of blond hair that covered the muscles, the newest of the three pockmarks was very noticeable. The wound was healing, but it was unpleasant to look at. There was another one marring his shoulder in back. He grimaced as he studied himself in the mirror, which was foggy because of the heat from the shower. On his side, under his arm, was the scar from where they’d put in the tube to drain his lung just after he was shot.

  No woman was going to find that body attractive, he concluded. He wished he’d felt like putting on the clean white T-shirt he brought in here with him, but it hurt to raise his arm. Was that indicative of a new problem? He didn’t know. He was going to have to talk to Dr. Coltrain. He was getting worried about his lack of progress.

  He slung the towel over one shoulder, and, with his T-shirt between his fingers, he went out into the hall. Just in time to step right in front of Minette, who was coming down the hallway.

  Without thinking, Hayes smoothed the towel across his chest, to hide the wounds that he was self-conscious about.

  Minette gaped at him. Her face colored. She bit her lower lip.

  “What?” he asked belligerently.

  “You’re trying to hide your chest? Hayes, are you wearing...a bra...or something?” She burst out laughing, almost doubled over.

  His lips made a thin line. He slammed the T-shirt to the floor. “Damn it!”

  She sobered at once. He was really angry. She stared at him blankly.

  He swept the towel away from his chest and dropped it to the floor alongside the T-shirt. Then he just stood there, glaring at her.

  “Oh. I see, now...” Her dark eyes were apologetic. “I’m sorry. It just... I mean...” She winced. “It must hurt a lot,” she said.

  That was the last, the very last thing he expected her to say. It took the fire off his temper. “I thought you were going to say how distasteful it was to look at,” he replied, his voice deep with irritation.

  “Distasteful?”

  Her surprise made him even more self-conscious.

  He rubbed a hand over the thick hair beside the newest wound. “I didn’t realize how bad it looked until I saw myself in the mirror,” he said, averting his eyes.

  “It doesn�
�t look bad at all,” she assured him.

  He thought she was bluffing. His black eyes met hers, but she didn’t look as if she were trying to be polite.

  “It doesn’t?” he echoed.

  She shook her head. “No.”

  He moved one shoulder. “I guess I’m more self-conscious than I realized.”

  She smiled. “No need to be.” She leaned down and picked up his T-shirt and the towel, and handed them to him. She flushed a little as she stared at the broad, muscular chest in its nest of thick, curling dark blond hair. “I’m not used to meeting half-dressed men in my hall.”

  He smiled back. “Oh.”

  Her eyes went back to the wound. “It still looks a little red. Is that normal?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I was going to call Coltrain.” He sighed. “I’m not getting better as fast as I thought I would.”

  “Are you in a hurry to leave?” she asked.

  “Sure. I can’t wait to rush home to bouncing biscuits and overdone bacon and burned toast,” he agreed at once.

  She laughed.

  “I just don’t want to be in the way here,” he said.

  She shook her head. “You’re not. The kids are having a ball watching movies with you,” she confided. “They do whatever I ask now, without any argument, as long as I agree to let them pester you for another cartoon movie every night.”

  “I don’t mind,” he confessed, laughing. “They’re super kids.”

  “Thanks.”

  He drew in another breath. “Listen. We need to talk. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  She raised both eyebrows. “You really do wear a bra?”

  He glared at her. “Stop that.”

  “Sorry. It just slipped out.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Okay, I’m serious. What is it?”

  He searched her eyes slowly, hesitantly. He didn’t want to have to tell her. It was going to be painful, in more ways than one.

  He moved a step closer. One big warm hand went to her soft cheek. She was a tall girl, but the top of her head only came up to his nose. He looked down into her dark, soft eyes with utter fascination.

  She felt her heart shaking her with every beat. She could feel the warmth of Hayes’s breath on her nose. She could feel the heat from his powerful body. Involuntarily her cool hands went to his chest, pressing just above his diaphragm, sliding into the thick, soft hair that covered the hard muscles.