Passion to Protect

by Colleen Thompson

  She nodded as she crept inside on mouse feet.

  “Have a seat,” he invited, nodding to the chair in front of his desk.

  She shook her head, then took a deep breath and braced herself. “I think I’d rather stand for this.”

  So she knew. Well, that was better. These things were a lot harder when the other person was surprised. Though his sister would make his life hell for doing a thing like this to her “grandbaby,” Camille was still young. Young enough that a dismissal from this dead-end job, along with last-week’s breakup with her dead-end boyfriend, might be exactly what she needed to get her to take another stab at finishing her schooling.

  Bracing himself for the hard part, he dropped his bottle of antacids back into his desk drawer.

  “Before you get started, though,” she blurted, passing him a sheet of paper, “you’ll probably want to see this email from Special Agent Davies about what she’ll need to facilitate her investigation. I’ve highlighted all the need-to-know stuff.”

  “So Harper Davies is a woman?” Harry asked, not wanting to embarrass himself with a gaffe. “You’re sure?”

  “Definitely.” Camille’s voice grew steadier as she continued. “We talked for quite a while earlier. She sounded young. And she was so nice.”

  “You talked?” As Harry dug through the stack of memos, reports and other papers littering his desk, he swore he could feel his blood pressure rising. “You forget to take the message?” Again.

  “Oh, there was no message,” she hastened to assure him. “She just wanted to get to know a little about the department and the people she’d be interacting with here.”

  “The people?” Over the course of his long career he’d run across—and been forced to cooperate with—FBI agents now and again, but he’d never met one who’d acted halfway interested in finding out about the local law enforcement team, unless... Did they suspect him of incompetence? Or worse?

  “Sure,” said Camille. “Like you, for instance. She had a lot of questions about you.”

  Alarm jolted through him. What the hell?

  “You know,” Camille elaborated. “The way you run things, what you’re like to work with, that sort of thing.” With a shrug, she added, “The little quirks that make you special.”

  Harry didn’t like it any more than he liked the shrewd sparkle replacing Camille’s blush. She darned well knew she’d snagged his full attention, and she was enjoying his discomfort. “So what exactly did you tell the nice agent, Camille?”

  She smiled—the first real smile he’d seen from her in days. Yep. The kid was definitely having fun here in what she clearly suspected were her final moments on the job. That, in combination with her ability to coax some sort of sense from the machines he was forced to deal with more and more often lately, convinced him she was a lot sharper than her recent screw-ups would suggest.

  Sharp enough to warrant one more chance, he decided when she left him hanging.

  “Would it help to know you’re not getting fired?” he asked. Not today, at any rate.

  “Really? That’s so awesome. Because I have some ideas—ways to help streamline things around here, get rid of all this old-school paper you have cluttering your office and—”

  “Let’s not get carried away. Now tell me, before I drag you into the interrogation room and break out the rubber hoses, what exactly did you tell Special Agent Davies about me?”

  Her smile betrayed not a hint of slyness, but all he could get from her was a smug, “Nothing but the truth.”

  At the stark reminder of his duty to give Deke’s daughter the full truth, Harry said curtly, “Close the door on your way out, Camille.”

  Then he reached for the phone one more time, intent on reaching Liane before Agent Davies beat him to the punch.

  Chapter 15

  Peering from behind the corner of the old bunkhouse, Mac watched Liane walk out with the man he now knew for certain was her lover. Though he hadn’t been able to see anything when he’d finally worked up the courage to creep close enough, he’d damned well heard her cries of passion. It disgusted him to know that his wife, still as beautiful as ever, was whoring with some two-bit cowboy, that she would screw the bear-spray-wielding bastard within sight of the house where she lived with the children whose minds she’d poisoned against him.

  I’d be well within my rights to kill them both now, to leave their blood-soaked bodies lying in the dirt. Then he could go and take the children. Sooner or later they would come around and realize that everything he’d done had been for them. Eventually, he thought, he could even make them love him. After all, I’ll be the only one they have left.

  But when he noticed the tools that Liane and her lover were carrying, he pushed aside his fury and focused on what she was saying.

  “There’s no way we’ll find that money, not after the sheriff and his deputies have already searched the place three times.”

  “If it’s anywhere, it has to be in your dad’s study,” the cowboy insisted. “Maybe hidden in the walls?”

  Mac’s rage grew white-hot. Not only was the cowboy screwing Liane, he was clearly out to claim the money he’d sacrificed everything for.

  She nodded. “I still think you’re dead wrong, but Dad did have drywall put in front of the old log walls so he could hang his photos.”

  He nodded, shifting the tools uncomfortably.

  “Let me get that. You’re still healing,” she said, reaching for the pickax.

  “I’ve got it,” he was quick to tell her.

  Even from his vantage point, Mac could detect the strain between them.

  “Don’t be so stubborn,” Liane said, taking the pickax from him.

  “When they put up the drywall,” the cowboy said, “they would’ve had to build the wall out. Which means there’d be a space behind it.”

  “If there’s a drywall patch, we’ll see it,” she said. “But don’t you think the sheriff and his men would’ve, too?”

  The two of them walked toward the house, still debating, and Mac weighed his options. As badly as he wanted them dead, he had to have that money. Could he take a chance on killing them both and then searching the house by himself? Or would it be better to risk a confrontation now, before they got inside, and force them to do his searching for him?

  Armed as he was, he was certain he could control Liane, but the memory of the tall man jumping him, then nailing him full in the face with the bear spray, had him worried about the potential for another violent surprise.

  So take the risk out of the equation, he thought as, heart in throat, he slipped out into the open. Kill the cowboy right now, while surprise is on your side.

  * * *

  “Move over, Misty,” Liane said as she set down the tools to unlock the back door, “and please stay out from under my feet.”

  Whining urgently, the dog seemed as tense as she felt, but it was all she could do to handle her own swirling emotions. As furious as she’d been with Jake for believing her father could have found and kept the stolen money, she knew she was not only terrified he was right but angry with herself.

  She’d been a fool to sleep with him. No matter how powerful the attraction, how right and inevitable—how incredible—it had felt to make love with him, she knew she could only hurt him by pretending she was capable of getting past what had happened to her and moving forward.

  She also knew now that she’d been crazy to think she and Jake could ever maintain a simple friendship. There was no ignoring the way he made her feel and no deluding herself into thinking she could ever push him away without hurting him or that it wouldn’t destroy her to see him with another woman.

  “You all right?” he asked, clueing her in to the fact that she was standing frozen in place.

  “Whatever we find or don’t find,” he s
aid gently, “I swear to you, I’ll be there to help you through it.”

  Tears came to her eyes as she thought of how much she would miss this caring man and how devastated her kids, who had taken to begging her to “be real nice to Mr. Jake so he can stay with us forever,” would be when they were forced to leave him. Her heart shuddered as she thought of giving up the home that had been in her family for more than a century, but she had no hope of affording it on her own, much less growing the business back to the point where it was a going concern. Instead, she would be forced to evict Jake and then leave—perhaps returning to her old job—since she couldn’t imagine sticking around this area, living on the fringes of her old life.

  The sense of loss and failure, of letting down her father and grandfather, the whole long line of Masons, stole the breath from her lungs. Maybe if she’d taken more of an interest from the start, stayed here to help her dad instead of rushing off straight after college to work for a big corporate hotel—or tried harder to help him out after her return, in spite of his resistance to what he’d called her “fancy new ideas”—he never would’ve grown desperate enough to...

  Grief sideswiped her again, so raw and painful that she found herself saying, “I need a moment. You go in. It’s just—it’s harder than I thought to come back.”

  “The first step’s always toughest,” he said, looking at her with such compassion that she wanted to fall into his arms.

  But she didn’t allow herself to compound her earlier error. Instead she opened the door, moving aside as Misty nosed her way through. “I’ll be right in, I promise. Do you remember the alarm code?”

  “I’ve got it,” he told her as he stepped inside to turn off the newly repaired system. “You call if you need me and I’ll be back out in a flash.”

  * * *

  The smile Liane sent Jake’s way didn’t touch the sadness in her eyes. As upset as he’d been when she’d compared him to her ex, his anger evaporated at the reminder of the hell she’d been through—and was still going through.

  Don’t crowd her, he warned himself, or you could lose her forever.

  A few minutes later, when he looked out to check on her, he found her pacing as she spoke on the phone.

  “Whatever you need to say, Sheriff,” she was saying, “just go ahead and spit it out.”

  Assuming that Harry was telling her about the FBI’s involvement, he left the door ajar, then went to find a flashlight. Back inside the study, he directed the beam over every inch of drywall, including the areas hidden behind the desk and file cabinet and behind the framed photos. But he found no sign of a recent patch job, nor did he spot anything behind several file boxes in the supply closet.

  “Foundation...” he murmured, then looked down, realizing he should have thought of the floor earlier. Though he saw no evidence of loose boards, he realized there was no way he would know for certain whether anything was under there until he took up the big area rug and then pried up every bit of flooring.

  It would leave a hell of a mess, he knew, as well as a lot to explain when the FBI came calling. Realizing that his previous plan to move the money if he found it had been a foolish fantasy, he decided he had better discuss things with Liane before he went any further.

  As he returned to the back door, he didn’t hear her talking, so he stepped outside to look. “Liane?” he called, wondering where she could have gone.

  Then he spotted the taillights of her silver Jeep as they disappeared from view.

  Chapter 16

  As she ended her conversation with Harry, Liane was stopped her in her tracks by the sound of a voice she’d hoped never to hear again. Mac’s voice.

  “One move, one sound, and you’re one dead slut, I swear it.”

  Shock cascading through her system, she felt something hard pressing into her back. A gun, she thought, a scream on her lips before he grabbed her arm and starting walking her quickly toward her Jeep.

  “Try anything and I swear I will shoot you,” he said. “Now move. We’re going for a little ride.”

  Somehow she managed to stay on her feet, but there was nothing she could do to stop her body’s trembling or the nausea threatening to double her over. It’s real this time—no nightmare. Today’s the day I die.

  “You want to stay alive?” he asked. “At least a little longer?”

  Paralyzed with fear, she couldn’t answer.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he told her as he opened the driver’s door and shoved her behind the wheel.

  Shaking her head, she fought to clamp down on her panic. “Just let me go inside and tell him I have to go pick up the kids. That way he won’t be suspicious.”

  Mac’s cruel laughter sent her racing heartbeat into overdrive. “You’re kidding, right? You take one step toward that house and it’s over.” His gun still pointed at her, he slipped into the seat behind her. “Take out that phone and call him, tell him you’ll be right back. Tell him Cody’s sick and you’ve gone to get him. Tell him whatever you want. Just make it good.”

  “He’ll insist on coming with me,” she warned, desperation forcing her voice higher. “No matter what I say.”

  Mac’s slow grin in the rearview was the face of evil. “If you can’t manage one simple lie, no problem. I have a score to settle with the bastard anyway. And don’t worry, I’ll be happy to take his place between your legs.”

  Liane’s vision grayed, her stomach lurching.

  “Start driving,” he ordered. “Then make your call. And be sure to make your story convincing.”

  She pulled her keys from her pocket and stabbed them into the ignition. “He’ll hear it in my voice that I’m lying.”

  “He’d better not. Otherwise we will go get those kids now, and I swear you’ll never see them again.”

  Alarm streaked through her at the thought that he might mean to harm them. “Please, Mac. Whatever you believe I’ve done, you’ve already punished me by—you took my father from me.”

  “It was his own damned fault. He went for his gun—didn’t even give me a chance to ask him about that money he stole. My money.”

  “Whatever he did or didn’t do,” she said, forcing herself to keep her focus on saying whatever she had to to save her children, “there’s no reason to do this.”

  “I can think of about two-and-a-half million reasons,” he said. “And that’s not even counting the most important one—revenge.”

  * * *

  As Camille stepped inside Harry’s office, she raised her delicate brows. “I’ve never seen you turn up your nose at Toni’s pot roast. Something wrong with it today?”

  He looked down at the congealing brown mass, normally his favorite, and shut the take-out container with a snap. “Guess I’m just not hungry.”

  “You’re not getting sick, are you?”

  He shook his head, though the burning in his stomach had grown worse than ever. Funny, when he’d convinced himself that talking with Liane would make things better. Maybe if he’d kept on talking, rather than convincing himself he’d already upset her enough for one day...

  She gave him a skeptical look. “Your color’s kind of off. Maybe you should make an appointment with the doctor.”

  “If your grandmother’s put you up to doing her nagging for her, you can tell her I’m just fine.” With no children of his own to “look after him,” as his sister put it, she’d come right out and told him it was up to her to see he didn’t go to seed. He might have appreciated the thought if Violet’s “help” hadn’t included sending Hurricane Camille his way.

  His grandniece looked worried. “Maybe Grandma’s right. You’ve had a really tough week, and it’s only been a few months since Aunt Myrtle—”

  “Six months,” he said hollowly, feeling every day of the half year since he’d last seen her in the fles
h. In dreams he saw her all the time, and even in the daylight he often imagined he glimpsed her thin face with its reassuring smile.

  “Why don’t you go home and lie down for a little while?” she suggested. “I can give you a call when Special Agent Davies gets here.”

  “I imagine you’d like that,” he groused. “Give you another chance to chat with your new friend about me.”

  She smiled. “Come on, Uncle Harry. I was only teasing about that. I swear I didn’t tell her anything except how you’re a real sweetheart, underneath that grouchy exterior.”

  “The hell I am. Now, did you come in here for any reason in particular? Aside from irritating me, that is?”

  Still smiling, she nodded and passed him a message. “Sure. I thought you might get a kick out of this one. Lady called in with an urgent problem.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  Camille rolled her eyes. “She says that when she and her husband came home a little bit ago her coffee pot was empty. And, even worse, apparently she’d had her heart set on a honey-glazed donut, but somebody’d swiped the last one from the box.”

  She laughed, as she usually did at the more absurd calls. But if she’d hoped he would join in, she was disappointed.

  “You’re seriously bothering me about that? Now? Don’t you have some filing out there or something?”

  She sighed and left him, hurrying her steps when the phone on her desk started ringing.

  Before Harry could get up the gumption to toss his lunch in the trash, Camille called, “Line two for you. Bob Carpenter, and he sounds really mad.”

  Wondering what was bothering the normally easygoing retiree—who had occasionally joined him and Deke for breakfast—Harry picked up. “Wallace here. What can I do for you, Bob?”

  “You can get a man out here, and I don’t mean tomorrow.”

  Taken aback at his friend’s tone, Harry glanced down at the name on the message Camille had handed to him. “This isn’t about Becky’s missing donut, is it?”