by Debra Webb
“So this contact you have developed is so loyal that you don’t question how your requests are carried out.”
He shook his head, going on the defensive now. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Obviously, you received the evidence, which means Janet must have been alive after my contact passed along the message.”
Victoria leaned forward, looked him square in the eyes. “Someone violently murdered her, Mr. Barker. Who else besides you knew she had that evidence?”
“No one.”
“Not your connection?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. He only carried the message. Expect someone from the Colby Agency.”
Victoria narrowed her gaze and searched his as carefully as he had examined hers. “You don’t seem upset that your friend died to protect your secret.”
All emotion, even the guarded expression that had gone up as a defense mechanism, disappeared. “I appreciate what you’re doing to protect my daughters. There is no way I can hope to repay you. But it feels as if you’re accusing me of something, and I don’t understand why. I’ve done nothing but try to ensure my daughters were protected.”
The man was good, she would give him that. But not good enough. She had spent some time with the warden before this meeting. He had identified the one-armed man. A nurse in the infirmary, Tony Weeden, had provided medical care for Rafe Barker’s allergy-related asthma condition for the past three years. Tony had lost his right arm in an accident as a young boy. His height and hair color matched those of the man who had whisked Clare Barker away. Not to mention the apartment next to hers had been rented under the name Toni Westen. Seemed a little coincidental now that they had the one-armed man’s name, though he had not been seen going in or out of the apartment since Clare’s arrival next door. He had facilitated her escape. The means had been planned for months.
“Mr. Barker, I warned you from the beginning that unless you were truthful with me, my agency could not help you.” He had fallen well short of that single standard.
He shook his head. “I wish you would simply explain what it is you believe I’ve done.”
Victoria tamped back the anger and impatience. “Clare Barker has vanished. Our surveillance ended abruptly after her apartment complex was destroyed by a fire that has been ruled as arson.”
“She started this fire? Was anyone killed?”
“No lives were lost, thankfully. We don’t believe she started the fire. There is reason to suspect her accomplice used the fire as a distraction to facilitate her getaway.”
Barker sighed. Gave a little shrug. “I’m not surprised she has made friends to help her. She is as desperate as I am, only for different reasons.”
“There’s just one thing.” Victoria watched closely in hopes of catching some small reaction besides this annoying nonchalance and indifference. “You seem to have at least one mutual friend.”
“That’s impossible.” A spark of outrage appeared in his eyes.
Victoria nodded resolutely. “Your nurse at the infirmary. Tony Weeden. He was her accomplice. We have the two of them on video leaving the scene together.”
“I don’t believe you.”
There it was. Shock. Disbelief. If Barker had any idea that Weeden and Clare were associates, he did an award-winning job of covering it up.
Victoria reached into the bag the guards had allowed her to bring into the room and removed the photo she’d had printed from a single frame of the video. She placed the glossy enlarged shot on the table. “You’re saying that is not Tony Weeden.”
Barker stared at the photograph for an extended period. It occurred to Victoria that this might be the first image he had seen of his wife in about twenty years. Would that prompt him to tell the truth, or would seeing her free with his friend fuel a rage that would end his cooperation?
“That is Tony.” His tone was blank, low, almost a whisper.
“Then you see how I might suspect you’re not being completely honest with me.”
“I don’t understand why he would do this.” Barker shook his head again. “I thought he was my friend. That he believed in my innocence.”
“Does he have information that could prove detrimental to our investigation and how we protect your daughters?” The answer was essential to getting the job done.
“He knows very little. As you are aware, until I sent you that letter I rarely spoke to anyone, verbally or otherwise.”
“But he knows something,” she pressed.
“He knows I’m innocent and that the girls are alive. He passed the word to Janet that you were coming. That’s all.”
That was enough. “Is he capable of murder, in your opinion?”
He considered the question for a time. “I would say no, but obviously I am not a good judge of character. I believed he sincerely wanted to help me and was loyal to the cause.”
“Is he the one who mailed the letter you sent me?”
“Yes. He read it and insisted on helping me.” Rafe looked away as if attempting to regain his composure. “Why would he do this? Surely he understood there would be consequences.”
“Only if we can find him.”
“He works here every day. He never misses a day.”
“He didn’t show up for his shift today. He isn’t answering his phone and his neighbors haven’t seen him in two days. He’s not coming back, Mr. Barker. And unless we can find the two of them, my investigators will have no choice but to work in a reactive state under the assumption that both Tony and Clare represent a threat to our clients.”
Barker stared at her, blinked.
“Do you understand what that means, Mr. Barker?”
He blinked a second time.
“Shoot to kill, Mr. Barker, that’s what it means.”
Barker was taken from the interview room five minutes later without having uttered another word.
He knew something or was planning something. Victoria felt it in the most basic minerals of her bones. Either way, the stakes were upped.
These women were in extreme danger. The Colby Agency would do whatever necessary to protect them.
Chapter Fifteen
Second Chance Ranch, 8:30 p.m.
Sheriff Cox ordered two of his deputies and a tow truck to take Sadie’s truck away. Not one word Lyle said to the guy had penetrated that thick skull of his. He just kept repeating that same mantra. I have a job to do. The strangest part was the idea that Gus would not want him to do this.
Since when did Cox ignore the desires of Gus Gilmore? He’d lived comfortably in the man’s hip pocket for decades now. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It also didn’t make him the kind of bad guy who would go to these extremes.
After the deputies had gone, Sadie stood there in the moonlight staring at the charred rubble that had been her home. He wished there was more he could do or say. The promise that this would pass in time just wasn’t enough.
Lyle strode over to where she stood. “The horses are tucked in for the night. So are the dogs. Can I convince you to go to a hotel with me?” Sounded like a bad pickup line.
“I don’t know about leaving them.”
Her hesitation was understandable. “How about a nice, relaxing dinner before we hit the hay then?”
She smiled.
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s what I like to see.” His chest tightened with the need to hold her and promise her anything she wanted to hear.
“You think he’ll be okay?”
Her father’s condition was part of the burden weighing down those slender shoulders. Lyle wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close, urged her to lean on him. “The doctor said he’s doing fine. He’ll be home tomorrow. You’ll see.”
She shuddered with the release of a heavy breath. “He looked so old and fragile in that bed.”
“He’s tough,” Lyle assured her. “A lot tougher than the truck he was driving.” According to the sheriff the truck was totaled. Whoever ran him off
the road knew exactly where to strike. Gus never saw the other vehicle. He was making that left turn and suddenly he had overshot the turn and was barreling into the ravine.
It was a flat-out miracle he survived. If Sadie were herself, she’d swear he was too mean to die.
But she wasn’t herself by a long shot. If he were in her shoes, Lyle couldn’t say he would fare any better.
“Okay.” She turned to him, tilted that pretty face up to his. “How about that dinner?”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead and guided her to his truck. The sooner he had her out of here, the happier he would be. After Victoria’s report on her last meeting with Rafe Barker, Lyle had a bad feeling that the situation was about to deteriorate fast.
* * *
SADIE WASN’T HUNGRY but Lyle had insisted she order. She played with the straw in her water glass, wished it was a beer. Thing was, she rarely drank beer or wine, not since her teenage days anyway. But right now seemed like a good time for one or two. Too much was going on to allow her senses to be dulled. The hospital could call. She’d spoken to Gus a couple of hours ago, but that didn’t keep her from worrying. Her father had always been strong, immortal almost.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Somehow she pushed a smile into place for her dinner companion and bodyguard. He deserved all the smiles she could summon. If he hadn’t been here…
“I was thinking about Gus. At my mother’s funeral he was so solemn and hard looking. He didn’t cry. Shook hands and chatted with his friends.” Sadie let those memories she usually repressed play out in her mind. “I hated him for that. Then when his own mother died…he was the same way. Like it didn’t matter. Just business as usual.”
“You were young, Sadie. It’s difficult to understand the way some handle emotion.”
“I spent most of my life thinking he didn’t love me, he loved controlling me.”
“You’re a lot like him.”
Sadie didn’t know what to make of that. She shook her head. “Seriously, you’re kidding, right?”
He laughed that rumbling sound that made her shiver. She’d forgotten how sexy his laugh was. They’d certainly had nothing much to laugh about since he came back.
“Well, let’s see.” He leaned his elbows on the table and ticked off the similarities on his fingers. “You’re both as stubborn as hell. Refuse to give an inch in battle. And you both love your horses.”
She waved her hands in his face. “Wait, wait, wait. He doesn’t love those animals the way I do.” No way. Her father was too driven. He expected the animals to be just as driven, no matter how old and worn out they were.
“Think about it, Sadie. Have you ever actually seen him mistreat an animal?” Before she could argue, he added, “I mean the way some of the other rodeo kings do?”
Well, he had her there. “I guess not.”
Lyle raised his hands in the air as if he’d just gone way over the necessary eight seconds. “It’s a miracle. You admitted you might be wrong.”
She laughed, couldn’t help herself.
“Gus just has different expectations and standards. That’s all. The same way he had expectations for you.”
Sadie flatted her hands on the table and stared at the finger that still had no ring. Yeah, she was young, but she’d been in love with the same guy for her whole adult life. Didn’t that count? “He made you leave.”
Lyle placed his hands over hers. “He suggested I leave. I left because it was the right thing to do at the time.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “You wanted to go?” Of course he had. Just because they’d made love this morning didn’t mean he loved her…that he’d ever loved her.
“You were fifteen,” he reminded her as if she could have forgotten. “You had a right to be who you were going to be without me taking that away from you before you were old enough to have a clue.”
She pulled her hands free of his and leaned as far back in the booth as the padded fake leather upholstery would allow. The disappointment in his blues eyes almost stopped her from saying what she needed to say. “I kept thinking you’d call or come back to get me.” The admission hurt even now, seven years later.
“I did call.” He held her gaze, didn’t cut her any slack. “On your eighteenth birthday. You were in Cancún or some place. I left a message. Sent you a card.”
He called. Sent her a card? “I didn’t know.” She shook her head. If her daddy wasn’t half-dead, she’d kill him. “Gus told me you’d moved to California and had a wife.”
Lyle scrubbed a hand over his unshaved jaw. At least something good came of the fire. He hadn’t been able to shave. Inside, she quivered at the remembered feel of that stubbled jaw caressing her skin.
“Well, I did spend a little time in California, but there was no woman.”
“But you’ve had girlfriends.” Sadie wanted to slither under the table. How could she have said that?
He shrugged. “No girlfriend really. A few dates.” He hesitated a moment. “If you’re asking me if I’ve been celibate this whole time, the answer is no.”
That hurt. She couldn’t pretend otherwise.
“If what you want to know,” he offered, “is if I have ever wanted anyone the way I wanted you, that answer is no, as well.”
Her heart launched into a crazy staccato. “You said wanted, as in past tense.”
The sweetest, sexiest smile she had ever seen broke across his lips. “You didn’t feel my answer to that this morning?”
Heat rushed across her cheeks. “You made your point.”
He leaned close. “If that waitress ever brings our food, I’m thinking we should go to Gus’s house and try out that cute canopy bed you told me you had in your room.”
Donning a properly affronted face, she declared, “You cad.”
Their waitress arrived before he could defend himself. When she arranged their entrées on the table and hurried away, Sadie leaned toward him and whispered, “You take me back to the barn for a few hours and I promise we’ll spend the rest of the night at the mansion.”
He licked his lips, whether from her offer or from the heavenly aroma of the food steaming between them she couldn’t say. As if he’d read her mind, he said, “Deal.”
* * *
“I THOUGHT YOU SAID you weren’t really hungry,” Lyle teased as he drove along her driveway, the headlamps highlighting the massive pile of rubble that had been her home.
Sadie flattened her hand on her tummy. “I think I might die. You shouldn’t have let me eat so much.”
“Hey. I was just glad you left the plate.”
“Funny.”
She was out of the truck by the time he’d grabbed his weapon and the take-home bag from the restaurant and rounded the hood. She closed the door and leaned against it. “I’m not sure I can move.”
Lyle swept her into his arms and started for the barn. “Don’t worry, I’ll do all the moving.”
She banged on his chest. “You are not funny.”
He sat her down long enough to open the barn doors and turn on the light. The dogs jumped around in a little dance accompanied by their yapping.
He turned back to Sadie. “One moment.”
She made a face. “Hurry up!”
Grabbing a blanket, he hustled to that last stall. After fluffing the hay, he spread the blanket over it and tried to slow the need building to a frenzy inside him. He wanted this time to be slow and awesome. This morning he hadn’t been able to hold out as long as he’d hoped to. He tucked his weapon beneath the hay. No need to remind her of the troubles still hanging over their heads.
The horses shuffled around in their stalls as he dashed back to the front of the barn. “Ready.”
She strolled past him. Lyle herded the dogs outside and gave them the treat he’d brought from the restaurant. With them occupied, he closed the barn doors and hurried back to where Sadie waited.
He came to an abrupt stop. She had shed her boots and clothes, everyth
ing but those cute little pink panties and the matching bra she’d bought while they were in town today.
“Wow.” She was way ahead of him…but he was catching up entirely too fast.
She crooked her finger at him. “Come on, cowboy. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The boots came off first. Sadie taunted him into making a show of the rest. He opened his fly and lowered the zipper really slowly. She urged him on, and he refused to disappoint her. By the time he was on the blanket with her, he was more than ready.
Using all the restraint he could muster, he made love to her the way she deserved. He showed her with his every kiss how very much he cared, how much he had missed her and all that he hoped for in the future.
Their future.
She showed him that she was no little girl anymore. She was all woman and she wanted him to acknowledge that. He did his best to do just that. He took great pleasure in acknowledging every womanly part of her over and over again.
Rocking Horse Ranch, May 24, 1:00 a.m.
“THIS IS STRANGE.” Sadie leaned forward. “Where is everyone?” The house was darker than the night, not a single light on inside. Even the outside lights were off. Couldn’t be a power outage. Gus had a whole-house generator.
“Should we check the bunkhouse? Sizemore and his playmates should be around somewhere.”
“Good idea.” Sadie didn’t like this. With Gus in the hospital, Sizemore was supposed to be in charge. Looked as if he had fallen down on the job.
Lyle drove to the bunkhouse. No lights there, either. He handed her his cell. “Stay here. Lock the doors. Anything happens, get down and call 911.”
Sadie hit the lock button as soon as he was out of the vehicle. This was too weird. Something was really wrong. She entered the number on her cell for the hospital and got the nurse’s desk on her father’s floor. He was sleeping comfortably. Sadie hugged herself, the phone in hand, and tried to see any movement around the bunkhouse. Lyle had gone inside already. The headlights split the night, their beam spreading wide on each side of the truck.
Lyle exited the bunkhouse and started back to the truck. She hit the unlock button so he could open the door. “Did you talk to anyone?”
