by B. J Daniels
He felt a shiver he tried to rein in, but he knew she hadn’t missed it. Her gaze came up to meet his.
“I see a long life if you aren’t foolish, if you don’t fall for the wrong woman before you find your true love.” She let go of his hand.
“How will I know?” he asked pretending to play along.
“The wrong woman could get you killed.”
He nodded as he wiped up the broken glass and replaced the drink he’d spilled. “She sounds dangerous. But exciting. You’re sure she’s that wrong for me?”
Her dark eyes locked with his. “Positive.”
He placed the new drink on her tray and she started to turn away. “You do know that not all Romani are fortune tellers or—” she hesitated a moment “—thieves.”
“So I shouldn’t put much stock in what you read in my palm.”
“Oh, that was all true. Didn’t I tell you? My grandmother had the sight. It runs in my family.” With that she took her tray of drinks and left.
He watched her go, his heart still pounding. She’d tried to warn him about her. He almost laughed out loud. He’d been doing the same thing himself. And yet, he found himself wanting her more than his next breath.
Glancing down at his palm, he touched the skin where she had only moments before and told himself she was right. He’d be a fool to take this any further.
So why did he feel filled with expectation and excitement? He’d never been one to take risky chances. Until now. He was completely enthralled by her. He wanted to know this woman in every sense of the word—no matter how dangerous it was.
* * *
THEY’D BEEN ABOUT to close for the night when the two men came in. Darby felt his stomach drop. Hadn’t he been expecting this? If not, he should have.
He glanced behind the bar where Mariah was cleaning up the last of the glasses. She looked up at the sound of the door. Her expression mirrored his own. Trouble had just walked through the door. The question was, though, had she—unlike him—known it was coming?
Her gaze shot to him and he thought he saw something in it... Oh hell. He felt his heart drop. This was her doing. She was finally going to take back her bracelet—one way or another.
How foolish of him to think that she wouldn’t change the unwritten rules of this challenge and bring in reinforcements.
The men were scruffy-looking, the kind he often saw hitchhiking through the state. They moved through the bar slowly, calculating every move. Darby swore under his breath. He should have closed fifteen minutes ago. But Mariah had distracted him. Now he thought he knew why.
The second man closed the door behind him and locked it as the first moved to the bar and pulled a gun. He pointed it at Mariah.
Darby’s heart began to pound. He’d been hesitant to keep a gun behind the bar. That had always seemed like a bad idea before. Instead, he kept a baseball bat where he could get to it. He’d thought the biggest worry he would have was breaking up a bar fight.
These two were more than your average armed robbers. They were here for more than what little cash was in the register.
CHAPTER SIX
“NOT LOOKING FOR TROUBLE,” the man said as he motioned for Darby to stay where he was. “We’ll just take the money and be gone. No one gets hurt.”
Darby looked at Mariah. She hadn’t moved, didn’t seem alarmed to have a gun pointed at her head.
Anger rushed through him—more toward himself than at Mariah or these men. He’d let this happen. His foolishness had caused this. Lightning bolt, love at first sight, infatuation be damned. He started to step toward the bar, determined to put an end to this, but the second man stopped him as he also pulled a gun.
“Let the little lady handle it,” the second man said. They all looked toward Mariah, who nodded and moved to the cash register, opened it and began to take out the money.
Both men seemed to relax. The one at the bar stepped closer, watching as Mariah pulled out the bills. “What’s that around your neck?” the man asked.
Her free hand went to the pendant. “It’s to ward off the evil eye.”
The man laughed. “The evil eye? You hear that, Carl? You’ve got kind of an evil eye.” He turned back to the woman, all humor gone. “I’ll take it. You got any more of that evil eye stuff around?”
Here it comes, Darby thought. He’d walked right into this, lulled by the calm before the storm.
“Sure,” Mariah said. “I keep a trunkful of it around.”
“You live upstairs?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Carl, take a look upstairs.”
“Why me? Lou, you always send me off to—”
“I live upstairs,” Darby said, as if Mariah and these men didn’t know that. “But there is nothing up there that would interest you.” His gaze was on Mariah. She looked up. For a moment their eyes locked. Hers were unreadable.
“Go!” Lou ordered, scowling at his accomplice.
Carl, still mumbling to himself, grudgingly headed for the kitchen and the back stairway that led up to the apartment.
Darby simmered to a slow burn. Carl wouldn’t find anything. Then what? Would they tear the bar apart looking for the bracelet? Or would they hold a gun to his head? Right now, he thought he’d rather die than give her the bracelet. All she’d ever had to do was ask. Not rob his damned bar.
He looked at her. She didn’t look scared or worried. But then why would she? This was all part of her plan, one he hadn’t seen coming. Without even being aware of it, he took a step toward her.
“You move again and I’ll shoot you.” Lou moved so he had a clear shot at either of them. “You really don’t want to do anything stupid. You either,” he said, swinging the gun barrel back in her direction. “Hurry up, Carl!”
Darby could hear the second man’s footfalls overhead. It wouldn’t take long to search since there was nothing worth stealing. What the man wouldn’t find was the bracelet.
Had Mariah thought it would be that easy?
He saw now how her plan could have worked. Have it look like a robbery so she would never be suspected. Get her bracelet back and disappear again. No one would be the wiser. Except Darby and he wouldn’t be able to prove a thing.
“Speed it up, sweetheart,” the man said to Mariah. “It doesn’t take that long to empty a cash register.”
Darby watched her start to hand over the money and stop. Her gaze darted to him and what he saw there sent his pulse into overdrive and made his stomach roil. Was it possible he could be wrong and she hadn’t set this whole thing up?
“Just give him the money,” he heard himself say. “It isn’t worth getting killed over.”
“You want the change too?” she asked the gunman. “I can put it in a sack.” She bent down as if to reach for a sack.
Except there was no sack under there. The man was watching her, leaning over the bar a little, anxious for the money.
“Don’t forget the necklace,” the man said, seeming to enjoy the view of her cleavage as she bent over in the V-necked T-shirt. He leaned closer, resting the gun in his hand on the bar top.
Darby started to rush the man but stopped just as abruptly as he heard the man say, “You move again and I shoot the woman. Got it, hero?” Smiling, he reached over to fondle the necklace dangling freely so close to the cleavage above Mariah’s breasts.
Heart in this throat, Darby saw her come up with the baseball bat so quickly, it completely took Lou off guard. If anything, the man had been expecting Darby to do something—not Mariah.
She swung the bat, catching Lou in the arm holding the gun, before the bat ricocheted off the man’s shoulder.
Darby sprung forward as the man let out a curse of pain. The gun clattered across the smooth surface of the bar—right to Darby. Grabbing the weapon, he slammed the butt of it into the
back of the Lou’s head. The man dropped to the floor like a ton of bricks.
He and Mariah both quickly turned their attention to the back of the bar. Carl would be coming down any minute.
Darby motioned for Mariah to stay down and stepped to the side of the doorway at the sound of heavy footfalls descending the stairs.
“There’s nothing much up there, Lou,” Carl was saying as he walked into the bar and saw his partner in crime sprawled on the floor.
Darby stepped out, jabbed the barrel of the gun into the man’s ribs and took the man’s weapon from him.
“I’ve called 9-1-1. The sheriff is on his way,” Mariah said. There was a calmness to her that probably shouldn’t have surprised him. But when she reached up to touch the pendant at her neck, he saw that her hand trembled.
He could hear sirens in the distance. “Looks like that necklace brought you some luck.”
She met his gaze. “We make our own luck. Anyway, it’s just a cheap piece of jewelry. He would have been disappointed when he found out that it wasn’t worth anything. Still, I would have put a curse on it so he never forgot me for the rest of his life.”
Was that what she’d done with the bracelet? Sure seemed that way because Darby knew he would never forget this woman. He felt confused and guilty. He’d thought all this was her doing. Until that moment, he hadn’t been worried about her safety because of it. Now, though, he found his knees had gone weak as the realization of what could have happened here tonight hit him.
“Mariah, what you did...”
“Stupid, huh. I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Or she wasn’t about to part with the pendant. In which case, he now knew that she wasn’t leaving without her bracelet.
Two sheriff’s department cars pulled up out front. Mariah went to open the door.
* * *
DEPUTY HARPER “HARP” COLE transported the two men to jail. “Might want to have Doc have a look at that one,” Flint told Harp. “I think he’s just got a knock on his head and a nice bruise on his arm, but it won’t hurt to make sure he’s all right. And, Harp, straight to the jail. No side trips. Like to the diner to show off what you have in the back of the patrol car.”
“Like I would do something like that,” Harp snapped.
“He’s got a girlfriend down at Sue’s Diner. Vicki something or other,” Flint said to his brother after Harp left. “I’m betting he was planning to do a little showing off.” He shook his head. Harp would be the death of him. “Okay, let’s get your statements.” He turned to his brother, who looked sick to his stomach. “You all right?”
Darby nodded. “Mariah’s the one who saved the day.”
The sheriff looked over at her. “That was a smart, but dangerous move on your part. The man could have shot you.”
She nodded and looked away. “In retrospect, I don’t know what possessed me.”
He had his doubts about that. The woman appeared awfully calm. He figured anyone who’d had a gun pointed at her like that should still be shaken. Unless it wasn’t the first time she’d had a gun pointed at her.
He took their statements and then turned off the recorder. “Well, I think that’s all I need. You’ve both had quite a night and there isn’t that much left of it. Get some rest. If I have any more questions, I know where to find you.”
After Mariah left, Flint turned to his brother again. “What do you know about her?”
“That’s an odd question,” Darby said as he stepped behind the bar to pour himself a cola. He looked like he could use something stronger, but he’d been going to AA for some time now and didn’t seem to miss drinking. “Mariah saved the day, just as we told you.”
He watched his brother, surprised by Darby’s answer. “You sure she didn’t know the two men?”
“Why would you ask that?” Darby demanded in a way that made him wonder if his brother hadn’t suspected the same thing at least at some point.
“Because what did you have in the till? Not enough to get killed over,” he pressed. “What she did was dangerous. And it wasn’t even her money.”
“What are you getting at?”
Flint shook his head. He hated being so suspicious of everything, everyone. “She took a hell of a chance. It just surprises me.”
“It surprised me too,” Darby admitted after taking a drink of cola. “She’s a remarkable woman. I don’t think there is anything she can’t do. And, as it turns out, she’s great at this job.”
“Still, I’d keep an eye on her. In fact,” Flint said moving around the bar to carefully pick up the glass Mariah had been using. “You don’t mind if I run her prints do you? Just as a precaution.”
* * *
MARIAH KNEW SHE wouldn’t be able to sleep. She didn’t even bother stopping at the cabin. Instead, she roared past it and kept going. All her instincts told her to get her things and move on. It was just a matter of time before Darby told his brother how they’d met. He was probably already suspicious. She’d overheard the brothers mention that the saloon had never had a robbery before.
Attempted robbery. She still couldn’t believe the risk she’d taken. It wasn’t even her money. She could have been killed. But the man had wanted her pendant and he would have taken it too if she hadn’t stopped him.
Still, all he would have had to do was pull the trigger and she’d be dead.
What had she been thinking? Was her pendant—her bracelet—worth risking her life over?
She felt that old anger in her, that old need to fight. She’d fought her circumstances for so long that now all she had in her was retreat. Run and don’t look back. That was what she needed to do. Keep running. It was the looking back that was causing the trouble.
Her thoughts went straight to Darby like an arrow. He’d shown her...kindness by hiring her and not calling his brother the sheriff. But it was so much more complicated than that. When she was around him, she felt...
That was just it, she felt. For so long, she’d turned all emotion off. It had been the only way she could survive. Run, don’t look back and above all don’t let yourself feel anything. There’d been no fight in her because she hadn’t cared about anything but getting away.
Tonight she’d risked her life. She’d fought back. She’d felt something—for Darby, for his damned bar...for herself. She had drawn a line in the sand. She wasn’t going to let that dumbass robber take her pendant. But mostly, she wasn’t going to let Darby think that those men had been her idea.
She’d seen it in his expression when he’d looked at her after they’d come in and pulled a gun. He’d thought she was in on the robbery. Would she have let them take the money and leave if the man hadn’t demanded her pendant?
Maybe. She didn’t know. The money wasn’t worth dying over. It wasn’t as if she owed Darby anything. Soon she would be gone and she wouldn’t look back. Couldn’t.
But the disappointment she’d seen in his gray eyes had been her undoing. She’d let herself care what he thought of her and had almost gotten herself killed.
Tears blurred the road ahead. She’d never felt more alone than she did right now. Alone and scared and so weary of running that she didn’t care if she lived or died.
The two-lane highway was empty. Low clouds hid the stars and moon. A cool pine-scented breeze wafted down from the mountaintops.
It would have been so easy to keep going, to keep running and to let Darby believe the worst about her. Deep inside her she felt that small fire that had started tonight. That spark that had made her fight rather than give up.
She let up on the throttle and, slowing, turned around and headed back. She wouldn’t run. But she also couldn’t stay here any longer. She had to finish things here. No more putting it off.
* * *
ELY STOOD IN the moonlight staring at the eight-
foot-high chain-link fence that enclosed the missile pad. No one believed him about the aliens or what he’d seen here just months ago.
His family thought that he was getting senile. Everyone else just thought he’d always had a screw loose. Lately he’d been feeling...old. More than old, strange. It worried him. He had to know what was going on at the missile silos. If he died before he did...
He glanced up as the silver moon burst from behind the clouds. It cast the entire valley in a bright white glow, glittering off the chain-link fence around the underground silo.
Flint had told him that what he saw three months ago wasn’t aliens—but military personnel dressed in hazmat suits.
“And that doesn’t scare you more than aliens?” he’d demanded.
“Dad, they do all kinds of emergency preparedness exercises out there. It probably wasn’t anything.”
Ely had looked at his son. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”
“I called the commander.”
“And didn’t get anything out of him.”
“It’s military and over my paid grade,” Flint had joked.
“I’m wondering if there is trouble at the other missile silos.”
Flint hadn’t known anything about them. “No one’s reported a problem. Or seeing anything.”
“Everyone’s afraid of the military. Or worse, of looking like a fool. They won’t report anything until it is too late.”
Ely still believed that. He’d read about problems at other sites where there had been leaks of poisonous gases, mistakes where the missiles had been on alert but no one had touched the buttons.
“We don’t even know if there is a missile in ours,” Flint had said.
“Then why the guys in hazmat suits?”
He’d had his son there. Flint shook his head.
“I just wish you didn’t worry about it so much, Dad.”
“Someone has to.” Ely had almost told him then about the notebook he’d been writing everything down in. But the moment passed. As long as he was kicking, he’d keep writing down what he saw and the dates. His sons were smart. They’d find the notebook when he was gone. They’d figure it out.
