“How did you find Philip’s house?” Gabe questioned.
“I put a transmitter in your car back in Grand Valley. I’ve been tracking you, waiting for my chance.” He glanced down at the blood seeping through his fingers. “Guess I blew it, huh? You win this round.”
“It wasn’t a game,” Gabe told him. He quickly turned to Jinx. “Where’s Houston?”
“Nearby. I untied your brother—”
“Philip’s here?” Leigh asked.
Jinx nodded. “And with Teresa’s help, he should have Jenny and Houston free by now. I told them to wait until everything was over.”
Gabe hoped this qualified as everything being over. But it didn’t. One look at Frank, and he felt a hatred he hadn’t thought he could feel. He realized he still had his gun aimed right at the man.
“I should just kill you,” Gabe let him know.
Leigh stepped closer and slid her arm around Gabe’s waist. “He’s not worth it. When the ATF agents are finished with him, Frank will wish you’d put a bullet in him.”
Gabe wasn’t so sure about that. He could make things a lot more miserable for Frank than an entire task force of agents. However, he put those thoughts aside when he saw Philip, Teresa and Jenny walking toward them. Philip held Houston, but the boy squirmed to get down. With the exception of his diaper, his son didn’t have on a stitch of clothes—Jenny had them in her hand.
Leigh moved at the same time he did, quickly eating up the distance so Houston wouldn’t get a chance to see the wounded man lying on the ground. Leigh pulled him into her arms and pressed a flurry of kisses over his face.
“Not a scratch,” she relayed to Gabe after she’d checked the child over.
He took his son and did his own inspection, but Houston seemed far more interested in giggling and singing that spider song than he was in his father’s scrutiny. Houston pressed a loud, wet kiss on Gabe’s cheek and wound his arms around Gabe’s neck. It was pretty clear that Houston hadn’t experienced any emotional trauma from the kidnapping.
Houston rattled off something that might have been actual words, but Gabe didn’t understand him. One look at the child’s face, however, and Gabe knew he had indeed understood. Houston smiled, a smile that melted away all the anger and fear Gabe had felt just moments earlier. A smile that touched the very center of his soul.
“Magic, isn’t it?” Leigh whispered.
Gabe managed a nod. It was powerful stuff.
He put his arms around his son and wife and held on.
Chapter Twenty
“Well, that’s something I thought I’d never see,” Jinx remarked after he finished off a glass of ice water.
Leigh made a sound of agreement. Jinx and she were on the back porch of her house and had their attention focused on Gabe and Houston. The Sanchez males were on the flagstone walkway, Houston sitting next to his father. The little boy was trying to teach Gabe how to move his fingers to the now-infamous spider song. With Gabe’s large hands, the motions looked absurd. And surprisingly tender.
It made Leigh smile.
“Special Agent Gabe Sanchez, a father.” Jinx shook his head. “I wonder if hell really did freeze over. He always said that’s when he’d have kids.”
Leigh flexed her eyebrows. “Well, I didn’t exactly give him a say in the matter.”
“Still, he doesn’t look upset. He looks content, if you ask me. And happy. Of course, he hasn’t actually had to change a diaper yet.” Jinx made a sound of mock contemplation. “Let me know when he does so I can give him grief about it.”
She was just close enough to send the toe of her shoe into Jinx’s shin. Not a kick. More of a friendly jab. “Careful, or I’ll pass that chore on to you.”
It felt good to joke around with Jinx. Now that the danger had passed, she wondered why she hadn’t trusted him. Leigh figured it had something to do with the fact he hadn’t kept that conversation confidential they’d had about her pregnancy. Still, she wasn’t about to hold that against him.
“What are you two talking about?” Gabe asked. After giving his son a kiss on the cheek, he walked up the steps and dropped down on the porch swing next to Leigh.
“Diapers,” Jinx readily supplied. “Hard not to look like a genuine wuss when you’re changing a diaper.”
“There’s nothing wussy about my husband.” And Leigh punctuated that with a kiss to Gabe’s cheek.
With his dark curls dancing around his face, Houston toddled toward the back porch to join them. His hands bulged with rocks that he’d taken from the flower bed, and she could only guess that he had grand plans for them.
“He sure hates clothes,” Jinx commented.
Houston had already discarded his shoes and socks somewhere near the birdbath—after he’d tried to drink some of the water from the somewhat dirty dish. His shirt lay near Leigh’s feet. She hadn’t even bothered to put it back on him after losing that battle with him twice. The only clothing items remaining were his denim shorts and diaper. She figured the shorts wouldn’t last much longer either.
“Does he ever slow down?” Gabe asked, his attention focused on the boy who was busy climbing up the steps toward them.
Leigh grinned and snuggled deeper into the crook of Gabe’s arm. “Never.” It would be amazing to watch Gabe get to know his son.
Houston made it to them after a few somewhat precarious steps and began to arrange the pebbles on the toes of his dad’s boots.
“Well, he sure doesn’t look any worse for wear,” Jinx went on. “But I was plenty scared there for a while. I can’t believe I did something so stupid as to allow Frank to get near the house.”
“How exactly did Frank manage to take all of you hostage?” Leigh asked. Since the FBI had only been gone less than an hour, this was their first chance to talk. She hoped Jinx could fill in some of the sketchy spots.
“Because I was stupid, that’s why.” Jinx shook his head in disgust. “I’d just arrived and didn’t hear him come up behind me. He was wearing a ski mask and shoved a stun gun into my ribs. Then he drugged me. By the time I came to, the four of us were already tied up, and none of us knew who’d done it.”
That wasn’t an image Leigh cared to dwell on so she pushed it aside and concentrated on the rest. “I’m just thankful he didn’t hurt any of you.”
“And we were lucky that he separated us. I managed to get away while he was checking on the others.”
Yes, and that explained why Frank was out in the woods behind the house and why he had that rope in his hand.
“It’ll all be in the report,” Jinx continued. “But Teresa got Frank to tell her what happened at the house in Grand Valley. Frank wanted to kill you two, but he wanted to make it look like you were just caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The two dead men were his hired guns that he eliminated so he wouldn’t leave any witnesses.”
“But how did he know I’d be on that bridge?” Leigh asked.
“He followed you. Frank was the one who’d been accessing records right and left. He got lucky and located Philip. He said he’d been tailing him for a couple of days before you showed up at the nightclub to tell your brother about your trip. Frank just followed you from there and then apparently accessed the message you’d left on Gabe’s machine. That’s how he knew you’d be at the lake.”
Houston climbed up into Gabe’s lap, oblivious to the serious conversation that was taking place around him. He grinned and pinched his father’s nose.
Jinx took a deep breath before he continued. “But Frank sure took a chance by following you to that bridge to meet Gabe. Gabe could have seen him. And almost did.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Gabe explained. “Frank called me just as I was about to leave to meet Leigh. He tried to keep me on the phone, using every stall tactic in the book. Thank God I hung up on him, because my guess is he was already near that bridge waiting for Leigh then.”
Leigh pulled in her breath at hearing that. How close she’d come to
dying. But it was over. It was finally over.
Jinx got to his feet. “I guess it’s time for me to head out. You three probably need some time alone.” He reached down and goosed Houston’s bare stomach. The boy laughed and wiggled out of Gabe’s lap. He returned to his rock-piling activity. “By the way, Leigh, if you ever want your job back, I’m sure that can be arranged.”
She hadn’t had time to think of anything like that, but it sounded like a good offer. “I believe I’ll take you up on that in a month or two. Right now, I really just want to spend some time with these guys.”
Jinx nodded. “All right. And Gabe, when I’m gone, you can give Leigh that kiss you’ve been wanting to give her. Just remember, you’ve got a pair of little green eyes watching you.” He tipped his head to Houston, who was trying to pick grass bits off his blueberry-size toes.
“We’ll keep any activity G-rated,” Gabe assured him.
Jinx gave them a yeah-right look before he left.
Gabe angled her chin and kissed her. It definitely wasn’t G-rated, but at least no clothes were removed.
“I love you,” she let him know.
“I love you right back.”
The easy way that he said the words brought tears to her eyes. “I can’t believe I almost threw all of this away,” she whispered.
“I wouldn’t have let you do that. Ever.”
Yes. She could see that now. What they had wasn’t something that could be discarded. After all, she’d fallen in love with Gabe not just once, but twice.
Gabe reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring. But Leigh soon realized it wasn’t just any ring. It was her wedding band. “I found it on your dresser,” he explained. “I thought maybe you’d start wearing it again.”
She smiled. “Definitely.”
He slipped it onto her finger, adding another of those hot kisses.
Houston pushed his way between them and lifted his arms to be taken. “Up, up.”
Leigh reached for Houston, but Gabe beat her to it. He scooped up his son and planted a kiss on the boy’s cheek. Houston giggled and slipped his rather dirty, sticky hands around Gabe’s neck. The hug he gave his father was hard, long and apparently satisfying to both, because neither of them seemed to be in a hurry to end it.
There was no doubt in her mind that this was right. She finally had the answer to the question that troubled her. Where would they go from here?
Anywhere.
Everywhere.
Leigh knew it wasn’t so much the destination that was important but the fact she’d be making that journey with Gabe and their son.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8684-3
A MAN WORTH REMEMBERING
Copyright © 2002 by Delores Fossen
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