Camouflage Cowboy

by Jan Hambright

  Harlan McClain sat behind his desk minus the black hoodie and sweatpants he’d used to disguise himself for the purse-snatching ruse.

  “Thanks, buddy,” Nick said as he tossed his keys onto his desk and leaned against the edge. “Your timing was spot-on.”

  Harlan swiveled his desk chair. “Did you get what you needed from her?”

  “Yeah.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out the evidence bag. Holding it up to the light streaming in through one of the loft windows, he could see the clear imprint of Grace Marshall’s lips on the rim of the glass. Grace’s lips. Her perfect, kissable lips.

  “You’re not going to tell me what the hell is going on, are you?” Harlan rocked forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

  “Can’t, but suffice to say it’s an assignment that came down personally from Governor Lockhart.” Nick put the bag down on his desk and went around to the other side. He pulled open the file drawer, took out a lab form and sat down in his chair. The results of the DNA test on the lip impression would come in from their private lab in a week. It was the definitive piece of evidence he needed. He didn’t particularly like the method he’d been forced to use to obtain it, but in this case, the end did justify the means, and he’d be able to tell the governor conclusively whether or not Grace Marshall was her illegitimate daughter.

  Nick filled out the paperwork, aware of the modulation of Nolan Law’s voice as he stepped out of his office, still talking on his cell phone.

  “Is he awake yet?” A measure of excitement materialized in Nolan’s tone. They’d yet to catch a break in the case of a shooting at Governor Lockhart’s ranch, and their only link was Trevor Lewis, a man lying in the ICU, breathing with the help of a ventilator. The man Harlan McClain had so expertly perforated before he’d been able to hurt Stacy Giordano.

  Nick looked up, watching Nolan pace back and forth as he talked to the team member assigned to guard Trevor Lewis, their only suspect in the war someone had instituted against Governor Lila Lockhart and her bid for the U.S. presidency.

  “Who’s watching Lewis today?” Nick asked Harlan.

  “Matteo. I take over at five.”

  “Is Lewis still on a ventilator?” Nick turned in his chair to face his fellow team member.

  “Yeah, but the doc is going to wake him up around four this afternoon. Nolan wants us there so we can persuade him to give up the name of the shooter who infiltrated the party at Twin Harts Ranch wearing a stolen deputy’s uniform. We need to nab the guy before he tries again.”

  Nick couldn’t agree more, but he’d been an outsider on the case from the start. Forced instead to focus on his special assignment for the governor.

  Nolan closed his phone and headed toward them. “Let’s go. The doctor told Matteo that Lewis is stable enough to breathe on his own. He’s going to remove the tube. He’ll give us five minutes to get some answers before they prep him for medical transport to the hospital in Amarillo.”

  Anticipation clung to Nick’s nerves as he taped the lab request to the evidence bag and stood up, then on a whim, he picked up his pen and put an X next to the fingerprint-lift request, as well. Maybe Grace’s prints on the water glass could lead him to the holes in her life story if he decided to run them.

  CSaI receptionist Amelia Bond glanced up from behind her desk near the front entrance, catching wind of the hustle being stirred up as Nolan hurried for the door.

  On the way out, Nick put the evidence bag on Amelia’s desk for processing. He knew her efficiency would have the sample out today and the results back to him before he could stop thinking about Grace Marshall’s perfect lip impression on the edge of the glass.

  Chapter Two

  Nick pulled his vehicle in next to Nolan Law’s sleek black Mercedes. He’d never cared much for hospitals, cared even less for them now. He’d seen too many men perish in them and had come close to being a casualty himself not too long ago—before CSaI founder Bart Bellows gave him a reason to breathe again.

  The hair on the back of his neck bristled as he climbed out and locked his pickup. He took a quick scan of the parking lot, searching for the source of the hinky feeling climbing all over his nerves. They were being watched. He’d bet his best horse on it.

  A pair of nurses chatted as they walked toward the main entrance to Holy Cross Hospital. A single male dressed in green scrubs was in the process of getting into his car while he held a cell phone plastered to his ear and spoke into it at just below a yell.

  Nick’s stare locked on Grace Marshall’s beat-up silver Camry parked in a slot near the front doors. He hadn’t anticipated coming in contact with her here. Still, he wasn’t sure he could attribute her presence as the source of his agitation.

  He fell in behind Nolan and Harlan, keeping his senses on high alert as they headed for the main en trance. Trevor Lewis hadn’t acted alone, and Nick couldn’t help but feel no one was safe in Freedom until his accomplice was identified and captured. He wouldn’t relax until they were inside the hospital and out of the open.

  The double set of extra-wide automatic doors ground open and Nick’s gaze connected with Grace Marshall’s on the other side of the gap. A moment of recognition passed between them and she smiled.

  Nolan and Harlan walked past her, headed for the elevator bank on the opposite side of the hospital’s lobby. A wave of attraction swelled inside of Nick as he approached Grace and stopped.

  “Grace.” He focused a degree of surprise in his voice. He was glad that Harlan had ditched the black hoodie and sweats. He was convinced that along with her level of caution there was no doubt a level of observation she practiced on a regular basis.

  “Nick Cavanaugh. I had no idea you were following me.”

  A stream of guilt flooded his insides, but he forded it with a grin. The elevator bell chimed in the background and he glanced up to where Nolan and Harlan waited for him. Making eye contact with Harlan, he nodded slightly, certain that Harlan had recognized his purse-snatching target from earlier in the afternoon and was more than happy to duck for cover inside the elevator.

  “I’m checking in on someone. Visiting hours and all.” He took the opportunity to look down at the little boy sitting in the wheelchair that Grace had been pushing to the exit, and now clung to.

  Her sweet smile faded as she reached down to brush her hand across the top of the little boy’s head. “Caleb, this is Mr. Nick Cavanaugh. Nick, this is my son, Caleb.”

  “Hey, buddy.” He bent over, reached out and grasped the little boy’s hand, giving it a gentle shake. The child’s line of sight started at his boot-clad feet, went up his jean-encased legs and eventually ended with Caleb staring up at him with eyes the same heavenly blue as his mother’s.

  “Are you a cowboy, Mister Nick?”

  Nick straightened, amused by the little boy’s power of observation. “Hmm. Yeah. You could say I’m a cowboy.”

  “Gotta horse?”

  “A few.”

  “Can I ride one? My friend Zachary-G says it’s fun. He rides horses all the time.”

  Caution raked over Nick’s nerves. He hadn’t considered the connection that might exist between Zachary Giordano and Caleb Marshall. They did both attend Cradles to Crayons, and Grace did work there part-time as a preschool teacher. Maybe he should have enlisted another team member besides Harlan McClain to pull off the ruse, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty.

  “Maybe sometime your mom will bring you out to the ranch and I’ll saddle one up for you.”

  “Really?” Caleb’s eyes widened to the size of silver dollars. “Wait till I tell Zachary-G!”

  The air was suddenly charged with vibes Nick could almost feel. He straightened, dialing in on Grace’s face, on the way she pressed her lips together as if she were about to cry. His heart twisted in his chest. Instinctively he reached out and brushed his hand against her upper arm—a mistake, he realized, when a jolt of heat passed between them. She pulled away.

  “Let me.” He was glad
when she stepped aside and allowed him to take the handles of the wheelchair. “Where’s your car?”

  She pointed to the Camry and fell in next to him as they pushed through the sliding doors, across the breezeway and out into the parking lot.

  Caleb began to hum, his tiny voice picking up the vibrations from the asphalt as the wheelchair wheels bumped over the uneven surface.

  Nick swallowed hard, sucked into the emotion coming from the woman next to him. Caleb Marshall was a very sick little boy. How sick? He didn’t know. But he intended to find out.

  “Here we are, tiger.”

  Grace moved past them to unlock the car, then pulled the right rear passenger-side door open.

  Nick eased the chair to a stop, stepped around to the front, squatted down and flipped up the footrest pads. “Need some help?” he asked, studying Caleb’s handsome little-boy face.

  “Nope.” Determination gripped Caleb’s features as he put his tennis-shoe-encased feet firmly on the ground, grasped the armrests and pushed up from the seat, where he promptly wobbled and fell forward into Nick’s arms.

  Grace let out an audible gasp and was next to them in a heartbeat. “Caleb, you know you need to take it easy after your treatment.”

  “I want to do it myself.”

  “Come on, buddy, I’ll help you.” As if he were holding a fragile sheet of glass, Nick guided Caleb into the backseat of his mother’s car and supervised him as he buckled himself in his car seat.

  “What color is your horse, Mister Nick?” he asked, staring with a huge grin on his face. “I wanna tell Zachary-G.”

  “He’s a bay.”

  “Bay?”

  “It’s a reddish-brown color, with a black mane and tail. Beautiful.”

  Caleb nodded and laid his head back against the seat. “A bay,” he said again as he closed his eyes. “Red-brown.”

  Nick stepped back and closed the car door before turning to face Grace.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, some of the tension visibly leaving her body in a shoulder shrug. “He always overestimates his strength after every transfusion. It takes a day or so for him to bounce back.”

  “You can’t fault him for trying.”

  She swallowed and shook her head. “Sometimes I marvel at his will to survive, to go until he can’t go anymore.”

  “What’s wrong with him, Grace?” Caution brought her chin up as she studied him and he witnessed the battle between suspicion and trust as it warred across her delicate features and settled in her blue eyes.

  “He needs a bone-marrow transplant. He has aplastic anemia and has to have a blood transfusion every two weeks, but his doctor informed me this afternoon that his condition is worsening. We need to find a bone-marrow donor as soon as possible or he’s going to…” Her voice faltered.

  Die? Nick mentally finished the horrific statement and reached out for her, folding his arms around her slender shoulders. Sympathy leeched from his insides, but he felt her stiffen and pull away.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “This isn’t any of your concern.” She went around to the driver-side door. “But thank you for your help.” She climbed into the car and fired the engine.

  Nick stepped back as she maneuvered out of the parking space and drove away. He stared after her for a moment, snagged the empty wheelchair and turned for the hospital entrance.

  Grace Marshall was clearly desperate. Hell, he’d be desperate, too, if he had a dying child, but desperate people did desperate things. Was it possible the donor she was seeking for Caleb was the governor? He didn’t know much about donor matches, but Lila Lockhart stood a good chance of being a blood relative to Caleb Marshall.

  Worry needled him all the way back into the hospital and followed him into the elevator. Was it possible Grace knew the governor could be her birth mother? Was she willing to blackmail Lila into donating bone marrow to her dying grandson, or she’d…she’d what? Sabotage Lila’s shot at a presidential bid?

  Nick’s sense of right had gone into battle with his sense of duty by the time he stepped off the elevator on the third-floor ICU unit and into the jaws of chaos.

  “Code blue…code blue. Paging Dr. Karnahan, Dr. Mark Karnahan to ICU, stat.” The request rang out over the unit’s PA system.

  Nick sidestepped a nurse as she rushed a lifesaving crash cart down the corridor to where Nolan and Harlan stood in the hallway. She spoke with them for an instant before wheeling it past them and into the room. Trevor Lewis’s room.

  Nick hurried toward them. “Nolan! What’s going on?”

  Nolan Law shook his head, his gaze going to the floor for an instant before he made eye contact again. “Lewis coded. One minute he’d agreed to tell us who the shooter was at the governor’s ranch, and the next I was performing CPR.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Nick’s blood churned in apprehension. Trevor Lewis had been stable up until this point. Stable enough to talk. Was it possible someone had a hand in changing his condition so he’d never say another word? What if that someone had been the source of the hinky feeling Nick had had in the parking lot when they’d first arrived?

  Nick got his bearings in the east-west hallway and bolted for the window at the end of the corridor overlooking the parking lot below. Nolan and Harlan followed close behind.

  “What’s going on?” Nolan asked from next to him as he stared out of the window three floors above the myriad of cars.

  “I should have said something, but when we arrived, I had the feeling we were being watched.” Nick put his focus on a man jogging through the lot wearing blue scrubs and a tan jacket with the hood pulled up. “There.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Harlan said. “We passed him getting into the elevator when we got off.” Harlan banged his fist against the ledge in frustration. “I barely got a look at him with his head down.”

  They watched the man disappear into a bank of trees and shrubs on the outer perimeter of the parking lot. There wasn’t a chance they could catch him at this point.

  “We better hope Trevor Lewis survives, because he’s our only link right now.” Nolan pushed away from the window, but Nick and Harlan remained, picking out each car that moved from its space on the tree-lined street beyond the hospital entrance.

  “Red compact…Ford Focus. Dark-gray SUV…Tahoe. Black pickup…Dodge.” Nick called out the vehicles. “White…pickup…Dodge.” Anyone in a hurry to clear the area would be long gone by now, but odds were if he’d driven away from the scene in the past ten minutes they’d have a make on what he drove.

  Harlan wrote the last vehicle description down on the small notepad he held in his hand. “It’s a long shot, but I’ll see if Sheriff Hale will plug the makes and models into the system. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “We don’t even know if the guy drove a car. He could have been on foot the entire time, could have been standing in this very window when we arrived and timed his escape accordingly. I’m going to check and see if the hospital security cameras caught a visual of his face at some point.”

  Harlan nodded. “I can tell you he was tall…six foot, give or take an inch. Powerful build. I’ll see if any hits on the autos produce an owner who matches his physical description.”

  “Let’s hope we catch a break.” Nick glanced down the corridor at the empty chair next to the entrance of Trevor Lewis’s room and realized he hadn’t seen Matteo. “Where’s Matt?”

  “He wasn’t here when Nolan and I arrived. The charge nurse said she saw him head for the vending room to grab a soda.”

  “That takes what, three minutes? He should be back by now. Let’s have a look.”

  Together, he and Harlan hustled along the hallway, focused on the vending-machine cubical on the right at the end of the corridor, marked by an information sign hanging above the entrance.

  He had a bad feeling about this. First Trevor Lewis; now Matteo? What the hell was going on?

  Nick slowed his pace, raised his right hand and motioned Harlan to the other
side of the entrance before he sucked up next to the door frame and glanced inside.

  The small room was empty except for a row of soda and snack machines ablaze in fluorescent light.

  “Nothing,” Harlan said, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know how, but he must have gotten past us.”

  Relaxing his stance, Nick stepped through the entrance and surveyed the room for hidden nooks and crannies, still unable to shake the worry surging in his veins. Where was Matteo Soarez? He’d never leave his post.

  Frustrated, Nick pulled out his cell phone and dialed Matt’s number.

  Over the drone of the machines, he swore he heard a muffled ringtone. “Do you hear that, Harlan?”

  Harlan stopped in his tracks. “Yeah.”

  “Where’s it coming from?” A wave of desperation floated Nick along the bank of vending machines as he listened to the familiar ringtone grow louder. At the end of the processional, a cooler filled with premade sandwiches stood silent and dark. Unplugged?

  In an instant, reality jolted through Nick on the heels of one last ringtone before a beep signaled one missed call.

  “Damn,” he whispered as he stared into the corner between the cooler and the wall. Into the narrow gap where Matteo Soarez was crushed against the wall with a black hood over his head.

  “It’s Matt! Help me move this!” Nick and Harlan worked in unison, holding on to the cumbersome machine, pulling and rocking it until the space opened several inches.

  Nick reached in and snagged Matt’s limp arm where it hung at his side.

  “Matt, buddy. Can you hear me?”

  Matteo groaned.

  A good sign in Nick’s mind. “We’re going to get you out of there. Hold on.”

  Harlan jockeyed the cooler case, opening the crack another inch, just enough that Nick felt Matt’s body give in the tight space.

  “That’s it! A little more.” Inch by inch, he dragged Matteo out of the crevice and lowered him to the floor.

  Fingering the knot of cord that held the bag in place over Matt’s head, Nick prayed that it hadn’t also strangled his buddy in the process. How long had he been pinned? How long had he been deprived of oxygen?