by Cindy Dees
Tom Foley ordered tersely, “Doc, you’re with me. Tex, Howdy, you take the other car. We’re all clear on how to get to the Dutcher place?”
His men nodded grimly. None of them were happy about the idea of running an op against one of their own. But Dutch had turned.
Of all people! Tom shook his head. He still couldn’t believe it. Levelheaded, rock-solid Dutch was the last man he would ever peg to fall for a woman. Especially not for the conniving, dangerous kind of female who could get him killed.
Tom climbed behind the wheel of the car and headed up into the mountains. He half hoped he was wrong about where Dutch had gone to ground. But he doubted it. He would do the same thing in the same situation. Dutch was heading for his home turf to circle the wagons and make a last stand.
They pulled into the driveway of a neat, rustic ranch house a couple of hours later. Jens Dutcher turned out to be a giant bear of a man, easily as tall and broad as his athletic son. And as unrevealing of his thoughts and emotions, too. Usually, when Tom met the families of his men, there was at least a flicker of response at meeting the commander of the legendary Blackjacks.
But all Jens Dutcher did was ask cautiously, “So, Colonel, what brings you way out here to our place? Everything all right with my boy?”
Tom answered hastily. “Dutch is fine. This visit is nothing like that.” He continued carefully. He sensed it would not be wise to tick off Papa Bear. “But speaking of your son, has he contacted you in the last twenty-four hours?”
Jens replied noncommittally, “Why do you ask?”
As cagey as the younger Dutcher. “We have reason to believe a criminal by the name of Eduardo Ferrare is chasing him, and we’re here to help Dutch.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t exactly a lie, either. They were here to help. To save Dutch from himself and the fucking black widow who’d gotten her fangs into him.
Jens rocked back on his heels and stuck his huge hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Seems to me my boy would ask for help if he thought he needed it.”
Tom nodded with a calm he didn’t feel. “We received some information today that indicates Ferrare is closer to Dutch and more dangerous than your son is aware of. Since he’s not in constant contact with us, we haven’t been able to get word to him yet.”
Jens leveled a measuring look at him. Damn, this guy would make a great card shark with that expressionless poker face of his.
Tom added with quiet authority, “I launched every available member of the squad to Montana on less than one hour’s notice because I think Eduardo Ferrare poses a serious threat to Dutch’s life.” He added lightly, “Hell, I’m not even supposed to be out in the field with my bum leg. But I felt the threat was grave enough to get up from behind my desk and come myself.”
Dutcher nodded. “My son thinks very highly of you, Colonel.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Jens shrugged. “If he’s in this area and he feels threatened, I would expect he’d go to my hunting cabin. He knows every rock and tree on that whole mountain.”
Julia followed Dutch inside the tidy chalet-style cabin, not so unlike the last one they’d stayed in. It had the same rustic charm, albeit with a few more amenities, like electricity and running water. And a phone. The way her cell phone was acting up in these mountains, she would need the landline to set up the meeting with her father. Her insides quivered in terror at the prospect of seeing him again.
But she couldn’t go on living like this. Running from place to place, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of thugs intent upon killing her. She couldn’t ask it of Dutch, and she couldn’t do it by herself. It was time to end this.
Dutch’s voice interrupted her turbulent thoughts. “You can have the upstairs loft. I’ll take the downstairs bedroom. It’s safer that way.”
Yeah, and he didn’t have to confront his conflicted feelings for her that way. A neat dodge for Mr. Never-Deal-With-His-Emotions. She climbed the steps to the chalet’s loft, and stopped in astonishment. The space was filled with memorabilia from Dutch’s youth. Trophies, newspaper clippings, photos, and a leather letterman jacket hung on a hook.
He called up to her about doing a perimeter check, and then the back door closed behind him. She took the opportunity to have a peek at the boy behind the man.
The outstanding athletic and academic achievements were pretty much as she’d expected. But one thing did strike her as odd. He laughed and smiled in almost all of the pictures lining the walls. And another young man showed up over and over again beside Dutch, often with Dutch’s arm thrown over his shoulders in brotherly affection. It had to be Simon. Such a handsome young man. A lot like his older brother.
She swallowed back the tears that threatened. She was doing the right thing. She owed Dutch a debt she could never repay. The best option now was to sacrifice herself to save Carina and Dutch. It was the only course of action that could even begin to make up for what she’d already taken from him. She sighed and began the long wait until nightfall and her reckoning with destiny.
“Señor Ferrare, the helicopter and pilot you requested are standing by.”
Eduardo turned to his flunky and growled, “Any sign of them yet?”
“No, sir. The soldier and your daughter disappeared after they took off on the snowmobiles.”
“Keep looking. They can’t have gone far without getting some help. Somebody out there knows where they are.”
Dammit. This American soldier Julia had hooked up with was one of the slipperiest bastards he’d ever come up against. Lord knew his daughter wasn’t smart enough to evade his grasp like this, over and over.
He would crush them both like bugs when he got hold of them. Soon. Very soon. He would stick them on pins and pull their wings and legs off, one by one, until he tired of listening to their agony. And then he would kill them both. Personally.
When Dutch was sure that Julia was ensconced in his bedroom, no doubt playing Peeping Tom with his past, he slipped outside. He tromped over to the detached garage that also acted as a tool shed and rummaged around in his dad’s toolbox.
After checking to make sure Julia wasn’t watching him out the upstairs window, he eased over to the side of the house and opened a gray utility box mounted on the wall. He cut a pair of wires, and quickly spliced in secondary wires that led to a walkie-talkie he’d found in the garage that would act as a receiver.
It wasn’t the prettiest phone tap he’d ever done, but he also didn’t have his usual gear to accomplish such a task. Besides, it didn’t have to be a sneaky job. It wasn’t as if Julia was going to come outside to check the lines in twenty-below-zero weather, assuming she even knew what to look for. He stowed the walkie-talkie inside the junction box for use later tonight and tucked the batteries inside his coat. When Julia called her old man to set up the rendezvous, he would be able to listen in and hear what she had in store.
He made his way back inside, his heart heavy. God, he hated spying on her. But what choice did he have? She’d betrayed him once. And she sure as hell acted as if she was in the middle of doing it again.
As he knocked the snow off his boots, a little voice in his head told him that she didn’t know him as well ten years ago, so her betrayal hadn’t been an attack on him personally. She had done what she had to in order to stay alive and protect her sister. Honestly, if he and Simon had been in that situation, he would probably have done the same thing to keep his kid brother alive and well.
But that didn’t make it right, his logical brain argued.
Yeah, but it did make her actions understandable. And maybe even a little forgivable.
Never, his hard, military side declared.
But what would it cost him if he couldn’t forgive her for doing what she was blackmailed into all those years ago? She’d been barely more than a girl, for crying out loud.
Frustrated, he stepped into the chalet’s cozy warmth. He’d better catch a nap if he could. He had a nasty feeling that tonig
ht was going to turn into a fiasco of the first water.
Tex reported through Tom’s earpiece. “He’s gone inside, sir.”
“Did you see what he was doing around the side of the house?” Tom asked.
“Yeah. Looked like he was setting up a wiretap.”
“On his own telephone?”
“Yes, sir.”
Foley frowned. What the… “Can you get over to the phone line and set up a second tap? If he thinks something’s going to come across that line that’s important enough for him to hear, then I want to hear it, too.”
“Will do,” was Tex’s short reply.
“Make it neat,” Tom ordered. “We don’t want to tip him off in any way.”
“You got it, boss.”
Julia picked at the leftovers of the hearty stew Dutch had cooked for supper. It was delicious, but she had no appetite whatsoever. How did condemned prisoners manage to eat their last meals only hours before they died? She was too busy fighting the urge to throw up.
“You feeling all right?” Dutch asked.
“Uh, yes. Fine,” she replied hastily. “I’m just getting tired of all this running around and hiding. I’m worried about your safety and Carina’s, and I want it all to be over.”
“It will be soon,” he said bluntly.
He sounded so confident when he said that. As if he knew something she didn’t. Suddenly suspicious, she asked, “You wouldn’t go and do something really dangerous to bring this thing to a head, would you?”
He looked at her blandly. “Now, why would you ask me something like that? Have I done anything stupid so far?”
“No,” she answered. “It’s just that— Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’m just being paranoid.”
He reached out with a big, warm hand and covered hers where it rested on the table. “You’re authorized to be tense. Just keep your wits about you and stick to me like glue, and you’ll be fine.”
But that was the problem. She had to face the dragon alone. And she was woefully unprepared to do battle with him. She had no doubt her father was going to chew her up and spit her out. And there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She just had to close her eyes tight and fling herself upon her sword. She could do this. No problem. No problem at all.
Not.
Chapter Sixteen
Dutch tarried in the living room with Julia after supper until she was visibly so nervous she could hardly sit still.
Perfect. He wanted there to be no doubt that, the second he gave her a chance, she would bolt straight to the phone and call her old man. She went into the kitchen on a pretext, and he followed her casually, watching her get herself a glass of water and gulp it down.
“Hot chocolate?” he asked her mildly.
“Uh, no thank you,” she replied nervously.
Oh yeah. She was eyeing the phone as if she couldn’t wait to get her hands on it. Jittery as a junebug. Time to let her off the hook.
He reached for his coat on the hook by the back door. “I’m gonna run a perimeter check and make sure we’re still alone. Will you be okay in here by yourself for a while? I’ll be keeping an eye on the place from a distance, so you’ll be safe the whole time.”
She nodded instantly. The woman could not lie to save her life. She could disguise her emotions and act calm when she wasn’t, but she couldn’t lie. Not to him, at least. He knew her far too well to miss the signals.
He slipped outside into the dark and made a production of moving away from the house toward the woods, but as soon as he was out of sight of the kitchen window, he circled back to the phone box. He picked up the radio he’d left there, popped in the batteries, and pressed the icy plastic to his ear.
Julia waited until Dutch’s big shadow faded into the night, and then she headed for the phone. She dialed her father’s cell-phone number quickly.
It rang only once before Eduardo’s voice growled, “What?”
She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. “It’s me, Daddy.”
Tom Foley jolted at the voice on the other end of Julia Ferrare’s phone call. He would know that gravelly, commanding voice anywhere. She was in direct contact with her father? Dutch was in a whole lot more trouble than they’d realized!
He listened carefully as she described a rest stop and scenic overlook on Route 2, a couple of miles north of Martin City. He and the squad had passed the spot on their way up here to the high-mountain passes of the northern Rockies.
Sonofabitch. She was arranging a secret rendezvous with her old man! It could mean only one thing. She was in cahoots with the bastard again. Her line to Dutch about wanting to save her sister and testify against her father could only be a lie.
Tom looked down at his watch. She’d set the meeting time for a little under three hours from now. Not much time to get into place. He gave a hand signal to his men and the four of them faded back silently into the darkness of the woods. Once they cleared the sight line of the house, they sprinted for the cars. He gave them a quick brief on what he’d heard, and every jaw went stiff at the mention of Eduardo Ferrare.
“Let’s move out,” he ordered tersely. He’d been waiting for this night for ten long years. It was high fucking time for a whole lot of payback.
Eduardo hung up the phone and gave his men a smile dripping with malice. “The little bitch thinks I’m going to make a deal with her. That I’m going to let her walk away from this thing alive.” He snorted. “With what she knows, she could put me in jail for the rest of my life and then some.”
He turned to the hired pilot. “Is everything arranged like I told you?”
“Yes, sir,” the mercenary replied smartly. “I’ll be flying myself.”
“Perfect,” Eduardo purred. The fucker ought to be flying the mission himself with the kind of money he was paying the guy’s services.
He announced to all the men in the room, “Let’s go catch us a little bird and stop her from singing.”
Dutch went back into the house noisily. Julia had already retreated upstairs to the loft. Excellent. He walked around in the bedroom downstairs, ostensibly getting ready for bed. He ran water and flushed the toilet, opened and closed a couple of drawers, and made sure to walk on the floorboard that squeaked. He turned out the lights and crawled into bed as noisily as he could, all but jumping up and down on the springs.
Then, in stealthy silence, he plumped the pillows into the shape of a human body and stuffed them under the covers. He pulled the comforter high up over where his head would be and eased away from the bed. Carefully, he slipped out of the room. He double-checked that the rental car’s keys were hanging prominently on a hook by the back door where Julia couldn’t fail to see them. Then he slipped outside, stepping only in footprints he’d made earlier. He made his way quickly and quietly to the garage and eased open the well-oiled doors. He pushed out the dirt bike stored inside.
The motorcycle was way too noisy to start up here, so he pushed it down the driveway and away from the house. He gave himself a good half mile of distance before he dared step on the kick-starter and let the engine roar to life.
The machine wasn’t made for snow, but he’d been riding motocross for fun since he was a kid, and he knew his way around a bike and bad traction.
He tore down the mountain, the throttle wide open. He didn’t have much time to get to the meeting place, scope it out, and get into place before the two Ferrares arrived.
“Dutch is approaching the security perimeter. Want us to pick him up?” Doc asked.
“No,” Tom answered on a hunch. “Let him through. Eduardo will expect him to be lurking around somewhere, so let’s give Ferrare what he’s expecting. Any sign of Julia or Eduardo?”
Howdy’s quiet voice. “Not yet, sir. They’re not due for another half hour.
“What’s Dutch up to?” Tom asked.
“Setting up a couple of explosives on remote detonators. He’s centering around that big gazebo on the far side of the clearing.”
Tom looked
that way. Good call on Dutch’s part. That was where he’d guessed the meeting was going to take place, too. It was far enough away from the parking lot to ensure privacy, but close enough to it to make for a fast getaway.
“Each of you take a quadrant around the gazebo. Howdy to the west, I’ll take the south, Tex, you slide around to the north side, and Doc, you cover the east. Let’s back off a few hundred feet and give this thing plenty of room to develop. And, gentlemen, don’t let Dutch spot you. Remember, he’s every bit as good as any of us.”
Tom sidled backward on his belly, easing beyond the far end of the parking lot. The thigh wound that ended his field career protested, but he gritted his teeth and ignored the pain. Dutch was his fellow officer. More than a friend, even. He owed this to his old comrade-in-arms.
Julia sneaked down the stairs in her socks, one careful step at a time. A quick peek into Dutch’s room through the partially open door. He was asleep on his side, facing away from the door. Perfect.
She eased into the kitchen and sighed in relief at the faint glint of metal by the door. The car keys were hanging on the same hook Dutch had put them on when they arrived. She lifted the keys, taking extreme care not to rattle them.
She stepped into her boots, cracked open the back door, and slipped outside. She put the car into neutral and released the parking brake. Thankfully, the vehicle began to roll slowly down the driveway. She let it get a good long ways from the house before she reached for the ignition.
Her heart pounded. An image of the Jeep going up in a ball of fire filled her mind’s eye. The good news was her father would no doubt call off his goons until after tonight’s meeting. He wanted his money before he waxed her. Tomorrow, all bets were off, though. The car started, and she was still alive.
Her watch said it was twelve-fifteen. She was cutting it a little close, but she should be able to make the rest stop by the 1:00 a.m. meeting time she’d set. The last thing she needed was to make her father even madder by being late.
