by Diana Palmer
“Are you all right?” she asked aloud, concerned.
He framed her face in his hands, bent and kissed her with breathless tenderness. “You are my whole world,” he whispered in Afrikaans. “My love. My life.”
Tears stung her eyes. “And you are mine,” she whispered back in that same tongue.
He drew away at last and took a steadying breath. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said softly. “Sleep tight.”
She smiled drowsily, deeply in love and happier than she’d been since Rourke left Manaus the last time. “You, too.”
“Tot siens,” he said in Afrikaans. He winked at her and went down the steps whistling. It was all an act. Tonight, he had a serious and dangerous task to perform. He only hoped everything went as planned.
* * *
CLARISSE HAD PUT the baby to bed. Mariel wasn’t sleepy, so she said she’d watch a movie and listen for Joshua in case he woke up. She knew Clarisse must be tired. She was still weak from her illness.
“That’s sweet of you,” Clarisse told the other woman. “Thanks.”
“It’s no problem,” Mariel said. She seemed unusually alert. A minute later, there was a knock on the door.
“I’ll go,” Clarisse laughed. “It’s probably Rourke. He must have forgotten something…”
Mariel walked off down the hall in the middle of the sentence.
Frowning, Clarisse opened the front door. It was Jack Lopez. But he didn’t smile. He looked oddly smug. She walked out onto the porch with him, curious.
“Jack,” she said. “It’s a little late for company…”
“No, actually, it’s just the right time,” he said with a faint smile as he hand went to his pocket. “You have so much company that it’s really been hard trying to get you alone for a minute.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” He pulled a pistol out of his pocket. “Sapara says hello,” he added with a deep, sarcastic laugh. “So long, Mrs. Carvajal. Tell your late husband he shouldn’t have slept with the patio door open. And don’t worry about your baby. He’ll be joining you very soon.”
He raised the pistol.
Clarisse remembered Rourke’s warning, the promise she’d made that she hadn’t understood until right now.
“You can tell my late husband yourself,” she said in a tight, cold voice. And without warning, she dropped to the ground and rolled away from him. She didn’t know if it would work, if Rourke even had someone in place watching. But this was the only chance she had, and she took it.
Seconds later, the shocked man standing over her froze and stared down at her with a blank look on his face as the top of his head seemed to explode in a gush of blood. She closed her eyes, because she didn’t want to have to see it. She felt a spray of blood fall down on her averted face, smelled the metallic odor of it and tried not to throw up. A fraction of a second later, she heard a crack like the sound of lightning striking and a thud like a melon shattering.
There were running footsteps. Clarisse stayed on the ground. Her mouth was dry. Her heart was racing like a wild thing. She looked up in time to see Rourke running toward her.
“Are you all right?” he asked quickly.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded choked. She sobbed, reaction hitting her after the fact. “Rourke!” she cried.
He paused just long enough to put a finger on the neck of the downed man, checking for a pulse that he knew he wouldn’t find. The sniper rifle was still in one big hand. He drew Tat up with him, held her very close and bent to kiss her with bruising intensity.
“Thank God you remembered!” he groaned, and he kissed her again, so hungrily that his lips and arms bruised. His powerful body shuddered as he realized how many things could have gone wrong. He could have lost her in an instant. He kissed her even harder. But he drew back almost at once. This wasn’t the time.
He jerked out his cell phone and punched in a number. “Well?” he asked in a tone vibrant with anger and relief. His face was solemn. “Ya, that’s what I thought. Take the shot. Don’t argue with me, damn it, do it now! Right now! Take the shot…! Yes? Yes!” he said with a rough sigh of relief. “No, I can’t wait. There’s no time. I’ll call you.” He broke the connection, punched another button, spoke one word into it, turned off the phone and ran into the house, propping the rifle against the wall on the way.
He’d motioned Tat behind him just before he ran down the hall to the baby’s room. She followed in his footsteps, wondering why he was in such a hurry. The man lying cold on the ground was no threat anymore, certainly not to Joshua!
When they got to the nursery, Mariel was in the rocking chair holding the baby, just starting to put a bottle to his mouth. Shocked, she looked up at Rourke and then at Clarisse, standing close to him with blood all over her blouse, her face, her throat. The assassin’s blood.
“Why, Mrs. Carvajal, you’re bleeding!” Mariel exclaimed. “I thought I heard a gunshot! Are you all right?”
“I’m…fine. Why are you giving the baby a bottle?” Clarisse asked. It was strange, because Mariel knew that she nursed Joshua.
“He was hungry and I thought you had gone to bed,” Mariel said simply.
“But he was asleep,” Clarisse protested, not grasping the situation at all.
Rourke moved forward, as quick as a cat, and took the bottle from her fingers with a gloved hand. “Get up,” he said in a voice that rang with authority. “Now!” he added harshly when she hesitated.
“What is wrong?” the woman asked tremulously. “I was only going to feed him!”
Rourke put the bottle on the floor. “Clarisse, take the baby. Do it quick, honey!”
Clarisse didn’t hesitate, but she was looking more confused by the minute. She took Joshua from Mariel’s arms. She almost had to force him out of them. She stepped back, aware of an odd gleam in Mariel’s eyes.
“Check his pulse,” Rourke said at once.
She laid her head against the baby’s chest. Joshua was awake and looking up at her, not even upset, or so it appeared. “It sounds all right,” she faltered. “Rourke, what’s going on?”
“Sit down,” he told Mariel, because the woman had stood up. When she hesitated, he pulled a .45 Colt ACP smoothly out of its holster and leveled it at her. “I think you’ve seen gut wounds before,” he said in a voice like ice. “They aren’t pretty.”
“You must be kidding,” Mariel gasped, but she sat down. “Señora Carvajal, the man is crazy!”
It did seem that way. For just a second, Clarisse wondered if the head wound had caused Rourke to act out of character. But then she remembered Lopez aiming a pistol at her. He wouldn’t be doing this without a good reason.
While she was debating what to say next, sirens came screaming up outside the house. Doors slammed.
Cash Grier came running into the house with two uniformed officers right behind him. His pistol was out as he followed Rourke’s curt voice down the hall and into the baby’s room.
Cash let out a breath when he saw Clarisse holding Joshua in her arms.
“Thank God,” he said heavily. “I was afraid we wouldn’t be in time.”
“You and me both, mate,” Rourke said. His eyes had never left Mariel. “One of my operatives has a dossier on her. We got it from Interpol. She’s wanted in more countries than I used to be,” he added.
“Any warrants outstanding?” Cash asked.
“Yes. One, in Belgium, for assassination. We’ve been in touch with authorities there. But you may not want to discuss extradition until you have the contents of that baby bottle screened.” He indicated it on the floor beside the rocking chair, and his one brown eye was glittering with fury. “She had it at his lips when I came in. We need to take Joshua to the emergency room and have him checked, just to be sure.”
&nb
sp; “The bottle…?” Clarisse faltered, holding the baby closer.
“Poison, unless I miss my guess,” Rourke said coldly, glaring at the woman, who flushed under the murderous fury of the stare.
Clarisse’s horrified gasp was audible in the room. She held Joshua close to her heart and buried her face in his little body. She was shivering as she stared with horror at the woman she’d trusted with his life.
“I admit nothing,” Mariel said with faint contempt. “And I might have failed, but this will not be the only attempt…”
“I’m afraid it will be,” Rourke replied.
“Señor Sapara will have me bailed out by dawn tomorrow,” Mariel assured him with a cold smile while one of Cash’s officers read her rights to her.
Rourke pulled out his cell phone and made a call. His face was harder than ever. “Ya. Good job. Yes, I’ll tell him.” He hung up. The smile he gave the would-be assassin was smug and merciless. “The local police in Manaus have just picked up Arturo Sapara’s body,” he told her. “Along with those of two of his assistants. He won’t be bailing anybody out.”
Mariel’s face lost color. “You are lying!”
He didn’t even answer her. “I left Jack Lopez just outside the front door,” Rourke told Cash.
“We noticed.” Cash pursed his lips. “I just had a call from Rick Marquez’s father-in-law.”
Rourke nodded. “It was sanctioned. Even if it hadn’t been,” he added, looking at Clarisse and the child in her arms with an expression so full of emotion that it burned, “I wouldn’t have hesitated. He had a pistol leveled at her.”
“I can understand how you felt. How did you know where to find Sapara?” Cash asked as they were all going out the door together. One of his officers had already put Mariel in the back of a patrol car. Rourke had the sniper rifle in his hand.
“I have a man on my team who can track spirits across water,” Rourke chuckled. “He has contacts in a number of unmentionable places.”
“A blessing,” Cash replied.
Rourke put an arm around Clarisse’s thin shoulders. “My biggest one today, among many others,” he agreed. He kissed Clarisse’s hair. “Come on, baby. We need to make sure she didn’t get any of that formula into Joshua. I’ll drive you.”
“I’ll need a statement from both of you,” Cash said. “But it can wait until morning,” he added with a faint smile.
“Thanks, mate,” Rourke said with genuine gratitude. “It’s been a long night. I wasn’t sure of the outcome, either.” He glanced at Clarisse. “Thank God you didn’t question what I told you to do, and that you remembered when to do it!”
“It sounded very odd at the time, what you told me,” she said. “And I didn’t understand why you told me in Afrikaans and refused to let me tell Mariel.” She grimaced. “She would have killed the baby…!”
He held her close. “I knew about her, as soon as I knew who Jack Lopez really was. You see, I was the only person we had who’d ever seen him face-to-face. I trained him, in fact, over a decade ago. It was blind luck that I remembered in time.”
She wanted to ask if he’d remembered anything else, but he was already herding her toward the car. He locked the sniper rifle in the trunk. Then he let her put Joshua in the backseat, but he watched how she put the baby carrier that doubled as a car seat in place, smiling as he touched the baby’s soft little cheek.
“When this is all over, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown,” she said huskily when they were pulling up at the emergency room entrance of the hospital.
“When it’s over, I’m going to join you,” he agreed.
They walked in with the baby. Dr. Copper Coltrain was waiting for them. He did a cursory examination and smiled, because he found no evidence that Mariel had got any of the deadly liquid inside that little mouth.
“Micah’s off tonight. So is Lou,” he added, referring to his wife, Louise, who was also a physician. “She’s in the last stages of pregnancy and having a hard time getting around, so I’m subbing for her. I wish Drew Morris hadn’t decided to specialize in radiology, so he’d at least be on call when Lou was incapacitated,” he chuckled, referring to their former partner in the practice.
“I hear that Carson Farwalker’s planning to fill that spot briefly, until he decides whether or not to become an internist,” Rourke mused.
“He is. He’s very good. Come on back. We’ll draw blood and check the baby thoroughly.” He shook his head, his red hair flaming in the overhead lights. “A woman who’d kill a child for money. I still have a hard time believing there are people like that on the planet.”
“So do we,” Rourke said, his arm around Clarisse as they walked into the cubicle.
“Let me get one of the lab techs in here to draw blood. It’s always better to err on the good side of caution,” Coltrain said. “Be right back.”
After he left, she looked up at Rourke with soft, loving eyes. “You saved my life,” Clarisse said huskily. “And Joshua’s. I never even suspected…!” She bit her lower lip. “I have no judgment about people. I’ll never hire another housekeeper as long as I live!”
“She was very convincing,” he said softly. “You couldn’t have known. It was Lopez who put the anopheles mosquitoes in your house in Manaus,” he added. “He killed your husband.” His face went taut. “He almost killed you, as well.”
She tried to find the right words and faltered on them. “You knew about the mosquitoes? But how…? I never told you!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I KNOW A great many things that you never told me, darling,” Rourke said quietly. He bent and touched his mouth to hers while she held Joshua close. Then he bent and kissed the tiny child in her arms. “Dear God, I’ve never been so terrified in my life! I had a tip that Lopez was on his way to your house. I was in position—I was ready for him. But I was scared to death to take the shot!”
Her lips fell open. “You…you shot him?” she gasped.
“Yes,” he said, his eye cold and hard. “I couldn’t trust it to anyone else.”
Her eyes stared up at him wildly. “You told me to drop and roll,” she began.
“Bullets hit bone and ricochet,” he said tautly. “Sometimes a sniper accidently kills the victim that way, or an innocent bystander. People have died because snipers know that, and sometimes they hesitate one second too long.” He drew the woman and the baby into his arms and bent his head over hers. He could barely get his breath. “I prayed that you’d remember what I said. I’ve had hell living with a lot of things I did in my life, Tat. But if I’d hit you because my aim was off a hair, they’d have buried me right beside you.” He shuddered. “There is no way in hell I’m staying alive if you don’t.”
She felt the words. Felt them like silk wrapping around her body. She pressed closer to him, her eyes closed as she drank in the wonder of his feelings for her.
“Stanton, how much do you remember?” she asked without looking at him.
Dr. Coltrain and the nurse walked in just in time to spare him any embarrassing revelations. He would, of course, be obligated to tell her the truth at some point in the near future. But he was going to put it off as long as he could. He still felt enormous guilt at what she’d suffered because of his damned job. And that was another discussion he’d be having with other people very soon.
* * *
JOSHUA WAS ALL RIGHT. Rourke let out a sigh of delighted relief when Coltrain grinned and handed the baby back to Clarisse.
She kissed his little face and cuddled him.
“He’s a lovely child,” Coltrain said. “Nice name, too,” he chuckled.
“I know, your son is also named Joshua,” Clarisse said, blushing a little. “I honestly had no idea…”
“Three of our friends also have sons named Joshua. One is called Joe, one Josh, and ours
is Tip.”
“We, uh, heard about the train wrecking instincts,” Rourke chuckled.
Coltrain just smiled. “So you see, if we all yell Joshua at the same time, only your little boy is likely to come running. Feel better?”
“Much,” she confessed. “Thanks.”
“Now that you’re off the endangered list, are you staying?” Coltrain asked.
“I’d like to,” Clarisse said softly. She smiled. “I’ve never lived in a small town in my life, but I love this one.”
“You’ve made friends here. Besides, Tippy Grier will mourn if you take Joshua away,” he laughed. “She’s very fond of him. Of both of you.”
“It would be nice if she and Cash could have another one,” Clarisse said.
Coltrain didn’t say a word. He just lifted an eyebrow and changed the subject.
* * *
ROURKE TOOK JOSHUA and Clarisse to Jake’s house with him.
“But we’ll be imposing,” she’d protested all the way.
“Honey, you’ve got a body on your front porch,” he pointed out, having taken her out the back door so that she didn’t have to see Lopez lying there. He’d also dampened a washcloth and handed it to her before they got in the car to take Joshua to the hospital, so that she could wipe off the blood. “You can’t possibly sleep there, and I’m not leaving you alone.”
“But you’re staying here already…”
“Jake’s daughter married Carson Farwalker,” he pointed out. “So Jake has a spare bedroom.”
“One spare bedroom,” she began.
“Just a sec.” Rourke pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her.
She handed Joshua to him as she read it, standing on Jake Blair’s front porch. Her eyes searched Rourke’s for a few seconds. “It’s a marriage license,” she said.
“Ya,” he agreed. “We’ve both had blood work recently. The results are on file. Jake can marry us right now. I even have the ring in my pocket.” He cocked his head and he’d never looked more solemn. “We can have a sweet social wedding later on, when we recover from the past few days. But we can be married very quietly, and privately, right here, tonight. If you’re willing.”