by Harper Allen
“Riggs fired the first shot, dammit,” Dixon said with peevish defensiveness. “Larry says if he’d kept his cool—”
“He fired the first shot to take down a killer who was about to kill me,” Caro corrected him sharply. “By then, Larry’s actions had left him no option.”
She stepped away from him. “But if you can pin this on Gabe, your hands are clean, aren’t they. I’m wasting my time, and this wasn’t what I came to talk to you about anyway. I’m leaving the Lazy J tonight, Steve. I’m taking Emily to—”
“Forget it, princess. You and Emily are staying here, where I can be sure you’re safe.”
The growl coming from the open doorway was huskier than normal, but there was no mistaking it. Caro whirled to see Gabe, his shoulder bandaged and the bullet-proof vest he was wearing obviously on loan from one of Kanin’s men.
Dizzying relief swept through her. No matter that she’d been told by the Recoveries International medic who’d attended him that despite his lapses into unconsciousness during the trip back to the villa Gabe’s injuries weren’t life-threatening, she’d still argued against returning to the Lazy J without him. Only her fears for her daughter’s safety had finally persuaded her to accompany Dixon on the hasty departure from Mexico that Larry had advised him to make.
“I thought you were—” she began tremulously, but he cut her off.
“Out for the count?” He shook his head. “Not this Navajo. When I came to, I gulped down a couple of pain pills for my shoulder and persuaded Kanin’s helicopter pilot to get me back over the border.”
“Where’s Larry?” Dixon frowned. “For God’s sake, man, you didn’t leave him stranded there, did you?”
Gabe spared him a glance. “To explain away the two dead bodies on the road, you mean? Straight up I did. But knowing him the way I do, I made sure I got my explanation in first, during a phone call I made before I left the villa to an old compadre of mine, Captain Ronrico Estavez of the federales. I told him exactly how everything had gone down tonight and said if he needed me to return to Mexico to give official testimony, I’d be glad to as soon as Leo was put out of commission.”
The smile he directed at Steve was sharklike. “I saw flashing lights pull up to the villa as my ’coptor lifted off. I’d say Kanin’s doing some fast talking just about now.”
Beneath his almost flippant manner he was barely holding his anger back, Caro realized, taking in his tense stance, the way his hands hung at his sides, fingers slightly curled as if readying to become fists. Steve could apparently read the ominous signals, as well as she could, because with a muttered imprecation he turned on his heel and left the room.
His departure had the flavor of a hasty retreat. She would have given almost anything to have been able to follow him, rather than stay here and stage her own confrontation with Gabe, but she didn’t have that option.
“When you told your Mexican police friend you wanted to see Leo put out of commission, you meant you intended to go hunting for him yourself, didn’t you.” She saw by the tightening of his jaw that she’d surmised correctly, and went on in a stronger voice. “Which means that you’re going to leave me and Emily here with hired protection guarding us. That’s not good enough, Gabe.”
“The men I have in mind are the best. Some of them are ex-Recoveries International operatives who quit the company after Kanin bought it a couple of years ago. The others are a mixed bag—one’s a former Navy SEAL who worked with me on a job once and whom I’d trust with my life, another’s a female cop who was undercover for years and who’s as tough as they come. You and your daughter will be in good hands.”
A shutter came down behind his gaze. “I owe it to Jess to track down the bastard who orchestrated his kidnapping and murder,” he said curtly, turning away from her. “I failed an old friend tonight. I won’t fail him again.”
“Failed?” Frowning, she spoke to his back. “That’s not how I see it. You put your life on the line—not just for Jess, but for me. No one man could have done more than—”
“You don’t get it, do you.” He faced her again, so abruptly that she took half a step backward. “You think that if Dixon and Kanin hadn’t interfered tonight, right now I’d be knocking back a couple of cold ones with my buddy Crawford and telling him that saving his hide was all in a day’s work for me. You think I’d be glad I’d been there for an old Double B pal, right?”
“I don’t think that, I know that,” Caro said in confusion. “For heaven’s sake, what’s this about, Gabe?”
“It’s about maybe deep down some part of me saw Jess’s death as a reprieve, princess,” he said harshly. “It’s about me not feeling the sense of loss I should have when I saw him killed. All I could think was that now I wasn’t ever going to hear that you’d be come Mrs. Jess Crawford.”
The corners of his mouth lifted as he took in her frozen reaction. “Hell of a note, isn’t it? On one side of the scales I had a friend who would have gone to the wall for me. On the other was a woman I’d spent a single night with, a woman I didn’t even particularly like. And it was no contest, honey—when you showed up at that gas station this morning and told me he’d asked you to marry him, just for a minute I saw Jess as the enemy.”
She had thought she’d changed, Caro told herself. It seemed she hadn’t—or at least, not as much as she’d thought. Because out of everything the man in front of her had said, the self-absorbed woman she’d once been seized on the least important component.
Seized on it, examined it and found that it had the power to hurt her more than she would have imagined.
“A woman you don’t particularly like?” Repeating his words had the same effect as turning a knife in a wound. She gave a brittle laugh. “Then, you’re correct, I don’t get it at all. You don’t like me. You told me earlier today that if I ever wanted you again you’d turn down the opportunity to have me. I don’t for a moment believe you were in any way responsible for Jess’s murder, but if you were, I don’t think finding Leo’s going to make it right for you. I don’t think anything ever will. So how can you stand there and tell me it was no contest?”
“Because even if the price was my soul, I’d sell it in a heartbeat and think you were worth damnation, sweetheart,” he said tightly. “There’s no good reason for me to feel that way, and I wish to hell I didn’t, but I do. That’s why I need to do the only right thing left for me, and hunt Leo down.”
This time when he turned away from her there was an implacability about his posture that told Caro he’d said all he intended to on the subject. She supposed she had, too, she thought shakily.
His revelation hadn’t changed anything. The man had confessed to an obsession with her, an obsession he wished he could reason away. He hadn’t talked about a future between them. And that was a good thing, she told herself resolutely.
She needed to keep her distance from him, and by his own admission there was a gulf as wide as a New Mexico canyon yawning between them. Now the only threat he posed to Emily’s security was his insistence on hiring bodyguards to keep them safe here on the Lazy J—and that wasn’t his call, it was hers.
Hers and Jess’s.
“I’m sure the people you have in mind are good, but they’d still be hired protection.” She turned toward the door, pausing only to look back at him. “And you’re wrong. Hunting Leo down is the easy thing for you to do, not the right thing. The right thing would be to follow Jess’s last wishes, but you gave me your answer on that before you even knew he’d been kidnapped.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” He glanced over his shoulder at her, lines of pain and exhaustion suddenly apparent in his face as their gazes met.
She shrugged. “Double B band-of-brothers reunion? Thanks but no thanks? I think that’s how you put it. Come to think of it, you never did tell me why Jess’s memories of Del Hawkins and his boot camp for wayward teens were so different from yours. Why your attitude toward the place and the man didn’t jibe with anyone el
se’s, for that matter.”
“‘Anyone else’ being Tyler Adams and Virgil Connor?” Gabe frowned. “Lady, I’m damned if I know what my reckless youth has to do with anything, but I’ll play along if that’s what you want. Like I told Kanin this afternoon, I was a sixteen-year-old car thief who was given the choice between the Double B or real time. I chose the Double B, figuring a year at a ranch run by a Vietnam vet who needed a wheelchair to get around was better than jail. If I had to do it all over again, I’d take the lockup, believe me.”
His smile was tight. “Former Marine Lieutenant Hawkins made my life hell for that year. I did my best to return the favor. When I finally shook the dust of the Double B from my boots, I vowed I’d never see it or that leatherneck son of a bitch again, and only Jess was ever fool enough to try to change my mind.”
A different kind of pain crossed his features before the shutters came down behind his eyes again. He shook his head. “I don’t know how many times over the years he asked me along when he paid Del a visit. Never say die, that was our Jess.”
“Yes, that was Jess,” Caro agreed past the lump in her throat. She met his gaze, and at the sight of the telltale brilliance lighting the amber eyes she felt tears come to her own again. “He still hasn’t given up, Gabe. Are you going to turn him down this final time, too?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Jess made me promise him two things a few weeks ago. The first was that if he was kidnapped, I would get you to negotiate his release. The second was that if I ever found myself in danger and he wasn’t there for me, you and I were to go to the Double B and ask Del and your bad-boy buddies from fifteen years ago for their help.”
She tipped her chin firmly upward. “Jess said the Double B was the only real home the four of you ever knew, whether you wanted to admit it or not. You have to go home, Gabe. You have to take me and my baby daughter to the Double B, where we’ll be safe.”
With the sleeveless black vest fitting him like a second skin and the white bandage slashing across the dark tan of his right shoulder, all at once the man facing her seemed unreachably remote. Silver glinted at his wrist as the swell of his biceps tensed.
He exhaled, and in the sound there was a hint of defeat.
“I’d like to think I might have been able to say no to you on this one, princess,” he said brusquely. “But I’m no match against you and Jess together. Get Emily ready for a helicopter ride.”
He strode past her to the doorway, his mouth a grim line. “We leave for the Double B in fifteen minutes.”
THE DOUBLE B’S KITCHEN wasn’t as spacious as he remembered, Gabe thought two hours later as he closed the door of the spare bedroom leading off from it, where he’d deposited his one bag of belongings. But maybe the seeming lack of space was an illusion, brought about by the fact that right now there wasn’t a single empty chair at the scarred pine table that took center stage in the rustic room, beneath the antique hanging lamp and a few feet away from the equally old-fashioned cookstove. Tye’s seat was close to that of his new wife, Susannah, while Connor had his arm around a slim Dineh woman he’d introduced as Tess, with whom he’d also recently tied the knot.
Looks like you were well on your way to being the last bachelor holdout of the original gang, Riggs, especially since even Hawkins is a married man now. He frowned as the notion crossed his mind. But once Jess had married Caro, wild horses wouldn’t have dragged you to a Double B gathering like this one anyway. As it is, it took his death to accomplish that.
Gabe steeled himself against the pain that slashed through him, and saw from the grim set of Tye’s mouth and the bleak expression in Con’s eyes that they were steeling themselves, too. Susannah and Tess, whom he’d gathered had both met Jess in the past two months, weren’t attempting to emulate their spouses’s foolish male stoicism, he noted. Like Caro earlier, they were allowing their tears to fall unheeded.
While she’d been bundling Emily into a carry-cot at the Lazy J and gathering the essentials she’d asked Mrs. Percy to pack for her daughter, he’d placed a call to the Double B to advise Hawkins of their arrival and the reason for it. He’d been surprised when Connor had answered the phone, and disconcerted to hear the genuine pleasure in his old friend’s voice before he’d had a chance to break the news of Jess’s death.
“Hell, Riggs, we figured you’d dropped off the edge of the world, man. You’ve missed three weddings, I’ll have you know—mine, Tye’s and, if you can believe it, Hawkins’s—plus all the rest of the action that’s been happening lately on the Double B. There’s too much to tell you over the phone, but Tye and I and our better halves are now living here, as well as a couple of Del’s old Beta Beta Force buddies from his Vietnam days—John MacLeish and Daniel Bird, Tye’s new father-in-law. Jess said he was going to find out where you’d disappeared to. Don’t tell me the son of a gun finally did.”
“In a way,” he’d answered with difficulty. “I’ve got bad news, Con. Brace yourself.”
From the moment Caro had told him Jess had been kidnapped he’d known there was an outside chance of tragedy, as little as he’d wanted to acknowledge that possibility, Gabe thought somberly. But to the people sitting around this table now, Jess Crawford’s murder had come without any warning at all. Even Daniel Bird and John MacLeish, Del’s buddies and men who’d known Jess only slightly, seemed shaken and stunned, while Greta, Del’s new wife, was openly weeping with the other women.
Of course, Mr. Semper Fi himself didn’t crack, he thought with a flicker of anger. When our helicopter landed in the field and he drove out to meet us in his Jeep, for all the emotion he showed he could have been back in ’Nam, greeting a new contingent of recruits, dammit. Even when Greta offered to show Caro to the room that had been prepared for her and Emily, Hawkins insisted on playing the hospitable ranch baron and getting her settled in himself.
But what had he expected? Gabriel asked himself. The man was as tough as rawhide. Obviously not even the death of one of his former protegés touched—
“You’re handling this well.”
Looking up, Gabe saw Tye filling a battered tin coffeepot at the sink beside him. As quiet as the observation had been, he thought he discerned a rebuke in it and responded sharply. “Hadn’t you heard? I’m an old hand at losing hostages, Adams. Sure, this time it was a personal friend and I saw him killed right in front of my eyes, but what the hell. A few more like tonight and I might even manage the same iron-assed lack of reaction as Hawkins.”
“I never thought I’d hear you call me your role model in anything, Riggs. In fact, I seem to remember you once told me I was the biggest son of a bitch you’d ever known.”
Del’s clipped tones came from the doorway that led from the kitchen to the hall. Beside him stood Caro, the dismay on her face evidence that she, too, had overheard his intemperate rejoinder to Tye.
Hawkins entered the room, his gray gaze flinty. “I’d say right now you’ve got me beat hands down in that category, though, boy. You want to take this outside and see?”
Jess had told him Del was walking again, Gabe recalled, courtesy of a pair of prosthetic legs that a few years ago had replaced the ones he’d lost when an explosion had robbed him of his own during the waning days of the long-ago war he and Bird and MacLeish had fought in. It was still unsettling to see him out of the wheelchair that had once been so much a part of him. The old man looks good, he told himself reluctantly. And if we hadn’t already butted heads I might even try to tell him I’m glad for him.
But right now wasn’t the moment. Right now Del Hawkins seemed to think Gabriel Riggs was still the sixteen-year-old punk whose butt the tough ex-marine, wheelchair or no wheelchair, had once whipped in an arranged fight out back behind the horse barn.
And right now Gabe needed to make it clear those days of sir, yes sir! were long over.
He grinned tightly at Hawkins, because he knew his grin had always riled the man. “Why not, Lieut? Don’t they say a wake’s like a
wedding—it hasn’t really gotten under way until a few punches get thrown? Behind the horse barn again?”
“You’re on, boy,” Del rumbled, striding toward the door that opened from the kitchen onto the ranch house’s wraparound porch. “It’ll be pure pleasure to show you that some things haven’t changed around—”
“Stop right there, mister!” The barked command sounded as if it had come from a drill sergeant—a female drill sergeant, Gabe realized in astonishment as he saw Greta push her chair abruptly away from the table and take a swift step to block her husband’s path. At the same moment, Caro advanced toward him, her expression coldly angry.
Both women spoke at once. Both voices could have peeled paint from a wall.
“What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Delbert?”
Greta’s incredulous query was all Gabe heard of her reaming-out of Del before Caro gained his attention by planting herself in front of him.
“Are you out of your mind, Gabe? Have you forgotten what brought us here?” Her gaze was chillier than Del’s had been. “The only thing you got right was that this is in the nature of a wake—Jess’s wake. I won’t allow you to turn it into a brawl!” She pressed her lips together. “I want to see you march over to Del and shake his hand. And then the two of you can start acting like the adults you both are.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Greta snapped. “Go on, Del. Shake hands with Gabe and apologize.”
Gabe’s glare met Del’s equally recalcitrant one. He saw Del’s jaw tighten stubbornly at the very moment his own clenched.
I love it! The old man and Riggs, both of them getting reamed out by a pair of feisty females. Too sweet, man! At first Gabe didn’t know who the laughing voice in his head belonged to. Then it hit him, and suddenly the pain he’d been holding back all night was right there in his throat, making it impossible to speak. He saw the sheen he hadn’t noticed before glazing Del’s gray gaze, and slowly he extended his hand.