by Harper Allen
“Because you and Emily were the only ones specifically threatened by Leo.” He’d started shaking his head even before she’d finished talking. “Maybe Jess’s cryptic phone call before he left for Mexico convinced Tye there’s more to this than a simple kidnapping gone wrong, but you remember what Jess was like. He was always getting all fired up over his latest enthusiasm. A month later he’d be excited over something new.”
“Which was probably one of the reasons he became so successful in his field,” she retorted. “He was willing to keep an open mind. But this wasn’t like his short-lived mania for flying ultra-light planes, or his model railroad craze, Gabe. From what he told me after his two visits to the Double B in the past couple of months, the incidents that brought Susannah and Tyler together and then Connor and Tess, both left questions that were never satisfactorily explained. And Jess’s curiosity was just as much a part of him as his enthusiasm, so he wouldn’t simply have shrugged off those loose ends. What if he did learn something that put him in danger?”
“Something connected to Del’s shadowy past in Vietnam?” Gabe let out an impatient breath. “For God’s sake, that was over thirty years ago.”
He glanced around the softly lit room, and then seemed to come to a decision. “Sit.”
With a nod at the rumpled bed, he pulled a nearby chair closer. As Caro reluctantly settled herself on the edge of the bed, he dropped into the chair and leaned forward, muscled forearms resting on his thighs, his hands hanging loosely between his knees.
“Has anyone filled you in on what Beta Beta Force was, exactly, and just how it was disbanded?”
She pressed her lips together. “No,” she replied with asperity. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Everyone’s gone out of their way to make me welcome and comfortable here, but I still feel like an outsider.”
She saw the flicker of disconcertion that briefly crossed his face. “You do, too. You and Del have kept things civil between you since the night we arrived, but the two of you still rub each other the wrong way. Is that why you don’t want to explore Jess’s theory?”
“I don’t want to explore Jess’s theory because I don’t see the point,” he replied shortly. “Look, Del and I aren’t ever going to see eye to eye, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect him for what he sacrificed in an unpopular and largely forgotten war. Beta Beta Force was a four-man covert operations group consisting of him, Daniel Bird, John MacLeish, and a man named Zeke Harmon. They were assigned to carry out the jobs that no one else would touch, and instead of being hailed as heroes when the war ended, any mention of their exploits was wiped from the official records.”
“But all Del has to do is pick up the phone and he seems to be able to get through to any four-star general he wants,” Caro protested. “That doesn’t sound like he’s been forgotten.”
“Not by those who know the truth,” Gabe conceded. “But to many, the name of Beta Beta Force was synonymous with one of the darkest chapters in American military history, and the four men who sported those tattoos you might have noticed on Del’s or Daniel’s or MacLeish’s biceps—the tattoos depicting two bees fighting to the death—”
“Two bees?” A bell rang faintly in Caro’s memory but echoed off into silence before she could place it. She shook her head at Gabe. “Sorry. Yes, I saw that tattoo on Daniel Bird’s arm yesterday when he was sluicing off at the pump after working in the barn. I didn’t realize Del and John MacLeish had identical ones. What’s it supposed to represent, besides the obvious reference to the initials of their unit?”
“That any one of the four could count on the man beside him to fight to the death for him. They were as close as brothers in the beginning.” He looked down at his hands. “But then rumors began to circulate about a rogue killer who was murdering civilians, the enemy, and their own soldiers for sadistic pleasure. The Double B’s were assigned to track down the killer, and when they did they found he was one of their own—Zeke Harmon. They turned Harmon in to the authorities.”
She’d earlier accused him of being too blunt. But she knew that in retelling this tragedy, Gabe had deliberately left out the gruesome details, and she found herself suddenly grateful that he had. She swallowed.
“Learning that one of their number was a monster must have torn the others apart, especially if they were a band of brothers at the start, like you say.” A thought occurred to her, and her eyes widened. “But that could be what Jess discovered, Gabe. Maybe this Harmon’s been released after all these years and he’s looking for revenge on his old comrades.”
“So he targets a software billionaire who has a peripheral connection to Del, and then threatens a woman and child Hawkins doesn’t know.” His tone was dry. “Even if there was any logic to that, it wouldn’t wash. Harmon was killed, Caro. Del killed him.”
“But—”
“But he was turned in to the authorities? Yeah, and then the bastard escaped into the jungle he knew so well.” Gabe grimaced. “By then Beta Beta Force had been disbanded and Daniel Bird had actually been shipped home, so Del and MacLeish were given the assignment to find Harmon and bring him back.”
He lifted broad shoulders in a shrug. “They split up, Del found Harmon first, and when Harmon drew his gun, Del was forced to shoot to kill. A second later as he approached Zeke’s body, he stepped on a booby trap the bastard had rigged. Obviously Harmon had planned to go out taking one of his old buddies with him. Only the fact that MacLeish found Del and carried him back to base camp twenty-five miles on his back saved Del’s life, although not his legs.”
It had been over thirty years ago, as he’d said, Caro thought. But neither the passage of time nor Gabe’s toneless recitation of the facts could lessen the horrific impact of the story she’d just heard. She saw one last possibility.
“Could there be a chance Harmon didn’t die from Del’s bullet? Was his body ever recovered?”
“We’re talking jungle conditions. What was left of it was, along with his dog tags, a few days later.” Gabe’s smile was brief. “You’re like Jess, princess. You don’t give up easy, do you.”
“Never say die,” she agreed, trying to match his smile and failing as the aching sadness that had caught her unawares several times over the past forty-eight hours engulfed her again. She blinked back the moisture in her eyes. “I’m with Connor’s wife, Tess. I don’t want to believe a good man like Jess was killed over something so senseless as money. Not that any reason would be acceptable for murder, but knowing there was one might stop me from seeing him every night in my dreams, bound to a chair in that fruit delivery van with a gun—”
“Fruit delivery van?” Gabe’s voice was sharp. “How do you know that’s what it was?”
“What do you mean, how did I know? You were there, too. You saw the—” Caro paused. “Or maybe you didn’t,” she said slowly. “You were near the front of the truck when it stopped, and the glare of the headlights would have been in your eyes. When you moved around to the side, the opened panel door had slid across. But from where I was first standing by the SUV, I could—”
Her breath caught in her throat. The bell that had rung so faintly in her mind a few minutes earlier sounded again, and this time it was loud and clear.
“My knowledge of Spanish isn’t anywhere near as good as yours,” she said huskily. “But I can recognize simple words. Gabe, the logo on the side of that truck was Dos Abejas Fruit Company. Doesn’t that mean—”
His voice cut across hers before she could finish. “The Two Bees, dammit,” he said harshly. “As in the Double B—and as in Beta Beta Force.”
Chapter Seven
“You certainly set the cat among the pigeons last night, darlin’.” Crossing the yard from the direction of the horse barn and catching sight of Caro sitting on the porch, Emily in her stroller beside her, a crease appeared in the tan of Del’s cheek as he delivered his dry comment.
As he reached them he nodded at the man standing behind her. “That salve you p
ut on the colt’s leg seems to be doing the trick, Mac, but I think we’ll keep him quiet for one more day. I saw an impatient-looking nine-year-old sitting in your truck waiting for you, said you’d promised to drive him into Last Chance to get some new boots. You’d better hustle along and let me take over here.”
“Joey, Tess and Con’s young hell-raiser.” John MacLeish grinned at Caro. “I made the mistake of telling him a real cowboy needed real cowboy boots, and he’s got his heart set on a pair he saw in the window of Hoyt’s General in town.”
It didn’t necessarily take a village to raise a child, Caro thought with a smile as Del and John exchanged a few words beside her—it just took a ranch. The Double B was proof of that, though right now the bunkhouse that during the school year held the current crop of wayward teens sent here to turn their lives around was only occupied by MacLeish and Daniel Bird. The men were using it for sleeping quarters while the houses that had been planned for them were being built on the opposite side of the sprawling ranch property from the two homes recently constructed for Tyler’s and Connor’s families.
“Gabriel’s own damn fault, though,” Del grunted, breaking open the rifle handed to him by MacLeish as the other man left the porch. He squinted briefly inside the weapon and locked the barrel into place again. “It might have occurred to him to ask you if you’d seen anything he hadn’t at the scene that night. Did he tell you our old sad story, honey?”
His question was offhand, but Caro sensed her reply was important to him. “Gabe told me. It is a sad story, Del.”
“Sadder still for Harmon’s victims and the families they left behind,” he said with a thread of remembered anger in his voice. “It was terrible enough back then to get a telegram informing you that your son or husband or fiancé had fallen in action, but to learn he’d been killed by a rogue murderer—” He shook his head. “No wonder some of the boys tarred all Beta Beta Force with the same brush. We should have figured out sooner that Zeke had crossed over to the darkness.”
The very intensity of his muttered words told Caro this was a recrimination he’d berated himself with before. She hastened to turn his thoughts. “I didn’t have the chance to speak with Gabe before he left with Connor this morning for the FBI field office in Albuquerque. How convinced is he that my information could mean Jess’s kidnapping and murder was the start of a vendetta against anyone connected with you?”
“Not very, although he agreed with Con that going through the most-wanted files with an eye to age and military service was a step he couldn’t skip.” Del scowled. “But like he said, if a disgruntled veteran’s been holding a grudge against our unit for the death of a friend in ’Nam at the hands of Harmon, why has he waited so long to take revenge on us? Sure, Daniel’s been in prison for the past fifteen years after being convicted of killing the scumbag who raped and murdered his wife, and Mac’s been living in the shadows until recently, but anyone looking to hunt me down would have had an easy time of it. I was confined to a bed in a V.A. hospital for the first six months after being shipped home, and for another year after that, I was in a physical rehab program.”
She’d meant to divert him with her question, but Caro found her own attention momentarily straying. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you,” she said softly, “and yet you went on to carve out a new life—and in the process turned the lives of countless teens in a more positive direction. Jess always said he thought of you as the only father he’d ever known.”
“Don’t be too fast to pin a halo on me, honey.” Salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifted. “I was one surly ex-marine for the longest time, I can tell you. If it hadn’t been for a rehab nurse who not only wouldn’t let me quit but restored my sense of self-worth by giving me the greatest gift a woman could give a—”
He stopped abruptly, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. There was a story there, Caro thought curiously, and although it was a story that Del apparently wasn’t prepared to share, it wasn’t too hard to guess at the gist of it. She put her musings aside as he shot her a wry smile.
“Let’s just say there was a time when I didn’t think I was going to get my life back on track. And even after I did, Jess’s high opinion of me never jibed with Gabriel’s, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“I’ve noticed the two of you are always at odds with each other, probably because neither of you ever backs down from a position,” she said tartly. “I’ve heard Greta call you her tough old mustang, and Gabe’s as much a maverick as that bad-tempered Appaloosa, Chorizo, who’s such a legend here at the Double B. Two stallions in one herd can’t help but lead to the kind of testosterone-fueled displays you men indulged in the night we arrived.”
She fixed him with a stern glare. A heartbeat later she clapped her hands to her mouth, appalled. “Del, I’m sorry. I had no right to speak to you the way I just did. I—I don’t know what I thought I was doing.”
He grinned at her. “You thought you were telling off our boy Gabriel, honey.” His grin faded. “Hell, I know I ride him harder than I ever rode any of the others who came here,” he growled. “When he was a teen I told myself it was because I saw so much potential in him, and I was afraid he was going to throw it all away.”
“But he’s a man now,” she reminded him. “And he lived up to his potential, Del.”
He shook his head. “Not fully. Not yet. Maybe that’s why I’m still riding herd on him—because I’m still afraid he’s going to let the life he could have slip through his fingers.”
His gaze held hers. “A man needs roots. Maybe Gabe could have put down some if he’d gotten in touch with his Dineh heritage, but he’s always been too much of a loner to do that. A wife and a child would complete him.”
He knows, Caro thought, unable to turn from the gray eyes watching her. It didn’t matter that Del Hawkins didn’t have the full details of her involvement with Gabe; he knew just by looking at the baby girl napping in the stroller between them who Emily’s father was. The question was, would he feel it was his duty to tell Gabe?
“His mother was killed by a hit-and-run driver when he wasn’t much older than your little girl is now, and he was bounced around in the foster system after that,” Del went on, still watching her. “He grew up fast and he grew up tough. Maybe someone of your social background might see Gabriel Riggs as no more than a man to call on when you need protection or muscle, but not one you’d consider a future with. A woman who thought that would be wrong.”
With an effort she wrenched her gaze from his. Bending to the stroller, she adjusted its shade against the afternoon sun and spoke without looking at him.
“If it was his background that bothered her, then of course that woman would be wrong. But what if the reason she didn’t see a future with Gabe was that he’d shown her in every way he knew how, that he didn’t want those roots you say he needs? Would she still be wrong? Would you still be so quick to pass judgment on her, Del?”
She gave up all pretense. “Oh, Gabe wouldn’t shirk his responsibilities,” she said unhappily. “If he knew Emily was his daughter, he’d feel duty-bound to acknowledge her. He’s too decent a man not to, and besides, he obviously feels a connection to her, even if he doesn’t know why.”
“So what’s the problem?”
She looked up sharply. “The problem is that roots can’t be grafted. You said it yourself—if Gabe truly wanted to put down roots, he would have gotten in touch with his Dineh heritage before now. He would have made his peace with you and the Double B. My little girl deserves to be more than a responsibility to the man she calls Daddy. She should be his sun and his moon and his stars, like she is mine. Because if she isn’t, one day she’s going to realize it and the realization’s going to tear her apart. I won’t let that happen to her, Del. I’d rather bring her up without a father.”
She stared stonily at him. “Are you going to tell him?”
Slowly he shook his head. “No, I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to. But it’s just
a matter of time before he sees it for himself.”
“Not if Emily and I are out of his life before he can,” she replied dully. “And that’s the plan. As soon as I know my daughter’s safe again, I intend to walk away from Gabriel Riggs for the second time in my life—this time for good.”
“And if he comes after you—”
He didn’t finish the rest of his question. His lean body suddenly tense, slowly he rose from his chair and narrowed his eyes in the direction of the dirt road leading to the yard.
“What—”
He cut across her query, his voice low and flat. “Take Emily out of her stroller, honey, and get into the house.” She blinked at him, and harshly he added, “Now!”
The urgency in his tone galvanized Caro into action. Scooping Emily up, she hastened to the screen door that opened from the porch to the kitchen. Stepping inside, she pulled it securely shut before looking out at Del.
He was already sighting down the barrel of the rifle. She followed his gaze, and saw a weaving gray shape approaching from across the yard.
For the first time in her life Caro realized that the tiny hairs on the back of her neck actually could rise. “What’s the matter with that dog? Why is it stumbling?”
“It’s rabid.” Del didn’t take his attention from the advancing animal. He swore under his breath. “That’s Chuck Weatherby’s bluetick hound, Jake. Chuck told me a couple of days ago that Jake had gone missing, and he was worried a wolf had got him. Cover your baby’s ears, honey.”
Caro complied, hugging a now-fretting Emily to her breast and fumbling the light blanket in which she was swaddled up around her head. Her precautions came just in time. A moment later the explosive crack of a rifleshot rang out, so shockingly loud that pain lanced Caro’s eardrums.