Fearless Gunfighter

by Joanna Wayne

  Unless that meant giving up Tucker. In which case she might have to reexamine her whole life to this point.

  Rachel and Sydney met briefly with Jackson. A more detailed meeting was set for first thing the following morning, after both of them had some rest and recovery time.

  Rachel went back to Esther’s with Sydney and Tucker, and his marvelous family welcomed her with warm, embracing arms.

  It was hours later before Sydney and Tucker finally made it to her bed. This time Tucker got to stay all night and they finally made love.

  Three times.

  Epilogue

  Three weeks later:

  Tucker had returned to the rodeo. He loved it as much as ever and was thankful he hadn’t walked away from it. But rodeo wasn’t all he loved.

  He was head over heels crazy about Sydney but the relationship seemed to be stalling out at the commitment stage. He’d always heard it was men who were afraid of commitment, but he couldn’t wait to promise forever. Sydney wouldn’t even mention the c word.

  The ring was in his pocket, but what would he do if she said no? Beg? Not his style.

  Riding bulls had never been this scary. He walked out to the porch to wait for Sydney. She was driving in from Dallas, where she said she had an important meeting with Jackson today.

  He’d driven in from Waco, where he’d just come in first in the bull-riding competition.

  He and Sydney had to do a lot of planning to get time together, but it was always worth the trouble. Not just making love with her, as fantastic and exciting as that was. He loved every second he spent with her.

  Esther joined him, a glass of tea in hand. She sat down in her porch swing and watched him pace.

  “What’s gotten into you tonight? You’re as wired as an electric line.”

  “I’m just looking forward to seeing Sydney.”

  “You two aren’t having problems, are you?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Don’t you mess it up with her, Tucker. She’s smart, sweet and fun. You’re not going to run into many women like that in a lifetime of looking.”

  “I agree.”

  “I sure do appreciate her getting me some closure on my Charlie’s death. I knew he didn’t commit suicide. We loved each other too much for him to just check out on me like that. It didn’t make me miss him any less, but all the same it was salve for my grief.”

  “Good to finally get justice for Charlie,” Tucker said. “I’m not surprised to find out Millie was behind the killing or that Roy Sales could be lured into the murderous scheme with her money. I am shocked Millie finally admitted her part in that. She’ll be behind bars for a long, long time.”

  “My Charlie was just so honest,” Esther said. “He knew his friend Dudley wasn’t guilty and that Millie was always letting Angela get by with anything. When Charlie went to her and threatened to tell the truth, she just up and had him killed.”

  “Charlie is just another trial Roy Sales will be facing. He also confessed to the murder of Sara Goodwin.”

  “Do they have any idea why he killed her?” Esther asked.

  “The theory that’s being tossed around is her murder is what triggered his going over the edge. He thought she wanted to be with him and then she started calling him the same sort of names his mother used to call him.”

  “The dark-haired mother who looked a lot like Rachel and his other victims,” Esther said. “They say his mother used to lock him up in the basement for days if he just spilled his milk or got his clothes dirty playing outside. What kind of momma would do a thing like that?”

  “One that shouldn’t have had children,” Tucker said. “Sales had his problems. That didn’t give him the right to kill and torture others.”

  “What he done was bad and that’s for sure,” Esther said. “But even though he killed Charlie, I’m glad they put him in that mental hospital to see if he’s fit to stand trial. The psychologist said Roy Sales even believed he’d killed his mother because he wished she was dead when she tortured him. Truth was she just accidentally fell from a ladder.”

  “I suppose the defense will claim the torture he went through as a child was what caused him to lock Rachel and the others up in that crowded storm shelter,” Tucker said. “Too bad he didn’t get help before he caused so much hurt to so many people.”

  A car pulled up in front of the house and stopped. When Sydney stepped out, Tucker hurried to meet her.

  She fell into his open arms and they stayed that way for long minutes.

  “How did your meeting go?” he asked.

  “Great. I can’t wait to tell you about it.”

  “Then don’t.” He opened the trunk to get her luggage. “Let’s hear it.”

  “It’s not something I want to just blurt out.”

  He wasn’t sure he was going to like this. “Want to take a walk before we go inside?”

  “I do.”

  This was starting to sound like a breakup moment. He stuck his hand deep in his pocket and worried the engagement ring he’d hoped to put on her finger tonight.

  They walked awhile in silence before Sydney broke her news. “I’ve been offered a really nice promotion but it will require moving to Dallas.”

  “Are you going to take it?”

  “That all depends on you.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I love you, Tucker. I love you so much that I can’t even imagine living without you. But I love my job, too. And you love bull riding. Living in Texas instead of Nashville would make it easier for us to get together, but I’m still not sure we would ever have enough time for us.”

  “We’ll make time. It will take effort but we can do it. Vacations. Days I’m not in competition, I’ll spend with you. Weekends you can fly to meet me wherever I’m competing.”

  “Will you settle for that?”

  “I guess the real question is, will either of us settle for less? We don’t fit into the one-size-fits-all mold, Sydney. We take risks. We go for the passion, at least that’s what a wise woman once told me.”

  “What if she was wrong?”

  “I know her well. She meant every word of it and she’s almost never wrong. As brave as you are, don’t tell me you’re afraid to take a chance on us.”

  He curled his fingers around the ring in his pocket and then fell to one knee.

  “I love you, Sydney Maxwell. I have since the first day I met you. I don’t want you to give up something you love for me. That would only diminish both of us.”

  “And you can be happy with my continuing to work for the FBI?” she asked.

  “I certainly can’t be happy if you’re not happy. We’ll go through lots of changes in our life. My body definitely won’t hold up to bull riding forever. You might want a family one day. But we’ll change on our terms when we’re good and ready.”

  He took her hand. “Will you marry me and join me in the best damn love affair in the history of all mankind? All it has to last is forever.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  “Then the answer is yes. I love you, Tucker, and I have no doubts that marriage to you will be the most exciting adventure of my life.”

  He slipped the ring on her finger, stood and took her in his arms. They sealed their promises with a kiss that took his breath away.

  A thrill a minute with Sydney for as long as they lived. It couldn’t get any better than that.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from BULLSEYE: SEAL by Carol Ericson.

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  Bullseye: SEAL

  by Carol Ericson

  Prologue

  The boy tottered close to the edge of the shimmering pool, and Josh Elliott held his breath. A woman, her long, dark hair falling over one shoulder, swooped in and plucked up the toddler, lifting him over her head. The boy’s face broke into a smile, his little body wriggling with joy in his mother’s grasp.

  Safe in his mother’s arms—or he would be once she got the hell out of there.

  Josh puffed out of the side of his mouth to dislodge a bug crawling on his face. He’d become part of the dense foliage on the hillside in this southeast corner of Colombia, not far from the Amazon. If this mission took any longer, the plants would grow right over and through him.

  The woman dipped next to a chaise longue to grab a towel and tucked it around her child’s body. She gave a curt nod to the men gathered at the other end of the pool, and then headed for the house via the sliding glass doors. Josh released a long breath.

  A voice crackled in his ear seconds later. “Go time, boys.”

  Josh swept his M91 away from the retreating figure of the mother and her child and zeroed in on his intended target—her husband.

  Ricky Rojas folded his arms, his expensive jacket tightening across his shoulders, as he cocked his head in the direction of the three men seated at the table. What Josh wouldn’t give to hear their conversation right now—their plots, their plans—but his SEAL team’s assignment didn’t include capture and interrogation.

  It only included death.

  These men had already killed and would kill again. In the crack of two seconds, his team would be responsible for bringing down a high-ranking member of a vicious terrorist cell and the mastermind of a brutal drug cartel...and a few of his associates.

  And the father of that child.

  Josh swallowed. The kid would get over it, especially after he learned what a scumbag his old man had been. The wife? That might be another story.

  A muscle ticked in Josh’s jaw. They’d been told to keep the woman out of the range of fire. More senior people than he had made the determination that Gina Rojas had nothing to do with the Los Santos drug cartel.

  If they believed the daughter of Hector De Santos, the kingpin of Los Santos, and the wife of Ricky Rojas was an innocent bystander while her father and husband traded arms and passage to the United States for terrorists in exchange for drugs, who was he to question their common sense?

  A pretty face could still buy wiggle room out of anything—and Gina Rojas had a pretty face and a body that could bring a grown man to his knees.

  Once the kills were accomplished, the CIA would be descending on the De Santos compound to search for leads and evidence, but he and his teammates would be long gone, swallowed up into the Amazon.

  A maid scurried from the palatial house to deliver a tray of drinks to the men on the patio. When she disappeared inside, the crackling in his ear resumed.

  “All clear. And five, four, three, two...”

  At the conclusion of the countdown, Josh dropped his target, and all the other men fell with him courtesy of the other navy SEAL snipers positioned in trees and dug into the hillsides ringing the compound.

  The maid rushed from the house and threw her hands in the air. She must’ve been screaming because several other servants joined her on the patio.

  Josh shifted his scope to encompass Gina Rojas emerging from the house, without her son, thank God. While the domestic staff flailed and scurried about or dashed off for parts unknown, Gina stood still like a statue amid a battering sea. She put her arm around the hysterical maid and surveyed the carnage, her head held high, her gaze sweeping the hillside.

  “Josh. Josh, you on the move?”

  “Copy that.”

  He lowered his sniper rifle from the intriguing sight of Gina Rojas’s unflinching demeanor and began to break down his weapon.

  Either this hit was no surprise to Gina...or she didn’t give a damn.

  Chapter One

  Thirteen months later.

  RJ raised a chubby hand before spinning around and grabbing his new friend by the arm to drag him to the slide.

  Gina sniffed as she waved to her son’s back.

  “It’s better than having him cling to your leg, isn’t it?” Denise Reynolds, the owner of Sunny Days Daycare, winked.

  Gina rubbed the back of her hand across her nose. “Much better, but did he have to get over that stage so quickly?”

  “RJ’s an outgoing boy. He makes friends quickly, very adaptable.”

  “He’s had to be.” Gina hoisted her purse onto her shoulder and shrugged. “There’s been a lot of upheaval in his young life.”

  “I saw from your application that you’re relatively new to Miami.” Denise bit her lip. “And I’m sorry about his father, your husband. That he’s deceased, I mean.”

  “Yes, just over a year ago.” Gina sniffed again for good measure. “We’re still...adjusting.”

  “Well, I think Sunny Days is just the place for him to adjust. One month and he already has a best friend, who started just a few days after he did.”

  “He already talks about Diego nonstop. His mother introduced herself to me right away. The boys already had one playdate and we’ll be arranging another for them in the next few days.” Gina’s cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and her heart skipped a beat.

  “Everything okay?” Denise tilted her head to one side, her perky blond ponytail swinging behind her.

  “Just a pesky client.” Gina patted the pocket of her light jacket. “Thanks for everything, Denise.”

  Gina whipped out her phone as she walked back to her car. She couldn’t go into cardiac arrest every time someone sent her a text. Wedging her hip against the cinder block barrier between the daycare’s parking lot and the walkway to the center, she swiped her fingertip across her phone’s display.

  Then her heart skipped two beats as she read the familiar words. Where are the drugs? Where are the weapons, paloma?

  The same two questions, along with the endearment, texted to her every day for almost a week now, from the same unknown number. She’d responded to the text in several different ways already.

  Wrong number.

  Wrong person.

  I’m calling the police.

  It didn’t seem to matter what she texted back. The same two questions came back at her each day as if on autopilot—with the same endearment. Only Ricky had called her paloma...when things were g
ood, but that was impossible. Wasn’t it?

  She could call the police. She snorted and dropped her cell phone in her pocket as she opened her car door. Then she’d have to go through the whole process of explaining who she was and watch the officers’ faces change from expressions of concern to scowls of suspicion. They might even call in her old pals at the Drug Enforcement Administration, and they could start grilling her again.

  She’d take a pass. In the meantime, she’d continue to ignore the texts. The person texting her wouldn’t try to make contact...would he? And that person couldn’t be Ricky. Ricky was dead...wasn’t he?

  Glancing over her shoulder, she pulled out of the daycare’s parking lot and checked her rearview mirror as she joined the stream of traffic. She had nothing to tell anyone who made contact with her, at least not about any drugs or weapons.

  On her way to the realty office, she turned up the music to drown out her own thoughts and the memories of that day at her father’s compound in Colombia. The CIA agents who’d swarmed the place after the carnage had interrogated everyone on the property, including her, for several hours.

  They’d tossed the place, looking for money, drugs, arms—and they didn’t find one single thing. As far as she knew, not even her father’s computers had revealed any information about his thriving drug business.

  The US and Colombian governments had seized all her father’s assets—but they hadn’t found everything. Then the CIA turned her over to the DEA and the fun started all over again. She had no desire to repeat that experience.

  She wheeled into the parking lot of the realty office and dragged her bag from the passenger seat as she exited the car. She’d just passed her licensing exam but didn’t have any listings of her own yet. She had to start from the bottom and work her way up, but she’d never been afraid of hard work.

  The real estate business may not be her calling, but she’d had to find some gainful employment after she’d lost her business—the restaurant-bar she’d developed and run with Ricky before...before.