Twice A Target (Task Force Eagle)

by Susan Vaughan

  What the hell? He snatched open the door and stalked outside.

  When the woman turned around, the sight of her face sucker-punched him in the solar plexus.

  “Hi, Holt. Guess you never expected to see me here again.” Madelyn McCoy propped her hands on her hips and gave him a crooked smile.

  Sweat popped out on his brow. Had he somehow conjured up Maddy? Same sassy mouth, violet eyes the exact shade of the pansies Espie planted every May in the window boxes.

  “McCoy, you’re the last person I want to see. What the hell are you doing here?” He stopped before his temper got the best of him. The mere sight of her pushed all his hot spots.

  She’d lit out eight years ago a twenty-year-old girl, pretty and tempting as a mountain spring, but the female who stood hip-sprung before him was all woman—and twice as sexy.

  And twice as deceitful. He’d bet the next newborn calf on it. The sooner she left the better.

  Maddy held out open hands in a peace declaration. “Look, I know with you I’m persona non grata.” Her shoulders slumped, and her sass slid to sorrow. “Faith Rafferty emailed me...about Rob. I had to come to pay my respects.”

  Faith and Maddy used to be close. So that’s how she knew. His throat clutched, and he gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to share his loss with the woman who’d broken Rob’s heart.

  Facing Holt showed a measure of unexpected courage. As children, they’d all been friends, Rob and Maddy and him—kids running wild during the summers. Even if she didn’t love Rob enough to marry him and stay on the Valley-D, she once cared for him. Holt had to admit that, at least to himself.

  Much as the sight of her troubled him, he’d accept her condolences.

  He stared at the dust settling on the driveway. She had no transportation. “Why did Luke Rafferty drive you here? You in some kind of trouble?”

  A shadow flickered across her eyes. Or it could be his imagination. His DEA work dealing with lowlifes made him as suspicious as a calf at branding time.

  “Just car trouble,” she said lightly, picking up the metal case at her feet. A fancy camera case, if he wasn’t mistaken. “My Range Rover broke down in Rangewood. Luke happened to see me at the diner.”

  Close up, he saw exhaustion in her eyes. “Reckon I could drive you back later.”

  “How did it happen, Holt? The accident. All Faith said was a car accident.” She marched up the porch steps toward him like an invading Amazon.

  Damn, he had to tell the story again. His gut twisted with the prospect. He ran his tongue around his teeth and focused on the distant peak, still rosy with sunlight. “The crash happened about a month ago. Rob and his wife were headed down to Cripple Creek for a night out. They took the shortcut from north of Rangewood that leads southeast to the state road. Went off the road on a mountain curve and rolled into a ravine.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, Holt, how horrible. Did they...were they—”

  “Rob and Sara died quick, I reckon.” He couldn’t let himself think about their pain and fear. “That old truck barely had seat belts, let alone air bags.”

  There was more to the story. A lot more. Including the crash was no fucking accident. He had no proof yet, but he knew. Dammit, he would find the bastard who’d murdered his family. He couldn’t tell Maddy any of that, and she didn’t need to know. He cleared his throat before he turned back to her.

  Her voice caught on a sob. “I’m so sorry. What a terrible loss.”

  He swallowed his pride. “I appreciate that. You didn’t have to come all this way though, from Timbuktu or wherever you were.”

  “Malibu.” A wobbly smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “I figured if I telephoned you’d hang up on me. I had to come in person...to see the grave.”

  “Fine. You know where the family plot is.” He sketched a wave in that direction.

  “You don’t give an inch, do you?” Maddy shook her head, the movement lifting her short blonde hair like a buckskin fringe on a sleeve. “I’d appreciate the use of your bathroom before I go sit by Rob awhile.”

  Holt’s first instinct was not to let her in the house, but he couldn’t act the ogre about it. Besides, she was shivering in her denim jacket. He stepped back and held the door as she sashayed in.

  Chapter 2

  Maddy’s stomach muscles relaxed with relief at Holt’s capitulation, though he’d win no prize for hospitality. When he’d confronted her outside, she feared he might send her packing, on foot. His overwhelming male presence had her shaking in her sneakers, but he apparently bought her bravado. Striding past him, she caught familiar scents that brought back the past—cow, hay, horse, leather, and male sweat from a hard day on a working ranch.

  He looked at her as if she were a bobcat that might leap at any moment. Time had settled on him well. His shoulders had filled out, widened with a muscular heft that tested the seams of his blue chambray shirt. He wore his light brown hair longer than she remembered, but its frivolous tendency to curl didn’t detract from his authoritative air.

  At sixteen, a tangle with a wild mustang had given him a boxer’s flattened nose. That and the harsh planes and angles of his strong-boned face kept him from being classically handsome. His face was compelling in its severity. And his blue eyes, the dark blue of a mountain lake, still had the power to mesmerize her.

  Chagrin at her attraction to Rob’s brother pleated her brow. Here I go again.

  She set her case down inside the kitchen door. Where a wood-burning cook stove used to reign sat a Shaker-style china cabinet. A matching cherry table turned the space into a dining area. In the functional part of the kitchen, all new appliances had replaced the old. “The house has changed.”

  He shrugged, his features schooled into the expressionless mask he must use when in DEA mode interrogating bad guys. He leaned against the kitchen counter. “Sara put up some new curtains, bought a damn dishwasher.” His eyes narrowed to chips of dark ice.

  “Rob’s wife.”

  “I’m surprised you know her name.”

  Her cheeks heated. “Rob wrote to me once in a while.” She took a step toward him.

  The way his mouth dropped open, she might have whacked him with her camera bag. “He wrote to you? Letters?”

  She raised her chin. “What do you think, notes rolled up in little tubes and delivered by carrier pigeon? Yes, letters at first. Then e-mails. Once a year, sometimes twice. Not so often since he married. You may think I’m Public Enemy Number One, but Rob is—was more forgiving.” Her mouth tightened at the slip-up in tense.

  “You know his temper. When he finally got through his love-mushed brain the meaning of your Dear-John note, he tried to tear the altar apart. It was all I could do to get him out of the church.” He tunneled his big fingers through his hair, leaving tracks in the waves, as if of bitter memories.

  This conversation was twisting her stomach, as though spiders had woven a thousand webs. “I’ve regretted how I left every day of the last eight years, but I had to end it. I’m sure Rob blew up. That was Rob, but he never stayed angry. Unlike some people—” she glared at him pointedly “—your brother didn’t hold a grudge.”

  “If it eases your conscience, you go ahead and believe Rob forgave you. I know better.”

  She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Holt’s grief was still bloody raw, so she’d let his attack on her pass. “Rob is dead, and our sniping at each other won’t help either one of us. Or him. I don’t want to argue about this with you. I’m too tired.”

  “Oh, yeah, crossing time zone after time zone will get you. The jet set life must be rugged.” He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, drawing her gaze to the bunched muscles of his forearms below the rolled-up sleeves.

  “Some jet set. I bummed a ride from Nepal in a cargo plane. I crashed at a friend’s house before I got Faith’s email. Then I drove here.” And slept in my truck. Her belly churned with emotions better left unexamined.

  His mouth thinned, and he shove
d his hands in his back pockets. “Tell me one thing, McCoy. Why did you wait until the last minute to run? If you didn’t want to marry him, why didn’t you tell him before the damn wedding day?”

  Maddy couldn’t utter the words.

  Rob’s and her connection had grown from shared childhood fun and dreams into what she thought was love but stood only as a house of cards. She had doubts but didn’t want to hurt Rob. Then what happened between her and Holt after the rehearsal dinner collapsed the fragile structure. Then she’d hurt and humiliated Rob.

  “Holt, you know why. Do you really want to dredge up that mud after all this time? Now if you don’t mind.” She scooted out of the room.

  Behind her, he said, “I expect you remember where the bathroom is.”

  The hallway to the left of the kitchen led past three doors to the bathroom at the end. The first door, to Rob’s childhood bedroom, was closed. With his only brother dead, perhaps Holt couldn’t bear the memories every time he walked this way.

  Tears welled, and she allowed them to fall this time. She leaned her forehead against the door frame and remembered. Mostly the memories were good.

  Every summer since she was ten until eight years ago, visits to Gramma and Grandad’s Circle-S and this neighboring ranch had nurtured roots for a girl whose airline pilot father planted none. When they were kids, Rob was her best friend, as reliable a presence in her transient world as he was carefree and adventuresome. Together, they worked the animals and swam the streams and climbed the hills.

  “I don’t know if you ever really forgave me, Rob,” she whispered to the closed door, “but I hope you did. And I hope Sara made you happy.”

  The second door stood ajar, revealing jeans slung over a chair and clean laundry piled on the iron-framed double bed. So Holt occupied his old room, though the feminine décor must seem alien to him.

  Baskets of dried flowers, teal and rose throw pillows and a dainty rocking chair in a teal print transformed into a trendy guest room what had been the typical boy’s milieu of rodeo posters, football paraphernalia, and bunk beds.

  The wife again. Sara.

  Older by four years, by eons to kids, Holt had watched over her and Rob, guiding them to the shallower parts of the creek and helping them practice roping on the smallest calves. Sometimes he dared along with them. They explored the abandoned silver mine on Ghost Mountain, a distant, eerie foothill on the Valley-D. Bringing in the mustang that broke Holt’s nose was another of those times. Protective and responsible, that was Holt. The threesome dissolved during his tenure at college. When he went on to law school and she and Rob entered UC, everything changed.

  After she jilted Rob, she left Colorado, and her photography career took her everywhere in the world except back to the only real home she’d known. She wouldn’t change the last several years but more wandering had no appeal.

  Maddy dragged herself away from the contrast between chamois shirts and lace-edged pillow shams. The last door, to the master bedroom, remained closed, but the bathroom door stood open.

  Grief and exhaustion swam in her head, and she sat on the toilet lid. Last night she spent reliving memories and regrets. Dawn found her still restlessly tossing in her sleeping bag. She’d slept in tents on rocky ground, in mud huts and in campers as well as in good hotels, but the trip from the coast proved her first experience at round-the-clock driving. She’d have to shore up her bank account somehow to pay the mechanic.

  For now, she was in a real bathroom. She might as well take advantage. She stood and dumped her denim jacket on the tile floor. After taking care of business, she rolled up the sleeves of the green print shirt she’d bought in Kabul and cleaned up in the sink. She’d kill for a shower but then she’d have to explain her circumstances to Holt.

  She opened the cabinet between the sink and tub for a fresh towel. Masculine toiletries cluttered one shelf. She should’ve brought her camera bag in with her since it contained a toiletry kit. But Holt’s disquieting presence had unfocused her brain.

  Applying Holt’s lotion—unscented, of course—she peered deeper into the shelf and spotted a bottle of perfume that was missed when someone cleared out Sara’s things. She whispered an apology to the dead woman as she spritzed on Happy, her favorite scent.

  With tentative fingers, she picked up his hairbrush. Not that her short do required much brushing. The fluffy, layered style was easy to manage—necessary on the road.

  Running the brush over her hair, she heard an odd noise like a cat’s meow. From the kitchen? She hadn’t seen a cat. Low, soothing responses followed the squalling. Holt’s rumbling baritone sounded oddly reassuring.

  Finished, she opened the bathroom door. The escalating cry no longer seemed feline. The wailing sounded like a—

  She dashed back to the kitchen.

  —baby.

  Standing in the center of the large room, Holt held an infant in disposable diapers and a blue polka-dot undershirt. A baby screaming its head off as if Torquemada and all his Inquisition zealots were torturing it. The crimson-faced infant, no more than a couple of months old, waved its tiny fists in fury. Or in pain.

  Her heart raced, and prickles like ants crawled over her skin.

  Holt, married? With a child?

  She hadn’t anticipated that.

  Then where was his wife? What was going on?

  He cradled the child in his brawny arms as if it were a precious gem. He crooned to it. He jiggled it. He rocked it.

  Against her will, warmth slid into her at the gentle way her gruff host handled the infant. She remained implanted in the kitchen doorway. “Holt?”

  He raised solemn eyes from the screech factory in his arms. “I hoped he’d sleep longer. Meet Robert Trask Donovan, Jr., human air raid siren.”

  Robert Trask Donovan, Jr.

  The name trickled into her consciousness, like water into the desert floor. The sense of it percolated through her slow brain for a moment before the dimensions of the tragedy found their level. Her heart stuttered. “Rob’s son? He and Sara left a son?”

  Nodding, he paced the length of the kitchen. “That drive to Cripple Creek was to be their first dinner out since Bobby here was born.”

  “How old is he?” She could barely speak over the thickness in her throat.

  “Bobby’s two months old. Just yesterday.”

  “Two months? Then he was only—” A month old when his parents were killed. Tears burned again as she approached the disconsolate child. “Maybe you should change him.”

  “Done.”

  “Could he be hungry?”

  “Among your many accomplishments, you’re a baby expert?” He cocked a bushy eyebrow to express his skepticism. “He ate about an hour ago before Espie put him down.”

  Two months old? She searched her memory for what tidbits she’d picked up in her travels. “He’s on formula?”

  He nodded, pacing the room with the fussing infant. “Sara was nursing him. Obviously, I don’t have the equipment. He hasn’t adjusted to the formula. Gives him gas pains. Doc says that’s one reason he cries so much. That and missing his mom.”

  She folded her hands in beneath her chin. “But...but there has to be something we—you can do.”

  “I’m doing it, McCoy. Walking him and holding him. He’ll run down after while.” He paused in his circuit of the room and halted before her. “I suppose you could do better.”

  Emotions swirled inside Maddy. She’d held plenty of babies. Haitian babies, Afghan babies, Ghanaian babies. Getting to know the families was part of setting up photo shoots. But the moms had always been there to take them back if they cried.

  Holding babies, cuddling them, and cooing nonsense to them—that was the extent of her knowledge. She probably knew less about child care than Holt.

  He’d had the last month to learn. On-the-job training.

  But this bawling, round-faced cherub with a head of light fluff like duck’s down entranced her. “I can’t do any worse than you, Dr. Spo
ck.”

  Fierce concentration on his features, Holt passed his nephew to her. “Here, hold him in one arm. Then you can rub his belly. Sometimes that helps.”

  In the transfer, his shoulder and arm pressed against hers. She felt every muscle imprinted on her skin and couldn’t resist the pull of his blue eyes. The other hand grazed her breast as he released his hold on his nephew. She chalked up her leaping pulse to fear of dropping the squirming child.

  As soon as little Bobby was settled in her arms, Holt stepped back as though from a kicking mule.

  Propping the baby’s head, she jiggled him and cooed at him. She concentrated on soothing him and forced herself to ignore the much larger male across the room.

  The screaming stopped. The wailing and gnashing of gums ceased. Only gentle gurgles emitted from the tiny bow-shaped mouth. Tear-spangled, spiky lashes framed rounded kitten-blue eyes. He stared at the strange woman who held him.

  Both adults sighed at the resulting peace.

  “You have custody of your nephew?” She stood in place, rocking the apparently contented child. Baby scents of powder and milk and innocence. Too sweet for words.

  Something gooey melted inside her and she tried to harden it. She couldn’t get involved with this household. Her heart couldn’t afford renewed attraction to this man.

  “Temporary custody for now. I’ll adopt him as soon as I can and raise him as my son.” Pride and determination roughened his deep voice. “What did you do? Hypnotize him?”

  She shrugged her dismissal of that notion. “Maybe it’s because I’m new. Will you take him back east when you return to work?”

  He lifted a tired gaze to her from Bobby, who had discovered his fist and was sucking on it noisily. “I am at work. Here. I’m staying to run the Valley-D. My resignation from the DEA became final two weeks ago.”

  The announcement punched her in the chest but she kept a sigh from leaking out. Holt was no longer a federal agent. He lived here. “Oh.”

  He scowled. “You said ‘back east.’ So Rob told you where I was, about my work?”