by Gayle Wilson
“Nobody,” Sam said.
“There are all kinds of ways people can find out information. Listening devices, phone taps…”
“I had’em checked. The morning after Samantha called me, I had them do a sweep of the office. Phone’s clean, intercom, everything. Nobody overheard what we talked about in here.”
Then something or somebody else, Chase thought, some other direction. “Who brought the money to the ranch?” he asked, pursuing one of those possibilities.
“Dawson Sanders, president of the San Antonio bank. Brought it personally as a courtesy to me. I told him to keep his mouth shut. Nobody at the bank knew who or what that money was for.”
“But he did?”
“If Dawson wanted to steal from me, there are lots of ways for him to have done it before now. Safer and easier ways.”
Which was true, Chase acknowledged. “Who saw the ransom note?”
“You and me,” Sam said.
“What’d you do with it?”
“Put it in that safe right there.” The old man nodded at the portrait of Samantha’s mother hanging on the wall behind Chase.
“Would you check to see if it’s still there?”
“Already did,” Sam said. “It’s there.”
“Who else knows the combination?”
“Not a soul in this world. Not even Samantha.”
Chase looked at her for confirmation, and she nodded. He should have known this would be pointless. Sam Kincaid wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t careless. They were no closer to figuring out who might have planned the ambush than they had been before.
“And ideas?” Chase asked Sam. Why not take advantage of the old man’s shrewdness and experience?
“I think you probably got some bad information.”
“Why?”
“You said you asked the kidnapper to get the information for you because he has friends down there. Maybe he’s protecting them.”
That was another possibility, Chase realized. In his conversation with the Mexican, he had left little doubt that he was out for revenge. If the kidnapper knew the person who was responsible for the attack, he might choose this way to protect him, to throw Chase off.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Samantha said.
“It’s getting us further than thinking I’m the one,” Sam said. “Damn fool idea.”
Chase knew the old man was hurt that that had been Samantha’s first thought. Having watched him with his granddaughter at the airstrip, Chase couldn’t believe there was anything to that theory. The only problem was, he didn’t have another one.
“So what do we do?” Samantha asked.
“I don’t think there’s anything else to do. Not until Saturday.”
“And on Saturday?” she asked.
“I take the money down.”
“Despite what he told us.”
“If we can’t figure out what’s going on, then I don’t know what else we can do. Maybe Sam’s right. Maybe it’s just a hoax.”
“That’s what you thought the first time.”
“My instincts weren’t entirely wrong then,” he said, reminding them both that they had kept a couple of important things from him.
“I don’t like it,” Samantha said. “I talked to him. I thought he was telling the truth. I couldn’t hear any deception in his voice.”
“Maybe he was, but unless you have another suggestion, I don’t know what else we can do.”
“You can be careful,” Sam said.
Chase’s eyes came back to focus on the old man who had had surprisingly little to say during this session. That comment had been another surprise.
“I intend to,” he said.
“I can arrange some protection for you,” Sam offered. “We won’t be taking a chance at scaring off the kidnapper this time. We got Mandy. We got nothing else to lose.”
Nothing but a chance to flush out the person who had sent the shooter, Chase thought. “I think I’ll provide my own security,” he said aloud. “But thanks for the offer.”
“You don’t have to play hero,” Samantha said, and he looked at her again. There was a touch of color over each high cheekbone and her eyes were wide and very green. “Nobody expects you to get killed delivering that money.”
“That’s good,” he said, smiling at her. “Because I don’t intend to. There are still a couple of things I have to take care of.”
She knew what he meant. The knowledge was suddenly there in her eyes. A couple of things to take care of, and this was part of it—looking after her and Amanda. Somebody had played a very dangerous game with his daughter’s life and with that of the woman he loved. Chase McCullar didn’t intend to let whoever that was get away with it.
SAMANTHA WALKED WITH him to the patio door. She waited until they were almost there before she asked.
“What did you think? Did you believe him?”
“Did you?”
“He’s my father. I’m not very objective.”
“Neither am I,” Chase said.
“What does that mean?”
“Sam’s never liked me. I can’t see him trying to arrange for me to find out that Mandy’s mine.” Or to be thrown together again with you, he thought, but he didn’t say it.
“I think he always…admired you more than you realized.”
“Right,” Chase said. “Admired me so much he had me beat to a pulp as a warning to stay away from you.”
“That was years ago and even then, that’s not why you stayed away. You did that because you gave him your word that you would. I think he admired you for that.”
“I had good intentions,” he said. Which had lasted about as long as it had taken her to unfasten the top button of her shirt that night.
“I don’t think you ought to go Saturday. Not unless we can figure out what’s going on.”
“I don’t have a choice, Samantha. I gave him my word.”
“But it’s possible that whoever knew about the first trip may find out about this one. The temptation is still the same. Easy money.”
“We could do something about that. If you’re willing to trust me again.”
“What do you mean?”
“We could try a little bait and switch, but I’d need your help to bring it off.”
“We made a pretty good team,” she said, smiling at him.
“Which time?” he asked softly, allowing the old memories to invade his eyes, allowing her to see them there.
“In the mountains,” she whispered. Her smile had disappeared.
“Yeah,” he agreed, his voice very low. “I thought that must be the time you meant.”
She swallowed, the muscles in her throat moving and the soft color coming up through the translucent skin. “Bait and switch?” she asked, controlling the tremor in her voice.
“I’ll call you,” Chase said, and then grinning at her, he added, “just as soon as I’ve figured it out.”
He opened the door, knowing that if he stayed any longer all his good intentions about giving her some time were also going straight to hell. He knew now why they said the road there was paved with them. All those good intentions.
“Mr. McCullar.”
He turned at the sound of his daughter’s voice and watched Mandy come out of the kitchen door and run across the stone patio toward him. She was wearing a dress today, and he was a little disappointed that she was wearing shoes.
He had found himself thinking about those minute pink toenails at the strangest times, like after Samantha’s phone call last night. Thinking about his daughter’s toes and a lot of other things. He had remembered something his mother used to say to him when he was little. Something about taking the pigs to market, and he had found himself wondering if Mandy had heard it.
“Hi,” he said, squatting down beside Sam’s pickup. She stopped just before she reached him, put the brakes on suddenly about two feet away from him. He could see her uncertainty about how to greet him in her eyes, even wondering, maybe, w
hether to hug him or not. “Did you come to see your granddaddy?” he asked, not wanting her to be uncomfortable about her relationship to him. That would come naturally, he thought, given time. If he were given enough time.
“Uh-huh,” she said, nodding. “Rosita told me you were here.”
He wondered why the housekeeper would do that, and then he remembered what Sam had said. Rosita had been with him since before Samantha’s birth. She probably knew all the old secrets—including the one about Mandy’s parentage.
“You tell Rosita I’m grateful,” Chase said.
“She knew the song,” Mandy said.
“About the cat?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s good. Now you won’t forget it.”
“Rosita said her mother sang it to her when she was a little girl. Just like me. Only she lived in Mexico then. I told her I’d been to Mexico.”
He smiled at her before he asked carefully, “What else did you tell Rosita?”
“Just about my new friend.”
“The man with the mustache.”
She nodded. “But Rosita doesn’t think she knows him.”
“It’s a big country,” Chase said, thinking about the truth of that. “A lot of people live there. She probably doesn’t.”
“She said you were leaving.”
“I’m going…” Home. He had almost said home, he realized. “To my sister-in-law’s house.”
“To my Aunt Jenny’s,” Mandy said, nodding. “Mama told me that’s where you live. She’s not really my aunt, but I stay with her sometimes. We live next door to her.”
“That’s right.”
“Are you coming back to see our horses?”
“Not today, maybe, but soon.”
“You promise?” she asked. She put her hand on his shoulder, resting it gently on top of the cloth harness.
“Cross my heart,” Chase said. “I’m coming to see you.”
“Okay,” she agreed. She sounded like Samantha, Chase thought She leaned toward him and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. A butterfly kiss. Baby soft and sweet
“You be careful,” Mandy ordered, and then she stepped back and watched him climb into Sam’s pickup. In the rearview mirror, he saw Rosita come out the back door and stand, shading her eyes with one hand, as he drove away. Her other hand was resting on Amanda’s shoulder.
THE MUSCLES IN CHASE’S neck were tight again on Saturday night as he headed to Ciudad Acuña. Lawman’s instinct, premonition, or maybe just plain old fear. He hadn’t been afraid of anything for a long time. Not until he’d had to climb out of that damn ravine in Mexico, he acknowledged, with Samantha up above him trying to provide some kind of cover fire.
All of that had changed. It had begun changing when he’d seen Samantha again. When Sam had said “divorced.” When he’d realized that nothing was really different about the way he felt about her. After that, he’d been afraid to die, because he’d had something to live for—something to make right.
Now there was also Amanda. It seemed to him that all of a sudden he had a hell of a lot to live for, and yet here he was again, putting his neck into another noose. At least he was putting it there for his own reasons and not to rescue somebody else’s loved one. And those reasons were worth dying for.
That’s about as morbid as a mortician, he thought, shaking his head. That wasn’t like him. He had the reputation of being cold and unfeeling. “Without a nerve in his body,” someone had once said, meaning it as a compliment, he supposed. If that had ever really been true, it wasn’t anymore. He wasn’t looking forward to tonight, despite the fact that he wanted whoever had played with their lives, wanted him pretty badly.
He was still driving Sam’s pickup. It didn’t make much sense to change cars if his intent was to flush out the ambusher. If anybody had been keeping an eye on him, waiting for the additional payoff, then he wanted to make it easy for them.
He had pretty much discounted that possibility during the last two days. If the ambush had been directed from up here, that probably made it less likely that anyone could know about this second payoff. People in Mexico knew—the kidnapper and whoever he’d been working with—but Chase couldn’t figure out how the ambusher could possibly know about his agreement to take another half-million of Sam Kincaid’s money below the border. So he had believed his and Samantha’s plan was probably another wild-goose chase. Until tonight.
He realized with surprise that he was almost to Del Rio. He had taken the road leading north from Eagle Pass, the highway that paralleled the river. He had made no effort at evasion or deception. That wasn’t what this trip was about.
The headlights he’d been watching had been behind him for a pretty good stretch now. Close enough not to lose him and far enough away not to make him suspicious.
Whoever was following him didn’t have much time now to play out whatever was going to happen. Pretty soon Chase would be into the lights of the small west Texas town and from then on, there wouldn’t be any place on either side of the border to hit him before he kept his appointment. Like most border complexes, the two towns—Acuña and Del Rio—were in reality one community, separated only by the river and the bridges.
Even as he thought that, the headlights began moving up, gradually growing larger in the desert darkness. He glanced at the bag on the seat beside him and then back in the mirror. Definitely closer.
He could feel the adrenaline surging into his body, fighting the anxiety that had been there before. Now he just wanted this over. Wanted to be done with this job so he could get on with the other. The important one.
Although he had been expecting it, when it came, it all happened a little more quickly than he’d anticipated. Suddenly the Jeep was right beside him, running along with him in the eastbound lane, obviously not worrying about oncoming traffic, not on this isolated stretch of highway. He glanced to his left, but in the darkness he couldn’t make out enough of the driver’s features to attempt an identification. A man, he had decided, just before the Jeep sped up and veered in front of him.
Chase went off the road, just as the other driver had intended. That hadn’t been his only option, of course. After all, he’d been prepared for the Jeep’s move, or for something like it. Chase taught courses on defensive driving, gave seminars on how to avoid situations just like this. Only this time, avoiding wasn’t what he’d intended.
The Jeep kept up the pressure, both vehicles bouncing along, still side by side, but well off the narrow road. Chase hit a couple of cactus plants, which appeared too quickly in the beams of his headlights.
Then both vehicles were into the wash—another site, carefully chosen. Chase had time to think before the wheels on the right side of the truck began climbing the rock wall. The Jeep didn’t pull back, still edging him along, close enough that they’d bumped doors a couple of times.
Chase had slowed considerably, but between the incline of the wash and the Jeep’s crowding, he didn’t have much room to operate, not much room in case the truck spun out if he braked too abruptly.
Suddenly the Jeep dropped back, but before Chase had time to react, he ran into an outcropping. It wasn’t big, but enough to turn the truck, sending it careening drunkenly on two wheels for a few seconds before the topography and the slope it had been following put an end to the ride. Almost in slow motion, the pickup lost the battle to remain upright and slammed over onto its side.
Chase felt the jar all the way to his spine, pain flaring like wildfire along the half-healed collarbone. Son of a bitch, he thought, gritting his teeth as he reached to douse the lights. The truck rolled on over onto the roof and before it had stopped moving, Chase had the door open and had slithered onto the ground.
The lights of the Jeep behind him were cut off abruptly, plunging the terrain around them into darkness. Chase used his elbows and knees, crawling quickly despite the rocks and plants, keeping his body low. As he moved, he heard the Jeep’s door slam and even the footsteps of the approac
hing driver. Chase had managed to put maybe fifty feet of darkness between him and the man who had run him off the road.
“You okay in there?” the driver of the Jeep called, still standing a safe distance from the truck.
Trying to pretend that what had happened was an accident and he was just playing Good Samaritan? Chase wondered. Which meant he wasn’t very bright. He was also carrying a flashlight, moving its beam slowly over the rough ground ahead of him, making himself a pretty good target.
They both waited through the desert silence that was the only answer to the shouted question. The questioner came closer to the truck, cautiously shining his flashlight around it. There was no movement, of course, from the overturned vehicle.
“Hello,” he called.
Stupid, Chase thought again. The man couldn’t assume Chase had been killed or injured in the wreck. He sure shouldn’t assume Chase would believe it had all been an accident.
There had been something about the voice that was familiar. It had echoed in his memory, but Chase couldn’t pin the recognition down, couldn’t seem to remember where he had heard it before.
The Jeep driver moved closer. Still just man-shaped. That was all. Nothing he could recognize. From behind the outcropping, Chase could see the beam of light from the flashlight playing around the interior of the wreck now. Looking for him. And looking, of course, for what he’d been carrying.
Abruptly the flashlight was cut off. It seemed that the man holding it had finally reached the conclusion that if Chase wasn’t in the truck, he had to be somewhere else, hiding somewhere in the darkness that surrounded him.
Then there were only sounds. As Chase listened to them, trying to identify each one, he backed quietly toward the place where the guy had left the Jeep parked, its motor still running, ready to move quickly out of the unforgiving territory they both knew so well.
Chase was careful, but the guy had probably been making enough noise himself that even in the stillness of the desert night he hadn’t been aware that Chase was moving. When he came back toward the Jeep he was running. And he was carrying the canvas bag Chase had brought from Sam’s.
By that time, Chase had put the Jeep between him and the man—a slight advantage, he hoped, when the shooting started.