Ransom My Heart

by Gayle Wilson

  “That’s far enough,” Chase warned. The .38 in his hand was directed steadily at the chest of the man carrying the bag. “Throw it down and put your hands over your head,” he ordered.

  Instead, before he had even finished speaking, the bag came hurtling toward him out of the darkness, quickly followed by a couple of shots seemingly directed at the spot where his voice had come from. Chase was no longer there, hadn’t been there since he’d seen the bag coming.

  He squeezed off a round of his own. He didn’t think he hit anything, but at least he would have a target he could see. And the guy had begun running again, only not toward the Jeep—which would have been the smarter thing maybe—but away from it. Toward too much open territory, too visible against the lighter darkness of the sky.

  “Stop now,” Chase commanded, “or you’re a dead man.”

  Mac would have liked that line, gotten a good laugh out of the melodrama of it. He kind of liked it himself, Chase thought, his finger beginning to squeeze the trigger. He had given him fair warning, and if the bastard—

  Then he realized, a little disappointed, that the guy had stopped, both arms lifting into the air. His first smart move, damn it. Chase forced himself to ease off the pressure on the trigger, and then he waited a second, just to make sure before he ordered, “Throw the gun. Pitch it forward toward the truck. And don’t lower your hand below your ear when you do it.”

  He had time to count to three before the man obeyed, awkwardly sending the gun out into the darkness in front of him.

  “Flashlight, too,” Chase suggested.

  “I left it in the truck. I couldn’t carry everything.” There was something plaintive about that. Almost asking for sympathy, Chase thought. Only he was fresh out. Not for a guy who put little girls with candy-pink toenails in danger.

  Chase eased around to the front of the Jeep, to the driver’s door. He shifted the revolver to his less-reliable left hand, knowing that the man he was holding pinned with its threat couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything except the desert, stretching before him. Chase opened the Jeep’s door and fumbled around until he found the switch for the headlights.

  The man caught in their glare, silhouetted against the night sky was big, maybe as big as Mac. He was wearing jeans and a dark shirt, like just about every other inhabitant of south Texas, Chase thought.

  “Turn around,” Chase ordered.

  There was a slight hesitation, and then, seeming to recognize that he had no choice, the man turned to face him.

  Not bad information, Sam. You were wrong about that, Chase thought. Pretty damn accurate, as a matter of fact.

  “Now what?” Jason Drake asked.

  “Now we play Twenty Questions,” Chase said, feeling anger at another betrayal blossom in his chest. “My right-hand man,” Sam had said. “I ask them and you answer them. And as you do, try to remember that I’m not real happy with you right now. There’s a lot of goodwill down here that belonged to my brother. Somehow it’s rubbed off on me. Nobody’s going to give a damn if I shoot you. Nobody’s even going to ask me to explain why.”

  “What do you want to know?” Jason Drake asked sullenly.

  Chase laughed. “Everything,” he said simply. “I want to know it all.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Have a late dinner,” the kidnapper had instructed. That was exactly what she’d been pretending to do for the last three hours, Samantha thought irritably, although she couldn’t have named anything she’d eaten.

  She recognized that her irritation, which had been increasing almost exponentially as she sat at the table in Crosby’s, nursing a cup of decaf, wasn’t really because she was having to wait. It was anxiety-based. Her mind and her heart were with Chase, who was supposed to be making his way here, traveling openly along the road to Del Rio.

  He was the decoy, the intended target, and despite the fact that she had recognized the logic in his plan, she didn’t like that aspect of it now any more than when he’d proposed it. She had only agreed because Chase hadn’t given her a choice. He had reminded her that if their unidentified assailant had had any part in the original kidnapping, Amanda might possibly still be in danger.

  So she had picked up the money at Sam’s on Friday, using Mandy’s weekend with her grandfather as a cover. Chase was to have gone to Sam’s ranch tonight and without making any attempt to hide what he was there for, he would pick up another bag, only this one wouldn’t contain any money. Bait and switch.

  “May I join you?”

  She looked up from her coffee at the question. Both hands had been cupped around the white earthenware mug, maybe to still their trembling, or at least to make it less obvious. The man who had spoken to her was the one with the mustache, the one who had taken Mandy.

  Neither of them seemed out of place in the popular restaurant, she realized, which was probably why he had chosen it as the rendezvous. There were some tourists scattered in the lively throng, and scores of natives and Texas borderhoppers jammed together among the crowded tables.

  “Of course,” she said politely.

  He pulled out the chair across from hers and sat down. His dark eyes studied her face for a moment.

  “Did you give our friend my message?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

  “We appreciate what you did.”

  “Was it…profitable?”

  Samantha hesitated. Of course, since it was almost midnight, whatever was going to happen had probably already happened, even while she had been sitting here, endlessly waiting.

  “Not yet,” she said. “At least, not as far as I know.”

  His eyes moved to survey the room, and she waited again until they came back to her face.

  “Is that why you’re alone?” he asked.

  “My friend should be joining us soon.”

  “To deliver the package.”

  Again she hesitated, but this was, after all, why Chase had sent her. “I brought the package,” she said.

  She could read the surprise in his eyes, and then, as she watched, amusement touched their darkness. The soft mustache moved slightly as he smiled at her. “I think that makes you the…bagman?”

  She laughed and was rewarded by a flash of very white teeth. “At least you didn’t say bag lady,” she said. “I think you’ve been watching too many bad American movies.”

  “Bad TV shows, all dubbed in Spanish,” he agreed, still smiling.

  “I guess technically you’re right. I’m the bagman.”

  “Your friend believed that was safe? For you to come here?”

  “He gave you his word—and my father’s—that the delivery would be made. No one should have any reason to suspect that I’d be the one. I came the long way around. I crossed the border at Eagle Pass. I’m driving a rental.”

  “And you weren’t afraid to carry that much money? You weren’t afraid that someone might try to take it from you?”

  She thought about Chase, deliberately making himself a target for whoever had shot at them. “It’s only money,” she said softly. That was the truth, of course—a truth she had always known.

  “Spoken like a true Kincaid,” the kidnapper said.

  “What do you know about the Kincaids?” she asked. She resented his assumption about her and about her life, lumping her together with her rich father.

  “Only that. Only the money. How much money you have.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having money. Nothing evil. Especially not if you’ve worked for it. My father earned what he has.” She wondered why she was defending Sam, who certainly didn’t need her defense.

  “With a lot of help from his somewhat ruthless ancestors. Forgive me, Miss Kincaid. I didn’t intend to express a disdain for your money. It is, as I told your friend, as I certainly have cause to know, a very valuable tool.”

  Samantha had fought her entire life against the implications of her family’s wealth and agai
nst the easy judgments people made about her because of it. She understood, probably better than he did, all the things that money represented. More important, she even understood about the lack of it. She had known enough about that during the last five years. She knew that she would again.

  “Whatever you feel about the Kincaids or about their money,” she said, “we’ve done what you asked. It’s at an end. Whatever…use you have for the money you’ve stolen, I hope that it gives you some kind of pleasure,” she said, not bothering now to hide her contempt.

  Using her foot, she pushed the canvas bag she’d picked up at Sam’s to his side of the table. Despite the noise that surrounded them, the dragging sound the bag made moving across the floor could clearly be heard, so she knew he’d been aware of what she was doing.

  She stood. She took a ten out of her billfold, preparing to pay for her dinner and then leave. She was almost fumbling in her haste, suddenly needing to be out of here, needing to know about Chase, about what was taking him so long.

  As she reached down to put the money on the table, the kidnapper’s hand, his fingers long and brown and very strong, closed suddenly around her wrist. Startled, she looked up into his black eyes, filled now with the same anger she had seen in them only once before, when Chase had kicked over the suitcase in the dusty street of the mining camp.

  “Pleasure?” he repeated softly, as if the word itself were an insult.

  She didn’t say anything, nor did she struggle to pull her wrist from his grasp.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting something,” Chase said.

  He was standing almost beside the table. She hadn’t been aware of his approach because her attention had been focused on the kidnapper’s reaction and on the pain of his gripping fingers. Slowly he released her wrist, the marks his hand had made red against her pale skin, and his gaze flicked upward to Chase.

  “Is something wrong?” Chase asked.

  Samantha’s eyes examined him also, checking to see if he was all right. In the dimness, his face looked strained, but he was here. At least he was here.

  “I was getting a lecture on money,” she said. “On its uses. On being a Kincaid.” There was a trace of bitterness in her tone, and Chase held her eyes for a second before he turned back to the kidnapper.

  “You have your money,” he said. “Consider yourself a lucky man, lucky to be alive. If I’d been with them the day you put a gun to my daughter’s head and to hers, you wouldn’t be. In the future, you stay the hell away from the people who belong to me.”

  The dark eyes that locked on his were unashamed and unafraid, just as they had been from the start, Chase realized.

  “I’d like to show you something,” the man said after he had held Chase’s cold, angry gaze a long moment. “There’s something I would like both of you to see.”

  “I don’t think we have time to visit any tourist attractions,” Chase said. “You ready?” he asked, turning to Samantha, deliberately breaking the compulsion that was in the kidnapper’s black eyes.

  “It won’t take long,” the man with the mustache said softly. “Five more minutes out of your lives, and then you may write an end to this. I swear to you on my mother’s grave you will have no more dealings with me.”

  “We don’t owe you five minutes,” Chase said. “We don’t owe you anything.”

  “Then my information didn’t prove helpful in finding what you sought?”

  There was silence for a moment, the crowd noises again intruding into the quiet circle the three of them made—unwillingly joined by danger and betrayal and honor. And by a little girl who was safer tonight because of what this man had told them.

  “Five minutes,” Chase said.

  THE HOUSE HE LED THEM TO had been very close, within easy walking distance. It was in a mildly affluent area of the city, but Chase had wondered as they had followed the man through the dark streets what possible purpose this could serve. Another wild-goose chase. At least it would be the final one.

  The woman who opened the door was obviously surprised that he had brought visitors. She was his sister, the kidnapper explained, but he made no introductions. He said something to her, the words too quietly spoken for them to overhear, and they were aware that she argued with him, shaking her head, but in the end she did as he had instructed.

  The bedroom she led them to was very clean, its sparse furnishings orderly. Against one wall was a child’s bed, hardly larger than a crib. The slight form that disturbed the smoothness of the coverlet was visible in the dimness.

  It was the kidnapper and not his sister who walked to the table by the bed and lit the half-dozen candles in the small shrine that occupied the top. At their sudden illumination, the sleeping child stirred, opening and then rubbing her eyes, which seemed too large for her thin face.

  “Papa?” the little girl said, questioning their presence in her room in the middle of the night, but she didn’t sit up.

  “I have brought someone to meet you,” the man with the mustache said.

  Her eyes focused on Samantha, who was standing now almost beside the bed, drawn closer by the sight of the child. She was near enough that the candles not only brought to luminous life the gold threaded in the halo her curling hair created but changed the translucent purity of her skin to alabaster.

  “An angel, Papa,” the little girl whispered. “You’ve brought me an angel.”

  “No,” Samantha denied quickly, smiling at her. “Only…a friend.”

  “You look like an angel,” the child said. “Just like the angels in my books.”

  “Thank you,” Samantha whispered.

  There was something wrong here, she realized. The girl was tiny, only the size of a two-year-old, perhaps, but her speech marked her as older. Turning away from the child and toward her father, Samantha asked very softly, speaking to him in English, “What’s wrong with her?”

  His dark eyes remained on the little girl, and his mouth beneath the soft mustache never lost its smile. “Unfortunately,” he said, “my daughter was born with…some damage to her heart. A malformation. Easy to repair with the right surgeons, the right facility. Except…those are not here, not in my country, and they are not for people like us.” His eyes moved to meet Samantha’s briefly and then back to his daughter’s, which were still shining with wonder at her unexpected visitors.

  “Not an angel, little one, but a princess,” he said, speaking to her again in Spanish. “A fairy princess who lives in a real castle.”

  “Does she have a magic wand?” the child asked.

  The kidnapper looked again at Samantha before he nodded. “A very magic wand that can change lives. And she has loaned it to us for a little while.”

  There was silence now in the small dark bedroom. The only light was from the candles and from the twin stars of the child’s dark eyes.

  “No,” Samantha said, smiling at the little girl. “She has given it to you. May it bring you great joy.”

  She turned to leave, fighting tears, hot stinging tears that welled because she knew he was right. Money was only a tool and it could be used for so many purposes. And she was also crying, she recognized, because her own daughter was safe, sleeping warm and healthy, protected in the house of her rich and powerful grandfather.

  Chase had turned to follow Samantha out of the room when the kidnapper’s question stopped him. “Would you steal to. save your daughter’s life, Mr. McCullar?” he asked. “Would you put a gun to someone’s head if that was necessary to keep her alive?”

  Chase turned back, looking at the little girl in the bed and seeing instead small, trusting fingers that had gripped his hand. Soft lips moving to brush shyly against the corner of his mouth. And toes, dusty from playing in the yard, touched at their tips with pink polish.

  “Yes,” he said softly, knowing it was true, and then he pushed by the man and somehow found his way out of the small house.

  Samantha was standing in the street. Without thinking about it, acting on impuls
e alone, Chase put his good arm around her and pulled her against his chest. She didn’t resist, her slender arms automatically locking tightly around his midsection.

  “It’s okay,” he said, comforting. “Everything’s okay. It’s all over.”

  “Let’s go home,” she said, her words muffled against the front of his shirt. “I need to see Mandy. I just need…to hold her. I need to keep her safe.”

  SAMANTHA DROVE WHILE Chase talked. His arm and shoulder had begun to hurt like hell, whether from tonight’s accident or because he had left off Doc’s contraption, he didn’t know, but having to tell Samantha what Jason Drake had confessed to was a welcome distraction from the pain.

  “When the kidnapper took Mandy, Drake thought he saw an opportunity to make a fast buck, a whole hell of a lot of unmarked and untraceable money, so he took it. To hell with Sam. And even with Mandy.”

  “That rich bitch,” Drake had said about Samantha, but Chase didn’t repeat those words. They were cruel and untrue, and he saw no need to spread that venom. Maybe Drake had been attracted, and Samantha had rebuffed him. Chase didn’t know and he didn’t care. None of that would be reason enough for Drake’s betrayal.

  “Sam trusted him,” Samantha said. “He doesn’t trust many people, but I think that during the last couple of years everything was getting to be…a little too much for him, too much to manage. He needed some help, and he chose Jason Drake. I thought it was all working out. I wasn’t there often, not often enough to see anything wrong. Sam’s usually a pretty good judge of character.”

  “Thanks,” Chase said.

  “I said usually.” Samantha glanced over at him. His head was back against the headrest and his eyes were closed. “And eventually he figured you out,” she added. A man of honor, she thought. Sam hadn’t been wrong about Chase, no matter how faulty his judgment had been about the other man.

  “You keep saying that. I haven’t seen any reason to think anything’s changed about Sam’s opinion of me. Except maybe that I was better, somehow, when I was a lawman.”