by Diana Palmer
“Is it over, Mommy?” Bernadette asked from the kitchen.
“For now,” Sarina assured her, holding out her arms. She hugged her daughter close. “You must always be alert. You shouldn’t sit on the porch alone, baby.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“We live in a bad place,” Sarina said worriedly. She hadn’t wanted to opt for an apartment in this low-rent area of town, but it had been necessary. Medical bills had forced her to seek such accommodations. She watched her daughter carefully, hoping that the upset wasn’t going to trigger an attack, as Colby’s harsh remarks had earlier in the week. But Bernadette wasn’t upset at all. In fact, she was smiling.
“I like it here,” Bernadette said surprisingly. “The other kids play with me, and they don’t make fun of me. Mommy, am I a person of color?”
Sarina laughed delightedly. “Well, yes, baby, you are,” she had to admit. “You have Apache blood. Remember, what your grandfather told you about the Apache Women Warriors? You come from brave people!”
“Was my daddy brave?”
Sarina bit her tongue. “Of course he was,” she said, forcing a smile.
“Why didn’t he want me?” Bernadette asked.
“Bernadette…”
“I know, we don’t ever talk about him. But my granddaddy loved him. He said my daddy was troubled and didn’t know who he was.”
“Those are deep observations, my darling,” Sarina said.
“I saw that awful man get shot,” Bernadette said out of the blue. “But when I asked him if his arm hurt, he was hateful to me.”
Sarina frowned. “You saw which man get shot?”
“That awful man you kicked,” she said. “He doesn’t like me. Well, I don’t like him, either. He’s a horrible man!”
Sarina averted her eyes. Bernadette had made these strange comments about a dark man from time to time. Sarina knew she had visions, which very often were accurate. It was a gift she’d shared with her late paternal grandfather, who could also see things before they happened. But she hadn’t known until today that Bernadette had that mental link with Colby Lane. It was vaguely terrifying.
She sat down heavily on the sofa. “What else did you see, Bernadette?” she asked seriously.
“He drank a lot of bad-smelling stuff from a bottle and a man he worked for hit him real hard,” the child recalled. “Then he shot somebody and got shot back and his arm was all bloody. It was a place called Africa.”
Sarina was stunned. “You saw that?”
Bernadette nodded. She pushed back a strand of long hair. “There was this woman, too. She went away and he got real upset.”
Sarina’s heart jumped. Maureen left him? She hated herself for the joy she felt, even momentarily. He’d never get over the other woman. That was a fact she had to face. He didn’t want Sarina. He never had and he never would.
“What do you say we have a pizza tonight?” Sarina asked the child.
“Could we? With mushrooms?”
“You bet!” Sarina got up and looked out the window again, worriedly. “I guess it’s safe to ask a defenseless pizza guy to come here.”
“It’s safe,” Bernadette said with a grin. “I’ll protect you, Mommy. Granddaddy said his father was a shaman, and that he had a brother who could see things before they happened, just like Granddaddy and me could.”
“Well!” She hesitated, wondering how to bring up a worrying subject. “Bernadette, I want you to promise me something.”
“What, Mommy?”
Sarina chewed her lower lip. “That man, today, the one you saw shot. I want you to promise me that you’ll never, never, speak Apache in front of him.”
The little girl frowned. “But, why?”
Sarina drew in a slow breath. “You mustn’t ask me that. But you must promise. I know you’ll keep your word.”
The child nodded. “My granddaddy taught me that I must always do that.” She looked at her mother quizzically, but finally she nodded. “Okay, Mommy, I promise.”
Sarina smiled and hugged the little girl warmly. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She drew back. “Do you think Santa Claus would bring me a microscope for Christmas?”
Sarina laughed. “It’s two months until Christmas. I suppose it isn’t too early to be thinking about it. But the microscope you want is very expensive, baby,” she added gently.
Bernadette laid a gentle hand on her mother’s shoulder and looked very adult. “I know it costs a lot for my medicine,” she began. “Maybe I could do without it…”
“No!” Sarina said at once.
“But it costs so much…”
Sarina hugged her close, her eyes closed as she imagined life without the new drugs, the way it had been. “I don’t care what it costs.”
Bernadette laid her head on Sarina’s shoulder. “I wish I was like Nikki,” she murmured. “She never gets sick.”
Sarina’s eyes closed. She wished, not for the first time, that she’d been able to take better care of the child in the beginning. The doctors had said that it made no difference, but Sarina didn’t completely believe them. If anything happened to Bernadette, she’d die!
The child pulled away and looked into her parent’s worried eyes. “Mommy, I’m all right,” Bernadette assured her. “Really.” She smiled. “I’m going to be a detective one day, working in a big city, and there’s this very handsome man who’s going to marry me. I dreamed it.”
Sarina’s eyes closed and she shivered. The child could truly see ahead. It was a relief, in a way.
“So you mustn’t worry,” Bernadette continued. She bit her lower lip. “I’m going to be fine.” She didn’t add that she had worries about her mother that she didn’t dare share. She forced a smile. “Maybe Santa Claus will bring me that microscope anyway,” she added, grinning. “In fact, I’m almost sure he will!”
“I don’t know.”
“It never hurts to ask. Right?”
Sarina got up, chuckling. “We’ll see. Now, let’s order that pizza!”
COLBY LANE went home to his small rented apartment and fixed himself a frozen dinner. He had a sudden urge for pizza and couldn’t understand why.
He checked his telephone messages while the microwave cooked. There were no messages. He wasn’t surprised. The only people he knew in town were the Hunters. He had no social life to speak of, no close friends except Tate Winthop. Tate was in D.C. now, with Cecily and their son, working for the government again—although not in any dangerous situations. Colby’s father had died two years ago, although he hadn’t known until he’d made a trip to the reservation the year before. He still had cousins there, but they were oddly reluctant to speak of his late father. All they’d told him was that the old man had lived in Tucson until his death. His body had been buried at the old Apache cemetery near his former home in a small, private ceremony. His cousins had been oddly reticent to speak of the ceremony.
He and his father hadn’t spoken since he married Maureen. The old man hadn’t approved of her, and Colby had overreacted to the criticism. He and his father had never been really close. He’d loved his mother, but she’d died when he was very young and his father had started drinking and become brutal. He blamed the old man for everything. Now that he was older, and had been obsessed with a woman himself, he began to understand his father’s behavior. He wished he’d made an effort to see the old man while there was still time. Now he was alone in the world. No wife, no kids, no parents. He had an uncle in Oklahoma and a cousin or two. He wouldn’t have recognized them if he’d seen them on the street. It was a lonely sort of life.
When he and Maureen had married, he’d envisioned them being together for life with a houseful of kids. But she didn’t want mixed blood kids. Just as well, he thought bitterly, since he was infertile. He thought about that little girl Bernadette, Sarina’s daughter, who was Hispanic. He wondered who her father was, and how Sarina had managed to conceive a child after the nightmare of pain he’
d given her on their wedding night. He’d had a couple of neat whiskies. He’d hoped it would be enough to leave him incapable. It wasn’t. Long afterward, he’d left her in their hotel room, shivering under the covers, and he’d been eloquent about how he felt about the wedding that had been forced on him.
He’d gotten himself a separate hotel room afterward, ordered a whole fifth of Cutty Sark and finally passed out, dead drunk. He didn’t awaken until the next day, and when he went to look for her with an uneasy conscience, she’d left. A letter had been sent to him the day after the quick wedding by some attorney, with a terse note from her father. Annulment papers would be mailed to him as soon as they could be drawn up, and they wanted an address to send them to. He gave them Maureen’s. Obviously Sarina had been willing to lie about the marriage being consummated and he didn’t give a damn. He’d sign their stupid papers. Maureen had called him the day he’d married Sarina to tell him she wanted to get married at once. He’d made some excuse and then he’d taken out his fury on Sarina. His conscience still troubled him.
He’d had a rushed assignment overseas before he and Maureen could get married. When he came back, she told him that she forged his name on the papers and the annulment had been granted, so they could get married right away. She had a friend who was a minister and he was willing to marry them. She had the license and everything. All he had to do was say the right words. Odd, that ceremony, he recalled. Maureen even kept the license. He hadn’t seen it since. He assumed that she’d used it to get her own divorce. He’d signed some sort of papers, on tacky legal stationery. He didn’t remember much of it. He’d been drinking back then, too.
He and Maureen had a feverish wedding night after their quickie wedding. She’d kept him at a distance all the time they were dating. The abstinence had been one reason he’d fallen on Sarina like a starving wolf, he recalled with shame. But Maureen had been an obsession. Once she was truly his, he’d had to leave her behind in Washington, D.C., for several months because he’d been given a new assignment overseas. Sarina’s father had pulled strings to get him out of town. Right after that, he’d left military intelligence and gone to work with a group of mercenaries. The money had been fantastic, and he’d loved the adrenaline rushes. But that was over now.
He felt regret about Sarina. It must have taken a great deal of courage for her to risk intimacy with a man again, he thought. He hated the memory of what he’d done to that gentle young woman whose only crime had been to love him. None of what happened had really been her fault, even if he’d blamed her for it. The fault had been his own, for having too much to drink at the party they’d both attended, and letting them be discovered by her father and his associates in a compromising situation. He’d blamed her for that, but he shouldn’t have.
She was still as attractive as ever, he mused. She was more mature, more independent, more spirited than the woman he’d once known who was owned by her rich father. He was surprised that she was working for a living. Her father had been worth twenty million dollars, and she was his only heir. He’d heard that Carrington had died six years earlier. He hadn’t grieved, but he’d thought about Sarina finally being out from under his thumb, and with money of her own. He frowned, remembering how she dressed, how her daughter dressed. If there was money now, it didn’t show in their clothing, or in the lowly position, probably poorly paid, that she held now.
The microwave buzzed and he pulled the instant dinner out of it. He had a small store of dinnerware and silverware that he’d brought from his apartment in D.C. He still lived like a Spartan. Old habits died hard. He didn’t have possessions. A man who was constantly on the move couldn’t afford to lug a houseful of stuff around with him.
Hunter had been, like himself, in the CIA, and then in freelance covert ops before he settled into security work. It had surprised him to find Hunter married and with a child. His wife was a knockout—a gorgeous blond geologist named Jennifer who was a cousin to the wife of old man Ritter’s son, Cabe. The way Hunter and Jennifer felt about one another was obvious to a blind man. They’d been married for years, but the passion hadn’t burned out, not by a long shot. Perhaps, he considered, some marriages did work out.
He thought about his own two failed marriages and winced. He’d chosen badly. Maureen had nothing in common with him and she hadn’t loved him. She’d loved what he could give her materially. Theirs had been an obsessive physical relationship that burned out a year down the road. He’d been determined to hold on, but in the end, he had to let her go. Admitting failure had cut up his pride. Maureen had been an obsession, but he’d learned that obsessive desire was no substitute for love. Sarina had loved him with all her heart, and he’d pushed her away brutally. Perhaps, he thought philosophically, he deserved the misery he’d endured. Certainly it had paid him back for the hurt he’d caused Sarina.
He finished his supper, had a shower, and went to bed early. In his youth, he could go night and day. Now, with his war wounds hurting like hell in the darkness, he had to take advantage of any drowsiness he was lucky enough to get. None of his comrades would recognize this worn-out soldier who made his living by protecting an oil company from thieves and drug smugglers. He felt far older than his years. Perhaps he should be grateful that he was still alive. Many of his friends no longer were.
JUST BEFORE LUNCH, Colby was walking by Sarina’s office when he saw her in earnest conversation with the Hispanic man, Rodrigo Ramirez. Funny, they were obviously close but they didn’t act like lovers. There was nothing like physical attraction in her regard, and her body language was interesting—she folded her arms tight around her chest and her expression was completely businesslike. If she was involved with the man, she was good at keeping things discreet.
Rodrigo was a puzzle as well. Colby had asked Hunter about him, only to be told that the man, a Mexican national, worked as a liaison between Eugene and an equipment company owned by Eugene’s son, Cabe Ritter. It seemed a thin sort of connection, and an odd sort of job. For some reason, he didn’t see Rodrigo at a desk job. He had the strangest feeling that he’d run across the man somewhere.
Sarina passed a file to Rodrigo and stood up. “That’s all I’ve got so far,” she said, her voice carrying in the deserted offices—it was lunchtime and most everyone else was already gone.
“I have more. I’ll put it on a CD for you,” Rodrigo replied in softly accented deep tones. “On a more personal note, you need to consider a move. Bernadette’s too conspicuous a target.”
“I can take care of Bernadette,” she replied quietly. “I can’t move. You know why.”
“I could help you,” he began.
She held up a hand. “Bernadette and I will manage. It’s better now, anyway.”
“Why can’t I ever convince you to do the safe thing?” the Latin asked, his accent growing more prominent.
“Safe is for old women,” she replied with a laugh. “Besides, this job is more important than any we’ve ever done.”
“That it is,” he had to agree. “I just don’t like having you take point on the firing line.”
“You never do, but it’s my choice.”
“You and your independence—” He broke off when he noticed Colby Lane approaching the door. He stood up and lifted an eyebrow. “Can I do something for you, Mr. Lane?” he asked formally, his deep voice faintly accented.
Colby glanced at Sarina. “I had a question for Miss Carrington,” he replied. “Nothing urgent. It can wait.”
“I have to go,” Rodrigo replied, noting the time. “I’ll call you,” he told her.
She nodded.
When he left, she looked at Colby icily. “Yes?”
“What did he mean, about your daughter being at risk?” he asked.
Both thin eyebrows went up. “Is my daughter’s welfare your business, Mr. Lane?”
“Drop the formal line,” he said coldly. “We were married.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve had headaches that lasted longer than
our marriage did.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared her down. “What risk?” he repeated.
“We live in government housing,” she said. “There are gangs and last night there was a running gun battle while Bernadette was sitting on the porch. A neighbor boy was shot.”
He scowled. “Why do you live there?”
She didn’t share Bernadette’s condition with outsiders. She didn’t want to think about the night before, when she’d been awakened from a sound sleep and had to rush with Bernadette to the emergency room. It was Colby’s fault, but he didn’t know it and she wasn’t going to tell him. “My daughter doesn’t exactly blend in a white community,” she said instead.
One eye narrowed dangerously. “Why are you living in such a place?” he persisted. “Your father was worth millions when he died, six years or so ago, and you were an only child.”
“I’m not worth millions,” she informed him.
“He must have left you something.”
She just stared at him.
“Your child’s father should be paying child support,” he said, changing tacks.
“Chance would be a fine thing,” she replied.
“Hunter said he was Hispanic,” he persisted. “He must have relatives, or even friends. It shouldn’t be hard to track him down.”
God bless Hunter for that white lie, she was thinking. “Why don’t you just do your job, Mr. Lane, and leave me alone to do mine?” she suggested, sitting back down.
“How did the child know about my arm?” he asked out of the blue, hoping to shock her into an answer. What Hunter had told him hadn’t made sense.
She frowned. “What about your arm?” she asked, diverted.
She didn’t know? He straightened. “She knew I was…wounded,” he prevaricated.
“Oh.” She studied his face curiously, but it gave away nothing. “I don’t know,” she lied. “Maybe somebody mentioned it to her.”