by Diana Palmer
That made him angrier.
His dark eyes narrowed and he didn’t smile. “Go to your mother’s office and stay there,” he said in a cold, commanding tone.
She got up quickly, grabbing at her paper and pencils, dropping one in her haste. She scrambled to pick it up. When she turned to go quickly out of the room, Colby saw tears on her cheeks. Her breathing was actually audible.
He cursed under his breath. The child had feelings of glass. He hadn’t meant to sound that threatening. He wasn’t used to children and this one disturbed him. How did she know where he’d been shot? How did she know what the man who’d shot him looked like? His arm throbbed again as he stared at the scene that brought back so many painful memories of Africa. He glared at the drawing and started to crumple it. Then, involuntarily, he folded it and put it in his shirt pocket instead. The child knew more about him than anyone except Hunter and his friend Tate Winthrop, and she knew it in ways that were eerie and disturbing.
Every time he saw her, he remembered that he couldn’t father a child. He felt less than a man. Sarina’s presence upset him more, bringing back all his failings with a vengeance. But that was no reason to take it out on the little girl. Nor was her uncanny gift for seeing into his private life. He shouldn’t have been so curt with her. He felt guilty all over again as he watched her scrub her eyes with a little fist. It was like a knife through his heart. He could almost feel the pain…
Cursing under his breath, he started toward the retreating child just as Rodrigo Ramirez came back into the canteen. He stopped dead when he saw Bernadette. His black eyes flashed angrily as he connected Colby’s stern expression with Bernadette’s tears. He bent and picked her up, cuddling her close. Colby could hear her rasping sobs all the way across the room. The sound went through his tall body like a bullet.
Rodrigo tucked the child under his chin and walked straight at Colby with a stride that meant business. His black eyes were murderous. The mild-mannered clerk Colby had found vaguely pathetic was suddenly somebody else.
“If you have something to say to Bernadette, you can say it to me,” Rodrigo said icily, his Spanish accent thicker in anger.
“The canteen isn’t an appropriate place for a child to play,” Colby said curtly.
“Eugene Ritter gave Sarina permission to bring Bernadette here in the afternoons,” he replied. “She can’t afford day care—it would take her entire weekly salary to put Bernadette in care.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was all Rodrigo felt comfortable telling this stranger.
Colby frowned. He hadn’t known it was that expensive.
“If you have a problem, I’ll inform Mr. Ritter,” Rodrigo continued in a soft, threatening tone. “But if you say one word to Bernadette about her presence here ever again, rent-a-cop,” he added with deliberate insolence, “I will kick your ass from one end of this building to the other.”
“You’re welcome to try, Ramirez,” Colby replied just as coldly. Like the Latino, he didn’t back down an inch, even when he knew he was in the wrong.
“That day may come sooner than you think,” Rodrigo said in a soft, dangerous tone.
Colby’s eyes narrowed. “Gee, see me shaking with fear!” he drawled contemptuously.
Rodrigo bit off a word in Spanish that made Bernadette’s eyebrows lift. He flushed when he realized what he’d said to Colby, his lips making a thin line as he turned abruptly to carry the child out of the canteen.
Colby watched them go. He hadn’t expected such a threatening stance from a man he’d considered one step below a filing clerk. Colby wondered again why Ramirez seemed so familiar. That scene Bernadette had drawn, quite competently, was a landscape in South Africa. Colby remembered the location well. It was where he’d lost his arm. There was no way on earth the child could have known that. So how could she have drawn it?
He couldn’t get the sound of her raspy sobs out of his mind. It was unnatural, the way she sounded, and familiar. He’d had asthma as a child. He’d outgrown it, but there had been many trips to the local clinic before then, especially when he was upset.
He went back to his office in a daze of misery. He sat down behind his desk and stared blankly at the wall. His arm hurt like hell. The doctor who made the prosthesis said that the phantom pain was incurable. He could still feel his hand, even though it was no longer there. The doctor explained that the nerve endings in the brain that controlled that hand were still intact. So to his brain, he still possessed his hand. It was something he’d had to learn to live with. It hadn’t been easy.
The door opened and he looked up into Hunter’s dark eyes.
“Ritter wants to see you,” he said.
Colby got up. “It won’t take much imagination to know why,” he said heavily. “I didn’t mean to make her cry again.”
Hunter’s eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”
“Bernadette,” he said, seeing again the small face covered in tears. “I said the canteen wasn’t a day care center. She didn’t even fight back this time, she got up and left.” He grimaced. “Sarina’s friend Rodrigo said that Ritter gave her permission.”
Hunter nodded. “He did. For more reasons than I can tell you right now,” he added. His eyes narrowed. “Just a word of advice. You don’t want to give Rodrigo an excuse to make an enemy of you. He’s not what he seems.”
“I noticed that. He’s not my idea of a liaison officer. So, who is he?” Colby asked shortly.
Hunter hesitated. “I can’t tell you that, either. I know.” He held up a hand when Colby’s lips thinned. “It’s frustrating for me, too. I trust you. But Cobb and Mr. Ritter don’t know you as well as I do.”
“How the hell am I supposed to work security here when I don’t know what’s going on around me?”
“You’ll have to trust me to keep you pointed in the right direction until I can fill you in. But stop picking on Bernadette or even I won’t be able to save you,” Hunter added firmly. “You used to be able to recognize a hornet’s nest before you stuck your head into it.”
“I used to have a real job, too,” he returned with impotent fury. “When I was faster, younger, stronger…when I had two arms!”
Hunter let out a long breath. “It wasn’t easy for me, either, at first,” he said in a softer tone. “I had hell fitting into a private sector job. But I managed, because I had to. You’ll manage, too. Just try not to take everything so seriously. One child in a canteen for a couple of hours isn’t going to bring down the corporation. Is it?”
Colby grimaced. “She throws out challenges without saying a word. She knows things she shouldn’t know. It occurred to me that her mother might have sent her into the canteen on purpose, to get under my skin. She’s antagonistic.”
“Sarina isn’t petty,” Hunter replied. “She fights face-on, not behind your back. She’s had a hell of a hard life. Cut her some slack, Colby.”
Colby glowered. “Some hard life! Her father was a multimillionaire…”
“Her father,” Hunter said furiously, “put her in the street when she refused to have an abortion,” he bit off, noting Colby’s sudden stillness. “He didn’t want a mixed-blood child to dilute his perfect bloodlines. He cut her off without a penny. Later, when she had complications and wasn’t able to work, he refused any help, knowing that she couldn’t even afford food and rent and had nobody else to turn to! She almost lost Bernadette. It’s a miracle she didn’t die in childbirth!”
Colby stared at him blankly. The revelations shocked him. “There are government agencies that help people in trouble,” he argued.
“Right. A millionaire’s daughter whose face is familiar to people on the street walks into a welfare office and asks for financial aid and they’re going to cut her a check,” Hunter scoffed. “They laughed her out of the office. They thought it was a joke.”
“Then, what about the child’s father?” Colby persisted.
Hunter hesitated. He averted his eyes. “The father wouldn’t do anything. He denied that th
e child was his. He told Sarina never to call him again.” He wasn’t supposed to know that. Sarina had told Jennifer in confidence. But Jennifer had no secrets from Hunter. Hunter could have bitten his tongue. He shouldn’t have told Colby.
“The cold-blooded son of a bitch,” Colby breathed harshly. “Why didn’t she file charges against him? A simple blood test would have confirmed paternity. At least he owed her child-sup-port!”
“Nobody could find him.”
“Don’t hand me that,” Colby muttered. “Any half-baked detective could have tracked him down through his relatives!”
“The father lived out of state,” Hunter said shortly. “Sarina didn’t try to find him after that one attempt. She said that if he didn’t want his child, it didn’t matter, because she did. Bernadette is her whole life.” Hunter checked his watch. “We’d better get cracking. Ritter doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Colby had a suspicion that Hunter knew a lot more about Bernadette’s missing father than he was willing to say.
“Rodrigo looks familiar,” he murmured as they walked down the hall.
“Does he?” Hunter asked in a deliberately light tone.
Colby stuck his hands in his pockets. “He loves that child,” he said, thinking aloud. “He was ready to deck me for what I said to her.”
“He’d marry Sarina in a minute if she’d have him,” Hunter replied. “She won’t. She has nothing to do with men.”
Colby’s high cheekbones flushed with embarrassed guilt. He was glad his friend was looking the other way. He knew, as Hunter didn’t, why Sarina had nothing to do with men. But it raised another question. How had she managed to get involved with Bernadette’s father, after the pain he’d caused her?
WHEN HE GOT TO RITTER’S office, the silver-haired elderly man wasn’t alone. He had Alexander Cobb’s family friend, Jodie, in his office as well. The young woman was flushed and traces of anger were still visible in her eyes.
Ritter gave Colby a look that promised retribution at a later date, but he didn’t say a word about Bernadette at the moment.
“Miss Clayburn has just quit her job as Brody Vance’s assistant,” Ritter said with a wry smile, “so we’re rehiring her as a computer expert. Cobb says she’s on a par with cybercrime experts in his agency,” he added. “I’d like to put her to work doing extensive background checks on certain employees.”
“We’ve got a member of the drug lord’s team working here, haven’t we, sir?” Colby asked Ritter.
“Almost certainly,” Ritter replied. “After what happened in our own warehouse, I’m convinced that we’ve still got an illegal shipment of drugs hidden somewhere as well. We had a close call.”
“Colby and I had a closer one,” Hunter murmured dryly with a smile at Jodie Clayburn. “If Miss Clayburn hadn’t driven that car right into one of the drug smuggler’s accomplices, Colby and I would both be dead right now—and so would DEA senior agent Alexander Cobb.”
Jodie smiled. “I still can’t believe I did that,” she pointed out. “I’m much better at fighting crime with computers than cars.”
“That’s what you’ll be doing from now on,” Ritter told her, and outlined her salary and responsibilities.
She accepted the new job at once, and thanked Eugene. Hunter walked her out to her car. She could finger the female member of the drug smuggling team, who was Brody Vance’s girlfriend, and she’d actually planted a bug for Cobb under the woman’s table at a local coffee house and obtained evidence of drug smuggling. Cara had been arrested, but Jodie was in danger. Cobb was taking her down to his ranch in Jacobsville for a few days for safekeeping. It was Brody Vance who’d let Cara Dominguez into the warehouse parking lot in the first place. He’d bailed Cara out of jail, and pretended innocence. But Ritter knew he had to be involved somehow.
Ritter sat back in the conference room chair and glowered at Colby Lane when they were alone.
“I know,” Colby said on a sigh. “I’ve been unreasonable about the child. But there’s an excuse, even if it isn’t much of one.” He got up, pulled the drawing Bernadette had made out of his pocket, unfolded it and placed it on the polished wood surface of the boardroom table in front of Eugene Ritter.
“So? It’s a drawing,” Ritter said, puzzled, as his blue eyes met Colby’s dark ones. “The child has talent. Why are you showing it to me?”
Colby’s face tautened. “That—” he put his finger on the man in fatigues with the machine gun in the drawing “—is the SOB who shot my arm to pieces in Africa! And this,” he added, indicating the path between two tall trees, “is where it happened.”
Ritter frowned. “You told the child?”
“I told her nothing,” he returned curtly. “I’ve told no one. There were eight other people with me in Africa, including Hunter, who saw it go down. None of them ever discussed it with anyone else, much less a little girl!”
Ritter sat back in his chair heavily. He didn’t know what to say.
“The day I first saw her, in the hall here, she came right up to me and said that if I hadn’t moved so slowly, I wouldn’t have lost my arm,” Colby added heavily.
“I…don’t understand,” Ritter murmured.
“Neither do I,” Colby said flatly. “I’m sensitive about my handicap,” he added. “I don’t discuss it with anyone except Hunter and my old comrades.”
“Perhaps her mother told her…?”
“I haven’t seen her mother for almost seven years,” Colby interrupted, and then clamped his jaw shut, because Ritter hadn’t known there was a prior relationship.
Eugene’s silver eyebrows arched. “You knew Sarina before you came to work here?”
Colby picked up the drawing and took his time refolding it. “We were married once. Briefly.”
“The child…” Ritter began at once.
“…is not mine,” Colby said firmly, in a tone that didn’t invite further speculation.
“You’re sure of that?” Eugene plowed right ahead.
Colby’s eyes lowered to the boardroom table. “I’m sterile,” he said in a haunted tone.
Ritter’s indrawn breath was audible. “I’m sorry. I have two sons. I can’t imagine not having them.” He stood up. “But none of this is a reason to make Bernadette’s life difficult. She takes enough heat from other students without getting it here where her mother works as well.”
Colby scowled. “Heat from other students?” he asked blankly, before he remembered what Sarina had said about putting the child in a predominantly Hispanic school.
Eugene’s eyes were old and wise. “Didn’t you have problems in grammar school?”
“I went to a grammar school on the reservation,” he replied. “All Apache.”
“Well, Bernadette isn’t so lucky,” the old man told him. “She’s had her problems with prejudice, in Arizona and now here. It’s one reason Sarina moved into a heavily Hispanic district. Bernadette fits in there better than she does in a predominantly white school. In fact,” he added, “Hunter’s daughter, Nikki, goes to the same school. They’ve had their own problems.”
Colby put the drawing back into his pocket. “That doesn’t explain why she has to stay in the canteen in the afternoons,” he said slowly.
“Day care costs as much a week as Sarina makes,” Eugene said flatly.
Colby stared at the older man. “What if a woman had two or three kids?”
“It would cost more than she made at most clerical positions to put them in day care, I suppose.”
“That’s not right,” Colby said harshly.
He shrugged. “Tell the government. Meanwhile, I let Bernadette sit in the canteen, where she’s no trouble. It’s my corporation. I can do what I like in it, within reason.” His blue eyes narrowed. “And you won’t cause her any more problems, will you, Lane?”
“No, sir, I won’t,” Colby replied quietly. “I didn’t understand the situation at all.”
“None of us understands it,” Eugene muttered, turnin
g. “How any man could turn his back on a beautiful child like that is beyond my comprehension.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Well, let’s go through the warehouse one more time,” he told Colby, “and see what we can turn up.”
“Right behind you, sir.”
THE SECURITY GUARD who’d let the drug smugglers into the warehouse was in jail pending arraignment. Ritter and Colby talked to the other two security guards, who maintained that they hadn’t seen anything suspicious. They did a cursory search, but turned up nothing that looked like drugs.
Ritter contemplated having the warehouse searched inch by inch, but Colby felt that constant surveillance would yield better results. He recommended the placement of additional hidden cameras and recording devices, which would be unknown even to the security guards.
The suggestion made Eugene grin. He agreed at once, and Colby felt better about his earlier faux pas.
BUT HE WENT BACK to his office feeling vaguely uncomfortable, still, about the way he’d upset Bernadette.
He’d taken out his .40 caliber automatic Glock, checked the clip, and was cocking it when Sarina walked in without knocking. She stopped dead in the doorway as he put on the safety and stuck the pistol back into its holster on the opposite side of his belt.
Sarina stared at the gun. She hadn’t realized that Colby would carry one on the job, but it was stupid not to have anticipated it. The Glock was the preferred weapon of many law enforcement agencies. You could drop one in a mud puddle and it would still fire.
But she wasn’t supposed to know that, so she kept her mouth shut and folded her arms over her chest.
“I know why you’re here,” Colby said without preamble. “Your friend Ramirez and Mr. Ritter have both had a bite of me. So go ahead.”
He’d taken the wind out of her sails. He didn’t even look hostile.
“Why did you upset her this time?” she asked instead.
He pulled the drawing out of his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to her.
She blinked. She didn’t understand it. She frowned up at him. “It’s a jungle,” she began.