Outsider

by Diana Palmer

  He shook his head. “It’s too soon. If he’s back at work today, we’ll know we’re on the right track. I haven’t spoken with Hunter this morning.”

  “I haven’t, either. I guess one of us should call the office.”

  He pulled out his cell phone, pressed a number, and listened. “Yes, it’s me. I just picked up Sarina at the hospital and brought her home. We’re going to pick up Bernadette at school and then I’ll be in.” He hesitated. “Yes. Yes, I thought he might. Good. Then we’re still on track, I guess.” He hesitated again. “Yes, I know,” he said heavily. “But we’re bound to get a break sooner or later.” He looked at Sarina. “She’s better, but still not one hundred percent,” he said. “I’ll tell her. Thanks. See you later.”

  He hung up and put the phone back inside his jacket. “He said Ritter and Cobb told him to let you stay out until tomorrow, if you’re determined to come back in undercover.”

  “I need to. I can’t let Rodrigo down,” she said, without looking at him.

  “Cobb was chewing up tenpenny nails trying to figure out who the two DEA undercover agents were, and I understand he hit the ceiling when he discovered Ramirez was one of them. They have a history of some sort,” he remarked, then glared at her. “You and Ramirez certainly had me fooled.”

  “We’ve done undercover work before. I worked for Ritter when I was carrying Bernadette,” she said, “and while I was in college. When this problem came up, he naturally thought of me. I brought Rodrigo in as well.”

  “You picked a dangerous profession,” he said.

  She looked up at him. “So did you,” she shot back. “Or do you think being in the military is a piece of cake?” She lowered her gaze to her unfinished rice. “Is that where you met her?”

  “Her?”

  “That blond woman in your apartment,” she said stiffly.

  His breath caught in his chest. He was about to answer when there came a hard knock at the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  COLBY EXCHANGED GLANCES with Sarina and carefully slid his hand into his jacket, against the cold butt of the automatic as he moved to the door and looked out through the Venetian blinds.

  She was tempted to pull her own service weapon to back him up, but she knew it was unnecessary. She’d seen Colby in action. She had no doubt at all that he could handle whatever turned up outside.

  But he quickly removed his hand from the jacket and opened the door without turning on the outside light.

  It was Señora Martinez’s grandson, Raoul. He moved into the room quickly and closed the door behind him.

  “I wanted to tell you,” he said to Colby, “that my cousin is through treatment and himself again, thanks to your amigo, the reformed priest,” he added with a grin. “He had a lot to say about the two of you in Africa.”

  Colby smiled. “He was one of our best, before he took on the collar.”

  “He is still one of your best,” the boy replied. He glanced at Sarina and grimaced. “I was not in time to warn you about the raid. I am very sorry that you were hurt, señorita,” he told Sarina.

  She managed a smile. “Thanks.”

  “But I have come to make up for it,” he continued, his eyes narrow. “This woman, this Dominguez, is destroying us all. She has no thought for anything except her own profit. She sacrifices us as if we were ants. My second cousin, a boy of fifteen, died in the attempt on the warehouse, and she gave not one word of apology to his mother. She said only that his own stupidity and clumsiness caused his death.”

  Colby drew in a rough breath. “Even Lopez, as bad as he was, never killed children.”

  The boy raised an eyebrow. “We understood that your group had something to do with his sudden disappearance.”

  “A former member of it,” Colby said, uncomfortably aware that Sarina was intent on the conversation and knew nothing of his real past.

  “Now we are between the woman and a countryman of hers who is only a little less bloodthirsty,” the boy said heavily. “So we make a decision that the woman must go. She is intent on profit and has no thought for life.”

  Colby became somber. “I’m listening.”

  “It must never become known that I am involved,” he said firmly, glancing at Sarina.

  “It never will be,” Colby promised. Sarina nodded.

  He shrugged. “They are planning to move the shipment soon, to a location south of here, in a small town known as Jacobsville. Lopez once had a base there, which is still owned by a holding company in his name.”

  Colby’s eyebrows lifted suddenly. “Doesn’t she know that Jacobsville is a hotbed of former mercs?”

  The boy grinned. “No,” he said. “She believes it was a rumor concocted to make Lopez look stupid.”

  Colby actually laughed. “Her mistake.”

  “It will be,” the boy agreed. “I know nothing more, but I will tell you what I can.” He glanced at Sarina. “I owe you both for my cousin’s recovery and the salvation of my grandmother. But I will not betray my comrades, even so.”

  Colby held out a hand. The boy shook it. “I give you my word,” Colby said, “that your part in this will never be revealed.”

  He smiled. “This I know already. The priest was very forthcoming about you. I must go.”

  “How is your grandmother?” Sarina asked.

  “Very well, thank you,” he replied. “The priest has two men come every week and shop for her. One cleans her apartment. These mercs,” he added with a chuckle, “have remarkable skills. Adios!”

  He left, as cautiously as he’d come, and Sarina stared at Colby without blinking. “How is it that you’re friends with a priest who was with you in Africa, and he was a merc?”

  He drew in a long breath, and turned, his eyes narrow as they met hers. “I wasn’t exactly in military intelligence all those years.”

  “No?” She stared harder.

  He grimaced. “I couldn’t settle in the regular military. I was even out of place in the CIA. I became an independent contractor.”

  Her expression tautened. “That’s why you were in Africa,” she began slowly, her eyes wide with sudden knowledge. “You were part of a military coup there!”

  He nodded slowly. “We overthrew a dictator who was killing hundreds of innocent people daily,” he confessed. “We put in a government that was less brutal, and friendly to our country.”

  “We?” she persisted.

  “Okay,” he said on a rough sigh. “Me and Eb Scott, Cy Parks and Micah Steele.”

  Her lips fell apart. “Cy was a merc?”

  Boy, was she in for some big surprises soon, he thought solemnly, especially when she discovered that her friend and partner Ramirez was up to his neck in the same work. But he didn’t feel comfortable telling her that. Not yet, at least.

  “And Micah Steele,” she continued, thinking back. “That was why Phillip called him up here. He was with you in Africa. He knew what was wrong with you even before he came.”

  He nodded. “He saved my life…performed an amputation with only a native intern as an assistant, under combat conditions.”

  She turned away, unsettled.

  “Well,” he said irritably, “now you know how I felt when I found out the hard way that you were moonlighting as a field DEA agent involved in shootouts with drug smugglers!” he returned defensively.

  She had to grit her teeth to stem an outburst. He was right. They’d both kept dangerous secrets. But her actions were at least understandable. His weren’t.

  “I had to support myself and my daughter,” she said without looking at him, “who had a serious asthma condition that could have killed her when she was younger. I had to get the best paying job I could find. Working as a clerk for an oil company didn’t cut it.”

  “You could have been promoted into management,” he shot back, glaring.

  “Right,” she laughed hollowly. She sat down on the arm of the sofa. “I can’t order people around with any sort of success. That’s why I’
m still a field agent. I don’t have what it takes for management. Some people don’t,” she defended. “That doesn’t mean I can’t be good at what I do.”

  “I’ll agree with that. You’ve got grit and you’re canny,” he said surprisingly. “You’re a natural for security work.”

  “I like what I do,” she countered.

  He turned and moved closer to her, his dark eyes quiet and questioning. “I don’t,” he said flatly. “If anything happens to you, Bernadette gets stuck with me. I’m not a good risk.”

  She didn’t know how to take that. Her eyes darkened with pain. Was he telling her that they had no future together, even after the passionate interludes they’d shared?

  He saw her expression and understood it. He moved a step closer, his good hand touching her cheek very lightly. He grimaced. “I’ve made too many mistakes, haven’t I, Sarina?” he asked softly. “I’ve got so much to make up to you and Bernadette. I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Being honest with me would be a start.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Look who’s talking.”

  She flushed slightly. “I had orders, strict orders, to keep my identity to myself and share it with no one.”

  “You shared it with Hunter,” he accused.

  “I was ordered to, by a regional DEA official who outranks Cobb,” she said flatly. “He knew that Cobb had at least one informer in his organization and he wasn’t taking any chances with an operation this big. Hunter had to be told. You didn’t. You were a relative newcomer here and the official didn’t know you from a sponge.”

  “I guess he didn’t.”

  She backed down a little when she saw his brooding, hunted expression. “I didn’t like keeping secrets from you,” she confessed. “But after that Saturday morning at your apartment…” Her voice trailed off and she turned away. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She moved into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, checking the time. “We have about twenty minutes before we have to leave and get Bernadette. I could make us a sandwich,” she offered.

  “I’m full from lunch.”

  “So am I.”

  He hesitated. “But we could go by the pizza joint on the way home instead and get Bernadette something with a lot of pepperoni and mushrooms.”

  She laughed involuntarily. “How did you know…?”

  “I keep having these odd cravings,” he confessed. “Since I realized I couldn’t be pregnant,” he added, tongue-in-cheek, “I attributed it to that odd link I’ve got with my daughter.”

  She smiled. “She knows all sorts of things about you. I don’t understand how it works. But I know that your father had it, too.”

  “So does my uncle,” he said. “He’s Comanche. Teaches history at a community college in Oklahoma. His son, my first cousin Jeremiah Cortez, is with the FBI.”

  “I’ll bet he’s a keen investigator,” she commented as she poured coffee.

  “Actually he doesn’t have the gift the way his father does. Neither do I. Bernadette puts us all in the shade.” He sat down at the kitchen table and accepted his coffee black. “Does she take a lot of heat for it at school?”

  “She tries to hide it,” Sarina told him as she sat down across from him. “It frightens her.”

  “I can understand why, if she saw how I was wounded. One of my own men threw up.”

  She glanced at the prosthesis, trying not to imagine the pain. It must have been terrible. She couldn’t imagine his Maureen being particularly sympathetic, either.

  “Colby,” she began without looking at him, “that blond woman…”

  He cocked his head and looked at her, hard. “I haven’t changed fundamentally, even if you are finding out things about me that you didn’t know. Am I the kind of man who goes from one woman to another without conscience?”

  She looked at him worriedly. “You went from me to Maureen that way.”

  He grimaced and sipped coffee. “I was obsessed with her,” he said after a minute. “Before I ever really knew you. I was attracted to you, hungry for you. But I was blinded by what I felt with Maureen. It was fool’s gold,” he added quietly. “I only had to live with her to realize how little she cared for anyone, except herself. She found me repulsive when I lost my arm. She couldn’t bear to look at me without my shirt.” He met her eyes and smiled gently. “You never seemed to notice it was gone.”

  “It didn’t matter,” she replied, helpless to lie. Her eyes met his evenly and her heart jumped up into her throat. “You still haven’t said…”

  With a long sigh, he pulled out the photo Cecily had given him, that he’d kept in his wallet. He pushed it across the table to her.

  She picked it up, surprised. “Who’s the man beside her?”

  “Her husband, my best friend, Tate Winthrop. He’s Oglala Lakota. The woman is Cecily. They have a terrific little boy who’s just one year old, and they’re pregnant again. Tate was in the shower when you came by.”

  She grimaced. She’d assumed he was cheating on her and acted accordingly. She hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt. She fingered the photo. “I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions.”

  “With my track record, you were entitled to,” he said. “But from now on,” he added, “we have to try to be honest with each other.”

  She looked up from her cup. “That might be a little difficult.”

  “For me, too. I’m used to keeping secrets.” He shrugged. “Then we start even. We start over.”

  She swallowed. “To what end?”

  “Bernadette needs two parents,” he told her quietly. “A father and a mother. I do realize that I’m starting late, but I’m not going to quit on her.”

  “She’s very important to me, too.”

  “Where does Ramirez fit into your future?” he added suddenly.

  She grimaced. “Colby, he’s my partner. We’ve worked together for three years. Surely you know how it is, when you’re under fire with people. There’s a bond there.”

  His dark eyes narrowed. “Is there?”

  “He needs me,” she pointed out.

  That was laughable. Ramirez was even more of a lone wolf than he was himself, and he had a history that was going to make future work relations with her very difficult, when she knew them. But it would look like jealousy if he brought it up right now. He was jealous, of course. He just didn’t want her to know it. Ramirez would gloat.

  “Suppose,” he began, “we take it one day at a time, for now? Just until this drug smuggling racket is tidied up, and we know where we stand?”

  “That’s a good idea,” she agreed.

  “Now that we know the smugglers are going to move their product to Jacobsville, it’s not logical to keep staking out the warehouse. We need to make a move down to Jacobsville and set up operations there with Eb and Cy.”

  “But, my job,” she began. “Your job…!”

  “We’ll work it out with Cobb and Ritter and Hunter,” he said. “It’s well-known in the company that you and I are keeping company, and that Bernadette and I are getting close. It would be pretty natural if we went down to Jacobsville, where we both have friends, and took a few days off together.”

  “Well, it’s not bad, as a blind,” she considered aloud.

  He frowned. He didn’t mean it that way. But she sounded serious. Perhaps it was too soon to start making long-range plans.

  “I wish we knew where those drugs were hidden,” she said after an uncomfortable silence.

  “So do I, but at least we have some idea of where they’re taking them, if the gang leader wasn’t leading us astray,” he pondered. “Cy knows the lay of the land around Jacobsville, and he and a few friends put Lopez on the run. If they did it once, they can do it again.”

  “I guess so,” she agreed.

  “I like Jacobsville,” he said abruptly. “It’s small, but that’s not such a bad thing. I remember when I was a boy,” he added quietly, “and if anyone
got sick, the whole community showed up to help take care of them. It isn’t that way in cities.”

  “I wouldn’t know much about small communities,” she said quietly. “I lived very high. I had everything in the world, except love.” She laughed hollowly and didn’t look at him. “Money alone isn’t enough to make anyone happy.”

  “Bernadette loves you very much,” he remarked.

  She smiled. “Yes, she does,” she agreed. “And I love her. She’s the most important thing in my life.”

  “I’m beginning to understand that feeling myself,” he said slowly. “I’d like to be around for her, when she needs a father.”

  Her heart was turning cartwheels. Was he was offering her a future, or just pointing out that he’d be visiting his daughter? “Are you going to be around? How about the call of the wild, Colby?” she asked solemnly. “You’ve been restless ever since you’ve been at the oil company.”

  He curled the cup into his big, lean hands. “I won’t deny that it’s hard to give up the adrenaline rush. But I’m getting too slow for combat,” he admitted a little curtly. “I’ve lost my edge. Besides that, I want to stay alive long enough to become a grandfather.”

  She smiled slowly, but she avoided his eyes. “Do you honestly think you could settle down in a small town someday?”

  “Why not?” he asked. “I might actually enjoy the security of neighbors and friends in a small community. Especially among a few ex-mercs,” he added only half humorously. He glanced at her. “What about you? Have you ever thought of moving Bernadette to a small town? And if you ever did, could you give up fieldwork for it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” She grimaced. “But even if I had a job here and a place to move to, I just don’t know how I’d explain it to Rodrigo.” She stopped abruptly, afraid she’d made her wishes all too clear.

  “I could explain it for you,” he offered with a glint in his dark eyes. “I think I still have some bullets in my left pocket…”

  “You stop that,” she said. “Bernadette loves him.”

  “She likes all sorts of serpents,” he replied. “You should have seen her at the reptile house at the zoo. She even knows the names in Latin.”