Outsider

by Diana Palmer

  He glowered at her. “Plenty of people have children without marriage.”

  “I don’t!” she returned.

  Colby stepped between them. “We are all here to fight drug dealers,” he pointed out.

  “Are we really?” she muttered.

  “And you never told me that you were a DEA agent,” Colby added. “I had to find out during a drug raid!”

  “He has a point,” Rodrigo told her.

  “You can shut up,” she invited.

  “Isn’t that your boss?” Cash asked suddenly, indicating a tall, grim looking man with dark hair and green eyes striding toward them.

  Sarina and Rodrigo turned immediately, snapping to attention.

  “So you’re both already here. Good. Good,” Alexander Cobb said. “I assume all of you are part of the deal?” he added, noting the group.

  “We know the layout of the land, and at least two of us were involved in shutting down Lopez,” Cy volunteered.

  Cobb narrowed his eyes at the other man. “I remember,” he said curtly. “You walked right into my operation without my knowledge, thanks to Kennedy—who is now serving time for conspiracy to distribute drugs!”

  Rodrigo held up his hand. “May I intercede? I was working undercover in Lopez’s operation at the time, and they intervened to keep your men from killing me.”

  Cobb’s lips made a thin line. “Obviously they missed. And lucky for you that I’ve mellowed since then,” he added, and Rodrigo smiled sheepishly.

  “Some target practice might not come amiss,” Cash murmured dryly. “My men are required to qualify on the shooting range monthly.”

  “Your men don’t shoot people,” Eb pointed out.

  “Well, if they ever have to shoot anyone, we don’t want them to miss, now do we?” Cash agreed.

  “Who do you have staking out the smugglers’ local warehouse?” Cobb asked Cy.

  “One of my men with a pair of binoculars and a cell phone.”

  “And if they spot him?” Cobb persisted.

  “He’s wearing a Ghillie suit.”

  Cobb blinked. “Where the hell did you get a Ghillie suit?” he demanded.

  Cash raised his hand. “I wasn’t using it for a day or two.” He glanced down at Sarina’s puzzled expression. “I got it at Fort Bragg, years ago,” he whispered. “Army Sniper School. But don’t worry, it’s just my spare.” He grinned. She didn’t know whether to laugh or run. He couldn’t be serious, of course.

  Cobb gave Cash a curious glance, but he didn’t pursue it. “Okay, then, can we assume he’ll let us know the minute he spots traffic?”

  “We can,” Cy assured him. “It looks like a long night.”

  “Or maybe two or three of them,” Colby added. “Hunter’s going to tip off Vance unobtrusively. Then we have to hope that Dominguez will take the bait.”

  “Absolutely.”

  THEY SETTLED DOWN to wait. It wasn’t long before Cy had a quick communication from Harley.

  He chuckled. “It seems the smugglers have just moved in a shipment of bee gums,” he said dryly.

  “Bee gums.” Cobb nodded. “Open or closed?”

  He asked Harley. “Closed,” he replied. “And get this, there are men with automatic weapons all around the bee gums, making sure those bees don’t escape.”

  The task force grouped together. Everyone started checking guns and ammo, and communications equipment. They synchronized watches.

  “Everybody ready?” Cobb asked the group.

  There were murmured assents. There was no joking now.

  Colby tugged Sarina to one side and looked down at her solemnly. “How’s the arm?” he asked with some concern.

  “I’m going to be just fine, as long as you and Rodrigo are there to back me up,” she said with a tiny smile.

  He chuckled, having already decided that Rodrigo was no longer a threat. He winked at her. “I’d kiss you,” he whispered, “but we’d never live it down.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Afraid of gossip?’ she mused.

  He glanced at Cash Grier, whose eyes were sparkling with gleeful malice.

  Colby indicated the other man. “Are you?” he whispered.

  She chuckled. “Well, maybe just a little,” she confessed.

  He cocked his pistol and put on the safety before he holstered it. “Later,” he promised with twinkling eyes.

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Later.”

  “Let’s go!” Cobb called.

  The various members of the task force melted into cars and set off for the warehouse.

  COLBY AND SARINA were almost at the site when Colby’s cell phone rang insistently. He glanced at it, saw Hunter’s name on the caller ID, and turned it off. He’d call him back after the raid, he decided.

  “Better shut off your phone as well,” he told her. “We can’t afford to have them ring before we’re in position.”

  “Good point,” she agreed, and shut her own off.

  They pulled up behind Cobb and Cy, on a dirt road several hundred yards from the entrance to the warehouse.

  Everyone got out, checked weapons, and gathered for the assault. But before they could act, Eb Scott moved in front and held up a hand urgently.

  “Hold on,” he said curtly. “There’s a complication.”

  He looked straight at Colby and Sarina as he said it, and Colby cursed under his breath. “Bernadette!” he said at once.

  Eb gave him an odd look, but he nodded. “The Dominguez woman has her,” he said tightly. “Hunter took the kids with him and Jennifer to a restaurant. Bernadette went to the restroom and didn’t come back. Hunter is furious with himself, but it’s too late for regrets now. The Dominguez woman says either we back off, or…” He let the rest slide. There were murmured whispers.

  Colby glanced down at Sarina and gathered her close. “It’s all right,” he said softly. “Trust me.”

  “You know I do,” she said. “But…”

  He pressed his fingers against her mouth. He moved away from the law enforcement contingent and drew aside Eb and Cy. “I need a hostage,” he said. “Someone high level.” He glanced at Cobb and the others. “You’re not here for the next fifteen minutes.”

  Cobb, alert to what was going on, nodded solemnly.

  The three men moved off together into the darkness. Sarina stood with the other law enforcement officers, gnawing her lip, and prayed.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Colby came back ahead of them, his face grim, his eyes flashing. “They’ve got her at the old Johnson place, near where Sally Scott lived before she married Eb. I need two willing volunteers.”

  “Me,” Sarina said at once.

  “Me, too,” Cash Grier said, and he wasn’t smiling. “I’ve got my rifle in the boot of my car, with night vision,” he added grimly. “Colby and Sarina and I will go in together. When we’ve got the child in the clear, we’ll give you the green light.”

  “A rifle?” Sarina asked worriedly. “Listen, if they’ve got her close to them…”

  Eb Scott moved to Sarina’s side while Cash went to get his gear. “You don’t know Grier, and he won’t tell you, but I will,” he said, lowering his voice. “He was a covert assassin. There isn’t anybody better with a sniper kit. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

  Sarina let out a breath. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Eb nodded and went with Cy and the others to the back of Cy’s Expedition, where his own cache of weapons was stored. Cash came back in a riot jacket and a face mask, carrying the rifle over his shoulder. He looked as grim as the others.

  Hayes Carson moved closer. “Listen, county enforcement is my jurisdiction,” he told Cash.

  The older man turned to him. “Can you hit a target in the dark at six hundred yards and not miss, when a child’s life hangs in the balance?” he asked curtly.

  Carson let out a breath. “No.”

  “I can,” Cash replied with supreme confidence. He motioned to Sarina and Colby with his head. “Le
t’s go.”

  Colby drove. As they neared the Johnson place, Cash had Colby stop the SUV and let him out with the rifle.

  He checked his cell phone. “Turn yours on, if it isn’t already,” he told Colby. “And don’t make a move on the house until I take out whoever’s holding the child. I’ll send a signal, just one. Go like hell when I do.”

  “Roger.”

  Cash took off into the woods, so silently that Sarina was amazed.

  “How did you find out where they had her?” she asked Colby as they moved closer, without lights, and stopped just out of sight of the house.

  He glanced at her. “You don’t want to know. Really.”

  She pursed her lips. “They won’t hurt her…?”

  They would, and he knew it. “They won’t get the chance,” he told Sarina. He closed his eyes, hoping against hope that his odd psychic connection to the child would work this one time when her little life might depend on it. Father, he thought silently to the old man he’d treated so badly in recent years, help me save her!

  As if in a dream, he saw Bernadette, her dark eyes solemn and unblinking. He saw through her eyes the room, the window, the man standing behind her with a loaded pistol while a dark woman, Cara Dominguez, spoke on a phone. There was another woman as well, armed with an automatic rifle, and another man with a pistol.

  “God,” he whispered unsteadily. “Keep your head down, baby. Keep your head down!”

  Even as he thought it, he heard the first of three shots. They were quick, deliberate, and, apparently so accurate that the people inside couldn’t even react—because the phone suddenly rang.

  “Let’s go!” Colby told Sarina.

  Both had their pistols out and they were running for Bernadette’s life.

  Colby didn’t stop to open the door, he kicked it in. He went low, Sarina went high, as if they’d practiced the assault all night. The Dominguez woman had Bernadette around the neck and she was crouched, the pistol at the child’s neck. The other three members of her group were on the floor, one dead, two badly wounded and useless.

  “I will kill her!” she told Colby, screaming. “You will not stop me!”

  Colby took a slow, careful breath. He didn’t lower his pistol. “Baby, you know what to do,” he whispered.

  “Yes, Daddy,” Bernadette said, her voice shaking, but her eyes full of courage.

  “¿Que?” the Dominguez woman demanded. Her grip on Bernadette tightened. “What are you…?”

  Bernadette’s eyes closed and she went completely limp all at once. She was small, but such a dead weight that the Dominguez woman had to shift her weight suddenly. The tiny movement gave Colby a shot and he took it. He got the woman in the chest. She groaned and fell, her lung punctured. The gun fired, but into the floor.

  At the same time, the downed man got his fingers around his pistol and raised it, but Sarina was equal to the task. She winged him in the arm holding the gun and it flew out of his hands.

  Colby shot forward and scooped up his daughter, holding her so tight that she shivered, her little arms hard around his neck. Sarina disarmed the woman on the floor and kicked the man’s pistol aside before she went rapidly to her family. She slid an arm around Bernadette, too, and kissed her hair.

  “I was scared to death,” Sarina said shakenly.

  “Great shot, by the way,” he told her, grinning. “I couldn’t have saved myself in time.”

  “Thanks. Oh, Colby!” she groaned. “What a close call!”

  He kissed her hungrily. “Bernadette and I knew what we were doing, baby,” he told Sarina. “We just couldn’t tell you!” He smiled at Bernadette. “God, I’m so proud of you!” he told her. “So proud! You were very brave.”

  “So are you. I heard you, in my head,” she told him seriously. “You said to keep my head down. Somebody shot those men, before you and Mama came, and that other woman…!”

  Cash came up on the porch so silently that nobody heard him until he was in the room, the rifle slung over his broad shoulder. He surveyed the damage and nodded.

  “I need to get in more practice,” he muttered coldly as he noted the two who were only wounded. They gave him horrified looks.

  “You did great, from our point of view,” Colby said sincerely. He held out his hand. “Thanks!”

  “I’ll second that,” Sarina said with a tearful smile. “Thanks a million!”

  He shrugged. “All in a day’s work,” he assured them, as he shook Colby’s hand, and with a warm smile at Bernadette, who returned it. “But I count favors,” he told Sarina. “And I really need an investigator. Making drug cases is the biggest part of what I do here. I’ve got a missing woman who’s up to her neck in the Dominguez operation. She’s still out there, somewhere, and she’ll probably replace Dominguez. This isn’t over, by a long shot.”

  She looked at him and then at Colby and Bernadette. She smiled. “Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll give Cobb my resignation today,” she said. She glanced at Colby’s delighted smile. “Where are we going to live?”

  “We’ll rent a house for the time being,” he said huskily. He cuddled Bernadette close. “How would you like to live on a ranch in Jacobsville, baby, and have your own horses?”

  “Oh, Daddy, I’d love it! Can we?”

  He looked over her head at Sarina, in a way that could have set fire to dry leaves. “Yes, we can.”

  “Are you going to marry my mommy?” she persisted.

  He smiled. “We’ll talk about that later. Right now, we’ve got a drug bust…”

  Cash’s phone rang. He answered it, glancing at Dominguez, who was cursing steadily. “Stop that,” he muttered, “there’s a child present!”

  “And she speaks Spanish,” Colby seconded, glaring at the woman.

  “Right,” Cash said into the phone and closed it. He grinned. “It seems that the rest of the beekeepers are now in custody, along with their product. They’ll be guests of the federal government for some time.”

  “How…” Colby began.

  “Oh, I phoned them,” Cash said easily. “I saw Dominguez go down in my scope and figured you had the situation in hand, so I gave Cobb the green light. He and the rest took out the operation.”

  “We weren’t even needed,” Sarina sighed.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Cash replied, noting the results of their raid. “Nice shooting,” he told them both.

  “Not so nice,” Colby muttered. “I wasn’t aiming for her shoulder,” he added deliberately, and the woman on the floor stopped cursing and went white.

  “You can practice on our local gun range whenever you like,” Cash told him. “Sort of a thank-you for letting your wife work for me.”

  “You’re welcome,” Colby said, looking past him at Sarina with warm eyes. He still had to tell her about their marriage. He hoped it wasn’t going to be a disappointment.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LATER, when Cash found out how Colby got Bernadette to go limp in the nick of time, he took them all to his house and introduced them to his beautiful, and very pregnant wife, Tippy. She had the same gift that Colby and Bernadette shared, and found the successful end to the kidnapping not at all unusual. Despite her fame—she’d been both a model and film star—she was as down-to-earth and charming as her husband, and her young brother who lived with them.

  Colby and Sarina left Bernadette with the Griers, and young Rory, while they went back to the motel and talked about the future. But talk was on the back burner the minute the door closed. In the aftermath of terror and potential tragedy, they were both too aroused to need words. They ended up on one of the big double beds in a tangle of arms and legs, throwing clothing over the side as fast as they could release hooks and buttons and snaps and zippers.

  They came together in a firestorm of passion, barely capable of rational thought at all. She arched up to meet the furious thrust of his body, clinging as the movements sent her quickly right over the edge of the world. As she fell into what felt like throbbi
ng fire, she heard his harsh groan at her ear. Consciousness eluded her for breathless seconds.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was shaking in the aftermath. So was he. They were both wet with sweat.

  She managed weak laughter and then groaned as her arm protested the exercise she’d exacted from it.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked apologetically.

  “Yes, but I don’t care,” she laughed wickedly. She looked up at him, feeling the throb of him deep in her body. She shivered again. She linked her arms around his neck. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.

  “I’m not sure I could,” he replied, grinning back. His hips rose and fell and quickly humor melted into a rekindling of the helpless ardor that had sent them spinning down into oblivion. He heard her voice at his ear, whispering that she loved him, that she’d never stopped loving him. The pleasure was so intense that he actually cried out.

  WHAT SEEMED like hours later, they lounged together on the rumpled bed, catching their breath.

  “Volcanic,” he murmured.

  “Feverishly passionate,” she replied drowsily.

  “I’m running out of good adjectives,” he remarked.

  “Me, too.”

  He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “Do you remember those annulment papers that your attorney sent to me seven years ago?” he asked abruptly.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “I’d forgotten all about them.”

  “I never signed them,” he told her.

  It took a minute for that to sink in. “You what?”

  “I never signed them.”

  She drew back and met his dark, soft eyes. “But if you didn’t sign them…”

  “…they never went through the process,” he finished for her. “We never had an annulment. And Maureen and I were never legally married.”

  She sat up, shocked. “How? Why?”

  “Her late husband left a will. If she remarried, she lost every penny in his savings account. There was a lot of money in it. So she got a friend to pretend to be a minister and marry us. I never checked the marriage license. If I had, I’d have realized it was phony.”