Invincible

by Diana Palmer

  “Our police chief is awesome when he gets going,” Carlie laughed. “We had one guy up for speeding, and when he came in to pay the ticket he was almost shaking. He just wanted to give me the fine and get out before he had to see the chief. He said he’d never speed in our town again!”

  “What did Cash do?” Jake asked.

  “I asked. He didn’t really do anything. He just glared at the man while he wrote out the ticket.”

  “I know that glare.” Rourke shook his head. “Having been on the receiving end of it, I can tell you truly that I’d rather he hit me.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Carlie mused. “I wasn’t working for him then, but I heard about it. He and Judd Dunn were briefly interested in the same woman, Christabel, who eventually married Judd. But it came to blows in the chief’s office at lunch one day. They said it was such a close match that both men came out with matching bruises and cuts, and nobody declared victory. You see, the chief taught Judd Dunn to fight Tae Kwon Do–style.”

  “Wasn’t he going to teach you and Michelle Godfrey how to do that?” Jake asked suddenly.

  “He was, but it was sort of embarrassing, if you recall, Dad,” she replied. She glanced at Rourke, who was watching her curiously. “I tripped over my own feet, slid under another student, knocked him into another student on the mat, and they had to go to the emergency room for pulled tendons.” She grimaced. “I was too ashamed to try it again, and Michelle wouldn’t go without me. The chief wanted us to try again, but I’m just too clumsy for martial arts.”

  Rourke’s eyes twinkled. “I can sympathize. On my first foray into martial arts, I put my instructor through a window.”

  “What?” she exclaimed.

  “We were standing near it. He threw a kick, I caught his foot and flipped him. The momentum took him right into a backward summersault, right out the window. Fortunately for him it was a low one, raised, and very close to the ground.”

  “Well!” she laughed.

  “I’ve improved since then.” He shared an amused look with Jake.

  “Shall we say grace?” Jake replied, bowing his head.

  * * *

  “YOU DIDN’T TELL me that it was the police chief’s wife, not Carlie, who insulted you,” Carson said as they shared coffee during intermission at the theater in San Antonio.

  Lanette looked at him under her long lashes. “I was very upset,” she remarked. “Perhaps I was confused. Honestly, that girl is so naïve. And she isn’t even pretty! I don’t understand why you were dancing with her in the first place!”

  He studied her covertly. She was getting more possessive by the day, and she was full of questions about Carlie. It bothered him. He kept thinking of her rap sheet, too.

  “Several of us are watching her,” he said after a minute. “There was an attempt on her father’s life, and she was injured. We think there may be another one.”

  “On a minister?” she exclaimed, laughing loudly. “Who’d want to kill a preacher?”

  His black eyes narrowed. “I don’t recall telling you that her father was a man of the cloth,” he said.

  Her face was blank for just an instant and then she smiled prettily. “I was asking about her at the dance. Someone told me who her father was.”

  “I see.”

  “She’s just a backward little hick,” she muttered irritably. “Let’s talk about something else. Are we going to see the symphony Friday night? I bought a new dress, specially!”

  He was thoughtful. He didn’t like the way Lanette had started to assume that he was always available to take her out. She was beautiful to look at, to show off in public. The poor reservation kid in him enjoyed the envious looks he got from other men when he escorted his striking blonde companion in the evenings. But she was shallow and mean-spirited. He forgave a lot because she eased the ache in him that Carlie provoked.

  Funny thing, though. Although he enjoyed the physical aspects of their relationship, he couldn’t quite manage to go all the way with his gorgeous blonde. It unsettled him, and irritated and insulted her, but expensive presents seemed to pacify her.

  He didn’t understand his reticence. Lanette was eager and accomplished, but her talents were wasted on him. Deep down, he knew why. It didn’t help the situation. Carlie was never going to fall into bed with him. And if she did, her father would kill him and Cash Grier would help.

  “I’ll be very happy when you’re finished with this dumb assignment and you don’t have to be around that little hick,” Lanette was saying. She brushed back her long, thick, blond hair.

  “People in Jacobs County are very protective of her,” was all he said.

  “She’s probably not even in trouble,” she muttered. “I expect people are just overreacting because of that attack on her father. For goodness sake, maybe whoever’s after her isn’t even after her, maybe it’s her father!” She glanced at him. “Isn’t that what you said about that knife attack, that he was trying to kill her father and she tried to stop him?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  She shook her head. “Well, it was a really stupid job,” she murmured. “Imagine a man going to the victim’s house in the middle of the day, in broad daylight, and attacking a minister in his own house!”

  Carson frowned as he listened. “I didn’t know it was in broad daylight.”

  “Everybody knows,” she said quickly. “They were even talking about it at that silly dance you took me to.”

  “Oh.”

  She glanced away, smiling to herself. “They also said that the man who tried to kill the preacher ended up dead himself.”

  “Yes, poisoned. A very nasty, slow poison. Something the late Mr. Martin was quite well-known for in intelligence circles.”

  “I hate poison,” she said under her breath. “So unpredictable.”

  “Have you been poisoning people, then?” he mused.

  She laughed. “No. I like to watch true crime shows on television. I know all about poisons and stuff.” She moved very close to him. “Not to worry, handsome, I’d never want to hurt you!” she added, and lifted her arms toward his neck.

  He raised an eyebrow and stepped back.

  “Oh, you and your hang-ups,” she muttered. “What’s wrong with a hug in public?”

  “It would take too long to tell you,” he said, not offering the information that in his culture, such public displays were considered taboo by the elders.

  “All right,” she said with mock despair. “Are we going to the theater Friday?”

  “Yes,” he said. It would keep his mind off Carlie.

  “Wonderful!” She smiled secretly to herself. “I’m sure we’ll have a lovely time.” She paused. “That mad South African man you know, he isn’t coming to the theater, is he?”

  “Rourke?” He laughed to himself. “Not likely on a Friday night.”

  “Why not on a Friday?” she asked.

  He almost bit his tongue. Rourke played poker with Cash Grier. He didn’t dare let that slip, just in case Lanette knew anyone who had contact with Matthew Helm. “Rourke drinks on weekends,” he lied.

  “I see.” She thought for a minute. “What about your friend the police chief?” she asked, laughing. “I’ll bet he takes that prissy wife of his to the theater.”

  “Not on a Friday night,” he chuckled. “The police chief and several other men get together at the chief’s house and play poker after supper.”

  “Exciting game, poker. Especially the strip kind,” she purred.

  He sighed. “I don’t gamble. Sorry.”

  “Your loss, sweetie,” she said with pursed red lips. “Your loss.”

  * * *

  FRIDAY NIGHT, REVEREND BLAIR had a call from a visitor to the community who was staying in a local motel outside town.

&nbs
p; “I just want to die,” the man wailed. Jake couldn’t quite place the accent, but it definitely wasn’t local. “I hate my life! They said you were a kind man who would try to help people. They gave me your number, here at this motel—” he named it “—so I said I’d call you. Before I did it, you know. Will God forgive me for killing myself? I got some rat poison...”

  “Wait,” Jake Blair said softly. “Just wait. I’ll come to see you. We’ll talk.”

  “You’d come all this way, just to talk to me?” The man sounded shocked.

  “I know the motel you mentioned you were staying at,” Jake said. “It’s just a few minutes from here. I’ll be on my way in a jiffy. What’s your room number?”

  The man told him. “Thank you. Thank you!” he sobbed. “I just don’t want to live no more!” He hung up.

  “Pumpkin, I have to go out,” he informed his daughter as he shrugged into his bomber jacket. “I’ve been contacted by a suicidal man in a motel. I’m going to try and talk him down before he does something desperate.”

  She smiled. “That’s my dad, saving the world.”

  He shrugged. “Trying to, anyway. You stay inside and keep the doors locked,” he added. “And keep that cell phone close, you hear me?”

  “I’ll put it in my pocket, I swear.”

  “Good girl.” He kissed her forehead. “Don’t wait up. This may take a while.”

  “Good luck,” she called after him.

  He waved at her, left and closed the door behind him.

  Carlie finished cleaning up the kitchen and went upstairs to play her game. On the kitchen table, forgotten, was the cell phone she’d promised to keep with her. The only other phone in the house was a fixed one, in her father’s office...

  * * *

  “GOODNESS, COFFEE JUST goes right through me,” Lanette whispered into Carson’s ear. “Be right back.”

  He just nodded, aware of irritated glances from other theatergoers nearby. He wasn’t really thrilled with the play. It was modern and witty, but not his sort of entertainment at all, despite the evident skill of the actors.

  His mind went back to Carlie on the riverbank, standing so close that he could feel every soft line of her body, kissing him so hungrily that his mind spun like a top. Carlie, who was as innocent as a newborn, completely clueless about the hungers that drove men.

  He wanted her until he couldn’t sleep for wanting her. And he knew he could never have her. He wasn’t going to settle down, as Cash Grier had, with a wife and child and a job in a small town. He liked adventure, excitement. He wasn’t willing to give those up for some sort of middle-class dream life in a cottage or a condo, mowing the grass on weekends. The thought of it turned his stomach.

  He brushed away a spec on his immaculate trousers and frowned. He didn’t understand why Carlie appealed to his senses so strongly. She wasn’t really pretty, although her mouth was soft and beautiful and tasted as sweet as honey. Her body was slender and she was small-breasted. But she had long, elegant legs and her waist was tiny. He could feel her small breasts swelling against his hard chest when he kissed her, feel the tips biting into his flesh even through layers of fabric.

  He groaned silently. His adventures with women had always been with beautiful, practiced, elegant women. He’d never been with an innocent. And he wasn’t about to break that record now, he assured himself firmly.

  He’d been vulnerable with Carlie because he felt guilty about sending her to the hospital when he lost his temper. That was all. It was a physical reaction, prompted only by guilt. He was never going to forgive himself for frightening her like that. Her white face haunted him still. He’d only moved closer to make his point, it hadn’t been a true aggression. But it must have seemed that way to a young girl who’d been beaten, and then later stabbed by an assassin.

  But he hadn’t hurt her at the dance, when they’d moved together like one person, when he’d felt the hunger so deeply that he could have laid her down on the dance floor right then. What the hell was he going to do? It was impossible. Impossible!

  While he was brooding, Lanette returned. She slid her hand into his and just smiled at him, without saying a word. He glanced at her. She really was beautiful. He’d never seen a woman who was quite this exquisite. If it hadn’t been for her attitude, and her other flaws, she might have seemed the perfect woman. That made it all the more inexplicable that he couldn’t force himself to sleep with her; not even to relieve the ache Carlie gave him.

  * * *

  CARLIE WAS FIGHTING two Horde in the battleground. Sadly, neither of them was Carson. She flailed away with her two-handed sword, pulled out her minions, used every trick she could think of to vanquish them, but they killed her. She grimaced. She had the best gear honor points could buy, but there were these things called conquest points that only came from doing arenas. Carlie couldn’t do arena. She was too slow and too clumsy.

  So there were people far better geared than she was. Which was just an excuse, because the playing field was level in battlegrounds, regardless of how good your armor was.

  The painful truth was that there were a lot of players who were much better at it than Carlie was. She comforted herself with the knowledge that there was always somebody better at the game, and eventually everybody got killed once or twice during a battle. She was just glad that she didn’t have to do it in real life.

  “Ah, well,” she said, and sighed.

  She resurrected at the battleground cemetery, got on her mount and rode back off to war. Before she got to either her home base or the enemy’s, the end screen came up. The Alliance had lost to the Horde. But it had been an epic battle, the sort that you really didn’t mind losing so much because it was fought by great players on both sides.

  “Next time,” she told the screen. “Next time, we’ll own you, Hordies!”

  She was about to queue for the battleground again when she heard a knock at the door downstairs.

  She logged out of her character, although not out of the game, mildly irritated by the interruption, and went down the staircase. She wondered if maybe her father had forgotten to take his house key with him. He was so forgetful sometimes, it was funny. Twice now, he’d had to wake Carlie up when he came back from a committee meeting that lasted longer than expected, or when he returned from visiting and comforting congregation members at hospitals.

  She peered through the safety window and frowned. There was a big man in a suit outside. He looked uneasy.

  “Is there something you want?” she asked through the door.

  “Yeah,” he said after a minute. “I need help.”

  “What sort of help?” she answered.

  He paused for a minute. He looked through the small window at the suspicious young woman who was obviously not about to open that door to a man she didn’t know.

  He thought for a minute. He was slow when it came to improvisation. Maybe he could fool her if he was smart. Yeah. Smart. Who would she open the door for?

  “I, uh, came to tell you about your dad,” he called through the door. “There’s been an accident. I was passing by and stopped. He asked me to come and get you and drive you to the hospital where they’re taking him.”

  “Dad’s been in a wreck?” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t the police come?”

  What did she mean? Did police notify people about wrecks here? He supposed they did. He’d done that once, long ago. He paused.

  “Well, they were coming, but I told them your dad wanted me to bring you, and they said it was okay.”

  She still hesitated. Perhaps it was one of the new patrolmen, and her father had been impatient about getting word to her. A kind stranger might have been imposed upon to fetch Carlie.

  “He’s hurt pretty bad, Miss,” he called again. “We should go.”

  She couldn’t bear to think
of her father injured. She had to go to him. She grabbed her coat off the rack near the door. Her pocketbook was upstairs, but she couldn’t think why she’d need it. Her father would have money in his wallet and a house key.

  “Okay, I’m coming,” she said, and opened the door.

  He smiled. “I’ll take you to him,” he promised.

  She closed and locked the door behind her. Too late, she remembered her cell phone lying on the kitchen table.

  “Have you got a cell phone?” she asked abruptly.

  “Yeah, I got one,” he said, leading the way to his late model sedan. “Why?”

  “In case we have to call somebody,” she explained.

  “You can call anybody you like, Miss,” he said. “Just get right in.”

  She bent down to slide into the open passenger side when she felt a cloth pressed against her mouth and pressure behind it. She took a breath. The whole world went black.

  * * *

  THE BIG MAN cuffed her hands together behind her before he slid her onto the backseat. She was breathing sort of funny, so he didn’t gag her. He hoped that would be okay with the boss. After all, where they were going, nobody was likely to hear her.

  Before he got into the car, he dropped a piece of paper on the ground deliberately. Then he got in the car, started it and drove away.

  9

  REVEREND JAKE BLAIR knocked at the motel door, but there was no answer. He immediately thought the worst, that the man had actually attempted suicide before his arrival. He might be inside, fatally wounded.

  He ran to the motel office, explained the situation, showed his ID and pleaded with the man to open the door.

  The manager ran with him to the room, slid home the key and threw open the door.

  “Is this some sort of joke?” the manager asked.

  Jake shook his head. “He phoned me at home and begged me to come and speak with him. He said that someone locally had recommended that he call me and gave him the number. He said he was suicidal, that he was going to take poison.” He turned to the man. “Did you rent this room tonight?”