by Linda Turner
“No, really. I learned to ride a bike when I was four—”
“That doesn’t make you a tomboy. Anybody can ride a bike.”
“Okay, smarty pants, I’ll agree with you on that. But sissies don’t jump out of a tree house when they’re five and break their ankle.”
Surprised, he shot her a sharp look. “You had a tree house?”
She nodded, smiling at the memory. “My mother designed it, and my grandfather built it. It was like something out of an old Tarzan movie. It had bedrooms, ceiling fans—even running water.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I am not. Honest. It was incredible.”
As the miles passed and they reached the Colorado state line, she told him about the summer art classes where she first fell in love with designing, the trips to Paris with her mother, where they went shopping and to fashion shows, and she left her tomboy ways behind, the dreams her mother encouraged her to follow.
Closing her eyes, remembering, she smiled sleepily. “I really had a wonderful childhood. I just wish my mother had lived to see how far I’ve come with my designs. She would have been thrilled.”
“When did she die?”
“Five years ago,” she said quietly. “She and my dad were killed in a car accident one night when they were coming home from a party. It was the worst night of all of our lives.”
Suddenly realizing that while she had been reminiscing with her eyes closed, the tiredness she had been fighting for hours caught up with her. Try as she may, she couldn’t seem to stay awake. “I’m sorry,” she said huskily, sitting straighter in her seat. “I’m supposed to help keep you awake and I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“You’re doing fine,” he told her with a chuckle. “Anyway, we’ll be there soon. That’s the lights of Colorado Springs on the horizon.”
That brought her eyes open as nothing else could. “Colorado Springs! Why are we going there? I thought we were going to Willow Bend.”
“Not yet,” he said. “It’s too dangerous. First we have to get some backup.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The FBI. One of my friends—Carlos Rodriquez—is the head of the local office.”
“But Colorado Springs isn’t really that far from Willow Bend. What if your friend is somehow in on all this? We’ll be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”
“Carlos is straight as an arrow,” he assured her. “If anyone can find out what’s going on in Willow Bend, he can.”
Priscilla wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t forget how whoever was after the ranch had connections that reached all the way to London. What if Donovan was wrong? What then? When was this nightmare going to end?
“It’s the middle of the night,” she said as anxiety sent goose bumps racing over her skin. “How do you even know he’s here? He could be on assignment. Or he might not even work for the FBI anymore. When was the last time you talked to him?”
“Two weeks ago. And no, he’s not in the office at this time of night, but I have his home phone number. I’ll call him as soon as we get in town and see if he can meet us somewhere.” At her silence, he squeezed her hand. “It’s going to be all right, Priscilla. I would never do anything to hurt you or your family.”
“I know that,” she said softly. “It’s just so hard to have any faith in law enforcement anymore. You don’t know who the good guys are.” Suddenly remembering the betrayal in his own past, she frowned at him searchingly. “Dirty cops nearly destroyed your life. How did you ever get past that?”
“I’m still suspicious as hell of anyone with a badge,” he admitted. “Obviously, there are people like Carlos who I trust, but that didn’t happen overnight. He had to prove himself to me.”
If he trusted this Carlos person that much, she had to trust his judgment. That didn’t mean, however, that she wasn’t anxious when Donovan stopped at a truck stop on the outskirts of Colorado Springs to call him.
“He’s going to open the office up for us,” he said as he rejoined her a few minutes later. “There’ll be no one there but the three of us. If there’s a dirty cop in the office, he won’t even know we’ve been there. Okay?”
Relieved, she sighed. “Okay.”
Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the federal building to find Carlos Rodriquez waiting for them at the entrance. Extending his hand to Priscilla as Donovan introduced them, he grinned. “You must be a saint if you can hang around with this wild man for any length of time without killing him.”
“I’ve considered it a few times,” she admitted with a smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Hopefully, I can help you. C’mon up to the office, and you can tell me what’s going on.”
Once inside, they took the elevator up to the third floor, and within minutes, he’d made coffee, collected a notepad and a tape recorder and showed them into a small conference room. “Okay,” he said as he took a seat across the table from them. “What’s going on?”
“Eleven months ago, my brother and sisters and I inherited the Broken Arrow Ranch near Willow Bend,” Priscilla told him. “Our cousin, Hilda Wyatt, left it to us, but she must have been afraid that we wouldn’t actually live there since we’re from England, so one of the requirements of the inheritance is that one of us has to be at the ranch every night for a year. We can be absent for one night without any penalty, but not two consecutive nights.”
Taking notes, Carlos looked up curiously. “What’s the penalty?”
“The ranch goes to an unnamed heir.”
“And who knows about this clause?”
“Apparently, at least half of Colorado.”
He whistled softly. “Let me guess—half of Colorado has been trying to drive you away.”
“Oh, it gets better than that,” she said and proceeded to tell him about the attacks on the ranch and the family.
“And whoever’s doing this isn’t limiting the attacks to the Willow Bend area,” Donovan added darkly. “Someone deliberately ran into Priscilla’s car in London, and then when she got out of the hospital, they kidnapped her. That’s when I came on the scene. Her brother hired me to track her down and keep her safe until the year is up at the end of the month and the ranch is theirs.”
Taking notes furiously, Carlos frowned. “What the hell have the police been doing while all this was going on? There must have been evidence…suspects…something!”
“Most of the time, there wasn’t any evidence at all,” Priscilla said in disgust. “And when there were any leads, nothing came of them.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Donovan told him. “Someone put a wiretap on her brother’s phone.”
Stunned, Carlos snapped, “Who the hell ordered that? And why? What grounds did the police have for a wiretap?”
“That’s why we’re here,” he replied. “We were hoping you could tell us.”
Sitting back in his chair, he studied Donovan with sharp, brown eyes. “How do you know for sure there’s a wiretap?”
“Because someone has chased us all the way from London, and every time we lost them, they’d find us again when we talked to Buck.”
“Then they’re not just tapping the phones, they’ve got to be using global positioning on your cell to find you.”
“I don’t see any other explanation,” Donovan agreed. “They almost caught us in Los Angeles this morning less than an hour after Buck called. An hour, dammit. In Los Angeles! That’s not dumb luck. Especially when the police set up a roadblock.”
That got Carlos’s attention, just as Donovan knew it would. “What the hell! How do you know they were after you?”
“Because it was four o’clock in the morning,” he retorted. “When was the last time you heard of a roadblock being set up at four in the morning?”
“It happens,” he argued. “There could have been a robbery, a murder, a cop down and the perp still in the area.”
“Was there?” Priscilla asked.
“There’s onl
y one way to find out,” he said, and moved to the computer on the desk in the corner.
Sitting back in his chair at the table, Donovan watched as Carlos checked the LAPD records, as well as all APBs issued in Colorado and California and the adjoining states. When he swore, Donovan knew he’d hit pay dirt. “Well?”
“The phone tap was ordered by a Judge Garrison in Willow Bend,” he told them. “And it looks like the APB came from there, also. Don’t jack with me, Donovan. Is there any reason the police would be after you or Priscilla?”
“No, of course not. You know me, Carlos. I don’t do that kind of crap.”
“You’re sure? You don’t have any outstanding warrants? Maybe something you forgot about?”
“I haven’t even gotten a traffic ticket in eight years,” Donovan insisted. “Trust me. There’s nothing.”
“We did use fake passports to get into the country,” Priscilla admitted. “But there’s no way a judge from Willow Bend would know that.”
Not sure if he wanted to laugh or groan, Donovan said, “Sweetheart, you don’t tell an FBI agent you got into the country illegally.”
“It wasn’t illegally,” she said defensively. “I had my real passport, and you did, too. We just didn’t use them. We couldn’t,” she told Carlos. “My kidnappers tracked us all over England. We couldn’t take a chance that they would follow us to the United States, so we used false names…and fake passports. What else were we supposed to do? We didn’t know who we could trust.”
Struggling to hold back a smile, Carlos said, “We’ll deal with that later. For now, you’re right. A judge in Willow Bend wouldn’t have a clue how you got into the country. What I want to know is why he authorized a phone tap and who requested it. Something doesn’t smell right.”
“So you’re going to check it out?” Donovan asked.
He nodded. “In the meantime, I want you to stay as far away from Willow Bend and Judge Garrison as possible and let me handle this.”
“We can’t,” Priscilla said, stricken. “The ranch is scheduled to officially become ours at the end of the month. Between now and then, whoever is after the Broken Arrow is going to throw everything they can at my family, and they’ve got no one they can call on for help, no one they can trust. I’m not going to hide in the shadows while they go through hell. I have to go home.”
“If you really want to help your family,” Carlos said, “give me some time to investigate and find out who’s behind this. That’s the only way to put a stop to it.”
“I can’t,” she said simply, rising to her feet. “My family needs me.”
Donovan had to agree with her. “Thanks, man,” he told Carlos as he, too, came to his feet. “I’ll be in touch. With the wiretap, you can’t call us at the ranch, and I left my old cell phone in California to throw off whoever’s tracking us. As soon as I get a new one, I’ll call you and give you the number.”
Not happy with their decision, he commanded, “Just be careful, okay? I’m going to get on this immediately, but it’s still going to take some time to get some answers. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’m going to make sure we’re ready for just about anything the bastards can throw at us,” Donovan said coldly, “but we’re not going to sneak into town like we’ve got something to hide. The more people who know we’re coming, the safer we’ll be.”
“I agree,” Carlos said, “but I still don’t like it. If you run into something you can’t handle, call me.”
Donovan liked to think there wasn’t much on this earth that he couldn’t handle if he had time to prepare for it, but life didn’t always turn out the way you expected. Two hours later, they were ten miles from Willow Bend when they stopped at a truck stop to call Buck.
“What’s wrong?” Buck demanded the second Donovan said hello and he recognized his voice. “Is Priscilla all right?”
“She’s fine. She’s coming home.”
“What?! No!”
“She’s not going to leave you to fight this fight alone,” Donovan said gruffly. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes or so.” Suddenly hearing a siren, he turned in time to see a sheriff’s patrol car race into the truck stop parking lot with lights flashing. And it was heading straight for where he stood with Priscilla at the pay phone. “What the hell!” he growled. “I’ve got to go, Buck.”
“Wait! You—”
“I’ll call you back,” he promised. Hanging up, he stepped protectively in front of Priscilla and faced the older man who stepped out of the car. “Can I help you, sheriff?”
“I need to see your driver’s license,” he said coolly. “And yours, too, Miss Wyatt.”
Behind him, Donovan felt Priscilla crowd closer to him before she gathered the courage to face the sheriff. Stepping around him, she confronted the older man. “I beg your pardon? My name is—”
“Priscilla Wyatt,” he answered for her. “And this,” he continued, looking pointedly at Donovan, “is the man you’ve been on the run with.”
“On the run?” Donovan said and laughed. “What are you talking about? The last I checked, she was over twenty one and free to go wherever she wanted.”
“Not when she deliberately avoids a license check,” he retorted. “You’re both under arrest.”
“What the hell!”
“You can’t be serious! It wasn’t even a license check. It was an ambush—”
Too late, she realized she’d given away too much information, and she wanted to kick herself. The sheriff couldn’t have known for sure that they’d been in Los Angeles. The authorities never even got a look at the vehicle they were driving, let alone saw their faces.
“What do you mean it was an ambush?” he demanded. “Who was ambushing you?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, fighting the urge to run. “Forget I said anything—”
“The hell I will,” he retorted. “You don’t make a claim like that without reason. Who’s ambushing you?”
Trapped, she was left with no choice but to answer him. “Judge Garrison. He ordered wiretaps on our phones.”
Looking at her as if she were crazy, he snapped, “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard of. Judge Garrison has an impeccable reputation. Who told you that nonsense?”
In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought, and told him the truth. “The FBI.”
Chapter 12
“You’re still under arrest,” Sheriff Clark told them coldly. “If you’re telling the truth, I’ll release you after I talk to the FBI, but in the meantime, I’m not taking any chances.”
Priscilla couldn’t believe he was serious. “It was a license check, for heaven’s sake! You don’t arrest people for that.”
“I can arrest you for any damn thing I like,” he sneered. And before she could guess his intentions, he pulled out a pair of handcuffs and slapped them on her left wrist. “You’re under arrest,” he repeated. “What you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you—”
“We get the gist of it,” Donovan cut in as he started to pull Priscilla’s hands behind her back. “Do you really think it’s necessary to cuff her behind her back, Sheriff? It’s not like she’s an ax murderer or anything. She’s unarmed, for God’s sake.”
His face set in hard lines, the older man hesitated, then grudgingly gave in. “All right,” he said as he secured Priscilla’s hands in front of her and then did the same to Donovan. “But don’t even think about trying anything just because I’m cutting you some slack. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who tries to avoid arrest is asking to be shot.”
He didn’t say he would shoot them, but Donovan didn’t miss the not so subtle threat. And as he watched the old man through narrowed eyes, every instinct he had told him Sherm Clark was a little too close to the edge. One wrong move and they would find themselves looking down the barrel of his gun. Whether he would actually pull the trigger or not was still up for grabs, but Donovan wasn’t willing
to find out. He was a daredevil when it came to a hell of a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid enough to take his chances with a loaded gun or risk Priscilla getting shot.
“I agree,” Donovan said. “So you don’t have to worry about us. We’re not going to try anything.”
Beside him, Priscilla stood as still as stone, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. He wanted to tell her not to despair—he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her—but he couldn’t very well do that in front of the maniac sheriff. Instead, all he could say was, “We’re not going to try anything. Right, sweetheart?”
She blinked, and the fear that had been in her eyes only seconds before was replaced with a healthy dose of outrage when she looked up at him and lied through her teeth. “No,” she said stiffly. “Of course we’re not going to try anything. We’re not that stupid.”
If he hadn’t been cuffed, Donovan would have hugged her. Did she have any idea how proud of her he was? A lot of women would have fallen apart under such circumstances, but even though she was afraid, she was furious, and he thanked God for it. He needed her anger—her spunk to help him get them through this.
Jerking open the rear door of his patrol car, the sheriff motioned for them to get in the car. “Let’s go.”
With their hands cuffed in front of them, they slid into the backseat and heard the sheriff hit the door locks as he climbed behind the wheel. When he pulled out of the parking lot, Donovan expected him to turn east, toward Willow Bend. He turned west, instead.
Beside him, Priscilla stiffened. “This isn’t the way to Willow Bend,” she told the sheriff through the metal grillwork that held them captive in the backseat. “Where are you taking us?”
“I’ve got a stop to make before I head back to the office,” he said, meeting her gaze in the mirror. “Not that I answer to you, Missy. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll sit there and keep your mouth shut.”
She wanted to blast him—Donovan could feel the fury building in her, but she held her tongue. If looks could kill, though, the sheriff would have keeled over right then and there. And Donovan understood exactly how she felt. Before the day was through, the bastard would pay for speaking to her that way, he promised himself. He’d make sure of it. First, however, he had to free them from the handcuffs that held them captive.