by Laurie Paige
The sky turned completely dark, hiding the twilight glow of the city as they headed out the county road. The lights of the truck cast black shadows into the ravine beside the road as the oaks and willows writhed with the moaning of the rising wind.
A funny sensation crawled along her back between her shoulder blades.
“Damn,” Dev said.
At the same moment she heard a crack like thunder, then the truck veered sharply left, sending their rear wheels into a skid…straight toward the ravine.
Dev cut the wheel left, but the truck wouldn’t obey. Instead it wobbled eerily as it continued to slide toward the drop-off into darkness. She heard a loud crack as they swiped a thin sapling. The tree hit her side of the vehicle and broke in two, its top part sliding over the hood with a scratching sound.
“Dev?” she said, not sure what was happening.
Her head careened into the window as they tilted wildly. Points of light shattered behind her eyelids. She felt herself sliding into the darkness of the ravine, only it seemed to be inside her now.
“We’re going over the side,” Dev said grimly.
She forced her eyes open and saw him battling the wheel. He worked with the gear lever and used one foot on the brake, the other on the accelerator. She frowned as dizziness washed over her. She should tell him that he couldn’t brake and speed up at the same time.
There was another loud crackling, then they came to a dead stop. She stared at the tree that blocked her window, which was now cracked into a million tiny fragments but still of a piece.
“What happened?” she asked in the silence.
“Someone shot out the tire,” Dev said in a tight voice.
Ten
Dev pulled the cell phone from his pocket and punched in Wyatt’s number. The sheriff was still at his desk. Dev explained the situation.
“Sit tight. I’ll have a crew out there at once.”
“I think I can get us on the road,” Dev told him. “I’d like a cast of any tire tracks you find on the road that leads up to the hill above us. I want to see how they compare to those you found on the bootmaker’s road.”
“Will do.”
Dev hung up. “Okay, hold on. I think this junk heap will pull us out of here.”
“Okay.”
He gazed at her in the dim glow of the dash lights. “You’re a brave woman,” he murmured, then turned his attention to their predicament.
The front wheels were still on the shoulder of the road. Keeping one foot ready on the brake, he changed to first gear in four-wheel drive and pressed lightly on the gas pedal. The truck shuddered, then began to move. He kept his touch on the accelerator light and steady. Slowly the truck inched forward, the tree that had stopped their skid gouging the paint along the passenger side as they moved.
At last they were on the road.
Dev got out and set about changing the flat. “That’s one tire I won’t have to worry about changing again,” he remarked, jovial now that the danger was behind them.
“Someone wanted to hurt us,” she said slowly, looking up at the trees on the hill above the road. “How do you know he’s gone?”
“No one is shooting at us.”
He checked her over, noting the steadiness of her hands as she smoothed her hair from her face. She was all right. He stored the ruined tire in the truck. The deputies arrived just as he finished.
“I’m going up the hill,” he told Vanessa. “You can stay in the truck. It’s going to rain soon.”
“I’m coming with you.”
He recognized the determined tone and didn’t argue. The two of them and a deputy hiked up the steep incline. With a powerful flashlight, the deputy found the footprints where the shooter had stood. There was no casing. The man had been careful to leave nothing with fingerprints. But he had left a set of tire tracks in the dust.
The deputy called his partner on the radio. They got a set of tracks in plaster before the first drops of rain fell. Dev took Vanessa by the hand and ran for the truck. They made it just as the deluge began.
Arriving at the hacienda a short time later, they dashed to the side door and into their rooms.
“Your poor truck,” she murmured.
He grinned. “It did its job.”
“And that’s all you expect from it,” she concluded. She sighed. “Being frightened is very tiring.”
Dev stopped her at the adjoining door. He examined her face and delved into her eyes. She was more than tired. The vulnerable sadness was back. He enfolded her in his arms.
“We’re beginning to get somewhere,” he assured her, kissing the top of her head. “They’re warning us to back off. That means they think we’re getting too close.”
“I wish,” she said, her face buried in his shirt.
For a long while neither said anything. He could feel her heart beat against him, feel the warmth of her breath through his clothing. He nuzzled her temple. Somewhere in him, a little-used, creaky, rusty door opened slowly and reluctantly. Like a sudden light shining in the eyes, he felt a painful contraction in that secret place.
He could no more shut her out than he could stop the rain from falling. It pelted the roof and windows now in a steady roar. And he admitted he was lost to reason.
“Come to bed,” he coaxed. “Things will look brighter in the morning.”
She nodded.
He helped her undress, then tucked her under the sheet. He joined her in another moment, pulling her close to warm her when he felt the coldness of her hands and feet.
“Until the kidnapping, I’d never realized exactly how cruel the world could be.”
“I know, Beauty, I know,” he murmured, soothing her as best he could. He held her until she relaxed into sleep. For a long time he lay awake, savoring the pleasure of her closeness. But he already felt the emptiness that would come when they parted.
Dev woke just as the sun broke over the horizon and lit the window of his room. Vanessa nestled against him, her arm and leg thrown across him. A soft knock on the door caused every nerve in his body to tighten.
“Yeah?” he called softly.
Ryan Fortune stuck his head in the door. His keen gaze took in the situation at a glance, then he stared directly at Dev. Dev stared back, refusing to blink or explain her presence or even to jog her awake.
“A meeting in an hour in my office,” Ryan said quietly. “Can you make it?”
Dev nodded. His lover’s father stepped back and closed the door. Dev wondered what other interesting things fate had in store for him. “Hey, time to wake up.”
When he explained about the meeting, she sat up. “We’d better get ready. I’m going, too.”
He nodded at her defiant glance. “I figured you would.”
They showered and dressed and ate a muffin before heading for the master suite and the office. Ryan was at the desk when they entered.
Vanessa went to her father and dropped a kiss on his cheek. “Is there news?” she asked.
“You probably know that better than I do,” he replied ruefully, glancing over her shoulder at Dev. “I felt like a meeting was in order to go over things. Especially the information on the tracks Wyatt found at the scene of the shooting, which he told me about this morning. You could have mentioned that last night.”
“It was late when we arrived. I didn’t want to wake you in case you’d already gone to bed.”
“Huh,” her father said.
Dev took up a position opposite the door and observed each man as he appeared. The sheriff arrived on Matthew’s heels. Sam Waterman was last. Ryan greeted each man, then closed the door after Waterman.
Before he could take the seat behind the desk again, the door opened. Clint Lockhart stood in the doorway. “I understand there’s a meeting about the kidnapping. Okay if I sit in?”
Dev didn’t miss the frown that flitted ever so briefly across Ryan’s face before he nodded and told his brother-in-law to join them. They went through the ritual of serving coffe
e before Ryan got down to business.
“Wyatt, you want to go first?” the patriarch invited.
The sheriff nodded and took out a notebook. He flipped it open. “The truck that followed Kincaid and Vanessa to the Tomahawks’ home was the same one on the hill where they were shot at.”
“Shot at!” Clint looked stunned.
“They aimed for the tire,” Dev said dryly.
“And hit it,” Wyatt continued. “The handwriting samples are the same. We have a name, too. Jack Mason. Drifter. Rodeo bum. Cowboy when he runs out of money. According to his sister in Amarillo, he’s always trying to find a get-rich-quick scheme. He has a record, so we got fingerprints on him.”
Dev surveyed the group when Wyatt paused. Matthew looked haggard and dispirited. Sam was tightlipped, his eyes angry, his manner controlled. Clint, after that first exclamation, revealed nothing, his face as impassive as a plaster of Paris mask.
“Mason is our man,” Wyatt said. “It was his print at the hotel and on the rowel. He’s the kidnapper.”
“Have you picked him up?” Sam demanded.
“That’s the problem. We don’t know where he is. He appears, then disappears just as quickly. I figure he has a bolt-hole in San Antonio. We have a bulletin out to report his whereabouts but not to engage him if he’s spotted again.”
“We need to be careful,” Sam warned. “If he panics, he may shoot everything in sight—”
“Including my son,” Matthew broke in.
Dev knew Sam was speaking from his experience in dealing with terrorists. Their behavior was predictable. Desperate men were the same the world over.
“The FBI has jurisdiction,” he said. He looked directly at Wyatt. “All action is to be coordinated through me. You have my cell phone number. Use it.”
Wyatt nodded curtly.
Dev looked at Sam.
The private detective nodded, then added, “I’ll make sure McCoy has your number, too.”
“He does.” Dev looked at Ryan, then Clint. “I don’t suppose I have to remind you how important it is that this information remain among this group only.” He glanced at Matthew. “Not even wives.”
“What about lovers?” Clint drawled, his glance going deliberately to his niece.
Dev didn’t take the bait. “Not even lovers,” he said, staring directly into the man’s eyes, telling Lockhart he knew exactly who his lovers were, until the man dropped his arrogant gaze. “When we find where the man and his accomplice are holed up, I’ll take a special team in to arrest them. Anyone moves on this without my okay is going to be hauled up on federal charges for interfering in an investigation.”
Vanessa, putting away her personal concerns, watched the interaction between the men with professional interest. Dev had been speaking to her uncle and brother. He didn’t consider Wyatt, Sam, or her father, a problem.
He also didn’t care for Uncle Clint, although there was nothing specific in his demeanor to indicate this. It was intuitive knowledge on her part.
The way she knew she and Dev were meant for each other.
She caught her father’s eyes on her. He studied her intently, unaware of her gaze on him, his manner troubled. When he caught her eye, he smiled as if to reassure her that all would be well. She managed a small upturn of her lips.
She stayed silent as the men talked, then Dev dismissed them with a reminder to report any findings to him.
When they left, Dev turned to her father. “I don’t think it will be long now,” he said.
“Until you catch the kidnappers?” she asked.
His dark blue gaze fell on her. “Until we hear something, one way or another.”
A chill rushed over her. Someone walking over her grave, Rosita would have said. She hugged her arms across her chest. “It can’t be soon enough for me.”
“Nor for me,” her father agreed.
Her heart went out to him. He looked so tired. She had learned with her mother’s death that her father didn’t command the fates, but she had still thought of him as next to God in power. Now she knew him to be a vulnerable man.
Dev dropped an arm across her shoulders, surprising her with the show of affection. “It’ll be all right,” he promised softly. “We’ll get Bryan back.”
She could only gaze at him with her heart in her eyes while love clutched at her chest, making her ache for all the joy she was afraid they were going to miss.
“I know. But be careful. I don’t want you hurt. Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” he stated.
Her father cleared his throat. “You’ll keep me informed of any developments?”
“Of course, sir,” Dev replied in his polite way.
“A black pickup with a hitch on the back,” Wyatt told them Thursday afternoon. “The sister described the truck.”
Vanessa looked at Dev. “That’s about half the pickups in the state of Texas.”
“Well, it rules out the other half.”
“The license plate is stolen. He’s probably changed it again by now.” Wyatt laid the report aside.
“Yeah,” Dev agreed, “but he used the same truck at the motel as at the ranch. He’s got new tires whose tread shows up nicely in the dust. He left a date and the name of the paper in the ransom note and the newspaper scraps at the motel. All mistakes. He’s made others. Our job is to find the one that leads us to him.”
Vanessa experienced the familiar clutching in her chest while she watched her love sort through their meager evidence. Thorough and polite, he continued in the face of every obstacle.
She had trailed along with him and Wyatt as they went over the shooting scene again that afternoon in case the deputies had missed something the night before. The rain had washed out all traces of the incident, except for the broken sapling and the missing bark from the larger tree.
A near tragedy. She or Dev could have been killed. The terrible ache of love invaded her. If he had died, how could she bear it? It came to her that if she had died, Dev would never forgive himself.
In that instant she knew because of their involvement he would never love again if something happened to her. He would never trust life or have faith in himself that he could protect the ones he loved.
And that would be an even worse tragedy. He was one of the most honorable men she had ever known, true and brave and fine. He would be a wonderful husband and father.
Oh, love, love…
Staring at the calendar on Wyatt’s wall, she realized that as of today, she had known Dev two weeks. An eternity.
“Ready?”
She glanced up into his eyes, confused by the question. She realized he was standing. “Yes. Thank you, Wyatt, for all your help,” she said sincerely.
Outside the sheriff’s office, she and Dev watched the busy traffic along the street for a minute.
“You’re quiet,” he remarked.
His plangent voice reminded her of peaceful waves breaking on a moon-washed beach. She swallowed against the longing that rose, all hot and swift and purposeful, in her. “I was thinking about children,” she said.
The guarded look came into his beautiful desolate eyes. Beyond it, she saw a need that he wouldn’t recognize but she knew to be the same as her own—the need to belong, to establish a home and raise a family.
“We’d better go,” he said.
She refused to let him off so easily. “I want children, Dev. I want them to be yours. Ours.”
He shook his head, a quick, angry gesture. But in his eyes she saw the tortured longing he wouldn’t acknowledge.
“Women always get nesty,” he advised, taking a sardonic approach. “You’ll get over it.”
“Will you?” she asked softly.
He ignored the question. “It’s after five. Are you ready for dinner?”
“Yes. We forgot to eat lunch.”
He drove them to a quiet place away from the Alamo and its busy churning of humanity. The restaurant was small, elegant and rec
lusive. He was greeted warmly by the hostess.
“The place is family owned,” he explained after they were seated and had been served long-stemmed goblets of wine. “They’ve been here almost as long as your family.”
He consulted with the chef, who came to their table to tell them the day’s specials, and suggested she might like a chicken dish served with rice.
After their order was complete, she studied him. “You come here often?”
“Often enough.”
“I’m trying to decide if I’m jealous.”
Dev found the idea preposterous. “Why should you be?”
“You’re friendly and glad to be here. You enjoyed talking with the chef. You make them welcome in your life.”
“But not you?”
“Not our love.”
The futility of it swamped him. He didn’t know how to convince her that what she wanted just wasn’t possible. He couldn’t promise forever when he had no idea if tomorrow even existed.
“I warned you,” he told her. “Don’t expect anything. That way, life is full of surprises.”
Her springtime eyes filled with pain. “Be kind,” she suddenly requested. “For tonight, let me dream.”
Her words almost unmanned him. He tasted each separate pain of loving her, one bitter pill at a time as it lodged in his throat. “All right,” he said, his voice husky with the impossible need to give her everything she thought she wanted from him.
After the meal, he took her dancing.
“Our first dance,” she said, her eyes aglow, filled with fox fire, with magic.
For him, all for him.
The most magical of all was that she thought it was real. For tonight, so would he.
She had dressed in her green silk outfit for the trip to town after searching the hill for clues. The silk was smooth and cool to his touch. Under it, her flesh was as smooth, but she was warm, a magical being of promise and passion. For him.
The ache of hunger ran deep within his body, matching the pain of longing he’d experienced as a boy when he’d thought by wishing hard enough he could make it happen.
But neither his wishes nor his mother’s prayers had been enough.
The green-eyed woman in his arms didn’t know that yet. She believed…and, God help him, he couldn’t crush her dreams under his heel as if they didn’t matter.