“I spent six years of my life believing one man’s lies. I’m not going to let myself do it again.”
Peg snorted on her way out the door. “That cowboy is worth two dozen of that no-good husband of yours. If you’re too stubborn to see it, then you don’t deserve a man like him.”
Maybe. Twenty-four hours ago she would have agreed completely, but that was before she knew how very stupid she had been, before she had discovered that when it came to things like truth and honesty, Colt McKendrick wasn’t so very different from Michael.
Too restless after Peg left to stay in the medic office when no cowboys waited to be treated, she went in search of Agent Beckstead, to find out if he had learned anything more about Nicky’s whereabouts.
The familiar weight of her medical bag knocked against her thigh as she walked to the campground and she decided to leave it inside her trailer while she went looking for the agent.
After unlocking the door, she set the bag by the bed, then turned to leave. Just as her hand twisted the doorknob, she remembered the rip she had felt there earlier while tending Marty O’Sullivan.
It wasn’t important, she thought. Especially not now when her attention was so completely focused on bringing her son home safely. But some instinct prompted her to investigate it further, anyway. It would only take a moment, after all.
Her fingers felt along the satin lining until she found the slit. Curious. It didn’t look large enough for anything to have slipped through, and yet she could plainly see something long and light colored that didn’t match the dark underside of the leather.
She pulled it a bit more with her fingernails, careful not to rip the material, just loosen the seam. When she had widened the hole enough for her fingers to slip through, she reached in and grasped the item. It wasn’t paper, as she expected, but some kind of soft material. Velvet, maybe, or silk of some kind.
She slid it through width-wise so she didn’t have to rip away more of the lining, then pulled it free and out of the medical bag.
As soon as she saw it, her heart began to pound, and she felt all the blood rush away from her face. Dizzy, she fumbled beside her for the bench seat and sat down hard, staring at her discovery.
It was indeed velvet—a small pouch, really—seven inches long by about five inches wide.
She knew, without even looking at it, what it would contain. Or at least she had a good idea. She hadn’t put it there, certainly, and the only other person who would have had access to her bag was Michael.
Had she been carrying it around with her all this time? Packing it from place to place for weeks without ever knowing it was there?
This must be what Damian DeMarranville was looking for, she thought, then frowned. It was large enough to carry a computer disk but certainly not enough money to make it worth DeMarranville’s while to kidnap an innocent little boy.
She pulled the silk drawstring on the bag and reached inside. Her fingers first encountered a hard square item and she pulled it out. It was a simple black computer disk with a white lined label that said only “DeM.”
There had to be more. There had to be. In a frenzied rush, she upended the little velvet pouch, then gasped when a glittery shower of tiny stones rained out.
Diamonds. A veritable fortune in diamonds.
She stared at them, scattered there on the chipped and worn Formica of her humble table, and had to force herself to breathe through the fury suddenly consuming her. This was why her son had been kidnapped? Why Michael had died? For a handful of cold little rocks?
It was vile. Obscene. Her child was being used as a bargaining chip in a battle for a pile of diamonds.
With an angry sweep of her hand, she shoveled the pile of stones back into the pouch, thrust the disk in after them, then headed for the door. She had to find Colt.
She didn’t stop to consider the irony that Colt would be the first person she wanted to find to show her discovery; she was too consumed with an odd mix of anger and relief.
At least now she would have this in her favor in the grim chess game she played with Damian DeMarranville. She would be able to give him what he wanted and then pray he would play fair and give her back her son.
Since it was right next door, she decided to check Colt’s camper first. Instead of Colt, though, the balding Agent Dunbar answered.
“McKendrick’s not here,” he said when she asked for Colt. “He’s over scouting out the drop site with Beckstead.”
Ferretlike, his gaze sharpened on the pouch in her hand. “Can I help you with something?”
She started to open her mouth to tell him about her discovery when uneasiness pinched at her and she remembered Colt’s animosity toward the agent. She gripped the pouch with suddenly nerveless fingers. “I—no. I believe I’ll just go find Colt.”
“Does whatever you’re holding there have something to do with the case?”
When she didn’t answer, he frowned. “As I’m sure you’re aware, I’m second in command on this assignment, Dr. Prescott. If whatever you have there is connected to our operation in any way, I really must see it.”
His easy tone couldn’t completely conceal the layer of steel lurking underneath it.
She weighed her options. She could either ignore his politely worded order, just walk away to find Colt on her own, or she could give in and show Dunbar her discovery.
For some reason she didn’t like the agent. He had a shiftiness around his eyes, a hardness around his mouth, that put her off.
But then she hadn’t been the best judge of character lately. The reminder of Colt and the depth of his deception weighed heavily in Dunbar’s favor.
After another moment of consideration, she gave a mental shrug. One FBI agent was much the same as another, right? “I think I found what DeMarranville really wants.”
She held out the pouch, with it’s glittery contents. Dunbar peered inside, then his thin lips stretched into a small, satisfied smile. “You were right to bring this to me,” he said.
His fingers covered hers on the bag and a shiver skittered down her spine at their cool pressure. “Thank you, Doctor. I’ll take it now.”
His high-handedness annoyed her, and that avid gleam in his eyes was beginning to make her uneasy again. She tugged the pouch away. “You know, I think I’d still like to show this to Colt and the other agent. The one in charge. Beckstead, isn’t it?”
She started subtly, slowly edging toward the road. “You said they’re at the arena? I’ll just go look for them there.”
She made it only a few steps when she felt those cold, strong fingers clamp around her arm. “I don’t think so,” Dunbar said. The steel was unsheathed now, hard and cruel. “I’ve worked too hard to find those diamonds to let you screw things up for me now.”
“Don’t you mean the disk? The evidence against DeMarranville?” she challenged him.
He lifted a mocking eyebrow. “Right. The disk I’ll take it now. And the diamonds.”
She wasn’t stupid enough to think he would just turn them over to the other agents. Not with that avarice gleaming in his eyes. He would probably take off as soon as she handed them over, which would leave her right back where she started, without anything to use as a bargaining chip for her son’s life.
Not if she could help it. With a great heave, she wrenched her arm away from Dunbar and took off down the road, intent only on finding Colt. She didn’t stop to think about his betrayal now. She knew only that he would protect her, would know what to do about the rogue agent.
She only made it a few steps before Dunbar caught her, twisting her arm behind her back so hard tears welled up in her eyes, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of letting them fall.
“Those diamonds should be mine,” he growled in her ear, his breath hot and fetid. “I earned them, damn it. I deserve them after all the crap I’ve done for Damian over the years.”
He was working for DeMarranville, too? Just who was she supposed to trust in this whole mess?
Her mind scrambled for an escape plan as he forced her toward her trailer. Only one of them could enter the small enclosure at a time and for the first time she was grateful for the tight quarters.
Once inside, she had a few precious seconds alone before he joined her, but it was enough. Acting completely on instinct, she dropped the pouch and scooped up the first weapon she could find—her trusty cast-iron frying pan.
She didn’t give herself time to consider the prudence of her actions or what she would possibly do if she failed. Her son’s life was at stake—the only thing that mattered.
Gathering the last vestiges of her courage, she swung the heavy pan over her head and brought it down with a hard thunk. It bounced off Dunbar’s temple and he staggered against the door frame, then toppled backward, arms flailing, to the ground.
Maggie grabbed the pouch and ran past him, evading his grasping fingers at her ankles. She rounded the corner of the camp office, only to collide with Colt’s hard chest.
His hands reached out to steady her. “What is it, Doc? What’s the matter?”
She struggled to catch her breath. “Dunbar—back there—he tried to steal the diamonds—”
“Whoa. Slow down. Start from the beginning. What diamonds?”
She took a deep breath, willing her pulse to slow, her nerves to settle. Finally when the adrenaline rush had ebbed enough to think straight, she shoved the pouch at him. “Look.”
He opened the bag, and his eyes widened at its contents. “How did you find them?”
“In my medical case. Michael must have sewn them under the lining somehow.”
“What does Dunbar have to do with anything?”
“After I found them, I tried to find you to tell you, but he was at your camper and he said I had to give them to him. When I refused, he tried to take them. He said something about how he’d done enough for DeMarranville over the years that he deserved them.”
“That son of a bitch. He’s the leak.”
“Exactly.”
Both of them turned at the cultured tones of Colt’s superior. He walked around the side of the building, pushing a handcuffed Dunbar ahead of him. A Technicolor bruise bloomed above one eyebrow.
“You have no proof of anything,” Dunbar snarled.
“Wrong.” The special agent in charge offered a small, satisfied smile. “I have all the proof I need, thanks to the doctor here.
Maggie stared. “What did I do?”
“You offered the right bait. He’s been under suspicion for some time but it threw us off when he didn’t go to Damian immediately with your whereabouts. But you were looking for the diamonds yourself, weren’t you, Dunbar? That’s why you didn’t want DeMarranville to know where she was until we found them. Until you stole them yourself and had a chance to leave the country, right?”
“You have no proof of anything,” the agent repeated.
Again the small smile played around Beckstead’s mouth. “I guess it’s just your bad luck that I came looking for the doctor when you decided to make your move. I heard every word. And may I say, Dr. Rawlings, you wield that frying pan very well.”
“You hit him with your frying pan?” Colt stared in disbelief.
She flushed, remembering the times she had almost wielded it against him. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You did exactly the right thing,” Beckstead said. “If you can be as cool and quick thinking tonight, the operation should go off without a hitch.”
Chapter 17
Colt checked his watch one more time. Two minutes to ten—120 seconds to zero hour.
He shifted on the hard metal bleachers and pulled the highpowered binoculars back to his eyes, unerringly focusing on Maggie standing a few feet away from the entrance to the arena. The powerful binoculars brought her so close he felt like he could reach out and smooth a hand down her hair or rub a thumb over those pale smudges below her eyes.
Someone who didn’t know her would probably never guess at the riot of emotions he knew must be going a hundred miles a minute inside her as she waited for Damian to show up with her son. She appeared outwardly calm, her delicate features composed. But he could see the tension in her tightly clasped hands, in the rigid set of her shoulders, and in the way her beautiful dark eyes never stopped scanning the road.
He hated being so far away from her, that the magnified image was only an illusion. In that moment he would have given anything he owned—anything—to be there with her, to hold her close and be able to promise her everything would turn out okay.
Not that she wanted that from him. Or anything else, for that matter, except his help rescuing her son.
He felt as helpless as a damn baby up here on the bleachers, forced to watch everything from three hundred feet away and twenty feet up, but she had been adamant that he stay out of sight.
“DeMarranville said I had to wait alone,” she had said, with a firmness that he thought probably surprised her as much as it had him and the rest of the FBI team. “He mentioned you specifically, Colt. If he sees you anywhere in the area, who knows what he’ll do?”
He knew she was right, that Damian’s unpredictability was one of the things that made him so dangerous—that and his streak of utter ruthlessness. Still, the knowledge didn’t take away the impotent frustration churning through him at being sidelined.
She had also refused to wear a wire for the same reason, that if he detected it, Damian might consider it a breach of their agreement for her to show up alone. They had to be content with the audio from the mikes worn by the agents nearby.
Colt had insisted, over her objections, that undercover agents be placed just a few feet away from her. One manned the ticket booth, another posed as a vendor selling beer, and two more posed as an amorous couple flirting outside the six-foot-high fence surrounding the grounds.
“How’s she doing?”
Beckstead’s voice crackled in his ear. The SAC waited with an unlikely team of reinforcements out of view for phase two of their plan, which would go into action after Nicholas was back safely in his mother’s arms.
Colt spoke into the tiny, voice-activated microphone pinned to his shirt. “She looks tense. What do you expect? Wouldn’t you be, if you knew you’d been set up?”
He knew his anger came out loud and clear to his superior and to everybody else monitoring the voice communications, but he didn’t give a damn. He still couldn’t believe Beckstead would purposely endanger civilians—a woman and child, no less—to set a trap for a dirty agent.
It made him sick even thinking about it. Beckstead had known Dunbar was on Damian’s payroll and he’d all but delivered Maggie and Nicky to the bastard on a silver platter.
He wasn’t at all appeased by the SAC’s explanation that he had people inside Damian’s circle ready to move in an instant when DeMarranville found her. This operation was proof that Damian, as always, had been a step ahead of them.
He shoved his fury aside. This wasn’t the time for it. Now they had to concentrate on Nicky and bringing him home.
“Any sign of them?” Colt asked.
“Not from this direction. Nuñez, you see anything?”
“Negative, sir.” One of the other FBI agents Beckstead had called to join the team from the Salt Lake City office answered. “Wait a minute. Possible suspect vehicle approaching.”
“McKendrick. Can you confirm?”
He moved the lenses from Maggie to scan the road, and his pulse hitched up a notch at the sight of a big dark limousine approaching the arena from the west. It had to be Damian Nobody else would show up to a rodeo in a limousine, especially when the show was just about over, when the only event left was the bullriding.
“Affirmative,” he growled. “Suspects in sight.” He flipped the binoculars back toward Maggie and inched forward on the bleachers, not taking his gaze off her now for even a second.
Everything else—the buzz of conversation around him, the announcer’s crackly voice on the loudspeaker,
the cheers and whistles of the crowd—faded as his concentration centered only on Maggie and on the long midnight limousine with tinted windows that pulled up alongside her.
She looked pale, suddenly, and so tired. Through the binoculars he could see her mouth tighten, her lips tremble ever so slightly. Fierce pride washed through him as she stepped forward to face the limousine despite the fear he knew must be pumping through her veins.
The woman had guts. He had always known it, but maybe she would believe it of herself now, too.
The rear door swung out and that son of a bitch Carlo Santori climbed out and greeted her with his usual smirk His white-blond hair shone in the moonlight and his designer suit looked ridiculously out of place surrounded by jeans and cowboy hats.
If possible, Maggie paled a shade lighter at seeing the man Colt knew had killed Michael Prescott—and probably numerous others they didn’t know about—but she took a few deep breaths and seemed to regain control over her emotions.
Santori said something Colt couldn’t hear over the agents’ microphones and made an obvious gesture for her to get inside the limo but Maggie shook her head in defiance and pointed to the ground where she stood, her hand only trembling a little.
“What’s happening?” he said quietly into his mike.
“Damian wanted to talk to her inside the limo but she refused,” the agent in the ticket booth murmured.
Good girl, he thought. Don’t get in the car. Make the trade on your own turf.
She apparently won the first round of their stalemate. After a few tense moments, Damian climbed out of the limousine, as arrogant and cocksure as always.
“DeMarranville’s getting out,” the man in the ticket booth told those out of visual range.
“He’s asking for his merchandise,” the agent posing as a beer vendor whispered.
Colt focused in as Maggie produced the pouch from inside the sweater she wore against the night breeze. Damian moved to take it from her, but she quickly snatched her arm back and stuck the pouch behind her with a shake of her head.
The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom Page 20