Cowboy Delirium

by Joanna Wayne

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “That’s all we’re asking. One more thing about Rio. The CIA specifically sought him out when they heard he was leaving the service and that he was coming to work with my team. That’s why they falsified documents to make it look as if he was kicked out of the SEALs.”

  “Why him specifically?”

  “His record of success and bravery is amazing. His risk-taking is legendary. He does what has to be done, consequences and conventional wisdom be dammed. That doesn’t always fly well in the military. They frown on loose cannons, and Rio earned that label his first year.”

  “I’m not sure what that means for me, Cutter.”

  “Just that his ideas may seem to lack credence at times, but his instincts for figuring out the enemy are unrivaled. Trust him.”

  Trust Rio no matter how implausible his ideas. Cutter made it sound easy, but what if that trust was a mistake and Rio was really in league with the devils behind all of this? What if he was manipulating all of them to improve his position in the cartel or to milk even more money from her family?

  She studied the hard, unrelenting lines in Rio’s face and the exigency that swam in the intoxicating depths of his eyes. She realized it was too late for her questions. Whether or not she should trust Rio was a moot point.

  She already did.

  “Take care, Jaime. Rio will get you out of this alive. As for the rest of the innocent lives, they still hang in the balance.”

  She thanked Cutter for being so honest with her and broke the connection. Then she looked up at Rio. “Do you want me to make the call to Zach now?”

  “Not yet. We need a strategy first. Your shoes are by the back door. Put them on and we’ll take a walk down to the lake. Best not to go barefoot out there in the dark.”

  The sun had finished setting. Facing the muddy trail by the light of the moon in a toga and a pair of stiletto sandals was not her idea of fun. However, the thought of escaping the oppression of this stuffy cabin and stepping out into the cool night air overcame her objections. Not that Rio had asked for her approval.

  She lifted the layers of sheet that tangled around her ankles and followed Rio from the bedroom prison. Her shoes were waiting just as Rio had said. Only they’d been butchered. The beautiful heels had been cut off, leaving the edges ragged and hideously unattractive.

  She stooped and picked them up, cradling them as she fought a new wave of frustration. “You ruined my shoes. How could you?”

  “Easy. I just picked up that butcher knife over there and whacked them.”

  Her hands flew to her hips. “Don’t ever touch my shoes again.”

  “You can play fashion queen on your own time. Escaping through the woods in those would be suicide—just in case it comes to that. You can thank me later.”

  But those sandals were brand-new and absolutely stunning. Any woman would know that. “You—you—you loose cannon,” she muttered, for want of a better retort.

  He smiled and opened the door for her. “Don’t start buttering me up so soon. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  “YOU LOOK LIKE YOU GOT ONE wheel down and the axle dragging.”

  Lenora opened her eyes at the sound of Billy Mack’s voice. “About time you got here.” Her words stalled on her thick tongue. The heart attack and the medication were taking their toll.

  “I didn’t expect you to miss me so much you’d be asking for me this soon.”

  “I don’t. I need you.”

  “Sure didn’t expect you to admit that. Aren’t they treating you well around here?”

  She gathered her thoughts from the mire of confusion created by the drugs. “It’s about Jaime.”

  “I was sure it would be.” He put his mouth close to her ear. “I can’t go there with you, Lenora, not in here. There are too many ears to hear the conversation.”

  “Then they told you?”

  Billy Mack nodded. She’d thought they surely would. He’d been their neighbor for so long he was like family now. He’d become a proxy dad for her children after their own father had died. He hadn’t taken Randolph’s place. No one could, but he tried, and all the children tended to go to the crusty old rancher when trouble hit.

  “No one will tell me anything,” she whispered. “Not even Becky. She just tells me not to worry and that they have the situation under control.”

  “They don’t want to upset you.”

  “But they are,” she whispered. “Not knowing is the hardest of all. Level with me, Billy Mack. Please. Give it to me straight.”

  “The straight of it is that you’re supposed to stay calm and you’re getting all riled up right now.”

  “I’ll walk out of here tubes and all if you don’t tell me what’s going on, Billy Mack. I swear I will.”

  “Reasoning with you is like trying to put a pair of socks on a rooster.”

  One of the ICU nurses walked over to check on them. Lenora managed a smile as the nurse offered her a drink of water. She sipped from the straw and the nurse moved on. Lenora waited until her footsteps had faded into the far corner of the large multi-bed room.

  “Did Zach really talk to Jaime?”

  “He did and he said she sounded fine.”

  She kept her voice so low it couldn’t carry past Billy Mack’s ear. “Then why don’t they just pay the ransom so that she can come home?”

  “They’re working on it.”

  “I don’t see what there is to work on. I don’t want negotiations. Give them everything they’re asking for. Just get Jaime back.”

  “You need to let your sons handle this, Lenora. They have good heads on their shoulders and cowboy determination. You and Randolph made sure of that. They’ll make the right decisions.”

  “I can still make the decisions for my family.”

  “You could, but you’re not there. They are and they’re grown now. You need to turn the reins over to them for this ride.”

  “I have a really bad feeling this time. I can’t explain it, Billy, but my heart can’t find any comfort no matter how hard I pray.”

  Desperation tightened her chest. Getting upset wasn’t good for her condition, but Jaime’s life was riding on this. She couldn’t even imagine life without her high-spirited, exuberant daughter.

  “We’ve been friends for a long time, Billy Mack. If that friendship means anything to you, talk to my sons and make them follow my wishes. Under no circumstances are they to take this to the FBI or any other law enforcement agency without asking me first.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, but I’ll wag my tongue at ’em if you promise to stay in this bed and try to stay calm.”

  “I promise.”

  There was little to say after that and Lenora was actually glad when the nurse said it was time for Billy Mack to go. She closed her eyes, and her mind drifted back twenty-eight years ago to the night Zach and Jaime were born.

  Randolph had sat with her in their local hospital while she was in those final clutches of labor. He’d come directly from an auction when she’d called to tell him the babies were on the way.

  He’d smelled the way he so often did, of horseflesh and perspiration and that special musk that was all him. She remembered it now because it had seemed so comforting in the sterile environs of the delivery room.

  When the twins had come screaming into the world, old Doctor Ed had put both of them in Randolph’s arms, telling him to meet his newest children, while Lenora caught her breath from the double birth.

  Randolph had stood there in all his rugged rancher strength and virility with tears in his eyes.

  She’d loved him so much that night. She still did. At moments like this, she missed him as if his death had been yesterday instead of over twenty years ago.

  Oh, Randolph, watch over our little girl. Take care of Jaime.

  THE SUN HAD DROPPED COMPLETELY below the horizon by the time Jaime and Rio reached the lake, and the evening’s first moonbeams danced across the shadowed water. She
was afraid, but exhilarated. Anxious, but excited.

  Rio took her arm and guided her to a cleared area that was carpeted with a thick layer of dried pine needles. Something rustled and she followed the sound to discover a family of skunks parading through the trees and toward the lake.

  She stood perfectly still until they’d passed, letting the sounds and smells of the night soak in. An owl hooted overhead. Bullfrogs accompanied a chorus of tree frogs and crickets. Lightning bugs darted through the trees, and the sweet scents of earth and spring blooms perfumed the air.

  Though it felt good to be out of her prison, the calm had zero effect on her pulse rate.

  “What will you do if Zach doesn’t know the details of the flight as yet?” she asked.

  Rio propped his foot on the trunk of a downed tree. “We’ll have to wait until he does.”

  “Perhaps you should talk to Buerto since he’s handling the negotiations.”

  “Have you and Buerto been together long?”

  “Only a few months. We met at a party for one of the charities my mother sponsors. We hit it off and before I knew it, he’d offered me a job choosing art for a five-star resort he’s building in Mexico.”

  “Do you have experience in that line of work?”

  “No. But he said I have a flair for whimsy and a style about me that was better than experience. And I am a fast learner.”

  “He must have made quite an impression if you just quit your current job and went to work for him.”

  “I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with my job at Collingsworth Oil. Staying cooped up inside an office building for most of every day is too confining.”

  “Your family owns Collingsworth Oil. You surely could have had your choice of jobs there. They can’t all require you to be chained to a desk.”

  “So said my CEO brother, Langston. But starting at the top is not the Collingsworth way. Family or not, you earn your job title. That’s particularly difficult when none of the jobs curl your hair.”

  “So what did you do at the oil company?”

  “What didn’t I do would be the easier question to answer. A couple held potential, but didn’t pan out.”

  “Which couple?” Rio asked.

  He actually seemed interested, so she kept muddling through her past employment tales of woe. “I was fairly successful as a facilitator, but I couldn’t get up a lot of excitement for setting up meetings. I worked the longest as a recruiter. Visiting colleges to enlist some of the brightest engineers for positions at Collingsworth Oil was fun, but I couldn’t see myself doing that year in and year out. I’m not knocking it. It just wasn’t me.”

  “So you never had a burning desire to do anything in particular?” Rio asked.

  She shook her head. “I worked as a social worker for a few months after getting my degree, but I got more buried in the clients’ problems than they were. My supervisor said that wasn’t the key to a good client/social worker relationship. She advised me to choose another line of work. Instead I took off and spent a couple of years traveling the globe.”

  “I suppose you don’t really have to work when you’re independently wealthy.”

  “Not for money,” she admitted. “But I want that same sense of purpose the rest of my family has. I want to do something that makes a difference in people’s lives. I want to wake up in the morning excited about tackling a new challenge. I haven’t found my niche yet, but I’ll find it one day.”

  “And for now you have Buerto.”

  “I don’t exactly have him.”

  “That’s not how he made it sound on the phone.”

  “I think that’s the trauma of the abduction talking. I’m fond of him, and we date. But we’re not shopping for furniture.” That was as blunt and as honest as she could put it.

  “So back to the ransom,” Rio said.

  “Right.” The ransom they were asking from her family. “If the cartel knew how wealthy Buerto is, I’m sure they’d be asking him to contribute to their revolting cause.”

  Rio reached for a branch above his head, his muscles bunching and pushing against the fabric of his shirt. “They know everything about him. He’s been investigated thoroughly, the same as you, the same as your family has been. It’s how the cartels work.”

  Which meant they’d probably been watching her comings and goings, knew when she left the office, how much time she spent with Buerto, what time she turned off her lights and went to sleep. The thought of their spying on her made her cringe.

  “They knew Buerto would be with you that night,” Rio explained. “Poncho ordered me to let him and Luke take care of the guy you were with. Only on the drive home did I even hear his name mentioned.”

  “I don’t see how they could possibly know I’d be with him. It’s not as if Buerto and I were together every night. And we didn’t make dinner plans that night until the last minute.”

  “Someone had to know,” Rio said, “unless…” He let the sentence trail.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “You’ve kidnapped me and ruined my favorite shoes. No reason to worry about offending me with words.”

  He let go of the branch and took a step toward her. “Do you think it’s possible that Buerto is involved with the cartel?”

  “Absolutely not. He’s a legitimate businessman. I’m in his office every day. If he was dealing with thugs, I’d have noticed.”

  “Then you’ve seen the receipts for the art he’s purchased?”

  “He hasn’t actually purchased anything yet.”

  “So there’s no proof that’s why he’s really in this country.”

  “He wants to consider all the pieces he’s interested in before he actually purchases any.”

  “Or maybe he just created a fake profession that would let him get close to you.”

  “No, I’m the one who recommended he wait to do his final selection so that he’d have a more cohesive collection for the resort.” Or had she? At times, Buerto did have a way of putting words in her mouth.

  “I’m not accusing him of anything, Jaime. Buerto is probably as terrific as you believe he is, but I have to examine every possibility. I’ll admit that as far as I know, he’s not a major figure, but neither can I rule that out. Not that it would matter. If the cartel needs him, they’ll use him in whatever capacity they choose.”

  Rio’s suspicion that Buerto might be involved with the cartel sounded completely ludicrous to her. But Cutter had warned her about Rio’s crazy theories. He’d also said Rio had incredible instincts for identifying trouble. “Buerto is very professional in his dealings with gallery owners,” she said, feeling an obligation to defend her friend and employer. “He’s nothing like Luke.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything. The higher echelons of the cartel mix and mingle with dignitaries and sometimes even presidents of countries without a miscue.”

  “Do you have reasons for suspecting Buerto’s involvement other than the fact that I was with him when I was abducted?”

  “A few. The way you met. The fact that he persuaded you to go to work for him when you had no experience in the business. The fact that he claims to be building a multi-million dollar resort, a profession that explains why he was only in town temporarily. And now the cartel has chosen him to act as the negotiator when there’s no reason they can’t go directly to your family.”

  “He fought to save me.”

  “That could have been part of the plan.”

  “They beat and kicked him.”

  “And left him alive even though he saw all of us.”

  “I’ve seen you, too.” The truth of her statement hit home before the words were out of her mouth. “They don’t intend for me to get out of this alive, do they?”

  “Not likely.” Rio stepped closer, moving into her space. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. Not that there was any other possibility. Facing death tended to upset people. And now he was trying to tell her th
at her so-called boyfriend might be a thug. He backpedaled on that. “Buerto’s probably just an honest guy who fell for you from the moment you met.” He reached for her hand. “I can easily see how that could happen.”

  At his touch heat danced through her like tendrils of fire. She’d never responded to Buerto like that. She may have never responded to any man quite like that.

  She struggled to think clearly, but Rio’s fingers had trailed a blazing-hot path up her arm to her neck. They tangled deliciously in her hair.

  “Buerto is a lucky man,” he whispered almost gruffly.

  But it wasn’t Buerto who had her senses reeling now. Forgetting the danger, she turned her face toward Rio’s and rose on her tiptoes until her lips were only a breath from his.

  She wasn’t sure who made the next move, but suddenly his lips were devouring hers, igniting a firestorm of need inside her. Her makeshift sarong slipped, baring her breasts. She didn’t pull it up.

  Rio held her close, pressing his hard, fully clothed body against her half-naked one. His hands splayed on her back. Hers wrapped around his neck. The kiss intensified until she was weak and breathless.

  Then without warning Rio pulled away. He muttered a low curse and turned while she pulled the sheet back into place across her chest and tightened it.

  “So much for trusting me,” he said. “I had no right to push myself on you like that.”

  He sounded genuinely tormented. “It was only a kiss, Rio. And I initiated it.” A kiss that had rocked her soul. She was still trembling from the sensual onslaught of emotions.

  “I wasn’t trying to get you to doubt Buerto just so that I could kiss you.”

  “That never entered my mind.” Perhaps it should have. With all the revelations Rio had thrown at her tonight, it was difficult to distinguish reality from her own overactive imagination.

  “Now that we agree that Buerto could be a problem, we should call your brother,” Rio said. “You can explain to him why this second conversation with him should be kept a secret from Buerto.”

  “But how do I explain you?”