by Harper Allen
Don’t let that hammer-headed Appaloosa gelding fool you, boys. Some days Chorizo looks as harmless as a little lamb. But he’s as tricky as the devil, and the first time you forget that might be your last.
Del’s drawled warning had been directed at four know-it-all hell-raisers. California golden-boy Tye Adams, banished to the Double B by his wealthy father after nearly killing himself on a stolen motorcycle, had been the first to take on Chorizo. Watching him stumble back behind the safety of the corral bars, bruised and bleeding, the next kid up, Jess Crawford, simply shook his head.
“I’m just a computer geek sent here for hacking into school records,” Jess countered. “I never said I was the macho type, and I don’t intend to start now. You shouldn’t, either, Virgil.”
Connor had always suspected it had been Jess’s use of his hated first name that had prompted him to get onto Chorizo’s back, but whatever the reason, seconds later he’d found himself landing on hard-packed dirt, the wind knocked out of him. Even while he’d been trying to drag some much-needed oxygen into his burning lungs he’d seen the gelding’s razor-sharp hooves come down inches from his head. Only the swift intervention of Gabe Riggs, another of the boys, who’d ducked between the corral’s bars and dragged him to safety, had frustrated the Appaloosa’s intentions of making mincemeat out of him.
His run-in with the hammer-headed gelding should have taught him a lesson, Connor thought now.
Tess wasn’t much taller than Joey, and even when he’d seen her sitting in the diner he’d known his own solid six-three frame had to top hers by a good twelve inches or so. But her petiteness wasn’t the main reason he’d underestimated the woman now gesturing impatiently at him with his own gun.
Crazy she might be. Vulnerable she wasn’t. He wouldn’t make that mistake a second time.
“My car’s over there,” he said tonelessly. “But I’m asking you one last time to give yourself up.”
“I can’t do that, Agent.” Was he fooling himself again, or was there regret in those husky tones? “I can’t hand Joey back over to the Agency, and that’s final. Now, move.”
She’d just sealed her own fate, Connor thought. Prompted by the gun at his back, he headed across the parking lot to his car. He might wish this had turned out otherwise, but there was no reason to feel such desolation at her decision.
He wondered briefly why he did. Then he dismissed the question, knowing he couldn’t afford the distraction.
Sometime tonight those amber eyes would close forever, Agent Virgil Connor told himself bleakly. And he was probably going to be the one who would have to kill her.
Chapter Two
She’d kidnapped a federal agent, Tess Smith thought hollowly a few hours later. He was right—this wasn’t one of the fantastic stories that ran under her byline in the National Eye-Opener. Even if she’d wanted to pretend otherwise, a glance across the motel room at the grim-faced man sitting on a chair and secured by his own handcuffs to the steel bracket bolting down the television set was chilling proof of her actions.
In the bed a few feet away Joey had finally fallen asleep, his tough little face free of all worry for the moment. Beside him was a bobble-head doll from the diner, bought with the change from the money she’d left him to pay for their meal when she’d slipped from their booth to follow the Fed.
She hadn’t had the heart to scold him over his unauthorized purchase. The monsters in his young life were all too real. She could understand why a plastic one might bring comfort.
The same need to believe that monsters weren’t invincible was obviously why Joey was one of the Eye-Opener’s biggest fans. One of her biggest fans, rather, Tess corrected herself. Guilt flickered through her, as it had done more than once in the past two days. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told Joey the truth, since it was something he was going to find out sooner or later, anyway. But maybe it was better that he learn it himself, the way she’d had to.
Oh, not that monsters don’t exist, Joey, she silently assured the small sleeping figure in the rumpled bed. They do. They’re really real and I really went up against one, just like in those stories I write. Except I didn’t defeat it.
“It defeated me,” she said under her breath, her vision suddenly blurring. “I was your age, and the monster won. No one believed me, either.”
“How do you know? I might if you took the trouble to explain, lady.”
Startled, Tess jerked her attention to the handcuffed man across the room. She’d allowed him to remove his suit jacket before making him manacle his right wrist to the steel bracket, and even as she looked at him she saw the biceps of his secured arm flex. He gave her a thin smile.
“You want to give it a try?”
“Give what a try?”
She didn’t trust him, she thought edgily. She didn’t trust him and she didn’t like him—or, at least, she didn’t like what he represented, and that was close enough. He hadn’t spoken at all during the drive to this run-down motel, but she’d had the unsettling conviction that he’d been watching every move she’d made, hoping her attention would flag for just one second.
“Try telling me why you’re doing this.” He shrugged. “You seem to think no one would believe you, but you haven’t given me a chance to hear you out. In fact, you haven’t even told me your name.”
Feeling obscurely relieved that he’d evidently misheard her murmured words to the sleeping nine-year-old, Tess narrowed her gaze on him. “Going for the psychological approach, Agent? Trying to make me think we could be buddies? Don’t waste your breath. Your little ploy’s not going to lull me into uncuffing you and handing you back your gun.”
She shook her head. “Besides, you know darn well who I am. Even if you don’t think too highly of my work, you’ve obviously read an example of it, since you knew about the Bigfoot story.”
Dark eyebrows drew together in a frown. “You’re some kind of writer? Sorry, lady, I’m afraid I’ve never—”
“Oh, please,” she snapped. “If I believed everyone who told me they never buy the Eye-Opener, I’d figure we have a circulation of about twelve readers in the whole country. The most you’ll admit is that you might have glanced at it in a checkout line at the grocery store, right?”
“The Eye-Opener?”
He didn’t seem to realize he was matching his actions to his flatly phrased comment. The rest of the man was hard angles of bone and solid slabs of muscle, Tess noted incongruously, but his eyes were—
His eyes were beautiful, she thought a heartbeat later. They were a crystalline gray in the tan of his face, fringed with dark, spiky lashes any female would kill for.
She watched as they closed briefly, the lashes dipping to fan against hard ridges of cheekbone. When they opened again she was sure she saw wry humor light them just for a moment.
“You’re a tabloid reporter.” She hadn’t been wrong about the humor. A corner of his mouth quirked upward before it firmed into a straight line once again. “So there wasn’t any alien autopsy in Hangar 93?”
She glanced at a fast-asleep Joey before replying. “Hangar 61. But no, of course it wasn’t real.” She looked at him in confusion. “For heaven’s sake, do you think I’m some kind of—”
Belated comprehension flooded through her. “Dear God, you did, didn’t you? You thought I was a wacko, crazy enough to be working with whoever’s targeting Joey.”
She stared coldly at him. “Nice theory, Agent. Too bad it’s even less grounded in facts than the stories the National Eye-Opener runs every week.”
“Connor.” His tone was as clipped as hers. “And I don’t want to make you think we could be buddies, I’m just tired of being called Agent. Is Tess your real name or is that something else you’ve let Joey believe?”
“Tess is my real name.” When she was annoyed, her voice was raspier than normal, she knew. “Tess Smith. Connor what?”
“Connor’s my last name.” He grimaced. “These cuffs are cutting off my circulation. How a
bout loosening them?”
“Let me suggest an Eye-Opener headline for that one,” she retorted. “FBI Discovers Woman Dumber Than Dirt—She Believed Me When I Said I Wouldn’t Try To Escape, Agent Says. The cuffs stay. What’s your first name?”
He looked away. “Virgil,” he muttered. “But I go by Connor.”
His comment a moment ago had stung. She arched an eyebrow. “You think I deliberately lied to Joey, don’t you, Virgil? You think I encouraged his hero-worship for my own ends. Is that how you figure it, Virge?”
The eyes she’d thought so beautiful took on a hard glitter. Restlessly Connor—no, Virgil, she told herself defiantly—shifted position on the hard wooden chair.
“I still figure you that way, lady. What your day job is doesn’t really change anything.” He exhaled, his gaze on hers.
“Did Rick Leroy tell you why Joey Begand was being held in an Agency safe house?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “It was because he witnessed a murder in an Albuquerque alleyway—the murder of a retired FBI agent, Dean Quayle. Quayle’s killer, a homeless man by the name of John MacLeish, was wounded during the encounter, but not badly enough to prevent him from escaping later that night from the hospital where he’d been taken after the police had arrived on the scene. The police found Joey hiding in a Dumpster, his memory of exactly what happened temporarily erased. The doctors say Joey’s amnesia won’t last.”
His tone hardened. “I don’t care what your relationship with Leroy is, except for the fact that you have to be working with him, since he handed Joey over to you. What I do want to know is, what was Leroy’s deal with Quayle’s killer, MacLeish?”
He’d already judged her and found her guilty, Tess thought. She’d gone into this realizing that no explanation she could give would be believed by the authorities. That was why she hadn’t bothered to present her side of the story to him during the drive here, and why even now she suspected it was going to be futile to try to make Agent Virgil Connor, a man who obviously lived and breathed his job, understand.
But for a split second she’d thought she’d glimpsed a very different man from the single-minded enforcer of the law he appeared to be. Wasn’t it possible that those crystal-gray eyes might see she’d had no other choice but to keep faith with Joey Begand, even if keeping faith meant breaking the law?
It was worth a try. Even before Connor had found them she’d had serious doubts that she could pull this off all by herself.
“Maybe it’s time we got a few things straight.” She paused, wondering how best to present her story. “First, I don’t know what the connection is between Leroy and MacLeish, for the simple reason that I’m not working with Leroy. I’ve never even met the man, so—”
“For God’s sake, woman, save yourself!” Abruptly the big man stood, the chair he’d been sitting on sliding backward across the linoleum floor. He started to take a step toward her, only to be jerked to a halt by the cuff on his left wrist. “I don’t want to fire the shot that takes you down or stand by and watch another agent have to kill you. But that’s the way it’s going to happen if you don’t call a stop to this.”
Unsteadily Tess got to her feet, the fear she’d been trying to suppress for the past two days spilling over. “I’m telling you the truth, dammit! I’m not working with a killer and I’m not working with a dirty agent. My only loyalty is to a little boy who came to me believing I could keep him safe. That’s why I can’t bring myself to tell Joey the stories I write are all lies—because he needs them to be true. I’m his only hope, and I don’t intend to let him down.”
“He came to you?” There was hostile disbelief in his tone. “There’s no way Joey could have escaped from Leroy after he’d snatched him from that safe house. Try again.”
“Leroy didn’t get the chance to snatch him,” she snapped. “Joey knew the Agency wouldn’t be able to protect him, and the day he arrived at the safe house he started planning how he was going to escape when the time came. He got out through an air duct.”
She took a deep breath. “Ask him yourself when he wakes up. It’s a more hair-raising story than any of my so-called exploits, believe me. Apparently he climbed onto a wardrobe and slid aside a duct panel he’d loosened days before. He hoisted himself up, replaced the panel, and when he found himself over a nearby vacant apartment he simply dropped down again, courtesy of a knotted length of bedsheet he had ready in his knapsack. Then he took the service stairs to a back exit and trekked across town on foot to my place.”
“Supposing I believe any of that, why did he come to you?” His gaze was unreadable. “Did he know you?”
“He knew of me.” She smiled crookedly. “He knew I kicked ugly monster butt, as he put it. Apparently before his mom died last year she was an Eye-Opener fan, and Joey told me I was her favorite writer on the paper. I’m sure she wasn’t gullible enough to swallow the Hangar 61 and Bigfoot stories, but her son did. He figured since he had a monster to slay, he needed a monster slayer. So he looked me up in the phone book and showed up on my doorstep.”
“A monster to slay?” He frowned. “Forget that for the moment. Maybe I can understand why a nine-year-old boy might think a tabloid reporter could protect him better than the FBI, but how the hell did you convince yourself that going on the run with him was a good idea? And where did you intend to take him, anyway?”
“To the Dinetah, of course. I didn’t want to go there directly, in case we were being followed.” At his blank look, she elaborated. “The Navajo Nation. Joey’s mother always made sure he knew his heritage through her was Dineh, as we Navajo call ourselves.” She saw his assessing glance at her. “That’s right. I’m Dineh, too, Agent.”
“Your background isn’t what concerns me.” With his free hand the big man rubbed his jaw. “But there was nothing in Joey’s file to indicate he had any tribe affiliation. If the state authorities had known, when his mother died he would have been put into a facility where his culture would have been emphasized while he was waiting for adoption or fostering.”
“I’m not surprised he didn’t tell them. He’s a pretty close-mouthed little guy until he gives his trust.”
“And you say he gave his trust to you,” Connor said shortly. “I’d like to believe you. Hell, I halfway do, at that. But even if Joey thinks he’s safe with you, you know that protecting him is our job, not yours. He isn’t being chased by a monster, he’s being hunted by a killer, probably two, if MacLeish and Leroy are working together.”
He still didn’t get it, Tess told herself wearily. He never would, and she’d been a fool to hope otherwise. Virgil Connor was defined by his badge and his gun. He played by the rules. He didn’t think outside the box, and he’d probably get to be area director with those qualities.
Worst of all, he didn’t believe in monsters. And that meant he was no protection at all for Joey Begand.
She pushed a stray strand of hair back from her forehead. She intended to be on the road again before sunup, and she desperately needed some sleep before the several hours of driving still ahead of her.
Agent Connor was going to get some shut-eye, too, she thought, which was why she’d had no qualms about informing him about her plans. By the time he awoke tomorrow and found himself alone here, Joey would be on Navajo Nation land where the FBI would need warrants and special permission from tribal leaders to retrieve him—permission she was almost certain wouldn’t be forthcoming.
Letting his witness and the woman who’d abducted him slip through his fingers wasn’t going to look good on his file, but a blot on Agent Connor’s copybook wasn’t her biggest worry. Setting the gun down on the dresser beside her, she retrieved her purse from the foot of the bed.
“If your main concerns are MacLeish and Leroy, I’m surprised you aren’t out hunting them,” she said evenly. “But there’s no point in discussing our differing viewpoints, Agent Connor. Whether either one of us likes it or not, we’re sharing a motel room for the next few hours, so let’s—”
“Connor.” His interjection was brusque. “Just Connor. Drop the agent part, lady, since the fact that I’m FBI doesn’t seem to mean too much to you. I’m the man you’re holding at gunpoint. You’re the woman I let pull a fast one on me. Yeah, we’re in a motel room, but not for any of the usual reasons a man and woman usually come to a place like this.”
Tess felt faint heat touch her cheeks. He was trying to get her off balance, she thought in chagrin. He was succeeding, and although she didn’t really understand why his dismissive reference to a sexual tryst should make her color up like an embarrassed schoolgirl, if he got the impression his captor wasn’t as tough as she was pretending to be, he might begin to wonder if she’d really use the gun she’d been holding on him.
She’d been wondering that, too.
“You sound disappointed.” She allowed a thin smile to curve her lips. “That we’re not here for the usual reasons, I mean. I should have guessed a man who dresses the way you do would have a social agenda that revolved around cheap motel rooms.”
His answering smile was just as controlled as hers. “And I should have guessed that a woman who dreams up stories about Bigfoot wouldn’t have any trouble fantasizing about my sex life. Good thing we’ll never actually do the dirty together for real, honey. I doubt I’d be able to measure up to what you’ve probably been imagining about me.”
Outrage flickered swiftly through her. “Believe me, my imagination wasn’t coming up with anything very exciting,” she retorted. “In fact, I was probably giving you too much credit. I seriously doubt you have a social life at all.”
She tipped her head to one side. “Let’s see how close I get, okay? The job’s your life. You live in a one-bedroom apartment, and you’ve never bothered buying more than a bed and maybe a couch. You don’t have any pictures up on the wall, and those walls are whatever color the previous tenant left them. Am I warm?”