by Harper Allen
“Of course I lied to you,” she said, sharply enough so that he turned back to face her, Joey still in front of him. “I was afraid you’d change your mind if I told you he wasn’t at the ranch when you called. But I left a note telling him where I’d gone and what you wanted. All you have to do is wait for him to show up and then we can make the handover.”
For a moment she thought she’d convinced him. Then he shook his head. “Smells like a trap. Maybe it isn’t, but I can’t risk it. You had your chance, bitch. You blew it.”
“Nobody talks to my aunt like that!” Joey twisted angrily in Jansen’s grasp and aimed a sneaker-clad foot at his knee. “Nobody, do you hear, you big…you big turkey!”
“Joey, don’t!” Tess raced forward as Jansen’s open palm connected with the boy’s ear. Joey slipped sideways on the uneven gravel, and fell to the ground, obviously dazed.
It was the best chance they were going to have, she thought urgently. As Jansen made a quickly impatient gesture with his gun hand to keep her back, she raised her voice in a scream.
“Skinwalker!”
“You don’t have to shout, I’m right behind you. Hi, Arne. Kid got you a good one, didn’t he?”
Tess whirled around. Paula grinned at her.
“Yeah, you had it right the first time. Or was me being the villain your second theory? Arne, where do you want to do this?”
“You’re working with him? You were on his side all along?” Nausea rose in Tess’s throat. She forced it back along with her questions, a higher priority her first concern. “My nephew’s hurt. Can I go to him?”
“Why not?” Paula shrugged as Tess sped to where Joey was lying. As she dropped to her knees beside him, the female agent continued talking, but not to her. “As you can see, Arne, Virgil isn’t here.”
“Obviously.” His tone was peevish. “How’d you screw that one up? Is he really on his way like she said?”
Joey’s eyes were still closed. Feeling carefully beneath his head, Tess’s fingers closed around the small rock that he’d landed on when he’d fallen. Quickly she felt his pulse.
It was a little weaker than it should have been, but still steady enough, she thought with relief. But any loss of consciousness was serious enough to require immediate medical attention. She raised her head as Paula answered the area director’s question.
“Sure, Connor’s coming. I need him here, Arne. Say, did that tough little Dineh rip your pant leg when he kicked you?”
“I don’t think—”
The flat crack of Paula’s pistol ripped explosively through the silence of the night. Arne Jansen crumpled bonelessly to the ground. Bending down to pick up the gun that had fallen with him, Paula met Tess’s shocked and bewildered gaze.
“No more glass ceiling,” she said with a smile. The smile broadened. “Oh, God—you thought I was on your side for a second there, didn’t you? You thought I killed the bad guy so we could all go home to the ranch, right?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore.” Tess shook her head. “Paula, you saved this little boy’s life today. I don’t know how badly he hurt his head when he fell, but he needs medical attention. I can’t believe you’d stand in the way of him getting it.”
“This afternoon I needed Joey alive to testify that he’d seen Jansen in that alleyway. I was going to arrange a meeting with Arne all by myself and kill him with no witnesses around. Then I was going to play the big heroine who took down a murderous area director at great risk to her own life, and the organized-crime task force position would have been offered to me on a platter. Jack Vincenzi wouldn’t have cared that his partner’s second-in-command had just taken over the reins, as long as I was just as willing to be paid off for turning a blind eye as Arne always was.”
Paula tipped her head to one side. “I don’t see why it still can’t work that way, even though the body count’s going to be a little higher.”
“You’re going to kill me and Joey with his gun, aren’t you?” Controlling the tremor in her voice with difficulty, Tess got to her feet. “It’s going to look as though your shot took him down just a second too late to prevent his final two murders.”
“And this time I don’t have to shoot myself in the head to make it look good.” Paula grimaced. “My aim was a little off that night, but hell, was I rushed. Hit the lights, shoot Rick, grab Rick’s gun, shoot Danzig. Then I had to haul Rick down to the parking garage in the freight elevator, dump him into the trunk of my car, and heave him into the cement I’d seen poured earlier in the day. Good thing I’m not a shortie-pants like you or it would have been beyond me.”
“So you never intended to kill Joey that night?” Tess shook her head. “But of course you didn’t. You wanted him to testify against Jansen in the future, when you made your play for the task-force position.”
“Plus I knew very well that Joey had been climbing around in the air ducts and would be able to escape. He’s a toughie, like I keep telling you. I’m not happy about having to kill the two of you, Tess, believe me. I’m not a monster.”
“Yes, you are.” Tess held Geddes’s gaze. “I’ve seen monsters, so I know what they look like. Most of them look ordinary, like you and Jansen. Some of them look terrifying, like Skinwalker.”
She took a shallow breath. “What made you change your mind about letting Joey live, Paula? Or should I say, who made you change your mind? Did you meet him on your walk tonight, just before you and I talked in the kitchen? It had to have been sometime after you saved us from the rattler, because he was the one who shut us in there, wasn’t he?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” For the first time the female agent’s features showed a flash of disconcertion. “Like I said, when I thought Joey could finger Jansen as being with Quayle in the alleyway I wanted him alive, but when I realized he was keeping to his stupid monster story I figured I’d use him as bait instead, to bring Arne here tonight. I told Joey I thought I’d seen Chorrie just past the gate and I knew he’d sneak out of his bed and go looking for him there. Jansen was waiting for him, just like I told him—”
“Tess, get down!”
Tess whirled around in shock at the familiar voice coming from beyond the four-by-four—the voice she’d come to know like no other, the voice that belonged to the man she loved. A split second later she attempted to comply with Connor’s shouted warning, but it was already too late. Acting instantly Paula yanked her in front of her as a shield. Tess saw Connor’s raised gun arm, saw him check the movement of his finger on the trigger, saw his body spin sideways as Paula, Arne Jansen’s gun in her hand, fired.
Connor slumped against the side of the four-by-four. Slowly he slid down the body of the vehicle to the ground.
“Connor!” Tess struggled in Paula’s grasp, her frozen gaze fixed on the body of the man by the truck. “Let me go, damn you! Let me go to him!”
A terrible grief seared through her, and she turned tear-blinded eyes to the woman holding her. “I loved him. You’ve killed him!”
“Of course I did. I told you I was going to. Did you think at the last moment you would whip out your monster-slaying gear and stop me?” Paula’s expression was baffled. “This is crazy. I think our little conversation is over.”
Roughly she shoved Tess aside and strode over to Joey’s unconscious body. She started to raise the gun in her hand.
“No!” The scream ripped from Tess’s throat, but even as it left her mouth she heard it overlaid with another, more explosive sound.
As if some giant hand had smashed into her, Paula’s body flew backward and landed on the rocks near Joey. In disbelief Tess saw the dark hole in her forehead, just above her wide and lifeless gaze.
“Did…did I get her?”
Connor was raised up on one elbow, his gun still in his hand, but even as she ran to him and knelt beside him, he collapsed to the ground.
“You got her, Connor. She…she’s dead. Where did her shot get you?”
“My side,” he g
asped. “Is Joey all right?”
“He’s unconscious. I have to get both of you to a doctor. Can…can you stand?”
“I needed to tell you something.” His voice was thick and slurred. “Very…very important.”
“Tell me when we get to the clinic in Last Chance,” Tess said worriedly. She slung his arm around her shoulder and tried to get him upright. “Right now I have to get you into the truck, Connor.”
“I…I see us.” With what appeared to be great effort, Connor opened his eyes and held her gaze. “You asked me what I saw earlier. I gave you the wrong answer. I see us, Tess. I see us married and living at the Double B with Joey. I see us making children of our own in time. Do…do you see that?”
His eyes closed. At the side of his throat Tess saw a heavy pulse, still beating, but frighteningly slow.
He’d said he loved her. He’d seen the same future she’d wanted—the two of them, together with Joey, creating new life.
She had no intention of letting that future slip away.
Joey first, since he was lightest, she thought as she ran to him. She would put him in the four-by-four’s back seat, and then somehow get Connor into the front. Then she would drive hell-for-leather to Last—
“You saw me that night, didn’t you, Dineh?”
Every hair lifted on the back of Tess’s neck. Slowly she rose from Joey’s body and stared at the shadowy apparition blocking her way to the four-by-four and Connor.
His voice sounded like stones grating together. She could make out the gleam of a yellow eye, but the rest of him was a block of darkness, as if everything evil in the night had flown together to form him.
“I…I saw you, Skinwalker.”
All her life she’d known this moment was coming, she thought light-headedly. Now that the monster was finally before her she knew what she had to do.
This time she had to go up against it and win.
She tried to swallow. “Stand aside and let me be about my business here,” she said unsteadily.
“Your business became my business some time ago.” The grating voice sounded amused. “The old lady knows that. I don’t know how she knows, but she does. The boy dies. The man dies. And you die. It’s all part of a bigger picture.”
“Then I’m looking at my death.” Tess heard the fear in her voice, and tried to control it. “You called me Dineh, so you know I need to prepare myself and the boy.”
As she spoke she raised trembling fingers to her neck, touching the leather thong around it. The figure nodded.
“I respect honor and tradition. Use the pollen.”
“Beauty before me, I walk. Beauty behind me, I walk.”
It wasn’t going to work, Tess thought desperately as she intoned the words. He would guess her intentions, would easily thwart them, and after he’d dealt with her he would turn on the two people she loved—the child she’d sworn to protect and the man she’d given her heart to. Who was she to go up against monsters, anyway? What had made her think she had the weapons and the will to take a stand against real evil?
Who are you? The voice in her head sounded incredulous. You’re Dineh. You’re the daughter of Dineh, the sister of a courageous Dineh woman, and the aunt of a tough little Dineh boy. And if those alone aren’t strength enough, you’re a woman in love with a man who was willing to risk his life for you.
The voice in her head was right, Tess thought slowly as she pulled the thong from around her neck. Her love for Connor had freed her from the pain of the past. His love for her was a shield nothing could destroy. And her heritage had put the weapon she needed right into her hand.
The leather bag came free of her T-shirt. Her voice no longer unsteady, she took up the final few lines of the familiar and comforting chant.
“Beauty above me, I walk. Beauty below me, I walk.”
She loosened the neck of the bag. Grasping it with one hand, she spilled a little of the golden pollen into her other palm, and let it drift down onto Joey at her feet.
“Your magic isn’t strong enough to put off the inevitable, Dineh.” Skinwalker’s voice held a note of impatience. “Enough, now. Tell yourself it’s a good day to die, and face me.”
“Beauty all around me, I walk…” Tess finished softly. Her hand folded over the thin leather bag. Through the thin leather she felt the tiny but deadly purse-gun she’d drawn on Connor at the diner the first time they’d met…the gun she had slipped into the medicine bag before leaving the Double B tonight. She turned to the figure beside the vehicle.
“It’s a good day to die, Skinwalker,” she said clearly, raising the medicine bag and aiming the tiny derringer through the leather directly at him. “Your day, you monster.”
Even as the determined words left her lips, she squeezed off the shot.
“No!”
The single word slashed through the darkness like a knife as the figure in front of her staggered sideways, a hand to its chest. Around him the night seemed to grow denser, become blacker.
The blackness melted as the road above the gully suddenly became filled with lights and shouting.
“Tess! Connor!”
It was Del’s voice, but Jess was the first down the embankment, Daniel Bird and a big man whom Tess didn’t recognize close on Jess’s heels.
“We heard shots—”
Jess broke off as his shocked gaze took in the scene—Paula’s body lying close to that of Jansen’s, an unconscious Connor by the four-by-four, Joey nearby.
“I’ll tell Del to phone the clinic in Last Chance on his cell phone, get Doc Jennings to ready his emergency unit for a couple of patients,” Daniel said, immediately turning back the way he’d come. “Mac, help me get the stretcher from the truck.”
“Three patients,” Tess said, feeling a shakiness start somewhere deep inside her. “I don’t think my shot killed—”
The words died in her throat as she glanced toward the spot where only a moment ago the enemy she’d fired at had been standing. Now there was no one and nothing there.
“Skinwalker wasn’t killed,” Joey said faintly, raising his head and gazing at her with dazed eyes. “I saw him run into the shadows, Tess. You kicked his butt good, didn’t you? I knew you would.”
Tears spilled unheeded down her face as she fell to her knees and gathered him to her. “Don’t talk, champ,” she said, her words tumbling over one another. “Just take it easy. We’re going to get you to a doctor to make sure you’re okay.”
“Skinwalker?” Joey didn’t seem to hear Jess’s worried mutter, but it reached Tess’s ears. “It’s not a good sign if the little guy’s hallucinating. How hard did he hit his head—”
“Your trouble is you need proof of something before you’ll believe it, Crawford. Problem is, sometimes the proof is all around you, and you won’t let yourself see it. I’m just glad I finally figured that one out.”
Connor’s voice was a thread, but the gaze he directed on Tess as she flew to him was steady and unclouded. “You took on the monster and won, didn’t you, sweetheart?” he said softly. “You think for your next assignment you might want to take on a stubborn former FBI agent who’s decided to turn rancher?”
Crystal-gray eyes full of love gleamed up at Tess. She felt joyous tears streaming from her own.
“Do you know what the Dineh word aoo means, Connor?” She didn’t give him the chance to answer, but instead brought her lips to his.
“It means yes,” she whispered.
Epilogue
“FBI Agent Turns Down Promotion, Weds Alien-Hunter and Moves to Ranch.” The woman in front of Tess and Joey and Connor in the grocery checkout line extracted the tabloid from the magazine rack beside her and sniffed. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes. Who believes these things?”
“I do,” Tess whispered to Connor. “Ever since you whisked me and Joey off to Vegas a couple of weeks ago and we got married by that minister turned Elvis impersonator, that is. How ’bout you?”
“I think I started believing it wh
en I was being held at gunpoint in a cheap motel by a crazy lady,” he said, pulling her to him and dropping a quick kiss on the tip of her nose.
“And I believed it when Del said that if we’re going to be living at the Double B from now on, I should have my own horse,” Joey grinned. “Tess, I’m going to run out to the car and make sure Chorrie’s not too hot. I know we left the windows rolled down, but he might need a drink.”
“Okay.” Tess smiled up at Connor as the nine-year-old tore out of the grocery store. “You know, I bet I can guess what the Eye-Opener’s headline’s going to be next week. If the guys on the paper decide to play another trick on me and use my life for inspiration again, of course.”
“What’s that?” Connor ruffled her hair.
She lifted herself on her tiptoe and whispered something in his ear. She stood back and waited for his response.
“You mean we’re…you’re really—” Slow joy spread across his features. “That’s unbelievable!”
“That’s what I say, too,” said the woman ahead of them with a sniff, as she added the tabloid to her groceries.
But Virgil Connor’s brand-new wife, Tess, didn’t hear the sniffed comment.
She was too busy being kissed by her unborn baby’s father.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3755-1
DESPERADO LAWMAN
Copyright © 2004 by Sandra Hill
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.