“Nice recovery, Hamilton.”
White teeth gleaming in a muddy face, he panted out a reply. “I wasn’t sure…I was going to beat the odds…this time, Delachek. That’s quite an elbow you’ve got on you.”
She was still grinning when one of the marshals waded into the swamp and slapped a pair of handcuffs on Herndon. She turned to the other marshal, a question burning in her heart.
“What about the rest of the passengers aboard Flight 407?”
“As far as we know, they all made it. Now that we’ve got Hamilton and Herndon, we’ve accounted for everyone on the manifest, along with a female passenger and another marshal not on the list.”
Kelly Jackson and Spence Cantrell.
Suzanne let out a long sigh of relief. Her relief evaporated in the next instant, however. To her dismay, the marshal she’d questioned waited only until Ryder had gained dry land to pull out another pair of cuffs.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
The steel bracelets snapped into place. “He’s a prisoner in transport, ma’am. Federal regulations require—”
“To hell with federal regulations! This man helped save your aircraft and everyone aboard. He also pulled me out from under a crumpled instrument panel.”
“I’m sure that will be taken into account when he comes up for parole. But for now—”
“For now,” she interrupted fiercely, advancing on the man with fists balled, “you’d better take off those handcuffs.”
“Sorry, ma’am. I can’t do that.”
Ryder smiled wryly. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m used to them.”
At the casual endearment, the two marshals exchanged glances, then carefully wiped all expression from their faces. When they turned neutral looks on Suzanne, heat crawled into her cheeks.
She could guess what they were thinking. She’d heard all the stories about women who became pen pals with convicts and got sucked into relationships. How some even married men they’d never met outside of a prison visitors’ center. The sickening realization that she was no better than any of those desperate groupies curled in her stomach for a moment.
Only a moment.
All she had to do was shift her glance to Ryder to shatter the stereotypes. He wasn’t just a nameless, faceless number in a prison computer. She wasn’t a bubble-headed female so hungry for love she’d enter into a relationship with anyone who stroked her ego and her heartstrings.
Ryder Hamilton had shown more courage in the face of extreme danger than anyone she’d ever met. He also held to a personal code of honor that allowed for mistakes, but not for criminal activity.
Her back stiffened. Icy determination flowed through her veins. Ryder must have recognized the signs. Before she could let loose with both barrels, he stepped forward a few paces and spoke quietly, without rancor.
“Let it go, Suzanne. We both knew this was going to happen.”
Last night she knew it would happen. Even earlier this morning. Now, she was damned if she’d let the system swallow him again.
“Listen to me, Hamilton. Everyone aboard Flight 407 owes you. I owe you. You’re not the only one who always pays their debts.”
“Suzanne…”
“You’re not going back to Whiskey Springs in handcuffs,” she said fiercely. “In fact, you’re not going back at all until we make a little detour.”
“Detour?” His black brows snapped together. “Where?”
The scheme had popped into her head only a second or two ago. Her mind raced, spinning out the details. It might work. It had to work!
“South Miami.”
Stunned, he stared down at her. Hope flared in his eyes, only to die as swiftly as it was born.
“You’re crazy.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” she shot back, grinning. Spinning on her heel, she stalked over to the nearest marshal.
“Is that radio clipped to your waist tuned into the search and rescue net?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Get on it. I want to talk to FBI Agent Mason Taggart. Now!”
Three hours later, Suzanne gulped down hot coffee on the deck of a coast guard cutter and waited impatiently for Taggart to transfer from the launch bringing him across the swamp.
A fresh white bandage covered the cut on her neck. She’d changed out of her soggy flight suit into a pair of jeans and a soft cotton “swabbie” shirt borrowed from one of the female coast guard officers, but Taggart still wore the same rumpled brown suit. Stubble shaded his cheeks, and his thinning brown hair badly needed a comb. Yet Suzanne could have kissed him when he climbed onto the cutter’s deck and greeted her with a nod.
That was all she needed. A single nod. Whooping, she tossed the coffee over the side, flew across the deck, and hugged him for all he was worth.
Red singeing his cheeks, he grinned at her. “I had to call in every favor owed me and then some to get Washington to agree to this.”
“They’re going to get the bugs in place today?”
“One of the FBI’s technical squads is on their way to the pawnshop at this very minute.”
“Hot damn!”
Pulling a crumpled paper bag out of his pocket, he offered its contents. Suzanne shook her head. She hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours, but macadamia nuts were the last thing on her mind right now.
“It helped considerably that the locals have been watching that particular operation for some months now,” Taggart told her between crunches. “They’re pretty sure this Sharon Smith and her friend have been fencing stolen goods. That was the only explanation the locals could come up with for the matching BMWs Smith and her friend drive and their twelve-room shack with an ocean view.”
Suzanne knew what had paid for those flashy cars and the ocean view. Ryder’s payroll and the hundreds of thousands of dollars Sharon Smith and her friend had raked in from the sale of phony oil leases.
She didn’t stop to question the fact that she believed Ryder implicitly now. He said he was innocent. He was innocent. Period. End of argument. Now it was just a matter of proving it.
“Marshal Cantrell wants in on this sting, too,” Taggart informed her. “He was transported to a hospital in Fort Myers last night, but he’s checked himself out and will rendezvous with us in South Miami.”
“All right. Let’s get those blasted cuffs off Ryder and go to work.”
Taggart stilled her with a hand on her arm. “Cantrell’s put his career on the line by convincing his superiors to let Hamilton walk into that pawnshop alone. The place is a near arsenal, with enough guns on display to outfit a small army. Hamilton could walk right out the back door armed to the teeth.”
“He won’t.”
“Or he could put a bullet through this woman he claims set him up.”
Remembering the way Ryder’s eyes had gone so hard and flat when he talked about collecting on the debt his ex-fiancée owed him, Suzanne swallowed.
“He won’t shoot anyone.”
“You got that in writing, Miz Delachek?”
“I don’t need it in writing. He won’t hurt her. If this plan works, he won’t need to. All he has to do is scare the truth out of her by showing up without warning. Your tech squad gets it on tape, the tape goes to the judge, and Ryder goes free.”
“It’s not that easy. If she confesses—and that’s a big if—he’ll have to file a motion to reverse his conviction. A federal judge will have to…”
Suzanne swept the minor details aside with an impatient hand. “We’ll work all that out later. Let’s go get those cuffs off him.”
To everyone’s complete astonishment, Ryder’s included, he pulled it off.
Wearing borrowed jeans and a white shirt, he strolled into Doc’s Pawnshop two hours later. The pouty redhead filing her nails behind the counter took one look at him and went pasty white.
“Ryder! Wh…? What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, Shar.”
“I thought…” She sidled toward the regi
ster, her shaking hand groping along the counter’s edge. “I thought you still had another six months to serve before you came up for parole?”
“I got time off for good behavior. You don’t need to hit any silent alarms,” he told her as her fingers curved under the counter. “I’m not planning to wring your neck. Not that I didn’t think about it,” he added with a sardonic smile. “More times than you want to know.”
“Then—” she wet her lips “—what do you want with me?”
“I had a lot of time to hash things out in the past couple years, Shar. We were good together, before Pauly got between us. You were the only woman I ever…”
He couldn’t force out the word “loved.” He knew now that whatever he’d felt for Sharon all those months ago didn’t come anywhere close to love. Suzanne had taught him the difference in one night.
“You were the only woman I ever asked to marry me,” he finished.
Incredibly, she seemed to take his hesitation for emotion and looked at him with considerably less apprehension. He forced himself to bait the trap with a shrug and a smile.
“We were good together, weren’t we?”
Thinking back, he could barely keep from shaking his head at his own stupidity. Why hadn’t he seen past the black spandex, the 36D cup, and the dark roots under that mahogany hair? Suzanne was everything this woman wasn’t. Honest. Courageous. Sharp and clean as a winter morning.
Still wary but thawing fast, Sharon kept the counter between them. “Look, none of that business in Midland was my idea. Pauly thought the whole thing up.”
“Yeah, right.”
“He did! After I told him about meeting you at the Rusty Derrick, he started asking around. Found out how much you were worth. He was the one who thought I should get a job as your secretary.”
“And I suppose you didn’t know anything about the forged signatures on those lease agreements?”
“All right, I signed your name,” she admitted, “but I was going to find you when you got out and share my cut of the money with you. I swear!”
“What about Pauly?”
She abandoned the counter and moved toward him, emboldened by the possibilities she read in his face.
“He doesn’t treat me like you did. I…I missed you, Ryder.” Sliding her palms over his pecs, she lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “Like you said, we were good together. We could be again.”
“I don’t think so.”
Turning on his heel, he walked out the door.
Spence Cantrell climbed out of the nondescript van parked two doors down and greeted Ryder with a grin. “We got it, Hamilton. I’m having a copy of the tape made for you as a personal keepsake.”
Two FBI agents hustled out of the van as well and made a beeline for the pawnshop. Mason Taggart swung open the front door and descended more slowly.
Ryder ignored them all, his eyes locked on the silvery blonde who joined the small crowd on the pavement. He reached her in three long strides. There were a hundred things he wanted to tell her. Only one he could say with law enforcement officers flanking her on either side.
“Thanks, Delachek. I owe you. Again.”
Laughter, excitement, and an emotion Ryder wouldn’t let himself believe danced in her blue eyes. “Saving each other’s butt is getting to be a habit with us, Hamilton.”
“You’ve noticed that, have you?”
“So how are you going to repay me for this one?” she wanted to know.
He clenched his fists at his sides to keep from hauling her into his arms. “I’ll come up with something appropriate. I expect I’ll have some time to think about it until that tape gets before a judge.”
“Maybe not as long as you think,” Cantrell put in. “Four weeks, maybe six weeks max. Don’t forget that uncle I told you about. I’ve already called him.”
Ryder refused to release the reins of the wild emotions galloping through his chest. Yesterday, six months had seemed like a lifetime. Today, six weeks stretched even longer. If he thought Suzanne might be waiting for him at the end of those six weeks, however, he’d do them standing on his head.
He couldn’t ask her to wait. The words wouldn’t come. Not in front of Taggart and Cantrell. Not until he could say them right, with a reversal of his conviction tucked in his pocket and no shadows hanging over him.
He might have known cool, confident, always-in-charge Suzanne would take command.
“Well,” she demanded impatiently. “Are you going to kiss me or not?”
Something warm and wonderful knifed into Ryder’s heart.
“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled. “I surely am.”
Epilogue
A small welcoming committee awaited the sleek Gulfstream jet when it swooped in for a landing at Whiskey Springs just past ten o’clock that night.
Christine Logan stood beside Quinn Buchanan in the star-kissed April darkness. Most of the debris left by the tornado that had almost destroyed her airport had been cleared, although plywood still covered the shattered windows of the passenger terminal.
Christine couldn’t help a little thrill of pride as she swept the lighted runway with a proprietary eye. The portable tower was fully functional. Commercial traffic had resumed regular schedules. Streams of approach lights shone a steady blue and white path for the small jet returning the last of Flight 407’s passengers to its point of origin.
“You brought them home.”
She glanced up to see Quinn’s eyes on her face. More than anyone else, he knew what she’d gone through to get Sam Houston International Airport back up and running. Even more, how close Flight 407 had come to taking her life.
She slipped her hand in his. “We brought them home.”
The smile he gave her melted her knees. “We make a hell of a team, Slim. Too bad it took us so long to figure that out.”
“We know it now. That’s all that matters.”
“Here they are!”
Kelly Jackson’s eager voice floated on the soft night. She’d refused all treatment and counseling at the hastily organized trauma center and insisted on being at the airport tonight. She, like Christine and Quinn, wanted to be on hand when the last of Flight 407’s passengers and crew returned to Whiskey Springs.
Her slender body quivering in anticipation, Kelly pressed her fingertips to her ears to shut out the Gulf-stream’s whine as it turned onto the taxiway and headed for its designated parking space. The ground crew had no sooner set the chocks than the small jet’s side door raised and a set of steps folded down.
Kelly’s heart thumped painfully when a tall, broad-shouldered marshal ducked his head through the door and edged sideways down the stairs, using his unbandaged arm to steady himself.
Had these past days been a dream? Or had she really found a man like Spence Cantrell, as gentle as he was tough? As loving as he was good?
When he started across the tarmac, his smile for her alone, Kelly had her answers. The ordeal of the hijacking, the horror of the crash, all faded away. Only Spence remained, filling her heart with hope and the first stirrings of something so deep and sure she ached with it. He took her hand, not saying a word until a clatter of boots on the stairs turned their heads toward the Gulfstream.
The gorgeous female pilot Kelly had glimpsed for only a moment or two after the extraordinary midair transfer climbed out, followed by Ryder Hamilton. He looked so different in jeans and a red knit shirt, with his face clean shaven…and no handcuffs.
For a moment, the six people whose lives had been bound so inextricably by the terror in the skies had no words to say to each other. The joy of being alive spoke for itself in the silly smiles that spread across their faces.
Then Ryder thrust a hand through his gleaming black hair and aimed a grin around the small circle.
“Helluva flight, wasn’t it?”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6825-2
SPECIAL REPORT
Copyright © 2000 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges th
e copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
MIDNIGHT SEDUCTION
Copyright © 2000 by Margaret Price
COVER ME!
Copyright © 2000 by Debra S. Cowan
FINAL APPROACH…TO FOREVER
Copyright © 2000 by Merline Lovelace
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*All convicts must wear shackles and leg irons.
*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
*Code Name: Danger
†Holiday Honeymoons
**Men of the Bar H
**Men of the Bar H
**Men of the Bar H
†Holiday Honeymoons
†Holiday Honeymoons
§Destiny’s Women
Special Report Page 21