Undercover Cowboy

by Beverly Bird

  At least now he understood what had happened.

  Something must have leaked, Jack thought, and Paul hadn’t been able to get word to him without blowing his limited cover. And Scorpion hadn’t blown out the generator to prevent them leaving on time. He had very nearly gotten snagged in Oklahoma City before Jack had come in, and he had done it so that no one at the Draw would hear the news before he was ready for them to hear it.

  Jack swore richly.

  “And that tells me exactly nothing,” Carly said harshly.

  “I didn’t blow out your generator. I’ve told you that already.”

  “Well, what you’ve told me so far hasn’t exactly been the sterling truth, now, has it?”

  “Yes, it has.” He hesitated. “I just haven’t told you everything.”

  “So start filling in the holes.”

  He didn’t answer. Carly felt tears of frustration burn at her eyes. No, she was not going to cry again. She was going to get answers. This time, she was finally going to get some honest answers.

  “Can I come down there without getting shot?” Jack asked carefully.

  Carly hesitated, understanding what he didn’t say aloud. If he talked from up there on the rise, then the bad guy—Brad, it had to be Brad—might overhear him.

  “All right,” she said finally.

  Jack came down to the creek. He stepped over the narrow trickle of water and stopped a judicious distance away from her. He sat and watched her from the corner of his eye.

  “So what happened?” he asked. “Your friend Rawley heard the news?”

  Carly shook her head hard and fast. “No way, Jack. I’m asking the questions this time, and I’ve got a whole lot at stake here. So start explaining everything you left out last night. It seems there’s a good bit more to this story.”

  For a wild minute, he couldn’t even remember what he had told her so far. His instincts were crazy now, knotted. Half of him knew he was taking an unforgivable risk leaving Scorpion back in the camp. What if he changed his mind about Carly and just took off now? The other half knew that what was happening here was just as important. Carly could screw everything up if she were so inclined. It was purely a professional consideration to work her through this, and he nearly convinced himself of that until he looked into her eyes.

  The accusation there was like a kick in the gut. He had used people before. Easily. Usually it was the only way to get things done. But he couldn’t handle this woman looking at him that way, as though he had just kicked an injured puppy.

  “Is Brad a criminal?” she asked very softly. Jack had said that it was a false alarm when the man had come to the parlor last night, but then Brad had asked her about the wagon this afternoon. Of course, she thought, that could just be a coincidence. What did she know about cops and robbers and feds and fugitives after all?

  She groaned softly. And she knew what Jack was going to say before he said it.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  She raised the gun and pulled the trigger. The shot went over their heads and behind them. The report was loud and jarring.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

  “I told you,” she grated. “I’m burned.”

  “Well, I’m not the one you should be burned at!”

  “I didn’t shoot you, either, did I? That was just a warning.”

  “Give me that thing.”

  Carly reared back, holding the gun out of his reach. “Not on your life, cowboy.”

  The others came running to the top of the rise. Winston tripped all over himself, and Jack thought suddenly that Reggie approached like a man he wouldn’t mind having back him up in a fight.

  Scorpion, however, led the pack. He was still with them, then. Jack was relieved,’ though not surprised. There was really little chance that the man could get to his money and get away right now, with everyone awake. He could start killing people off to do it, but that wasn’t his style, not unless he was panicked. He was usually neater, more coldly concise than that.

  Jack’s ears were ringing with the gunshot. Carly Castagne was easily the most unpredictable, complicated, crazy, impulsive woman he’d ever met.

  “What’s going on down there?” Gofer yelled.

  “Snake,” Carly called back calmly. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  Jack shot her a look. “Cute, cowgirl.”

  “Don’t push your luck. I’ve still got the gun.”

  “You’re sure?” came Plank’s voice.

  “Absolutely,” Carly called back.

  Jack remained quiet, waiting for his pulse to settle again and his ears to clear. The others went back to the camp.

  Scorpion went last, with a lingering, narrow-eyed look at them. Carly didn’t seem to notice.

  “That was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” Jack finally snapped.

  “You haven’t known me long enough to say that. Personally, I think it was pretty stupid of me to take your twelve hundred dollars.”

  Jack ignored that. “It’s a miracle he didn’t come down here shooting first, asking questions later. I’ve got him just nervous enough that he’s jumpy.”

  “Who?” Carly demanded. “Is it Brad? Don’t make me shoot again, Jack.”

  Jack was relatively sure that if she tried it, he could be compelled to kill her himself. “Just shut up and listen, will you? I’ll tell you as much as I can.”

  Carly didn’t like the sound of that, but she waited. Her bravado was turning out to be little more than skin deep after all.

  “I’m chasing a guy we call Scorpion.”

  “Scorpion,” she breathed.

  “Code name,” he explained absently, raking a hand through his hair.

  “Oh. Sure. Of course.” Dear God.

  In spite of everything, until that moment, she hadn’t fully accepted that this was all really happening. She hadn’t fully realized just how completely out of her control this ride was.

  The fugitive had a code name.

  She started shaking.

  “If I told you, if I came right out and told you which guest he was, then you would look at him differently,” Jack went on, whispering. “If he came up behind you and asked you for a cup of coffee, you’d come out of your skin.” She opened her mouth to argue and he cut her off. “You wouldn’t be able to help it, Carly. You’re human and you haven’t been playing this game for as many years as I have, and even I’d have a hard time staying put if he startled me.”

  Carly finally nodded, conceding the point.

  There was a tiny, clicking sound. Jack paused and frowned, listening to it. It was her teeth. They were chattering together.

  “You’ve as good as told me that I’m right,” she whispered. “It’s Brad.”

  “I haven’t said anything of the sort,” he said tightly. “I only said it was one of them.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  No, she definitely was not. “Can I come closer?”

  Carly nodded spasmodically. She finally put the gun down on the ground on her other side. Jack closed the distance between them and drew her slowly, cautiously into his arms.

  Her trembling rocked through him. He tucked her head against his shoulder, wondering if she would let him do it, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or appalled when she did—she was that scared.

  Finally, she was scared. Maybe now she’d have some sense and cooperate.

  “Come on, cowgirl, don’t fall apart on me now.”

  “I can’t…I’m not…”

  “Sure you are.” He didn’t know what she had been about to say, but he thought it would be a good idea to argue with her. She was perilously close to going into shock. He could feel it in her rigidity, in the ice of her skin.

  “Don’t think about it, Carly. For God’s sake, just put it out of your mind. Worry about your cattle. Let me sweat it out about Scorpion. That’s what I’m here for.”

  She trusted him, she realized. It was an instinct, something in her hea
rt, not in her head. Her head told her never ever to trust a man. They died, they ran, they were about as useful as a bucket full of holes. Her head told her that Jack Fain was even more transient and elusive than most, a man used to living with lies, a man who preferred it.

  He walked in shadows, and, she imagined, he’d broken quite a few laws of his own in the name of a larger justice. He had that feeling about him. He was an honest-to-God, modern-day desperado, who might wear a white hat but who still carried a gun at his calf. And she needed him to keep holding her right now. She needed it because no matter what her head told her, it was the only way her heart felt safe.

  And in the end, that scared her most of all.

  Chapter 11

  They sat in silence for a long time.

  “Sorry about the gun,” Carly muttered finally.

  Jack’s arm tightened briefly around her. “You’re just used to taking care of yourself.”

  “Yes. But I wouldn’t really have shot you.”

  She looked up and saw his mouth curl halfway to a smile. “If I thought for a minute that it was a possibility, you wouldn’t have possession of the damned thing now.”

  She sighed. He felt the release of breath relax her entire body. Talking seemed’ to have a calming effect on her, so he kept it up.

  “Do you remember when that senator was killed in Dallas?” He felt her shrug. “There was a big to-do about some oil leases. This guy was standing in the way of them. It was a deal that would have funneled multimillions into some very greedy pockets, and the guys who owned those pockets hired Scorpion to get rid of the senator. They put an end to his interference so the deal could go through.”

  Carly stiffened in his arms again, but it was a different kind of tension now. It was sharpening interest.

  “That Dallas hit started it,” he went on. “It was so clean, so cold, and Scorpion pretty much vanished into thin air afterward. There’s a portion of our population who appreciate talent like that. So someone hired him to take out an English prime minister next. There was a summit meeting in Istanbul. It would have opened a free trade agreement with several countries, and that would have siphoned off some substantial business from certain American companies. The prime minister was a big proponent of the plan, so Scorpion took him out.

  “He got a lot of work after that. His hits started taking on the same…flavor. My superiors thought the best way to catch him—to even thwart some of his efforts—was to put one man on him, one man who could devote his full attention to him. Since I’d picked up the Dallas job, they gave Scorpion to me.”

  On some distant level, Jack heard himself and was amazed. He never talked like this. He honestly didn’t have any friends, at least no one who was not part of the agency. There had been Zoe once, but he’d traveled so much, moved around so much, that he’d managed to avoid putting down those treacherous things called roots. He sure as hell had never spoken of his work to her. That had been one of his many ways of keeping her at a distance, he realized now.

  He thought that if Zoe could have heard him now, she would have been stunned. And infuriated.

  “Scorpion is a paid assassin, Carly,” he heard himself go on. “He’s a for-hire terrorist. And that’s why I’m not telling you too much. Because you’re no match for someone like him, cowgirl.”

  “I…oh.” She shuddered.

  “He’s killed for the Red Army Faction and God knows how many Palestinian organizations. And those are just the hits that I know about for certain. There are others we suspect he was involved in and just can’t prove.” He paused, shaking his head. “There have been times when I’ve followed him…to Belgium, to Iran, and lost him once I got there. Someone important would die, and then I’d know it was him, but I couldn’t prove it. A lot of times I’ve just sort of guessed where he would show up. There’d be something politically important going on, some world leader would receive a death threat, or he’d take a stand that could tick off some powerful people, so I’d go there and keep my eyes and ears open, and at least half the time he’d still get the hit in.” Like in S?o Paulo, Jack thought. “Anyway, my point is that guys like Scorpion don’t easily get caught. The best I’ve been able to do over the years is identify some of his marks ahead of time and whisk them out of harm’s way before he could move on them.”

  “So who’s his mark in Oklahoma? What’s he doing here?”

  Jack’s heart stalled.

  He should have seen the question coming, knowing her. And now that it had, there was no way he could answer it. Not without opening the door to a hundred other questions.

  Her weight leaned sweetly and warmly against his ribs, and Jack knew suddenly that it was not enough to keep Scorpion from making contact with her. He knew in that moment that he was never going to let her know who Scorpion was. If he could manage it, if he could pull it off, this woman would never have to know what her ex-husband, her daughter’s father, had become.

  If she had been a mark, he would have whisked her out of harm’s way. Instead, he would whisk her out of the way of the truth, her own past, would let her go on living being none the wiser. If it was another lie, then he could live with it.

  “You’re thinking about this too much, cowgirl,” he said quietly, after a moment.

  “Just tell me that much and I’ll let it go.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I’ll try,” she amended.

  Jack chose his words carefully. “I don’t think he’s here to hit anyone.”

  Carly looked up at him silently, waiting.

  “I’ve learned a lot about him over the years. And there was something about his latest hit that made me think that he was going to retire. And if he was going to call it a day, then I thought he’d pass by here on his way.”

  “Pass by here? From Belgium to Iran to Oklahoma?”

  The hairs on Jack’s nape stirred with wariness. Careful, he thought. “We picked up his plane on radar,” he went on without answering. “That substantiated my hunch.”

  “Does he know you’re after him?”

  “Let it go, Carly.”

  “Has he seen you before?”

  “No. Not exactly. He’s seen a man he knows as Gemini. We rarely enter the field looking like ourselves. Usually our cover’s pretty deep.” And why on God’s earth was he telling her this? Because, he realized, the compulsion was as deep as any one of Gemini’s disguises.

  Carly suddenly understood enough to feel cold inside anyway. “How long have you been on this guy? How long has he known you’ve been on him?”

  Jack hesitated, wishing to God that he’d never opened his mouth. “A long time.”

  “Years?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many years?”

  “I think you’ve gone a’ long way beyond one question, cowgirl.”

  Carly ignored that. “More than five?”

  “Yeah,” he said reluctantly.

  “More than ten?”

  “Close enough. Let it go, Carly.”

  She did fall silent. For a moment.

  “So what are you planning to do with him?” she went on suddenly.

  “Do with him?” He leaned away from her to look at her warily.

  “How are you going to get rid of him now that you’ve caught up with him?” she asked. Her voice was getting wild again. “Are you just going to walk up to him and…and blow him away?”

  He’d thought of it. Oh, how he’d thought of it. “Can’t.”

  “Why not? Why can’t you just get rid of him, Jack?”

  “Because if I shoot and I miss, and he shoots and he doesn’t miss, then I’ve left a whole lot of innocent people at the mercy of one very angry assassin,” he bit out. That was the biggest reason. “Worst-case scenario number two is that when bullets started flying, someone could get hit.”

  “Oh,” she answered. Her voice had gotten small.

  Suddenly, Carly felt sick again. It was clear now, the unspeakable danger they were in, that he was in. S
corpion was an assassin, not just a fugitive. He was a terrorist, not just someone who’d robbed a liquor store and shot an old lady out of panic. And she knew—God help her, she knew—it had to be Brad, no matter what Jack had said. Or what he hadn’t said.

  “So,” he went on finally, “will you please send Rawley and Josh home now?”

  “No.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Rawley won the Ellis County shoot-out three years running.”

  Jack nearly choked. The Ellis County shoot-out? “Damn it, hasn’t anything I’ve just told you made a dent?”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I want as many good people as possible armed and guarding my back right now,” she said stiffly.

  “Your good people aren’t in the same league as mine, sweetheart. Stay out of it.”

  “Well, that may be, but they’re all I can muster.”

  Jack felt his headache building again. “The fewer people who have guns around here, the better off we are. Can’t you just trust me?”

  “Honestly? No. I have to take care of myself.”

  He grabbed her arm. “Not this time,” he said quietly. “This time you have someone to watch over you.”

  She looked into his eyes and felt again the irrational terror she’d felt that morning, when he’d talked her into leaving a day early. If she got used to leaning on him, to letting him take over, she might never be strong enough to duke it out on her own again.

  And then where would the Draw be?

  Jack watched her for a moment and thought he understood. She was not a woman who would turn over the reins easily, and he had a hunch that forcing her to do so now would be as traumatic as letting her know who Scorpion really was. He couldn’t stay and take care of her forever, and he couldn’t strip her selfsufficiency away. He needed to let her feel that she still had some control here, even as he knew that she had precious little.

  “You’re not going to let anything happen to anyone anyway,” Carly went on tremulously.

  “No. I’m going to wait for him to leave this little tea party, then I’m going to go after him.”

  “Will he do that? Will he just…leave?” Her voice escalated again, trembling as the implications of that sank in on her.