by Diana Palmer
“It’s worth a try.”
“I suppose it is.”
She laughed, remembering the hunter at Pam Simpson’s party back in Catelow.
“What’s funny?”
“I was remembering a party Mrs. Simpson gave for me, back home. One of my readers is a deer hunter. He takes my books into the woods to read while he’s waiting for game to show up.”
“You know, Sandra is one of your biggest fans,” he mused. “Would you mind if I used you as a sort of bribe?”
She burst out laughing. “No. I wouldn’t mind at all. Feel free.”
“Then I’ll do that, as soon as we get home!”
* * *
SHE PHONED BART to see how things were going back home, while Vic went upstairs to his room to text his wife in Vermont.
“Hi,” she said. “How are things going?”
“Great! I checked with Fender. Your ranch is secure, no problems there. How’s it going at Latigo?”
“It’s nice. I’ve just been to an obstetrician with Cort’s dad. He’s very nice.”
“Nice? Vic?” Bart exclaimed.
“Well, he’s been nice to me,” she returned. “He’s sad because his wife left him.”
“He was cheating on her!”
“He told me about that. He told me why, too. He’s not a bad man. He has insecurity issues.”
“Boy, there’s a lot of that going around,” Bart chuckled. “Well, as long as he’s nice to you, that’s the main thing. How’s Cort?”
“I don’t know. He had to sort out a labor strike at some company, then he’s got to go a lot of places on other business. From what I understand, he’s almost never home. I miss him. But I’m working on the new book.”
“Told him yet?” he asked gently.
“Not really. His father read SPECTRE. He recognized me from the back cover.”
“Mina, you really need to tell Cort before he finds it out the hard way.”
“I know. I should have told him long ago. I just didn’t know how. He’s not going to be happy about my commando group, I just know it. So I’ve been putting it off.”
“Listen, that book is in every major bookstore in America, and it’s climbing the charts. How long do you think it’s going to be before he sees your photo on the book jacket and makes the connection?”
“The photo doesn’t look that much like me,” she said.
“In the circles Cort travels in, your book will be read a lot. It’s an expensive hardcover.”
“I guess so. I’ll tell him as soon as he comes home,” she promised.
“You do that,” he said. “And take care of yourself. I miss you.”
She laughed. “I miss you, too, my friend. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Okay.”
She started to put down the cell phone when it rang again. “Hello?” she answered.
“Hi!” It was Ry, the leader of her commando group. “I wanted to see how you were doing on the new book and if you needed some help.”
She laughed. “I do, I do!”
“We can come up to Wyoming...”
“I’m not in Wyoming, though,” she said. “I’m married and pregnant and I’m living on a big ranch in West Texas.”
“Wow! Congratulations!” he said with genuine pleasure. “Then, how about telling us how to get to where you are? Because we’ve got some new tales to share!”
“That’s a deal!” she replied.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
VIC CAME DOWNSTAIRS rubbing his hands and grinning.
Mina’s face lit up. “Don’t tell me. It worked!”
“It worked,” he laughed. “You little doll, it worked! She said she’d do anything to meet you. Including discussing a second chance for our marriage.”
“Oh, I’m so glad,” she said on a sigh.
“So am I. Thanks,” he added warmly.
“You’re very welcome. Now I need a favor.” She grimaced. “You may not like it.”
His eyebrows arched. “Ask me.”
“You know the commando group I hang out with, the ones I was just in Nicaragua with?”
He nodded.
“Well, obviously, I can’t go crawling through jungles pregnant, but I need some insight into drug smuggling for the book I’m working on, and the guys have done interdiction in other countries...”
“And they want to come talk to you,” he guessed. He laughed at her expression. “Tell them to come on. But wait until Sandra gets here.” He rolled his eyes. “She’ll go crazy when she knows they’ll be here. She used to hang out with narcs and mercenaries and former mob members...”
“You’re kidding!” Mina exclaimed gleefully.
“I’m not. You’ll understand when you meet her.”
“When is she coming?” Mina asked.
“Day after tomorrow.”
“So I’ll text Ry and tell him to come with the guys day after tomorrow,” she promised. “It’s going to be so much fun!”
He shook his head. “What a change you’ve made here already.”
She smiled. “Thanks. I love Latigo. I’m going to be very happy here.”
* * *
TWO DAYS LATER, Vic walked in the door with his wife, Sandra, fresh from the airport in El Paso. She wasn’t at all what Mina expected. Sandra was little and wiry with amber eyes and brown hair and a smile that would stop traffic.
“Willow Shane, and I actually get to talk to you,” she exclaimed as she hugged Mina. “I couldn’t believe it when Vic told me! And you have a commando group for research. I thought I’d die of happiness!”
“I’m so happy to meet you. He—” she indicated Vic “—was very sad without you.”
She turned her eyes on her husband and pursed her lips. “Yes, well, we have a few things to work out.”
“A couple back home had those issues and they went to a psychologist,” Mina said gently.
Vic sighed. “I’d go to a psychologist today if Sandra would give me another chance.”
“You would?” Sandra exclaimed. “Honest?”
He nodded. He shrugged. “I guess I have more issues than I realized.” He glanced at Mina and smiled. “I seem to have lucked out on daughters-in-law however. She’s a wonder.”
“She’s my favorite author,” Sandra replied. She took off her denim jacket. “I have about a thousand questions...oh dear...” Her voice trailed off when she saw Mina’s face.
“Sorry!” Mina jumped up and ran to the bathroom in time to lose her lunch. She cleaned herself up and came back out with a wet washcloth, bathing her face on the way.
“Goodness, do you have a virus or something?” Sandra asked worriedly.
“I’m just pregnant,” she confessed, and laughed.
“You lucky woman,” Sandra said softly. “I’m too old to get pregnant, and I was too career-minded to even want to, while I was young. I’ve missed the boat.”
Mina put an arm around her. “You can share mine. Would you like the morning sickness or the heartburn first?”
Sandra burst out laughing and hugged her back.
* * *
MEANWHILE, CORT was just finishing up talks with the union to finalize a new contract and feeling guilty for leaving his new wife alone with his father at Latigo. He was miserable. He missed Mina. He wanted to go home. But there was a meeting he had to attend with some business leaders in Akron who were involved in the ranch’s real estate holdings. It was a cocktail party.
In the old days, he’d loved mingling with beautiful women—and there were always beautiful women, married or single—and drinking until he felt pleasantly numb. But now, alcohol and other women had lost their appeal. He must, he mused, be getting old.
A gorgeous brunette he’d had a brief affair with latched on to him at the party and he became aware belatedly
of the flash from a camera of some sort. But he disregarded it. Someone was always taking candid shots of other people, or selfies, and the room was dark.
A flash would have been necessary. He wondered why most of the affairs he attended were conducted in such dim light. Probably, he said with a silent chuckle, so that some of the philandering went unnoticed.
He hoped his father was behaving himself. Certainly, Mina could call Parker if she needed help with him. But she seemed very capable of handling Vic, even when he was roaring drunk. It was a revelation, watching her do that, with her traumatic background. A lot of her life had been ravaged by the abuses of drunk people, including her own mother.
He’d called her the night before, just to make sure she was okay. She’d laughed and said that except for morning sickness, things were good. Vic had stopped drinking and was actually talking to his ex-wife. She didn’t add that Sandra was there at Latigo, or that her commando group was due to arrive soon. She didn’t have time, because he was interrupted by another urgent business call and he had to hang up. He was impatient with himself for that. He shouldn’t have cut her off. Well, he’d be home soon, and he’d make up for his absence.
He watched one of the single women present trying to interest a very wealthy married man over martinis, but the man walked away. Her eyes lit on Cort and she moved toward him like a slinky predator. He laughed to himself. That type of woman no longer attracted him. He compared this pretty serpent with his sweet homebody of a wife who liked to knit and read romance novels. Mina would never do something like that. She’d never come on to another man at all. He felt good about that. She was just what he needed; a wife he could leave alone when necessary without having to worry if she was running around on him.
* * *
IT WAS A good thing he couldn’t see what was going on at Latigo two days later. Mina and Sandra were sitting in the living room with five men dressed in casual clothes. But they weren’t casual people. They were Mina’s commando group, and their delight in her marriage and pregnancy made her feel very good. Three of them had wives and kids of their own.
“When the baby comes,” Ry said with a grin, “we’ll teach him the fine art of stealth!”
Mina laughed. “I can hardly wait.”
“I want to know all about that stint you mentioned in the Congo,” Sandra said, with an apologetic glance at Mina.
“So do I,” Mina laughed. “But first,” she said, pulling out her cell phone and turning to the Notes Application, “I need to know about drug smuggling on the Texas border and interdiction strategies.”
“That will be my pleasure,” Ry said. His face hardened. “One of my men left to work in the Border Patrol. He was killed by a group of drug smugglers. Most of them are well armed and they have nothing to lose. They don’t mind killing government employees, ranchers or anyone else who gets in their way.”
Mina nodded, having already researched as much about smuggling as she could find on the internet. There was, however, no comparison with men who knew about it from personal experience.
“We’re having problems with drug smugglers now,” Vic interjected, having joined them with Chaca right behind carrying a tray of coffee and cups. “Thanks, Chaca,” he added as she put it down, smiled and left them to it.
“Interesting,” Ry said. “How so?”
“They’re using the southern border of our ranch as a trade route, you might say,” Vic replied. “We have good intel that they’re part of the Zetas. Camo, military gear and weapons, the works. One of our cowboys got shot on my own land.”
Ry pursed his lips and his eyes began to twinkle. He looked at his men and saw the same anticipation on their faces. “This is the sort of thing we truly enjoy interfering with,” he told Vic. “Think of us as a pro bono ex-military group on a stealth mission. Nobody will know except us.”
Vic whistled softly. “My son really wouldn’t like this.”
“Your son really doesn’t have to know,” Ry chuckled.
Mina groaned inwardly. This was going to be one more thing that she’d have to explain to Cort. But if it would help keep the ranch solvent...
“And no, you can’t come with us this time,” Ry told Mina firmly.
She made a face at him.
“How about me?” Sandra asked excitedly. “I went on a SWAT raid once. I can shoot a .45 auto.”
“Not on your life,” Vic said immediately, and gave her a look that could have boiled water. “I’m not risking you. Not for anything.”
Sandra flushed a little and smiled. “Well, maybe I’ll wait to hear all about it when you get back,” she told them.
“Don’t get killed,” Mina said firmly. “It will look very bad in my book.” She grinned.
“Okay,” Ry said, and he grinned back.
* * *
“OH, THE PEOPLE you know,” Sandra said with a sigh, after Vic had called in his livestock foreman to show the men where the trespassers were giving them the most trouble. It was a huge ranch. Even with fencing, it was impossible to watch the border night and day. Well, for the ranchers. Ry had a solution for that. He and his men mounted remote cameras in unexpected places and sat back to wait for results.
Their third night in residence, there was a sudden flurry of activity on the border. Ry and his men, already in sand-colored camo gear, assembled their weapons with solemn faces and went out to meet the threat.
Mina and Sandra monitored the assault on a network of monitors with night vision and audio that Ry and the guys had set up in a spare bedroom.
* * *
CORT WAS AT yet another business party, talking a trade deal with some men from Japan. Apparently, their hostess was another fan of Willow Shane, because she had a copy of SPECTRE on a coffee table, just like another businessman’s wife he’d met days before.
“She’s the most marvelous author,” the woman rattled off to a woman standing near Cort. “She actually goes on missions with this commando group into the jungle. She can use any sort of weapon that exists, and she’s a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do. In addition to all that, she runs a ranch of her own somewhere in the northwest.”
“Amazing,” came the reply. “I’d love to meet her.”
“But you can,” the other woman said. “She’ll be signing books at the Silver Bookmark, here in the city in a couple of weeks on an author’s tour!”
“She will? I’ll mark it on my calendar.”
“I can’t wait,” came the reply. The women moved away and Cort shook his head. He was lucky to be married to a woman who just wanted to knit and raise babies, not some wild-eyed author who risked her life for a story and went on tour to sell books. He wondered if the mysterious Willow Shane even had a home life. And she was a rancher? How the hell could she run a ranch and be on the road all the time, he wondered.
Well, it wasn’t his problem. He looked at his watch. He was ready to go back to the hotel and pack. With any luck, barring any further problems, he could fly home in the morning. He’d missed Mina. He recalled their one long, sweet session in bed and looked forward to more of them.
Of course, there was the morning sickness. He knew she was having a hard time right now. But he could hold her all night, even if she didn’t feel up to intimacy. He thought about the baby and smiled. What a happy difference Mina had made in his life already. He felt sorry for his father, who’d thrown away his own chance for happiness with the reporter from Vermont. Maybe someday the older man would stop philandering and really settle down. He didn’t know what he was missing.
* * *
MINA WAS GLUED to her chair in front of the bank of camera monitors in the spare bedroom, with Sandra sitting in a chair beside her. Neither woman wanted to miss the confrontation. It was going to be epic; she just knew it.
“This is so exciting,” Sandra confided. “I haven’t been a reporter for several years. I miss it terribly. Those adrenal
ine rushes are hard to give up.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” She sighed. “I’m going to be stuck at home for the immediate future. I really can’t go out with the guys when I’m pregnant.”
Sandra patted her hand. “This is almost as good,” she said, indicating the monitors. “Oh, look!”
As she spoke, a small group of men in military gear, holding what looked like automatic weapons, passed by the cameras. There was both night vision and sound, so what they said was audible. They were speaking in Spanish, in terse, angry voices. Fortunately they weren’t rattling off like some people did, so that Mina understood almost every word. What she heard chilled her blood.
“They’re talking about the ranch house,” she said to Sandra, and her face went pale. “Two of them want ransom...!”
“Your guys are out there. They’ll shut them down,” Sandra began.
“You don’t understand,” Mina said urgently. “There are two groups! One isn’t associated with the smugglers. It’s run by two men who separated from the others and just want hostages. It’s a big ranch and they know that wealthy people live here. They think it’s easy money, compared to running drugs!”
Even as she spoke, she heard the front door open violently. Mina ran to the closet and unpacked her .45. She grabbed the full clip and shot it home into the gun and cocked it. She hoped against hope that one of the commandos was monitoring the audio from those cameras, so they’d know Mina and the others were in danger. But she couldn’t count on being rescued.
“Get behind me,” she told Sandra, and suddenly she was someone else. She was Willow Shane to the teeth.
Sandra didn’t argue. She did what she was told.
Mina went stealthily to the door. She wanted to call to Vic, who’d gone into his room to watch TV, and tell him not to move. She looked over her shoulder and saw Sandra texting furiously. Sandra looked up and nodded. Mina nodded, too. Obviously the women had the same thought.