Cowboy, Undercover

by Vicki Tharp

  “Oh, no.” Sidney shook her head.

  “That’s kind of their thing,” Hank said. “We stay out of the way and let them get it out of their systems.”

  A couple of rolling hills ahead, Jenna and Boomer popped into view, the sound of thundering hooves came to them even from that distance. Dual clouds of dust streaked behind them like dusty contrails from a jet’s engines. Moments later they disappeared again, and Gil didn’t see them again until they’d all made it back to the barn.

  Boomer was all smiles, and Jenna had a playful scowl. The big blue roan Jenna had been riding blew a cloud of dust from his nostrils, his sides heaving, his nostrils flaring. Boomer’s horse, a sorrel, was tied to a hitching post. The mare lowered her head and cocked a rear leg as she relaxed.

  Boomer walked over and lifted Sidney out of the saddle and gave her a big smooch on her lips. “You were right, Irish. Bullet has jetpacks and a turbo drive.”

  He grabbed Sidney around the waist and spun her around before setting her down again. “I knew you could find me a horse that could beat Angel.”

  “That was a one-off,” Jenna said. “Don’t get used to winning.”

  Boomer jogged over to his horse that had managed to pull his rope free. “Never knew you were a sore loser. It’s not a great feeling. But you’re tough, you can deal.”

  They all went to work unsaddling their horses, hosing them down, and settling them into their pastures for the night. Mackenzie Nash, Hank’s wife, stepped into the barn, a large wooden spoon in her hand. “Soup’s on if any of you are hungry.”

  Hank walked over to her, tugged the USMC baseball cap off her head and kissed her on the lips. It wasn’t quick. It was slow and—

  “Ew, gross,” Jenna said. “I would tell you to get a room, but we can all see what happens when you do that.”

  Hank grinned and splayed his hand over Mac’s ever-expanding belly. He leaned over, his mouth at his wife’s belly. “Hey, Littlebit. Have you been good to your Mom today?”

  “The brat’s been kicking my kidneys all afternoon, that’s how he’s been.”

  “She,” Hank said. “She’s been kicking your kidneys.”

  “It’s a boy,” Mac insisted.

  “We’ll see about that.” Hank kissed his wife again. “Come on everybody, before it gets cold.”

  “Uh…” Gil hung back and glanced over at Tessa. “I think Tessa and I are going to head to the diner. Y’all go on ahead.”

  Tessa shot him a quick look but didn’t contradict him. Smart woman.

  Jenna opened her mouth to say something, but Quinn caught her hand and dragged her toward the big house. Mac took his announcement in stride. “Suit yourself.”

  “More for me,” Santos called from the tack room.

  Hank, Mack, Quinn, and Jenna headed off to the big house. Santos jogged after them. “Hey, wait up.”

  Alby clapped Gil on the shoulder. “You kids have fun. We won’t wait up.” He gave Tessa a wink and strode after the rest of them.

  She turned to Gil and said. “I really should say no.” She looked down at herself, her arms held out. “Look at me. I’m filthy.” She ran a hand across her forehead, and held her fingers out, showing him the grime.

  He took her fingers and wiped them on the front of his shirt, trapping her hand against his chest. He caught a finger under her chin and tilted her face up and pressed a light kiss to her lips. “It’s the diner. Unless you would prefer my place. You could catch a shower, and I could cook.”

  “You cook?”

  “I can microwave a hot dog with the best of them. Plus I think there are a couple slices of pizza in the fridge, but they’ve been in there a few days. It might poison you.”

  She glanced at his lips, then back at his eyes. “Tempting, but the diner seems less… dangerous.”

  Dangerous?

  “Wait.” He was a big man, but Tessa didn’t strike him as a woman who was easily intimidated. Gil eased out of her space but didn’t let go of her hand. “Are you afraid of me?”

  Though it wasn’t just his size that people found forbidding. He’d be lying if he said his overseas tours of duty and his time undercover hadn’t blackened his soul.

  He wasn’t violent.

  He wasn’t mean.

  But he’d done things he wasn’t proud of and seen things he couldn’t unsee. He would never be the man he was before he’d deployed, and that frightened some people. She of all people should understand that. Even if she’d spent her time in the military in the helo’s and not on the ground, she knew firsthand what the men and women on the ground had faced.

  “Should I be afraid?” An open and honest question. Her eyes narrowed. She expected the same honesty in return. He liked that she wasn’t scared to ask the hard questions.

  “No.” He didn’t elaborate. He figured the response was self-explanatory.

  “A shower and the diner then,” Tessa said. “Unless you want to rescind your offer.”

  “Not on your life.”

  3

  Tessa wasn’t sure why, but she’d agreed to drive them to the diner instead of them taking separate cars. Which meant she would have to go back to the ranch tonight to drop Gil back at his cabin.

  Would he invite her in?

  Did she want him to?

  In front of the diner, she killed the engine and set the Jeep’s parking brake. The saliva dried in her mouth as she looked over at him. “You know… If Pearl sees the two of us in there together, she’s gonna start talking.”

  “I didn’t take you as someone who cared about what other people thought.”

  “I-I’m not. Usually. It’s just… With this thing with my ex, like I said, it gets complicated. I wouldn’t want to give him any reason to take me back to court for custody.”

  “They’re not going to give him custody because you went out on a date.”

  “No. Probably not. But… He’s an asshole, remember? I wouldn’t put it past him to try. Even though he’s the one who ran out on us.”

  Gil took her hand off the manual shifter and held her hand in his, running his thumb over her knuckles, over the bumps, to the valleys, and back again.

  “Look, I don’t want to cause you any trouble.” His voice went soft. “Your son is the most important person in your life. I get that. If you want, you can take me back to the ranch and we’ll call it a night. No harm, no foul.”

  His eyes were stark but sincere. He wasn’t blowing smoke. He meant every word he said. Tessa’s heart kicked at her ribs. This man knew what he wanted, and right now for whatever reason, that was her. Yet he also saw her and seemed to understand how hard being a single mom could be.

  “Do you have any kids of your own?”

  “No. Not yet.” The yet piqued her interest, but that was a conversation for another time. Her stomach rumbled, and Gil smiled. He had one of those smiles that could transform his whole face. He had a short, thick beard, a bump from a break on the bridge of his nose, and dark eyes that drew her in. He had an edge to him she’d seen in other military and LEO boys, but when he smiled like that… it did something sinfully wicked to her insides. She glanced down at his lips and back up at his eyes.

  His grin got wider.

  “Can I kiss you?” She got the words out before she lost her nerve.

  “I’d like that,” he said, though he didn’t move any closer. Instead, he turned Tessa’s hand over and massaged his thumb into her palm.

  Her eyes fluttered closed, then opened again. That gentle massage shouldn’t have felt as good as it did. Now if he could go a little higher until he hit that knot between her shoulder blades. That nagging, niggling knot that hadn’t gone away since Bradley had gained visitation rights.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You hold that thought while we eat dinner. If you’re still interested when we’re done, you let me know.”

  She gazed back at him, and Gil didn’t break eye contact. He wasn’t anything like she’d expected. “Deal.” She held out
her other hand for him to shake and he took it.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “That sounds ominous.” She went to take her hand back, but he didn’t let go. Despite what she’d said, this was the man who’d single-handedly held off a drug cartel’s armed watchdogs, risking his life, while allowing Quinn, Jenna, and Pepita to escape a deadly situation. A situation that almost cost Gil his life. “Yeah, I trust you.” She didn’t say those words lightly.

  He popped his door and released her hand. “Wait here.”

  Gil jogged up the steps of the old converted railroad car turned diner. The backside had been blown out and a kitchen added on. Through the windows, she saw that most of the booths were taken as well as the row of stools lining the counter.

  It wasn’t long before Gil returned with a large To Go bag. Her heart skipped like a giddy little girl let out for recess.

  He climbed in and closed the door behind him. Tessa had been willing to go in with him, but the fact that he understood her hesitation spoke volumes to the type of man that he was.

  “Why don’t we head back to the ranch,” he said. “I know a place we can eat that I think you’ll really like.”

  She started the engine and backed out of her parking space. “I really appreciate you doing this for me, I—”

  “Well, don’t go polishing my knightly armor yet. It wasn’t completely altruistic.” He didn’t crack a smile, but his teasing tone gave him away.

  “Ulterior motives then?” Why was she hoping the answer was yes? She turned at the stop sign and sped back toward the ranch.

  “I wouldn’t mind having you all to myself. Then there’s the whole bit about not having to update the rumor mill if I decide next week I don’t like you.”

  “I can see where that could be a hassle.” She knew he was joking, but the doubts crept in. In all seriousness, she said, “Do you think you’re going to change your mind next week?”

  She expected him to deny it, she hadn’t expected him to say, “pull over.”

  Where the shoulder widened for a row of mailboxes, Tessa eased the Jeep to a stop. While her foot was on the clutch, Gil popped the Jeep out of gear and engaged the emergency brake.

  “Look, between my deployments and my stints undercover, it didn’t leave me many opportunities for relationships, or even much of a chance to date for that matter. It made me very selective with who I wanted to spend time with.”

  “Which means?” She wasn’t really getting impatient. She wanted to hear what he had to say, but the smells from the To Go bag where making her mouth water and her stomach grumble.

  “The short answer to that question is no. I’m not going to change my mind next week. I don’t ask random women out on a whim.” It might have been the play of the lights from her dashboard that made his eyes look like they’d gone darker, as the conversation got much more serious than she’d ever intended.

  “I’m just looking for some fun, Gil. I’m not looking for permanence.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched up, but somehow it came off looking like a frown. “Fun is good, too.” The lightness in his words seemed forced, but it was late, and she was hungry so she didn’t push him on it. He bobbed his chin toward the dark ribbon of road ahead of them. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”

  Tessa shifted into gear, the knot between her shoulder blades twinged as an uneasy silence splintered and fractured the air around them. She reached for the volume on the radio when her cell phone buzzed.

  She pulled it from her back pocket and glanced at the screen. There goes dinner.

  “What is it?” Gil asked.

  “Quinn and I got called in to fly cover for an op. I don’t have time to take you back. I’ll drive to the airport, and you can take my Jeep back to the ranch.”

  Her tires skidded and kicked up loose gravel as she pulled a U-ey and sped in the opposite direction toward Murdock’s municipal airport.

  “What’s going on? I’ve been out of the loop.”

  She glanced over at him, not knowing how much she could tell him. Technically, he was part of her task force, but she suspected if Special Agent Spinks had wanted Gil involved, he would have contacted Gil as well.

  She gave him the cliff notes version. “There’s been chatter of a big arms deal going down. We think The Wolf has moved into our area.”

  “Way the hell out here? Wouldn’t it be easier if he was closer to a port?”

  “You would think, but the ports are under intense scrutiny. We’re thinking The Wolf’s going to fly the goods in and out. In that case, a remote area works in his favor.”

  They lapsed into silence as she sped down the road, her headlights cutting through the darkness. Without lights and sirens, her speed was limited. Quinn must have broken the land speed record because he screeched to a stop and jumped out of his truck moments after she and Gil had arrived.

  She handed Gil her keys as Quinn clapped him on the back. “Are you our spotter?”

  “He didn’t get the call,” Tessa said. “We can’t take him out on this, without —”

  “Screw that, Sterling. Another set of eyes on a cover op never hurt. It’s not like he needs his medical clearance, or even to carry a weapon.”

  “Spinks will want to know,” she said, even as the three of them jogged toward the helo. They didn’t have time to jump into their flight suits.

  There didn’t seem to be a question of if Gil was willing to go. He beeped her Jeep locked and kept up with them.

  “We’ll tell him,” Quinn was quick to assure her, “as soon as we land.”

  Gil grinned over at her and climbed into the Blackhawk and buckled into the jump seat behind the pilot’s chair.

  Tessa and Quinn ran through their preflight as fast as they safely could. The engine spooled up, and as soon as they received clearance from the tower, they lifted off and banked north and west.

  Over the comms, one of the task force agents fed them coordinates to rendezvous with the rest of the team on the ground.

  Quinn plotted their course, and Spinks filled them in mid-flight on the rapidly developing operation. Everyone was en route to a location where actionable intel had placed an arms deal going down. They had a guy on the inside of a local gang that was looking to carve a niche as a snitch.

  The gang wasn’t satisfied with a little drug running like a lot of the other low-level scum who had moved in to fill the void since El Verdugo’s drug cartel had imploded. This gang had moved on to nastier things—guns and grenades. As much as the task force wanted to stop these guys, they weren’t the ones that posed the most significant threat.

  If everything went according to Spinks’ plan, the gun buys might lead them to The Wolf. Mainly because if the scuttlebutt was correct, this guy had amassed the firepower to huff, and puff, and topple small governments, or at least supply the revolutionaries with enough firepower to do it themselves.

  Even the most well thought out strategies never went off without a hitch, and as quickly as this operation had been pulled together, Tessa had a bad feeling…

  “This is fucked up,” Gil said from behind her over the internal comms, not the open mic to headquarters. There wasn’t any distress or panic in his words, just an observation from a guy with enough life experience to trust his gut.

  “Copy that,” Quinn said. “But after months of little or no intel, at least we’re not sitting here with our dicks in our hands waiting for something to happen.”

  Tessa made a noise in the back of her throat, not because she was offended, but because Quinn had reminded her what she might have missed if she and Gil had actually made it back to his cabin. It wasn’t often she had a weekend without her son. And yeah, she really needed to focus on what was happening beyond her windscreen.

  “You always talk like that around the ladies, asshole?” Gil’s reprimand came through her headset, clear and calm beneath the beating of the rotor blades.

  “Present company excluded,” Quinn amended. “Sorry, LT, sometimes I forg
et I’m in mixed company.”

  “I’m not mixed company, I’m your teammate.” To Gil, she said, “I don’t need anyone to run interference for me either, special agent. Someone gets outta line, I’ll tell ‘em.”

  Gil’s soft chuckle raised goosebumps on her arms, sounding much more intimate and more arousing than it should have. “Fair enough, lieutenant.”

  The way he said lieutenant almost sounded like an endearment. Her stomach had that falling-fifty-feet feeling, although a quick glance at her altimeter told her that their altitude remained steady.

  Quinn glanced over at her from the left-hand seat, a stupid grin on his face that told her Gil’s tone hadn’t been a figment of her imagination. Great. Just what she needed was Quinn giving her shit about Gil. At least it was good natured.

  Quinn had tried to warn her off Gil, but he’d been unable to hide the respect he held for the man who had helped save his life. Whatever faults Gil might have, whatever internal demons had brought him to the Healing Horses program, Tessa didn’t doubt he was a good man at heart.

  “Big Bird, this is Elmo. You got eyes on?” Agent Isaac Lang’s voice came through Tessa’s headset, with an edge to his voice that the crackle and hiss of the radio couldn’t hide. Lang was the lead agent on the ground with eyes on the impending gun deal.

  “ETA five minutes,” Quinn confirmed for him.

  The night was clear with good visibility. The plan was to keep the helo at altitude and out of sight. They were to keep their eyes on the truckloads of arms while Lang and his men would attempt to follow the sellers back to their hidey-hole.

  “We don’t have five minutes,” Lang said. “This shit’s going down now.”

  The rendezvous point was taking them far into the foothills where the houses and street lights gave way to rolling hills and trees and the cover of darkness. Tessa lowered her night-vision goggles, NVGs, pitching her world into an eerie green canvas. For some reason, the altered optics always made her think of an underworld of bridge trolls and fire-breathing dragons.

  Beside her, Quinn lowered his NVGs as well.

  “Sitrep, Elmo,” Spinks ordered.