JESSICA WAS SUBDUED AFTER the time she’d spent with Dallas. Even Stevie noticed, and became more attentive. Sally cooked her aunt’s favorite dishes and did her best to coax Jess into a better frame of mind. But the other woman’s sadness was blatant.
With her mind on Jessica and not on time passing, she forgot that she had a parents and teachers meeting the next Tuesday night. She phoned Eb’s ranch, as she’d been told to, but all she got was the answering machine and a message that only asked the caller to leave a name and number. She left a message, doubting that he’d hear it before she was safely home. She hadn’t really believed him when he’d said the whole family was in danger, especially since nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But even so, surely nothing was going to happen to her on a two-mile drive home!
She sent Stevie home with a fellow teacher. The business meeting was long and explosive, and it was much later than usual when it was finally over. Sally spoke to the parents she knew and left early. She wasn’t thinking about anything except her bed as she drove down the long, lonely road toward home. As she passed the large house and accompanying acreage where her three neighbors lived, she felt a chill. Three of them were out on their front porch. The light was on, and it looked as if they were arguing about something. They caught sight of her truck and there was an ominous stillness about them.
Sally drove faster, aware that she drew their attention as she went past them. Only a few more minutes, she thought, and she’d be home…
The steering wheel suddenly became difficult to turn and with horror she heard the sound of a tire going flatter and flatter. Her heart flipped over. She didn’t have a spare. She’d rolled it out of the bed to make room for the cattle feed she’d taken home last week, having meant to ask Eb to help her put it back in again. But she’d have to walk the rest of the way, now. Worse, it was dark and those creepy men were still watching the truck.
Well, she told herself as she climbed out of the cab with her purse over her shoulder, they weren’t going to give her any trouble. She had a loud whistling device, and she now knew at least enough self-defense to protect herself. Confident, despite Eb’s earlier warnings, she locked the truck and started walking.
The sound of running feet came toward her. She looked over her shoulder and stopped, turning, her mouth set in a grim line. Two of the three men were coming down the road toward her in a straight line. Just be calm, she told herself. She was wearing a neat gray pantsuit with a white blouse, her hair was up in a French twist, and she lifted her chin to show that she wasn’t afraid of them. Feeling her chances of a physical defense waning rapidly as she saw the size and strength of the two men, her hand went nervously to the whistle in her pocketbook and brought it by her side.
“Hey, there, sweet thing,” one of the men called. “Got a flat? We’ll help you change it.”
The other man, a little taller, untidy, unshaved and frankly unpleasant-looking, grinned at her. “You bet we will!”
“I don’t have a spare, thank you all the same.”
“We’ll drive you home,” the tall one said.
She forced a smile. “No, thanks. I’ll enjoy the walk. Good night!”
She started to turn when they pounced. One knocked the whistle out of her hand and caught her arm behind her back, while the other one took her purse off her shoulder and went through it quickly. He pulled out her wallet, looked at everything in it, and finally took out a bill, dropping her self-defense spray with the purse.
“Ten lousy bucks,” he muttered, dropping the bag as he stuffed the bill into his pocket. “Pity Lopez don’t pay us better. This’ll buy us a couple of six-packs, though.”
“Let me go,” Sally said, incensed. She tried to bring her elbow back into the man’s stomach, as she’d seen an instructor on television do, but the man twisted her other arm so harshly that the pain stopped her dead.
The other man came right up to her and looked her up and down. “Not bad,” he rasped. “Quick, bring her over here, off the road,” he told the other man.
“Lopez won’t like this!” The man on the porch came toward them, yelling across the road. “You’ll draw attention to us!”
One of them made a rude remark. The third man went back up on the porch, his footsteps sounding unnaturally loud on the wood.
Sally was almost sick with fear, but she fought like a tigress. Her efforts to break free did no good. These men were bigger and stronger than she was, and they had her helpless. She couldn’t get to her whistle or spray and every kick, punch she tried was effectively blocked. It occurred to her that these men knew self-defense moves, too, and how to avoid them. Too late, she remembered what Eb had said to her about overconfidence. These men weren’t even drunk and they were too much for her.
Her heart beat wildly as she was dragged off the road to the thick grass at the roadside. She would struggle, she would fight, but she was no match for them. She knew she was in a lot of danger and it looked like there was no escape. Tears of impotent fury dripped from her eyes. Helpless while one of the men kept her immobilized, she remembered the sound of her own voice telling her aunt just a few weeks ago that she could handle anything. She’d been overconfident.
A sound buzzed in her head and at first she thought it was the prelude to a dead faint. It wasn’t. The sound was growing closer. It was a pickup truck. The headlights illuminated her truck on the roadside, but not the struggle that was going on near it.
It was as if the driver knew what was happening without seeing it. The truck whipped onto the shoulder and was cut off. A man got out, a tall man in a shepherd’s coat with a Stetson drawn over his brow. He walked straight toward the two men, who released Sally and turned to face the new threat. Eb!
“Car trouble?” a deep, gravelly voice asked sarcastically.
One of the men pulled a knife, and the other one approached the newcomer. “This ain’t none of your business,” the taller man said. “Get going.”
The newcomer put his hands on his lean hips and stood his ground. “In your dreams.”
“You’ll wish you had,” the taller of them replied harshly. He moved in with the knife close in at his side.
Sally stared in horror at Eb, who was inviting this lunatic to kill him! She knew from television how deadly a knife wound in the stomach could be. Hadn’t Eb told her that the best way to survive a knife fight was to never get in one in the first place, to run like hell? And now Eb was going to be killed and it was going to be all her fault for not taking his advice and getting that tire fixed…!
Eb moved unexpectedly, with the speed of a striking cobra. The man with the knife was suddenly writhing on the ground, holding his forearm and sobbing. The other man rushed forward, to be flipped right out into the highway. He got up and rushed again. This time he was met with a violent, sharp movement that sent him to the ground, and he didn’t get up.
Eb walked right over the unconscious man, ignoring the groaning man, and picked Sally up right off the ground in his arms. He carried her to his truck, balancing her on one powerful denim-covered thigh while he opened the passenger door and put her inside.
“My…purse,” she whispered, giving in to the shock and fear that she’d tried so hard to hide. She was shaking so hard her speech was slurred.
He closed the door, retrieved her purse and wallet from the ground, and handed it in through his open door. “What did they take, baby?” he asked in a soft, comforting tone.
“The tall one…took a ten-dollar bill,” she faltered, hating her own cowardice as she sobbed helplessly. “In his pocket…”
Eb retrieved it, tossed it to her and got in beside her.
“But those men,” she protested.
“Be still for a minute. It’s all right. They look worse than they are.” He took a cell phone from his pocket, opened it, and dialed. “Bill? Eb Scott. I left you a couple of assailants on the Simmons Mill Road just past Bell’s rental house. That’s right, the very one.” He glanced at Sally. “Not tonight. I’ll tell her to come see you in the morning.” There was a pause. “Nothing too bad; a couple of broken bones, that’s all, but you might send the ambulance anyway. Sure. Thanks, Bill.”
He powered down the phone and stuck it back into his jacket. “Fasten your seat belt. I’ll take you home and send one of my men out to fix the truck and drive it back for you.”
Her hands were shaking so badly that he had to do it for her. He turned on the light in the cab and looked at her intently. He saw the shock, the fear, the humiliation, the anger, all lying naked in her wide, shimmering gray eyes. Last, his eyes fell to her blouse, where the fabric was torn, and her simple cotton brassiere was showing. She was so upset that she didn’t even realize how much bare skin was on display.
He took off the long-sleeved chambray shirt he was wearing over his black T-shirt and put her into it, fastening the buttons with deft, quick hands over the ripped blouse. His face grew hard as he saw the evidence of her ordeal.
“I had a…a…whistle.” she choked. “I even remembered what you taught me about how to fight back…!”
He studied her solemnly. “I trained a company of recruits a few years ago,” he said evenly. “They’d had hand-to-hand combat training and they knew all the right moves to counter any sort of physical attack. There wasn’t one of them that I couldn’t drop in less than ten seconds.” His pale green eyes searched hers. “Even a martial artist can lose a match. It depends on the skill of his opponent and his ability to keep his head when the attack comes. I’ve seen karate instructors send advanced students running with nothing more dangerous than the yell, a sudden quick sound that paralyzes.”
“Those two men…they couldn’t…touch you,” she pointed out, amazed.
His pale eyes had an alien coldness that made her shiver. “I told you to get that damned tire fixed, Sally.”
She swallowed. Her pride was bruised almost beyond bearing. “I don’t take orders,” she said, trying to salvage a little self-respect.
“I don’t give them anymore,” he returned. “But I do give advice, and you’ve just seen the results of not listening. At least you had the sense to leave a message on my answering machine. But what if I hadn’t checked my messages, Sally? Would you like to think where you’d be now? Want me to paint you a picture?”
“Stop!” She put her face in her hands and shivered.
“I won’t apologize,” he told her abruptly. “You did a damned stupid thing and you got off lucky. Another time, I might not be quick enough.”
She swallowed and swallowed again. “The…conquering male,” she choked, but she wasn’t teasing now, as she had been that afternoon when he’d told her to get the tire fixed.
He drew her hands away from her face and looked into her eyes steadily. “That’s right,” he said curtly, and he wasn’t kidding. “I’ve been dealing with vermin like that for almost half my life. I told you there was danger in going out alone. Now you understand what I meant. Get that damned tire fixed, and buy a cell phone.”
Her head was spinning. “I can’t afford one,” she said unsteadily.
“You can’t afford not to. If you’d had one tonight, this might never have happened,” he said forcefully. The heat in his eyes made her shiver. “A man is physically stronger than a woman. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, that’s the honest truth. Unless you’ve trained for years, like a policewoman or a federal agent, you’re not going to be the equal of a man who’s drunk or on drugs or just bent on assault. Law enforcement people know how to fight. You don’t.”
She shivered again. Her hair was disheveled. She felt bruises on her arms where she’d been restrained by those men. She was still stunned by the experience, but already a little of the horror of what might have happened was getting to her.
He let her wrists go abruptly. His lean face softened as he studied her. “But I’ll say one thing for you. You’ve got grit.”
“Sure. I’m tough,” she laughed hollowly, brushing a strand of loose hair out of her eyes. “What a pitiful waste of self-confidence!”
“Who the hell taught you about canned self-defense?” he asked curiously, referring to the can of spray on the ground.
“There was this television self-defense training course for women,” she said defensively.
“Anything you spray, pepper or chemical, can rebound on you,” he said quietly. “If the wind’s blowing the wrong way, you can blind yourself. If you don’t hit the attacker squarely in the eyes, you’re no better off, either. As for the whistle, tonight there would have been no one close enough to hear it.” He sighed at her miserable expression and shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you to run?”
She lifted a high-heeled foot eloquently.
He leaned closer. “If you’re ever in a similar situation again, kick them off and try for the two-minute mile!”
She managed a smile for him. “Okay.”
He touched her wan, drawn face gently. “I wouldn’t have had that happen to you for the world,” he said bitterly.
“You were right, I brought it on myself. I won’t make that mistake again, and at least I got away with everything except my pride intact,” she said gamely.
He unfastened her seat belt, aware of a curtain being lifted and then released in the living room. “I sent Dallas straight here as soon as I got the message,” he explained, “to watch out for Jess and Stevie. You should have let me know about this night meeting much sooner.”
“I know.” She was fighting tears. The whole experience had been a shock that she knew she’d never get over. “There was a third man, on the porch. He said that Lopez wouldn’t like what they were doing, calling attention to themselves.”
He stared at her for a long moment, seeing the fear and terror and revulsion that lingered in her oval face, watching the way her hands clenched at the shirt he’d fastened over her torn bodice. He glanced at the window, where the curtain was in place again, and back to Sally’s face.
“Come here, sweetheart,” he said tenderly, pulling her into his arms. He cuddled her close, nuzzling his face into her throat, letting her cry.
Her clenched fist rested against his black undershirt and she sobbed with impotent fury. “Oh, I’m so…mad!” she choked. “So mad! I felt like a rag doll.”
“You do your best and take what comes,” he said at her ear. “Anybody can lose a fight.”
“I’ll bet you never lost one,” she muttered tearfully.
“I got the hell beaten out of me in boot camp by a little guy half my size, who was a hapkido master. Taught me a valuable lesson about overconfidence,” he said deliberately.
She took the handkerchief he placed in her hands and wiped her nose and eyes and mouth. “Okay, I get the message,” she said on a broken sigh. “There’s always somebody bigger and you can’t win every time.”
“Nice attitude,” he said, approving.
She wiped away the last trace of tears and looked up at him from her comfortable position across his lap. “Thanks for the hero stuff.”
He shrugged. “Shucks, ma’am, t’weren’t nothin’.”
She laughed, as she was meant to. Her eyes adored him. “They say that if you save a life, it becomes yours.”
His lips pursed and he looked down at where the jacket barely covered her torn blouse. “Do I get that, too?”
“Too?”
He opened the shirt very slowly and looked at the pale flesh under the torn blouse. There was a lot of it on view. Sally didn’t protest, didn’t grab at cover. She lay very still in his arms and let him look at her.
His pale eyes met hers in the faint light coming from the house. “No protest?”
“You saved me,” she said simply. She sighed and smiled with resignation. “I belonged to you, anyway. There’s never been anyone else.”
His long, lean fingers touched her collarbone, his eyes narrow and solemn, his expression serious, intent. “That could have changed, tonight,” he reminded her quietly. “You have to trust me enough to do what I tell you. I don’t want you hurt in this. I’ll do anything I have to, to protect you. That includes having a man follow you around like a visible appendage if you push me to it. Think what your principal would make of that!”
“I won’t make any more stupid mistakes,” she promised.
“What would you call this?” he mused, nodding toward the ripped fabric that left one pretty, taut breast completely bare.
“Cover me up if you don’t like what you see,” she challenged.
He actually laughed. She was constantly surprising him. “I think I’d better,” he murmured dryly, and pulled the shirt back over her, leaving her to button it again. “Dallas is at the window getting an education.”
“And I can tell how much he needs it,” she said with dry humor as Eb helped her back into her own seat.
“That makes two of you,” Eb told her. His eyes were kind, and now full of concern. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes.” She hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. “Eb, is it always like that?”
He frowned. “What?”
She looked up into his eyes. “Physical violence. Do you ever get to the point that it doesn’t make you sick inside?”
“I never have,” he said flatly. “I remember every face, every sound, every sick minute of what I’ve done in my life.” He looked at her, but he seemed to go far away. “You’d better go inside. I’ll take you and Stevie out to the ranch Thursday and Saturday and we’ll put in some more time.”
“For all the good it will do me,” she managed to say nervously.
“Don’t be like that,” he chided. “You got overpowered. People do, even ‘big, strong’ men. There’s no shame in losing a fight when you’ve given it all you’ve got.”
She smiled. “Think so?”
“I know so.” He touched her disheveled French knot. “You wore your hair down that spring afternoon,” he murmured softly. “I remember how it felt on my bare chest, loose and smelling of flowers.”
Her breath seemed to stick in her throat as she recalled the same memory. They had both been bare to the waist. She could close her eyes and feel the hair-roughened muscles of his chest against her own softness as he kissed her and kissed her…
“Sometimes,” he continued, “we get second chances.”
“Do we?” she whispered.
He touched her mouth gently. “Try not to dwell on what happened tonight,” he said. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Sally.”
That felt nice. She wished she could give him the same guarantee, but it seemed pretty ridiculous after her poor performance.
He seemed to read the thought right in her mind, and he burst out laughing. “Listen, lady, when I get through with you, you’ll be eating bad men raw,” he promised. “You’re just a beginner.”
“You aren’t.”
“That’s true. And not only in self-defense,” he added dryly. “You’d better go in.”
“I suppose so.” She picked at the buttons of the shirt he’d loaned her. “I’ll give it back. Eventually.”
“You look nice in it,” he had to admit. “You can keep it. We’ll try some more of my clothes on you and see how they look.”
She made a face at him as she opened the door. “Eb, do I have to go and see the sheriff?”
“You do. I’ll pick you up after school. Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “He won’t eat you. He’s a nice man. But you must see that we can’t let Lopez’s people get away with this.”
She felt a chill go down her arms as she remembered who Lopez was. “What will he do if I testify against his men?”
“You let me worry about that,” Eb told her, and his eyes were like green steel. “Nobody touches you without going through me.”
Her heart jumped right up into her throat as she stared at him. She was a modern woman, and she probably shouldn’t have enjoyed that passionate remark. But she did. Eb was a strong, assertive man who would want a woman to match him. Sally hadn’t been that woman at seventeen. But she was now. She could stand up to him and meet him on his own ground. It gave her a sense of pride.
“Debating if it’s proper for a modern woman to like being protected?” he chided with a wicked grin.
“You said yourself that none of us are invincible,” she pointed out. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to admire a man’s strength, especially when it’s just saved my neck.”
He made her feel confident, he gave her joy. It had been years since she’d laughed so much, enjoyed life so much. Odd that a man whose adult years had been imbued with such violence could be so tender.
“Okay now?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m okay.” She glanced toward the road and shivered a little. “They won’t come looking for me?”
“Not in that condition they won’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “And they’re very lucky,” he added, his whole face like drawn cord. “Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been so gentle.”
Both eyebrows went up at the imagery.
“You know what I was,” he said quietly. “Until comparatively recent years, I lived a violent, uncertain life. Part of the man I was is still in me. I won’t ever hurt you,” he added. “But I have to come to grips with the old life before I can begin a new one. That’s going to take time.”
“I think you’re saying something.”
“Why, yes, I am,” he mused, watching her. “I’m giving notice of my intentions.”
“Intentions?”
“Last time I stopped. Next time I won’t.”
Her mind wasn’t quite grasping what he was telling her. “You mean, with those men…?”
“I mean with you,” he said gently. “I want you very badly, and I’m not walking away this time.”
“You and what army?” she asked, aghast.
“I won’t need an army. But you might.” He smiled. “Go on in. I’m having the house watched. You’ll be safe, I promise.”
She pulled his shirt closer. “Thanks, Eb,” she said.
He shrugged. “I have to take care of my own. Try to sleep.”
She smiled at him. “Okay. You, too.”
He watched her go up onto the porch and into the house, waiting for Dallas, who came out tight-lipped with barely a word to Sally as he passed her.
He got into the truck with Eb and slammed the door.
“What happened to Sally?” he asked, putting his cane aside.
“Lopez’s men rushed the truck when she had a flat. I don’t know if it was premeditated,” he added coldly. “They could have lain in wait for her and caused the flat. The tire was almost bald, but it could have gone another few hundred miles.”
“She looked uneasy.”
“They assaulted her and may have raped her if I hadn’t shown up,” Eb said bluntly as he backed the truck and pulled out into the road. “I want to have another look, if the ambulance hasn’t picked them up yet.”
“You sent for an ambulance?” Dallas asked with mock surprise. “That’s new.”
“Well, we’re trying to blend in, aren’t we?” came the terse reply. He glared at the tall blond man. “Difficult to blend in if we let people die on the side of the road.”
“If you say so.”
They drove to where Sally’s pickup truck was still sitting, but there was no sign of the two men. The house nearby was dark. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
As Eb digested that, red lights flashed and a big boxy ambulance pulled up behind the pickup truck, followed closely by a deputy sheriff in a patrol car.
Eb pulled off the road and got out. He knew the deputy, Rich Burton, who was one of the department’s ablest members. They shook hands.
“Where are the victims?” Rich asked.
Eb grimaced. “Well, they were both lying right there when I took Sally home.”
The deputy and the ambulance guys looked toward the flattened grass, but there weren’t any men lying there.
“Unless one of you needs medical attention, we’ll be on our way,” one of the EMTs said with a wry glance.
“Both of the perps did,” Eb said quietly. “At least one of them has broken bones.”
The EMT gave him a wary look. “Not their legs, by the look of things.”
“No. Not their legs.”
The EMTs left and Rich joined Eb and Dallas beside the truck.
“Something’s going on at that house,” Rich said quietly. “I’ve had total strangers stop me and tell me they’ve seen suspicious activity, men carrying boxes in and out. That’s not all. Some holding company bought a huge tract of land adjoining Cy Parks’s place, and it’s filling up with building supplies. There’s a contractor been hired and a plan has gone to the county commission’s planning committee about a business starting up there.”
“How much do you know about the men who live here?” Eb asked coolly.
Rich shrugged. “Not as much as I’d like to. But my contacts tell me that there’s a drug lord named Manuel Lopez, and the talk is that these guys belong to him. They’re mules. They run his narcotics for him.”
Eb and Dallas exchanged quiet glances.
“What sort of business are we talking about?” Eb queried.
“Don’t know. There’s a huge steel warehouse going up behind Parks’s place,” Rich replied, and he looked worried. “If I were making a guess, and it is just a guess, I’d say somebody had distribution in mind.”