“We were just talking about you,” Hollister chuckled.
“Was it something printable?” John asked as he joined them at the table.
“Mostly.” He held up a cup. “Want coffee?”
“I have too much respect for the beverage to ever drink it out of that counterfeit machine,” John said haughtily.
“It makes very nice hot chocolate,” Sunny said in its defense.
“It also steals dollar bills,” John muttered. “Someone should give it an attitude adjustment.”
“You wouldn’t ever have gone down to Palo Verde with a baseball bat?” Hollister asked hesitantly, and with a grin.
John chuckled in spite of himself as he pulled up a chair and straddled it. “No, but I understand the officer who did is still paying off the damage on a monthly basis. The circuit judge put the fear of God into him.”
“What am I missing?” Sunny asked, her eyes glancing off John’s. A faint blush colored her high cheekbones and he seemed to relax, all of a sudden.
She didn’t realize that he’d seen her with Hollister and that he was suddenly jealous. The other man drew women like flowers drew bees. Her flush delighted him, because it was proof that she was more attracted to him than the good-looking blond man sitting with her. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind since he’d seen her in the cathedral. Crazy, to feel possessive about a woman he hardly knew!
“There was a soft drink machine in the police department in Palo Verde,” John told her, bringing his attention back to the incident Hollister had alluded to. “It ate dollar bills and refused to give either change or soft drinks. One of the officers accidentally hit it with a baseball bat several times and it had to be replaced. So the story goes.”
She burst out laughing. “How in the world can you accidentally hit a soft drink machine with a baseball bat several times?!”
“Funny, the judge asked the same question,” John replied, his black eyes twinkling.
“And what was the officer’s excuse?” she asked.
“Muscle spasms,” he said with a grin.
She chuckled. John loved the way she laughed. It made her look very pretty, with her face animated and those dark eyes bright with humor.
“Needless to say, the muscle spasm defense failed,” Hollister chuckled. “Actually, I had a similar mishap with an office shredder after it ate my credit card,” he confessed. “I use it so often that I generally leave it on. It’s automatic. So I accidentally dropped my card when I pulled it out of my wallet, and the damned thing shredded it.”
“I hope the issuing institution was reasonable about replacing it,” John asked amusedly.
“They were, after they stopped laughing,” Hollister said, sighing. “But the captain at the time wasn’t as understanding about the big dent in the shredder and the matching dent in the wall. I ended up buying a new shredder and paying to have the wall fixed. I’m still being ridden high about it, at the office.”
“I shot a vacuum cleaner once,” John confessed. He laughed. “I hate housekeeping. We have a woman who lives on the ranch and does it for us part-time. But she was down with the flu for a week, and I was left with the chore. Damned things! You have to drag them around furniture and they catch on every single thing they can find.”
“You shot it?” Sunny asked, appalled. “Your poor neighbors!”
“I don’t have neighbors,” he returned. “I have a cattle ranch near Jacobsville, down in Jacobs County. Closest neighbor is about three miles away.”
“Gosh, all that space,” Sunny said with a wistful smile. “I live in a renovated broom closet.”
They both stared at her.
“Kidding,” she said. “It’s an apartment, but if I had mice, I’d have to move. There wouldn’t be enough room for all of us.”
They both smiled.
“I was going to call you when I left here,” Hollister told John. “We have a new shooting victim.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here,” John said. “I’ve got a police psychologist out in the waiting room. I need permission to question the patient.”
“He’s asleep right now,” Sunny volunteered. “He’s had a lot of pain, so the doctor ordered medication that would put him to sleep about two hours ago.”
“To sleep for how long, do you think?” John asked.
“A few hours, I should think,” she said. “He didn’t sleep last night at all. He was in and out of lucid speech. He just said that he loved wolves and his boss was going to feed some snakes to them.”
John and Hollister exchanged worried looks.
“I’m going to put together a task force,” Hollister said. “I’d like to have you on it.”
“I’m game.” John sighed. “Well, I’d better send my psychologist home. She gets paid by the hour.” He shivered. “Keeps snakes.”
Hollister’s eyes widened. “Emma Cain.”
“Well, yes.” John was surprised. “How in the world...?”
Hollister sighed and smiled secretively. “I have a checkered past. She was part of it.” He glanced at his watch and got to his feet. “When do you go back on duty?” he asked Sunny.
“Not for three days,” she said. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ll ask Merrie York. She takes the shift when you’re off, doesn’t she?”
“Usually.”
“I know her brother, Stuart,” he said. “We have a mutual friend, Hayes Carson, who’s sheriff down in Jacobs County.”
“I know Hayes,” John said, chuckling. “He’s had to help me with a few issues out in the county. He’s a great guy. Odd father-in-law,” he added, tongue in cheek.
“Yes,” Hollister chuckled. “His father-in-law is the biggest drug lord in the North American continent.”
“What?” Sunny asked, aghast.
“It’s okay,” John assured her. “He doesn’t practice his vocation in the United States. He has a brand-new granddaughter. No way he’s risking his visiting privileges by breaking the law around Jacobs County.”
Hollister sighed. “Still, half the undercover narcs in south Texas are employed by him.”
“Does he know this?” Sunny wondered.
“We’ve never been sure,” John said with a laugh.
“Didn’t his enforcer work for one of those Middle East dictators who was killed?”
“Former enforcer,” John replied. “He’s the son of Dane Lassiter, who heads a well-known Houston detective agency. From what we hear, the son is actually a fed working several undercover cases with international perpetrators.”
“Dangerous work,” Hollister said.
“He graduated from MIT with a degree in theoretical physics,” John mused. “Hell of a profession for an egghead.”
“MIT.” Hollister shook his head. “Now I’ve heard everything.” He got up to shake hands with Ruiz and smile at Sunny. “Thanks for the help,” he added. “You take care of yourself.”
“You do the same,” she replied and laughed. “I’m just a nurse. You’re right in the front lines in any gang warfare.”
“Goes with the job. And I love the job. I’ll call you,” he added to John.
They both watched him leave.
There was an awkward silence.
“He likes blondes, and he’s been around the world more than once,” John said abruptly, and his eyes were faintly hostile.
“It’s not like that,” she said gently. “He was the detective on the case when I...” She hesitated. “It was a long time ago.”
She picked up her purse and coat. “I have to go.”
“Give me a minute, before you leave. Please,” he added with a smile.
He walked out toward the waiting room. She wondered why he wanted her to wait. She wanted to go to bed.
But he wasn’t long. He came back in not more than the minute he’d promised.
“I’ll walk you home,” he said.
Her heart jumped. She just stared at him. “But, it’s broad daylight,” she stammered.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and smiled at her. “There are manholes,” he pointed out.
She blinked. “Yes?”
He shrugged. “You could fall in one. I’d be there to pull you out again.”
She laughed, flushed, delighted at his interest and without the experience to hide it. “Okay, then,” she said in her soft voice.
He smiled and jerked his head toward the door.
* * *
The parking lot was full. During the holiday season, there were many visitors on the children’s wards. Even Santa Claus made weekly visits to ask children what they wanted for Christmas.
“Still brooding about Bess, aren’t you?” he asked after a minute.
She sighed. “It’s hard, losing little patients,” she confessed.
“It’s hard losing people you care about.”
“Yes.”
She recalled her visit to the church to light candles and that he’d said he lit them, too, for lost members of his own family.
“What did you mean, that Hollister was the detective on your case?”
Her steps slowed. It was painful to talk about it.
He reached down and tucked her soft hand into his big one, lending her its warmth and strength. “Tell me,” he said gently.
She drew in a breath. The parking lot was deserted. There was nobody close by. They might as well have been alone in the world.
“There was a gang war,” she said, “six years ago. The Lobitos wanted to get even with a family that lived in the apartment my mother and brother and I had just moved into. They didn’t know that the former tenants were gone.” Her eyes closed on the pain. She could still hear the gunshots, hear the mocking cries outside as glass shattered and her mother screamed, and her little brother fell to the floor covered in blood.
He caught her to him, enveloped her in his arms, held her close and rocked her. “How old was your brother?”
“Four,” she said brokenly, tears rolling down her cheeks. “He was just four years old!”
“Dear God,” he whispered reverently, and held her closer.
The embrace gave her enough comfort to continue. “It was Rado,” she said bitterly. “Rado and the four boys who still run with him. They gave up the boy who fired the shots to save themselves. He was tried as an adult, and he’s on death row.” She ground her teeth together. “I wish Rado was sitting in the cell beside him. He’s killed so many people. They know, and they can’t do a thing. He’s always got an alibi!”
He drew the flower scent of her hair in through his nostrils. She smelled good. He liked the way she felt, close against him, too.
She liked it far too much. After a minute, she drew back and he loosened his hold. “Thanks,” she whispered, without looking at him.
“You’ve gone without comfort, haven’t you?” he asked, as if he knew.
She looked up, grimacing. “It’s...hard for me, letting people get close.”
“Yeah. I know all about that.” His face was hard with memories. “When I lost my wife, I had nobody else. Well, maybe one person,” he said, not mentioning that it was his son, Tonio. “But I drew into myself. I couldn’t bear to talk about her. She was so young. I thought we’d have years and years. Nobody knew she had heart trouble. She got into an argument at work. She never argued,” he added with evident sorrow. “She was the sweetest woman I ever knew. Her boss didn’t like her. Maria was very conventional. She went to church, loved to knit...” He swallowed hard. The memories were painful. “Her boss was one of these new women, who look down on anyone conventional. She rode Maria, all the time. She pushed her too far one day and Maria talked back.” His eyes closed. “She just...died. Right there.”
“I’m sorry,” she said huskily. She pressed close, holding him, as he’d held her. She laid her cheek on his broad chest. “I’m so sorry.”
His hand tangled in her soft blond hair. “I thought her boss didn’t give a damn,” he said through his teeth. “I was going to see her the next day, after the funeral. I was going to give her hell.”
“What happened?”
“She took a handful of pills, very strong pills. They found her body the next morning.”
She lifted her head, shocked.
“Maria wouldn’t have wanted that,” he added quietly. “She’d have forgiven even the woman who helped kill her. It was the sort of person she was.” His face hardened. “I’m not like that. I’m vindictive. I hit back.”
She drew in a long breath. “I don’t have the heart for revenge,” she replied. “My mother always said that God uses people to teach us things. That sometimes a person who hurt your feelings did it for a reason, to make you see the world a different way, to make you understand an opposite position.” She searched his black eyes. “She said that people came into your life because you needed them to. Some people make you happy. Some make you sad. But there’s always a reason. There are no coincidences.”
He lifted her ponytail and ran his fingers through her long silky hair. “So why are you in my life, now?” he teased.
“I was going to ask why you were in mine,” she returned with a pert smile.
He shrugged. “Maybe we’re going to solve some big crime together and make headlines, huh?”
She grinned. “I would love to solve a big crime.”
“I’ll keep my eye out for one,” he promised. He looked around. People were coming into the parking lot. “We should probably get moving before we become a tourist attraction.”
“For that, you have to carry a controversial sign,” she assured him.
“Point taken.”
He kept her hand in his while they walked. “This isn’t the best neighborhood,” he said as they approached her apartment. “And the memories must be pretty bad, if this is where you lived when it happened.”
“It is,” she replied. “But I know the landlord. He’s very protective and he hasn’t raised the rent once, in all these years. He’s filthy rich. He said he likes providing a safe haven for people like me, whose jobs are to help other people. I have neighbors who are rescue personnel, cops, public defenders...the list goes on and on.”
“Nice guy,” he commented.
She grinned. “You’d pass out if I told you his name.”
“Try me.”
She stopped walking and looked up at him. “It’s Marcus. Marcus Carrera.”
His thick eyebrows arched. “The mobster?”
“He isn’t. Not anymore. I mean, he still owns casinos and things. But he’s married to a Jacobs County girl, and they have a little boy. I know her through Merrie York.”
“Small world,” he mused.
“It’s that star,” she said, tapping it through the shepherd’s coat. “You don’t see much of the bright side of life. You see horrors.”
He searched her brown eyes. “So do you.”
“I never used to think I could bear to be a nurse. I was squeamish. But after my little brother died, and my mother, I went into nurse’s training. I kept thinking, if I’d known any sort of first aid, I might have saved them.”
He smoothed his big hands up the sleeves of her soft coat. “My best friend had a father who beat up his mother, and the kids. One night, he got stinking drunk and hit his wife. My friend intervened.” His face hardened. “His father hit him over the head with a fire poker. Killed him instantly. The father went to prison. He was sorry, when he sobered up. But my friend was still dead. I wanted to help make sure that it didn’t happen to some other innocent child.” He sighed. “But I’m not doing so much good right now. One dead kid, another wounded one, and now one almost dead, and in my district.”
“It takes time to solve criminal cases,” she pointed out. “But you’ll get the perpetrators. After all, you’re a Texas Ranger.” She smiled.
He traced her soft mouth with just the tip of his finger. He loved the way she flushed when he did that. She was so deliciously innocent. “What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked.
“You mean besides helping the president with his foreign policy and suggesting new legislation to the House?” she asked blithely.
He burst out laughing. “I was going to offer you a fast-food hamburger, but I can see that you’re far too important for that,” he teased.
She grinned. Her heart seemed to be flying overhead. “I love hamburgers.”
“Do you?”
“When?”
“Eleven?”
She nodded.
“Wear your hair down, will you?” he added.
“Why?”
“I love long hair,” he said softly. “And yours is sexy as hell.”
Her lips parted. “My hair?”
He nodded. “Men have preferences,” he mused. “Some like big...” He cleared his throat. “Suffice it to say, I like hair.”
She laughed softly. He wasn’t crude. She knew what he was going to say, just the same. “I’m challenged in that area,” she pointed out.
His eyes fell to her chest. “Oh, no,” he said with a tender smile. “Not challenged at all.”
She could have flown. She’d never known such a connection to anyone before, least of all a man. She couldn’t believe that he wanted to take her out. She shouldn’t go. She couldn’t offer him anything, especially not a casual affair. Wasn’t that what men expected these days, when they took a woman somewhere? She had so little experience with men...
He tipped her chin up. He read her worried expression very well. “Just a hamburger,” he said softly. He smiled sadly, thinking of Tonio, of how impossible it would be to let himself become involved with her romantically. Still, he was becoming fond of her, and it was just a hamburger, after all. “Friends.”
Her eyes lit up. She could manage that, surely! “Friends,” she replied huskily.
He winked. “See you tomorrow at eleven, rubia,” he teased. “Stay out of trouble.”
“Why? Don’t you like getting the opportunity to practice your profession?” she asked dryly.
“Not that way, and certainly not with you,” he returned. “Keep your doors locked,” he added.
“I always do.” She smiled. “Don’t get shot.”
He pulled back his coat to reveal the gun on his belt. “Bullet deterrent,” he replied. “Works wonders.”
She laughed, waved and went inside. She felt happier than she had in years.
* * *
But, of course, once she was alone, she started brooding about the future. He was a gorgeous man. He could have had any woman he wanted. Sunny was just a new face, a new personality, to him right now. But if he wanted to take things further, there were too many risks. She didn’t want him to ever find out why she never dated, why she never encouraged men.
She was twenty-three years old and she’d never had a love affair. She’d never even had a serious romance. She was green as grass and there were reasons, very good reasons, why she could never be intimate with a man.
Was it fair to John to let this continue? She was vulnerable when she was with him. What if she lost her heart, and then he found out? What would become of her, afterward?
She brooded about it all night. The next day, she decided, she was going to have to refuse the date. It would be for the best. She had nothing to give him. It might hurt now, in fact it was going to hurt very badly, but it would save a lot of heartache later on.
* * *
But she didn’t call it off. She had a dozen excuses. She didn’t have his cell phone number. She didn’t want to have to call the Ranger office and ask for it, and they probably would want to know why or they wouldn’t give it to her. And on and on. In the end, she just couldn’t call it off. She wanted his company too much. She paced until it was time for him to come and pick her up. Eleven o’clock arrived. But he didn’t.
He didn’t seem like the sort of man who stood up dates. Not that you could tell—
Her cell phone rang. It took a minute for her to realize that it had. She picked it up. So few people had the number. Mostly, people at work...
“Hello?” she asked hesitantly.
“It’s me,” a deep, soft voice came over the line. “I got your number from your supervisor—I’m interviewing you about the shooting victim on your ward,” he added with a chuckle.
“Abuse of power,” she began, feeling elated.
“Guilty. Listen, I’m sorry, there’s been a robbery. I have to stand you up.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding. She was delighted and sad and uncertain. “That’s okay,” she said. It was for the best. Or maybe he was just letting her down easy.
“How about we try it again tomorrow, same time?” he asked abruptly, and her heart started beating again. “I have a wild life. I’m pretty much on call twenty-four hours a day if I’m needed, and you can’t say no to a crime in progress. It’s a hectic life.”
“It’s okay,” she said at once.
“Tomorrow?” he persisted.
Say no, she told herself. Say it! Say it right now!
“Okay,” she said softly.
He chuckled. “I’ll try to make it all the way to your door next time. Honest. See you, rubia.”
He hung up. She turned off the phone and muttered at her own weakness. This, she told her stupid heart, was not going to end well.
* * *
There was something in the back of John’s mind about the gang problem. He couldn’t quite access it, but he knew he’d seen something, heard something, about Los Diablos Lobitos and a case several years ago. Talking to Sunny had stirred a memory.
They had a Ranger who worked cold cases. He had an assistant, but most of the legwork was up to Sgt. Colter Banks. He had an office in the basement of Rangers HQ in San Antonio. If anybody could connect something, it would be Banks.
So John drifted down to the basement between phone calls and working up reports to talk to him.
Banks was in his midthirties, tall and rangy with black eyes and dark brown hair. He was personable, but on the job, there weren’t many law enforcement officers who were more relentless when on a case.
“No windows,” John murmured as he tapped on the door and walked in. “I’d get claustrophobic in here.”
Banks lifted a thick eyebrow and chuckled. “If I had a ranch the size of yours, I’d get claustrophobic in a building!”
John shrugged. “Dust and cattle and headaches twelve months a year.”
“Fresh beef.” Banks sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a nice twelve-ounce steak with mashed potatoes and green beans...”
“Haven’t you had lunch?”
Banks glowered at him. “Lunch is for people who don’t work cold cases. I’m knee-deep in an investigation that suddenly went hot. I may get a guy out of prison who’s served five years for a crime he didn’t actually commit.”
“Nice work.”
“I said I might, not that I would,” Banks replied, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. “It’s a lot of legwork, and there’s just me and Clancey to do it.”
“Clancey?”
“Oh, sure, but when they start handing out the credit, it’ll be, ‘Oh, what a great job Banks did! Isn’t he wonderful?’” came a mocking voice from behind another door.
“Oh, can it,” Banks muttered. “You get plenty of credit.”
A woman with short dark hair and pale gray eyes glared at him as she came into view in the doorway. She was slender and tall, wearing jeans and boots and a blue-checkered, long-sleeved shirt. “I never get credit,” she retorted. “I spend my whole life in here, poring over dusty files, while the man of my dreams wanders around out there—” she indicated the general direction of the staircase “—being stalked by predatory females!”
“Yeah? Well, you shot the last predatory person who was seen around here,” he reminded her.
“I never!”
“We had to take him to the emergency room,” Banks told John.
“He shot himself,” Clancey replied. “It was his own fault. He was trying to impress me with the size of his gun and it went off accidentally.”
“Not to hear him tell it,” Banks drawled.
“It wouldn’t have gone off accidentally if he hadn’t had his hand on my butt!” she said with towering indignation.
“Was he a Ranger?” John asked, appalled.
“No, he wasn’t a Ranger,” she said curtly, “he was a Reserve Deputy Sheriff serving papers in the building to one of our workers who’s being divorced.”
“Then what was he doing down here?” John asked, curious.
“I went up to get a soft drink and he followed me down here into the black pit of doom,” Clancey muttered, glaring at Banks. “He—” she pointed to the other Ranger “—was offered an office in the building where the district attorney has his, where all the pertinent files for old cases are kept. But, oh, no, he likes it down here in the dungeon!”
“It’s not a dungeon. And it’s quiet. Usually,” Banks added under his breath.
“Well, that’s why the volunteer thought it would be a good place to chase women, obviously,” she added.
“There aren’t any women down here. There’s just you, kid,” Banks said with faint venom.
She drew herself up. “I’ll have you know I just hit twenty-two!”
“I’ll order a case of Ensure for you,” he promised, alluding to a protein drink for older people.
“Order it for yourself, why don’t you, you old fossil?” she shot back, looking him up and down. “One job. There was one job going in the whole city, and I was desperate enough to take it.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Why?” she asked. “Why didn’t I just keep looking for that dishwashing job I’ve always dreamed of doing?”
“I’ve got dishes,” John volunteered.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m going through the sixth box now,” she told Banks. “And I still haven’t found one single reference to that man you’re looking for information about. I’ll go blind!”
“You’ve got more lights in there than I’ve got in here,” he pointed out. “I’m trying to save an innocent man.”
“No, I’m trying to save an innocent man. You’re talking to people!”
Banks’s dark eyes narrowed. “I swear to God, I’ve killed chickens that didn’t complain half as much as you do!”
“You heartless man!” she said. “Poor, fluffy little things...!”
“Floured. Fried. Crispy and delicious,” Banks said with a wistful smile. “Nobody cooked fried chicken like my mother.”
“Chicken,” John scoffed. “I’ll take a juicy steak any day.”
“Poor, sweet little cows,” she began, glaring at John.
“Steers,” he corrected. “We don’t eat heifers or bulls or cows. We eat steers.”
She stared at him.
“It’s useless to try and share knowledge with her,” Banks said, waving his hand in her direction. “You can’t fix stupid.”
“No, you can’t, that’s why the captain busted you back to sergeant,” she told Banks with a vicious smile.
“At least I don’t shoot men in my own office,” he retorted.
“Peasant,” she said haughtily and went back into her office.
“Nasturtium,” he called after her.
“And will you stop calling me that?!” she snapped.
Banks hid a smile. Her door slammed.
“Nasturtium?” John asked.
“It’s a flower. If you call her one, she leaves you alone, at least, temporarily.” He shook his head. “Never a dull moment down here since they stuck me with her,” he added, his mouth turning down at one side. “I’ve thought of accusing myself of a crime so they’d lock me up and I’d be rid of her. But with my luck, they’d arrest her and with our unisex society being what it is these days, we’d be sharing a cell.” He looked up. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m not sure.”
Banks chuckled. “Well, you’re honest.”
John took off his hat and tossed it onto a chair, running his fingers through his thick hair. “I’ve got one dead kid and another missing wounded one, and one half-dead one, all three members of warring gangs. I keep trying to remember something similar, years ago, but I can’t quite—”
“McCarthy,” Banks said quietly. “Melinda McCarthy.”
John drew in a quick breath. “Yes. Of course!”