SALLY FOUND HERSELF JUMPING at every odd noise all day Saturday. Jessica could feel the tension that she couldn’t see.
“You have to trust Eb,” she told her niece while Stevie was watching cartoons in the living room. “He knows what he’s doing. Lopez won’t succeed.”
Sally grimaced over her second cup of coffee. Across the kitchen table from her, Jess looked serene. She wished she could feel the same way.
“I’m not worried about us,” she pointed out. “It’s Stevie…”
“Dallas won’t let anything happen to Stevie,” came the quiet reply.
Sally smiled, remembering the broken objects in the living room the night before. She drew a lazy circle around the lip of her coffee cup while she searched for the right words. “At least, the two of you are speaking.”
“Yes. Barely,” her aunt acknowledged wryly. “But Stevie likes him now. They started comparing statistics on wrestlers. They both like wrestling, you see. Dallas knows all sorts of holds. He wrestled on his college team.”
“Wrestling!” Sally chuckled.
“Apparently there’s a lot more to the professional matches than just acting ability,” Jessica said dryly. “I’m finding it rather interesting, even if I can’t see what they’re doing. They explained the holds to me.”
“Common threads,” Sally murmured.
“And one stitch at a time. What did you think of Cord Romero?”
“He’s the strangest ex-schoolteacher I’ve ever met,” Sally said flatly.
“He was never cut out for that line of work,” Jessica said, sipping black coffee. “But demolition work isn’t much of a profession, either. Pity. He’ll be two lines of type on the obituary page one day, and it’s such a waste.”
“Eb says Maggie’s running from him.”
“Relentlessly,” Jess said dryly. “I always thought she got engaged to Eb just to shake Cord up, but it didn’t work. He doesn’t see her.”
“He’s in the same line of work Eb was,” Sally pointed out, “and Eb said that his job was why she called off the wedding.”
“I think she just came to her senses. If you love a man, you don’t have a lot to say about his profession if it’s a long-standing one. Cord’s wife was never cut out for life on the edge. Maggie, now, once had a serious run-in with a couple of would-be muggers. She had a big flashlight in her purse and she used it like a mace.” She laughed softly. “They both had to have stitches before they went off to jail. Cord laughed about it for weeks afterward. No, she had the strength to marry Eb—she simply didn’t love him.”
Sally traced the handle of her cup. “Eb says he isn’t carrying a torch for her.”
“Why should he be?” she asked. “She’s a nice woman, but he never really loved her. He wanted stability and he thought marriage would give it to him. As it turned out, he found his stability after a bloody firefight in Africa, and it was right here in Jacobsville.”
“Do you think he’ll ever marry?” she fished.
“When he’s ready,” Jess replied. “But I don’t think it will be Maggie. Just in case you wondered,” she teased.
Sally pushed back a wisp of hair from her eyes. “Jess, do you know where your informant is now, the one that Lopez wants you to name?”
She shook her head. “We lost touch just after Lopez was arrested. I understand that my informant went back to Mexico. I haven’t tried to contact…the person.”
“What if the informant betrays himself?”
“You’re clutching at straws, dear,” Jessica said gently. “That isn’t going to happen. And I’m not giving a witness up to the executioner in cold blood even to save myself and my family.”
Sally smiled. “No. I know you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t, either. But it’s scary to be in this situation.”
“It is. But it will be over one day, and we’ll get back to normal. Whatever happens, happens.” Jess reminded her niece, “It’s like that old saying, when your time’s up, it’s up. We may not know what we’re doing, but God always does. And He doesn’t have tunnel vision.”
“Point taken. I’ll try to stop worrying.”
“You should. Eb is one of the best in the world at what he does. Lopez knows it, too. He won’t rush in headfirst, despite his threat.”
“What if he has a missile launcher?” Sally asked with sudden fear.
Miles away in a communications hot room, a man with green eyes nodded his head and shot an order to a subordinate. It wouldn’t hurt one bit to check out the intelligence for that possibility. Sally might be nervous, but she had good instincts. And a guardian angel in cowboy boots.
* * *
MANUEL LOPEZ WAS A SMALL man with big ambition. He was nearing forty, balding, cynical and mercenary to the soles of his feet. He stared out the top floor picture window of his four-story mansion at the Gulf of Mexico and cursed. One of his subordinates, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, had just brought him some unwelcome news and he was livid.
“There are only a handful of men,” the subordinate said in quiet Spanish. “Not a problem if we send a large force against them.”
Lopez turned and glared at the man from yellow-brown eyes. “Yes, and if we send a large force, the FBI and the DEA will also send a large force!”
“It would be too late by then,” the man replied with a shrug.
“I have enough federal problems in the United States as it is,” Lopez growled. “I do not anticipate giving them an even better reason to send an undercover unit after me here! Scott has influence with his government. I want the name of the informant, not to wade in and kill the woman and her protectors.”
The other man stared at the spotless white carpet. “She will never give up the name of her informant,” he said simply. “Not even for the sake of her child.”
Lopez turned fully to look at the man. “Because now it is only words, the threat. We must make it very real, you understand? At midnight tonight in Jacobsville, precisely at midnight, you will have a helicopter fly over the house and drop a smoke bomb. A big one.” His eyes narrowed and he smiled. “This will be the attack they anticipate. But not the real one, you understand?”
“They will probably have missiles,” the man said quietly.
“And they are far too soft to use them,” came the sneering reply. “This is why we will ultimately win. I have no scruples. Now, listen. I will want a man to remove one of the elementary school janitors. He can be drugged or threatened, I have no interest in the method, just get him out of the way for one day. Then you will have one of our men take his place. The substitute must know what the child looks like and which class he is in. He is to be taken very covertly, so that nothing out of the way is projected until it is too late and we have him. You understand?”
“Yes,” the man replied respectfully. “Where is he to be held?”
Lopez smiled coldly. “At the rental house near the Johnson home,” he said. “Will that not be an irony to end all ironies?” His eyes darkened. “But he is not to be harmed. That must be made very clear,” he added in tones that chilled. “You remember what happened to the man who went against my orders and set fire to my enemy’s house in Wyoming without waiting for the man to be alone, and a five-year-old boy was killed?”
The other man swallowed and nodded quickly.
“If one hair on this boy’s head is harmed,” he added, “I will see to it that the man responsible fares even worse than his predecessor. I am a violent man, but I do not kill children. It is, perhaps, my only virtue.” He waved his hand. “Let me know when my orders have been carried out.”
“Yes. At once.”
He watched the man go and his odd yellow-brown eyes narrowed. He had watched his mother and siblings die at the hands of a guerrilla leader at the age of four. His father had been a poor laborer who could barely earn enough to provide one meal a day for the two of them, so his childhood had been spent scavenging for food like an animal, hiding in the shadows to avoid being tortured by the invaders. His father had not been as fortunate, but the two of them had managed to work their way to the States, to Victoria, Texas, when he was ten. He watched his father scrape and bow as a janitor and hated the sight. He had vowed that when he was a man, he would never know poverty again, regardless of what it cost him. And despite his father’s anguish, he had embarked very quickly on a path to easy money.
He looked down at the white carpet, a dream of his from youth, and at the wealth with which he surrounded himself. He dealt in drugs and death. He was wealthy and immensely powerful. A word from him could topple heads of state. But it was an empty, cold, bitter existence. He had lived at first only for vengeance, for the ability and the means to avenge his mother and his baby brother and sister. That accomplished, he wanted wealth and power. One step led to another, until he was in over his head, first as a murderer, then as a thief, and finally, as a drug lord. He was ruthless and he knew that one day his sins would catch up with him, but first he was going to know who had sold him out to the authorities two years before. What irony that vengeance had led him to power, and now it was vengeance that had almost brought him down. He cursed the woman Jessica for refusing to give him the name. He had only discovered her part in his arrest six months before. She would pay now. He would have the name of his betrayer, whatever the cost!
He stared down at the rocks and winced as he saw once again, in his memory, the floating white dress and the equally white face and open, dead eyes of the woman he’d wanted even more than the name of the person who had betrayed him. Isabella, he thought with anguish. He had never loved, not until Isabella came into his home as a housekeeper, the sister of one of his lieutenants’ friends. She had talked to him, admired him, teased him as if he were a boy. She had made herself so necessary to him that he told her things that he told no one else. She had made him want to be clean, to give up his decadent life, to have a family, a home. But when he had approached her ardently, she had suddenly wanted no part of him. In a fit of rage when she pushed him away at a party on his yacht, he hit her. She went over the rails and into the ocean, vanishing abruptly under the keel of the boat.
He had immediately regretted the act, but it was too late. His men had searched for her in the water until daybreak before he let them give up the search, only to find her washed up on the beach, dead, when he arrived back at his mansion. Her death had cheapened him, cheapened his life. He was deeply sorry that his temper had pushed him to such an act, that he cost himself the most precious thing in his life. He had killed her. He was damned, he thought. Damned eternally. And probably he deserved to be.
Since that night, two years ago, just before his arrest in the United States for narcotic trafficking, he had no other thought than to find the man who had betrayed him. Nothing made him happy since her loss, not even the pretty young woman who sang at a club in Cancún just recently. He had taken a fancy to her because she reminded him of Isabella. He had ordered his henchmen to bring her to him one night after her performance. He had enjoyed her, but her violent revulsion had angered him and she, too, had felt his wrath. She had taken her own life, jumped from a high balcony rather than submit to him a second time. Her death had wounded him, but not as deeply as the loss of Isabella. Nothing, he was certain, would ever give him such anguish and remorse again. He thought of the woman Jessica and her son, of the fear she would experience when he had her child. Then, he thought angrily, she would give him the name of her informant. She would have to. And, at last, he would have his vengeance for the betrayal that had sent him to an American prison.
* * *
EB HADN’T COME NEAR the house all day. After Stevie was tucked up in bed, Jessica and Sally sat together in the dimly lit living room and watched the clock strike midnight.
“It’s time,” Sally said huskily, stiff with nerves.
Jessica only nodded. Like Sally, her frame was rigid. She had made her decision, the only decision possible. Now they were all going to pay the consequences for it.
Even as the thought crawled through her mind, she heard the sudden whir of a helicopter closing in.
“Get down!” Jessica called to Sally, sliding onto the big throw rug full-length. She felt Sally beside her as the helicopter came even closer and a flash, followed by an explosion, shook the roof.
Smoke came down the chimney, filling the room. Outside, the whir of the helicopter was accompanied by small arms fire and the sounds of bullets hitting something hard. Then that sound was abruptly interrupted by a sudden whooshing sound. Right on the heels of that came a violent explosion that lit up the whole sky and then the unmistakable sound of falling debris.
“There went the chopper,” Jessica said huskily. “Sally, are you all right?”
“Yes. We have to get out,” she said, coughing. “The smoke is going to choke us!”
She helped Jessica to her feet and started her down the hall to the front door while she went to grab Stevie up out of his bed and rush down the same hall with him in her arms. It was like a nightmare, but she didn’t have time to count the cost or worry about the outcome. She was doing what was necessary to save them, in the quickest possible time. She could only pray that they wouldn’t run out right into the arms of Lopez’s men.
She caught up with Jess, who was feeling her way along the wall. Taking her by the arm, with Stevie close, she propelled them to the front door, unlocked it, and rushed out onto the porch.
Eb was running toward them, but an Eb that Sally didn’t recognize at first. He was dressed completely in black with a face mask on, carrying a small automatic weapon. Other men, similarly dressed, were already going around the back of the house.
“Come with me,” Eb called, herding them into the forest and into a four-wheel-drive vehicle. “Lock the doors and stay put until we check out the house,” he said.
He was gone even as the words died on the air. Stevie huddled close to his mother while Sally watched Eb’s stealthy but rapid approach toward the house, her heart racing madly. Even though the attack had been expected, it was frightening.
A tap on the window next to Jessica on the passenger side made them all jump. Dallas pulled off his face mask, smiling as he replaced a walkie-talkie in his belt. “Open the window,” he said.
Sally fumbled with the key in the ignition and powered the passenger side window down.
“We got the chopper,” he said. “But it’s only a smoke bomb in the house, irritating but not deadly. Lopez is a man of his word. He did attack at midnight. Pity about the chopper,” he added with glittery eyes. “That will set him back a little small change.”
Sally didn’t ask the obvious question, but she knew that somebody had to be piloting that helicopter. She felt sick inside, now that the danger was past.
“Is everyone all right?” Jessica asked. “We heard shots.”
“The chopper was well-equipped with weapons,” Dallas said. “But he wasn’t a very good shot.”
“Thank God,” Jessica said heavily.
Dallas reached in and touched her face gently, pausing to run a rough hand over Stevie’s tousled hair. “Don’t be afraid,” he said softly. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Jessica held his hand to her cheek and choked back a sob. Dallas bent to touch his mouth to her wet eyes.
Impulsively Stevie leaned across his mother to hug the big blond man, too. Watching them, Sally felt empty and alone. They were already a family, even if they hadn’t realized it.
Dallas’s walkie-talkie erupted in a burst of static. “All clear,” Eb’s voice came back to them. “I’m phoning the sheriff while the others open the windows and turn on the attic fan to get this smoke out of here. Then I’ll lock up.”
“What about…” Dallas began.
“We’ll take the women and Stevie home with us,” he said. “No sense in leaving them here for the rest of the night. Sally?”
Dallas moved the walkie-talkie to her mouth. “Yes?” she said, shaken.
“Come in and help me find what you need in the way of clothes for all three of you. Dallas, take Jess and Stevie back to the house. We’ll catch up.”
“Sure thing.”
Sally got out of the vehicle, still in her jeans and sneakers and sweatshirt, her long hair falling out of its braid. Dallas got in under the wheel as she walked back to the house. She heard the engine roar and glanced back to see the utility vehicle pull out of the yard. At least Jess and Stevie were safe. But she felt shaken to the soles of her sneakers.
Eb was in the smoky living room, having just hung up the phone. His mask was in one hand, dangling along with the small machine gun. He looked tough and angry as he glanced at Sally’s white face. He didn’t say a word. He just held out his arm.
Sally ran to him, and he gathered her up in his arms and held her tight while she shivered from the shock of it all.
“I’m no wimp, honest,” she whispered in a choked attempt at humor. “But I’m not used to people bombing my house.”
He chuckled deeply and hugged her close. “Only a smoke bomb, baby,” he said gently. “Noisy and frightening, but not dangerous unless it set fire to something. He had to make a statement, you see. Lopez is a man of his word.”
“Damn Lopez,” she muttered.
“Amen.”
Around them, men were pouring over the house. Eb escorted Sally down the hall to her bedroom.
“Get what you need together,” he said, “but only essentials. I’d like to get you out of here very soon after the sheriff arrives.”
“The sheriff…?”
“It’s his jurisdiction,” he told her. “I’m sanctioned, if that’s what the worried look is about,” he added when he saw her face. He smiled. “I wouldn’t take the law into my own hands. Not in this country, anyway,” he added with a grin.
“Thank goodness,” she said heavily. “I had visions of trying to bail you out of jail.”
“Would you?” he teased.
“Of course.”
She looked so solemn that the smile faded from his lips. He gathered a handful of her thick blond hair and pulled her wan face under his. His grip was a little tight, and the look in his green eyes was glittery. “Danger is an aphrodisiac, did you know?” he whispered roughly, and bent to her mouth.
He hadn’t kissed her that way before. His mouth was hard and demanding on her lips, parting them ruthlessly as his body shifted and one arm pushed her hips deliberately into the changing contours of his own.
She felt helpless. Her mouth opened for him. Her body arched up, taut and hot, in the grip of madness. She returned his kiss ardently, moaning when his legs parted so that he could maneuver her hips between them, letting her feel the power of his arousal.
His tall, fit body shuddered and she could feel the sharp indrawn breath he took.
After a few wild seconds, he dragged his mouth away from hers without letting her move away even a fraction of an inch. He looked down at her with intent, searching her wide, soft gray eyes hungrily. The arm that was holding her was like a steel rod at her back, but against her legs, she felt the faintest tremor in his.
“I’ve gone hungry for a long time,” he whispered gruffly.
She didn’t know how to reply to such a blatant statement. Her eyes searched his in an odd silence, broken only by the whir of the attic fan in the hall and the muffled sound of voices as Eb’s men searched the house. She reached up and touched his hard mouth tenderly, loving the immediate response of his lips to the caress.
He bent, nuzzling his face against hers to find her mouth. He kissed her urgently, but with restraint, nibbling her lower lip sensuously. Both arms went around her, riveting her to him. Her own slid under his arms and around his hard waist, holding him close. She closed her eyes, savoring the wondrous contact. The fierce hunger he felt was quite obvious in the embrace, but it didn’t frighten her. She wanted him, too.
“When I heard the explosion,” he said at her ear, his voice tight with tension, “I didn’t know what we were going to find when I ran toward the house. We’d planned for any eventuality, but the chopper came in under radar. We didn’t even hear the damned thing until we could see it, and then the launcher jammed…!”
She hadn’t imagined that Eb would be afraid for her. It was wonderful. She hugged him closer and felt him shiver.
“We were a little shaken,” Sally whispered. “But we’re all okay.”
“I didn’t expect to feel like this,” he said through his teeth.
She lifted her head and looked up at his strained face. “Like…this?”
His green gaze met her soft gray one and then fell to her mouth, to her soft breasts flattened against him. “Like this,” he whispered and moved deliberately against her while he held her eyes.
She blushed, because it was blatant.
But he didn’t smile. “I knew you were going to be trouble six years ago,” he said through his teeth. He bent and kissed her again, fiercely, before he put her away from him and stood trying to get his breath.
She was shivering a little in the aftermath of the most explosive sensuality she’d ever felt. She searched his face quietly, despite the turmoil inside her awakened body.
“You’ve never felt like that before, have you?” he asked in a hushed tone.
She shook her head, still too shaken for words.
“If it’s any consolation, it gets steadily worse,” he continued. “Think about that.”
He turned and went out into the hall with her puzzled eyes following him. She touched her swollen lips gingerly and wondered what he meant.
* * *
THE SHERIFF, BILL ELLIOTT, and two deputies pulled up in the yard, took statements and looked around with Eb and the other men. Sally was questioned briefly, and when the house was secure, Eb drove her back to his house with the rest of his men remaining in the woods.
“I don’t think Lopez has any idea of trying again tonight,” he said, “but I’m not taking any chances. I’ve already underestimated him once.”
“He does keep his word,” she said huskily.
“Yes.”
“What do we do now?”
“I take you and Stevie to school and Jess stays at my house. In fact, you all stay at my house,” he said curtly. “I’m not putting you at risk a second time.”
She was stunned at the emotion in his voice. He was really concerned about her. She felt a warm glow all the way to her toes.
He glanced at her with slow, sensuous eyes. “At least at my own house, I can find one room with no bugs.” His eyes went to her breasts and back to her face. “I’m starving.”
She knew he wasn’t talking about food, and her heart began racing madly.
He caught her hand in his free one and worked his fingers slowly between hers, pressing her palm to his. “Don’t worry. I won’t let things go too far, Sally.”
She wasn’t worried about that. She was wondering how she was going to go on living if he made love to her and then walked away.
* * *
WHEN THEY GOT TO THE HOUSE, Jessica and Dallas were in the small bedroom Eb’s male housekeeper had given Stevie, tucking him in.
Eb had his housekeeper show the others to their rooms and he excused himself, tugging Sally along with him, to Dallas’s obvious amusement.
“Where are we going?” Sally asked.
“To bed. I’m tired. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
She supposed he was giving her a room further down the hall, but he didn’t stop at any of the closed doors. He led her around a corner and through two double doors into a huge room with Mediterranean furnishings and green and gold and brown accessories. He closed the double doors, locking them, before he turned to the dresser and pulled out a pair of blue silk pajamas.
“You can wear the pajama top and I’ll wear the bottoms,” he said matter-of-factly.
Her breath escaped in a rush. “Eb…”
He drew her into his arms and kissed her slowly, with deliberate sensuality, making nonsense of her protests with his hands as they skimmed under the sweatshirt and up to find her taut breasts.
She moaned, feeling the fever rise in her as he unfastened the bra and touched her hungrily. Her body arched, helping him, inviting him. Her hands gripped hard against the powerful muscles of his upper arms, drowning in waves of pleasure.
His mouth lifted fractionally. “I won’t hurt you,” he breathed. “Not in any way. But you’re sleeping in my arms tonight.”
She started to protest, but his mouth was already covering hers, muffling the words, muffling her brain.
His hands removed the sweatshirt and the bra and he looked at her with quiet, possessive eyes, drinking in the soft textures, the smooth skin, the beauty of her. He touched her gently, smiling as her body reacted to his skilled hands.
His mouth slid down to her breasts and kissed them slowly, each caress more ardent than the one before. He had her out of her jeans and sneakers and down to her briefs before she realized what was happening.
He moved away just long enough to pick up the pajama top and slip it over her head, still buttoned. He lifted her, dazed, in his arms and paused, balancing her on one knee, to pull the covers back so that he could tuck her into bed. He leaned over her, balancing on his hands, and searched her flushed, fascinated face.
“I’ll be in after I’ve talked to Dallas and reset the monitors.”
She didn’t bother to protest. Her gray eyes searched his and she sighed a little unsteadily. “All right.”
His eyes kindled with pleasure. He smiled, because he knew she was accepting anything he proposed. It was humbling. He kissed her eyelids closed. “Sleep well.”
She watched him go, uncertain if that meant he was sleeping elsewhere. She was so tired that she fell asleep almost as soon as the doors closed behind him, wrapped in sensuous dreams.