by Diana Palmer
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS A rainy Friday morning.
Carlie Blair, who was running late for her job as secretary to Jacobsville, Texas police chief Cash Grier, only had time for a piece of toast and a sip of coffee before she rushed out the door to persuade her ten-year-old red pickup truck to start. It had gone on grinding seemingly forever before it finally caught up and started.
Her father, a Methodist minister, was out of town on business for the day. So there was nobody to help her get it running. Luck was with her. It did, at least, start.
She envied her friend Michelle Godfrey, whose guardian and his sister had given her a Jaguar for Christmas. Michelle was away at college now, and she and Carlie still spoke on the phone, but they no longer shared rides to town and the cost of gas on a daily basis.
The old clunker ate gas like candy and Carlie’s salary only stretched so far. She wished she had more than a couple pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts, a coat and one good pair of shoes. It must be nice, she thought, not to have to count pennies. But her father was always optimistic about their status. God loved the poor, because they gave away so much, he was fond of saying. He was probably right.
Right now, though, her rain-wet jeans were uncomfortable, and she’d stepped in a mud puddle with her only pair of good shoes while she was knocking corrosion off the battery terminals with the hammer she kept under the front seat for that purpose. All this in January weather, which was wet and cold and miserable, even in South Texas.
Consequently, when she parked her car in the small lot next to the chief’s office, she looked like a bedraggled rat. Her dark, short, wavy hair was curling like crazy, as it always did in a rainstorm. Her coat was soaked. Her green eyes, full of silent resignation, didn’t smile as she opened the office door.
Her worst nightmare was standing just inside.
Carson.
He glared at her. He was so much taller than she that she had to look up at him. There was a lot to look at, although she tried not to show her interest.
He was all muscle, but it wasn’t overly obvious. He had a rodeo rider’s physique, lean and powerful. Like her, he wore jeans, but his were obviously designer ones, like those hand-tooled leather boots on his big feet and the elaborately scrolled leather holster in which he kept his .45 automatic. He was wearing a jacket that partially concealed the gun, but he was intimidating enough without it.
He was Lakota Sioux. He had jet-black hair that fell to his waist in back, although he wore it in a ponytail usually. He had large black eyes that seemed to see everything with one sweep of his head. He had high cheekbones and a light olive complexion. There were faint scars on the knuckles of his big hands. She noticed because he was holding a file in one of them.
Her file.
Well, really, the chief’s file, that had been lying on her desk, waiting to be typed up. It referenced an attack on her father a few weeks earlier that had resulted in Carlie being stabbed. Involuntarily, her hand went to the scar that ran from her shoulder down to the beginning of her small breasts. She flushed when she saw where he was looking.
“Those are confidential files,” she said shortly.
He looked around. “There was nobody here to tell me that,” he said, his deep voice clear as a bell in the silent room.
She flushed at the implied criticism. “Damned truck wouldn’t start and I got soaked trying to start it,” she muttered. She slid her weather-beaten old purse under her desk, ran a hand through her wet hair, took off her ratty coat and hung it up before she sat down at her desk. “Did you need something?” she asked with crushing politeness. She even managed a smile. Sort of.
“I need to see the chief,” he replied.
She frowned. “There’s this thing called a door. He’s got one,” she said patiently. “You knock on it, and he comes out.”
He gave her a look that could have stopped traffic. “There’s somebody in there with him,” he said with equal patience. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“I see.” She moved things around on her desk, muttering to herself.
“Bad sign.”
She looked up. “Huh?”
“Talking to yourself.”
She glared at him. It had been a bad morning altogether and he wasn’t helping. “Don’t listen, if it bothers you.”
He gave her a long look and laughed hollowly. “Listen, kid, nothing about you bothers me. Or ever will.”
There were the sounds of chairs scraping wood, as if the men in Cash’s office had stood up and pushed back their seats. She figured it was safe to interrupt him.
Well, safer than listening to Mr. Original American here run her down.
She pushed the intercom button. “You have a visitor, sir,” she announced.
There was a murmur. “Who is it?”
She looked at Carson. “The gentleman who starts fires with hand grenades,” she said sweetly.
Carson stared at her with icy black eyes.
Cash’s door opened, and there was Carlie’s father, a man in a very expensive suit and Cash.
That explained why her father had left home so early. He was out of town, as he’d said he would be; out of Comanche Wells, where they lived, anyway. Not that Jacobsville was more than a five-minute drive from home.
“Carson,” Cash said, nodding. “I think you know Reverend Blair and my brother, Garon?”
“Yes.” Carson shook hands with them.
Carlie was doing mental shorthand. Garon Grier was senior special agent in charge of the Jacobsville branch of the FBI. He’d moved to Jacobsville some time ago, but the FBI branch office hadn’t been here quite as long. Garon had been with the bureau for a number of years.
Carlie wondered what was going on that involved both the FBI and her father. But she knew that question would go unanswered. Her father was remarkably silent on issues that concerned law enforcement, although he knew quite a few people in that profession.
She recalled with a chill the telephone conversation she’d had recently with someone who called and said, “Tell your father he’s next.” She couldn’t get anybody to tell her what they thought it meant. It was disturbing, like the news she’d overheard that the man who’d put a knife in her, trying to kill her father, had been poisoned and died.
Something big was going on, linked to that Wyoming murder and involving some politician who had ties to a drug cartel. But nobody told Carlie anything.
* * *
“WELL, I’LL BE OFF. I have a meeting in San Antonio,” Reverend Blair said, taking his leave. He paused at Carlie’s desk. “Don’t do anything fancy for supper, okay?” he asked, smiling. “I may be very late.”
“Okay, Dad.” She grinned up at him.
He ruffled her hair and walked out.
Carson was watching the interplay with cynical eyes.
“Doesn’t your dad ruffle your hair?” she asked sarcastically.
“No. He did lay a chair across it once.” He averted his eyes at once, as if the comment had slipped out against his will and embarrassed him.
Carlie tried not to stare. What in the world sort of background did he come from? The violence struck a chord in her. She had secrets of her own from years past.
“Carson,” Garon Grier said, pausing at the door. “We may need you at some point.”
Carson nodded. “I’ll be around.”
“Thanks.”
Garon waved at his brother, smiled at Carlie and let himself out the door.
“Something perking?” Carson asked Cash.
“Quite a lot, in fact. Carlie, hold my calls until I tell you,” he instructed.
“Sure thing, Boss.”
“Come on in.” Cash went ahead into his office.
Carson paused by Carlie’s desk and glared at her.
She glared back. “If you don’t stop scowling at me, I’m going to ask the chief to frisk you for hand grenades,” she muttered.
“Frisk me yourself,” he dared softly.
The flush deepened, darkened.
His black eyes narrowed, because he knew innocence when he saw it; it was that rare in his world. “Clueless, aren’t you?” he chided.
She lifted her chin and glared back. “My father is a minister,” she said with quiet pride.
“Really?”
She frowned, cocking her head. “Excuse me?”
“Are you coming in or not?” Cash asked suddenly, and there was a bite in his voice.
Carson seemed faintly surprised. He followed Cash into the office. The door closed. There were words spoken in a harsh tone, followed by a pause and a suddenly apologetic voice.
Carlie paid little attention. Carson had upset her nerves. She wished her boss would find someone else to talk to. Her job had been wonderful and satisfying until Carson started hanging around the office all the time. Something was going on, something big. It involved local and federal law enforcement—she was fairly certain that the chief’s brother didn’t just happen by to visit—and somehow, it also involved her father.
She wondered if she could dig any information out of her parent if she went about it in the right way. She’d have to work on that.
Then she recalled that phone call that she’d told her father about, just recently. A male voice had said, simply, “Tell your father, he’s next.” It had been a chilling experience, one she’d forced to the back of her mind. Now she wondered if all the traffic through her boss’s office involved her in some way, as well as her father. The man who’d tried to kill him had died, mysteriously poisoned.
She still wondered why anybody would attack a minister. That remark of Carson’s made her curious. She’d said her father was a minister and he’d said, “Really?” in that sarcastic, cold tone of voice. Why?
“I’m a mushroom,” she said to herself. “They keep me in the dark and feed me manure.” She sighed and went back to work.
* * *
SHE WAS ON the phone with the sheriff’s office when Carson left. He went by her desk with only a cursory glance at her, and it was, of all things, placid. Almost apologetic. She lowered her eyes and refused to even look at him.
Even if she’d found him irresistible—and she was trying not to—his reputation with women made her wary of him.
Sure, it was a new century, but Carlie was a small-town girl and raised religiously. She didn’t share the casual attitude of many of her former classmates about physical passion.
She grimaced. It was hard to be a nice girl when people treated her like a disease on legs. In school, they’d made fun of her, whispered about her. One pretty, popular girl said that she didn’t know what she was missing and that she should live it up.
Carlie just stared at her and smiled. She didn’t say anything. Apparently the smile wore the other girl down because she shrugged, turned her back and walked off to whisper to the girls in her circle. They all looked at Carlie and laughed.
She was used to it. Her father said that adversity was like grit, it honed metal to a fine edge. She’d have liked to be honed a little less.
They were right about one thing; she really didn’t know what she was missing. It seemed appropriate, because she’d read about sensations she was supposed to feel with men around, and she didn’t feel any of them.
She chided herself silently. That was a lie. She felt them when she was close to Carson. She knew that he was aware of it, which made it worse. He laughed at her, just the way her classmates had laughed at her in school. She was the odd one out, the misfit. She had a reason for her ironclad morals. Many local people knew them, too. Episodes in her childhood had hardened her.
Well, people tended to be products of their upbringing. That was life. Unless she wanted to throw away her ideals and give up religion, she was pretty much settled in her beliefs. Maybe it wasn’t so bad being a misfit. Her late grandfather had said that civilizations rested on the bedrock of faith and law and the arts. Some people had to be conventional to keep the mechanism going.
“What was that?” Sheriff Hayes’s receptionist asked.
“Sorry.” Carlie cleared her throat. She’d been on hold. “I was just mumbling to myself. What were you saying?”
The woman laughed and gave her the information the chief had asked for, about an upcoming criminal case.
* * *
SHE COOKED A light supper, just creamed chicken and rice, with green peas, and made a nice apple pie for dessert.
Her father came in, looking harassed. Then he saw the spread and grinned from ear to ear. “What a nice surprise!”
“I know, something light. But I was hungry,” she added.
He made a face. “Shame. Telling lies.”
She shrugged. “I went to church Sunday. God won’t mind a little lie, in a good cause.”
He smiled. “You know, some people have actually asked me how to talk to God.”
“I just do it while I’m cooking, or working in the yard,” Carlie said. “Just like I’m talking to you.”
He laughed. “Me, too. But there are people who make hard work of it.”
“Why were you in the chief’s office today?” she asked suddenly.
He paused in the act of putting a napkin in his lap. His expression went blank for an instant, then it came back to life. “He wanted me to talk to a prisoner for him,” he said finally.
She raised both eyebrows.
“Sorry,” he said, smoothing out the napkin. “Some things are confidential.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s say grace,” he added.
* * *
LATER, HE WATCHED the news while she cleaned up the kitchen. She sat down with him and watched a nature special for a while. Then she excused herself and went upstairs to read. She wasn’t really interested in much television programming, except for history specials and anything about mining. She loved rocks.
She sat down on the side of her bed and thumbed through her bookshelf. Most titles were digital as well as physical these days, but she still loved the feel and smell of an actual book in her hands.
She pulled out a well-worn copy of a book on the Little Bighorn fight, one that was written by members of various tribes who’d actually been present. It irritated her that many of the soldiers had said there were no living witnesses to the battle. That was not true. There were plenty of them: Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow and a host of other men from different tribes who were at the battle and saw exactly what happened.
She smiled as she read about how many of them ended up in Buffalo Bill Cody’s famous traveling Wild West show. They played before the crowned heads of Europe. They learned high society manners and how to drink tea from fancy china cups. They laughed among themselves at the irony of it. Sitting Bull himself worked for Cody for a time, before he was killed.
She loved most to read about Crazy Horse. Like Carson, he was Lakota, which white people referred to as Sioux. Crazy Horse was Oglala, which was one of the subclasses of the tribe. He was light-skinned and a great tactician. There was only one verified photograph of him, which was disputed by some, accepted by others. It showed a rather handsome man with pigtails, wearing a breastplate. There was also a sketch. He had led a war party against General Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud and won it. He led another party against Custer at the Little Bighorn.
Until his death, by treachery at the hands of a soldier, he was the most famous war leader of the Lakota.
Sitting Bull did not fight; he was not a warrior. He was a holy man who made medicine and had visions of a great battle that was won by the native tribes.
Crazy Horse fascinated Carlie. She bought book after book, looking for all she could find in his history.
She also had books about Alexander the Third, called the Great, who conquered most of the civilized world by the age of thirty. His ability as a strategist was unequaled in the ancient past. Hannibal, who fought the Romans under Scipio Africanus in the Second Punic War at Carthage, was another favorite. Scipio fascinated her, as well.
The ability of some leaders to inspire a small group of men to conquer much larger armies was what drew her to military history. It was the generals who led from the front, who ate and slept and suffered with their men, who won the greatest battles and the greatest honor.
She knew about battles because her secret vice was an online video game, “World of Warcraft.” A number of people in Jacobsville and Comanche Wells played. She knew the gamer tags, the names in-game, of only a very few. Probably she’d partnered with some of them in raid groups. But mostly she ran battlegrounds, in player-versus-player matches, but only on weekends, when she had more free time.
Gaming took the place of dates she never got. Even if she’d been less moral, she rarely got asked on dates. She could be attractive when she tried, but she wasn’t really pretty and she was painfully shy around people she didn’t know. She’d only gone out a couple of times in high school, once with a boy who was getting even with his girlfriend by dating her—although she hadn’t known until later—and another with a boy who’d hurt another girl badly and saw Carlie as an easy mark. He got a big surprise.
From time to time she thought about how nice it would be to marry and have children. She loved spending time in the baby section of department stores when she went to San Antonio with her father occasionally. She liked to look at knitted booties and lacy little dresses. Once a saleswoman had asked if she had children. She said no, she wasn’t married. The saleswoman had laughed and asked what that had to do with it. It was a new world, indeed.
She put away her book on the Little Bighorn fight, and settled in with her new copy of a book on Alexander the Great. The phone rang. She got up, but she was hesitant to answer it. She recalled the threat from the unknown man and wondered if that was him.
She went to the staircase and hesitated. Her father had answered and was on the phone.
“Yes, I know,” he said in a tone he’d never used with her. “If you think you can do better, you’re welcome to try.” He paused and a huge sigh left his chest. “Listen, she’s all I’ve got in the world. I know I don’t deserve her, but I will never let anyone harm her. This place may not look secure, but I assure you, it is...”
He leaned against the wall near the phone table, with the phone in his hand. He looked world-weary. “That’s what I thought, too, at first,” he said quietly. “I still have enemies. But it isn’t me he’s after. It’s Carlie! It has to have something to do with the man she saw in Grier’s office. I know that the man who killed Joey and masqueraded as a DEA agent is dead. But if he put out a contract before he died... Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” He shook his head. “I know you don’t have the funds. It’s okay. I have plenty of people who owe me favors. I’ll call in a few. Yes. I do appreciate your help. It’s just...it’s worrying me, that’s all. Sure. I’ll call you. Thanks.” He hung up.
Carlie moved back into the shadows. Her father looked like a stranger, like someone she’d never seen before. She wondered who he’d been speaking to, and if the conversation was about her. It sounded that way; he’d used her name. What was a contract? A contract to kill someone? She bit her lower lip. Something to do with the man she saw in the chief’s office, the man she’d tried to describe for the artist, the DEA agent who wasn’t an agent.
She frowned. But he was dead, her father had said. Then he’d mentioned that contract, that the man might have put it out before he died. Of course, if some unknown person had been paid in advance to kill her...
She swallowed down the fear. She could be killed by mistake, by a dead man. How ironic. Her father had said the house was safe. She wondered why he’d said that, what he knew. For the first time in her life, she wondered who her father really was.
* * *
SHE FIXED HIM a nice breakfast. While they were eating it she said, “Why do you think that man came to kill me?”
His coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“The man with the knife.”
“We agreed that he was after me, didn’t we?” he said, avoiding her face.
She lifted her eyes and stared at him. “I work for the police. It’s impossible not to learn a little something about law enforcement in the process. That man wasn’t after you at all, was he? The man who was poisoned so he couldn’t tell what he knew?”
He let out a breath and put the coffee cup down. “Well, Carlie, you’re more perceptive than I gave you credit for.” He smiled faintly. “Must be my genes. Your mother, God rest her soul, didn’t have that gift. She saw everything in black and white.”
“Yes, she did.” Talk of her mother made her sad. It had just been Carlie and Mary for a long time, until Mary got sick. Then Mary’s mother, and her hophead boyfriend, had shown up and ransacked the place. Carlie had tried to stop them... She shivered.
It had been several days later, after the hospital visit and the arrests, when her father had come back to town, wearing khaki pants and shirt, and carrying a pistol.
There had been no money for doctors, but her father had taken charge and got Mary into treatment. Mary’s mother and her boyfriend went to jail. Sadly, it had been hopeless from the start. Mary died within weeks. During those weeks, Carlie got to know her absent father. He became protective of her. She liked him very much. He was gone for a day after the funeral. When he came home, he seemed very different.
Carlie’s father spoke to someone on the phone then, too, and when he hung up he’d made a decision. He took Carlie with him to Atlanta, where he enrolled in a seminary and became a Methodist minister. He said it was the hardest and the easiest thing he’d ever done, and that it was a good thing that God forgave people for horrible acts. She asked what they were. Her father said some things were best left buried in the past.
“We’re still not sure he didn’t come after me,” her father said, interrupting her reverie.
“I heard you talking on the phone last night,” she said.
He grimaced. “Bad timing on my part,” he said, sighing.
“Very bad. So now I know. Tell me what’s going on.”
“That phone call you had came from a San Antonio number. We traced it, but it led to a throwaway phone,” he replied. “That’s bad news.”
“Why?”
“Because a few people who use those phones are connected to the underworld in some fashion or other, to escape detection by the authorities. They use the phone once to connect with people who might be wiretapped, then they dispose of the phone. Drug lords buy them by the cartload,” he added.
“Well, I didn’t do anybody in over a drug deal, and the guy I gave the artist the description of died in Wyoming. So why is somebody still after me?” she concluded.
He smiled. “Smart. Very smart. The guy died. That’s the bottom line. If he hired somebody to go after you, to keep you from recognizing him in a future lineup, and paid in advance, it’s too late to call him off. Get the picture?”
“In living color,” she said. She felt very adult, having her father give her the truth instead of a sweet lie to calm her.
“I have a couple of friends watching you,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a big threat, but we’d be insane not to take it seriously, especially after what’s already happened.”
“That was weeks ago,” she began.
“Yes, at the beginning of a long chain of growing evidence.” He sipped coffee. “I still can’t believe how many people’s lives have been impacted by this man and whoever he was working for.”
“You have some idea who his boss is...was?”
He nodded. “I can’t tell you, so don’t ask. I will say that several law enforcement agencies are involved.”
“I still don’t understand why you’re having meetings with my boss and that...that man Carson.”
He studied her flushed face. “I’ve heard about Carson’s attitude toward you. If he keeps it up, I’ll have a talk with him.”
“Don’t,” she asked softly. “With any luck, he won’t be around long. He doesn’t strike me as a man who likes small towns or staying in one place for any length of time.”
“You never know. He likes working for Cy Parks. And he has a few projects going with locals.”
She groaned.
“I can talk to him nicely.”
“Sure, Dad, and then he’ll accuse me of running to Daddy for protection.” She lifted her chin. “I can take whatever he can hand out.”
He smiled at her stubbornness. “Okay.”
She made a face. “He just doesn’t like me, that’s all. Maybe I remind him of someone he doesn’t care for.”
“That’s possible.” He stared into his coffee cup. “Or it could have something to do with asking him for a grenade to start a fire...”
“Aww, now, I wasn’t trying to start anything,” she protested.
He chuckled. “Sure.” He studied her face. “I just want to mention one thing,” he added gently. “He’s not housebroken. And he never will be. Just so you know.”
“I have never wanted to housebreak a wolf, I assure you.”
“There’s also his attitude about women. He makes no secret of it.” His face hardened. “He likens them to party favors. Disposable. You understand?”
“I understand. But honestly, that’s not the sort of man I’d be seriously interested in. You don’t have to worry.”
“I do worry. You’re not street-smart, pumpkin,” he added, with the pet name that he almost never used. “You’re unworldly. A man like that could be dangerous to you...”
She held up a hand. “I have weapons.”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“If he starts showing any interest in me, I’ll give him my most simpering smile and start talking about how I’d love to move in with him that very day and start having children at once.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Works like a charm. They actually leave skid marks...”
He threw back his head and laughed. “So that’s what happened to the visiting police chief...?”
“He was very persistent. The chief offered to punt him through the door, but I had a better idea. It worked very nicely. Now, when he comes to see the chief, he doesn’t even look my way.”
“Just as well. He has a wife, God help her.”
“What a nasty man.”
“Exactly.” He looked at his watch. “Well, I have a meeting with the church officials. We’re working on an outreach program for the poor. Something I really want to do.”
She smiled. “You know, you really are the nicest minister I know.”
He bent and kissed her forehead before he left. “Thanks, sweetheart. Be sure to check your truck, okay?”
She laughed. “I always do. Don’t worry.”
He hesitated. He wanted to tell her that he did worry, and the whole reason why. But it was the wrong time.
She was already halfway in love with Carson. He knew things about the man that he’d been told in confidence. He couldn’t repeat them. But if Carlie got too close to that prowling wolf, he’d leave scars that would cripple her for life. He had to prevent that, if he could. The thing was, he didn’t know how. It was like seeing a wire break and being too far away to fix it.
He could talk to Carson, of course. But that would only make matters worse. He had to wait and hope that Carlie could hang on to her beliefs and ignore the man’s practiced charm if he ever used it on her.
Carson seemed to hate her. But it was an act. He knew it, because it was an act he’d put on himself, with Carlie’s late mother. Mary had been a saint. He’d tried to coax her into bed, but she’d refused him at every turn. Finally, in desperation, he’d proposed. She’d refused. She wasn’t marrying a man because he couldn’t have her any other way.
So he’d gone away. And come back. And tried the soft approach. It had backfired. He’d fallen in love for the first time in his life. Mary had tied him to her with strings of icy steel, and leaving her even for a few weeks at a time had been agonizing. He’d only lived to finish the mission and get home, get back to Mary.
But over the years, the missions had come closer together, taken longer, provoked lengthy absences. He’d tried to make sure Mary had enough money to cover her bills and incidentals, but one job had resulted in no pay and during that time, Mary had gotten sick. By the time he knew and came home, it was too late.
He blamed himself for that, and for a lot more. He’d thought an old enemy had targeted him and got Carlie by mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake. Someone wanted Carlie dead, apparently because of a face she remembered. There might be another reason. Something they didn’t know, something she didn’t remember seeing. Even the death of the man hadn’t stopped the threat.
But he was going to. Somehow.
Copyright © 2014 by Diana Palmer