Against the Odds (3 page)

“The site of what?”

“The...umm...the mine.”

He was beginning to get it. Sabrina Eckhart was a
businesswoman, first, last and always. “What kind of mine?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Silver, maybe.” She sat up a little
straighter in the chair. “It’s a long story, Alex. The point is, my uncle Walter
left me the property. It was all he had in the world. It may be valuable. It may
be worthless. But I need to find out. Can you take me or not?”

Not a chance in hell he was going to say no. Aside from the
fact Sabrina was Sage Cantrell’s best friend and Jake Cantrell was one of Alex’s
best friends, she was a fox. He’d been attracted to Sabrina Eckhart from the day
he’d met her. And though every look, every word she said told him that
attraction was not returned, he wasn’t convinced.

“I’ll take you.”

Sabrina smiled, seemed to relax. “Great. I’ve already started
making the arrangements. I figured you’d know the best place here to rent a
plane. I’ve called about the helicopter. I remember you saying you could fly
one, so we’re almost set.”

“You done any checking, tried to find out if anyone in Rio
Gordo knows where the mine is?”

“My uncle was a hermit and extremely secretive. He never even
told me. No way would he tell anyone else.”

“When do you want to go?”

“The sooner the better.”

He didn’t ask how she could get away from her job so easily.
She’d always been a workaholic. Maybe she was due some time off. “How about day
after tomorrow?”

“That’d be really great. You get the plane lined up and I can
reserve the chopper.”

“I’ll do you one better. We’ll use my plane.” The Twin
Beechcraft Baron he’d bought a couple months ago. Any excuse to fly it was a
good one. “And I’ll need to make the call on the chopper myself, make sure it’s
something I’m checked out in.”

“Okay.” She stood up from her chair and stuck out a small hand.
“Thanks, Alex.”

Alex rose and took her hand but didn’t let go. “Only one
question.”

“What’s that?”

“Why me?”

She eased her hand from his. “Because, whatever our
differences, you’re good at your job. I saw how well you worked with Jake to
protect Sage.” Jake had served as Sage’s bodyguard. They’d ended up married.
“You proved it again when you found the evidence the police needed to arrest the
man who killed little Carrie Wiseman.”

“Go on,” he pressed, figuring there was more.

She looked like she didn’t want to say it. “All right—because I
trust you. It’s as simple as that.”

But she probably shouldn’t. Just seeing her standing there
looking like a hungry man’s dessert made him want to take her to bed. “I’ll need
to do some recon on the area. I’ll need those maps and whatever information you
have on the property.”

“I’ll make copies and drop them off here at the office.”

“Good enough. I’ll pick you up Wednesday morning.”

“All right. My address is—”

“I know your address. I’m a detective, remember?”

She eyed him with suspicion. “What about my cell number?”

He grinned. “Same number you had before?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll pick you up Wednesday. Eight o’clock okay?”

“I’ll be ready.” She started to leave, then turned back.
“Thanks, Alex.”

“You haven’t asked my fee. You may not thank me when you hear
what it is.”

It was her turn to grin. “I know your fee. I may not be a
detective, but I have my sources.”

He laughed. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.” She didn’t object as
he kept pace with her to the front desk. He reminded himself he preferred tall,
svelte blondes, not petite, curvy redheads. Still, there was something about
this particular redhead that had him looking forward to the flight to Rio
Gordo.

He pushed open the glass front door. Unfortunately, instead of
Sabrina walking out, Melissa Carlyle walked in.

“Alex! I was hoping you’d be here.” She threw her arms around
his neck and gave him a smacking kiss on the lips. Alex inwardly groaned.
Unwinding her arms, he eased her back a couple of paces.

“I’ll see you Wednesday,” Rina said, flicking him a smug,
knowing glance over her shoulder. “Unless you get too busy.” She walked past
them out the door, the bell jingling as it shut behind her.

Damn.
He looked over at the woman
eagerly awaiting his attention. Melissa was tall, blonde and svelte, just the
way he liked. She also had a brain that rattled around like a marble inside her
head.

“I thought maybe we could go to lunch,” she said. “Not that I
dare eat all that much. I have to watch my weight, you know.”

Alex looked past her, saw Sabrina getting into a little blue
Corolla instead of her sexy red Mercedes and frowned.

“Did you hear me? I said I thought we might—”

“I heard you. I thought we decided to take a break from each
other.”

“Did we? I must have forgot.”

“Did you also forget your ex-boyfriend is in town? You said the
two of you were thinking about getting back together.”

She shrugged. “Well, maybe.”

“Look, Melissa. I’m really busy. I think you should call your
ex, see if he wants to go to lunch.”

She just nodded, smiled. “Okay.” She turned and started walking
toward the door. “See you later.”

Alex made no reply. He was hoping he never saw the airheaded
blonde again and couldn’t understand how he’d gone out with her a second
time.

He shook his head. As he walked back to his desk, Sabrina’s
image swept into his mind, a breath of fresh air blowing back into his life.
Sitting down behind his desk, he began to make the arrangements for a trip to
Rio Gordo.

Two

T
hose dimples.
Oh, my
God!
Be better for the female population if the man never smiled. As
she drove back toward her apartment, Rina sighed. She must have been insane to
get Alex Justice involved in this.

Except that she needed his help. What she’d said was true. She
trusted him. She had met him when her friend Sage Dumont, a VP at Marine
Drilling International, had needed protection. Well, actually, Sage had
introduced Rina to Jake Cantrell, her bodyguard, and Jake had brought Alex in to
help with the job.

She’d seen him in action enough to realize how good he was at
what he did.

And there was no way she was going out to some remote location
in the desert with just anyone. The mere thought of hiring some overweight,
muscle-headed helicopter pilot from a nowhere town like Rio Gordo sent a shiver
down her spine.

Clearly, Alex was a man with a strong sexual appetite, but he
wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever force himself on a woman. And since he
sometimes worked as a bodyguard, he had to be a lot tougher than his blond,
blue-eyed, cover-model appearance made him look. She would be safe with Alex
Justice—even in the middle of God only knew where.

Since she was on a leave of absence from her job at Morgan
Stanley, which, considering her customer base had shrunk to almost zilch, wasn’t
a problem, she went straight back to her apartment to make the necessary calls
and start packing an overnight bag for the trip. She hadn’t mentioned it to
Alex, but she might need to stay an extra day, depending on what she found on
the property.

Excitement trickled through her. She reminded herself not to
get her hopes up, but she couldn’t help herself. During the past six months of
market ups and downs, she had decided she was ready to make a change. If the
land had any sort of mining potential, she was going to jump in and see if she
couldn’t make it work, see if she could make some money.

Silver prices had spiked to more than thirty dollars an ounce.
Her research told her that historically there wasn’t much silver in Texas, and
mining for the ore had stopped in 1994. But recently, with the cost of silver
climbing, the Desert Mine had reopened, and it wasn’t that many miles away from
her uncle’s property.

Rina couldn’t wait to find out if Uncle Walter’s ramblings over
the years might have been right. She couldn’t wait to see if there was actually
something there.

* * *

Rina was dressed in a pair of jeans, sneakers and a
sleeveless turquoise blouse when Alex arrived to pick her up on Wednesday
morning. It was only the first of May, but an early heat wave had arrived in
Houston, and it was going to be even hotter out in the dry West Texas desert,
reaching a possible high of ninety-five degrees. According to weather.com, it
would also be extremely cold at night.

Aside from a change of clothes, her makeup bag and a toothbrush
in case they needed to stay an extra day, she had a warm, fleece-lined jacket in
her flowered tapestry satchel.

Alex didn’t say much as he drove her to the airpark southwest
of the city where he kept his plane. By the time they arrived, it had been towed
out of its hangar and was waiting for them on the tarmac.

“It’s a beautiful airplane,” she said, admiring the sleek
blue-and-white twin-engine aircraft that looked extremely expensive.

“Beechcraft Baron,” he said. “I’ve only had it a couple of
months.” He looked at it with the same covetous expression Nate Billings had
when he’d eyed her little red Mercedes, and also a hint of pride.

Rina studied the Baron, a much larger plane than she had
thought he would rent. “It’s more than I figured we’d need. How much is this
going to cost me?”

Alex grinned and his dimples popped up. “You’re in luck,
sweetheart. I was going to take her up anyway. Might as well go to Rio Gordo as
anywhere else.” There was something in his eyes, like maybe he knew the
truth—that she didn’t have the kind of money she’d had a year ago. He was a
detective, after all, as he had reminded her.

But Alex had no reason to be digging up information on her so
she was probably wrong. She certainly hoped so. She didn’t want Alex Justice’s
charity. She didn’t want anything from him except a ride out to the property she
now owned.

Still, fueling planes like this one didn’t come cheap. “Are you
sure?”

“Not a problem. I’m just anxious to get her in the air.”

She worked not to sag in relief. “Great. Me, too.”

Alex made an exterior equipment check, wandering around the
plane, checking the tires, whatever pilots did before takeoff, then tossed her
satchel and a bag of his own into the luggage compartment and helped her climb
up on the wing.

Once they were both inside, Alex in the pilot’s seat, Rina
riding copilot, he began his preflight check. The cabin was first-class, with
club seating for four in back in butter-soft blue-gray leather, and immaculately
clean.

“You ready?” he asked when he’d finished and both engines were
running smoothly.

She didn’t tell him she’d never flown in a plane smaller than a
commercial airliner. Didn’t mention the butterflies swirling in her stomach. She
didn’t want him to know what a small-town girl she really was.

Uvalde, Texas, where she was raised, wasn’t Houston. Her
mother, Florence, had been a homemaker, her father, Big Mike Eckhart, a truck
driver. She’d studied hard to get a partial scholarship to the University of
Houston. Uncle Walter had sent her some money on occasion, and she’d worked
part-time to earn the rest, enough to get through college.

She gave him a saucy smile. “I’m ready.” And actually, she was
looking forward to the flight. She was always up for a new adventure. Seeing new
country, trying new things. Besides, Sage had told her that Alex had flown
planes off a carrier. This had to be a piece of cake for him.

The engine hummed as they taxied down the runway, then built to
a roar as the plane picked up speed. In seconds they were lifting into the air,
the ground falling away beneath them, becoming a collage of miniature houses and
high-rise buildings, then tiny blue lakes in a landscape of green. She jumped at
the crack that echoed through the cabin as the wheels rose and locked into
place, then sat back and relaxed, beginning to enjoy herself.

Instead of dreading the flight when she flew commercial, jammed
in between two other people, trying to see out the tiny cabin window, she
watched the land give way to a patchwork of fields and prairie, delighted by the
view from up so high.

“You like to fly?” Alex asked.

She gazed out at the beautiful blue sky and white puffy clouds
Alex was careful to avoid. “I guess I do.”

He flicked her a sideways glance. “You haven’t done this
much?”

She hated to admit it but she wasn’t about to lie. “I’ve only
flown commercial.”

Alex grinned. “Then you’re in for a treat. Just sit back and
enjoy the ride.”

So she did. According to Alex, the plane cruised at two-hundred
thirty miles an hour so it wouldn’t take long to reach Rio Gordo, a little less
than five hundred miles away.

“Now that we’re on our way, you want to tell me what’s going on
with this? You said you got an inheritance, but you don’t really know what it
is. How does that work?”

She talked over the engine noise, which wasn’t as bad as she
had expected. Probably because it was such a well-built plane.

“It’s kind of hard to know where to start.”

“How about starting with the guy who left you the property? You
said he was your uncle. He didn’t have any other relatives?”

“Uncle Walter was my father’s older brother and he and his wife
had three kids. But Aunt Marlene divorced him and married someone else, and
Walter and his kids never got along.” She looked over, caught Alex studying her
profile. “Maybe I should start by telling you Uncle Walter was extremely
eccentric.”

“Eccentric how?”

“From the time I was old enough to remember him, my uncle was
mostly off on some adventure. My mom said when he hit forty, he went into his
second childhood. He quit his job as an accountant and left town in search of
buried treasure. He was never around, always off somewhere digging in the dirt.
After a couple of years, my aunt divorced him and his kids all turned against
him. They blamed him for their mother’s unhappiness—and they were pretty much
right.”

“So he left the property to you instead of his kids.”

“I loved Uncle Walter. I was adopted when I was a baby so I was
the youngest of all the kids. As I grew older, the fact he had the courage to go
and do exactly what he wanted seemed really cool to me.”

“So he was out in West Texas hunting for treasure?”

“Not exactly. Earlier, when Walter didn’t find any buried
treasure, he started prospecting...you know...looking for gold and silver.”

“I can see why you called him eccentric. Sounds like a
character right out of an old Western movie.”

“Oh, he was. He had snow-white hair and a scruffy white beard,
the whole bit. But Walter wasn’t a fool.”

“That why you think there might be silver on the land?”

“That, and because he told me there was. He always came home
for Christmas, back to Uvalde where he was born. Christmas was a big deal to my
family so I always went back, too. We all knew he’d been working this mine he
owned out in West Texas. The Christmas before he died, he told me he hadn’t
found the mother lode yet but he was really close. He believed it
completely.”

“How long was he out there?”

“He bought the property about seven years ago. Before that, he
was in Nevada for a while. I think he owned a mining claim there, but he sold it
and moved up to South Dakota. He had a couple of gold claims there that came to
nothing.”

“So he wound up prospecting for silver in Texas.”

“That’s right. He died right before Christmas, almost six
months ago. Car accident on his way to our house. My mom and I were devastated.
My dad had died six years earlier. When Walter died, Christmas pretty much died
with him, at least for Mom and me. I don’t think it’ll ever be fun for either of
us again.”

Alex made no reply, but a muscle faintly tightened in his
cheek. Sabrina was glad he’d stopped asking questions. Stirring up painful
memories of her father’s death and then her uncle’s was making her heart hurt.
She knew why Walter had left her the property, knew it was because no one had
ever had any faith in him but her. As a kid, she had always been sure he would
find the treasure he’d been seeking.

She couldn’t let him down without at least taking a look,
finding out if what he had told her might be true.

* * *

Alex made an easy landing at the Rio Gordo airport,
which sat at the edge of a town of less than two thousand inhabitants. There
were a couple of fleabag motels, three gas stations, a post office, town hall, a
Mexican restaurant and the Rio Gordo Café. He taxied the plane over to a pair of
concrete tie-downs and shut off the engine.

They’d made good time from Houston, mostly clear skies so the
trip was smooth and easy. He could tell Sabrina had enjoyed herself. She had an
adventurous spirit he had admired from the first day he’d met her on a shopping
trip to the Galleria with the daughter of a Saudi sheik and her entourage. He
had been helping Jake Cantrell with the protection detail, and Sabrina had been
there to help her friend Sage keep the Saudi women occupied.

Rina was feisty and smart.

And she flat-out hated any man she thought might have more than
an ounce of testosterone. She didn’t like macho men, she’d said, and she didn’t
like smart-ass jet jockeys.

He smiled at the memory.

She didn’t want anything to do with a guy like him, yet she was
here with him in Rio Gordo because she wanted a man who could protect her. She
hadn’t come right out and said that, but both of them knew it was true. As he
spotted the tough-looking characters hanging around the helicopter sitting on
the tarmac fifty yards away, he thought she’d done the smart thing.

“Let me get the plane tied down then we’ll go into the office.”
He grabbed Sabrina’s pink-flowered satchel out of the luggage compartment along
with his gear bag, then finished securing the plane and guided her inside a
metal-roofed wooden building.

The interior was spartan, with only two worn green leather
chairs and a table stacked with dog-eared magazines. A gray-haired man stood
behind the Formica-topped counter, a pencil perched above his right ear.

“We’re here for the chopper,” Alex said. “I spoke to someone
about it. This is Sabrina Eckhart, she phoned a couple of days earlier.”

Sabrina smiled and the old man smiled back as if he’d known her
for years instead of only through a single phone call.

“Why, yes, I surely do recall.”

“Hello, Mr. Woodard, it’s nice to meet you in person.”

“You, too, Ms. Eckhart. Don’t get a lot of folks out here from
the big city.”

“I’m from Uvalde originally. It’s not all that big.”

“Uvalde, huh? You wouldn’t know a guy named Leonard Jenkins out
there?”

“Jenkins...? I’m afraid not. I’ve been gone for a while.”

Woodard looked as if he had another dozen names he wanted to
run past her, but instead took the file Alex handed him containing his
pilot-helicopter credentials and forms he’d pulled off the internet. In
exchange, Woodard handed him the service records he’d asked for on the helo.

“Your lady said you was a navy pilot.”

She wasn’t his lady, not even close, but he didn’t bother to
correct the guy. “That’s right.”

“I guess you’ve got plenty of experience,” the older man said,
reviewing the file he’d brought with him.

“I’ve been at it awhile.”

“You fly into Afghanistan?”

Alex nodded. “Air Wing One off the
Teddy
Roosevelt.
Iraq off the
Enterprise.
”