Her Cowboy Protector (3 page)

"Hold tight, Cruz." Niall's split-second of warning was all she received before he punched the gas. The motor revved so loudly she feared it would explode. Eyes squeezed tight, Cruz gripped her belly and gritted her teeth. Blaring horns and a hail of gunfire erupted all around them. Niall's fingers were suddenly covering hers over the swell of her tummy. He braced her body with his big hand as the sickening crunch of metal and the whine of locking breaks pierced her eardrums. Niall's hand tightened around hers. She felt his body move and realized he was glancing behind them. "Shit!"

In the next instant, Cruz heard Carlos's gut-wrenching groan filter across the phone's speaker. Her trembling hand grappled for the phone. "Carlos?
Carlos!
"

2
Chapter Two

"We have to go back!"

Niall grimaced at Cruz's hysterical scream. She'd been yelling at him for five minutes straight. Not that he blamed her. Carlos had rammed that SUV in the lead so hard the hood had flown off. The red car following close on the SUV's tail had ricocheted off the SUV's bumper and then the driver's side of Carlos's truck. It had been one hell of a gutsy move to T-bone them. Niall marveled at Carlos's love for his sister. That was something else. There weren't a lot of women who could drive a man to risk a trip to the ICU. Apparently, Cruz was one of them.

"I told you," Niall said calmly. "We. Are. Not. Going. Back. You heard Carlos. He wants us out of Austin."

"I also heard him groaning in pain." She turned those tearful doe-eyes on him and Niall nearly caved. "Please."

He locked his gaze on the windshield. "No."

"I thought you were his best friend? Don't you care about him?" Her accusing tone cut right through him.

"Don't." Niall fixed her with a warning stare. "Carlos and I bled on the battlefield. Two men can't get closer than we are without exchanging vows. Don’t you dare sit there and accuse me of being uncaring. I'm doing what my best friend asked me to do. I'm protecting you."

"I'm sorry," she said finally, her voice wobbly. "I'm sorry."

"Carlos will call us when he can. I promise you. He'll be fine. His DEA handlers can't have been far behind him. You'll see." Niall needed to calm her down before she hyperventilated. His words were true. The second Carlos could reach a secure line, he'd call Cruz.

Niall's chest tightened. Her soft sobbing awakened something inside him, something he'd long buried and forgotten. He tried to convince himself it was just indigestion from that spicy Freebirds burrito he'd hastily scarfed before hitting up her apartment, but the reality was much more troubling.

Compassion
.

He was
feeling
again—and that wasn't a good thing.

Niall’s gut clenched painfully as her sniffling continued. He didn't do consoling very well. Hugs and soothing words weren't his thing. He searched for the right thing to say but it never came. Eventually, she let out long, shaky breath and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. He allowed his gaze to roam her soft curves as she dabbed at her face. A quiver of heat lanced his lower belly. He ignored the sensation of instant attraction. Well-versed in self-denial, Niall shut down his emotional side with the ease of flipping a switch.

But he had a suspicious feeling it wasn't going to be so easy with Cruz.

This girl was totally off-limits—she was his best friend's sister—but she'd ignited that primal male side of him that simply couldn't be ignored. The second he'd clapped eyes on her inside that apartment, he'd fought to breathe. She was nothing like the scrawny little girl from the pictures Carlos had carried with him over there.
Flaca
, as Carlos had so affectionately called his baby sister, was no more. She'd blossomed into a lush beauty with a pouty mouth and bright brown eyes.

His gaze shifted sideways to her round belly. His hand burned with the memory of holding her and the baby as he blasted through the red light intersection. It had been pure instinct to reach out and grab her, to hold her body tight to prevent a dangerous slide if he'd been the slightest bit off in blowing across that traffic. He'd been gripped with fear that something would happen to her or that tiny life growing inside her. There were few things that Niall found precious anymore and babies were among them.

Old and painful memories bombarded him at the sight of her pregnant form. Niall shoved them aside. He didn't want to think about Marlene right now. He had to think about Cruz and her child. There hadn't been much time for him to gather intel from Carlos. His old friend had been in the middle of an undercover gun run when he'd learned El Alacrán had marked Cruz for death. Niall had only gotten the barest of details before hitting the road. What he needed now was the full story.

"We've got a two hour drive before we stop off to trade out this SUV for my truck. I need you to answer my questions so I can help you."

She looked at him warily. "All right."

"Look, Cruz, I hate to make you think about that night, but what can you tell me about him, about The Scorpion?"

"I never saw his face." Her tone turned insistent and fearful. "I really didn't. He wore a mask, one of those clear ones they make for burn victims." She shuddered. "I didn't even know he was this Scorpion guy until the DNA results came back. They fast-tracked them because of Carlos, and, when his name popped up, everyone freaked."

"Do you know why he came after you? Any idea?"

"No. They told me it was a mix-up with the apartment. Apparently, the woman who lived there before me was the girlfriend of some high-level money man in the De La Garza outfit. He cooked the books and took off with the money. Left the girlfriend high and dry." Cruz shrugged. "I don't know. I sub-let the place from her because she couldn't afford the rent anymore. I guess El Alacrán made a mistake. I'd only been there six days when it happened. He thought he was sending a message to He Who Absconds with Money but he got me instead."

Niall wasn't sure he bought that. At some point during the home invasion, El Alacrán must have realized he had the wrong girl. Cruz looked nothing like the high-priced hooker types who tended to cling to dirty cartel accountants.

"Do you think he knows about the connection between you and Carlos?"

"I guess that’s the million dollar question, isn't it?" Cruz absent-mindedly rubbed her tummy. He tore his gaze away from the sweet maternal movement. "When it happened, we all assumed Carlos's cover had been blown. I was sure he'd get it in the neck before he made it to the hospital but nothing happened. He made up some story about a girlfriend being sick and no one in his crew batted an eyelash when he left for a few days. It was a non-event for them."

"And that's something the DLG boys would have crowed about loudly." Even as Niall spoke the rather indelicate truth, Cruz surprised him by nodding. She appeared to be rather pragmatic about the whole thing.

"Can you imagine? If the DLG outfit had uncovered a rat in the Reynosa cartel, they'd use that for leverage. If they sent their hitman after that rat's little sister, it would have been all over the streets. But Carlos put his ear to the ground and heard the same thing. Mix-up. Wrong girl. Recreation."

Niall's stomach lurched at her description of her attack as a bit of fun for the psychopath who had broken into her home and brutalized her. He started to speak but she interrupted him.

"I kept waiting for him to say something, to tell me why he was…hurting me like that. He didn't talk much. He just—" She stopped and gulped, her fingers tightening around the seatbelt. "He laughed. He thought it was…funny."

Fury welled up inside Niall and threatened to boil over. The lights illuminating the interstate lit up her face. Shame darkened Cruz's features and she averted her eyes. "Don’t," he said, reaching out to grab her hand, his promise not to touch her without warning forgotten. "Don't ever be ashamed. You're a survivor, Cruz."

"Yeah," she replied with a small smile. "That's what my therapist says."

"Is that helping?" He hadn't had a very a good experience with counselors. Therapy needed active participation and he wasn't interested.

"A lot. My therapist is also a rape survivor so she gets it. I go to some group things, too, but I guess those will have to be put on hold for the time being."

"Unfortunately," he agreed and let go of her hand. She stared at her palm and he couldn't help but wonder if she'd felt the same electric tingle. Clearing his throat, Niall put both hands on the steering wheel. "I'm not sure there's anything like that out in Eldorado. Maybe San Angelo but that's a two hour round trip. Frankly, we can't risk it, not even at an anonymous type support group."

"I understand," she replied softly. "What about prenatal care? I'm less than nine weeks from my due date. I need to see a doctor regularly."

"That close?" Niall's mind went into overdrive as he considered how the hell they were going to manage childbirth with a crazed assassin hot on their heels. "Your pregnancy is progressing well? No issues? No gestational diabetes or high blood pressure?"

A look of surprise crossed her face. "No, I'm very healthy. A textbook pregnancy as my doc says."

"Good." Niall was happy to have one less complication.

"Considering the way this pregnancy began, it's a miracle it's gone so well."

Her blunt statement confirmed what Niall had suspected but hadn't yet been brave enough to ask. Carlos had told him that Cruz had been brutally sexually assaulted. He'd never explicitly stated she'd conceived that night, only tacking on the information about her pregnancy seconds before they'd ended that first call. Niall had put two-and-two together but hoped he was wrong.

Niall sat in silent awe of Cruz's courage. He wondered how many women would have gone through with a pregnancy that began in such despicable violence. Niall had no doubts she'd considered her choice thoroughly. She didn't strike him as the kind of woman to make life changing decisions lightly. Hell, she was a University of Texas PhD student in some kind of advanced mathematics. A brain like that didn't make jump decisions.

"You really want this baby." The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

Her gaze whipped his way, the ends of her ponytail smacking her jawline. Her arms curled protectively around the baby. "Yes."

"That's admirable of you."

"Is it? I don't know." She shook her head. "I just—"—she swallowed hard and shook her head—"I couldn't end it. When I realized I was pregnant, I was eleven weeks along. He was kicking and swinging his arms in the ultrasound—and I fell in love with him instantly. There was no question after that. He was so perfect and so pure." She glanced away and wiped at her eyes. "He's mine. He's my son and I love him. That's all that matters."

Niall's throat tightened. The honesty of her words slashed at him, cutting through the armor he'd embraced to keep out all those unwanted emotions. He wondered what that was like, to love someone so deeply and so completely. Memories of his own mother invaded his thoughts. The image of her slurring and stumbling around the kitchen while a cigarette smoldered on the laminate countertop filled his mind. No, he definitely hadn't known a love like Cruz bore for her unborn son.

"You're son is going to be just fine, Cruz." Niall's jaw ticked as he tried to push down those old feelings of abandonment and terror. "My parents weren't winning any awards and I turned out all right. With a mom like you that kid will probably be president someday."

Cruz snorted and grinned his way. "We'll see."

Niall turned his attention back to the road. They settled into a comfortable silence. The wheels in his head spun. Why target Cruz? He didn’t buy the apartment screw-up. A man like El Alacrán didn't become legend by making rookie mistakes like that. It seemed more likely he'd gone after Cruz specifically.

But why let her live? Why come back for her now? He'd had nearly eight months to finish the job.

A sickening thought jumped to the forefront. He snuck a glance at Cruz. The baby. What if El Alacrán wanted the baby? Rape was a sadistic, hateful crime. Someone evil enough to batter and assault an innocent young woman was probably just warped and twisted enough to decide that he wanted the child he'd fathered.

As much as he wanted to discount the theory, Niall couldn't. It was a possibility, however wild, and he had to account for it in his planning. There was also the much more likely scenario that El Alacrán was fully aware that Carlos was a Fed and that he'd somehow picked through Carlos's sanitized history to find the link to Cruz. Maybe he was screwing with Carlos or working some other angle to blow up the Reynosa cartel from the inside. Just a whiff of undercover agent could send the Reynosa outfit into a tailspin. Hell, even El Alacrán's loyalty to the De La Garza gang was suspect. Maybe
he
was the double agent. Putting Carlos out of commission could make things easier for him if he was working both sides.

Niall didn’t have the answers and it left him uneasy. He couldn't protect Cruz without all the facts and so much of this didn't add up. Years of covert operations, some that went pear-shaped awfully fast, had taught Niall to work on the fly. He'd completed missions successfully on less intel than this.

Besides, the second that son of a bitch put his hands on Carlos's sister, Niall had become involved. Years earlier, in the heat of battle, both men had sworn a blood oath. Niall had promised he'd look after Cruz if something happened to Carlos. Even though having a young pregnant woman under foot was the absolute last complication he needed in his life, Niall had sworn that vow and he never broke his word.

Cruz reached for the radio but stopped. She glanced at him questioningly. "Do you mind?"

"No but not too loud. And for god's sake none of that hip-hop crap!"

She rolled her eyes and mumbled something he couldn't understand. When she landed on a station blaring some of that god-awful Lady Gaga nonsense, she smirked and turned up the volume. He held her gaze but refused to ask for her to change the channel. Apparently, she was feeling him out, testing his boundaries like a spoiled child used to getting her way. Well Niall wasn't going to bite that bait. He turned his attention to the highway and pretended he didn't notice her glare.