Mercenary's Woman (13 page)

96
                             
MERCENARY'S
WOMAN

"I had to have
a foreign language series as part of my
degree," she said. "I chose
Spanish, because that's pretty
necessary around here, with such a large Hispanic popu
lation. I hated it at
first, and then I learned how to read in
it." Her eyes brightened. "It's the most exciting thing
in
the world to read something in the
language the author
created it in. I never dreamed how delightful it
would be
to read
Don Quixote
as
Cervantes actually wrote it!"

"I know what you mean. But the older
the novel, the
more difficult the
translation. Words change meaning. And
a
good number of the more modern novels are written in
the various
dialects of Spanish provinces."

She grinned.
"Like Blasco-Ibanez, who used a regional
dialect for his matador hero, Juan
Gallardo, in dialogue."

"Yes."

She finished her cone
and wiped her hands. "I became
really fascinated with bullfighting after I
read the book, so
I found a Web site that had biographies of all the matadors. I found the
ones mentioned in the book, who fought in the
corridas of Spain around the turn of
the century."

"Until you read
Blasco-Ibanez, you have no idea how
dangerous bullfighting really is," Eb
agreed. "He must have seen some of the corridas."

"A number of
Spanish authors did. Lorca, for example, wrote a famous poem about the death of
his friend Sanchez
Mejias in the bullring."

He brushed back a
strand of gold-streaked brown hair and smiled. "I've missed conversations
like this, although
a good many of the men I train are well-educated. In
fact,
Micah
Steele, who does consulting work for me, was a
resident doctor at one of the bigger
Eastern hospitals when
he joined my unit."

"Why did he give
up a profession that he must have
studied very hard for?"

DIANA PALMER
                                      
97

"Nobody knows,
and he won't talk. Mostly what we
know about him we found out from his father, who used t
o be a bank president until his heart attack.
Micah's step
sister, Callie, looks
after old man Steele these days. He
and
Micah haven't spoken for years, not since he and Cal
lie's mother
divorced."

"Do you know why they did?"

He shrugged.
"Local gossip had it that Micah's father
caught Micah and his stepmother in a
compromising po
sition and threw them both out of the house."

"Poor man."

"Poor Callie.
She worshiped the ground Micah walked
on, but he won't even speak to her these
days."

"That name sounds familiar," she commented.

"It should.
Callie's a paralegal. She works for Barnes and Kemp, the trial lawyers here in
town."

"It's so nice to
have a lazy day like this," she mur
mured, watching Stevie browse among the party
decora
tions
on a shelf. "It makes me forget the danger."

"I'm surprised
that Lopez hasn't made any more moves
lately," he said. "And a little
disturbed. It isn't like him
to back off."

"Maybe he was
afraid those two men who attacked me
would be arrested and they'd tell on
him," she said.

He laughed
mirthlessly. "Dream on. Lopez would have
them disposed of before they had time
to rat on him." He
pursed
his lips. "That could be what happened to them.
You don't make a mistake when you belong to that par
ticular
cartel. No second chances. Ever."

She shivered. "We do keep all the doors locked,"
she
said, "And we're very careful about
what we say. Well,
Jessica is,"
she amended sheepishly. "Until you taught me about surveillance equipment,
I didn't know that a whisper
could be
heard half a mile away."

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MERCENARY'S WOMAN

"Never forget
it," he told her. "Never drop your guard,
either. I'll always
have someone close enough to run in
terference if you get into trouble, but you
have to do your
part to keep the house secure."

"And let you
know when and where I'm going," she
agreed. "I won't forget again."

He reached across
the table and folded his fingers into hers, liking the way they clung. His
thumb smoothed over
the soft, moist palm while he searched her eyes.

"You haven't had
an easy time of it, have you?" he
asked conversationally. "In some ways, your whole life
has been in turmoil since you were
seventeen."

"In transition,
at least," she corrected, smiling gently.
"If there's one thing I've learned, it's that
everything
changes."

"I suppose so." His fingers
tightened on hers and the
look in his eyes
was suddenly dark and mysterious and a
little threatening. "I've
learned a few things myself," he
said
quietly.

"Such as?" she whispered daringly.

He glanced down at their entwined fingers.
"Such as
never taking things for
granted."

She frowned, puzzled.

He laughed and let
go of her fingers. "I told you that I
was engaged once, didn't I?" he asked.

She nodded.

"I never told
her what I did for a living. She never
questioned where my money came from. In fact,
when I
tried
to tell her, she stopped me, saying it wouldn't matter,
that she loved me and
she'd go wherever my job took
me." He leaned back in his chair, his expression
reflective
and solemn. "Her parents were dead. She and an older
boy were fostered at the same time to a
wealthy woman.

DIANA PALMER

They spent years together, but he and Maggie
weren't
close,
so I made all the wedding arrangements and paid
for her gown and the rings, everything." His eyes dark
ened with remembered pain. "I still felt
uncomfortable
about having secrets
between us, though, so the night be
fore
the wedding, I told her what I did for a living. She put the rings on the
coffee table, got her stuff, and left
town
that same night. She married two months later...a man twice her age."

She knew about his
ex-fiancee, but not how much he'd
cared about the woman. The expression in his
eyes told her that the pain hadn't gone away. "Didn't she send you
a letter, or phone you
after she'd had time to think it
over?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Until I ran into
her in Houston a
week ago, I had no idea
where she was. Her adoptive
mother
died just after we broke up. Tough break."

Her heart stopped in her chest.
"You...saw her...in
Houston?"

He nodded, oblivious
to the shock in her eyes. "As luck would have it, she's a new junior
partner in an investment
firm I use, and widowed."

He stared at her
until she looked up, and he wasn't smil
ing. "You're in a precarious situation,
and we've been
thrown together in a rather unconventional way. We're
friends, but you don't
have to live with what I do."

All her hopes and
dreams and wild expectations crum
bled to dust in her mind. Friends. Good
friends. Of course
they were! He was teaching her martial arts, he was help
ing her to survive a
potential attack by a ruthless drug lord. That didn't mean he wanted her to
share his life. Quite the
opposite, it seemed now.

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MERCENARY'S WOMAN

DIANA PALMER

101

"If a woman
cared enough, surely she could give it a chance?" she asked, terrified
that her anguish might show.

Apparently it didn't.
He leaned back in his chair with a long sigh, reflective and moody, "No.
She said she wanted
a career, anyway," he replied. "It suited her
to have her own money and be independent."

"My parents
never shared their paychecks, or anything
else," she said carelessly. She finished
her cone and
glanced at Stevie. "Stevie, we'd better go, sweetheart."

He came running,
smiling as he leaned against her and
looked across at Eb, who was still brooding.
"Can we take
Mama a cone?"

"Of course we
can," Sally said gently. She dug out two
dollars. "Here. Get her a cup of
that fat-free Dutch choc
olate, okay? And make sure it has a lid."

"Okay!"

He ran off with his
grubstake, feeling very adult. Sally
watched him, smiling.

"I could have done that," Eb commented.

"Yes, you
could, but it wouldn't help teach him re
sponsibility. Six isn't too young to start
learning independence. He's going to be a fine man," she added, her voice
softer as she watched him.

He didn't comment. He
was feeling claustrophobic and he didn't know why. He got up and dealt with the
used napkins. By the time he was finished, Stevie came back
carrying a small white sack with Jessica's
treat inside.

There wasn't much
conversation on the way back to the
Johnson house, and even then it was
completely imper
sonal. Sally realized that it must have hurt Eb to recall
how abruptly his
fiancee had rejected him. She might have
loved him, but the constant danger of his
profession must

have been more than she could handle.
Now that he was
retired from
the danger, it might not be such an obstacle.

That was a
depressing thought. His ex-fiancee was a
widow and he was in a secure profession, and
they'd re
cently
seen each other. It was enough to get Sally out of
the truck with Stevie and off into the
house with only a quick thank-you and a forced smile.

Eb, driving away down
the road, felt a vague regret for
the loss of the rapport he and Sally had seemed to share.
He couldn't understand what had made her so distant
this
afternoon.

Eb had already
contacted a man he knew in the Drug
Enforcement Administration on a secure
channel and told him what he knew about Lopez and his plans for Jacobs-
ville. He'd also
asked about the possibility of having a man go undercover to infiltrate the
operation and was told only
that
the DEA was aware of Lopez's construction project
He wouldn't tell Eb anything more than that.

Understanding
government work very well, Eb had as
sumed that the undercover operation was
already under
way. He wasn't about to mention that to anyone he knew.
Not even Cy.

He had Dallas
monitoring some sensitive equipment that gave them direct audio and visual
information from Sally's
house.
Nobody would sneak up on it without being no
ticed.
He'd also had Dallas bug the telephone. That night,
he was glad he had.

In the early hours of
the morning, Sally was brought wide-awake by the insistent ringing of the
telephone. The number was unlisted, but that didn't stop telemarketers.
Ordinarily, though,
they didn't call at this hour. It wasn't
a good marketing strategy, especially in
Sally's case. She'd

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MERCENARY'S WOMAN

DIANA PALMER

103

hardly slept after the discussion with
Eb in the yogurt shop.
She wasn't in the mood to talk to strangers.

"Hello?" she asked belligerently.

"You'll never
see us coming," a slow, ice-cold voice
said in her ear. "But unless Jessica
gives up the name by
midnight
Saturday, there will be serious repercussions."

Sally was so shocked
that she fumbled with the phone
and cut off the caller. She stood holding the receiver,
blinking in astonishment. That softly accented
tone had
chilled her to the bone,
despite the flannel gown she was
wearing.

No sooner had she righted the telephone
than it rang again. This time, she hesitated. Her heart was pounding
like mad. She was almost shaking with the force
of it. Her
mouth was dry. Her palms
began to sweat There was an
uncomfortable knot in the pit of her
stomach.

She wanted to ignore
it. She didn't dare. Quickly, before
she lost her nerve, she lifted it.

"She has one last chance,"
the voice continued, as if
the connection hadn't been cut. "She must phone this
number Saturday night at midnight exactly and give a
name. One minute
after midnight, you will all suffer the
consequences." He gave the number and
hung up. This time the connection was cut even more rapidly. Sally
dropped the receiver
back into the cradle with icy fingers. She stared down at it with growing
horror. Surely Eb and Dallas and the others would be watching. But were they
listening as well?

The phone rang a third
time, but now she was angry
and she didn't hesitate. She jerked it up.
"Hello...?"

"We couldn't get
a trace," Eb said angrily. "Are you
all right?"

She swallowed, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and

swallowed again. "Yes," she said calmly. "I'm all
right.
You heard what he said?''

"I heard. Don't worry."

"Don't
worry?" she parroted. "When a man's just
threatened to kill
everyone in my house?"

"He won't kill
anybody," he assured her. "And he's
through making threats for tonight.
I'm going to find out
where that phone is. Go to sleep. It's all right."

The receiver went
dead. "I am sick and tired of men throwing out orders and hanging up on
me!" she told the
telephone earpiece.

It did no good, of
course, except that voicing her irritation made her feel a little better. She
climbed back into
bed and lay
awake, wide-eyed and nervous, until dawn.
Just
before she and Stevie left for school, out of the child's
hearing range,
she told Jessica what had happened.

"Eb and the others
are watching us," Sally assured her
quickly. "But be careful about answering
the door."

"No need,"
Jessica said. "Lopez may be certifiable, but he's predictable. He never
takes action until his demands
haven't been met. We have until midnight Saturday to
think of
something."

"Wonderful,"
Sally said on a sigh. "We have today
and tomorrow. I'm sure we'll have Lopez and
all his co
horts in jail by then."

"Sarcasm doesn't
suit you, dear," Jessica said with a
smile. "Go to work. I'll be fine."

"I wish I could
guarantee that all of us would be fine,"
Sally murmured to herself as she went
out the door behind
Stevie.

Somehow she knew that
life would never be the same again. It had been bad enough hearing Eb talk
about the
woman
he'd loved who had rejected him at the altar, and