Mercenary's Woman (22 page)

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MERCENARY'S WOMAN

can manage a mop, can't you,
son?" he asked with a big
grin.

"Sure can!"
Stevie said, hefting the mop over one
shoulder.

"Let's away
then, my lad," the man joked. "I'll send
him right back, so
he won't miss any class," he promised.

"Okay."

She watched Stevie go
down the crowded hall behind
Harry. It wasn't quite time for class to start, and she
didn't
think anything of the
incident. Until five minutes later, when Stevie hadn't reappeared.

She left a monitor in
charge of her class and went down
the hall to the janitor's closet. There was
the broken
bucket, and the mop, but Stevie was nowhere in sight. But
the janitor was.
He'd been knocked out. She went straight
to the office to phone Eb and call the
paramedics. Fortunately Harry only had a slight concussion. To be safe, he
was taken to the
hospital for observation. Sally felt sick.
She should have realized that Lopez might
send someone
to the school. Why had she been so gullible?

Eb arrived at the
front office with the police chief, Chet
Blake, and two of his officers. They went from door to
door, combing the school. But Stevie was no
longer there.
One of the other janitors remembered seeing a stranger
leave the building with the little boy and get
into a brown
pickup truck in the parking lot.

With that
information, the police put out a bulletin. But
it was too late. They found the
pickup truck minutes later,
abandoned in another parking lot, at a grocery store.
Stevie
was nowhere to be
seen.

They waited by the
telephone that afternoon for the call
that was sure to come. When it did, Eb had to
bite down

DIANA
PALMER

hard on what he wanted to say. Jessica and Sally had been
in tears ever since
he brought Sally home to the ranch.

"Now," the
voice came in a slow, accented drawl,
"Stevie's mother will give me the name I
want. Or her
son will never come home."

"She had to be sedated," Eb
said, thinking fast. "She's
out
cold."

"You have one
hour. Not a second longer." The line
went dead.

Eb cursed roundly.
"Now what do we do?" Sally asked,
He phoned Cy Parks.
"Did you get that message sent
for me?" he asked.

"Yes. Scramble the signal."
Eb touched a button on the phone.
"Shoot."
Cy gave him a telephone number. "He should be there
by now. What can I do
to help?"

Eb didn't have to be told that the news about Stevie's
abduction was all over
town. "Nothing. Wish me luck."
"You know it."

He hung up. Eb dialed the other number and waited. It
rang once. Twice. Three times. Four times.
"Come on!" Eb growled impatiently.
On
the fifth ring, the receiver was lifted.
"Rodrigo?"
Eb asked at once.
"Yes,"

"I'm going to
put Jessica on the line, and leave the
room. She'll give you a name. You know what
to do with
it."

"Okay."

Eb gave the receiver
to Jessica and motioned everybody
out of the communications room. He closed the door.

Jessica felt the
receiver in her hands and took a deep
breath. "The name of my informant was
Isabella Me-

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DIANA PALMER

167

dina," she said quietly.
"She worked as a housekeeper
for..."

There was an intake
of breath on the other end of the
line. "But surely you knew?'' he asked at once.

"Knew what?" Jessica stammered.

"Isabella was
found washed up on the rocks in Cancun,
just before Lopez's capture," Rodrigo said abruptly.
"She
is long dead."

"Oh, good Lord," Jessica gasped.

"How could you not know?" he demanded.

Jessica wiped her
forehead with a shaking hand. "I lost
touch with her just before the trial. I assumed that she'd
gone undercover to escape vengeance from Lopez.
She
wasn't going to testify, after
all. She only gave me sources of hard information that I could use to prosecute
him. Af
terward, there were only
three people who knew about her
involvement,
and they died under rather...mysterious cir
cumstances."

"This is the name Lopez wants?" he asked.

"Yes," she said miserably. "He's got my son!"

"Then you lose
nothing by giving him the name," he
said quietly. "Do you?"

"No. But he may not even remember her..."

"He was in love
with her," Rodrigo said coldly. "His
women have a habit of washing up on
beaches. The last,
a young singer in a Cancun nightclub, died only weeks
ago at his hands.
There is no proof, of course," he added
coldly. "The official cause of
death was suicide."

He sounded as though
the matter was personal. She hes
itated to ask. "You knew the singer?''
she ventured.

There was a pause. "Yes. She was...my sister."

"I'm very sorry."

"So am I. Give
Lopez the name. It will pacify him and
spare your son any more adventures. He will
not harm the

boy," he added at once. "I
think you must know this
already."

"I do. At least
he has one virtue among so many vices.
But it doesn't ease the fear."

"Of course not.
Tell Scott I'll be in touch, and not to
contact me again. When I have something
concrete, I'll
call him."

"I'll tell him. Thank you."

"De nada." He hung up.

She went into the
other room, feeling her way along the
wall.

"Well?" Sally asked.

"My informant is
dead," Jessica said sadly. "Lopez
killed her, and I never knew. I thought
she'd escaped and
maybe changed her name."

"What now?" Sally asked miserably.

"I give Lopez
the name," Jessica replied. "It will harm
no one now. She was
so brave. She actually worked in his
house and pretended to care about him, just
so that she
could find enough evidence to convict him. Her father and
mother, and her
sister, had been gunned down in their
village by his men, because they spoke to a government
unit about the drug smuggling. She was sick with
fear and
grief, but she was willing
to do anything to stop him." She shook her head. "Poor woman."

"A brave soul," Eb said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too,"
Jessica said. She wrapped her arms around
herself, feeling chilled. "What if Lopez
won't believe
me?"

"You know," Eb said quietly, "I think he will."

"Let's hope
so," Dallas agreed, his eyes narrow and
dark with worry.

Sally put a loving arm around her aunt. "We'll get

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DIANA PALMER

169

Stevie back," she said gently. "Everything's
going to be
okay."

Jessica hugged her
back tearfully. "What would I do
without you?" she whispered huskily.

Sally exchanged a
long look with Dallas. She smiled.
"I think you're going to find out very soon," she
teased.
"And I'll be your
bridesmaid."

"Matron of honor," Eb corrected with soft, tender eyes.

"What?" Jessica exclaimed.

"I'm going to
many your niece, Jess," Eb said gently.
"I always meant to, you know.
And," he added with mock
solemnity, "it does seem the least I can do,
considering
that she's saved herself for me all these years, despite the
blatant temptations
of college life..."

"Temptations," Sally chuckled. "If you only knew!"

"Explain that," Eb challenged.

She let go of Jessica
and went close to him, sliding her arms naturally around his hard waist.
"As if there's a man
on the planet who could compare with you," she mur
mured, and reached up
to kiss his chin. Her eyes literally
glowed with love. "There never was any
competition.
There never could be."

Eb lifted an
eyebrow. "I could return the compliment,"
he said in a deep, quiet tone.
"You're in a class all your
own, Sally
mine."

She laid her cheek
against his hard chest. "They'll give
Stevie back, won't they?" she asked after
a minute.

"Yes," he said, utterly certain.

Sally glanced at
Jessica, who was close beside Dallas
now, leaning against him. They looked as if
they'd always
belonged together. Things had to turn out all right for
them. They just had
to. Lopez might have one virtue, but
Sally wasn't at all sure that Eb was right.
She only prayed

that Stevie would be returned when Jess gave
up the in
formant's
name. If Lopez did keep his word, and that
seemed certain, there was a chance. She had
to hope it was
a good one.

DIANA PALMER

171

Chapter Eleven

In exactly an hour from the time Lopez hung
up, the
phone
rang again. Eb let Jessica answer it.

"Hello," she said quietly.

"The name," Lopez replied tersely.

She took a slow
breath. "I want you to understand that
I would never have given up my informant
under ordinary
circumstances. But nothing I say can harm her now. I only found out
today that she's beyond your vengeance. So it
doesn't matter anymore if you know who
she was."

"Who...she was?" Lopez asked, his voice hesitant

"Yes. Was. Her name was Isabella..."

His indrawn breath
was so harsh that Jessica almost felt
it "Isabella," he bit off. There was
a tense pause. "Isabella."

"I lost touch with her before your
trial," Jessica said
curtly. "I
assumed that she'd gone away and taken on
another identity to escape being found out. I didn't know
that she was dead already."

Still, Lopez said
nothing. The silence went on for so
long that Jessica thought the connection was cut.

"Hello?" she asked.

There was another
intake of breath. "I loved her," he
spat. "In my life, there was no
other woman I trusted so
much. But she wanted nothing to do with me. I should
have known. I should
have realized!"

"You killed her, didn't you?" Jessica said coldly.

"Yes," he
said, and he didn't sound violent He
sounded oddly subdued. "I never meant
to. But I lashed
out in a moment's rage, and then it was too late, and all
my regrets would not
bring her back to life." He drew
another breath. "She was close enough to
me that she
knew things no one else was permitted to know. It oc
curred to me that
she was asking far too many questions, but I was conceited enough to believe
she cared for me."
There
was another brief pause. "The boy will be returned
at once. You will find him at the strip mall in the toy store
in five minutes. He will not be harmed. You have
my
word. Nor will you ever be
threatened by me again.
I...regret...many
things," he added in an odd tone, and
the line went dead abruptly.

Jessica caught her
breath, still holding the receiver in
her hand, as if it had life.

"Well?" Dallas asked impatiently.

She felt for the
instrument and replaced the receiver with
slow deliberation. "He said that Stevie
would be in the
toy store in the strip mall, in five minutes, unharmed."
Her eyes closed.
"Unharmed."

Eb
motioned Dallas toward Jessica.

"Let's go," he said tersely.

"What if he
lied?" Jessica asked as Dallas escorted her
out to the big sports utility vehicle
Eb drove.

"We
both know that Lopez is a man of his word, re-