Mercenary's Woman (8 page)

Chapter Four

Jessica was subdued after the time
she'd spent with Dal
las. Even Stevie noticed, and became more attentive.
Sally
cooked
her aunt's favorite dishes and did her best to coax
Jess into a better
frame of mind. But the other woman's
sadness was blatant.

With her mind on
Jessica and not on time passing, she
forgot that she had a parents and teachers
meeting the next
Tuesday
night. She phoned Eb's ranch, as she'd been told
to, but all she got was the answering machine and a mes
sage that only asked the caller to leave a name
and number.
She left a message, doubting that he'd hear it before she
was safely home. She hadn't really believed him
when
he'd said the whole family was
in danger, especially since
nothing
out of the ordinary had happened. But even so, surely nothing was going to
happen to her on a two-mile
drive
home!

She sent Stevie home with a fellow
teacher. The busi
ness meeting was long and
explosive, and it was much
later than
usual when it was finally over. Sally spoke to

58
                              
MERCENARY'S WOMAN

the parents she knew and left early. She
wasn't thinking
about anything except her bed as she drove down the long,
lonely road toward
home. As she passed the large house
and accompanying acreage where her three
neighbors
lived,
she felt a chill. Three of them were out on their front
porch. The light was
on, and it looked as if they were
arguing about something. They caught sight
of her truck
and there was an
ominous stillness about them.

Sally drove faster,
aware that she drew their attention as she went past them. Only a few more
minutes, she
thought, and she'd be home...

The steering wheel
suddenly became difficult to turn and
with horror she heard the sound of a tire
going flatter and
flatter. Her heart flipped over. She didn't have a spare.
She'd rolled it out
of the bed to make room for the cattle feed she'd taken home last week, having
meant to ask Eb
to help her put it back in again. But she'd have to walk
the rest of the way, now. Worse, it was
dark and those creepy men were still watching the truck.

Well, she told
herself as she climbed out of the cab with
her purse over her shoulder, they weren't
going to give
her any trouble. She had a ioud whistling device, and she
now knew enough at
least self-defense to protect herself.
Confident, despite Eb's earlier warnings,
she locked the truck and started walking.

The sound of running
feet came toward her. She looked over her shoulder and stopped, turning, her
mouth set in a
grim line. Two
of the three men were coming down the
road
toward her in a straight line. Just be calm, she told
herself. She was wearing a neat gray pantsuit
with a white
blouse, her hair was up
in a French twist, and she lifted
her chin to show that she wasn't
afraid of them. Feeling her chances of a physical defense waning rapidly as she
saw the size and strength of the two men,
her hand went

DIANA
PALMER

nervously
to the whistle in her pocketbook and brought it by her side.

"Hey, there,
sweet thing," one of the men called. "Got
a flat? We'll help
you change it."

The other man, a
little taller, untidy, unshaved and
frankly unpleasant-looking, grinned at her.
"You bet we
will!"

"I don't have a
spare, thank you all the same."

"We'll drive you
home," the tall one said.

She forced a smile.
"No, thanks. I'll enjoy the walk.
Good night!"

She started to turn
when they pounced. One knocked
the whistle out of her hand and caught her arm behind her
back,
while the other one took her purse off her shoulder
and went through it
quickly. He pulled out her wallet,
looked at everything in it, and finally took
out a bill, drop
ping her
self-defense spray with the purse.

"Ten lousy
bucks," he muttered, dropping the bag as
he stuffed the bill into his pocket.
"Pity Lopez don't pay
us better. This'll buy us a couple of six-packs,
though."

"Let me
go," Sally said, incensed. She tried to bring
her elbow back into the man's stomach, as
she'd seen an
instructor on television do,
but the man twisted her other
arm so harshly that the pain stopped her
dead.

The other man came
right up to her and looked her up
and down. "Not bad," he rasped. "Quick, bring her
over
here, off the road," he told the
other man.

"Lopez won't like this!" The man
on the porch came
toward them, yelling
across the road. "You'll draw atten
tion to us!"

One of them made a
rude remark. The third man went
back up on the porch, his footsteps sounding
unnaturally
loud on the wood.

Sally was almost sick
with fear, but she fought like a

MERCENARY'S
WOMAN

tigress. Her efforts to break free did no
good. These men
were bigger and stronger than she was, and they had her helpless. She
couldn't get to her whistle or spray and every
kick, punch she tried was effectively
blocked. It occurred to her that these men knew self-defense moves, too, and
how to avoid them. Too
late, she remembered what Eb
had said to her about overconfidence. These men weren't
even drunk and they
were too much for her.

Her heart beat wildly
as she was dragged off the road
to the thick grass at the roadside. She would
struggle, she
would fight, but she was no match for them. She knew she
was in a lot of danger
and it looked like there was no
escape. Tears of impotent fury dripped from
her eyes.
Helpless
while one of the men kept her immobilized, she
remembered the sound of her own voice
telling her aunt
just a few weeks ago that she could handle anything. She'd been
overconfident.

A sound buzzed in her head and at first
she thought it
was the prelude to a dead
faint. It wasn't. The sound was growing closer. It was a pickup truck. The
headlights illuminated her truck on the roadside, but not the struggle
that was going on near it.

It was as if the
driver knew what was happening without
seeing it. The truck whipped onto the
shoulder and was
cut off. A man got out, a tall man in a shepherd's coat
with a Stetson drawn
over his brow. He walked straight
toward the two men, who released Jessica and turned to face the
new threat. Eb!

"Car trouble?" a deep, gravelly
voice asked sarcasti
cally.

One of the men
pulled a knife, and the other one ap
proached the newcomer. "This ain't none of your busi
ness," the taller man said. "Get
going."

The newcomer put his
hands on his lean hips and stood
his ground. "In your dreams."

"You'll wish you
had," the taller of them replied
harshly. He moved in with the knife close in
at his side.

Sally stared in horror at Eb, who was
inviting this lu
natic to kill him! She knew
from television how deadly a
knife
wound in the stomach could be. Hadn't Eb told her
that the best way to
survive a knife fight was to never get
in
one in the first place, to run like hell? And now Eb was
going to be killed and it was going to be all her
fault for not taking his advice and getting that tire fixed...!

Eb moved unexpectedly, with the speed of a
striking cobra. The man with the knife was suddenly writhing on
the ground, holding his forearm and sobbing. The
other
man rushed forward, to be
flipped right out into the high
way. He got up and rushed again. This
time he was met
with a violent, sharp
movement that sent him to the
ground,
and he didn't get up.

Eb walked right over
the unconscious man, ignoring the
groaning man, and picked Sally up right off
the ground in his arms. He carried her to his truck, balancing her on one
powerful denim-covered thigh while he opened the pas
senger door and put her inside.

"My...purse,"
she whispered, giving in to the shock
and fear that she'd tried so hard to hide. She was shaking so hard
her speech was slurred.

He closed the door,
retrieved her purse and wallet from
the ground, and handed it in through his
open door. "What
did they take, baby?" he asked in a soft,
comforting tone.

"The tall
one...took a ten-dollar bill," she faltered, hat
ing her own cowardice
as she sobbed helplessly. "In his
pocket..."

Eb retrieved it,
tossed it to her and got in beside her.

"But those
men," she protested.

62

MERCENARY'S WOMAN

DIANA PALMER

"Be still for a
minute. It's all right. They look worse than they are." He took a cell
phone from his pocket,
opened it, and dialed. "Bill? Eb Scott. I left you
a couple of assailants on the Simmons Mill Road just past Bell's
rental house. That's
right, the very one." He glanced at
Sally. "Not tonight. I'll tell her to
come see you in the morning." There was a pause. "Nothing too bad; a
couple
of
broken bones, that's all, but you might send the am
bulance anyway. Sure. Thanks, Bill."

He powered down the phone and stuck
it back into his
jacket. "Fasten your seat belt. I'll take you home and send
one of my men out to
fix the truck and drive it back for
you."

Her hands were shaking
so badly that he had to do it for her. He turned on the light in the cab and
looked at
her
intently. He saw the shock, the fear, the humiliation, the anger, all lying
naked in her wide, shimmering gray
eyes. Last, his eyes fell to her blouse,
where the fabric was
torn, and her simple cotton brassiere was showing. She
was
so
upset that she didn't even realize how much bare skin
was on display.

He took off the
long-sleeved chambray shirt he was
wearing over his black T-shirt and put her
into it, fastening
the buttons with deft, quick hands over the ripped blouse.
His face grew hard as he saw the evidence
of her ordeal.

"I had
a...a...whistle." she choked. "I even remem
bered what you taught
me about how to fight back...!"

He studied her
solemnly. "I trained a company of recruits a few years ago," he said
evenly. "They'd had
hand-to-hand combat training and they knew all the right
moves to counter any sort of physical attack. There wasn't
one of them that I
couldn't drop in less than ten seconds."
His pale green eyes searched hers,
"Even a martial artist
can lose a match. It depends on the skill of his opponent

and his ability to keep his head when the
attack comes.
I've seen karate instructors send advanced students running
with nothing more
dangerous than the yell, a sudden quick
sound that paralyzes."

"Those two
men...they couldn't...touch you," she
pointed out, amazed.

His pale eyes had an
alien coldness that made her shiver.
"I told you to get that damned tire
fixed, Sally."

She swallowed. Her
pride was bruised almost beyond
bearing. "I don't take orders," she
said, trying to salvage
a
little self-respect

"I don't give
them anymore," he returned. "But I do
give advice, and you've just seen the
results of not listening. At least you had the sense to leave a message on my
answering machine.
But what if I hadn't checked my mes
sages, Sally? Would you like to think where
you'd be
now?
Want me to paint you a picture?"

"Stop!" She put her face in her hands and shivered.

"I won't apologize," he told her
abruptly. "You did a
damned stupid
thing and you got off lucky. Another time,
I might not be quick enough."

She swallowed and
swallowed again. "The...conquering
male," she choked, but she wasn't
teasing now, as she had been that afternoon when he'd told her to get the tire
fixed.

He drew her hands away from her face
and looked into
her eyes steadily. "That's right," he said curtly, and he
wasn't kidding. "I've been dealing with vermin like that
for almost half my
life. I told you there was danger in
going out alone. Now you understand what I meant. Get
that damned tire fixed, and buy a cell
phone."

Her head was spinning. "I can't
afford one," she said
unsteadily.

"You can't afford not to. If you'd had one tonight, this