Passion to Protect (10 page)

Taking her like this, burning off her grief and his own in the raw lust he was feeling, would only make things even more awkward between them than they were already. And she and her kids needed him now to help them through this. He owed it to them, and to his friend Deke, to stop himself—and her—from doing something she would regret.

When he felt the dampness of Liane’s tears against his skin he finally drew back, using the excuse of pulling a tissue from the box sitting on her dad’s desk.

“Here, I think you need this,” he said, using it to blot the delicate skin beneath her eyes.

Nodding, she took it from him, her eyes welling with remorse. “I’m sorry, Jake. That was wrong. I can’t— I don’t know what I was thinking, kissing you like that.”

“You’re running on empty, and we’re both a little— We’re forgetting ourselves, that’s all.” For her sake, he managed to smile.

She ran a hand over her loosely braided hair. “I’m losing my mind, wishing that I’d never met Mac, that I’d never left here in the first place. If I hadn’t gone away—”

“You had to,” he said, and he meant it, though he, too, had blamed her for a long time. “It was never fair of me, expecting you to give up a full scholarship and your dreams to stay here and raise a family. I knew you weren’t ready for that. Neither was I. Not then.”

“I’m home now,” she told him. “But you need to understand that it’s too late. It’s too late for me to—”

“You know what your dad would say to that, Liane? He’d tell you that it’s never really too late. And then he’d tell you to march your rear into the kitchen and let me feed you lunch.”

* * *

Later that day, Liane had just put on a pot of water to boil to make pasta when Harry finally called.

“I catch you at a bad time?” he asked, when she mentioned turning down the burner. “If you want, I can call back later.”

“No, please,” she said, her stomach roiling. “Now’s a good time. Tell me, what did you find out from the bank?”

“First off, there’s been no theft that I can see. No activity at all on the accounts this past week, and no debit card use, either. Nothing but some automatic bill payments.”

“So that’s what caused the overdraft, then?”

“Right.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” she reasoned. “It means I don’t have to worry that anyone has Dad’s debit card and PIN number, right?”

“I think it’s safe to say they would’ve already used it if they could’ve. But I’ve had the account frozen anyway, at least for the time being.”

“Good,” she said, thinking she could cover the bills long enough to give them a little breathing space before she was forced to take a hard look at finances—and the future of a property that had been in her family for more than a century. A property she knew her father would never have wanted her to sell. “But I don’t understand why Dad let his account get down so low. Do you think he just lost track?”

At Harry’s hesitation, bands of dread tightened around her.

“I’m sorry, Liane,” he said, “but it’s not just the checking account. Your father was having—I don’t know how to say this except to come right out with it. This tough economy’s done a number on his finances.”

“But business was improving,” she argued. “Dad’s been really busy these last few months.”

“Those horses you have out there, they eat all year round. Then there’s vet care, shoeing, taxes... Land value’s gone up even though the economy hasn’t, so the taxes are high.”

“Did you know about this before? Did Dad say something to you about it?”

“Not much, but that’s no surprise. Your father was a proud man, and he’s always played things close to the vest.”

“But why would he keep secrets from
me?
”
The line went silent for so long that she finally asked, “Still there?”

“I’m still here,” he said. “And we all keep secrets, Liane. Maybe he didn’t want to worry you about—”

“Well, I’m worried now,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. “What am I going to— No, I can’t think about this right now. My dad’s not even in the ground.”

“I know it’s overwhelming, and I’m sorry, Liane. If there were any way I could’ve protected you from this...”

“No,” she choked out, abruptly, irrationally angry with her father for doing just that. “You were right to tell me, Harry. I don’t want any surprises later.”

“I should drive out,” he said, “and we can talk face-to-face.”

She tensed, hearing in his voice the promise of more bad news. Her heart started bumping at breakneck speed. “What else, Harry? What have you found out?”

“Is Jake there with you?” he asked uncertainly.

“He took the kids with him to feed the horses. Why?”

“I just need to know you aren’t alone.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Did my dad—”

“It’s not him. It’s about McCleary. Neither of the bodies recovered from the canyon matched your ex-husband’s dental records.”

She sank down onto a kitchen chair, her knees suddenly too weak to support her. A coldness enveloped her, like the fumes from a block of dry ice. She’d only been beginning to work through the fact that Mac had died after taking her father away from her, but now...

“Are you still there, Liane?” Worry tightened Harry’s voice.

“So who were they? Do you know yet?”

“The M.E.’s still working on it. Could be some of the other escapees, or maybe even those missing hikers—though their car isn’t where the friend who reported them missing said it’d be, so they more than likely made it out.”

“What if Mac took it?”

“Since we couldn’t reach the hikers or their friend, I’ve got an alert out for the car,” Harry told her. “If anybody took off in it and he’s still nearby, we’ll get him. But chances are, the last thing a murderer would do is stick around the scene of his crime.”

She tried to believe what he was saying, wanted to with all her heart. But she wanted her father to come back, too, to tell her everything would be all right and assure her that he’d had a plan all along for dealing with his financial issues.

Right now, though, one thing felt as impossible as the other.

* * *

With the children’s help and the horses’ nickers of encouragement, Jake fed each animal the measure of grain that supplemented their hay rations. He was refilling water troughs in the corral when he noticed Kenzie standing outside the stall of the only horse that hadn’t returned, her head lowered and her thin shoulders shaking.

“Cody, could you cut the water?” he called to his number-one helper, who was quick to turn off the hose. Then he crossed the corral and walked up behind Kenzie, gently touching the top of her head. “Hey there, Giggle Girl. How’s it going?”

Sniffling, she looked up at him, her blue eyes—so like Liane’s—brimming. “Cody says Buttercup’s never coming back again. He says she probably got all burned up out there somewhere.”

He crouched down to put himself at her level. It was on the tip of his tongue to ease her worries with a story about a fat and fuzzy palomino running off to join a herd of mustangs, where she would take her place as lead mare and run shoeless on sweet, soft grass. But Kenzie had been there while he and Liane had spread ointment on patches of burned hide on several of the animals, and she remembered enough about the fire to understand how bad it had been.

So he let loose a long breath before saying, “You know, as much as your grandpa loved both you and your brother and your mother, he really loved his horses, too. Every one of them.”

“And Waco, too,” said Cody as he came to join them.

“Definitely Waco,” Jake confirmed, thinking that Deke had probably loved the ornery black mule most of all. “And he was always crazy about riding.”

“But Grandpa had to go to heaven,” Kenzie said.

Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Cody burst out, “Because that bad man ki—”

Jake silenced him with a look and a jerk of his head toward Kenzie, a reminder that he was two years older. They’d had a “man-to-man” talk earlier about good and bad ways to handle his anger, and apparently it had sunk in, because Cody gave him a conspiratorial nod and went back to listening.

“The thing is, heaven’s a long way,” Jake told both of them, “and your grandpa couldn’t imagine getting there without one of his very best horses.”

“So he picked my Buttercup?” asked Kenzie.

“I think that’s what he did. So he wouldn’t be lonely without you two and your mama.”

“And Misty, too,” said Cody, clearly warming to—or needing—Jake’s version of the truth.

“That’s right,” Jake said. “He left Misty to take care of you two, and all of us to take care of each other. But I expect he was thinking Kenzie here wouldn’t mind too much if Buttercup rode up with him.”

“I bet he picked Buttercup ’cause she’s so sweet and fuzzy,” Kenzie told them, wiping away tears. “He can pet her when he gets lonely and feed her apples when she misses me.”

“They don’t have apple trees in heaven, silly,” Cody started, before adding in an uncertain little boy’s voice, “Do they, Mr. Jake?”

“Who’s to say if they do? For all we know, they might have mountains of those red-and-white peppermints Buttercup always liked to crunch on.”

“And ponds full of molasses,” suggested Kenzie.

“And carrots growing upside down,” Cody threw in, topping off the idea with a big grin. “If Buttercup’s not careful, she’ll get so fat, she’ll fall back down through the clouds.”

Both children burst into giggles at the notion, and soon they started chattering about the movie they’d seen that day.

Jake decided that instead of harps and angels, this might well be the music he would pick out for his brand of heaven. But it could never be complete until he found a way to coax Liane to add the rare sound of her laughter to the mix.

Chapter 9

T
wo nights after the funeral, the sounds of a soft rain awakened Liane, pulling her from the slipstream of a bittersweet dream where she’d been arguing with her father. Something about Jake, she thought, grasping at the fast-receding edges of the memory, about how the two of them had already wasted too much time.

Her face burned as she remembered how hard she’d tried to convince him to send Jake packing once she moved back home. How hard her dad had argued that he couldn’t possibly turn out a friend still recovering from such a severe injury.

As often as her dad had denied it, she’d always suspected he was scheming for more grandkids—this time hers and Jake’s. As she lay there with her children snuggled beside her, the thought was a painful reminder that her father hadn’t been the only one with secrets. But this late at night, she didn’t dwell on it, her mind already circling back to the kiss she’d shared with Jake, to the reawakening hunger she had thought was forever extinguished.

With the memory, pain twisted low in her abdomen, along with the knowledge that she could never give him what he craved. She pushed the thought from her mind and pulled Cody and Kenzie closer, kissing each sleep-warmed face in turn. She knew it was past time to move them back to their own beds, time to start them on the path to normal, but ever since their return from the hospital they’d been creeping into her room at night, cuddling against her. Needing her the way she needed to be close to them, to help keep the worst nightmares at bay.

Misty, too, was keeping close, her singed fur a reminder of the horrors she’d shared with them. In the dim light cast by the clock radio, Liane saw the shepherd stand, rising from her dog bed and moving toward the closed bedroom door.

At a scraping sound from somewhere outside, Misty growled, and Liane jerked upright in bed.

It’s only the rain,
she assured herself, comforted by the tapping of a branch and the plinking of fat drops against the window—the thunderstorms the weather forecasters predicted would finally quench the smoldering coals threatening to reignite the backcountry. But the thought of the fires set off an avalanche of memory, with worry hot on its heels.

Giving up on a return to sleep, she had just gotten up to get a drink of water when she heard another sound—a thump this time. Was that a clay pot toppling over on the back deck? Shivering in her robe, she catalogued the many occasions when a curious raccoon, marauding coyote or some other animal had disturbed her sleep.

It’s no animal this time. It’s him.
As hard as she had worked to barricade her mind against it, the thought kicked her heartbeat into overdrive. Mac had finally come back to finish her forever.
And maybe both our kids, too. Unless I do something.

Trembling, she told Misty, “Stay,” and quietly crept out the door, closing it behind her.

Instantly she spotted movement, a shadowy figure rushing toward her.

Before she could scream, the man was on her, grabbing her around the waist with a powerful arm and clapping a hand over her mouth. She struggled, her bare foot kicking backward and encountering something unyielding and unnatural.

“Shhh, Liane. It’s me. It’s all right,” a deep voice said in her ear. A familiar voice that had the tension draining away like ice water from a broken pitcher.

Jake’s voice,
a confirmation that what her heel had struck had been his false leg.

“You almost gave me a heart attack,” she whispered as she pulled free from his hold.

“Something’s out there,” was his only answer. “Probably just an animal, but I thought I’d check on you and the kids before I headed downstairs to see.”

She noticed he’d pulled on his jeans, along with an old sweatshirt. Or had he been sleeping fully clothed, taking his protective duties far more seriously than he had let on?

“I’m coming with you,” she said. “But we’ll need to grab a gun out of Dad’s closet.”

“Did you forget? I’m armed already—or didn’t you feel that .38 tucked in my waistband?”

“And here I thought you were just glad to see me.” Adrenaline had her feeling so giddy that she was backsliding into the stupid banter of their teenage years, a realization that had her burning with embarrassment.

To her surprise, he let out a quiet laugh. “I’m
always
glad to see you, Liane. Don’t you know that by now? But let’s get you a gun, too, just in case. Then you go back in your room and wait with the kids while I check things out.”

“I should go with you. Or maybe we should all go into my room and call for a deputy to—”

“No way. First of all, it would take at least thirty, forty minutes for a deputy to get out here—maybe longer, as thin as they’re stretched. Besides, they’d confiscate my man card if it turned out to be a foraging skunk or something.”

If she hadn’t been so scared, she might have rolled her eyes at the foolishness of his machismo. Instead she asked, “But what if it isn’t, Jake? What if it’s—”

She couldn’t force the name out, as if speaking it would make her greatest fears come true.

“Then we definitely don’t want Cody or Kenzie waking up and coming downstairs while we’re traipsing around armed,” Jake said firmly. “It’s your job, first and foremost, to keep them safe and calm.”

Her initial impulse was to lash out, to argue that he had no right to tell her how to be a parent. But she swallowed back the harsh words as her common sense caught up.

He was right. She couldn’t leave the children alone. Instead, she had to be ready with the phone in hand, in case she heard any sound confirming they had human company.

“I have my cell phone with me,” Jake said. “Keep yours close, and let’s put them both on vibrate so we won’t be heard. Okay?”

“All right.”

Jake waited in the hallway as she slipped into her dad’s room, her eyes burning with the memory of the last time she’d set foot inside—to find his favorite plaid flannel shirt and jeans for the undertaker, since that was how he’d always insisted he wanted to be buried. Fighting past the grief, she flipped on the light to his walk-in closet and punched in the combination to the gun cabinet he had used to keep his weapons out of the kids’ sight.

She chose his shotgun, figuring she would have a far better chance of hitting something with it than his old deer rifle. Breaking it open, she loaded both barrels and dropped extra shells into the pocket of her robe, glad for once that her father had insisted she learn the basics of shooting when she was a teen. Afterward she went back into the hall, where Jake was waiting near the top of the stairs.

He was holding his left hand up behind him, signaling her to silence. She strained her ears but heard nothing except the low murmur of thunder and a fresh downpour scouring the roof.

Touching his wrist, she whispered, “What is it?”

Before she could answer, a faint noise floated up the stairwell. The sound of something heavy being dragged across hardwood floors?
Or could it be an animal but a larger one than she’d first thought, maybe even a pair of hungry black bears getting into mischief outside?

Turning his head toward her, Jake pointed in the direction of her room. Nodding mutely, she exchanged a look with him and silently mouthed,
Be careful. Please.

In all the years she’d spent at the homestead, she’d seen or heard her father get up in the night to deal with dozens of wildlife and horse-related issues. But she had never before heard noises quite like these.

And she had never before felt such a strong sense of foreboding creeping up her spine.

* * *

Breath held as he moved, Jake descended the staircase, a pistol in his hand. Mentally, he primed himself to use it if he had to, to do whatever was necessary to keep the family upstairs safe.

Like the low growl of a great wolf, thunder rumbled outside. The rain intensified, sheets of it rattling off every outside surface. Ordinarily a storm’s passage made him feel grateful to be sheltered indoors, but tonight he felt restless and uneasy.

Or had he only imagined that the last sound he’d heard had come from inside, that someone—some all too human predator—was using the first real rain they’d had in months as cover for a break-in after somehow disabling the alarm?

Jake’s pulse revved when another noise confirmed his worst fears: a heavy, metallic clatter followed by a deep-voiced, indisputably human curse. The intruder was definitely inside; the voice had come from Deke Mason’s study. As Jake crossed the family room toward the study, he spotted a rim of light framing the door, which had been left ajar.

Rage wound tight inside him at the idea that Mac—if he were really still alive—or one of his cohorts, or some other thieving lowlife, would intrude on his murdered friend’s domain, further traumatizing Liane and the kids by breaking into the home that should be their refuge. But why? And why tear apart the study? What could the intruder be looking for?

As he pressed forward, Jake thought first of Deke, the man whose casket he’d helped carry to its final resting place. But it was Liane’s frightened face that flashed before him as he reached for the doorknob, that and the memory of the terror he’d heard in her voice.

He sucked in a deep breath, steeling himself to shove the door open and shout
Freeze!
But before he could act, there was yet another clunk, followed by a harsh whisper that had him stopping to listen instead.

“Could you get any clumsier,
cabr
ó
n?
” came the heavily accented words. “She’d have to be deaf not to hear you.”

“Just another minute,” said the same man who’d been swearing earlier, judging from the harshness of his baritone voice. “It’s gotta be here someplace. It’s not like he woulda kept it in the bank.”

“We gotta get out of here now
.
Before she gets the sheriff on us. I’m not goin’ back in a cage again for no amount of money.”

So that’s what they’re after,
Jake thought. Did they imagine Deke had kept a cashbox for his business?

“Quit cryin’ like a little girl. No way she heard a damned thing all the way upstairs, not with this storm. Besides, people with alarms get to countin’ on ’em, you know?”

“Maybe for good reason. How do you know there’s not a silent backup callin’ the cops while we’re here lookin’?”

“Not on these old-school systems. Don’t worry, the thing’s knocked out, all right. And if she hears anything, she’ll just chalk it up to the rain.”

“All the money in the world’s no good if we end up busted, or maybe even in the ground.”

“Listen, man. You wanna take your chances on your own, you can hotwire one of those trucks out there and take off, drive straight home to Mexico for all I care. But that money’s my ticket to a new life. I’m not goin’ anywhere without it.”

Mac’s money,
Jake guessed. Had he stashed the missing millions here and told his fellow prisoners about it?

“What if it ain’t still here? What if that bastard lied about it in the first place, or maybe slipped away and beat us to it? After all, this is his turf.”

“Bullshit. He’s a dead man. No way he got out of that fire alive.”

“He’ll kill us if he catches us here. Hell, crazy as he was, maybe his ghost will chase us down and—”

“You want to waste time jawin’ about boogie men or you want to help me find that money?”

“It ain’t in here,
hermano,
and we already know he didn’t hide it in the stable or any of the cabins.”

So, Jake thought, he had these two—or at least one of them—to thank for wrecking his place. Tempted as he was to burst into the room and give them the shock of their lives, he owed Liane a warning. He edged behind the entertainment center, then set the .38 on one of the shelves. After pulling out his cell phone, he punched in a quick text.

CALL SHERIFF. 2 MEN IN STUDY AFTER MONEY. OTHER ESCAPED CONS?

As soon as he hit Send he picked up the gun and moved back toward the study.

“Time to head upstairs, then,” the deep-voiced man told his partner. “Might be the old man stashed it upstairs. Maybe in his bedroom. Mac’s ex’ll know.”

The words chilled Jake to the marrow.
I’ll shoot both of you dead before you take your first step up that staircase.

“What if she’s got a gun?” the Mexican asked.

“We catch her while she’s sleeping, she won’t have time to do a thing.”

“You’re one crazy
gringo.
”

“Crazy smart, ’cause you can bet your ass she knows something. If the old man had a safe, she’ll have the combination.”

“What if she won’t tell us?”

“She’ll tell us quick enough,” the deep-voiced man said darkly. “All I have to do is shove my gun in her face.”

“I thought you said you’d never hurt no woman.”

There was a moment’s hesitation before the man answered. “McCleary promised us a split. He
promised
. Besides, you know damn well that if they catch us, they won’t bother takin’ us back in. They’ll shoot us down like damned dogs, so we got nothing to lose.”

“Well, here’s what I know,
hombre.
I been eight years in that hellhole, and I could seriously use a woman. So if you want somebody to put the fear of
Jesús
in her—and a little somethin’ extra—I’m volunteerin’ for the job.”

Jake had heard enough. He surged forward, his gun in hand as he put his faith in his prosthesis and kicked the door wide open. Harnessing his anger, he ordered, “Drop your guns and raise your hands, or both of you are dead men!”

With the element of surprise on his side, his gambit should have worked. It might have, except he realized he’d made one crucial error.

A mistake that had him backpedaling and then diving for cover.