Bound by Honor (14 page)

Sally knew that Jess was talking about Dallas, and how she'd regarded his work as a soldier of fortune. She stared at the darkened window, wondering how she'd feel under the same circumstances. At least Eb wasn't
involved in demolition work or actively working as a mercenary. She knew that she could adjust to Eb's lifestyle. But the trick was going to be convincing Eb that she could—and that he needed her, as much as she needed him.

S
ALLY FOUND HERSELF JUMPING
at every odd noise all day Saturday. Jessica could feel the tension that she couldn't see.

“You have to trust Eb,” she told her niece while Stevie was watching cartoons in the living room. “He knows what he's doing. Lopez won't succeed.”

Sally grimaced over her second cup of coffee. Across the kitchen table from her, Jess looked serene. She wished she could feel the same way.

“I'm not worried about us,” she pointed out. “It's Stevie…”

“Dallas won't let anything happen to Stevie,” came the quiet reply.

Sally smiled, remembering the broken objects in the living room the night before. She drew a lazy circle around the lip of her coffee cup while she searched for the right words. “At least, the two of you are speaking.”

“Yes. Barely,” her aunt acknowledged wryly. “But Stevie likes him now. They started comparing statistics on wrestlers. They both like wrestling, you see. Dallas knows all sorts of holds. He wrestled on his college team.”

“Wrestling!” Sally chuckled.

“Apparently there's a lot more to the professional matches than just acting ability,” Jessica said dryly. “I'm finding it rather interesting, even if I can't see what they're doing. They explained the holds to me.”

“Common threads,” Sally murmured.

“And one stitch at a time. What did you think of Cord Romero?”

“He's the strangest ex-schoolteacher I've ever met,” Sally said flatly.

“He was never cut out for that line of work,” Jessica said, sipping black coffee. “But demolition work isn't much of a profession, either. Pity. He'll be two lines of type on the obituary page one day, and it's such a waste.”

“Eb says Maggie's running from him.”

“Relentlessly,” Jess said dryly. “I always thought she got engaged to Eb just to shake Cord up, but it didn't work. He doesn't see her.”

“He's in the same line of work Eb was,” Sally pointed out, “and Eb said that his job was why she called off the wedding.”

“I think she just came to her senses. If you love a man, you don't have a lot to say about his profession if it's a long-standing one. Cord's wife was never cut out for life on the edge. Maggie, now, once had a serious run-in with a couple of would-be muggers. She had a big flashlight in her purse and she used it like a mace.” She laughed softly. “They both had to have stitches before they went off to jail. Cord laughed about it for weeks afterward. No, she had the strength to marry Eb—she simply didn't love him.”

Sally traced the handle of her cup. “Eb says he isn't carrying a torch for her.”

“Why should he be?” she asked. “She's a nice woman, but he never really loved her. He wanted stability and he thought marriage would give it to him. As it turned out, he found his stability after a bloody firefight in Africa, and it was right here in Jacobsville.”

“Do you think he'll ever marry?” she fished.

“When he's ready,” Jess replied. “But I don't think it will be Maggie. Just in case you wondered,” she teased.

Sally pushed back a wisp of hair from her eyes. “Jess, do you know where your informant is now, the one that Lopez wants you to name?”

She shook her head. “We lost touch just after Lopez was arrested. I understand that my informant went back to Mexico. I haven't tried to contact…the person.”

“What if the informant betrays himself?”

“You're clutching at straws, dear,” Jessica said gently. “That isn't going to happen. And I'm not giving a witness up to the executioner in cold blood even to save myself and my family.”

Sally smiled. “No. I know you wouldn't. I wouldn't, either. But it's scary to be in this situation.”

“It is. But it will be over one day, and we'll get back to normal. Whatever happens, happens.” Jess reminded her niece, “It's like that old saying, when your time's up, it's up. We may not know what we're doing, but God always does. And He doesn't have tunnel vision.”

“Point taken. I'll try to stop worrying.”

“You should. Eb is one of the best in the world at what he does. Lopez knows it, too. He won't rush in headfirst, despite his threat.”

“What if he has a missile launcher?” Sally asked with sudden fear.

Miles away in a communications hot room, a man with green eyes nodded his head and shot an order to a subordinate. It wouldn't hurt one bit to check out the intelligence for that possibility. Sally might be nervous, but she had good instincts. And a guardian angel in cowboy boots.

 

M
ANUEL
L
OPEZ WAS A SMALL
man with big ambition. He was nearing forty, balding, cynical and mercenary to the soles of his feet. He stared out the top floor picture window of his four-story mansion at the Gulf of Mexico and cursed. One of his subordinates, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, had just brought him some unwelcome news and he was livid.

“There are only a handful of men,” the subordinate said in quiet Spanish. “Not a problem if we send a large force against them.”

Lopez turned and glared at the man from yellow-brown eyes. “Yes, and if we send a large force, the FBI and the DEA will also send a large force!”

“It would be too late by then,” the man replied with a shrug.

“I have enough federal problems in the United States as it is,” Lopez growled. “I do not anticipate giving them an even better reason to send an undercover unit
after me here! Scott has influence with his government. I want the name of the informant, not to wade in and kill the woman and her protectors.”

The other man stared at the spotless white carpet. “She will never give up the name of her informant,” he said simply. “Not even for the sake of her child.”

Lopez turned fully to look at the man. “Because now it is only words, the threat. We must make it very real, you understand? At midnight tonight in Jacobsville, precisely at midnight, you will have a helicopter fly over the house and drop a smoke bomb. A big one.” His eyes narrowed and he smiled. “This will be the attack they anticipate. But not the real one, you understand?”

“They will probably have missiles,” the man said quietly.

“And they are far too soft to use them,” came the sneering reply. “This is why we will ultimately win. I have no scruples. Now, listen. I will want a man to remove one of the elementary school janitors. He can be drugged or threatened, I have no interest in the method, just get him out of the way for one day. Then you will have one of our men take his place. The substitute must know what the child looks like and which class he is in. He is to be taken very covertly, so that nothing out of the way is projected until it is too late and we have him. You understand?”

“Yes,” the man replied respectfully. “Where is he to be held?”

Lopez smiled coldly. “At the rental house near the Johnson home,” he said. “Will that not be an irony to
end all ironies?” His eyes darkened. “But he is not to be harmed. That must be made very clear,” he added in tones that chilled. “You remember what happened to the man who went against my orders and set fire to my enemy's house in Wyoming without waiting for the man to be alone, and a five-year-old boy was killed?”

The other man swallowed and nodded quickly.

“If one hair on this boy's head is harmed,” he added, “I will see to it that the man responsible fares even worse than his predecessor. I am a violent man, but I do not kill children. It is, perhaps, my only virtue.” He waved his hand. “Let me know when my orders have been carried out.”

“Yes. At once.”

He watched the man go and his odd yellow-brown eyes narrowed. He had watched his mother and siblings die at the hands of a guerrilla leader at the age of four. His father had been a poor laborer who could barely earn enough to provide one meal a day for the two of them, so his childhood had been spent scavenging for food like an animal, hiding in the shadows to avoid being tortured by the invaders. His father had not been as fortunate, but the two of them had managed to work their way to the States, to Victoria, Texas, when he was ten. He watched his father scrape and bow as a janitor and hated the sight. He had vowed that when he was a man, he would never know poverty again, regardless of what it cost him. And despite his father's anguish, he had embarked very quickly on a path to easy money.

He looked down at the white carpet, a dream of his from youth, and at the wealth with which he surrounded
himself. He dealt in drugs and death. He was wealthy and immensely powerful. A word from him could topple heads of state. But it was an empty, cold, bitter existence. He had lived at first only for vengeance, for the ability and the means to avenge his mother and his baby brother and sister. That accomplished, he wanted wealth and power. One step led to another, until he was in over his head, first as a murderer, then as a thief, and finally, as a drug lord. He was ruthless and he knew that one day his sins would catch up with him, but first he was going to know who had sold him out to the authorities two years before. What irony that vengeance had led him to power, and now it was vengeance that had almost brought him down. He cursed the woman Jessica for refusing to give him the name. He had only discovered her part in his arrest six months before. She would pay now. He would have the name of his betrayer, whatever the cost!

He stared down at the rocks and winced as he saw once again, in his memory, the floating white dress and the equally white face and open, dead eyes of the woman he'd wanted even more than the name of the person who had betrayed him. Isabella, he thought with anguish. He had never loved, not until Isabella came into his home as a housekeeper, the sister of one of his lieutenants' friends. She had talked to him, admired him, teased him as if he were a boy. She had made herself so necessary to him that he told her things that he told no one else. She had made him want to be clean, to give up his decadent life, to have a family, a home. But when he had approached her ardently, she had suddenly
wanted no part of him. In a fit of rage when she pushed him away at a party on his yacht, he hit her. She went over the rails and into the ocean, vanishing abruptly under the keel of the boat.

He had immediately regretted the act, but it was too late. His men had searched for her in the water until daybreak before he let them give up the search, only to find her washed up on the beach, dead, when he arrived back at his mansion. Her death had cheapened him, cheapened his life. He was deeply sorry that his temper had pushed him to such an act, that he cost himself the most precious thing in his life. He had killed her. He was damned, he thought. Damned eternally. And probably he deserved to be.

Since that night, two years ago, just before his arrest in the United States for narcotic trafficking, he had no other thought than to find the man who had betrayed him. Nothing made him happy since her loss, not even the pretty young woman who sang at a club in Cancún just recently. He had taken a fancy to her because she reminded him of Isabella. He had ordered his henchmen to bring her to him one night after her performance. He had enjoyed her, but her violent revulsion had angered him and she, too, had felt his wrath. She had taken her own life, jumped from a high balcony rather than submit to him a second time. Her death had wounded him, but not as deeply as the loss of Isabella. Nothing, he was certain, would ever give him such anguish and remorse again. He thought of the woman Jessica and her son, of the fear she would experience when he had her child. Then, he thought angrily, she would give him the name
of her informant. She would have to. And, at last, he would have his vengeance for the betrayal that had sent him to an American prison.

 

E
B HADN'T COME NEAR
the house all day. After Stevie was tucked up in bed, Jessica and Sally sat together in the dimly lit living room and watched the clock strike midnight.

“It's time,” Sally said huskily, stiff with nerves.

Jessica only nodded. Like Sally, her frame was rigid. She had made her decision, the only decision possible. Now they were all going to pay the consequences for it.

Even as the thought crawled through her mind, she heard the sudden whir of a helicopter closing in.

“Get down!” Jessica called to Sally, sliding onto the big throw rug full-length. She felt Sally beside her as the helicopter came even closer and a flash, followed by an explosion, shook the roof.

Smoke came down the chimney, filling the room. Outside, the whir of the helicopter was accompanied by small arms fire and the sounds of bullets hitting something hard. Then that sound was abruptly interrupted by a sudden whooshing sound. Right on the heels of that came a violent explosion that lit up the whole sky and then the unmistakable sound of falling debris.

“There went the chopper,” Jessica said huskily. “Sally, are you all right?”

“Yes. We have to get out,” she said, coughing. “The smoke is going to choke us!”

She helped Jessica to her feet and started her down
the hall to the front door while she went to grab Stevie up out of his bed and rush down the same hall with him in her arms. It was like a nightmare, but she didn't have time to count the cost or worry about the outcome. She was doing what was necessary to save them, in the quickest possible time. She could only pray that they wouldn't run out right into the arms of Lopez's men.