TEXAS BORN (12 page)

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s my job, Mr. Scott.”

He let out a breath. “You can’t imagine how painful this is for me,” he said. “Men I trained, men I’ve worked with, accused of something so inhuman.” His face hardened. “Follow the money. It’s all about the money, I assure you,” he added curtly. “Someone stands to lose a lot of it if the truth comes out.”

“I can only imagine how bad it must be,” she said, and not without sympathy.

She asked questions, he answered them. She was impressed by him. He wasn’t at all the sort of person that she’d pictured when she heard people speak of mercenaries. Even the word meant a soldier for hire, a man who sold his talents to the highest bidder. But Eb Scott’s organization trained men in counterterrorism. He had an enormous operation in Jacobsville, and men and women came from around the world to learn from his experts. There were rumors that a few government agents had also availed themselves of his expertise.

The camp was state-of-the-art, with every electronic gadget known to modern science—and a few things that were largely experimental. They taught everything from evasive driving techniques to disarming bombs, improvised weapons, stealth, martial arts, the works. Michelle was allowed to photograph only a small section of the entire operation, and she wasn’t allowed to photograph any of his instructors or the students. But even with the reservations on what she was shown, what she learned fascinated her.

“Well, I’ll never think of mercenaries the same way again, Mr. Scott,” she said when she was ready to leave. “This operation is very impressive.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

She paused at the door and turned. “You know, the electronic media have resources that those of us in print journalism don’t. I mean, we have a digital version of our paper online, like most everyone does. But the big networks employ dozens of experts who can find out anything. If they want to find your man, they will. And his family.”

“Miss Godfrey, for the sake of a lot of innocent people, I hope you’re wrong.”

The way he said it stayed on her mind for hours after she left.

Eleven

M
ichelle wrote the story, and she did try to be fair. But when she saw the photographs of the massacre, the bodies of small children with women and men weeping over them, her heart hardened. If the man was guilty, he should be hanged for this.

She didn’t slant the story. She presented the facts from multiple points of view. She interviewed a man in Saudi Arabia who had a friend in Anasrah with whom he’d recently spoken. She interviewed a representative of the State Department, who said that one of their staff had been led into the village by a minor government official just after the attack and was adamant that the mercenaries had been responsible for the slaughter. She also interviewed an elder in the village, through an interpreter, who said that an American had led the attack.

There was another man, also local, who denied that a foreigner was responsible. He was shouted down by the others, but Michelle managed to get their representative in Saudi Arabia to go to Anasrah, a neighboring country, and interview the man in the village. His story contradicted the others. He said that it was a man well-known in terrorist circles who had come into the village and accused the tribesmen of betraying their own people by working with the government and foreigners. He said that if it continued, an example, a horrible example, would be made, he would see to it personally.

The local man said that he could prove that the terrorists themselves had perpetrated the attack, if he had time.

Michelle made the first big mistake of her career in journalism by discounting the still, small voice in the wilderness. The man’s story didn’t ring true. She took notes, and filed them on her computer. But when she wrote the story, she left out what sounded like a made-up tale.

* * *

The story broke with the force of bombs. All of a sudden, it was all anyone heard on the media. The massacre in Anasrah, the children murdered by foreigners, the mercenaries who had cut them down with automatic weapons while their parents pleaded for mercy. On television, the weeping relatives were interviewed. Their stories brought even hardened commentators to tears on-screen.

Michelle’s story, with its unique point of view and Eb Scott’s interview—which none of the national media had been able to get, because he refused to talk to them—put her in the limelight for the first time. Her story was reprinted partially in many national papers, and she was interviewed by the major news networks, as well. She respected Eb Scott, she added, and she thought he was sincere, but she wept for the dead children and she thought the mercenary responsible should be tried in the world court and imprisoned for the rest of his life.

Her impulsive comment was broadcast over and over. And just after that came the news that the mercenary had a sister, living in Wyoming. They had her name, as well. Sara.

* * *

It could have been a coincidence. Except that suddenly she remembered that the man, Angel, had both American and Canadian citizenship. Now she learned that he had a sister named Sara. Gabriel was gone for long periods of time overseas on jobs. Michelle still tried to persuade herself that it wasn’t, couldn’t, be Gabriel.

Until Sara called her on the phone.

“I couldn’t believe it when they said you broke the story,” she said in a cold tone. “How could you do this to us?”

“Sara, it wasn’t about anyone you know,” she said quickly. “It was about a mercenary who gunned down little children in a Middle Eastern village...!”

“He did nothing of the sort,” Sara said, her voice dripping ice. “It was the tribesman’s brother-in-law, one of the terrorists, who killed the man and his family and then blamed it on Angel and his men.”

“Do you know this man Angel?” Michelle asked, a sick feeling in her stomach because Sara sounded so harsh.

“Know him.” Her laugh was as cold as death. “We both know him, Michelle. He uses Angel as an alias when he goes on missions for Eb Scott’s clients. But his name is Gabriel.”

Michelle felt her blood run cold. Images flashed through her mind. Dead children. The one dissenting voice, insisting that it was the terrorists not the Americans who perpetrated the horror. Her refusal to listen, to print the other side of the story. Gabriel’s side. She’d convinced herself that it couldn’t be Gabriel. Now she had to face facts.

“I didn’t know,” she said, her voice breaking. “Sara, believe me, I didn’t know!”

“Eb told you it wasn’t him,” Sara said furiously. “But you wouldn’t listen. I had a contact in the State Department send a man to tell your newspaper’s agent about the dead man’s brother-in-law. And you decided not to print it. Didn’t you? God forbid you should run against the voice of the world press and risk your own glowing reputation as a crusader for justice by dissenting!”

“I didn’t know,” Michelle repeated through tears.

“You didn’t know! If Gabriel ends up headfirst in a ditch somewhere, it will be all right, because you didn’t know! Would you like to see the road in front of our ranch here in Wyoming, Michelle?” she added. “It looks like a tent city, surrounded by satellite trucks. They’re certain they’ll wear me down and I’ll come out and accuse my brother for them!”

“I’m so sorry.” Michelle didn’t have to be told that Gabriel was innocent. She knew he was. But she’d helped convict him.

“You’re sorry. I’ll be certain to tell him when, and if, I see him again.” There was a harshly indrawn breath. “He phoned me two days ago,” she said in a haunted voice. “They’re hunting him like an animal, thanks to you. When I told him who sold him out, he wouldn’t believe me. It wasn’t until I sent him a link to your story that he saw for himself.”

Michelle felt every drop of blood draining out of her face. “What...did he say?”

“He said,” Sara replied, enunciating every word, “that he’d never been so wrong about anyone in his life. He thought that you, of all people, would defend him even against the whole world. He said,” she added coldly, “that he never wanted to see you or hear from you again as long as he lived.”

The words were like bullets. She could actually feel their impact.

“I loved you like my own sister,” Sara said, her voice breaking. “And I will never, never forgive you!” She slammed down the phone.

Michelle realized after a minute that she hadn’t broken the connection. She hung up her own telephone. She sat down heavily and heard the recriminations break over her head again and again.

She remembered Eb Scott’s certainty that his man would never do such a thing. Sara’s fierce anger. It had been easy to discount them while Angel was a shadowy figure without substance. But Michelle knew Gabriel. And she was certain, absolutely certain, that the man who’d saved her from suicide would never put another human being in harm’s way.

* * *

It took two days for the effects of Sara’s phone call to wear off enough that she could stop crying and blaming herself. The news media was having a field day with the story, running updates about it all day, every day, either in newscasts or in banners under the anchor people. Michelle finally had to turn off the television to escape it, so that she could get herself back together.

She wanted, so desperately, to make up for what she’d done. But she didn’t even know where to start. The story was everywhere. People were condemning the American mercenaries on every news program in the world.

But Gabriel was innocent. Michelle had helped convict him in the press, without knowing who she was writing about. Now it was her turn to do her job properly, and give both sides of the story, however unpopular. She had to save him, if she could, even if he hated her forever for what she’d done.

* * *

So she went back to work. Her first act was to contact the newspaper’s man in Saudi Arabia and ask him to repeat the story his informant in Anasrah had told him. Then she contacted Eb Scott and gave him the information, so that he could pass it on to his private investigator. Before she did that, she asked him to call her back on a secure line, because she knew how some of the tabloid news bureaus sometimes had less scrupulous agents digging out information.

“You’re learning, Miss Godfrey,” Eb said solemnly.

“Not soon enough. I know who Angel is now,” she added heavily. “His sister hates me. He told her that he never wanted to see or speak to me again, either. And I deserve that. I wasn’t objective, and people are paying for my error. But I have to do what I can to undo the mess I helped make. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

“Too little, and almost too late,” he said brutally. “Learn from it. Sometimes the single dissenting voice is the right one.”

“I won’t forget,” she said.

He hung up.

* * *

She tried to phone Sara back and apologize once again, to tell her she was trying to repair the damage. But Sara wouldn’t accept the first phone call and after that, her number was blocked. She was heartsick. The Brandons had been so good to her. They’d made sacrifices to get her through school, through college, always been there when she needed help. And she’d repaid them like this. It wounded her as few things in life ever had.

When she tried to speak to her editor in confidence, to backtrack on the story she’d written, he laughed it off. The man was obviously guilty, he said, why make waves now? She’d made a name for herself in investigative reporting, it was all good.

She told him that Angel wasn’t the sort of person to ever harm a child. Then he wanted to know how she knew that. She wouldn’t reveal her source, she said, falling back on a tried and true response. But the man was innocent.

Her editor had just laughed. So she thought the guy was innocent, what did it matter? The news was the thing that mattered, scooping all the other media and being first and best at delivering the story. She’d given the facts of the matter, that was the end of it. She should just enjoy her celebrity status while it lasted.

Michelle went back to her apartment that night saddened and weary, with a new sense of disillusionment about life and people.

* * *

The next morning, she phoned Minette Carson and asked if she had an opening for a reporter who was certain she wasn’t cut out for the big dailies.

Minette was hesitant.

“Look, never mind,” Michelle said gently. “I know I’ve made a lot of enemies in Jacobsville with the way I covered the story. It’s okay. I can always teach journalism. I’ll be a natural at showing students what not to do.”

“We all have to start somewhere when we learn how to do a job,” Minette replied. “Usually, it’s a painful process. Eb Scott called and asked me, before you did the interview, if you knew who Gabriel really was. I told him no. I knew you’d have said something long before this. I should have told you.”

“I should have suspected something,” came the sad reply. “He was away from home for long stretches, he spoke a dozen impossible languages, he was secretive about what sort of work he did—I just wasn’t paying attention.”

“It amused everyone when he took you in as his ward,” Minette said. “He was one of the coldest men Eb Scott ever hired—well, after Carson, who works for Cy Parks, that is.” She chuckled. “But once you came along, all of a sudden Gabriel was smiling.”

“He won’t be anymore,” Michelle said, feeling the pain to the soles of her feet.

“Give it time,” was the older woman’s advice. “First, you have some work to do.”

“I know. I’m going to do everything in my power to prove him innocent. Whatever it takes,” Michelle added firmly.

“That’s more like it. And about the job,” she replied. “Once you’ve proven that you aren’t running away from an uncomfortable assignment, we’ll have a place for you here. That’s a promise.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

* * *

Michelle convinced Eb Scott to let her talk to his detective. It worked out well, because Dane Lassiter was actually in San Antonio for a seminar that week and he agreed to meet with her in a local restaurant.

He wasn’t exactly what she’d expected. He was tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with an easygoing manner and a wife who was thirtysomething and very attractive. She, like Michelle, was blonde.

“We always go together when he has to give seminars.” Tess laughed. “At least once I’ve had to chase a pursuing woman out of his room.” She shook her head, sighing as she met her husband’s amused gaze. “Well, after all, I know he’s a dish. Why shouldn’t other women notice?”

Michelle laughed with them, but her heart wasn’t in it. There had been a snippet of news on television the night before, showing a camp of journalists on the road that led to the Brandons’ Wyoming property. They were still trying to get Sara to talk to them. But this time they were met with a steely-eyed man Michelle recognized as Wofford Patterson, who was advising them to decamp before some of Sara’s friends loosed a few bears on the property in a conservation project. Patterson had become Sara’s personal protector and much more, after many years of antagonism.

“I’ve been watching the press reports on Brandon,” Dane said, having guessed the train of her thoughts. “You watch six different reports and get six different stories.”

“Yes,” Michelle said sadly. “Not everyone tries for accuracy. And I can include myself in that company, because I should have gone the extra mile and presented the one dissenting opinion. It was easy to capitulate, because I didn’t think I had any interest in the outcome,” she added miserably.

Tess’s pale eyes narrowed. “Mr. Brandon was your guardian.”

She nodded. He was more, but she wasn’t sharing that news with a virtual stranger. “I sold him out. I didn’t mean to. I had no idea Angel was Gabriel. It was hard, going against a majority opinion. Everyone said he was guilty as sin. I saw the photographs of the women and children.” Her face hardened. “It was easy to believe it, after that.”

“I’ve seen similar things,” Dane said, sipping black coffee. “But I can tell you that things are rarely what they seem.”

She told him about her contacts, and he took notes, getting names and telephone numbers and putting together a list of people to interview.

He put up his pen and notebook. “This is going to be a lot of help to the men who were blamed for the tragedy,” he said finally. “There’s a violent element in the country in question, dedicated to rooting out any hint of foreign influence, however beneficial. But at the same time, in their ranks are a few who see a way to quick profit, a way to fund their terrorism and inflict even more horror on our overseas personnel. This group that put your friend in the middle of the controversy is made up of a few money-hungry profiteers. Our State Department has worked very hard to try to stifle them. We have several oil corporations with offices there, and a good bit of our foreign oil is shipped from that country. We depend on the goodwill of the locals to keep the oil companies’ officials and workers safe. The terrorists know that, and they see a way to make a quick profit through kidnappings and other attacks. Except that instead of holding people for ransom, they threaten violence if their demands aren’t met. It’s almost like a protection racket...”