The Girl with the Golden Gun

“Are you?”

That stopped him cold.

“I was worried sick about you,” she said. “I had to come.”

Her big, golden, long-lashed eyes met his. Again he noted the raindrops glistening like diamonds in her red hair. Most of all he fixated on that single sparkle that clung to the tip of her cute, upturned nose. She was wearing lipstick and eyeliner for a change.

“If you’re looking to get yourself seduced, little girl, follow cowboys like me home and then throw yourself at them.”

“You’re not like that, and we both know it. You’re nice.”

“Nice? You don’t have the gumption God gave a horsefly. Guys aren’t nice. They’re all out to get you.”

“Where’s Spot?”

“At the house.”

Her teeth chattered, and she rubbed her arms to warm herself.

“If your daddy catches us together here, he’ll get one of his bought-off judges to railroad me into some prison until I’m old and gray. Come back when you’re eighteen.”

“What if some other girl…like Wendy Harper gets you before then?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m all wet and cold. You could offer me a blanket or your shirt or something.” She swallowed a quick breath, and he realized she was even more nervous than he was. Then she picked up the damp shirt that hung on the back of his chair and slipped her arms through the sleeves. When the long sleeves dangled many inches longer than her hands, she began to roll them up.

“Why can’t you ever do what you’re told?”

“Because then I don’t get what I want.” She paused, pulling his shirt close against her body. “Can I help it if I grew up spoiled instead of with a great big chip on my shoulder weighing me down?”

“What if I grabbed you and snapped you against my chest? What if I gave you a kiss or two, would you leave me alone then and go chase somebody closer to your age?”

She straightened up to face him. Beaming brightly, she puckered her lips. “Cross my heart and swear to die.”

“You’re hopeless. Girls are supposed to let the guy do the chasin’,” he said.

“That’s stupid. You’d never chase me.”

“You’re too young.”

“When I’m all grown up, eighteen, would you really want…”

“You’re a Kemble.”

“Kiss me,” she whispered in a low, hypnotic tone. “If my daddy runs you off like he said he would, this might be my last chance. Then I’d have to live my whole life without knowing…what you’re like.”

Hardly knowing what he did, he strolled closer, leaned down and pecked her cheek lightly with his lips. The kiss accomplished, he intended to jump free. “There. Now go!”

“That’s not the kind of kiss I meant, and you know it!”

Her gentle hands circled his wide shoulders, and she seemed to melt into him as she clung tightly. Even as he fought to loosen her grip, he heated where her warm breath brushed his cheek. He noticed that her damp body, although slim and petite, nestled against his huge frame, felt more like a woman’s body than a child’s. Damn her hide, she was a perfect fit.

His heart thudded painfully. He should burn in hell for this alone.

“On the lips,” she pleaded. “Kiss me like you kissed Wendy at the rodeo.”

“You little spy!”

“Just once—please.”

He yanked himself loose. Still, he admired the way she went after what she wanted. Nothing had ever been handed to him, either.

She put her hand to her cheek. “My skin burns where you…”

It was the damnedest, most unaccountable thing, but his lips burned from the chaste kiss he’d given her.

One taste of her sweet, velvet skin had rocked him. She was innocent but willing and utterly, utterly adorable.

He wished he was ten years younger so he could crush her close and not feel like he was Satan’s spawn.

He couldn’t stand another second of this, so he stomped out of the house and stood on his porch and watched it rain.

She raced after him.

“Now you really have to go,” he said roughly. “You promised.”

She shook her head. “That was only if you kissed me on the mouth.” Her voice fell so softly, he had to strain to hear it over the downpour.

Being protective of a Kemble was not a role he felt comfortable with. Not when she was so all-fired beautiful.

“Mia—”

When he turned and saw her backlighted by the porch lamp, he had to remind himself again she was jailbait. Standing there in her wet dress with her big eyes fastened on his mouth, she personified fresh, young sensuality and femininity.

“Go,” he said.

“How come you still wear that turkey feather I gave you in the brim of your hat?”

“That doesn’t mean anything, girl.”

His heart thudded. Inside his jeans, he was hard and swollen.

He wanted her. Even though it was wrong.

Before she could answer him, headlights flashed, and he heard a car down the road.

“Go to the kitchen. Don’t make a sound. If anybody finds you here, I could end up in jail. Do you understand how serious this is?”

For once she obeyed, and he shut the door behind her. Scarcely had she hidden herself, than his own father stormed up to the porch.

As usual he was drunk. His thick florid face was set in a mask of hatred as he stumbled up the steps. “I—I lost the ranch tonight…or what’s left of it…to Caesar Kemble. Because of you.”

Shanghai sank to his knees and fisted his hands. If someone had slammed a shovel against his spine, he couldn’t have felt more broken.

“It’s your fault.”

“Right,” Shanghai whispered. “Blame somebody else like you always do.”

His father weaved drunkenly. “You had to go over there and stir him up. He came looking for me just like you knew he would. And you just sat here and let him lure me into a game of cards. Entice me with the finest liquor. When it was over and he’d won Black Oaks, he told me you went to his house and strutted around like a bantam cock, like you thought you were somebody, like you thought you were as good as him.”

“I am as good as him.”

“You’re a loser, born to a loser, who’s sprung from a long line of losers.”

“I’ll drive you home and put you to bed, Daddy.”

“Don’t act so damned superior.”

“It would’ve happened anyway!”

“The hell it would! You’ve got high-and-mighty airs, but you’re no better than me. Caesar said it was time all of us Knights got what we deserved—nothing! But that’s not the only reason I came over. Kinky called him and said Mia’s run off again. Caesar said she was upset because he hit you, and they think she might’ve come over here. I don’t reckon you know where—”

Shanghai shook his head just as a pot crashed in the kitchen inside the cabin.

“Who the hell’s in there with you then?”

“Nobody.”

“You lyin’ son-of-a skunk! Caesar’s on his way over here, you fool!”

His father rushed past him, whipped the screen door open and stormed through the house.

Mia screamed from his bedroom. When Shanghai ran inside, his father was dragging her out from under the bed by the hair.

“Let go of her,” Shanghai yelled, shoving him in the back.

“It’s not what you think, Mr. Knight,” Mia began. “He didn’t do anything. It was me. All my fault. He told me to go, but I—”

“I got eyes in my head. He’s bare-chested and you’re wearing his shirt. You were in his bed.”

“Under his bed. I told you. I came over here on my own,” she said.

“How long has this been going on?” his father yelled.

“Nothing’s going on,” Shanghai said.

“She’s here, in your bedroom. It’s the middle of the night. She’s underage. You’ve got a wild reputation and you’re madder than hell at her father. And you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t touch—”

“What do you care? You’re the one who gambled the ranch away!”

His father lunged at him. “That was your fault and you know it! You set me up tonight! Laid a trap. I should’ve seen it coming. You’ve been a wild ’un since the day you was born.”

“Wonder where I get it?”

“Not from me! ’Cause you’re not mine, boy! The only reason your scheming mother married me was to get a daddy for her no-good bastard.”

“You’re lying!”

His father lunged. Together they crashed onto the floor. When Mia leaned down to try to pull them apart, his father slugged her.

Unconscious, she slumped like a limp rag doll to the floor.

Instantly Shanghai forgot his father and dropped to his knees beside her. Smoothing her hair from her face, he touched her throat.

“I didn’t mean to hit her,” his father gasped, all the meanness going out of him at the realization he’d hit Caesar’s daughter. “I meant to knock some sense into you. Not that that’s possible.”

“I think she’s okay.”

Shanghai picked her up in his arms and laid her on his bed. As he held her wrist and found her pulse, which was strong and steady, he saw headlights on the road outside.

Shanghai glanced up at his father and felt an utter coldness. “Somebody’s coming. Go see who it is. I’ll stay with her.”

Her eyes flickered open, and she smiled at Shanghai. “This is where I’ve always wanted to be—in your arms.”

“You’re gonna be okay,” he whispered, stroking her brow.

“It’s Caesar Kemble.” Through the doorway Shanghai could see his father was cowering drunkenly behind the front door. “He swore I could stay at Black Oaks till I died, but if he finds you and her here, he won’t honor that. He’ll have us both locked up for the rest of our natural born years—if he doesn’t shoot us on the spot.”

His father had gone so pale and looked so terrified Shanghai felt sorry for him.

“You never saw me tonight,” Shanghai said. “I wasn’t here. You don’t know where or why I went—understand? You’ll ask questions and act worried. You’ll pretend that you’re concerned about your missing son.”

His father nodded, as if trying to understand, but his eyes were too glazed with booze.

Shanghai turned back to Mia.

“Your daddy’s outside,” he told her, reluctant to leave the brat until he was sure she was okay.

“Run,” she whispered. “I’ll catch up to you when I’m all grown-up.”

In spite of himself he smiled. “When you’re datin’ age, you’ll have every eligible bachelor in Texas chasin’ you. You’ll forget all about the likes of Shanghai Knight.”

“No…I’ll find you when I’m all grown-up. I swear. And I’ll make you love me!”

He laughed.

“I will. Somehow I will.”

“You do that then, little darlin’. But if I don’t git—now—there won’t be much left of me to find or love!”

Funny thing. His last act on the way out the door was to lean down and grab that dang-fool rose she’d pitched at him.

Then he hightailed it out the back door.

BOOK ONE

Smart Cowboy Saying:

You get used to hanging, if you hang long enough.

—L.D. Burke, Santa Fe

One

Fifteen years later

Big Bend National Park, Texas

Where was the damn plane?

“Where are you, you little shit? Why don’t you be a good boy for a change and just come to Daddy?”

DEA Division Director John Hart squinted as he lowered his binoculars and shoved on his sunglasses. His pale blue eyes burned from eye strain from searching the skies so long for one tiny airplane.

So far the seizure was going off as planned. Except for one skinny, dark kid in ragged jeans, who’d run like lightning, eluding his best agents and their bullets, his men had rounded up Octavo Morales’s ground crew. At this very moment the bastards were cuffed and cursing him as they sweated like pigs in a sweltering van parked out of sight in a sharply cut canyon beside the trickle of water that was the Rio Grande.

No way was Hart driving the traffickers to El Paso. Not when the pilot was rumored to be Morales’s half brother. It was hard to be patient and wait, but Hart wanted this plane, its cargo, the pilot and the woman. He wanted them badly.

Ah, the woman.

Mia Kemble.

He still couldn’t believe it.

Bringing Mia Kemble home to the Golden Spurs Ranch was going to be bigger than the seizure. Way bigger. Just thinking about who she was and what this could mean for him made his pulse speed up. His name would be all over the papers. He’d be a hero.

It was high time. Wasn’t he capable and ambitious? Hadn’t he worked hard for the agency for years? Hadn’t he played it straight? Hell, for the past two years he’d worked his butt off on Operation Tex-Mex-Zero, which was an international Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation into the Morales-Garza (MGO) drug organization.

Since the U.S. Mexico border was the primary point of entry for drugs being smuggled into the United States, and he worked El Paso, he’d naturally been forced to play a big role. Operation Tex-Mex-Zero involved seventy separate criminal investigations conducted by dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, including Mexican and Colombian police officials.

Hart hated working on task forces. There were always too many egos and too much bureaucratic horseshit. When things went wrong, everybody got paranoid. Nobody cooperated. He’d been blamed for mistakes others had made. In the past year he’d gotten himself shot at twice by traffickers—once at point blank range. If he hadn’t been wearing his vest, he’d be dead. He was damn sure he’d been set up, too.

Hell, he was nearly as sick of lawmen as he was criminals. Where had his hard work gotten him? He’d been passed over for all the big promotions for guys who knew how to kiss ass or blow their own horns.

Then the Sombra had contacted him, and things had started to change. He didn’t know who this guy was or why he had it in for Morales, but if Hart could rescue Mia Kemble, get Morales’s half brother and make a major seizure to boot, all in one day, the name John Hart was going to be big on the Texas border. Maybe not as big as Morales, but big enough to suit John Hart. At least for a while. What he really wanted was to get Morales alone and chop him into little pieces.

The Chihuahua Desert was hot, rugged country even in early spring. Hart’s armpits were ringed with sweat. Watchful for snakes, he grabbed his backpack off the ground and then squatted in the scant shade of a nearby boulder and kept his eyes trained on the sky. A dozen of his men were hidden behind other rocks, but he preferred his own company.

He shook out a cigarette. Lighting it, he inhaled deeply. Then he pulled out a crumpled photograph from his shirt pocket and studied the redheaded beauty on the magnificent, black horse. Next his gaze turned to the tall, sinister-looking man with her, who held the bridle.

Morales.

Hart inhaled again. Even now, having studied the images dozens of times, the picture still had the power to shock him.

What the hell was Mia Kemble doing with that drug-smuggling, murdering son of a bitch, Morales? The bastard had to be balling the panties off her. And she had to have more tricks up those panties of hers than a talented border whore, or why else would he risk keeping her alive?

Her plane had crashed fifteen months ago in the Gulf of Mexico in the dead of winter. Everybody in Texas believed she was dead. Hell, her own father and husband had had her declared legally dead—no doubt to get their hands on her money. Her husband had even remarried, her twin sister, of all people.

All John Hart knew about the mystery was that it was lucky as hell for him that the bitch was still alive.

Where the hell was the plane?

Impatient, he lifted his binoculars again.

Two

Chihuahua Desert

Northern Mexico

Be careful what you wish for.

The desert wind was blowing hard outside. Despite the close, suffocating heat, Mia shivered convulsively as little pebbles pinged against the fuselage of the Cessna 206 like buckshot. Her nerves were on fire. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stand being locked up in this tight, dark space.

What was wrong? Had she been set up? The plane, which sat on a dirt runway outside the tall walls of Tavio Morales’s immense outlaw compound, should have been airborne for el norte, translation—the United States—hours ago.

Mia felt faint and slightly woozy as well as nauseated from the marijuana fumes, which reminded her, of all things, of the woodsy, slightly sweet stink of skunk urine back home on the Golden Spurs Ranch. Mopping at the sweat on her brow with her sleeve, she plucked her soaked blouse off her breasts. Then a gust rocked the plane so hard the towering bales shifted in the cargo hold, several of them falling on her.

When they struck her cheek, knocking her down, she screamed. Then she clamped a hand over her mouth. Being locked up was horrible, but being crushed was even worse.

Her heart thudding, she wriggled free of the heavy bales and sat up, straining to listen for the running footsteps of Tavio’s thugs outside or a nervous spray of machine gun fire. When nobody stomped up with assault rifles or machetes, she fought to calm down, sucking in big gulps of air. All the deep breathing did was to make her grow even woozier from the marijuana.

In the total blackness, the thin walls of the sweltering Cessna felt like they were closing in on her. To calm herself, she tried to imagine that she was loping bareback on one of the Golden Spurs’ endless green pastures instead of lying here trapped in this airless prison fearing imminent suffocation.

Ever since she’d gotten locked in the attic as a child at the Golden Spurs and that big, yellow-eyed rat had bitten her, causing her to have those awful rabies shots, she’d been afraid of two things—rats and being locked up. Then, after this year, her list of scary things had grown much longer.

Now here she was, a stowaway in a coffinlike cargo hold that was as hot as a furnace and getting hotter, and all because she was so desperate to get back to her little girl and her mother and her father and the Golden Spurs.

She wanted her life back.

Would she die here instead? Probably. Her throat tightened. Who would raise her little girl, Vanilla, then? Watch her grow up? Who was raising her now?

Her mother? Lizzy? Had Lizzy watched Vanilla’s first step? Heard her say her first word? Lizzy. Always Lizzy.

Vanilla would be a feisty toddler now. Was she chubby or slim? Docile or as ornery as a terrible two could be? What Mia wouldn’t give to know.

Everybody she loved believed she’d been dead for more than a year, which gave her an eerie, unsettling sensation. It was as if the real her had ceased to exist. If something went wrong in the next few hours, Tavio would probably torture and kill her, and her friends and family would never know she’d been alive all these months, thinking of them, longing for them. Shanghai would never know how much she still loved him in spite of everything, either. Not that he would care.

“Oh, Shanghai…” As she sat in the dark, feeling lost and alone, she willed him to think of her, to remember her, at least sometimes.

The nightmarish seconds ticked by like hours. What was Tavio waiting for? Would Marco, his half brother, who was to be the pilot tonight, ever climb in and rev the engine? Would they ever take off? And what if they did? Would DEA agents really be there to save her as Julio had promised? Could she trust Julio?

It got so hot her skin prickled and burned as if she had a heat rash. She had to get out of here, to feel fresh air on her face and soon, or go mad.

No. Ever since Julio had risked his life to hide her, assuring her the plane was flying into a trap, she’d known this was her best shot at freedom. Clenching her nails into her palm, she fought to hold on to her sanity and courage.

Somebody up there had a twisted sense of humor. Mia wasn’t naming names because she didn’t want to tempt fate.

“I don’t want to sound whiney…Yes, I know I have abandonment issues because Daddy didn’t want me and neither did Shanghai, not even when I told him I was pregnant with our baby after that night in Vegas. Yes, I know I prayed for the next man I met to be struck by a thunderbolt and love me so much, he’d never want to let me go.

“But Tavio Morales and his sick obsession? A drug lord?”

Mia knew it wasn’t a good sign about her sanity that she talked to herself so much. But could a woman, who’d gone through even half of what she had with Tavio and his criminal army for more than a year, remain entirely sane? She knew she was only holding on by a thread.

Fifteen months ago she’d been married to Cole Knight, having married him because he was Shanghai’s brother and for a host of other wrong-minded reasons, which was ironic because everyone in Spur County had thought Cole had married her to get her stock in the ranch.

When things had settled down, she’d had a new baby daughter, Vanilla, to raise and had been working with the horse program at the ranch. If her life hadn’t been totally what she’d wished for, at least it had seemed all planned out and stable.

On a whim, because Daddy had said he was flying, too, she’d chosen to fly with Cole the day he’d crashed their plane into the Gulf of Mexico. Cole was probably dead, and there had been times, hellish times, that she wished she were dead, too, like when she’d heard screams coming from that forbidden zone at the compound. Listening to those pitiful cries, she’d suspected that Tavio’s men were torturing their prisoners before they murdered them. From her bedroom window, she’d seen blindfolded, handcuffed people brought to those buildings against the north wall of the hacienda, and she’d never seen any of them leave.

The irony was she would have drowned if Tavio Morales, who’d just stolen a yacht, no doubt, after murdering its owners, hadn’t been so high on his crack-laced cigarettes he’d seen diving into those stormy, icy forty-foot seas and plucking her to safety as an adventure.

She knew he’d removed her wet clothes that first night, that he’d wrapped her in blankets and warmed her with his own body. Not that she liked to think about that. Since that night, he’d never held her or stroked her or even kissed her because he was waiting for her to want him, too.

She loathed his attentiveness and deadly patience. Obsessed with her, he’d nursed her back to health and brought her to his rancho in the Chihuahua Desert. He’d treated her as kindly as a man of his sort keeping a woman prisoner knew how, she supposed.

When he’d found out she liked horses, he’d let her groom and ride his fine, Polish-Arabian stallion, Shabol. Except for those horrible, forbidden zones, she’d been free to roam and ride Shabol as long as she stayed within the confines of the high walls surrounding his adobe mansion.

When she’d wanted something to read, he’d brought her newspapers. Sometimes he ranted about the stories written about himself and his operation by a certain Terence Collins, who was a liberal reporter for the Border Observer in El Paso.

Even though there was no free press in Mexico, these articles were translated and reprinted in all the Mexican papers owned by Federico Valdez, whom Tavio seemed to hate with a special vengeance. The coverage incensed Tavio mostly because his business ran more smoothly if he kept his affairs quiet. But also she sensed some deep personal vendetta between him and Valdez.

Tavio had threatened the reporter, and Collins had printed every threat, which added to his fame.

Tavio would turn red as soon as he saw his name in a headline or a sidebar. “I will kill him!” he would say as he wadded up the paper. “I will kill them both.”

“No,” Mia would plead.

“Soon! You will see, Angelita.”

Publicity made the officials Tavio bribed look like fools who couldn’t do their jobs. If Tavio got too much press, he explained, the federal police comandantes would be forced to demand expensive drug busts to make themselves look good. The United States would put pressure on the politicians in Mexico City, who might demand his imprisonment or death. After all, individual drug lords were replaceable.