Desperado Lawman

“We’re sharing a motel room for the next few hours so—”

Tess paused and glanced at the grim-faced man secured by his own handcuffs. The man was hard angles of bone and solid muscle, but his crystalline-gray eyes were soft—even beautiful.

“Connor.” His interjection was brusque. “Drop the agent part, lady, since the fact that I’m FBI doesn’t seem to mean much to you. And yeah, we’re in a motel room, but not for any of the reasons a man and woman usually come to a place like this.”

She felt faint heat touch her cheeks. Turning her back, she rummaged through her purse. “You sound disappointed, Agent Connor. Although I doubt you have much social life at all. The job’s your life. You probably live in a one-bedroom apartment and you’ve never bothered buying more than a bed and maybe a couch. Did I miss anything?”

“Just that I always carry a spare key for my handcuffs.” Spinning around in shock, she saw crystal-gray eyes looking coldly down on her. “Aside from that, I’d say you were dead on, lady. Seeing as you know me so well, this shouldn’t be a surprise.”

Even as Tess’s lips parted in a gasp, Connor’s mouth came down hard on hers.

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

We have a superb lineup of outstanding romantic suspense this month starting with another round of QUANTUM MEN from Amanda Stevens. A Silent Storm is brewing in Texas and it’s about to break….

More great series continue with Harper Allen’s MEN OF THE DOUBLE B RANCH trilogy. A Desperado Lawman has his hands full with a spitfire who is every bit his match. As well, B.J. Daniels adds the second installment to her CASCADES CONCEALED miniseries with Day of Reckoning.

In Secret Witness by Jessica Andersen, a woman finds herself caught between a rock—a killer threatening her child—and a hard place—the detective in charge of the case. What will happen when she has to make the most inconceivable choice any woman can make?

Launching this month is a new promotion we are calling COWBOY COPS. Need I say more? Look for Behind the Shield by veteran Harlequin Intrigue author Sheryl Lynn. And newcomer, Rosemary Heim, contributes to DEAD BOLT with Memory Reload.

Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Desperado Lawman

Harper Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Harper Allen lives in the country in the middle of a hundred acres of maple trees with her husband, Wayne, six cats, four dogs—and a very nervous cockatiel at the bottom of the food chain. For excitement she and Wayne drive to the nearest village and buy jumbo bags of pet food. She believes in love at first sight because it happened to her.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Tess Smith—On the run with a child witness, reporter Tess can’t allow FBI Agent Virgil Connor to take Joey back into custody—not when someone in the Agency is a traitor. But hijacking Connor at gunpoint wasn’t the plan….

Virgil Connor—Even if Tess Smith is right about Joey, he can’t let them stay on the run forever. But can he protect them from an unknown enemy?

Joey Begand—“I see monsters.” That’s what nine-year-old Joey’s been saying since he witnessed a murder. The only adult who believes him is Tess, but can she keep him safe from a killer?

Del Hawkins—The tough ex-marine runs a boot camp ranch for bad boys—like Connor once was. But his own past holds a dark secret that could put Tess and young Joey in danger.

Paula Geddes—Connor’s partner, she’s already risked her life once to keep witness Joey Begand safe.

John McLeish—Connor wants him for murder. Del remembers him as a hero. Tess wonders if they’re both right.

Arne Jansen—The FBI Area Director has no choice but to put out a shoot-to-kill order on now fugitives Agent Connor and Tess.

Alice Tahe—The Navajo matriarch sees evil threatening the Double B Ranch and Joey.

To T.:

Tell the others the circle is unbroken, buddy.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Prologue

When the night-light in his room suddenly went off, Joey Begand knew the killer had done something to the electricity.

He sat up fast in the dark. Swinging his sneaker-clad feet out from the covers, he reached for the duffel bag he’d stashed under the bed the day he’d been brought here, just as if he had been waiting for this moment all along. He had been. He’d even tried to warn the agents guarding him that calling this place a safe house was stupid since it was an apartment, not a house, and hiding here wasn’t going to keep him safe at all.

But that was the trouble with being nine years old. Grown-ups thought you didn’t know a thing.

He was going to have to get out of here. Then he was going to have to find the one person in the world he figured could protect him.

She’d snuck onto a top-secret government base and watched an alien autopsy. She’d tracked Bigfoot and even taken a picture of him—kind of a blurry one, but that was because if she’d gotten any closer Bigfoot would have smelled her scent and torn her apart. She’d hunted down a whole colony of vampires living in the mountains just north of Albuquerque, and if it hadn’t been for the crucifix she always wore around her neck she never would have been heard of again.

Tess Smith, star reporter for the National Eye-Opener, wasn’t like most other grown-ups, Joey told himself shakily. Tess Smith believed in monsters. She went up against them every day—went up against them and whipped their ugly monster butts.

Keeping a little kid safe from the monster who was trying to kill him would be a piece of cake for Tess Smith, nine-year-old federal witness Joey Begand thought desperately as he heard the muffled thud of the first body falling somewhere in the darkened safe house….

Chapter One

FBI Special Agent Virgil Connor pushed open the door of the all-night diner just outside of Roswell, New Mexico.

“Coffee?”

To hell with the heat, caffeine had become a food group over the past few hours, Connor told himself as the waitress plunked a mug in front of him and he slid into a booth adjacent to one occupied by a brunette with a grubby hellion. The waitress plunked a mug in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the hellion staring at him through an uncut swath of straight, black hair. He lifted his menu, blocking the kid’s view.

For two solid days he’d made the rounds of truck stops and diners like this one. The grunt work had just paid off.

The kid was Joey Begand. Connor had no idea who the woman was, but kidnapping a child who just happened to be a federal witness wasn’t the only charge she was facing. He could think of a dozen others, starting with accessory to murder. Breaking the news of Bill Danzig’s death to the slain agent’s wife two nights ago had been the worst moment of his career.

“Keep the ketchup on your side of the plate and stop playing with those fries.” The husky-voiced command came from the brunette. “We can’t stay here all night, you know.”

“Okay, Tess.”

Connor risked a glance over the top of his menu. Instead of the suspicious glare he’d favored Connor with, the gaze the urchin was directing at the tight-lipped brunette was wide and shining. Joey picked up a too-large cluster of fries with fingers that were even grubbier than the rest of him.

“That’s prob’ly not what it looked like, right, Tess? I betcha they got it all wrong, huh?”

The woman called Tess frowned. “For crying out loud, you don’t have to choke on them,” she said swiftly. “Put half of those back. Who got what wrong?”

“So what’ll it be?”

Connor blinked. The diner’s waitress, pencil at the ready, had paused beside his booth. He snapped the menu shut.

“Cheeseburger, plain,” he said, coming to a decision that had nothing to do with food. “Is there a phone I can use?”

He needed backup. He would have preferred to keep this takedown low profile, but low profile took second place to the safety of civilians, especially when one of those civilians was a child. There was a chance he could still keep a lid on the situation by using the security of a land line, instead of contacting the Agency office on his cell phone.

“Pay phone’s outside.” The waitress tucked her pencil behind her ear.

“…nothin’ like them, right? So what did it really look like, Tess?”

A ketchup-dipped fry in his hand, Joey was pointing to a dangling row of bobble-head dolls suspended over the cash register. About to slide from the booth and head outside to make his call, Connor checked his movement.

The dolls for sale, their spindly bodies topped by teardrop-shaped heads set with jet-black eyes, were an obvious attempt to capitalize on the beyond-the-fringe theory that an alien spaceship had once crashed near Roswell. If the brunette was unbalanced enough to believe in aliens and government cover-ups, she could be even more dangerous than he’d realized.

“How would I know?” The note of impatient confusion in her voice was reassuringly normal, and Connor began to get up from his seat again. “If you’re not going to finish those fries I’ll eat them. Then we’d better start figuring out how we’re—”

She stopped abruptly.

“Oh, yeah, the autopsy in Hangar 61.” Sounding weary, she raked slim fingers through short, feather-cut hair. “Well, you saw the secret photographs I took, so you know what it looked like. For one thing, it had three eyes, not just two.”

Joey looked thoughtful. “How come they don’t get you a better camera, Tess? ’Cause those pictures were a lot like the Bigfoot ones and that photo you took of Elvis a couple of months ago when you found out he was still alive and working in a used-car lot—all blurry and kind of shadowy.”

Connor let his gaze drift past the woman as he made his way to the door. She didn’t look insane. She looked bone tired, and under her brown eyes—amber-brown eyes, he noted before they were hidden by the hand she brought up to massage her temples—were dark shadows, but she didn’t look insane.

Except she had to be. Alien autopsies, Elvis sightings, Bigfoot…replete with photographs, according to what Joey had just said. She was living in her own unbalanced universe. A woman who was convinced she had proof positive that the King hadn’t left the building would have no trouble believing that being a party to abduction and murder was somehow justifiable.

What was worse, Joey Begand seemed to have allied himself with his kidnapper. Hoping that the kid would seize the first opportunity to run from her wasn’t part of the game plan anymore, Connor thought in frustration as he stepped outside. He headed around the corner of the building to the pay phone, his mind racing.

He wasn’t worried about being unable to reach the man he needed to contact. Area Director Jansen hadn’t left his desk since the night the safe house had been blown, leaving Paula Geddes wounded, Danzig dead and Rick Leroy, the third agent on duty, gone without a trace. Leroy had to be allied with the brunette, Connor surmised, lifting the phone’s receiver. The bastard was nervy, all right—that was a given, since he’d obviously been working against his own people for some time—but even Leroy must have known that once the snatch had gone down every law enforcement officer available would be on the lookout for him.

Leroy also would have guessed that Joey’s description wouldn’t be as indiscriminately revealed to the media and public as his own, for fear that whoever had the child would panic and eliminate him. He would have figured that if he delegated a woman to escort Joey to wherever it was he wanted the boy, chances were his female accomplice wouldn’t run into any problems.

There were two things Leroy hadn’t counted on, Connor thought in grim satisfaction. He hadn’t counted on a nine-year-old’s need for frequent bathroom breaks on a car trip. And he hadn’t counted on his girlfriend being soft enough to stop several times to accommodate—

“I’m holding a gun about two inches away from your spine, Agent. Hang up that phone and don’t even think of going for your own weapon.”

The low warning came from directly behind him, but Connor didn’t have to look to know who was delivering it. Her voice didn’t suit her, he thought as he carefully set the phone back in its cradle and brought both his hands up to shoulder height. Her pixie haircut and slim build gave her the same street-urchin quality that Joey had, but as soon as she opened her mouth those husky, froggy tones made her sound as if she should be poured into black satin and purring out a torch song in some smoky bar. Slowly he turned around.

She wasn’t bluffing. The gun she was holding was a purse-size derringer, but real enough. He decided to try a bluff of his own.

“My wallet’s in my back pocket. Not that this mugging’s going to make you rich, for God’s sake. I’m a plastics salesman, and—”

“Bull.” There was scorn in those amber eyes. “You’re FBI. Not even the most unsuccessful salesman would pick a suit as bargain basement as the one you’ve got on. And I bet the polyester shirt you’re wearing under that jacket’s drip-dry and short-sleeved, right?”

She snorted. “Joey figured you for a Fed as soon as you walked in. I knew he was right when I saw you watching us, Agent. Hand over your gun.”

“Or what? You’ll whistle up Bigfoot and sic him on me?” Giving up his bluff, Connor shook his head. “This isn’t one of your fantasies, lady. This is real life and you’re in real trouble. Instead of handing you my gun I’ll give you the chance to put yours down, but if you decide not to take me up on my offer you won’t leave me much choice.”

He began to lower his hands. “I don’t think you’re going to get off more than one shot, if that. And one bullet’s not about to stop me from taking Joey Begand away from you and back into protective—”

“I’m not going back, mister. Did you stop him before he made his phone call, Tess?”

Connor froze, his fingers inches away from his gun. He saw the raw fear that flashed through the amber eyes facing him, saw the derringer in Tess’s hand waver.

It would have been the perfect opportunity to make his move and wrest her weapon away from her. But he wasn’t going to chance it—not with a small boy only feet away.

“I told you to stay put, Joey.” Her voice was as unsteady as her hand, though she didn’t take her gaze from him. “Go back into the diner and wait until you see me pull up outside, like we agreed.”

“His cheeseburger’s ready.” Joey sounded as defensive as only a nine-year-old could. “The waitress told the busboy to take out the garbage and see if he was really using the phone or if he’d taken off.”

“Joey, listen to me.” The last thing he needed was another innocent bystander blundering on to the scene, Connor thought. “Tess isn’t your friend. She’s working with the person who killed Bill, one of the agents guarding you at the safe house, and who nearly killed Paula, the lady agent who was watching over you that night. My guess is she wants to take you to her partner, and when she does, he’s going to kill you.”

“Rick double-crossed you guys?” Joey’s eyes widened. He met Connor’s swift frown and shrugged. “You said Bill was killed and Paula was hurt. I figured since you never said anything about Rick he prob’ly was the one who sold the Agency out.”

“Joey, stay out of this. Where’s your car parked, Agent?” Tess—the name she’d given to Joey probably wasn’t her real one, Connor thought, but it would do for now—bit off the question. “I want you to hand over your weapon real carefully, and then you’re going to take us to your vehicle. Mine barely made it off the highway before it died, so we need a ride out of here. Let’s start with the gun.”

It was his own fault, Connor told himself, carefully pulling aside his jacket with one hand to reveal his shoulder-holstered automatic and even more carefully withdrawing the weapon. He’d let himself be lulled into complacency by windblown hair and exhausted golden-brown eyes, and he’d paid for that mistake by being bushwhacked. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d allowed himself to let down his guard so easily.

Or could he? A stray memory from his past—his distant past, he thought wryly—drifted into his mind as he deposited his gun into her outstretched palm. A run-in with the law when he hadn’t been much older than Joey had resulted in him being given the choice of juvenile detention or a year-long stay at what was essentially a boot camp for wayward teens. Run by disabled ex-Marine Del Hawkins, the Double B Ranch had taken in an angry sixteen-year-old street fighter and twelve months later had released a tough and capable young man back into the world.

Del and the Double B had turned his life around. So when the ex-Marine had called on him for his help with a problem the ranch had been facing a month ago, he’d been grateful for the chance to repay even a small part of the debt he owed the man. That time spent on the ranch as a young, reckless teen had taught him a lifetime of lessons.

Don’t let that hammer-headed Appaloosa gelding fool you, boys. Some days Chorizo looks as harmless as a little lamb. But he’s as tricky as the devil, and the first time you forget that might be your last.

Del’s drawled warning had been directed at four know-it-all hell-raisers. California golden-boy Tye Adams, banished to the Double B by his wealthy father after nearly killing himself on a stolen motorcycle, had been the first to take on Chorizo. Watching him stumble back behind the safety of the corral bars, bruised and bleeding, the next kid up, Jess Crawford, simply shook his head.

“I’m just a computer geek sent here for hacking into school records,” Jess countered. “I never said I was the macho type, and I don’t intend to start now. You shouldn’t, either, Virgil.”

Connor had always suspected it had been Jess’s use of his hated first name that had prompted him to get onto Chorizo’s back, but whatever the reason, seconds later he’d found himself landing on hard-packed dirt, the wind knocked out of him. Even while he’d been trying to drag some much-needed oxygen into his burning lungs he’d seen the gelding’s razor-sharp hooves come down inches from his head. Only the swift intervention of Gabe Riggs, another of the boys, who’d ducked between the corral’s bars and dragged him to safety, had frustrated the Appaloosa’s intentions of making mincemeat out of him.

His run-in with the hammer-headed gelding should have taught him a lesson, Connor thought now.

Tess wasn’t much taller than Joey, and even when he’d seen her sitting in the diner he’d known his own solid six-three frame had to top hers by a good twelve inches or so. But her petiteness wasn’t the main reason he’d underestimated the woman now gesturing impatiently at him with his own gun.

Crazy she might be. Vulnerable she wasn’t. He wouldn’t make that mistake a second time.

“My car’s over there,” he said tonelessly. “But I’m asking you one last time to give yourself up.”

“I can’t do that, Agent.” Was he fooling himself again, or was there regret in those husky tones? “I can’t hand Joey back over to the Agency, and that’s final. Now, move.”

She’d just sealed her own fate, Connor thought. Prompted by the gun at his back, he headed across the parking lot to his car. He might wish this had turned out otherwise, but there was no reason to feel such desolation at her decision.

He wondered briefly why he did. Then he dismissed the question, knowing he couldn’t afford the distraction.

Sometime tonight those amber eyes would close forever, Agent Virgil Connor told himself bleakly. And he was probably going to be the one who would have to kill her.

Chapter Two

She’d kidnapped a federal agent, Tess Smith thought hollowly a few hours later. He was right—this wasn’t one of the fantastic stories that ran under her byline in the National Eye-Opener. Even if she’d wanted to pretend otherwise, a glance across the motel room at the grim-faced man sitting on a chair and secured by his own handcuffs to the steel bracket bolting down the television set was chilling proof of her actions.

In the bed a few feet away Joey had finally fallen asleep, his tough little face free of all worry for the moment. Beside him was a bobble-head doll from the diner, bought with the change from the money she’d left him to pay for their meal when she’d slipped from their booth to follow the Fed.

She hadn’t had the heart to scold him over his unauthorized purchase. The monsters in his young life were all too real. She could understand why a plastic one might bring comfort.

The same need to believe that monsters weren’t invincible was obviously why Joey was one of the Eye-Opener’s biggest fans. One of her biggest fans, rather, Tess corrected herself. Guilt flickered through her, as it had done more than once in the past two days. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told Joey the truth, since it was something he was going to find out sooner or later, anyway. But maybe it was better that he learn it himself, the way she’d had to.

Oh, not that monsters don’t exist, Joey, she silently assured the small sleeping figure in the rumpled bed. They do. They’re really real and I really went up against one, just like in those stories I write. Except I didn’t defeat it.

“It defeated me,” she said under her breath, her vision suddenly blurring. “I was your age, and the monster won. No one believed me, either.”

“How do you know? I might if you took the trouble to explain, lady.”

Startled, Tess jerked her attention to the handcuffed man across the room. She’d allowed him to remove his suit jacket before making him manacle his right wrist to the steel bracket, and even as she looked at him she saw the biceps of his secured arm flex. He gave her a thin smile.

“You want to give it a try?”

“Give what a try?”

She didn’t trust him, she thought edgily. She didn’t trust him and she didn’t like him—or, at least, she didn’t like what he represented, and that was close enough. He hadn’t spoken at all during the drive to this run-down motel, but she’d had the unsettling conviction that he’d been watching every move she’d made, hoping her attention would flag for just one second.

“Try telling me why you’re doing this.” He shrugged. “You seem to think no one would believe you, but you haven’t given me a chance to hear you out. In fact, you haven’t even told me your name.”

Feeling obscurely relieved that he’d evidently misheard her murmured words to the sleeping nine-year-old, Tess narrowed her gaze on him. “Going for the psychological approach, Agent? Trying to make me think we could be buddies? Don’t waste your breath. Your little ploy’s not going to lull me into uncuffing you and handing you back your gun.”

She shook her head. “Besides, you know darn well who I am. Even if you don’t think too highly of my work, you’ve obviously read an example of it, since you knew about the Bigfoot story.”

Dark eyebrows drew together in a frown. “You’re some kind of writer? Sorry, lady, I’m afraid I’ve never—”