The Last Honorable Man

Del had been kept out of the loop in the investigation. The investigators wouldn’t tell him anything, except that the woman’s story seemed to check out. Elisa Reyes was from a small South American nation called San Ynez. She had only arrived in the U.S. a few hours before the shooting, had gone to Garcia’s apartment and then to his work address when she found he wasn’t home. She’d gotten to the warehouse just in time to see the gun battle. She didn’t seem to know anything about the deal that was supposed to have gone down there.

Del had tried to get more out of the DPS inspectors, but they’d stonewalled him. Matheson hadn’t been much more forthcoming. Damn it, it had been nearly a week, and they hadn’t cleared him in the shooting yet. The press had declared him a vigilante racist, and no one official was saying anything different.

He’d like to take those reporters to his farm up near Sherman and introduce them to his abuela, the grandmother who had raised him. She’d have a thing or two to say about Del’s supposed prejudice against Hispanics. Then again, what she would say about it wouldn’t likely be printable.

He almost smiled, picturing her face in mother-hen mode, protecting her chick. Almost. Because as soon as she chased the reporters away, she’d have a thing or two to say to him.

“You’re a good boy, Del Cooper, with a good name, an honorable name,” she’d always told him. “You do what’s right, pay your debts and you’ll keep it that way.”

He’d tried. For the most part he thought he’d succeeded, until five days ago. He’d done the right thing by shooting. He was sure of it. But now he had a responsibility to the woman at the warehouse. A debt he wasn’t sure he could ever pay. He only knew he had to try. He had to pass on his respects for her loss, if nothing else. But first he had to find her.

Down below, the crowd around the gravesite began to break up. Muttering to himself, Del walked back to his Land Rover. Inside, he shoved the car into gear and drove, his mind still on the woman.

What would he have said to her if he had found her? I’m sorry I killed…who? An innocent man? Someone you cared about? But I had no choice. It was a righteous shoot. Righteous…

His throat closing around that final word, Del headed to the back road through the cemetery, winding down a gravel drive to avoid passing the media vultures. This part of the cemetery was older. Century oaks towered over moss-covered headstones and larger monuments. Gnarled branches seemed to shake their fingers at him. The rustle of leaves in the breeze accused him.

Geez, he was really losing it.

He pressed down on the accelerator, spotting a rear exit to the cemetery, then stomped even harder on the brake. Beneath an aperture in the canopy of boughs sat a weathered chapel, a flagstone path leading from the road to its entrance, where the half-open door had caught his attention. Shutting off the car’s engine, he craned his head for a closer look.

Mortar crumbled between the rough-cut stones of the building’s facade. A peeling white steeple scraped against the lower branches of the trees, which shifted in the breeze, their rattle sounding less threatening and more inviting here, mixed with chipper birdsong and the scuttle of a lone squirrel pawing through old pine needles.

The place reminded him of the little church near his abuela’s farm, only smaller yet. He’d spent many hours there as a child, on his knees at her side, and the sudden longing for that simpler time drew him closer. It wasn’t until he got to the door that he saw the drawstring backpack on the floor—the same olive green backpack the woman had been carrying at the warehouse.

It appeared he wasn’t the only one drawn by the peacefulness of the place.

Elisa Reyes fingered her rosary beads, her lips moving in silent prayer, and inhaled the scent of old, polished wood, wet stone and candle wax. A single flame flickered from a votive on the stone wall beside her. The muted light set the stained-glass image of Christ on a the cross above the altar aglow.

Elisa had come into the chapel seeking a much-needed respite from the heat. Since she had arrived in Texas five days ago, Elisa felt as if she had been consigned to hell. The sun seemed to burn right through her. She was hot. So hot…and dry.

She paused in her prayers a moment to lick her parched lips. A wave of dizziness shook her, and she had to steady herself with a hand on the back of the pew in front of her until the lightheadedness passed. Grateful for the return of her strength, she took comfort in the silence and reverence of the tiny chapel for another second, then bowed her head again to finish her rosary. This place was the first she had found in this country that reminded her of home.

The first place she had found peace.

Until the squeak of hinges announced that she wasn’t alone.

Ever so slightly she cocked her head and looked over her shoulder. Through the black lace veil that covered her eyes, she saw the silhouette of a man in the doorway. He was large and dark, seemingly made more of shadow than flesh and bone. If it were not for the bright halo of daylight behind him giving shape to his form, she might not have believed there was a man there at all, no substance. Just a trick of the light. Dark energy.

Then he stepped down the aisle. His boot heels scuffed the worn wood floor. “Ma’am, I’m Del Coo—”

Elisa’s back stiffened. Suddenly she was not hot, but cold to the marrow. “I know who you are. Have you come here seeking absolution, Ranger Cooper?”

His throat convulsed. His hands crushed the brim of the Western hat he carried in front of him like a shield. “No, ma’am. I came here seeking you.”

Quickly she crossed herself and rose without meeting his eyes. Icy rage lent strength to her weakened body. “Then you have wasted your time. I am not your confessor.”

“I have no intention of burdening you with my sins.”

She tried to pass him in the aisle, but his muscular mass blocked the narrow passage.

“You weren’t at the service,” he said. She did not mean to look at him. Had not intended to acknowledge his presence any further. But something in what he said, some pain beneath the words, beneath the throaty baritone voice, called to her, and she looked at him.

His hair was cropped military short. So short that she could not call it brown or black—just dark. He had a broad forehead, but his brows were not overly heavy, and his strong, square jaw compensated. His nose looked as though it had been broken a time or two, and his gaze was not as cold as one might expect from gray eyes, but instead threw her pale reflection back at her like warm, polished pewter.

He had a dependable face, she decided. Sturdy. The kind of face people would trust.

It was too bad she knew it to be a mask. He was no stalwart defender of humanity. He was a cold-blooded killer.

And yet he had been at Eduardo’s funeral when she had not. She had lacked the courage to face the newsmen, as well as the strength to walk the last half mile.

The injustice of it enraged her. She raised her chin, digging her nails into her palms to keep her hands from shaking. “I do not have to be at God’s side for Him to hear my words. Nor, thanks to you, do I have to be so near to Eduardo now.”

The ranger jerked as if he had been slapped. She tried to shoulder past, but he let go of his hat with one hand and captured her arm. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

The breath whooshed out of her. Up this close, she could see the deep lines of strain that channeled out from the corners of his eyes and mouth. What worries weighed on him? The death of an innocent man? Surely not. He was policía. Heartless.

So what did he want with her?

“How do you know about my baby?” she asked.

“I felt it,” he ground out as if his jaw were frozen. “When we were wrestling at the warehouse.”

She yanked her arm free of his grip and smoothed her hand over her swelling abdomen. “Yes. I carry Eduardo’s child. So you see with your carelessness you took not one life, but three—the man, the husband and the father.”

This time the ranger didn’t flinch. He frowned. “Husband? You were married?”

“We were to be.”

His shoulders sagged. He blinked slowly. “I’m sorry. If there was anything I could do…”

She passed by him. This time she would not be stopped. Behind her, he cleared his throat. “I just want you to know you have my sympathy.”

She turned in the chapel doorway. “Sympathy from the devil is little comfort, Ranger.” Then she stepped over the threshold, into a Texas heat surely hotter than hell.

Del stood still as marble, a testament to the discipline ingrained in him by four years in the Army Special Forces and fourteen as a cop of one sort or another. It took every bit of will he had, and then some, not to place his fist through the pretty little stained-glass panel beside the door.

This was why he’d wanted to see her, he realized. So she could lay him open. Maybe in that way he could honor his debt in one bloody stream instead of paying slowly, drop by drop.

Only, it hadn’t worked. Instead of the anger he’d expected from her, he’d gotten only cold contempt, and instead of making payment, he’d found his debt tripled. She’d said he killed three men, and she’d been right. The sheer magnitude of what one pull of the trigger—his pull of the trigger—had cost her was incomprehensible.

One thing he did comprehend, though. A debt like that could never be repaid. Never. He closed his eyes. God help him. Maybe he should find a confessional after all.

He stood there for what seemed like a long time, fighting the invisible steel bands squeezing his chest with each breath he drew. He’d done what he had to do, he told himself. Saved Hayes’s life.

So why did he feel like he’d committed a mortal sin?

Feeling much older than his thirty-eight years, he finally sighed and managed to uncrimp his fingers from the ruined brim of his hat. He moved toward the door, but before he’d finished a step, a missile of a sharp-tongued woman crashed into his chest, her chocolate eyes wide with alarm.

“What?” he asked, setting her back on her feet. Her shoulders jutted through the thin blouse beneath his hands. She felt frail. Broken inside. But her disdain was intact.

She brushed off his touch as if he was an insect and pushed them both deeper into the stone chapel. “Reporters,” she said, checking over her shoulder.

Del leaned around her, looked out the door and cursed. A van with a KDAL logo cruised down the gravel lane. “Where’s your car?”

She clutched her pack to her chest. “I don’t have one.”

Without looking down, he saw in his mind the dust rimming the hem of her black skirt. How far was it from wherever she was staying to the cemetery? The nearest hotel had to be four or five miles. “You walked?”

She answered by narrowing her eyes, as if pregnant women always walked miles on the highway in 103-degree heat. Saving his disbelief for later, he pulled her back toward the door. “Come on.”

Her hand was in his just long enough for him to register the clammy feel of her palm. Then she recoiled. He gritted his teeth, motioning for her to go first. “After you.”

She didn’t budge.

“That’s my Land Rover out front. We can get away before they make us.”

“I will go nowhere with you.”

The rebuke blew away another chunk of what was left of his self-respect. She needed his help, whether she realized it or not. So far, Garcia’s involvement with a woman had been held to speculation. He could only guess she wasn’t interested in publicity, otherwise all four local channels would have plastered the face of the grieving fiancée on the TV news every night this week.

“Look,” he urged. “The press is still in a feeding frenzy over the shooting. Finding either one of us in here alone would provide a passable story for the bloodsuckers, but finding us here together will make for a regular tabloid extravaganza. Our pictures will be on sale at every grocery store checkout from here to Minnesota. They will hound us—you—night and day. Is that what you want?”

Her face paled to the same light ivory as her blouse. “No.”

He resisted the urge to steady her on her feet, doubting she’d appreciate the sentiment. Instead he pulled his own shoulders back, hardened his gaze to match hers. “Then what’s it going to be, lady? Ready to make a deal with the devil?”

Chapter 2

“Where do you want me to take you?” the ranger asked.

“Just stop the car.”

Elisa pressed her forehead against the cool window. Across the six lanes of cement on the other side of the glass, a pasture dotted by mesquite trees and cows with extraordinarily long horns bordered the parking lot of a modern sports stadium with a gigantic hole in the roof. Rural Texas gave way to urban in a dizzying blur.

A big truck sped past, rocking the vehicle. Elisa rested her palm on her churning stomach and looked away. Everything was so different here than in her country. So big. So fast. In her village, two cars couldn’t have passed on the main road without scraping door handles, and the normal flow of traffic was foot speed.

Except when the soldiers came.

The hand on her stomach fisted. “Please stop the car.”

The ranger’s jaw ticked, but his eyes stayed on the road. The ruddy spots on his cheeks darkened. “I told you, I am not dumping a pregnant woman on the side of the highway in this heat. In any weather, damn it.”

“There is no need to curse.”

“Curse? What…? ‘Damn it’?”

She frowned at him.

“Aw, hell,” he muttered, then shot her a look. “I mean heck. Look, just tell me where you want to go and I’ll drop you off.”

“You don’t understand.” She clutched her pack to her side. It was all she’d brought to America. All she’d had. “I—”

Too late.

Elisa’s eyes went wide as the wave began low in her body and rolled upward. One hand flying to cover her mouth, she fumbled at the window control with the other.

“What the—” The ranger stepped on the brakes and swerved to the shoulder.

Elisa was out before the car came to full stop. At the guardrail, she fell to her knees and lost what little she’d eaten that day. When it was over, she hung across the steel barrier, limp as yesterday’s laundry, clammy and shaking. She dragged in a breath of air, tasted exhaust and nearly choked again. Thankfully, the ranger had left her to her peace. The only thing more humiliating than being sick would have been to have him standing over her, watching.

A moment later she realized she’d offered her thanks too soon. Her stomach turned once more at the sound of his boots crunching across gravel. He stopped beside her and a column of shade fell over her where he blocked the sun. Grudgingly she huddled in the cool swath. She should get up, walk away. But she was so hot… “Leave me alone.” Her voice sounded miserable. Pitiful.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, ma’am.” Refusing to look into the eyes again of the man who had killed Eduardo, she focused on the ground until blunt fingers appeared in front of her face, waving a rumpled napkin sporting a fast-food chain logo.

Loath as she was to accept his help, even in the form of a napkin, her suffering would prove nothing. He was the one who should be shamed by what he had done, not her.

She snatched the thin paper and wiped her face. A plastic bottle of spring water appeared next and she took it, too.

What was the difference? Her pride was already in tatters. Had been since she left her own people to come to America.

The water was warm, but blessedly wet. She swished it around in her mouth and spit over the guardrail.

The ranger cleared his throat. “I guess I should consider myself lucky.”

Without meaning to, she raised her head. He had a way of making her forget her intentions, like her vow not to let him see her pain—or her temper—in the chapel.

“Lucky?” she said.

“You have good reason to hate me.” He raised one solemn eyebrows. “And I am within spitting distance.”

The weakness in her body must have weakened her mind, too, because it took her seconds to put together his meaning. By the time she had, her stomach had rolled from her throat to the floor of her abdomen. “Perhaps you will not feel so lucky when you look more closely at your car.”

“Good thing I paid the extra hundred bucks for Scotchgard, then.”

Thanks to more than eight years of foreign language classes, Elisa’s English was good—better than most native speakers, since she’d learned classroom grammar, not street slang. She prided herself on her extensive vocabulary—but she did not know this thing, Scotchgard. An inborn sense of curiosity almost made her ask, but the question was lost in a gasp. She pressed the heel of her hand against her navel, hoping to stem the rising tide of nausea.

This time, she was almost grateful for the distraction the sickness provided. She knew better than to ask questions of him. He was a Texas Ranger.

“Are you all right?” Squatting beside her, the ranger steadied her with a hand under her elbow.

She nodded toward the ground at his feet. “Do you also pay extra to Scotchgard those?”

He followed her gaze down. “My boots? No.”

Ostrich, she guessed. Expensive. “Then perhaps you should get them out of ‘spitting distance.’”

He quickly shuffled behind her—without letting go of her arm. Within seconds another swell of sickness rolled through her. Her back bowed, crested and then went limp. Her head hung over the gritty metal rail. She tried focusing on the ditch below for stability, but the very earth pitched like the sea. A cry escaped her, and a surge of shame followed as the ranger watched the final purging of her stomach.

A moment later the ground went still again. She opened her eyes as the ranger dug a pack of gum from his shirt pocket, pulled a piece from its paper wrapper, folded the silver foil halfway back and extended it out to her, holding it by the still-wrapped end.

How was he continually able to offer her the one thing she couldn’t refuse at the time? Practically snarling, she snapped the gum from his hand. A moment later, with sugar and spearmint sweetening her tongue, she propped her back against the guardrail and drew her knees to her chest. The roiling cauldron in her stomach settled to a slow simmer, but her strength had yet to reappear.

The ranger watched her, muscled thighs straining the seams of his dress slacks as he squatted. “Have you been sick like this much?”

She tipped her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. “Every day. They call it morning sickness, no? But for me it comes in the afternoon.”

“How far along are you?”

“Over four months. It should have passed by now.” Her voice wobbled. This weakness left her defenseless against the worry she’d been pushing back since she’d learned of her pregnancy. Worry that she didn’t know how to have a baby.

“You’re not showing much for almost five months. But it’s different for everyone,” he told her, his words gentle, reassuring.

“You have children?” she couldn’t resist asking.

“No. But I lived out in the country as a kid. My grandmother was a midwife for half the babies born in Van Zandt county. I grew up listening to her stories.”

Memories of Oleda, the eccentric old midwife from Elisa’s village, flashed through her mind like a favorite movie. She had not asked Oleda about the sickness before leaving San Ynez; she had not been able to risk it.

She would not risk it when she returned, either. She would bear this baby alone, if she lived to bear it at all. Despite his gentle voice, this ranger was responsible for that.

She looked up at him. His wide shoulders bunched and released under his sports jacket. The light scent of soap and sandalwood wafted to her on a puff of a breeze. The corners of his mouth angled up hopefully, as if he wanted to smile at the newfound peace between them. She had never seen his smile, but could imagine it—warm and beguiling, pulling a matching grin from whomever it fell on. His would be the kind of smile women trusted. The kind they depended on. Wanted to wake up next to.

Suddenly he was too close, too male, too alive. All the things Eduardo had been and was no more.

Once again the ranger had made her forget her intentions. Made her forget who she was, and who he was—policía. Untouchable.

Dredging up the energy from deep inside, she rose on rubbery legs. He rose with her, still steadying her. She held the half-full water bottle out to him. He shook his head. “Keep it. You’re probably dehydrated.”

She dropped the bottle next to his expensive boots, and the smile that had been so close to breaking, died, unborn. His eyes hardened, as did his voice. “Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll drop you off and not bother you anymore.”

“I will go no further with you.”

“I just want to help you.”

“I do not need your help.” She shook free of his grip, took two steps down the road.

In one agile move, he stepped in front of her, blocking her way again. Containing a heavy sigh, she stopped short of plowing into him. Just short. They stood nearly nose to nose, close enough for her to see the beginnings of the stubble that would shadow his jaw in a few hours. Close enough for her to see the shadows in his eyes, too, though their source was less clear to her.

“Bull,” he said.

She tilted her chin up. “You are certainly acting like one.”

“Only because you’re being unreasonable.”

“Because I don’t wish to be helped by a man with my fiancé’s blood on his hands?”

The ranger’s face blanched, and at that moment she knew the source of the shadows in his eyes. Pain. Guilt. Shame. She would not have thought a policía capable of these emotions.

“You don’t want my help?” he said. “Give me the number of someone to call for you. A name. Anything.”

“No.”

“No, you won’t? Or no, you can’t? There isn’t anyone to call, is there? You have no one.”

Her face heated. “That is none of your concern.”

“Lady, right now that is my only concern. Because until I know you have someone to go to, I’m stuck with you. And you’re stuck with me.”

Sensing the turmoil in him, she could almost feel sorry for him. Almost, if the seedling sympathy sprouting inside her had not been quickly trampled by the stronger emotions she felt. Rage. Fear.

Hate.

She held on to the hate. It was the only emotion capable of keeping her on her feet. It gave her the strength to shoulder past him and start again down the blistering blacktop.

Behind her, his footfalls kept pace with her own. “Eduardo’s place has been sealed since the shooting. Where have you been staying?”

She ignored him.

“When was the last time you had a decent meal?” he called to her.

At the mention of food, her knees nearly buckled. The ranger’s hands were on her shoulders, holding her, as she swayed. For a moment the broad male chest behind her was the only solid in a fluid world. The kick of his heart against her spine was a beacon, guiding her from the stormy sea to firm ground.

When the ground stopped rolling beneath her, he turned her gently toward him, the way a parent would nudge a tired child. Instinct screamed at her to resist, flee or fight, but she had the strength for neither. Unable to meet his gaze this time, she stared at his chest. Weakness was so uncharacteristic for her. Pregnancy was doing wild things to her body, her stamina. She hated the feeling of helplessness that consumed her.

“Please let me go,” she said, humiliated by the pleading tone in her voice.

“Go where?” His words, like his hands, held her softly in place. “Back to San Ynez?”

Her gaze jumped to his, but before she could speak, he continued. “How do you plan on doing that with no plane ticket, no money, no credit cards? Nothing but your passport, some clothes, two bananas and a rosary to your name?”